by Kirk Russell
“I didn’t get anything from him. I argued with him. We didn’t learn anything. I don’t even know if he has anything for us. I think we should focus elsewhere. What do you think? Do you agree?”
I did.
44
That night was the worst in a dozen years. My life had changed irreparably in 2004 after an insurgent in a cobbled-together bomb factory near Bagdad modified a Senao cell phone, replacing the power cord with a battery and reworking the phone, adding an external relay switch that allowed triggering the bomb from a distance. Installing a battery, rewiring the page button became standard steps in the process of making IEDs.
The pain tonight took me back to the flight home from Frankfurt in 2005 that started with elation and finished in agony. I was more than ready to go home and excited. I’d convinced the doctors I’d be fine, that I could sit long hours on a military transport plane.
I was wrong. As wrong as I’ve ever been about so many things where my enthusiasm and a natural toughness were a good start but not enough. What my investigative career taught me is follow-through. You build a case, then you take it all the way home. You do that with tenacity and discipline. I’ve approached my bomb injuries with a belief that the two are somewhat similar: never give up and keep working on it. If I worked hard enough, I’d get back to how I used to be physically. It took me years to get to this point, to acknowledge I never would get back to how I was before.
Tonight, I saw white light behind my eyes and the sweat-soaked sheets were undeniable. Earlier, Jo urged me to take some painkillers, and finally, late in the night, I reached for the pills. They brought shallow sleep and haunted dreams.
I woke early, scrambled two eggs with pepper, salt, and olive oil, and toasted bread as the coffee brewed. Ralin had sent me an e-mail at 3:13 a.m. That seems to be a time of day he likes. I read his message as I ate. He wanted to talk about Eckstrom’s murder. I referred him to Mara.
The final e-mail I read was from a missile expert in DC who’d concluded it was plausible that a terror group with the right team could field-assemble surface-to-surface missiles in a remote setting. He signed off with Call me. What you wrote worries me.
At the office, Jace and I learned 214 people were apprehended trespassing onto Independence Base. A dozen were charged with resisting arrest. Others had yet to be apprehended. I called Indonal to get his take on the situation at the base.
What Indonal said didn’t surprise me.
“They took Mark out of the Indie building in an ambulance this morning. He was shaking and having trouble talking. A couple of hard-assed interrogator types flew out from Washington yesterday and questioned him for hours and hours after you and Agent Blujace left. He was pretty messed up afterward.”
“Did you hear any of the questioning?”
“Are you kidding? They don’t let me go to a bathroom alone here.”
“How are you doing?”
“I’m working with the new coders. They’re pretty into it and catching up fast. I talked with Mark this morning, before he freaked out, about the timing of me leaving. I may stay a little longer or until he’s doing better. At this point, what’s the difference if I stay a few more days?”
He was quiet before adding, “The head of security for the Indie building told me he wants to be there when we’re both booted out. He thinks Alan got what he deserved and we got paid to give Indie’s source code to an enemy. I’m only back because Mark said he had to have my help. Mark and the head of DARPA talked them into bringing me back temporarily.”
“What did you say to the head of security after he said that?”
“That I can’t wait to leave.”
“Let me ask you something else,” I said, “and I’m going to jump around with some of my questions. Did you ever meet Claire Henley?”
“No, but Alan did. He was in London with Mark a couple of times. He liked her, but the situation made him uncomfortable. We both liked Mark’s wife, Sylvie, so it was awkward. If Alan hadn’t met her, I wouldn’t even know about her, and Mark has never said a word to me about his and Sylvie’s problems.”
“How are you doing with Alan’s murder?”
“I can’t stop thinking about it. After we split up, he said he was staying with a new friend who might be a great connection for us. That had to be her.” He paused. “The interrogators who talked to Mark yesterday want to question me later today. I get the feeling they know something about her. I wish I’d said something earlier.”
I sat on that a moment then realized he felt guilty he hadn’t said more sooner. I sat on that a moment then said, “Eric, I have to tell you, you wouldn’t have saved his life.”
“Are you certain? Because we were texting.”
Red flags started to go off for me.
“You were texting, but you may not have actually been texting with Alan. It might have been someone with his phone, someone trying to get you to tell them where you were. You didn’t get Alan killed. And you just might have saved both your life and Cindy’s by not communicating more.”
“I . . . I want to believe that.”
“From what you’ve told me, you shouldn’t fault yourself for Alan’s death.”
“Everything I’ve done since signing on to build Indie is screwed up. Indie isn’t just about defense. It’s like a hawk flying into flocks of doves when it rips into other computer systems. Once Indie goes through one, it’s wasted. Big bucks are going down. Someone is going to fight back. Something is going to happen. Cyber used to be like quiet warfare, but we ended that.”
To keep him from going down that rabbit hole, I asked, “What do you want to work on next?”
