Hellfire (Sisters In Law Book 2)

by John Ellsworth

  "Cross our fingers and pray," IBI Director Hans Schaffuler told the governor of Illinois.

  "That's not good enough, Schaff," said the governor. "I expect a hundred percent proficiency from here on out. Or I'm looking for a new director. Especially if this thing goes off and kills a bunch of kids. Heads will roll and yours will be first. Mine will be right behind. And we don't want that, Schaff. So get the hell on the ball!"

  Despite such encouragement from his boss, the director and his IBI continued to find themselves sabotaged in their tracking efforts. It would happen in traffic when the twosome would jump from one vehicle going north to an approaching vehicle heading south. Or jumping from a vehicle, abandoning it in traffic, and running in and through a building downtown. An old trick, but an effective one. As the IBI was tracking in fits and fails, Jamie Susmann was putting the finishing cosmetic touches on his new TRAC software. "TRACE RECOGNIZE AND CAPTURE," Sevi had named it. Jamie thought back to that night and he felt lonely for Sevi. She was just so damn smart, he told his mother. Why did she have to leave them? And she didn't even tell me goodbye! What's up with that?

  So...Jamie did the next best thing.

  He talked to his FACCE users and begged video feeds. Just citywide, but it was a start. And when they said yes, he almost exploded with joy. At last he had a chance at finding Sevi and learning what had happened to her. Christine had confided in her son that Sevi had been forced to leave them by a determined, evil man. Is this her husband? Jamie wanted to know. No, not her husband. An evil, terrorist sort. Jamie resolutely decided then and there that he would find her and do what he could to help extricate her from the situation. They were scientists and engineers: every problem was simply a solution waiting to be chosen.

  TRAC went live the same Friday that Althea Berenson was arrested.

  Jamie's determination to help his Muslim friend had redoubled. For sixteen hours he toiled at his monitor and keyboard, implementing the video feeds provided to him.

  Then, at midnight Friday, he went live.

  Slowly, but with increasing speed, the system began comparing the headshot Jamie had snapped of Sevi for his cell phone contacts list. TRAC compared the picture to all connected service station feeds, convenience store feeds, security cameras on every street corner in the city, video feeds coming from intersection monitoring equipment, and hundreds of thousands of other cameras pointed and turned on around the city for a thousand other purposes.

  Slowly, the system located her. First, a shot of her walking into a 7-Eleven. Next was a shot at a Marshall's in the western suburbs. Then a picture of her filling a white van with gas at an Exxon station.

  And on it went.

  By noon the next day--Saturday--he had his first film of Sevi moving around the city.

  Now to establish a starting location and a destination. If they turned out to be one and the same, then he would have what he needed. He would have learned where she was living. Who knows, he thought, there might even be a video camera smack in the middle of the block where she lived. If only he could be so lucky.

  He followed her forty-eight hours straight on Saturday and Sunday. He analyzed his videos. He had two locations where she appeared both days: an Exxon and a diner in South Chicago. The software kept spinning along, analyzing video feeds, and looking for the Sevi al-Assad model that it knew through its machine learning algorithms. As the software grew smarter, Jamie's friend began turning up more places.

  Then he did an interesting thing. He went back through the videos to the beginning of the feed and re-ran the TRAC system, smarter now the second time through. New images/locations began surfacing. Now there was a department store, exterior and interior hits when she had shopped and purchased summer weight slacks and a cotton shirt. There was a video series of her walking along Wacker drive as she went into 100 West, where she worked. Those feeds followed her inside, even up to views of her in her cubicle at work, her head bent low to her computer.

  Jamie was fascinated with what he had invented. And he was fascinated with the feeds. He knew that his system had huge potential for law enforcement and industrial security, but he was no fool, either. He knew his software had the potential to be a disruptive influence where it came to sorting out human rights and the right of people to be let alone and not be tracked in their daily lives by video feeds of their activities. Was there a legal right to be let alone? Jamie discussed this with Christine. Her advice to him: Continue on with the engineering but leave the legalities of his invention and its work product to the lawyers and courts. She told him he couldn't be expected to work both rings of the circus, her words. So he settled into what he did best: software engineering. And he freed his mind from concern over misapplication of his invention.

