by Jeff Buick
“Okay,” Ben said, inserting a CD and watching as the hacking program loaded onto the hard drive. “You want me to find all the Renaults registered between November fifteenth and December fifteenth last year. Right?”
“Right,” Eugene said, shoulder-surfing.
Numbers were scrolling down the screen and Ben explained. “My program is breaking down the secondary firewall. It shouldn’t take too long.”
“Excellent,” Eugene said.
A few minutes passed, and then the screen flashed and the logo for the New York State DMV appeared. “I’m in,” Ben said, keying in the request for Renaults registered inside the time frame Eugene had given him. He got nine hits on the request.
“Print them, please,” Eugene said anxiously. He watched as the paper rolled out of the LaserJet, then picked it up and glanced down the list. He didn’t immediately recognize any of the names. He took the list from the hotel registry and compared it to the DMV list. Checking the two against each other took almost a half hour, and when he was done he sat back with a discouraged look on his face. “No matches.”
No one spoke for a minute. Finally Eugene said, “Ben, could you try to get into one more database?”
“Depends. Which one?” “DEA.”
Ben grinned. “You’ve got to be shitting me. The Drug Enforcement Agency?”
“That’s the one.”
“That’s a far cry from the DMV, Eugene,” he said. “Those guys play hardball.”
“Trust me, I know how they operate. I need one file. Just one.”
Ben was uncertain. “I don’t know, Eugene. I’ve got a cloaking program with me, but their firewalls and software are going to be state-of-the-art. We could get pinged.”
“What?”
“Pinged. They could trace our hack back to this system.”
“That’s a chance I’m willing to take. And I’ll put my money where my mouth is. Five thousand dollars. I’ll have to get the money from the bank tomorrow, but my word is good.”
Ben perked up. “Five thousand dollars.” He glanced at Andrew and Bill. “How would we split it?”
“Five hundred each for your dad and me, the other four thousand in your pocket?” Andrew offered, and Bill nodded.
“Done,” Ben said. “What file do you need?”
“I want to find out what really happened to an agent named Fernando Garcia. It’s in the DEA database somewhere.”
“If it’s there, I’ll find it,” Ben said. “This may take a while, gentlemen. Please, make yourselves at home.”
Eugene wandered around the house. After about fifteen minutes, a thought struck him and he searched out the master bedroom. A single lady in a large house on a dark cul-de-sac may keep a gun close to where she sleeps. He tried the night tables, under her pillow, the closet, the bureau drawers and her en suite bath. Nothing. He stood in the darkness, staring at the bed. It was a four-poster, high off the floor, with a thick mattress and box spring. He lifted the mattress and slid his arm between it and the box spring. His hand felt cold metal, and he pulled out a Glock pistol. Good old Sarah Quigley. He checked the breach, which was empty, and the clip, which was full. He made sure the safety was on, then tucked the gun in his pants, against the small of his back. He returned to the computer room to find Ben navigating his way through DEA personnel records.
“I’ve found two files on Fernando Garcia,” he said, handing Eugene a couple of printed pages, “but I don’t think I’ve got what you want yet.”
Eugene read the material and shook his head. “No. There’s more in the system somewhere. These are his personnel file and the press release on his death.”
“I’ve got another hit,” Ben said, “but I can’t find the file. It’s hidden, way back in the computer’s hard drive. Someone went to a lot of effort to protect this file.”
“Can you get it?” Eugene asked.
Ben gave him an admonishing glance. “Of course I can get it. It takes time and patience to cut through all the layers of security. Time and patience.”
“Great,” Eugene said. “The two things I don’t have.”
Ben glanced at him through his hair. “I’m doing the best I can, Eugene. This is the DEA, not the Girl Scouts. And whoever buried this file knew what they were doing.”
Eugene walked to the living room and sat in the darkness, feeling time slip by. Seconds turned into minutes, minutes into an hour. He fought sleep, thinking of his wife and daughter, imagining them safe at home in Playa El Tirano. Nice thoughts, but not reality.