“I want to be working on the AI machine that can follow every cell in your body. I want to help build the AI machine that can track all cells in real time so if cancer cells start to multiply, we can catch them. That’s possible with the next generation of Indie.”
“That’s where your head is at, the next generation?”
“I want to leave here as soon as possible and go to work on that. I’m ready. I know it’s possible. I know it can be done.”
“Make it happen, Eric, and call if you ever need anything from me. When the interrogators question you today, tell them the absolute truth. Filter nothing. You don’t have to speculate on what you don’t know, but be very accurate about what you do know. If they want to talk to me, give them my phone number.”
“Thank you,” he said.
After he hung up and Jace left to meet with Laura Trent at her apartment, I sorted tip calls and talked with commercial real estate owners. I was in a melancholy mood when I left the office to go meet a real estate developer.
I have FBI friends who put in thirty years then retired with vested pensions and found new jobs. One is working for the police department in the hometown he’d abandoned thirty-five years ago. The town loves that he’s returned. He’s their one and only detective and says he gets paid next to nothing but up every morning happy. He told me his pension is more than enough where he’s living now, and he can’t remember when he’s been as happy.
If I go ahead with back surgery, that may lead to forced early retirement and a pension not fully vested. Both Jo and I love our work, but there’s a day out there we’ve counted on when we’ll have more time together. A sudden loss of income would jeopardize the timing of that, and my back problem could curtail my chances at a second career. To me, that means I will have failed us.
That’s where my thoughts were shortly before it happened. Not only that but on my way out I’d stopped to talk to the guards. Both were in upbeat, good moods. It all went down a half hour after I left.
45
Dalz
“It’s ready to go,” Dalz said and looked from Sean to the young man who would be driving the van. He showed the driver a photo as he explained. “When you park you need to be positioned over this
spot. Do you see that No Parking sign?” Dalz touched the image of the sign in the photo. “Line up the front of the van with this sign.”
“Front wheels?”
“No, the front of the van.” Dalz searched for the American word. “The bumper,” he said.
“What if the guard orders me to stop?”
“The guard will order that, but you roll to a stop in the correct position before you answer. If he’s right there, make it seem like you couldn’t hear him. That means you have your window up. He might be right there yelling at you to move on as you’re stopping, so pretend you don’t hear him and do not lower your window. You open your door instead and get out with the package you’re there to deliver.”
Dalz looked hard at the kid. He was unsure everything was getting through.
Dalz continued. “You’ve got the package, and he’s not taking it from you. So, what do you do?”
“I say I’m new and try to get him to take it. When I hear the horn honk, I run for the car.”
“You run, you dive into the back of the car, and the driver will shoot the guard if he chases you.”
“If he pulls his gun as soon as I get there, what should I do?”
“You still run when you hear the car honk.”
“What if he shoots me?”
He might and all the better, Dalz thought, but said, “All you need to do is get the truck there and into the correct position.”
Sean, still standing nearby listening, stepped in. When he did, Dalz backed away picturing Sean’s reaction after the bomb exploded. The young man seemed to be somehow related to him, maybe extended family. Perhaps that’s why he was trusted.
After the young driver left, Sean came to Dalz and wanted to go through the detonation timing again, to reassure himself there was plenty of time for the driver to escape in the car that would follow him.
“The bomb detonates sixty seconds after you’ve made the detonation call. That’s after I’ve called you and confirmed he’s parked in the right spot.”
“It doesn’t just detonate when I call?”
“No, sixty seconds later. If the gap is too long, they’ll see the getaway car and react. Remember, the guards will be on him already; he’s out of the delivery truck and talking. I call you then leave, so everything is up to him at that point. Everything.”
Dalz knew he’d be racing away when Sean called the detonation signal. Dalz had a place to get to. He’d built a smaller bomb to deal with Agent Grale. It was small but big enough for Grale to remember for the rest of his life.
46
At 2:08 p.m. a white commercial van turned off West Lake Mead Boulevard and slowed to a stop just past the guardhouse and adjacent to the painted metal fencing and a parking area that fronts our office. A white sedan rounded the corner eleven seconds later, right after one of the guards called out to the van driver, “No!” He waved him on. “No parking there, keep rolling. Move it!”
The driver lowered his window, leaned out and said, “It’ll take five seconds. It’s just one package.”
The window went up again and the driver pushed his door open with his foot and hopped out holding the package with his arm extended as he hurried toward the guard, a guy I’d known for fifteen years.
“Freeze! Do not approach! Get back in your vehicle. You cannot park there. Do not take another step toward me!”
“Okay, Jesus, sorry, relax. No problem, okay? I’ll move it.”
This was all recorded. I listened with other agents as I arrived and suited up and watched video recording from before the blast. The guard’s name was Enrique Jimenez. A good guy, observant, bright. In the video he looked aware of the danger. He’d had time to radio the other guard, and I read in the way he lunged forward that he knew. All those drills, then it comes down to a few seconds.
