by J. B. Turner
“Maybe.”
“Look, I need to go.”
“Where are you?”
“What, just now?”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“Curious, I guess.”
“Manhattan, if you must know. Satisfied?”
“Sure.”
“Look, I can’t talk now…” A long pause as if she didn’t want to hang up. Eventually she broke the silence between them. “Try and move on, Jon. Lauren needs you.”
The line went dead and Reznick handed the cell back to the Fed, who left the room. When he had shut the door, Reznick went across and sat down at his daughter’s bedside. He held her hand and stroked her soft hair. Then he leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “Lauren, I love you so much, honey. But I’ve got something to attend to. It means I’m gonna be away from you for a little while, honey. The doctors are going to take good care of you. But when I come back, this will all be over, one way or the other, I promise you.” He kissed her clammy cheek, visible through all the tubes. “Love you forever.”
Then he closed his eyes and said a silent prayer as the beeping of the machines filled the terrible silence.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The FBI’s three-storey safe house on Manhattan’s Upper East Side had fallen quiet as they listened to the phone conversation – retrieved minutes earlier by the NSA – between Reznick and the electronically distorted voice.
Meyerstein stood in the briefing room, hands behind her back, and stared out of the window over the houses of East 73rd Street’s Historic District. More than one hundred experts from the NSA, CIA, Homeland Security, National Counterterrorism Center and, of course, the FBI, were all trying to track down Caan and the identity and location of Reznick’s caller.
She was feeling the pressure like never before. The stakes were impossibly high. But she knew that cold logic instead of raw emotion was required.
She turned around and looked at the eerie real-time pictures from the cameras of the Hazmat team in Lower Manhattan. The night vision pictures were from a camera fitted to Special Agent Kevin O’Hare’s bio-suit as he headed along an aluminium duct of the building’s central air conditioning system.
Another plasma screen showed her team at the FBI’s HQ in Washington, seven members round a small conference table.
Meyerstein stared up at the screen to the team in Washington. “OK, let’s get started. I want to know more about this call. It’s exactly half an hour since we got working on this. What are NSA saying about it?”
Gary Clark, an NSA computer and telecommunications specialist, said, “The GPS showed that the call to Reznick originated from Grand Cayman. But we’ve done our calculations, and it’s not possible. It’s a false location. Classic GPS spoofing, bouncing off hundreds of locations.”
“OK, interesting. What else?”
“We are ninety two per cent certain that the call was made from a moving car. We’re still working on cleaning up the voice, though. They’re very good.”
Meyerstein sighed. “Clearly. Any further details about the phone?”
Clark cleared his throat and leafed through a pile of papers in front of him. “Pay as you go serial number, originally part of a consignment for a store in Miami.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere. What about voice analysis?”
“It’s gonna take time. There are so many overlays; it’s a highly sophisticated operation we’re dealing with.”
“What about Caan? Do we have anything on him?”
“He seems to have disappeared off the radar, ma’am.”
“Are we scanning all cellular traffic? He must be communicating with someone. This is not a lone wolf. The level of expertise tells us this is something entirely different.”
“Fort Meade is scanning telephone, fax and data traffic, including encrypted emails, across the world.”
Meyerstein knew they had a database containing hundreds of billions of records of calls made by US citizens from the four largest telephone carriers.
“Our analysts are using the extension Caan used at the lab, his home number and cell, although both haven’t been used in months.”
“It’s beginning to sound more and more ominous.”
“Look, we’re throwing everything at it. We’re using link analysis software and neural network software to try and detect patterns, classify and cluster data. We’ve also got a speech recording he made at a conference last year, and we’re using advanced speech recognition software to find him. But to answer your question, nothing so far.”
“OK, Gary. Get back to me as soon as we have something.”
Meyerstein cut the link to Washington. Then she called up the communications link to Assistant Director of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate, Professor Adam Horowitz, down in Lower Manhattan, and the National Counterterrorism Center in McLean, who were monitoring events as they unfolded. “Adam, it’s Martha. I’m looking for an update, if that’s possible.”
A loud groan as if it was the last thing he needed to hear. “We have located ten aerosol devices, all throughout the air ducts, and we have managed to disable eight of them with jamming using extra directional antennas, but two of the devices have still not been deactivated. And that’s worrying.”
“So, what do you surmise is causing the problem?”
“We don’t know is, the simple answer. Kevin is in the duct, as you can see. He is going to use another antenna, hoping to bounce off a second and third antenna in the duct, to jam the damn things.”
Meyerstein stood, hands on hips, shaking her head in frustration. “You’re saying we can’t deactivate two of them? I just don’t get it.”
“Martha, there are a lot of factors at work here. It may be the building’s design and the precise location where the devices have been placed. We’ve pulled apart one of the deactivated devices. And it came back positive.”
Meyerstein’s insides went cold. “Look, we’re very concerned that this call to Reznick might mean this guy or this group, will try and advance the timers on the remaining two devices. They know we’re onto them.”
“We’re working as quickly as we can, Martha.”
“I appreciate that, Adam. Can you tell how far Kevin is from these devices? He looks real close. Isn’t it possible to manually deactivate?”
“This is delicate. We’ve got to be very, very careful.”