Eugene heard Ben calling his name and hurried to the computer room. Ben had a file up on the screen and was reading the text. “It’s a field report from May 1993, of a raid on some cocaine laboratory. That’s when this Fernando Garcia fellow was killed.” He hit the print button, and the LaserJet spit out two pages. Eugene read the hard copy twice and sat on a chair beside Ben. The content was unbelievable. Intelligence reports prior to the raid had indicated Mario Rastano was the intended target, and that he would be at the lab. But the actual report, filed by the second agent, who was only identified by a code word, told a different story. Rastano was nowhere to be seen, he reported, but there was significant resistance and during the melée Fernando Garcia was fatally wounded. He died at the scene.
“Does this read like I think it does?” he asked the college student.
Ben nodded. “The autopsy showed that it was the second agent’s gun that fired the bullet that killed Garcia. It doesn’t come right out and say for sure it was friendly fire, but the report sure implies it.”
“That’s what I’m getting out of it,” Eugene agreed. “No wonder someone wanted this buried.” He was pensive for a minute, then added, “Why didn’t they just erase the file?”
Ben shook his head. “They couldn’t. The file is permanently protected with an anti-erase code in its header. It’s impossible to erase it, but hidden well enough, it’s almost as good.”
“Almost,” Eugene said. “But you found it.”
“I am good,” Ben smiled as he said it. “Do you know the narco they mention in the file, this Rastano guy?”
Eugene’s face hardened. “Oh, yeah, I know the guy. Mario Rastano. His son is holding my wife and daughter in El Salvador. This is all starting to add up.”
“But they don’t mention the other agent by name, just a code word. Dragonfly.”
Eugene was trying to piece things together. Whoever went into that lab with Fernando Garcia was already on Mario Rastano’s payroll. The advance reports were probably correct; Rastano was most likely at the lab when the raid went down. The two agents busted in, and while Garcia was in the process of arresting Rastano, the second agent shot him. Rastano escaped, but had the dirt on the agent. But there was no name associated, just the code word Dragonfly. He needed that name.
“Ben, scan the DEA database and see what you find under Dragonfly. I need to know who it is.”
The student bent over the keyboard and keyed furiously. Occasionally, he would stop and load another of his hacking or cloaking programs, designed to open doors while keeping the intruder invisible to the DEA security programs. At every turn, he carefully noted the path he was weaving through the database so they could find their way back, if necessary. It took over an hour before he got a hit.
“Eugene,” he said excitedly. “I’ve got something.”
Eugene stared at the screen over Ben’s shoulder.
“Give me one second, I just need to open the file.” He keyed in a couple more commands, and then a personnel file appeared for a split second. It vanished, and the screen went blank. “Oh, shit,” Ben said, his voice scared. “Oh, Christ. We’ve got problems.”
“What?” Eugene asked, as Bill and Andrew spilled in from the living room. “What’s wrong?”
“We’ve been traced. They’ve got us. That file had some sort of a protection program written inside it, if the person accessing it didn’t use a password. We never entered the password. And I’ll guarantee it trac
ed us and fed our location back to the DEA command center. They know we’re here. It’s just a matter of time before someone’s at the front door.”
“Shut it down,” Eugene said. “Wipe your fingerprints off the keyboard, the monitor and the door handles. Then let’s get the hell out of here.”
“I touched lots of stuff in here,” Andrew said, panicked.
Ben nodded. “Me too.” He had the presence of mind to note the final path to the personnel file on a slip of paper, and hand the paper to Eugene.
“Doesn’t matter. The team that will respond to this is going to be small. One of them won’t want anyone else to know what’s going on. Trust me. Wipe your prints off the obvious stuff, and let’s go. We drive the speed limit and don’t panic and we’re okay.” Three pairs of eyes stared at him in the darkness. “Trust me, guys. There will never be a report filed on this.”
