Sting of the Drone

by Clarke, Richard A

  Ray had never seen her so out of control. He was beginning to think she might quit, in which case the program would really be at a loss.

  “I get sued by some woman from Philadelphia for killing her son in Austria while I am supposedly in an undercover position here where nobody knows who I am. One of my pilots and his wife get killed when a gas pipeline bursts and you two tell me it’s murder. Another pilot gets drunk and is run over by a Mack truck, literally. Then this,” she threw the Presidential Directive limiting drone strikes onto her desk. “And now you tell me my chief pilot is under an IG investigation and will probably be suspended while they investigate. Fuck it. Honest to God, Ray, fuck it. Maybe Dugout would like to fly the Goddamn drones?”

  Ray looked at Dugout in a way that made clear he should not answer that question.

  “I’ll do what I can to stop them from ordering his suspension, but the Inspector General is fairly independent,” Ray offered. “What I gather is that they don’t have a smoking gun, or they would already have done something. Just an anonymous tip, probably from someone on the staff here, probably someone who has a beef with Erik for whatever reason.”

  “But he’s going to know he’s under investigation?” she asked.

  “The IG guys arrive late tomorrow. You probably want to tell him today,” Ray suggested.

  “Can’t,” Sandra said. “He’s taking Major Dougherty’s body back to his parents in Chicago. Finally got it out of the County Medical Examiner. Erik is really broken up about Dougherty’s death. He thinks that somehow he should have done something more to help him. Instead, he told him go get drunk and gave him his car. Now it looks like maybe he got into the accident because he was drunk. Bruce was a really good pilot, really nice guy.”

  Ray glanced at Dugout in a way that said something. Dugout nodded as if he understood.

  “I’d suggest maybe we want to let Dugout set up in Room 103, Spook Ops, to run traps on a few things. He might also look at the records from the Red Sea op, without leaving any traces that he has been looking.”

  Sandra stared at Ray. She knew not to ask. “It’s already been set up for him. I ordered it when you called last night. Sergeant Miller will take you down there now, Dug.”

  When they were alone, Sandra and Ray sat down at her small conference table. “I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t quit,” he began.

  “The fuck I can’t. It’s a free country.”

  “I’d like to keep it that way,” he said.

  “Yeah and all that stands between tyranny and perdition is me and the program. Don’t start with that crap, I’ve heard it all before and it’s not true and you know it,” she said. “It’s just getting too hard and nobody gives a shit except us. Do you think those people out there on the Vegas Strip think the drone program is making them safer? They don’t even think about it. They think they’re perfectly safe, except maybe from whack job fellow Americans with assault guns every now and again, randomly.”

  Ray stood up and walked to the glass wall. He looked out at the Control Room, at the Big Board with video feeds coming from drones all over Africa and the Middle East. “They’re not supposed to think about it. That’s the whole point, Americans should not have to worry about terrorism here.” Ray said softly, trying to lower the temperature in the conversation. “If there is another terrorist attack in the U.S. like 9/11, we will lose more of our freedoms in response, just like we did the first time. Warrantless wiretaps, throwing U.S. citizens in military prisons without trial, cameras everywhere, privacy out the window.” He turned back to face Sandy. “We are what stops the next attack. We get them before they get here. That’s what the people on the Vegas Strip want, that’s what most Americans want.”

  Sandra walked to her desk and picked up a file. “We’ve been running Pattern of Life flights on a bunch of huts up in the mountains in Yemen. HUMINT says the AQAP bomb maker is up there. The flights show nothing but guys with guns up there for over a week now. No women. No children. Not even any unarmed men. The government in Sana’a says they can’t go up there, too unsafe, terrorist territory. Can I still get a Kill Call?”

  Ray took the file. “The AQAP bomb maker? The guy who keeps trying to get someone’s undies to explode on a U.S. plane? I’d say he’s a direct threat to Americans. Someday he’s going to kill three hundred people, many of them Americans, in some 777 coming in from the Gulf and flying in over a U.S. city. Let’s schedule the call.”

