ROGUESTATE, page 17
Eduard used theWild Bunch to hack into the Bureau’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC). They issued under the auspices of the Chicago Police Department and one Detective Kevin Crosby an “Observer and Report” order for a vehicle registered to Parvez’s mother.
The NCIC is linked to eighty thousand law enforcement agencies around the country. The vehicle popped up on the daily tally sheet for a good percentage of those agencies, and within twelve hours a sighting was reported. TheWild Bunch diverted the response from the Chicago Police Department to its own servers located in Moscow. They forwarded the information via standard email to Eduard, and he gathered his gear together for the cross-country ride to Washington.
The wizards in Moscow thought they were quite clever as they managed to penetrate the FBI’s widely-used database for their purposes. They benefited greatly from a mother lode of intelligence the SVR continued to feed them. Written down in notebooks available to any member of theWild Bunch were the passwords to the Bureau’s very sensitive counterintelligence database. It was a system they monitored daily for any hint that the Bureau might suspect they had been penetrated like brick of Swiss cheese.
Parvez had been spotted outside the District of Columbia. Parvez was angling for an assassination attempt on Putin when he visited the new American President in late January. It confirmed Eduard’s worst fears, and that was the least of his problems.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Newport, Rhode Island,Naval War College, October, 2000 -The 1998 Twentieth Century Fox film “The Siege”went very far in bringing the idea of domestic terrorism back into the minds of the American people at a time when they had just bandaged their hearts after the horrific bombing of the Oklahoma City Federal Building. What unfolds is a chaotic scenario of terrorist activity that places the FBI, the CIA, Presidential advisors, and the U.S. Army in a position where each distrusts the others. In a scene where all of the designated senators and key players from the FBI, the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Executive Branch are gathered, the question of who should really be in charge is asked and reference is made to the Posse Comitatus Act.
As sensational as this movie is, it is not really too much of a stretch of the imagination when one considers the bombings of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, the World Trade Center, and Oklahoma City, and the incident in the Tokyo subway. In spite of restrictions on the use of military force within America’s borders, current literature shows that the U.S. Armed Forces are better equipped than local civilian authorities to identify and respond to the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
Dolan Springs, Arizona
Thursday, October 26, 2000
1:00 P.M. MST
Darby Hayes and Jim Harper drove the Ford Explorer down Pierce Ferry Road
and the ever-present dust cloud rose up behind them. Pierce Ferry Road
was marked with signs identifying it as County Road 25 after it left US Highway 93, which ran south from Hoover Dam, skirting the edge of the Grand Canyon’s west rim.
County Road 25 wound around Joshua Trees, along waterless arroyos, and any number of dubious tracks leading mostly nowhere. The Hualapai Indian Reservation rested astride the Colorado River, and their backyard was a huge stretch of the Grand Canyon. Las Vegas was eighty miles to the north and Kingman—the nearest school and hospital—was a good forty to fifty miles further down US 93.
They drove past the way point for tour vans coming out of Las Vegas and angled along the road until the pink adobe Assembly of God church popped up on the left. Darby read the street sign and turned down a dead-end road.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” murmured Harper. Fatigue attacked his limbs, and he could not remember the last time he had felt so stiff. His skin continued to heal, and he had flushed his doctor’s pills down the toilet on the airplane to Las Vegas. Perhaps the nausea that had plagued him since he left Walter Reed would go away.
The official population for Dolan Springs is one thousand eighty. Harper was beginning to believe the number included all the stray dogs, roaming cattle, occasional goats, and wandering pigs as well. The home lots were large, measuring an acre or more in size. Electricity arrived over power poles, and unless an industrious resident bothered to dig a well—a very deep well—water came on trucks from Kingman. Everyone in this part of Dolan Springs had a septic system or an outhouse—sometimes both.
“Yeah,” replied Darby. “His trailer is supposed to be the last one on this street.”
Harper squinted through the windshield, taking in the burnt-out trailer at the end of the road. “It doesn’t look very promising.”
Darby nodded silently as he pulled up to Damon Layne’s trailer. The top half of the trailer had blown skyward, scattering shrapnel and debris across the back end of the lot. The local response to a fire that had obviously engulfed Layne’s trailer residence, but offered no threat to any other homes, appeared to be to let the fire burn itself out—why waste the water?
Darby joined Harper on the trailer lot’s corner. “Quite a mess.”
Harper moved through the twisted metal shards and broken plastic pieces. There appeared to be a wider debris pattern on the far end of the trailer, and strangely, the liquid gas cylinder attached to the side of the trailer remained untouched by the calamity.
“Sergeant, what makes a trailer go boom?” Harper asked idly.
Darby poked his head into the more intact portion of the trailer. He found what was left of the kitchen. Lying on the floor further down the main corridor was a forty-pound railroad tie with huge spikes dug into the cheap linoleum floor.
Harper discovered the crossbow bolt driven into the wooden housing over the garbage cans. The weathered wood had splintered around the arrow’s target and lighter splinters were splayed around the impact. He traced the arrow’s flight back to the entrance Darby was hunched over.