They cleaned up, locked the house and piled into the Saturn. The street was deserted, and they didn’t pass a car on the main road leading back to FLCC. Everyone was far more relaxed when they finally pulled up in front of the dorm.
“Not a word,” Eugene said. “Not a word to anyone.” He looked at Ben and Andrew. “I owe you that money, Ben, and I’ll get it to you. Trust me. The only way I won’t be back is if I don’t live through this.”
“You’re involved in some serious shit, Eugene,” Andrew said. He stuck out his hand. “Good luck.”
“I hope you make it, man,” Ben said, also shaking Eugene’s hand. “And I’m not just saying that because you owe me money.”
Eugene laughed. It felt good. “Thanks,” he said.
Bill pulled the car away from the curb, and drove slowly down the twisting road. “Where to?” he asked.
Eugene glanced at his watch. Four-ten in the morning. “Just find a parking lot with a few cars, Bill. We’ll catch a few Z’s in the car, if that’s okay with you.”
“Fine with me,” Bill said. “I hope you got something useful out of that, because it was kind of scary having to run out of the house like that.”
“Yeah,” Eugene said. “Yeah, Bill, I got something very useful from our night out. Very useful indeed.” The personnel file for the agent codenamed Dragonfly had only been on the screen for a split second, but it was long enough for Eugene to recognize the face. A face he had gotten to know very well over the past few days.
He had failed to find a link to Pablo, but he now knew who the informant was.
Chapter Fifty-one
The call was patched through to the hotel switchboard at five-eighteen Friday morning. The caller asked for the guest by name and, although the switchboard operator cautioned him about the early hour, the man was adamant. The call went through.
“Hello.” The voice was sleepy, a person just awakened.
“This is Mel Jacobs in Arlington. There’s been a security breach. Could I verify your identity, please.”
“Certainly.” The correct identification procedure and codes were exchanged, and the caller continued.
“At three-fifty-four this morning there was an unauthorized entry into two files on the mainframe. The one where we managed to flag the intruder was your personnel file.”
“What was the other one?”
“A classified document dealing with a raid on a Colombian drug lab back in May of 1993. I can send you a copy of the file if you wish.”
“No. I know what’s in the file. Did you trace where they hacked in from?”
“Yes. I have an address in Seneca Falls, New York. It’s a residence owned by a Ms. Sarah Quigley.” He recited the municipal address of the house.
“Thank you. We’re close by and will take care of it. Please delete this from your records. It never happened.”
“Yes, sir.”
Senator Irwin Crandle hung up, and stared in the mirror. So this was it. Eugene Escobar had uncovered what no person or group in the entire United States security community had been able to. Eugene had connected the dots back to the raid on Mario Rastano’s lab. The raid where he had been forced to kill another DEA agent to keep Rastano from being arrested.
He dressed quietly, thinking about his sordid association with Mario Rastano. There was no other course of action he could have taken in the Colombian jungle, all those years ago. The intel prior to the raid was dead-on, but he and Fernando Garcia weren’t given all the facts before going in. They weren’t told Mario Rastano would be there. If someone had told him, he would simply have called and warned the man. Instead, they had busted in the doors only to find one of the cartel heavyweights standing in the center of the room, surrounded by processed cocaine. Garcia was on top of the world. They had a big fish in their net, and he wasn’t about to let Rastano get away. He’d had no choice other than to shoot Garcia in the back.
He was already taking money from Rastano. Christ, the money flowing through Colombia in those days was unfathomable. The cocaine business drove the country’s economy. What was the harm in taking a few million dollars in return for an insider’s voice on where and when the Americans would strike? Rastano didn’t care about the Colombian government, but Centra Spike and Delta sure scared the shit out of him and Pablo and the Ochoa brothers. With Crandle on the inside, the cartel chiefs could sacrifice just the right number of labs and planes to keep anyone from suspecting the rat in the pack. But the narcos moved too quickly a few times, and suspicion grew that someone inside was dirty. But nothing was ever proven. He had remained a faceless ghost. Until today.