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18

  FBI OFFICE

  PORTLAND, MAINE

  “The emphasis is on the second syllable, ah-dam,” Roble Adam told Bobby Gallagher in the Portland FBI office’s interview room.

  “You don’t want the coffee?” Gallagher asked. “It’s getting late. You’re tired. You need a little jolt to remember things?”

  “I don’t know what you put in it,” Roble replied.

  “It’s black. You want milk and sugar?”

  “I don’t want your drugs. What drugs did you put in it?” Roble asked.

  Gallagher put the two Starbuck cups next to each other in the middle of the table. “Pick either. I will drink the other one. After that, if you want, you can try drinking yours. Or not, I don’t care.” Roble didn’t pick.

  “All right, Roble, I want you to know where you stand right now. Even if you don’t say another word, we already have enough evidence to charge you with murder of the police officer, possession of explosives, and terrorism,” Gallagher noted.

  “You know what this is, Roble?” Gallagher asked, as he put a key on the table between them.

  Roble inhaled and blinked, but didn’t answer.

  “The Portland bomb squad is at the storage company now. They have a little robot. It’s cute. You should see it. It’s looking at your bomb right now. I just saw your bomb on the video feed. Is it RDX? That’s not easy to get,” Gallagher said.

  Roble closed his eyes.

  “Roble, in a little while they’re going to take you away, to Virginia. There are CIA people and others waiting to interrogate you. You know how the CIA interrogates people, Roble? Did you see the movie about getting bin Laden?”

  Roble quickly opened his eyes and stared at him. There was fear in his eyes, but also anger, rage.

  “Look, I know you’re just the lowest-level guy on the scrotum pole, the guy they got to carry the bomb. I can help you, but you have to tell me before they take you away. Then it will be too late,” Gallagher said. “But there are still things that can happen here in the next few minutes that may change the rest of your life forever. And those things are up to you, but not for long.

  “We did some research on you after we figured out it was you in the subway. Actually, you’re not a bad guy and your family, they’re good people. Your mom came here to this country from Somalia during the wars there, came with almost nothing, to make a place here that would be a better place to raise children. She worked hard, all for you, you and your sister.”

  Roble Adam glared at him. Gallagher continued, “And you, you made the football team here in high school, you helped out your mom, you protected your sister. Then these guys come along and recruit you, they use you, they spoil it all for you and your mom and your sister.”

  “They had nothing to do with it, my mother and my sister,” Roble insisted.

  “Actually, in some ways, Roble, you are the victim, the three of you. All of the Adam family has become victims because of what those guys, the recruiters, did to you. They’re the bad guys in this whole thing, not you. I know you didn’t mean for that cop to get hit by the train, he was—”

  Roble interrupted, “He fell over, man, I didn’t even push him. He fell and he hit his head or something.”

  “It was dark in there,” Gallagher added, “I know, I know. We may not have to make it a murder charge. I just need your help to identify the people who did this to you and your family. That’s all. And they don’t deserve your protection, not after what they did to you and your mother and sister
by getting you involved in all this. You just have to tell me, but now, before they take you to Virginia.”

  Roble sighed. “Tell you what?”

  “Who recruited you?”

  “They found me online. Then they came to our apartment one night. After a while, the big man came to town to meet me,” Roble replied. “I thought they were you guys, some fucking FBI sting. But they said they would tell me just before something blew up, something they were going to blow up. And they did. They told me about that Marriott in Kuwait like an hour before it happened. Figured they weren’t FBI after that.”

  “What were their names?”

  “They didn’t say, ever,” Roble answered.

  “We’re going to need you to describe them to an artist,” Gallagher said. “Tell me about the big man. Where did you meet?”

  “On the street, he came out of a store,” Roble said. “Like a light blue store, what you call it, aqua. On Exchange Street.”

  “And then what happened?” Gallagher asked.

