“Great point, Rick,” said Buster. “The simple answer is that, as Bennie said, we know from the profile that the suspect is likely to show some signs before he acts. But the bottom line is this: it will cut down on the vast number of suspects. Only a jihadi with as much smarts and training as the four of us will get through the screening. Of all the [AB20]killers on 10/15, we could have ID’d every one of them if we knew then what we know now. The job won’t be simple. It will entail a lot of basic police work. Once we find a bad guy who’s planning something, we tail him and put surveillance devices on his car, all of which we’re allowed to do with a FISA court warrant.”
“It seems to me that this is both good news and bad news,” I said. “It gives me the creeps to know that we can find so much about an American citizen without his knowledge.”
“Rick, these FISA Court judges are no pushovers. We really have to present compelling evidence to get a warrant. And the Senate Intelligence Committee is all over this process. Nobody wants the FBI or CIA to turn into the Gestapo. But the good news is that we now have the best means we’ve ever had to prevent terrorist attacks.”
“So what’s going on now, with all of this new technology and a bunch of profiles?” asked Bennie.
“I have a team of seven agents who do nothing but monitor the extremist websites, using the software I told you about. They also monitor social media sites like Twitter for interesting hashtags, like #jihad, or #deathtoamerica. Once the algorithm starts blinking red lights, we then go to the FISA court for a warrant.”
“What about mosques and Islamic schools? Not everything in the world gets done on the Internet,” said Bennie.
“Bennie, let me say this. You don’t have a need to know about that at this point. To be clear, you don’t want to fucking know. Just rest assured that we’re not stupid—and neither is the FBI.”
Bennie looked at me. I just closed my eyes and nodded.
“So we find a suspect, get a FISA court warrant, do surveillance, and nab him,” said Bennie. “You guys are the lawyers, but I know damn well that to get a conviction, we have to prove guilt of a crime beyond a reasonable doubt. That can be a tall order as you know. What if the bad guy gets acquitted or the judge throws out the case for lack of evidence? Then what do we do with the guy?”
“Don’t go there my friend,” said Buster. “Don’t go there.”
Chapter 18
“Buster,” I said, “this bothers me. We’re able to eavesdrop on anybody who happens to look at a radical website. There could be innocent reasons. Hell, what about your CIA team? They’re constantly on the different sites. And what about people who are just curious, or a journalist doing research for an article?”
“You’re right, Rick. Just because somebody visits a radical website doesn’t mean he’s a potential terrorist. Our algorithm accounts for those circumstances. Let’s take a look at one guy who seems to have been living on these sites for the past couple of months. This man visits each of the websites at least five times a day, and he spends a lot of time on each site. Sounds suspicious? Now take a look at this. The man is a writer, and here’s an article that was published over his name in The Atlantic. As you can see, it’s a feature-length article that discusses the content of each of the radical sites. He goes into detail and also wrote about the content of the posts themselves. So he’s just a writer, and a damn good one. I’m including his stuff in our research materials. Nothing wrong with the guy. He’s just a journalist and researcher. I don’t doubt that as we drill down further, we’ll find all sorts of politicians, not to mention law enforcement people, showing up on these sites. No, don’t worry Rick. We’re not dumb enough to assume that a radical site visit, in itself, is any kind of a red flag. Our algorithm doesn’t work that way either because it tracks other posts from the website site visitor. When it sees that he’s written about what he’s researched, it doesn’t flag him as a potential bad guy. Yes, it’s creepy, but that’s why we have oversight, people like the Senate Intelligence Committee. I know we look like Big Brother, but we’re a law-abiding Big Brother.”
“Why don’t we talk about some of the people your algorithm flagged as suspects?” asked Zeke. “Why don’t we look at somebody we may want to talk to?”
“Okay,” said Buster, “let’s look at a man that our algorithm blew a circuit over, a guy who is a blinking red light. Actually, the guy is a gal named Denise McLaren. A few years ago, our profiling would eliminate females, but welcome to the new world of radical jihad. I remind you that five of the twelve bombers of 10/15 were women.”
“Did you get a FISA court warrant to check her further?” asked Bennie.
“Yes, we did. And you’re about to see why. Ms. McLaren is 23 years old and graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in sociology. As of a year ago, she worked for a group called People of Peace, which is associated with CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. They’re mainly a bunch of researchers who feed data and information to CAIR for its propaganda. Sorry I meant to say educational outreach. Her phone records show that she talks to a source in Yemen at least once a week. The source was tracked to a man on our terror watch list. She’s posted about a dozen messages on the radical sites, including this one: ‘I will soon explode for the love of Allah.’ We’ve put a tracking device on her car, and a member of my team monitors her movements constantly. We also have an agent who personally follows her.”
“Buster,” said Dr. Bennie, “do you have any idea why this young woman has turned to radical Islam? Is there anything in her past to give a hint why she’s become disaffected with her culture?”
