Off Guard: A clean action adventure book

by Glen Robins

  June 17, 7:56 p.m. Mexico City Time; 5:56 p.m. Pacific Time

  Pho Nam Penh fussed with his fingernails, checking that they were shiny and smooth and perfectly trimmed. One of the accoutrements he most enjoyed about having money. It could buy the nice things and allow him to spoil himself in luxury and fashion, thus enhancing his power profile. Money also bought people and loyalties, especially from those starving for power. Once tasted by some, even to a very small degree, the intoxication from the elixir of authority produced an addiction of mythical proportion.

  Those in the middle to upper ranks of any government seemed the ones who fell into the power trap most often and most severely. That axiom was as true in Mexico as it was in any other country in the world. It just so happened that Mexico was strategically positioned in both time and geography to act on the suggestion of seizing its rightful spot atop the global stage. With the right mix of senatorial and military support, the coup within the country would be swift. Then, the necessary forces would be aligned to react quickly once the United States was weakened sufficiently.

  Penh’s brilliant plan was coming together nicely. And the evidence would point to Collin Cook as a coconspirator once the smoke lifted. He and his laptop were due to arrive in Mexico City just in time to join in. Penh marveled at the beautiful simplicity in his plan. Simple and elegant in presentation, complex and time-consuming to orchestrate.

  Penh rolled the satellite phone over and over in his hand, occasionally tapping the end of it against his chin as he mulled his strategy. He scrolled through his contacts list, ready to dial the secure line of Senator Juan Miguel Rivera Torres.

  Torres, a former military commander turned legislator, possessed the unlikely combination of leadership skill, technical savvy, high-level connections in all areas of government, and experience. What Penh liked most was his appetite for more power. Immensely ambitious, yet well-respected, Torres’s reputation within the vaunted halls of the Mexican Capitol garnered him access to the right sorts of people to pull off the task. Among the many hallmarks of his distinguished career, he had also won the hearts of the people due to the image he portrayed as a loving husband and doting father.

  Penh had discovered over time that every great champion had a chink in his armor. For Torres, a little-known penchant for expensive whiskey and exotic female escorts left him vulnerable to coercion from the outside. In public, he repelled all advances, suggestions, or appearances of evil. He had famously rebuffed the salacious approach of one of Mexico’s most famous call girls, known to have dragged down many a high-ranking official on hidden camera. The speech he gave after the discovery of the recording where he censured the notion of cheating on one’s spouse and piously proclaimed himself impervious to such vices had gone viral on YouTube in Mexico and much of Latin America.

  His private life, however, painted a very different picture. A cool distance had secretly grown between him and his wife. Two of his children had not made contact for many months. His youngest was shipped off to a boarding school midyear.

  Penh and his cadre of hackers were among the few to have discovered Torres’s chink. Eighteen months of intensive observation had revealed it. Six months of threats and pressure had exploited it sufficiently to gain his full buy-in and participation. The man was hungry for power and desperate to protect his brand. The fact that he had managed to conceal this part of his life so completely from the rest of the world made him a candidate with an ideal skillset to be the front-man in Penh’s scheme.

  Months of meticulous planning and careful manipulation and intimidation had reached its glorious crescendo. The stage was now set for the phone call Penh was about to place.

  ****

  FBI Office, Los Angeles, California

  June 17, 5:56 p.m. Pacific Time

  “How are we going to manage that?” Spinner asked incredulously.

  The two agents were back in the unadorned, but functional, borrowed office where they had started their day some fourteen hours earlier. Only now, their whole paradigm had shifted. Everything to do with this case had been flipped on its head, or so it seemed. After months of being stonewalled or ignored and coming up with nothing but close calls and missed opportunities, the past fifteen hours had produced a flood of new and actionable intelligence. The question now was how were they going to act on the information they had?

  Reggie took his commitment to Sarah and Henry Cook very seriously. He had promised them at the beginning, back in November, that he would do his best to bring their son home, safe and sound. The case had taken several turns, including a long detour through a place that made Collin look like the criminal. Now, in the light of recent revelations, Collin’s life and that of his best friend were in jeopardy. The solution seemed simple enough. Fly to Mexico, use the tracking device planted on Collin’s computer to find him, then bring him home.

  “We’re going to call Tom, of course,” said Reggie with a toothy smile. “Look at all the doors that have been opened to us since he got involved. He’s like Aladdin’s genie.”

  “Maybe so, but haven’t we used up our three wishes?” asked Spinner, shaking his head.

  “I only count two. The initial request to help us figure out what was going on and the second to pass along the message to Collin that Rob was in danger. That leaves us this one, the granddaddy of them all: Get us into Mexico to retrieve our boy and his friend and bring them home so we can do what we promised his parents we’d do. Pretty simple request, really.”

  Spinner continued to shake his head as a smile spread across his face. “You’re indomitable. A true optimist and the embodiment of ‘never say never.’”

  “As they say, you get one hundred percent of what you don’t ask for, so I’m asking for it.”

  Tom had called an hour and a half earlier and passed along another tidbit of information about the NSA pulling in operatives from every agency with assets in the country and converging on an area in the northwest section of Mexico City. So it seemed that they knew where Collin and Rob would end up. This left them with one minor detail to work out.