  * * *

  While Jamie was tweaking his software and watching as its IQ grew and grew thanks to its machine learning code, Christine wasn't sitting idly by in the Cook County Jail just hoping for a lucky break.

  The interrogation failed, of course, so they allowed her to call her attorney. The first person she called was Ed Mitchell. He had dropped what he was doing and immediately appeared at the jail, where they met and talked. Their conversation was general, without reference to case specifics, as they were communicating through Plexiglas over a phone system they knew to be hacked. The FBI was listening in and probably recording every word that was said. It was a federal crime to violate the attorney-client confidentiality rules. However, the FBI didn't give a damn. They played fast and loose with rules every day. It was part of who they were and how they rolled. Agents Janssen and Akim received transcripts of the conversation and they agreed there was nothing startling there.

  ED MITCHELL: Do you need anything?"

  CHRISTINE SUSMANN: A crab salad, lots of greens.

  ED MITCHELL: Bleu cheese?

  CHRISTINE SUSMANN: Yep. And a tall iced tea. It's sweltering in here. The AC is on the fritz.

  ED MITCHELL: I've called around for a judge. Everyone's out of town until Tuesday.

  CHRISTINE SUSMANN: I can do Tuesday in my sleep. They've got a bunch of John Grisham novels here. I can catch up.

  ED MITCHELL: I've checked in on the kids. Your mom has everything under control on the home front.

  CHRISTINE SUSMANN: Is Jamie taking his Cogentin?

  ED MITCHELL: He is. I checked that with him myself.

  CHRISTINE SUSMANN: And what about Little Bit? How's she holding up?

  ED MITCHELL: Janny is great. She's doing her colors and listening to her iPad music. She asks about you, but having Nana and your mom there is keeping her busy. They're taking up the slack, if that's possible.

  CHRISTINE SUSMANN: All right. We'll talk about this when we can have some privacy. That's all I have for now.

  ED MITCHELL: Agreed. I'll check in again tomorrow.

  * * *

  On Sunday, Jamie confirmed Hussein was holding Sevi where Christine had accompanied her.

  It was a walkup above a mechanic's garage on the South Side. He knew this because almost directly across the street was a Speedway and that service station's video feed from pump seven had captured her face as she was coming down the exterior stairs. Following behind was a dark male who Jamie didn't know, but he cropped out the man's face and sent it to Ed Mitchell to show Christine.

  Sunday noon found Ed back at the jail, again talking to Christine through the Plexiglas. The first thing he did was bring up the picture on his smart phone and plaster it against the Plexiglas screen-side to Christine.

  Her eyes grew wide.

  "I know him. He's the man holding her."

  "Well guess what? Jamie has them located."

  "Pure genius. His TRAC did this?"

  "His TRAC did this. I have a feeling Jamie is going to need to pay another visit to his patent lawyer."

  "Astonishing. Tell him how I proud I am."

  "Do we tell anyone?"

  They were comfortable enough talking about it. Those listening in neither saw the picture of H
ussein nor knew for sure to whom she was referring. They had their ideas, but there was no hard and fast evidence. So the conversation about Sevi could continue without being about Sevi.

  "We don't tell anyone yet. Let me think about this. But tell Jamie to stay focused here. It might even be a good idea to bring in additional surveillance."

  "Do this myself? Or authorities?"

  She pointed at Ed without verbally responding.

  "All right," he said, "if you don't feel comfortable answering me, then don't. But I have other appointments, so I'm out of here."

  "Enjoy our day off."

  "Whose day off? I've been at the office since sunup. Just because you're on holiday doesn't mean I am."

