“Okay, why is that so odd?”
“Well, only because when the truck pulls on the scale, it moves horizontally in front of the various sniffers. But after the truck is stopped, the RSCAAL is pointing right above the container’s center section. I’m no expert, but I had assumed that since the truck is stationary when the RSCAAL is aiming at the container’s middle, that’s where it would pick up the control reading it uses to compare against the background readings it had previously recorded, to decide if it should squawk or not.”
Agent Andrews looked at the center of the container and its perfectly normal looking paint. Perhaps the boardwalk carny had more than one shell game in play. Maybe the pea was hidden in the normal looking paint in the middle of the container and not in the suspicious paint on the ends.
Clyde poked around at the container’s undercarriage and looked closely at the flooring, but no other revelations were to be made. Agent Andrews was duly impressed with Clyde’s inspection, but never let on to him that he may have found things that his team of highly paid experts had missed. Instead, he just thanked Clyde for the information and had a junior agent drop Clyde back at work after giving him one more admonishment to keep this visit under wraps.
Despite Agent Andrews not praising Clyde’s help, Clyde was feeling so smug about helping save the world that he decided to take the rest of the afternoon off and enjoy the unusual April Seattle sunny day with a beer in his backyard. Agent Andrews had the paint-testing crew back in the warehouse, now taking samples from every inch of the container before Clyde said hello to his second Bud Light.
8 PM
When Agent Andrews received the preliminary report showing Clyde was correct about no biocides being found in the interior paint, the long day started to feel worthwhile. When the follow-up report on the outside paint returned, one line in the report told him he may just have a good night’s sleep after all.
“Test samples A-37 and A-42 produced an enzyme-substrate complex between the two layers of paint. The substrate consisted of minute amounts of salivary amylase (used to breakdown proteins in saliva). Additional trace particles of an unknown substance was found. Samples have been sent to the Biological Countermeasures Unit for further analysis.”
When the head of the test team forwarded an addendum to the initial paint report via email, Agent Andrews expected his new-found positive attitude to be dashed. After all, that’s the way everything else had been going. Instead, what Agent Andrews next read peeled back the mysterious onion one more layer.
“Sir, I assumed from the test results that you would want me to test the secondary containers (SEA-Test sub-3 and SEA-Test sub-2) as well. These are the normal containers that did not contain suitcases. Going on the assumption that the SEA-Test sub-1 container was the source of the initial contamination, I crosschecked their transport location on the ship using the ship’s manifest. It showed that the two secondary containers were located on either side of SEA-Test sub-1 while being transported. This led me to believe their positive test result at the weigh station most likely came from cross contamination during shipping.
To verify that thought, the team analyzed samples taken from each of the secondary containers and has discovered the same enzyme-substrate complex was present, but it was only found on the side that would have been facing SEA-Test sub-1. Additionally, the contamination was only found on top of the paint. Not between the layers. This clearly points to SEA-Test sub-1 as the original source of the contamination and the other two containers contamination as secondary and incidental.”
Agent Andrews decided to treat himself to a drive back to his apartment and a night’s sleep in a real bed instead of the pullout he kept in the office.
NO MORE SECRETS
Name: Aadil Dogar
Age: 27
Nationality: Pakistani
Education: Attock – Punjabi Army Public School. Graduate Student in Immunology.
Professional History: None
Family history: Father (Asif) was a Colonel in Pakistani Army Special Forces. No history on mother.
Current whereabouts: Unknown
Current watch-list status: Yellow
April 18, 2015
Seattle, Washington
Journalists tend to fall into one of three types. The first type are the straight up facts, “I don’t want to inject any personal bias into my reporting” kind. These types of reporters often end up as the company lackeys. They are intelligent and hardworking, but they never stray beyond the lines. If they are good looking, these types of reporters can usually be found filling 5:00 p.m. news anchor slots. If they are not, they get stuck doing stray dog reports for small town papers. The second type of reporter is the “I’m super-knowledgeable about everything and, if you are lucky, I’ll impart my wisdom to you” pompous kind. These types with minimal talent can often be found with their own local radio news/ talk shown. The pompous types with talent often fill up the national conservative radio spectrum. Then there is the dig for the dirt, never believe what you hear, and never take no for an answer kind. These reporters are usually unemployed and can be found writing blog posts well past midnight. Anne Kowanger was the latter, and her blog was released twice a week.
Anne grew up in downtown Seattle and, despite both parents being software engineers, allowing her to inherit their intelligence, she gravitated towards wanting to document engineering breakthroughs rather than discover them herself. Fortunately for Anne, her parents raised her during the my-child-can-do-nothing-wrong 80’s and they had enough money to smooth over her youthful indiscretions. When Anne was only 12 years old, her mother died because of a drunk driver. When Anne graduated from high school and declared that she wanted to spend $80,000 to attend journalism school, at a time when the internet was crushing all job prospects for journalists, her father stood by her decision and wrote the checks.