  Knowing the bureaucratic red tape involved when two FBI officers wanted to travel to Mexico, it would take people in power on both sides of the border to make it happen. As sworn law enforcement officers of the federal government of the United States, their jurisdiction ended at the boundary line that separated the two countries. Getting beyond the border to perform their job functions required high-level clearance. The two problems there were obvious. Time and tip-off. It would take time to run through the approval process and, once approved, it would be like ringing an alarm to whoever it was in the Mexican government helping Pho Nam Penh set up shop there.

  But the entanglements involved in international “business travel” for a Bureau man presented a problem. First, they had to prove Collin Cook was a suspected criminal. Second, they had to convince those in the know that he was not a spy with an order to assassinate Mexico’s president. Third, they had to prove that he should be tried for his crimes in the US, not Mexico. Unless they could get over these three hurdles and obtain special permission from the liaison office in Mexico City to apprehend a suspect in an international cybercrime ring, they would be held at the airport upon arrival.

  Crabtree was old school and believed in the power of being present when it came to investigating and solving mysteries. Plus, he didn’t like to rely on others to do his dirty work. And maybe there was a bit of a trust issue, too. In any case, Reggie felt the need to get himself and Spinner to Mexico City as fast and as inconspicuously as possible. Glancing at this watch, he realized it was after 11:00 p.m. in Washington, DC, but he decided to ring his friend anyway.

  Reggie knew they needed a break. Just a little luck, that’s all he was asking for. The arrest warrant for Collin Cook sat on his lap. An electronic version had been sent to the liaison office fifteen minutes ago. It likely wouldn’t get processed until morning, but he hoped that with Tom’s help, it could be ready first thing when
he and Spinner woke up.

  He looked at Spinner with a raised eyebrow and half-turned smile. Spinner gave a silent, hopeful thumbs-up as Reggie tapped the call button on his phone.

  ****

  Villahermosa, Mexico

  June 17, 7:56 p.m. Local Time; 5:56 p.m. Pacific Time

  Mongoose sat in front of a computer in the back of the barn-like structure, typing away. A few strange noises erupted outside, followed by a dog barking. The barking stopped quickly, so he went on with his work reassembling the clone of Collin’s laptop.

  He had spent much of the day repairing the sections of Collin’s hard drive that had been corrupted by Penh’s men when they hooked it up to their equipment. They had managed to punch through one firewall to attain access to some of Collin’s information, including his biometrics. That was bad, but not as serious as it would be if they got through the second, more robust firewall. Behind that electronic barrier lay a portal of sorts. Once accessed, the user could gain entry to the NSA’s database if he was clever enough. That would be disastrous, but Mongoose was quite confident that Penh’s group had not yet penetrated their elaborate cyberdefenses.

  Luckily, Mongoose had sent Collin’s laptop northward with a team that was to intercept Collin and the others and return the device to him. He had left the tracking software on, per the instructions he received from the German guy in Washington. That seemed odd, but the guy was adamant, so he followed the instructions he was given.

  The last thing Mongoose did was update the piece of code he had created and built into every NSA laptop in the field over the past year, including this clone. It was a genius program that stored data about a user’s keystroking nuances. Because every computer user had a unique pattern or rhythm to their typing, much like every human has a distinct gait, a clever program could monitor and analyze these metrics for each user over a period of time. The computer could measure and record the angle, pressure, speed, and cadence with which the user typed a certain sequence of keys. That pattern would become another identifier that would either lock or unlock the data and programs on a given computer system when the user typed a key phrase that included twenty-one different keystrokes.

  Mongoose sat back and cracked his knuckles, pleased with his latest creation. It was well hidden and virtually untraceable within the computer’s security protocol.

  Next, he would upload this update to the NSA mainframe so that it would require a new round of tests for each login. But to make it less obnoxious, the user would only be required to type the predetermined, random text once per day.

  An incoming text message grabbed Mongoose’s attention so he didn’t notice the front door open with a creak as he read the message from Carmen, asking for a status update. The fact that the door opened slower than usual didn’t dawn on him until it was too late. He hit enter to save his work on his computer before responding to the text. He pivoted toward the interior door behind him just in time to see the muzzle flash. His blood splattered the wall, the table, and the laptop he was working on.

  Mongoose’s computer continued to send his code over a secured virtual private network connection to the NSA mainframe while his murderers surveyed the scene and went about fulfilling their assignment. His last act would prove a valuable contribution to the security of sensitive government data.

  ****

  Two sets of black boots stepped into the room. Two pistols, held firmly with two hands each, swept in all directions until the two men holding them were sure the room was otherwise empty. The boots proceeded to the dark wooden desk in the corner, where the body, splayed backward and facing the ceiling, partially covered a laptop computer. The pistols were holstered and the room was searched top to bottom. Everything that looked useful was quickly stacked into plastic tubs. When the tubs were full, two more men entered the room and hauled the tubs out of the building and into the back of a pickup truck. Electronic devices of all sorts—laptops, tablets, satellite phones, routers, even game consoles—were stacked into the plastic containers. Cables, connectors, modems, and mice were packed in, as well.