  He smiled and placed his hand against the glass. She immediately raised her hand and placed it on her side of the glass. They would have been holding hands if it weren't for the inch of Plexiglas between them.

  He smiled. She smiled.

  He nodded: instruction received.

  Then he left.

  * * *

  Ed's next stop was at Christine's house to visit with Jamie.

  "Good work, Jamie" he told the teenager. "Evidently you've found her."

  "So what do we do now that we know where she is?"

  "XFBI has put a van in place. From here on, a constant video feed will be made directly to you."

  "Excellent. Will the van attempt to follow them?"

  "I don't think so. Too risky. We need it to go unnoticed and if it follows them, it might be spotted."

  "Will we tell the IBI what we've learned about where she's being held?"

  "Your mom and I are working on that one. I'll get back to you."

  "Cool."

  40

  The DuMont brothers were horrified. Their entire dark world was stored somewhere on servers beyond their reach. Whether classified government documents to which they were privy and had in their possession, or internally classified documents, the hack was unimaginable. They had paid over five hundred million dollars in IT funding to guarantee their online systems were burglar-proof and their firewalls unbreakable and their networks unhackable. Now it seemed the payouts had all been for naught. A single woman, someone without a world of computer expertise between the ears, had managed to not only penetrate their servers but also to make off with millions of pages of documents. The brothers were stunned.

  And not just a little frightened.

  Frightened because the world would learn of Blackguard's vile deeds if those documents went public.

  "How did we get here?" said Edlund DuMont to his brother, Wilfred, as they met over the Labor Day weekend and circled wagons. They were in the study of Wilfred's Dallas home, overlooking Lake Dallas on the lakeside of Westlake Park. A hearty dinner of rock lobster and steamed rice with shrimp had just been enjoyed, and now they were relaxing and speaking to each other through clouds emitted by Cuba's finest tobacco.

  "We got here because oil is our god," Wilfred replied. "Mother taught us better."

  "But father gave us the keys to the kingdom."

  "Here's to wildcatters."

  They each raised a brandy snifter and nodded to one another.

  "Arum al-Assad had to die because he was planning to sell our oil to the Chinese."

  "That was a no-brainer."

  Wilfred said, "I called in the drone because he had to go. The problem was the collateral damage. Who would have guessed the house was full of Muslims waiting for a wedding ceremony?"

  "No one is faulting you, Wilfred. I would have done the same thing."

  "Yes, you would have."

  "But lo and behold, a Muslim woman gets blown out of the house and lives. Then she comes to the United States and sues us. Along with the government. Now that's perplexing. It hasn't happened before."

  "And her lawyer plants this Berenson woman inside our Washington offices."

  "And she proceeds to rob us."

  "They say she has put our documents on servers around the world. There's so many they don't even know where to start."

  "How did she learn that?"

  "Unknown. What are we thinking?"

  "Our internal security service has just provided me with its workup. It appears Ms. Al-Assad's lawyer has a son who is a certified computer genius."

  "Are we thinking it was him?"

  "Unknown, for sure, they tell me. He's only fifteen."

  Wilfred blew a plume of blue Cuban smoke at the ceiling. He tapped the fingers of his free hand against his knee. "Do you know what I'm thinking?"

  "I think I do."

  "Tit for tat."

  "Quid pro quo."

  "His value to his mother equals our documents' value to us."

  "We can make a trade."

  "If we have a chip."

  "So grab him."

  "Done."

  "But don't hurt him. I'm sure he's a good kid."

  Wilfred tapped his cigar against the enormous crystal ashtray beside his chair. "I doubt that. And frankly I don't give a damn whether he ever sees his mother again. I just want our property back."

  With a wave of his hand Edlund replied, "Then do what you must. Throw him in the goddam lake for all I care."

  "I'm thinking there's even more to be done with him."

  "Such as?"

