The sheet also included installation instructions—a simple setup that could be used if the PC could be unlocked and accessed and a more complicated method if a PC were locked with a password.
There was also a thermal imager with an 80 mm lens, which was roughly the size of a small telescope or camcorder. According to the instructions, it would allow covert night viewing up to a mile and a half away without any likelihood of the user being detected.
The other item was a small pack of GPS microchip tracking devices, which could monitor the location of any item into which they were inserted.
Johnson walked to the coffee machine, made another cup, and turned on the radio Donovan had left in the apartment. A BBC Radio Ulster news program was underway.
He looked up the PC monitoring software brand, TotalAccessSpySoft, online and began to read up on its capabilities. The package looked comprehensive and had many good reviews from corporate users.
Johnson’s phone rang. He looked at the display. It was Ronnie.
There was no exchange of pleasantries. Ronnie got straight to the point.
“Word’s got around the village,” he said. “Duggan got picked up this morning by police. We think for questioning about Moira. They took him up to Belfast.”
Johnson instantly felt a jolt go through him. It was hardly surprising, though. “Has he been charged with anything?”
“No idea. That’s all I know. They’ve picked him up and apparently two others in as well. I don’t know who the others are. My bet is that he’s got alibis up to his armpits, but you never know.”
Johnson thanked Ronnie, ended the call, and turned to Jayne. “Did you get that?”
“I picked up that Duggan’s been taken in for questioning,” Jayne said. “That’s standard procedure, I’d have thought, to quiz him.”
“Yes. I’m just thinking—”
“He’s going to be held for at least a day or so, that’s my guess. The house’ll be empty.”
That was what he liked about Jayne—always on the ball. “Right. Unless he somehow arranged for someone to sit in at short notice, as Ronnie suggested. Unlikely. Or is it?”
“Don’t know, but it’s our best chance. We’d best get moving,” Jayne said. She would get Noreen Wilson to use her network to check on how long police might keep Duggan for questioning or at least to give Jayne a heads-up when he was going to be released. That would hopefully give them enough time to make a quick exit if needed.
Johnson nodded. He certainly didn’t want Duggan to catch him breaking into Willows Farm.
The usual butterflies fluttered in his stomach, as was always the case before he set out on something that either was dangerous or on the wrong side of the law.
Or both.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Forkhill
Dusk was falling rapidly, and a relentless north wind was buffeting the sparse branches of a tall pine when Johnson and Jayne arrived at the wooded area he had pinpointed, about three-quarters of a mile south of Willows Farm.
This time they drove up from the Irish Republic side, having earlier traveled south across the border on the divided highway, rather than take the route through Forkhill. There was less chance of being spotted by the wrong people that way.
Jayne drove the black Ford into the gateway to a field, cut behind a large stack of silage bales wrapped in black plastic, well out of sight from the road, and killed the lights. The plan was already agreed, so there was no need for further discussion.
Johnson and Jayne would head toward Willows Farm, but only Johnson would go in. Jayne would wait a suitable distance away in case things went wrong. If he didn’t return within an hour or send her a message, she would go in and search for him. He had given her a copy of Ronnie’s map of the underground complex.
Almost unconsciously, Johnson patted the Beretta, which he had stuffed into his belt, under his jacket. Hopefully he wouldn’t need it. They both got out of the car and set off.
Dressed entirely in black, from his woolly hat to his waterproof jacket to his leather boots, Johnson moved quickly behind the hedge separating the field from the straight single-lane road. Jayne, similarly attired, followed behind.
Up to their right, to the east, lay a slope that rose to a large wooded area on a ridge beyond the fields. Johnson quickly calculated that if they could work their way up to the trees, they could make their way along a ridge and get within a third of a mile of Willows Farm without breaking cover.
They walked up the side of the field next to the hedge until they reached the densely planted conifers and pine trees, then turned north and, hugging the darkness of the wood, followed the curve of the field.
Fifteen minutes later they reached the end of the tree line. Looking down the slope away to his left, Johnson could just about make out the outline of the three barns, the farmhouse, and the other outbuildings that made up Willows Farm, about half a mile away.
Johnson took out the thermal imager from his backpack and focused on the farm below, which instantly became clearly visible on the viewfinder as a series of white-gray images against the dark background of the field behind it. The whitest of them, indicating it was the warmest, was the farmhouse, next to the road.
There was no sign of life.
Johnson turned and pointed the imager toward the neighboring field, where several cows grazed. They showed up as clear white or pale-gray images. A fast-moving smaller white shape suddenly appeared from the bottom of a hedge and ran up to the wood. A fox.
“I think you should stay here,” Johnson said. “You can see everything, and you’re within range if I need you.”
“Yes. Perfect,” Jayne said. “See you soon, and good luck.”
Johnson nodded, returned the imager to his backpack, and made his way down alongside the hedge toward the farm.
After a few minutes he was within a couple hundred yards of the three barns that stood between him and the farmhouse and the road. The barn he needed was on the far left, southern side of the farmyard, on the Irish Republic side.