Darby had turned his head to see the crumpled remains of an M181A holder. It had been bent backwards from the blast, and Darby turned again, recognizing the holes formed by the Claymore mine’s ball bearings.
One of Layne’s booby traps remained unexploded. Incredibly, the grenade had not detonated when the rest of his surprises went off during Isaac Timmerman’s visit. The tripwire remained connected to the grenade’s pull ring. It appeared to have been severed by the Claymore mine.
Darby backed away from his vantage point, finding Harper crouched over his shoulder. “Booby traps, major.”
Harper nodded solemnly. “It suggests someone else might be hunting for Layne as well.” Harper had chased bad guys for twelve years before he retired from Louis Edwards’ band of hooligans. Damon Layne appeared to have attracted a following, and that suggested complications. In this business complications were never good.
“And they knew about the trailer,” added Darby. The only place the trailer had been listed was in the Q file the two men had read. If the other people hunting Layne had access to the Q files—and presumably they did not have to surreptitiously acquire their copies—then the stakes had just increased.
Not a good omen.
“Sergeant, let’s dispose of that grenade. We don’t want a kid getting hurt. And then we’d better go find Layne first.” Harper leaned against the side of the trailer, while Darby retrieved the grenade. It would not do to let Darby discover how weak he felt.
They had a score to settle.
* * * *
Crystal City, Virginia
Conner Fadden slipped away from Harvey’s office and onto the congested roads surrounding Brian Stillwell’s multi-million dollar defense issue think tank. The Glock Model 21 banged against his ribs as he jogged into the faceless anonymity an eight-million person metropolitan area offered.
He never talked about the training forSpanish Poppy. The subject had not come up in their discussions, and Conner decided to hold the information close. It did not seem like Harvey and his band of misfits were getting any closer to Damon Layne. He could have told them that Layne would not be found in Arizona. Layne would not oblige anyone by waiting around to become a target.
Mark Schaeffer considered him a monster who belonged in a death cell next to Timothy McVeigh—the only man to receive the death penalty for the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing. There were contrary opinions regarding McVeigh’s culpability. No one disputed he had parked a fertilizer bomb alongside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building. The inconvenient facts were that the University of Oklahoma seismographs recorded five blast impulses, and a secret Pentagon study conducted by ordinance experts concluded a low intensity car bomb could not have damaged the building and killed all those people. There were also the pesky rumors suggesting Osama bin Laden—the shadowy billionaire terrorist—had been involved in theactual attack. A convinced and rather silent minority concluded McVeigh was auseful idiot . However, no one suggested he should be given anything less than death.
The Columbian revolutionary group M19 claimed credit for the bombing committed by Conner in Panama City last May. It was convenient that Layne had access to Interpol and Bureau files when he claimed credit for the bombing on behalf of M19. Both the Panama City and Oklahoma City bombings resulted in dead women and children. McVeigh would pay for his complicity with his life while Conner ran free. The complications surroundingSpanish Poppy were not conducive to lengthy legal proceedings and spectacular headlines. The Administration had no stomach for such a mess.
Conner became Layne’suseful idiot. He followed his orders, built a bomb, and completed his mission. He became a criminal, because the order he obeyed resulted in the needless collateral death to non-combatants. American soldiers are not supposed to kill women and children. Conner determined that before he made it right with the God of his Catholic youth, he would rid the world of Damon Layne.
He wondered if he had the courage to use the Glock bouncing in his holster when his turn came to follow Layne into hell. Perversely, he equally wondered if he had the strength to continue to hunt for Layne as the burden of guilt grew heavier every day.
Conner made his way to the Metro Station. It was the easiest and cheapest way to leave Harvey and the others behind. He purchased a ten-dollar card from the vending machines and clambered down the stairs towards the buried tunnels. He remained oblivious to the camera pods scanning travelers, and he was unaware that the Metro camera pods were slaved in real time to the Bureau’s CYCLOPS system.
The cybernetic hound dog picked up Conner’s scent, and within forty minutes reported the fact to Adrian Bridger.
Conner had taken his first fatal step.
The Bureau continued to believe it was unique in the digital world. They righteously claimed their most secret systems remained inviolate. Elements of the American intelligence community permitted the Bureau to wallow in its self-delusion. Bridger clandestinely used CYCLOPS to hunt demons haunting the past.
This time it found Conner.
* * * *
Miami, Florida
Adrian Bridger rode through Miami in a stretch limousine. He wondered if the people drinking his liquor and puffing his cigars could actually deliver. Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties each had several hundred precincts. He needed these counties to swing heavily in favor of the Vice President. The further north he went, the harder it became to find people willing to defraud the entire country on election night.
He asked again, “How can you be so confident?”
The three-hundred-pound man from Broward chuckled. “We’ve been stealing votes down here for years. We lobbied the canvassing boards not to participate in a statewide program to purge the voter lists of felons and dead people. Do you think Mayor Daly back in the Kennedy-Nixon go-around was the first guy to figure out dead people can vote?” He tapped his ash more or less inside the ashtray.
Adrian did not like the idea of dead people voting. “And if something goes wrong?”
The skinny man with the acne-ravaged face from Dade County shook his head, “You worry too much.”