  When everything was loaded in the truck, one of the men turned on the gas stove in the kitchen full blast. He was the last one out. After climbing in the back of the truck, he lit a cigarette. When the truck sped past the farm house, he flicked the cigarette into an open window.

  The blast wasn’t immediate. The truck had traveled the length of several football fields before it blew, but when it did, it was spectacular. Glass, splinters of wood, and chunks of plaster flew in all directions. Pieces of the tin roof launched high into the air and somersaulted down like strange acrobats in an aerial ballet. Some of it rained down around the speeding truck. The heat and flames spread in all directions as the fireball grew in size and intensity. As the truck came through a stand of trees and reached the distant road, all occupants looked back and saw a black mushroom cloud reaching into the sky.

  The three Americans left behind to defend their safe house would have to be identified through dental records.

  Chapter Twenty

  Washington, DC

  June 17, 10:02 p.m. Local Time

  Carmen gasped in horror and covered her mouth with her hand. Lukas rushed to her desk from his position at the back of the stadium-style room. He came down two steps and leaned in for a closer look. Carmen pointed at the smoke that filled the center of her screen. “The safe house in Villahermosa just blew up,” she said with the tone of forced detachment and emotional neutrality she had been trained to maintain.

  “Ring them,” Lukas demanded.

  Carmen lowered her head and picked up her phone. She listened for a long moment. “There’s nothing, sir. It’s not even ringing.”

  Lukas sighed. “Do we know who was there?”

  “We know most of two teams are escorting Mr. Cook to Mexico City. They left behind only Mongoose, Troy, and Clutch to guard the house and take care of Mamba.”

  Lukas shook his head and clinched his jaw. “Those are good men.” He stepped away from Carmen’s desk, shut his eyes, and pondered for a moment. “Call in the team from Guadalajara. Get them in there to back up Butch and his team. Who else can we bring in?”

  Kevin spoke up. “We’ve got three men stationed in Cabo San Lucas, sir. They can be there in four hours.”

  “Do it. We’re going to need everyone we can get. Anyone else?”

  Marty looked up from his monitor and said, “We could get two guys out of Ensenada. The next closest is Tucson. Team of four there.”

  “OK. Make it happen. Things just changed. A group of Federales just attacked and killed three of our own.” Lukas’s brow was furrowed and his mouth pulled tight, showing the strain. “It looks like our crooked Mexican senator has garnered more support than we realized. This could be a bad omen. We need to get in touch with General Aguilar and hope he’s not in on it.” Lukas muttered the last part under his breath.

  “Will do, sir,” said Kevin as he swiveled back and began to punch keys on this computer.

  Lukas ran a hand through his bristly blonde hair as he turned and, leaning on his cane, strode back to his desk.

  Carmen watched him. “Don’t worry, sir. Our assets down there are professionals. They know what they’re doing.”

  Lukas turned toward her, the wrinkles in his forehead pronounced. “I know they are, but Collin’s just a civilian. I shouldn’t have gotten him involved in this.”

  “He’s with the best team we have. Remember, he volunteered to do this. He wanted to get involved. Plus, he has proven to be quick on his feet and very resourceful.”

  Lukas still had not sat down. Instead, he paced gingerly in the narrow space behind his desk. “I’ll be back,” he said, gripping his phone in his hand. “Continue coordinating the teams’ arrivals and get them situated. They should each be given the signal for both Penh’s phone and Collin’s. We need to secure the perimeter around Collin. If they’ll kill our agents in the field, they’ll have little trouble killing him when they�
�re done with him.”

  “But they won’t be able to unlock the hard drive without him. They can’t fake the biometrics data,” Carmen said, hopefully. “Plus, since it’s the money they’re after, they will need him to get that money out.”

  “Yes, but that will only buy us so much time. They’ll dispose of him and Rob without another thought. I can’t let that happen.”

  “Our team will protect him, sir. No way they’ll let Penh get to him.”

  Lukas stared at the screens on the wall for a long moment, his expression blank. He inhaled, held it, then said, “I wish I knew everything Penh had up his sleeve.” He then shouldered his briefcase and waved his phone. “Call me with updates,” he said as he pushed through the door to the back hallway where there was a service elevator to the basement. In the basement, there was tunnel he always used to enter and exit the building. A golf cart sat a few feet away, plugged into a charging station. He unplugged it and began silently working his way through the underground catacombs to the isolated parking area three-quarters of a mile deep in the forest of Virginia. A car with tinted windows and a professional driver awaited him in the tiny clearing.

  ****

  Orizaba, Mexico, 175 miles southeast of Mexico City

  June 17, 10:35 p.m. Local Time

  Collin was woken from his nap as they pulled into the quaint mountain village of Orizaba. An inky darkness had settled in. Flickering street lamps valiantly fought it back along the road lined with an assortment of buildings, most of them multiple stories. Some looked to be cathedrals built a century or two earlier. Others were newer office buildings with sixties-era stucco or concrete facades.

  Collin instantly felt the chill of the thinner, higher altitude air as he rubbed his eyes and shook his head to bring his senses back to life.