Johnson moved up behind a clump of gorse bushes, which provided him with good cover as he resurveyed the farmyard with his thermal imager. Again all appeared quiet apart from a cat that strolled out of one barn and sauntered slowly to the next.
Where was the Rottweiler Ronnie had mentioned? There was no sight of him in the farmyard and neither had he heard him barking. In any event, Johnson was prepared for the animal with a pack of dog treats. In his experience, they were worth a try. There weren’t many dogs he couldn’t charm, unless they were particularly vicious, rigorously trained animals.
Johnson checked carefully for surveillance cameras through the imager. The only one he could see was mounted on the outside of the barn he needed to access, above large double doors that faced north.
But he could tell from the angle the camera was pointing that if he stayed flat to the barn wall he should be safe. It was positioned to capture people coming into the farmyard from the road, not the field.
Johnson decided to make his move. He edged his way to the end of the gorse bushes and climbed over a wire mesh fence that separated the field from the farmyard. Then he bent double, ran across the rough concrete yard to the wall of the barn he needed to enter, and hid around the corner from the double doors and the security camera.
He dropped to his haunches and listened. There was only silence.
Then he put on a pair of thin rubber gloves and, after a minute, peered around the side of the barn, again checking the camera, which was pointing away from him. Then he rounded the corner, flattened himself against the corrugated steel wall, and moved swiftly toward the huge double barn doors twenty yards ahead. The large doors were closed, but to his surprise, a single inset door appeared slightly ajar. Was someone inside?
Johnson visualized the map of the underground complex in his mind. The manhole leading down into the tunnel must be at the rear of this barn. But where exactly?
He peeked through
the slight gap where the inset door was open. It was pitch-dark inside, and there was no sound. He pushed the door slightly, and the rusty hinges squeaked loudly in the still air. Johnson immediately stopped and winced. But again there was no sound from inside, and he needed to open the small door farther to get in. So after waiting a minute, he pushed again. There was another squeal of metal on metal.
Johnson stopped again and listened, his right hand resting on the Beretta at his side. But there were no shouts, no alarms, no running footsteps across the farmyard, no dogs barking.
He slipped through the gap into the blackness within.
Once inside, Johnson felt in his bag, took out the imager, adjusted the lens to wide angle, and slowly surveyed the interior. On the screen, he could now see the ghostly gray outlines of two tractors parked over to the right, a trailer, and a stack of hay bales. Occupying a large area to the left were two enormous fuel tanks mounted on cinder blocks with pipe systems emerging from the top and hanging down. Presumably they were used to fill or refuel vehicles or tankers.
But he couldn’t yet see what he was looking for.
Johnson took several steps toward the rear of the barn and again slowly moved the imager from right to left.
There it was. Right in the corner, next to a stack of cinder blocks, a slightly lighter gray circle stood out against the blackness of the floor that surrounded it. A manhole cover, elevated a little from the rest of the barn floor on a cement base, presumably to ensure that no water would drain into the cavity below.
It looked like a simple drain cover. But Johnson knew it wasn’t.
He walked to the manhole, replaced the imager in his backpack, and briefly flicked on a mini flashlight that he took from his pocket.
There were two handles on the metal manhole cover. With considerable effort, he grabbed them to lift it up and put it to one side. Below was a shaft with a metal ladder attached to the side.
Another quick flick of the flashlight, and Johnson could see the bottom, which he estimated was about fourteen or fifteen feet down. It looked dry. Above it were two openings to the right and the left, each perhaps four feet square, just as Ronnie had described. Anyone who didn’t know would simply assume it was a large drainage or sewer pipe.
The problem here was that he would have to leave the manhole cover off. It was just too heavy to maneuver back into place from below once he was in the shaft.
Before going down, Johnson took one of the microcameras, turned it on and wedged it into a small gap between two of the cinder blocks in the stack next to the manhole. The camera would be virtually invisible unless someone made a close inspection of the stack or moved the blocks. He could see by the flashlight that the blocks were covered in dust and hadn’t been touched for a long time, so a disturbance was unlikely.
Next he took the 3G transmitter unit and placed it out of sight between two other cinder blocks.
The cameras would connect wirelessly with the transmitter, if necessary via the booster unit he planned to place in one of the tunnels. In turn, the transmitter would send the pictures and sound via a 3G wireless connection to a secure website where Johnson could monitor the outputs, using either his laptop or the Internet connection to his phone.
He knew from experience that barring some unforeseen disaster, the system would provide decent pictures of whatever was going on in the barn or the other locations where he positioned the remaining microcameras.
Johnson removed a headlamp from his bag, strapped it onto his forehead, and began to descend into the blackness.
Chapter Twenty-One
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Forkhill
At the bottom of the shaft, Johnson turned on his headlamp and climbed into the right-hand tunnel, which he knew led to the farmhouse.
To his relief there were squares of dark green foam-backed carpet along the tunnel floor to make crawling more comfortable.
He set off slowly. The tunnel, built from cinder blocks, ran in a straight line. The floor on either side of the carpet squares was littered with pieces of cement and other building debris that had never been removed. Cobwebs filled every crevice. Ahead of him, a mouse appeared briefly, then vanished into a hole.