“Well, Bennie, you’re probably the best one in the room to answer that question. Let me explain what we know about her background. In her junior year at Wisconsin, she filed a sexual harassment complaint against a fellow student. She claimed date rape. As you know, universities take these complaints seriously. But her complaint was dismissed in about a month, along with a rebuke against her for having filed it. It seems that the guy she complained about had an ironclad alibi. He was out of the country at the time of the alleged incident. Then she followed up with another complaint against a different student in her senior year. Same result, and another rebuke, with a warning of expulsion. Further investigation showed that she dated each of the complaint targets briefly, but both guys called off the relationship. From interviews with some of the students, our operatives concluded that this was a simple case of a girl being jilted, twice in a year. In her final semester she almost flunked out. She took to Facebook to air her feelings about her two complaints. It seems that her fellow students, both men and women, were pissed off at her, and they all took the side of the complaint targets. Those postings against her could best be described as ridicule.”
“So,” said Dr. Bennie, “I’m picking up a strong whiff of embarrassment, a strong feeling of ‘why’s everybody always picking on me?’ As trivial as it may sound, feelings of shame and embarrassment often lead to revenge, either in the form of blackmail or in some cases violence. Her personal life was coming apart, and she had a couple of scores to settle. We could theorize that her turn to radicalism was a complicated way to retrieve her sense of worth, a self-imposed culture of ‘her against the infidels.’ How many times have we read about a loner who strikes out with violence because his or her personal life took a bad turn? Suicides are often the result of this kind of screwed up personal life. But when you combine suicide with an allegiance to a cause, and a chance to take down a lot of other people with you, you begin to see a pattern.”
“Bennie,” said Zeke, “are you saying that these acts of horrible violence could be the result of jilted love affairs or some kind of other public embarrassment?”
“Yes, Zeke, that’s exactly what I’m saying. The human mind can be a strange thing, take it from me. I won’t suggest that we’ll always see this pattern, but it’s a strong indicator. How else do you explain a modern young American suddenly adopting a bizarre ideolo
gy from the Dark Ages? It’s less a case of converting to a cause than of finding something to hold onto, an alternative, a sharp turn in the opposite direction. It’s a way to give a meaningless life some meaning.”
***
“It’s been about a month since the attacks,” said Buster. “So far they’ve targeted transportation and office buildings. We need to think about how else can they hurt the infidels, their perceived enemy?”
“Do you think another round of attacks will happen soon?” I asked.
“I have a gut feeling that things will calm down for a while,” said Buster. “The enemy knows that we’re on hyper-alert. They know that our guard is up.”
None of us said anything. We just looked at Buster.
“But I could be wrong.”
Chapter 19
At 7:30 on the morning of November 14, the Ocean Mariner, an American flagged cruise ship, steamed through the Narrows, the body of water at the entrance to New York Harbor. Its destination was Port Liberty in Bayonne, New Jersey, a cruise line terminal owned by Royal Caribbean. Security on the ship, as well as on every cruise ship in the world, was at its highest because of the attacks of 10/15.
A terrorist attack on a cruise ship hadn’t happened in a long time. In 1985, terrorists took over the ship Achille Lauro off the coast of Egypt. After they were denied permission to dock the ship in Syria, the hijackers shot Leon Klinghoffer to death. He was a disabled American Jewish businessman, confined to a wheelchair. After they shot him, the terrorists dumped his body into the ocean. That was 30 years ago.
***
The pilot boat pulled alongside the Ocean Mariner so that the harbor pilot could board the ship. This was a standard practice for any ship entering a large port. The pilot, as he is called, is an expert in the local waters, a sort of valet parker to make sure the ship arrives safely in port.
The captain of the pilot boat expertly maneuvered his vessel next to the ship. As the boat tied up to the platform on the starboard side of the Ocean Mariner, a bomb detonated. The gigantic blast ripped through the hull of the cruise ship, destroying all starboard side cabins to a height of 100 feet. It also ripped a gaping hole below the waterline. Blast debris and body parts rained down on the nearby Belt Parkway, causing 30 serious car accidents, some fatal. With water gushing through its decks, the Ocean Mariner took a steep list and rolled over onto its starboard side within 10 minutes. The assembly areas on the first deck were flooded instantly, drowning hundreds of vacationers who were waiting in lounge areas for their disembarkation instructions. Because the water was shallow, a large part of the Ocean Mariner protruded from the harbor. The ship was about 1,000 feet from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, giving morning commuters a spectacle of pure horror.
***
“Okay, people, let’s look at what we’ve got,” I said. I was feeling like my old self now that my cold was just about gone.
I had to fight back the urge to throw up, and it had nothing to do with my departing cold. I arrived at the office early that day, and so did Buster, Bennie, and Zeke. We got news of the Ocean Mariner about 10 minutes after we arrived. I’d noticed something about myself. Anytime I clicked on a news channel, I had a feeling like I just put my hand into a hornet’s nest.
Buster was on the phone, taking notes. He hung up and walked over to the flip chart.
“I just got off the phone with the Sandy Hook Pilots Association. I spoke to a guy who tossed off the lines to the pilot boat before it left the pier to meet the ship. He said the only people aboard were the normal crew of four, including the pilot. So from what we know right now, the pilot
boat wasn’t hijacked. The guy I spoke to said there is a crewmember who sleeps aboard the boat every night.”