  "Well, it's clear, isn't it? She has a judgment against us on the liability issues for killing the family. We trade the kid for a document evidencing a satisfaction of that judgment. We pay zip. We get our documents back. We dump the kid in deep water and wash our hands. He won't be around to tell the cops who took him."

  "I say we go the extra step as well. Father would have."

  "What would that be?"

  "We take out the al-Assad woman. There's no other family after her. No one to collect on any judgment. No one to push the case forward. Poof, it evaporates and we're back to square one."

  "How do we find her?"

  "We've already found her."

  "How did that happen?" asked Wilfred.

  Edlund smiled. His smile was the smile of a man in his eighties: long in the tooth and yellowed with coffee and cigar stains. "We hacked the son's computer, a simple task. Evidently he has hammered together a piece of software that takes video feeds and analyzes them. So our people tell me. Using his little software, he's located the al-Assad woman. She is staying in a walkup over a garage in South Chicago."

  "Then by all means. Do what's indicated."

  "Her demise is indicated."

  "Don't tell me. Just do it."

  "Consider it done."

  41

  Jamie found the same black Chevy sedan passing in front of his house four times Sunday morning and afternoon. He knew this because his own video system monitored the street that ran along their security wall. The same vehicle going past more than twice in any given day made the system flag Jamie and he took a look. Now the Chevy Impala had gone past four times.

  Four times, dark windows, slowing as it passed by--all the signs of a car that should be watched.

  On its fifth pass, Jamie's cameras caught the license plate number when the brake lights flared at the corner and the sun had just set. Now he had something to work with, so he fed the license plate number into TRAC and waited.

  While the system began searching new video, Jamie's thoughts turned to the car and the possibilities. He reasoned it was probably nothing, just someone visiting one of the other families in their housing development. But he also had a reservation about that kind of Pollyanna thinking: what if someone was after him? Or after Janny? Shouldn't he be prepared to provide protection now that his mother was incarcerated?

  Ever so quietly he stole from his room and crept in the early dark toward his mother's double doors. Once inside her bedroom he closed the doors quietly behind him.

  He knew the gun safe was built into the floor of her closet and he went there.

  He also knew the combination.

  Doubtful that his mother had any real secrets from him, he
spun the dial on the safe. Left-right-left-left-right, he could actually hear the tumblers falling into place.

  Then he stopped and twisted the handle and the safe door swung upward, assisted by pneumatic arms within.

  There wasn't just one gun; there were several.

  But he knew she preferred the .40 caliber Glock. It was the one she always wore when those challenging times presented themselves.

  So he fished it out of the safe, along with its shoulder holster.

  Christine had long ago taught Jamie gun safety and had taught him how to shoot targets. She had even begun teaching him the rudiments of combat shooting and had promised to send him to a three-day combat shooting course he found in Gun World.

  He sat on her bed and adjusted the straps of the shoulder harness.

  Then he tried it on. The gun was huge beneath his skinny left arm but it would work for him because it hung above the cuff on his forearm crutch. Ever so quietly he closed the safe and slipped back down the hallway to his room, where he locked himself inside. He went to his closet, found his denim work shirt, and slipped it on, effectively hiding the gun. He wore the shirt unbuttoned and untucked, but it did its job. Even his grandmother wouldn't notice and she normally noticed everything about her grandkids.

  With the gun in place and covered, he resumed his seat at the computer.

  Results were coming in. Surprisingly, the car had also driven past Sevi's location six times that day.

  Which set Jamie's mind to racing.

  * * *

  Chicago FBI learned from its Blackguard source that Jamie Susmann was in on the theft. The teenager had evidently passed along the technical know-how that enabled Althea Berenson to hack and transfer Blackguard's sacred documents.

  Two agents were dispatched to Jamie's house to question him. Their names were Sims and Ferlinghetti. Both were agents with ten-plus years of field investigative experience in the area of computer and financial crimes. Both knew the questions to ask and the computer systems to comb through.