Elevated Threat

by William Robson

  “What happened to the other fourteen containers?”

  The best answer she could come with was “Clerical Error.”

  Agent Andrews was incensed.

  “Find them now!!!”

  April 17, 2015

  Gilbert, Arizona

  Matt’s Recycling Center in downtown Gilbert, Arizona receives a container full of crushed up aluminum cans about once a month and those cans then get sent through a hammer mill which smashes them into small chips. The aluminum chips then get loaded onto a rail car which in turn gets shipped out to be melted down and used for the raw materials to build the next great aluminum item.

  When a funny looking container was dropped off at Matt’s earlier in the week, and the workers discovered a monster lock was on the door, they just moved the container to the back of the lot and forgot about it. If the owner wanted his money for the load of cans, he would have to show up with the key.

  When the workers arrived at Matt’s Recycling Center to start the Friday workday, waiting in the parking lot for them were three black government-plated vans full of scary looking dudes with a search warrant for the container. The workers certainly never expected to be told they would be closed for the day and to go home and not come back until they were told to do so. But since working in the sun in Arizona at a recycling plant is such a treat, none of the workers complained about the unexpected three-day weekend.

  When the hazmat crew completed their on-site examination, the container was moved to the same secret testing facility where the other containers were being dissected. The techs went into a flurry of work on the new arrival following the same detailed protocols they used in the previous searches. This new container was a mirror image of the previous four, right down to the strange paint and medical case inside. This new discovery added one very disturbing question to the puzzle. With everything about these five containers being identical, why did this container from Los Angeles not set off the alarms on the docks the way the other four had?

  When no member of his team could proffer any logical scenario where this made sense, Agent Andrews tore into them in a way that went well beyond his normal everyday rage. The jigsaw puzzle still had lots of pieces but none were coming together in a way where they could see any kind of picture. Frustration at the lack of purpose for these containers was weighing heavily on the teams.

  Agent Dan Spores’ investigation of the dock personnel was providing him with the same heartburn as Agent Andrews was encountering with the containers. The dock hands and ship crew interviews were all straight forward. They did not illuminate any new leads, but they were at least easy for the agents to conduct. The interviews with the short-haul truckers were a different kettle of fish. Many of these truckers had come from countries where talking to the police often meant a trip to a cold dark cell. If you managed to avoid a jail cell, the neighbors would start whispering to each other about information you had given up in order to stay home. Neither was a good option.

  Anytime Agent Spores or someone on his team talked to the truckers, their accents got thicker, and their memories got shorter. The lack of knowledge they had about any subject raised by the interrogator was stifling. The only option for the agents to make any headway was to try and determine if the subterfuge by the truckers was innocent and cultural, or more sinister in nature. The more they pressed the truckers for answers, the less response they got. Still, by crosschecking each employee and their stories against the verifiable facts, they eventually came to the conclusion that none of the truckers on duty that day had any part to play in the mystery container.

  One trucker was still unaccounted for. Fassil Hamid had not yet been found. It had been only 27 minutes from the time Clyde first mentioned Fassil’s name to Agent Andrews in the trailer until the time the first FBI agent arrived at Fassil’s rundown apartment in south Seattle. The apartment was found empty, and the manager loudly stated to the agents that the monthly rent which Fassil had paid in cash would not be returned. The agent would later make a note in his report that the apartment was only 1250 meters to the nearest mosque, even though no one there remembered Fassil ever attending services.

  Reviews of airport security files listed that over 9,000 travelers of Middle Eastern descent had departed the US on April 15th and 16th. The facial recognition system that the FBI had been hoping to have in place at the airports, which may have been able to spot Fassil boarding a plane, was still stuck in one of the many dysfunctional congressional committees. The ACLU lawyers had seen to that. The absence of Fassil Hamid remained just one more missing piece of the puzzle, and a big reason why Agent Spores could barely sleep.

  April 17, 2015

  Seattle, Washington

  Despite the increased cooperation between agencies after 9/11, boys will be boys. Bickering between agencies over who owns what information and who gets the credit when some badass gets caught never seems to stop. Even at the weekly interdepartmental situation report meetings where the big wigs from Homeland Security, CIA, FBI, and the various state agencies meet to try and share information on the open cases, they continue to bicker. Typically, one group has a working theory which they consider to be brilliant, while the others consider it rubbish. Often only because they didn’t come up with it.

  When they met in Seattle to discuss which procedures should be taken to prevent future cargo ships from getting through with suspect containers the usual process unfolded. Homeland Security wanted to inundate all the ports with personnel, and even went so far as to suggest we should stop all container ships at sea and inspect them first. The CIA team reminded them that this would severely hurt commerce, cost untold millions of dollars, and since there was still no proven biological or chemical agent found, they wouldn’t even know what to look for. The CIA instead thought the effort at interdiction should be placed at the source. They thought we should be rooting around for the originators in China. That way the normal commerce wouldn’t be affected. Naturally, as the only agency able to work this type of operation outside the US, they would take the lead role.