Damn Eugene Escobar to hell. This should never have happened. When Javier Rastano had contacted him and told him about the Swiss account, the plan appeared simple. They were going to get Eugene to find Pablo and get the code to the account. His cut was to be fifty million dollars—despite his healthy financial status, fifty million tax free was a lot of money. What could go wrong? Eugene was just some dumb hick who took tourists scuba diving for chump change. They figured that the motivation to save his wife and daughter would be enough to drive Eugene to find Pablo. But they had not foreseen how far this motivation would take him.
He glanced at the address. Seneca Falls. He spread a map of the greater Rochester area on the table and found the town. It was on the west side of Canandaigua Lake, about twenty-five miles south of the city. It was just past five-thirty and traffic would be light. He could make it to Sarah Quigley’s house and back before eight. He phoned down and left a message for Alexander Landry that he had gone for a morning drive and jog along the river, and would meet them at eight in the restaurant. Then he slipped on a windbreaker and tucked his gun in the pocket.
One thing was for sure. Eugene Escobar had signed his own death warrant.
Chapter Fifty-two
Friday morning.
The last full day before Javier Rastano’s deadline.
Eugene woke early, stiff from sleeping in the cab. He walked through the parking lot and down to a small stream trickling under a stone footbridge. He splashed the cold water on his face, and felt his senses sharpen from the shock to his system. He sat on the grass by the stream for a few minutes, collecting his thoughts and deciding on a course of action for this final day.
Irwin Crandle. The Kentucky senator was nothing more than a spy for a Colombian drug dealer. By now Crandle would know that his association with the Rastano family had been compromised. The evidence to charge him with murder was in the DEA computers, buried but retrievable. And Eugene was keenly aware that his possession of that evidence meant that Crandle couldn’t afford to have him walking around telling what he knew. The senator was now coming after him with one intention. To kill him.
Eugene returned to the cab to find Bill just waking up. They drove to a nearby restaurant for breakfast and coffee. After his third cup of the life-sustaining liquid, Eugene announced to Bill that he had made a decision.
“First thing we do,” he said, “is to head north of the city and stop at a couple of banks. I don’t know how all this is going to play out, and I won’t leave witho
ut first paying Andrew and Ben.”
“If you get the money, I’ll deliver it,” Bill said.
Eugene nodded. “We’ll see, Bill,” he said, as they left the coffee shop and got in the car. “But I don’t mind driving with you back down to the college after we get the money. I think best in a moving car.”
“Okay, boss. Whatever you want.”
Eugene settled back in the passenger seat and watched the countryside rush by. Perhaps he could cultivate an ally. He figured that Eduardo Garcia’s interest in this whole thing ran deeper than just finding Pablo. Garcia might have suspected the death of his uncle was something other than an act of violence by a cornered narco. If Eduardo wanted retribution for Fernando’s death, why not give him the target. With Eduardo Garcia after Irwin Crandle, Eugene could breathe a little easier. But how to alert Garcia without the rest of the team knowing? That was a problem. The team would be staying at a Rochester hotel. But which one? He didn’t have the time or resources to start canvassing the hotels and asking for information that they may not divulge.
Then he had an idea. Not many people flew into medium-size cities in a Learjet. He asked Bill to pull over at a pay phone. He dialed the number to the executive terminal at the Rochester airport and spoke with the receptionist. She told him the pilot for Senator Crandle’s jet was already in and having coffee with some of the maintenance staff. She put him on hold for a couple of minutes, then a voice came over the line.
“This is Captain Archer. Who am I speaking with?”
“Captain Archer, it’s Eugene Escobar. I don’t know if you remember, but you flew me from El Paso to Kentucky to meet with the senator.”