“Did you get the names of the crew?” Bennie asked.
Buster looked at him as if he was insane.
“Of course I got the names. They’re already being fed into the computer at the CIA.”
I had heard that Buster was usually 10 steps ahead of everyone else, and I just saw confirmation of that.
Buster sat in front of a computer terminal and checked his encrypted email messages. He had gotten off the phone only 10 minutes earlier, but already the information was pouring in. As an FBI guy, I had to say these CIA spooks were impressive – and fast.
“Okay, here’s what we got,” said Buster. “Nobody was on any sort of a watch list, and our algorithm never beeped a word about any of them.”
“But you just fed those names in,” I said. “How can we get the information so fast?”
“Harbor pilots are a group of people we’ve checked out in advance. It’s a no-brainer that they could potentially cause mayhem. So all the computer had to do was update the information on the names.”
“And here’s something,” said Zeke. “That was one big fucking bomb. I just read on the online edition of The New York Times that one expert says it had the size and explosive power of the Oklahoma City bomb that almost took down the Murrah Federal building.”
“Can anybody explain to me how a boatload of good guys can manage to deliver a bomb without realizing it?” asked Buster.
“With all due respect to your computer algorithm, Buster” said Bennie, “I think that we’re going to find something we may have missed, something that hadn’t been fed into the computer that may implicate one of these guys. The guy you spoke to said that the boat was manned 24/7. Nobody could sneak a large bomb aboard without the watchman noticing.”
“Let’s pay a visit to the guy who sleeps on the boat,” I said.
Chapter 20
Bennie, Buster, Zeke, and I went to the Sandy Hook Pilots Association building on Edgewater Street on the New York City Borough of Staten Island. The building was one story and covered with stucco, nestled by the Narrows.
Thank God my cold was almost gone and I could breathe in the fresh air. The weather was mild for mid-November, about 60 degrees. It felt good.
Mike Simonetti, the man who slept on the pilot boat the night before, was waiting for us in a small office. I introduced everyone and we sat around a small table. The room had a large window facing the water, covered with cracks from the explosion’s blast wave. We could see the hulk of the Ocean Mariner lying on its side in about 50 feet of water, less than a quarter mile from our location.
“Is it okay if we call you Mike?” I asked.
“Sure,” said Simonetti. “We’re an informal group.”
“Mike, before we begin, I have to ask you something. Are you feeling okay?”
“No, I’m not. I just got back from Staten Island University Hospital. When the crew reported to the boat this morning, I was fast asleep, but the problem was they couldn’t wake me up. An EMT told me that they had to physically carry me off the boat and load me into the ambulance. I’m still a little groggy, and I feel like shit. I lost three good friends this morning.”
“Did the doctor say what was wrong with you?”
“No, but they took a blood test and let me go after I seemed better.”
Buster excused himself and went outside to make a phone call.
“Why do you guys assign someone to sleep on the boat?” Zeke asked. “Security?”
“It’s a little extra security. Those pilot boats have a lot of expensive equipment. But the main reason we keep a guy on the boat is to start the engines in case we get an emergency assignment to meet a ship. The guy on the boat turns on the ignition and it’s ready to go when the pilot comes aboard.”
“Are you a pilot?”
“I’m in training. I hope to have my license by next year.”
“Did you have any alcohol last night?” I asked.
“Not a drop. The whole idea behind having a guy aboard is to get underway fast if we have to. Booze and alertness don’t go together.”
Buster came back into the room.
“It’s no wonder you’re groggy,” said Buster. “According to the hospital, you had enough sleeping medication to drug an elephant.”
/> “But how the hell could I have taken it? I never use sleeping pills.”
“Do you carry a thermos or any other liquids with you?”
“I always carry a thermos filled with tea.”
“Tell us more about the thermos. Did you leave it anywhere before you boarded the boat, where somebody may have slipped you a good night dose?”
“Let me think. Yes, I left the thermos in the kitchen here in the building after I filled it with tea, while I went back to my car to get my Kindle. I like to read at night.”
“Was anybody here who you didn’t recognize?”
“Yes, a guy who said he was from the Coast Guard walked into the building at around 5:30. He said he was here to drop off some paperwork. I thought it was weird because he wasn’t wearing a uniform. He was in the building while I went to my car.”
“Did he give you his name? Can you describe him?”
“He didn’t tell me his name, and I had no reason to ask him. He was white, about six feet tall, skinny, with sandy blond hair.”
“Anything else about this man that you can tell us?”
“He had a slight accent, Irish or English, I think. He sounded a bit like John Lennon. A cockney accent, like he was from Liverpool.”
“Was anybody else in the building while he was here?”
“No, it was empty, except for him. I guess it was dumb of me to leave him here alone, but we don’t think too much about security around here. We have a private security guard who walks around occasionally.”
“I want that kitchen secured as of right now,” I said. “Zeke, please grab some crime scene tape from the car. I want the kitchen dusted for prints.”
The Shadows of Terror Page 5