  Even the two GS 13’s in the room pointed out that getting cooperation from China was limited at best and there was no way to even predict where the next (if any) shipments would even come from. Someone made the point that anyone smart enough to build these specialized containers would not use the same origination point twice. The bad guys would be very aware that we would have been in touch with every port that ships to the US, so the tactics they would employ would surely now be changed. We would still be blind if we spent our time searching the foreign ports.

  Oddly, the FBI team remained silent, drawing more than a few curious looks from the others. At the end of the day there were no answers to be had. This mysterious onion had many layers and none were being easily peeled back.

  Normally Agent Spores does not get invited to the situational meetings, but Agent Andrews had invited him this time in case he could shed some light on the interviews he had with the truckers. When Agent Spores never spoke up at the meeting, Agent Andrews wasn’t very happy and made a mental note to not invite him again. He was even more surprised when Agent Spores turned up at his office afterward.

  “Agent Andrews, may I have a minute of your time?”

  Agent Andrews just shrugged and waved him in.

  “What can I do for you Dan?”

  “Well, I have been trying to understand why there doesn’t seem to be any answers about these containers and their contents, and I think the problem is that we are not thinking like the deer.”

  Agent Andrews looked straight into Dan’s eyes and after a deep breath sarcastically said:

  “Wow, I never thought of that; you should have shared that insight at the meeting.”

  Agent Spores got a little defensive but tried to recover his thought.

  “Sorry. What I mean is that perhaps we have been looking at this situation with only one viewpoint. Each agency is running tests, checking backgrounds and so on, based on the original assump
tions we made on the first day. Our initial assumption was that we had one of two possible scenarios. We either had containers which had some chemical material in them which set off the sensors, or we had faulty sensors setting off false alarms. There were no other options we gave credence to, so we never looked for other options. What if we were wrong in our initial assessment, and thus are looking in the wrong direction and that’s why we don’t have the answers?”

  Agent Andrews now sat on his desk. Agent Spores’ statement felt like some sort of Zen psychobabble but he was intrigued.

  “So what other possibilities are there besides hazard real, or hazard not real?”

  “Ok, let’s go back and look at the most basic facts. We had five containers leave from the same place and they were delivered to five different ports. Four of the five containers set off the sensors and one didn’t. Yet when we tested them, all five were negative for any contagions that the sensors would have triggered on. The first question is how could that happen assuming all sensors were working (which our techs say they were)? We are spending all our efforts looking into WHAT kind of material could do that. Since that has not turned up an answer, how about looking for the answer in a different dimension. Such as TIME.”

  Agent Andrews wasn’t quite sure what Agent Spores was getting at but he was at full attention now.

  “Time?”

  “Exactly. Imagine the old carnival game where the carny puts a pea under one of three shells and then moves them around. The pea is there where you think it is right up to the moment that the carny lifts the shell. Only in our case, the bio-marker setting off the alarm is there, until we go looking for it. I don’t have any background in this stuff, but what if someone was able to make a bio-marker that somehow decayed rapidly over time. And let’s say that person wanted to test it to see how long it would take for it to decay sufficiently where we would not be able to detect it. If I was going to do that, I would send my test loads to different locations where each one would take a different length of time to arrive, then sit back and see if we found it.”

  Agent Andrews stared into the distance, the wheels were turning now.

  “All right, Dan. Let’s explore that line. If I wanted to test our ability to catch a decaying chemical or biological agent by putting it in several containers and shipping them to different locations, why would I put the agent in a sealed briefcase inside a sealed cargo container where there would be a very minute chance of us finding it at all? Unless…”

  Agent Andrews was thinking now in full deer mode.

  “Unless the briefcase was the carny’s pea. We would be so consumed with it that we would miss the hand that palmed the pea away.”

  Now Agent Spores was starting to get lost, but Agent Andrews was on a roll.

  “What if the bio-agent was right there in front of us all along? If the goal was to see if we could detect it, why bother hiding it at all?

  Then Agent Andrews remembered something Clyde said when he interviewed him.

  “The Paint.”

  For the first time in weeks, Agent Andrews let a smile creep onto his face. Agent Spores was still confused, but seeing Agent Andrews smile meant his words had helped make a positive step forward. When Agent Andrews shook Dan’s hand firmly, thanked him for the visit, then walked him to the door, Agent Spores felt for the first time on this case like he had made a real contribution to peeling back the onion layers.

  April 18, 2015

  Seattle, Washington

  8 AM PST

  When Agent Andrews read the forensics report on the paint samples he was distraught. He was sure the paint was the answer. Each sample tested had a typical oil-based binder, traces of a petroleum distillate binder, a precipitated calcium carbonate pigment, and some small amounts of an additive that is used to improve pigment stability. In other words, just paint.