Johnson crawled on. He had never grown used to enclosed spaces, and he could feel his stress level rising, his heart rate increasing. Sweat stung his eyes, and he brushed it away with his hand.
After about fifty yards, Johnson saw a plywood hatch door in front of him. He took his Beretta from his belt and turned off his headlamp. Then he pulled the handle slowly toward him, a fraction at a time.
The hatch door opened, but behind it was only darkness. He felt with his hand to discover another flat wooden board.
Johnson turned his headlamp back on and scanned the board. At the top left-hand corner was a small brass catch. He pulled the catch gently open, clicked off his headlamp, and pushed very slowly on the board. Gradually it opened a couple of inches.
Was this a door into the house? Now Johnson was braced for the Rottweiler.
He found himself having to apply some pressure on the door to persuade it to move. It felt very heavy.
On the other side was more darkness.
Should he risk the headlamp?
The imager would be a better option.
Once he removed the imager from his bag and had a quick look, he could see the opening led into some kind of storage room filled with old wooden chairs, floor lamps, a mattress, and other furniture. The door on the far side of the room was closed.
Still there was silence from the dog. Strange.
Johnson turned the headlamp back on, eased his way out of the hatch, and stood.
The second door he had just come through, behind the hatch, was actually a bookcase on hidden hinges, designed to prevent anyone in the house from seeing the hatch door to the tunnel. It was filled with books, which explained why it had been so difficult to push open.
He moved slowly to the storage cupboard door, the Beretta in his right hand, and opened it fractionally. In front of him was a short passage, with two other doors leading to the right and the left, and ahead of him, a wooden staircase.
Surely a dog, if there were one, would have come running by now.
What he really needed was to find Duggan’s computer. But would it still be in the house, or would the police have removed it?
Johnson turned the headlamp off again and moved to the staircase. Planting his feet at the sides of the steps to minimize any creaking, he went up. He emerged in a utility room, then stepped through it to a kitchen.
Johnson took out his mini flashlight and turned it on, with a finger over the lens to minimize the light. He could see that the kitchen had been fitted with granite countertops and several top-of-the-line appliances.
There, lying on the countertop next to a pile of unopened letters and a copy of The Irish Times, lay a laptop with a pale blue cover, its small white standby light winking slowly in the gloom.
Johnson felt some relief that he wasn’t going to have to go through a prolonged search for the device. He flipped open the lid. As he had expected, the machine, a MacBook Pro, was password protected.
There were ways around that. Johnson considered trying to restart the machine with the bootable USB drive he had brought in his backpack and then copying the contents of the laptop’s hard drive. But he decided it would take far too long, and time was probably short, so he closed the laptop. It was better to spend his time ensuring that the cameras were in position.
Was there anything else of interest in the kitchen? Johnson began opening the drawers below the counter. There were spare light bulbs, batteries, and some matches in the top drawer. The next one down contained utility bills and a bunch of shopping receipts. In the bottom one was a spare laptop charging cable, a small radio, and a couple of electrical extension cables. Johnson was about to close the drawer when he noticed, half-covered by the charging cable, a small red and black USB flash drive in a clear plastic bag. He h
esitated for a second, then picked up the flash drive and popped it into his pocket. If he couldn’t take the computer or copy the contents, then maybe there was something of interest on the drive. Hopefully it would be some time before Duggan spotted that it had disappeared.
At the other end of the countertop, next to a sophisticated-looking coffee maker, was a battered copy of a novel Johnson had once read years earlier, Trinity, by Leon Uris, which he remembered as a deep study of Irish nationalism. Beside it was a new-looking large-scale walking map for the Belfast Hills, Divis and the Black Mountain. On the cover was a photograph of Black Mountain, rising up above the city of Belfast below.
Johnson turned around. Hanging on the wall was a framed photograph of a large Rottweiler. Underneath was a printed caption, “Rex: Aug 8, 2005–Oct 7, 2012, R.I.P.” That explained that, then. Duggan clearly hadn’t found a replacement.
He pursed his lips and looked around. Then he placed a microcamera on top of the shelving that ran around the kitchen wall, hidden between two dusty saucepans. In the absence of computer monitoring software, that was probably the next best option.
Next Johnson stood on a kitchen stool and worked another camera into the cavity behind a downlight in the ceiling, wedged in the gap between the stainless steel rim and the movable center housing for the bulb. He made sure it was almost vertically above the laptop, knowing there might be a need to record keystrokes as Duggan typed. That was assuming he always used his computer in the same place—which was probably unlikely.
He moved into the living room, then a small study, and the hallway, carefully placing the tiny cameras in each area in the most unobtrusive locations he could find. The shelves were spotless, which concerned him a little. He hoped Duggan didn’t have a daily cleaner who might come in and find them.
Johnson moved upstairs and also placed cameras in the master bedroom and the next largest bedroom, which showed signs of having been recently occupied. A sudden sense of voyeurism came over him as he placed a camera between two cardboard boxes on top of a wardrobe in the main bedroom. But at the same time he doubted that Duggan was involved in a relationship with anybody, based on what Moira had told him.
Bandit Country Page 17