He made it to the left front corner of the delivery van as he pursued the driver, who was running for a car that had slowed to a stop. Jimenez yelled something in the moment before an explosion enveloped both the van and the car and everything in close proximity. The blast blew out the steel fencing and shattered car windows and reinforced glass along the entry lobby. The face of the FBI building was pitted and scarred, and windows were broken across the street as wood fencing was hurled sideways. Most of the blast wave was directed downward.
The bomb design was different than initial reports. The asphalt road surface lay over a one-foot concrete cap that covered a gravel and sand joint trench carrying communication and power lines. Those lines were four feet below the underside of the concrete cap yet were still twisted and severed by the blast. The gravel covering the lines was blown out like buckshot.
Backup power had kicked in, and like Indie, we use JWICS communication for many things, but the hardwired Internet lines were compromised and enough other damage was done to provoke a temporary move of our office into three separate locations. For our squad, the DT, it was the fusion center out near the airport.
Agents came and went from the building in the hours after it was declared secure. I wasn’t among them. I helped retrieve pieces of Jimenez’s torn body and that of the other guard, Landers, and worked the bombing. I stopped hearing the sirens when I turned to the crater and twisted remains of the van and getaway car.
My reactions were about training. You do what you’ve learned. You react as you’ve been taught and draw from similar investigations. Later in the day, as I walked the street looking for pieces of the detonator, I thought more about Jimenez and Landers. Jimenez had two kids he adored, and Landers had survived multiple tours in the Middle East only to be killed here at home.
In humanity we have among us people with no empathy for others. Maybe it’s the way they were born. Maybe it’s chemical. Some of them are very successful. It’s been argued that some of history’s greatest leaders were narcissists with no real connection or feeling for other human beings.
It’s the man acting alone and the glad-handing politician who remember the names that are temporarily useful. For the rest of us, a clap on the back, a warm handshake, a “good to see you again” is more than enough. Dalz had joked with the border patrol after they’d thanked him for his cooperation and patience and returned his false passport. They smiled from behind him at his offer to send photos from the parks, but what did Dalz feel?
Dalz had long favored three types of detonators. I walked and rewalked the street looking for fragments. Hour by hour, we recovered pieces of the bomb. I was able to visualize the bomb construction and the design’s intent. I found detonator fragments that said it could be Dalz, but I puzzled over how the disruption of our office would work as an advantage. Sure, at first perhaps, but then what?
On some level it struck me as ignorant because the Bureau would react quickly. Surrounding offices would send more agents, and we’d ramp up hard. The FBI is America’s investigative agency. Period. There’s no one else. ATF is good at a lot of things, bombs in particular, and DHS has grown in ability and strengths, but it’s the FBI when it really comes down to it.
To me, it meant we had to pull out all the stops to find whoever did this. We had to find who would dare do this as a prelude to whatever was intended next. Everything changed with the bombing. Intensity heightened without anything being said. The speeches would come, but it was already understood among all of us.
I heard from Jace late in the afternoon that Mara gave a good speech at the fusion center as the DT squad moved in. Headlines flashed, “Vegas FBI Office Bombed.” Toward twilight our SAC, the special agent in charge and head of our office, stood in front of TV cameras and said we’d move back to the FBI office within three days.
“Nothing will stop us,” he said as cable TV fixated on Bismarck’s followers as possible bombers. For my part, I focused on the piece of a detonator similar to the type Dalz favored. It was swabbed that afternoon for DNA, but Dalz knew better. I didn’t expect anything th
ere. Something else was at the back of my mind, something Jo had told me.
47
Dalz
Dalz turned the images over in his head: the white van rounding the corner, brake lights, the van positioned just beyond the FBI guard station. Before it came to a stop, he was calling Sean, who then made the call that detonated the bomb.
Dalz felt the blast wave and he was already a half mile away. He didn’t doubt Sean knew the bomb exploded prematurely. The bombing of the FBI was successful, but Sean would demand to know why the bomb exploded too soon. He would be the only one who cared, and it wouldn’t matter. It was too late for Sean to replace him.
When Dalz arrived at the hospital parking garage, he’d found Dr. Segovia’s blue SUV. It took less than a minute to magnetically attach the bomb to the undercarriage and tighten tie wire to help hold it in place.
He returned to the ranch and was in the main house well before Sean raced the unpaved road in from the highway. When Sean walked in, Dalz was sipping a just-brewed espresso.
“Success? Everybody back?” Dalz asked.
“Two are dead, but you know that.”
“I am very sorry. What happened?”
“You’re not sorry at all.”
“Yes, that’s true. The bomb detonated. It was successful.”
“I should kill you,” Sean said.
“You can, of course, if you can explain to your superiors why you killed me before the operation was complete. But before you do, I have to tell you that someone has tampered with the missiles. Every time I have checked them, I’ve had to reset them. If I had trusted you even a little, I would have told you sooner.”