  The tests on the color variances showed that the pigment RGB values had the R component changed by two color steps for each change in color. There were no additional additives or substances that would account for the color change. The report’s conclusion was that the paint had nothing to do with triggering the alarms.

  Surprisingly, Agent Andrews was not willing to let this go. The theory of looking at everything in a different way, which Agent Spores had presented to him, had stuck in his big ugly head. Agent Andrews did not doubt his forensics team’s expertise, and he trusted what they put in their report, but he could not stop thinking that he needed the help of someone who was an expert on containers to spot what may not be obvious to those in the lab coats.

  When Clyde got the call from his boss to meet him in his downtown office, his mind started racing. Maybe his indiscretion had finally caught up with him. The blazer boys had not come around for a few days, and maybe his boss had started feeling bold enough to exact revenge. Clyde put his few personal effects from the office in a box just in case he needed to make a quick exit.

  When Clyde saw Agent Andrews in his boss’s office he wasn’t sure what to make of it. Agent Andrews reached out to shake hands.

  “Hi, Clyde. Your boss has graciously agreed to let you have the afternoon off so you could come help me look into something.”

  Clyde looked at his boss. He didn’t say a word, but it was clear by the scowl on his face who had made the day off possible. Clyde knew better than to drag it out.

  “Roger that.”

  Agent Andrews hated it when Clyde said that, which, of course, is why Clyde said it. Now all three men in the office were equally uncomfortable. Clyde had a way of doing that.

  Agent Andrews spent the entire trip to the FBI warehouse, where the cargo container had been taken, explaining to Clyde how he was not going to speak about anything he saw today to anyone. Clyde finished each admonishment from Agent Andrews with the same sarcastic response:

  “Or I’ll cut your balls off.”

  Agent Andrews hated that also, mostly because he couldn’t tell if Clyde was actually getting the message or if he was just messing with him. After several badge flashing checkpoints the two stood in front of the infamous container. Clyde’s peek inside the container on that cold rainy evening only gave him a peek at whatever his flashlight could illuminate. Now, completely empty, with the doors opened and the bright lights of the warehouse on, Clyde got his first good look inside the container. After looking around awhile Agent Andrews approached.

  “Clyde, we have looked at this container up and down, but we need someone with a trained eye who has seen these things for years to point out the differences between this container and all the others you have seen over the years. Tell me about every detail you can think of. I want to know about size, construction, everything.”

  “Got it. Well let’s start with the container’s size. In Seattle we mostly deal with the 1 TEU containers. Basically, that means we deal with a container that has the volume of a twenty-foot-long metal box. By being a consistent size they can all fit together on a ship, the trucks, and on trains. They are not always the same height, but we usually get the eight and a half footers. All the containers are eight-foot wide. My calibrated eyeballs say this one is a 1 TEU.”

  While Clyde was talking Agent Andrews was scanning his team’s report on the container.

  “Yep, this is listed as twenty feet by eight feet, by eight and a half feet.”

  Clyde was feeling pretty smug when he continued.

  “Obviously, the construction of the container is not at all normal. The steel is some alloy, the seams are double-welded, and of course, it has that inspection cover on the top. That’s very odd.”

  Agent Andrews pressed for details.

  “Why is an inspection cover so odd?”

  “Well, these containers sit on top of each other when they’re on the ship, and they are very heavy. They also get moved around with cranes and sometimes the guys moving them are not exactly careful with them, if you know what I mean. So any protrusion on any side, or on the top, will eventually get broken off. And since the insp
ection cover is so small it can’t be used to get in through it. The only use for the cover that I could see would be as a way to hook up the equipment needed to create the vacuum in the hold.”

  Agent Andrews was genuinely surprised at Clyde’s deductive reasoning. Maybe he wasn’t just the country fool he took him for.

  “Anything else stand out?”

  “Well, I had noticed before the paint on the outside looking like it had three shades, but now that I can see on the inside, I notice that it’s odd in here too. Most containers, particularly the new ones, have a type of insulating coat painted on the inside that has biocides mixed in. This helps prevent bacteria from getting started in the cold and wet conditions these things travel in. In a cold damp container that may be closed up for weeks or months you don’t want any molds or bacteria growing. But the inside of this one does not appear to have that kind of paint.”

  Agent Andrews’ ears really perked up. If the bad guys plan was to ship some type of bio-hazard materials in a container, you wouldn’t want to put any chemical agent that is designed to kill bacteria in with it. This started sounding like a solid clue as to what type of chemical they should be looking for. Something that would be affected by biocide based paint. As Agent Andrews was entering his notes, Clyde piped up again.

  “Hey, Andrews look at this. There are scrape marks in the paint here on the outside that were not there before. So I assume your team did that and are testing the paint variations for whatever. That’s all cool, but …”

  “But what?”

  “Well, my confusion is not what you are doing, but where. I see scrape marks all over both ends in the odd colored paint, but only a few scrape marks in the flat paint in between.”