“I get paid to worry,” snapped Adrian. Stealing a Presidential election had a potential profit margin measured in billions. He refused to consider the downside risk. He found himself relying on people who looked at voter fraud like they were playing the lottery.
“Yeah, yeah,” soothed Acne Face. “We’ll take care of the African and Haitian immigrants. All you need is somebody to show up in a uniform and tell them how to vote.”
Bridger cringed. “Like a policeman?”
Acne face shook his head. “Just a uniform—it could be the FedEx man for all they know. They piss on their shoes when they see a uniform, and if the suit tells them to vote a certain way, they will.”
“And the Cubans?” he pressed.
Acne Face shrugged. “The Cubans are a different deal. We steal the ballot boxes between the precinct and the canvassing board. We’ll replace their ballot boxes with our ballot boxes. Besides, we have our own voting machines.”
“You what?” snarled Adrian. He was going to need a vacation when this job was over.
“There was a big push to change over to optical scanners.” He shook his head. “You see with optical scanners, it’s much harder to screw up ballots, because you got to do it one by one. We have a punch card system in Dade County. All you need is a coat hanger and a bunch of ballots. You just drill it right on through a big pile of punch cards for your guy, and any votes for the other guy don’t get counted, because you’ve got an over-vote.” An over-vote was multiple votes for the same office.
“What’s your story?” Adrian asked the Palm Beach fellow.
Palm Beach downed his bourbon, and explained, “We do our voting ahead of time. I have precincts that will come in between ninety-five and ninety-nine percent right. Big ones with over a thousand votes each, and we wait until the very end before we dump our votes into the mix.” He smiled, “You see we always havetrouble with our voting machines.”
“Always?” probed Adrian.
“Always,” assured Palm Beach.
Florida was a wild-card kind of state. The heavy military population due to the presence of US Central Command (CENTCOM) headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, and US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) headquartered in Miami had produced unexpected results in absentee vote counts. Adrian had a team of lawyers prepared to challenge military ballots. He had also arranged for specific units to be sent out on missions the day before the election. The wimpy National Security Advisor was still good for a few things.
He ended their soiree, saying, “Remember, the Vice President’s campaign knows nothing of this little adventure. If you have questions, call me. Don’t call the campaign.” It was about the only truthful item discussed as Adrian’s limousine rolled along under the hot Florida sun.
CHAPTER TWENTY
New York,Time/CNN,October 27, 2000 –Republican Presidential candidate George Bush has opened a lead beyond the margin of error over Vice President Al Gore. Green Party candidate Ralph Nader is not seen as a significant factor in the election, which is a little more than ten days away.
Washington D.C.
Friday, October 27, 2000
10:00 A.M. EDT
Ellen Grafft frowned. Her fingers clacked along the keyboard as she attempted to resolve differences between the NCIC information screen and her just concluded phone conversation with Detective Kevin Crosby.
The NCIC screen indicated an “Observe and Report” request entered into the system on Saturday—the day of the murders. The requesting agency was listed as the Chicago Police Department. On Tuesday, an Alexandria, Virginia, police report identified the car. The report routed its way through the NCIC network back to the original requestor—Kevin Crosby. That happened the day before Ellen arrived on the scene with her gaggle of Bureau techno-nerds.
Crosby explained in his less-than-cordial manner that he did not know about any cars, and none were reported missing by Marianna Hyder. Perhaps, the NCIC developed a glitch, but she had never encountered a similar problem. Her intuition suggested something else was afoot.
Ellen decided the best way to handle the mess was to talk with Marianna Hyder again. A great plan, but it ran into another dead end. Marianna had melted away like snow on a hot summer day. She had not attended classes since the day of her mother’s murder, and she never showed up for work after her interview with the Ellen on Wednesday afternoon. She had gone to ground, and in a city the size of Chicago, it was a fairly easy thing to vanish.
According to passport control, Parvez Hyder had entered the country on October 9, 2000. The passport control log indicated he matched the daily profile for intensive scrutiny. The Customs Officer subjected him to a strip search and found no contraband on his person. The prior records, which had been transposed from an earlier system, indicated Parvez had left the country in 1991. Ellen ordered one of her assistants to verify the dates.
The motor vehicle registration indicated the car listed on the NCIC computer record belonged to Parvez’s mother. Ellen issued her own request to “Stop and Hold” Parvez Hyder. She would have had better results spitting into the wind. Parvez had alreadylost the car on the east side of the district.
Her computer chimed and notified her that she had five minutes to get to Feldman’s weekly staff meeting. Lately Feldman’s staff meetings seemed more like a pebble in her shoe than the free exchange of ideas and issues. She gathered up her notebook and scurried down the corridor towards the elevators.
Ellen settled in her chair at the table.
Dwayne looked as harried as she felt.
Cecil appeared unperturbed, quietly observing the others gathering around the conference table.
Rita Mason wrapped herself around her chair like a serpent and flipped open her notebook.
No one said anything—it was ahappy group.
Feldman swept into the room two minutes late. He kicked the door shut with the back of his foot and took up his position at the head of the conference table. Recently he had discovered Evian Water. The trendy, plastic twenty-ounce bottles replaced his stainless steel car mug.