  “We talked while we walked down to the water. I left him by the boat, the one that goes to Canada.”

  “He got on the boat?” the FBI Agent asked.

  “Not while I was there. He told me to walk away.”

  “What did he ask you to do?”

  Roble waited a moment. “He asked me to do surveillance, a trial run he called it, then when he tells me to, to leave a bomb in the train tunnel in Boston. His guys showed up with the bomb the day after. We went together and rented the storage locker.”

  “When were you supposed to leave the bomb?”

  “He said he would e-mail me. He created an e-mail account for me. I was supposed to check it every day,” Roble said.

  “We’re going to need that account. Did you ever get an e-mail?” Gallagher asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “All right, Roble. This has been good and I will do all that I can to make sure they don’t hurt you, but what else can you tell me now, something valuable that I can use to get you a break,” Gallagher said. “You know what’s valuable.”

  Roble thought. “He said it was important that I not go early or late because it had to go off simultaneous. Yeah, that was the word, simultaneous. He said before the end of the year, the Christian calendar, he called it.”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let them torture you. It won’t happen.”

  Gallagher stood and walked out of the room. Four other FBI men came in. Gallagher knew they would fly Roble Adam to Virginia, where the Special Interagency Interrogation Team awaited. He also knew that torture had stopped years earlier when the President took office.

  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18

  COPPER HILL RANCH

  KYLE CANYON, NEVADA

  “No more hijacking drones,” Yuri asserted as soon as Ghazi entered the room. “We lost two of our guys on that plane. I worked with one of them, Ivan, for twelve years. We lived together for almost three years before he got married.”

  “I’m sorry. Guys who worked with us a lot were the pilot and copilot. They died, too,” Ghazi answered. “But people die in this business. It’s not all sitting behind a computer for most of us. There’s risk. Did you figure out what happened?”

  “What happened is that they had another command frequency to talk to the bird. One we didn’t know about,” Yuri said, walking back to his bank of desktop and laptop computers. “And, obviously, they had an air-to-air missile on the bird. Something we also had not seen before.”

  “All right. Forget about hijacking drones. We did it once. We got the publicity. Made them look like they couldn’t control their own robots,” Ghazi said. “Now let’s worry about our Attack Day. We need to make sure everything will work.”

  “Our stuff will all work,” Yuri said. “The guys who are attacking the older subways, that’s your problem. When is A-Day?”

  “It’s coming,” Ghazi replied. “And our drones? Remember, the drones are part of A-Day, too.”

  “They’ll work fine.”

  “I may want to do a preliminary operation with one of them to see how much damage we get with one. When can you have one ready?” Ghazi asked.

  “Give me a couple of days,” the Ukrainian replied.

  37

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19

  LE CROUPIER BAR AND GRILLE

  NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  The restaurant staff seemed anxious to close up. Despite the name of the place, it did not keep Vegas casino hours. The big casinos on the strip were twelve miles away. By ten, the last diners had usually finished. The bar shut down at midnight on most days. It was in reality just another suburban office building bar and grill whose only connection to gambling was the few slot machines in the bar.

  Ghazi had taken a table by the window, looking out at the parking lot, looking out at a reserved parking space at the front of the building. He called up the tracking app on his iPad. The beacon he had placed on her vehicle showed that she was only a minute away. When she parked the white Ford Edge, he asked for the check. He knew her pattern of life. It would only be half an hour before the first patient arrived. He hit the stopwatch function on his Humboldt.

  The door to the third floor office was unlocked when he tried it. No one sat at the receptionist’s desk. When she came around the corner from her office, she looked startled. And then he fired the Taser and she dropped to the floor, writhing in pain. He moved quickly, taping her mouth, binding her hands, injecting her with the sedative. Within two minutes she was in the portable trash bin and on the freight elevator headed toward the loading dock.

  “Dr. Parsons?” the first patient called out upon entering the office for her late-night session. “Jennifer?”

  SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19

  SPECIAL OPERATIONS ROOM

  CREECH AFB, NEVADA

  “I have to have one of these,” Dugout started.

  “One of what?” Ray asked as he walked through the last of the three doors that led to the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, the SCIF. “You keep envying other people’s stuff. First, it was the airplane. It’s very unbecoming. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s tech gear.”

  “I covet the covert. I’ve been in dozens of SCIFs, but this one has great toys. I can do all sorts of things at once. I have enough diverse fiber connections and anonymizers to bring any country to its knees. And the databases they have direct access to. Amazing,” Dugout said.

  “I’m glad you like it. I’ll ask Santa to see if he can afford to get you a littler one,” Ray joked. “But what are you going to do with it?”

  “No, not just what I am going to do, what have I already done. While you were sleeping, or whatever you two did last night in Sin City, your trusty sidekick here has been hard at work for the last bunch of hours, I don’t even want to know what time it is,” Dugout replied.

  Ray let the implication pass. “And you found what?”

  “The FBI arrested a guy in Maine who was going to bomb the subway in Boston. Somali-American. Turned in by other Somali-Americans after someone brilliantly figured out how to get his image and run it through the Facial Recognition Database, anyway, that’s not the point,” Dugout said. “Point is that this kid says the people who recruited him were planning simultaneous attacks sometime in the next few weeks.”

  “Shit, that squares with what Burrell told me,” Ray thought aloud.

  “Have you been holding back facts from me?” Dugout was reddening in the face. “You ask me to connect the dots and then you don’t give me all the dots.”

  “Look, I’m not supposed to share this with you. Burrell told me. Let’s just say there is a way that the CIA has of learning some things once in a while. It’s a bit like a Magic Eight Ball. Its utterances are Delphic and you can’t follow up right away and ask it what it means,” Ray said.

  “Most CIA reports are like that,” Dugout observed.

  “Yeah, but this particular Magic Eight Ball has a good track record. And recently it said that two big plots we
re afoot. Something about two falcons.”

  Dugout snorted. “That’s really useful. So, the Agency has some hush-hush source, some agent in place, and they’re not sharing the whole story even with you. So maybe now you think this stuff in Boston is one of the falcons. Well, I got a falcon feather for you.

  “The FBI 302, the report on their interview with the kid they busted in Maine, says the big man behind the attack met him on the street in front of what turns out to be a cyber café. I got the date, went back to their logs for that day, around that time, and found a user who connected to three different anonymizer sites in twenty minutes, obviously a terrorist cloaking his identity,” Dugout said.

  “Or someone doing insider trading on Wall Street,” Ray suggested. “Still, how does this help us?”

  “Lots of ways. First, I checked on whom he was contacting. Whom. Found out he was hitting Virtual Private Network servers, as yet another way to hide his communication by using encryption and tunneling through the Internet. And I did a trace route on where he connected to using the VPNs. One guy was in Kiev. One some place in Pakistan. And one was in, drumroll, Texas.”

  “Wait, I didn’t follow all of that, but if he was using anonymizer Web sites and then VPNs how could you go back and find what he did?’ Ray asked.

  “We’ve been worried about those anonymizer sites for a long time, been inside them a long time,” Dugout explained. “The FBI can’t do it because they could never get a search warrant. But I don’t have that problem. Then again I don’t want to use what I found out as evidence in court, because then we would have to reveal how we discovered it and that might not be strictly legal. So, don’t ask, but for lead information, for stopping attacks.…”

  Ray sat down, looking at the bank of computer screens. “So you have confirmed there is a Ukrainian and a Pakistani terrorist link and maybe they have somebody in Texas.”

  “As they say on the late-night television ads, ‘but wait, there’s more,’” Dugout said, hitting a keyboard. “The guy who used the cyber café is this guy, I got his picture enhanced by some nice people at MIT. The cyber café actually is very law-abiding and keeps a few hidden cameras running to stop kiddie pornsters and other pervs. So now we have his picture.”