Despite being a short little thing, she made up for her lack of stature with a plucky desire to never quit when she was on the trail of a good story. She was also not the least bit afraid of hard work. More than once she had been described by her peers when on the quest of a story as a bulldog digging for a hidden bone. At only 105 pounds dripping wet, the analogy was more than just a theoretical one.
Anne had a few job prospects after she completed journalism school as her talent for writing had proven to be well-developed and her skill and tenacity for digging into the story was obvious. But her lack of conformity and stubbornness, even when she was dead wrong, made sure the few opportunities she had didn’t last. If only she had found a way to follow company procedures and listen to what the editors told her, she may have already commanded that 5:00 p.m. news slot instead of making do by scrounging for occasional independent submissions and keeping her blog stories updated. Fortunately, her dad never let her down when she called begging for rent money.
There was one other interesting thing about Anne. She just happened to live at Massachusetts and Union Avenue South in Seattle, less than a stone’s throw from Clyde’s office at the Seattle shipping port. When she looked out of her apartment window that Wednesday morning she saw firsthand the number of white vans and the vast array of blazers that showed up. With her view of the action from the docks she had never believed the story of the false alarm that all the other reporters were willing to accept. Her instincts told her that no way would that many white vans show up for a false alarm. When she left the apartment and went down to the street and peered in from the perimeter fence at the commotion, she could literally see the intensity on the faces of the people in those blazers and knew then and there that something had happened that day. And dammed if she didn’t intend to find out.
Long after the Seattle Times reporters and local newscasters had given up asking the boys on the docks what really went on that day, Anne kept up a daily vigil of stopping by for a visit. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she didn’t have much else to do with her days.
At first, Clyde didn’t much care for Anne. She had a te
ndency to be pushy, and, of course, there was that old “don’t you say anything to reporters or I’ll cut off your balls,” speech from Agent Andrews that Clyde hadn’t forgotten about. On the other hand, there was often a long time delay between ships where Clyde had ample free time on his hands, and having someone to talk to was much better than doing paper-work. It didn’t hurt that Anne was easy on the eyes and talked to him in salty language like the dock workers. After a few visits she started to become comfortable to be around. After a few tries to get Clyde to fess up his side of the story, Anne started easing up on the interrogation style of communication and just started talking to Clyde about life in general.
The two certainly did not have much in common. Clyde was a union boy from the day his Pop helped him reach over the desk and sign on as an apprentice. Other than the docks, hunting, and Seahawks games, Clyde had little in his life to talk about. Anne, however, was full of stories of all kinds of adventures. Her parents had taken her on numerous trips as a youngster and she was a natural newshound and her curiosity had led to many interesting places and situations.
It was during one of her stories to Clyde about hanging out with her brother in Portland when Clyde let it slip that he too had a brother in Portland and that his brother worked the docks there. Anne just glossed over the information at the time and went into a new story about how a friend had been jailed two years in a row at the May Day riots in Seattle. But that little nugget about Clyde’s brother stuck in Anne’s brain. When she got home that evening she started searching for information about Clyde’s brother. During that search she came across the story about Portland having a false alarm on the docks.
Looking through the reports she discovered the Portland false alarm occurred only two days before the one in Seattle. That got Anne wondering just how many times false alarms happen on the docks around the country. Perhaps she could run a story about wasted resources running down false alarms in Seattle, or maybe there was an angle to be found about how the equipment used was faulty. Ideas for a juicy scandal story started rolling around in her head. When she did an internet search to learn about false alarms at US shipping docks she just about fell out of her chair. She discovered that four West Coast cities in less than one week had run stories on false alarms at their shipping docks. When she looked for previous reports, she could only find two reports for the previous four years in the entire country. Youser. Anne started smelling blood in the ocean.
One thing about Anne. She was not naïve. Unlike the reporters with their own opinion shows, she knew enough to know that she wasn’t smarter than everyone else. So why hadn’t the AP, CBS, or NBC News reported this story of the rash of false alarms on the docks? It didn’t take her long to discover a couple of weak op-ed pieces on it and even a few minor mentions from the big hitters, but after the initial notice they all quickly glossed over the story.
Anne was convinced, in her semi conspiracy-theory way, that there could only be one answer. The major news players had somehow been convinced not to follow up the story. Her imagination ran wild all night. Her 82 regular weekly blog readers would now have to wait an extra day to be satiated with her usual drivel. An exposé was brewing.
April 21, 2015
Seattle, Washington
A little information combined with a big hunch are way more damaging to a reporter than anything else. Anne Kowanger knew that more than most. Despite spending the two days canvassing the Seattle docks, calling every contact she knew in Vancouver, Portland, and San Francisco, she could not get anyone to shed any light on the mysterious “false alarms”. There were the conspiracy kooks spouting their usual dribble, but she could find nothing at all from anyone she could trust. She even started thinking that maybe everyone else was right this time and she was just blowing everything out of proportion. But no matter how hard she tried, the image of the look on the faces of the agents on the docks that night would not leave her mind. She wasn’t yet ready to let it go.
Every time she decided to explore a new avenue for research, Anne would counter the idea by thinking that maybe it was only the two sleep deprived days that were pushing her to continue looking for answers, and that was making her see shadows of objects that were not there.
Besides, her blog was way past due. She had several articles pre-written for just a time like this when she didn’t have time to write something new, so she inserted one of them into her blog. Just before she hit the “Enter” button to submit her blog she had an idea to add a short plea for help for information on the mysteries at the docks. It was a long shot, but she wasn’t getting anywhere anyway, so why not. The April 21st blog edition ran this solicitation at the end.
“Dear Readers,
The ocean brings us life, the ocean brings us happiness, and the ocean brings us peace. On April 15th the ocean brought us a great mystery. A mystery that someone in our own government does not want us to understand. But this mystery is too big to ignore, too important to cover up, and too involved to keep hidden for long. Be the first to illuminate what others want to hide. Together we can share the truth and make our oceans free again.” To Anne, the first rule of investigative journalism is: don’t tell your readers what you don’t know; get them to tell you what they do know. It was worth a shot. Even though Anne’s small apartment sat right on a busy street and her mattress was a chiropractor’s dream, once she submitted her blog she slept like there was no tomorrow.
Blog readers, like reporters, tend to fall into several categories. Geeks that think reading a newspaper is so uncool, conspiracy nuts looking for “proof” for their own crazy thoughts, and other journalists looking for new story angles on their lunch break. One of those latter types reading Anne’s blog while consuming her usual Tuesday lunch of chicken salad was Rebecca Jones, the Seattle Times local interest reporter.
Rebecca was one of the play it safe, by the book type of journalist. After graduating from Washington State with a journalism degree, despite the same argument that Anne faced of having no jobs left in journalism, she was so dedicated to make it anyway, that she offered to become an unpaid intern for nearly two years at the Seattle Times doing anything and everything they asked just to keep close to the business. When the editing manager offered her a chance to do a column on local events once a week for $12,000 a year she was on Cloud Nine. She had made it, a professional writer.
Now, two years later, Rebecca’s enthusiasm, decent writing skills, and ability to follow every command her editor gave her without questioning, had given her the opportunity to become the “senior local events reporter”. Despite the fact the she was the only local events reporter at the Times, and her pay was not changed, Rebecca’s enthusiasm never waned. Bless her heart.
One of the stories Rebecca had recently reported on was the false alarm at the Seattle docks. Rebecca thought that perhaps Anne’s blog request for information may have had something to do with her report about it. Rebecca decided to get in touch with Anne, so after lunch she sent her an email. When Anne finally propped her eyes open again and saw the email from Rebecca it looked like manna from heaven.
Anne was able to arrange for a meeting between the two women the next morning at the best restaurant Anne could afford. Fortunately, the Subway around the corner from the Times downtown office was offering a two-for-one deal that couldn’t be beat. Rebecca had brought her own lunch since Wednesdays were her designated leftover lasagna day. Anne saved the other foot-long sub for dinner.
The two women couldn’t be any more different from each other if they had come from different planets. While growing up in Seattle, Anne had to fight for attention from her single father after her mother died. Her two older brothers played on all the sports teams and watched the Seahawks games with her dad while she wrote stories for him about Russian Oligarchs she had invented. Her dad did his best to respond to her but it was obvious his heart was with the boys.
Rebecca on the other hand grew up an only child in an idyllic family in the Seattle suburbs where tr
ust funds and private schools are de rigueur. Despite Rebecca’s next to non-existent salary from the Times, the bank of mom and dad made sure she always had the proper handbag and shoes for every occasion and a nice condo overlooking the city. The only thing the two women had in common was a love of writing.
It took several awkward exchanges between them before Anne was able to zero in on the fact that showing a mutual respect for writing was the wedge she needed to get information from Rebecca, and so she started pulling out the butter.
“Rebecca, I read your story on the activities on the docks, and I thought you really captured the essence of the scene that day.”
Rebecca squirmed uncomfortably in her seat. She was flattered by the praise but just couldn’t tell a lie. Bless her heart.
“Well, thank you. But, well... actually I sort of only wrote part of it.”
“Oh, I see. Well then, you must have just written the good parts.”
Rebecca giggled. Anne kept the full-court press on.
“So, why didn’t you write the whole story?”
“Well, that’s kind of a mystery, actually. I did originally write the whole story and submitted it to my editor. The next day when the article was published it was completely different from what I wrote. I asked my boss about it and he just said they needed to make some changes for security reasons, so I didn’t ask again.”
Anne’s eyes lit up.
“Well, you know, you did such a nice story I sure would like to see the original. Do you still have it?”
Rebecca was now blushing. Anne wanted to see her work.
“Oh sure, I keep every story I ever write so I can review my work and hone my style year after year. But I couldn’t let anyone else have it, my boss made me promise.”
Elevated Threat Page 5