“Adam, I understand that.” Her tone was calm, not wishing to instil anxiety into an already tense situation.
“As it stands, we don’t know how this device is set up. We reckon he is eight yards away, or so. But he’s got to be cautious. A movement sensor may set them off. And to compound matters, both devices are located at the opposite side of the ducts. Twenty, maybe thirty yards apart.”
Meyerstein said, “OK, we’ll keep this link open. Best of luck.”
Horowitz sighed. “We’re gonna need it.”
Special Agent Kevin O’Hare could hear the conversation through the earpiece of a two-way radio fitted into his Hazmat suit. Crawling through the air duct, the light on his helmet strafed the darkness. A tiny camera was fitted to the light and beamed back pictures to the FBI safe house in New York. He edged closer to the first of the two aerosol canisters, attached to the side of the aluminium duct.
He felt slightly claustrophobic wearing the fully encapsulating bio-suit with a full face piece, self-contained breathing apparatus and bacterial spore detector. It offered the highest level of protection against any gases, vapors, mists, particles, or spores. But that didn’t make it any less uncomfortable under all the protective layers.
The heat was intense. Each movement was such an effort. He felt sweat beading on his forehead. But it was the least of his worries.
He knew the risks when he volunteered as the most experienced member of the team to head down the duct. Severe to fatal, if this was indeed the hybrid version of the Spanish Flu 1918. His suit would protect him; at least it would
in theory. But what about any bacteria seeping through the vents into the packed streets of Manhattan outside? His wife worked in a deli only three blocks away. She was four months pregnant.
O’Hare’s breathing was getting more laboured as he edged closer to the device. He heard the voices of his instructors down the years. There must be focus. There must be patience. The whole scenario was something he had trained to do for nearly twenty years. He had done numerous training simulations and had been involved in a handful of incidents down the years, mostly involving anthrax spores. But this was major league stuff.
“OK,” he said into the two-way radio, “located the first of the devices. Looks like they are indeed attached. Magnet.”
O’Hare opened up the sealed pack attached to his suit belt and pulled out a directional high-grain antenna, hand-held LCD display and a military-grade signal jammer. He screwed in the antenna to the iPod-sized jammer and flicked on the switch to activate the device. It was slow work with his protective gloves on.
The green light came on. He was in business.
The frequencies it covered were beyond ordinary cell phone jammers and were intended to combat all radio frequency threats, not just cellular activated weapons.
The jammer worked by preventing radio signals from reaching the radio receiver used to detonate a device. He knew the jammer he was using broadcast interference on multiple frequencies. And in theory, all known threats should be thwarted. But it was sophisticated enough not to affect his two-way radio.
He glanced at his LCD fast-scanning receiver display, which showed that the signals from the bio-bombs were frequency hopping.
“Yeah, as I thought, they’re frequency hopping, do you copy?”
A voice at the other end said, “Yeah, copy that, Kevin.”
O’Hare rechecked the LCD display again. The two signals would only appear for a few milliseconds on a particular frequency before hopping on to the next.
What the hell was this?
The system he was using should have detected and jammed the frequency hopping. It should have received and instantaneously processed a wide bandwidth of radio frequency spectrum. Then it should have detected short duration signals such as frequency hopping and burst transmissions. And then automatically jammed the signal.
So, why the hell wasn’t it? This was not good. Not good at all.
O’Hare felt hot and his breathing got faster as the seconds ticked by. The more he thought of it, the more he wondered if someone wasn’t using state-of-the-art jammers against them and rendering his device ineffective. But only a handful of countries – American allies – had access to the US Sincgars system whose frequency hopping mode hops one hundred times a second.
This was no ordinary terrorist group. This was a government.
“Sir, I think we’ve got a problem,” he said, crouching within a few inches of the device.
“Yeah, I’m listening, Kevin,” said Professor Horowitz.
“As you can see, I’m inches from the devices. But the jamming is still not working. I repeat: the jamming is still not working.”
A beat. “That is impossible.”
“I think we’ve got to be thinking that this is a military grade frequency hopper, evading our jammer.”
“We should still be able to jam it, shouldn’t we?”
“Ordinarily, yes, sir. But a foreign government who has got our level of technology may have implemented modifications, neutralising our efforts.”
A long sigh. “That’s not possible. Can you get up close and give us a handle of what we’re dealing with?”
O’Hare peered closer to one of the devices. Welded to the side of the aerosol device was what looked like a small metal box. A whitish plastic sheet covered a Fresnel lens. It was a sensor. His blood ran cold. It was a passive infrared sensor triggered by body heat. He knew that inside would be two infrared-sensitive photo diodes or phototransistors. They would be bonded to a piece of metal to ensure that their temperature and sensitivity were about the same.
He knew that passive infrared sensors (PIRs) reacted only to drastic changes in levels of infrared radiation omitted in the surveillance area, usually caused by the movement of a person or person. The PIRs were popular amongst insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan who used them as motion triggers for roadside bombs.
“Sir, we’ve got another problem.” O’Hare relayed the bad news.
“Kevin, get back from there, do you hear me? Do you copy?”
O’Hare’s heart began to hammer. “Sir, please, someone needs to try and disable this. Let me keep on trying.”
“Kevin, get the hell out of there,” Horowitz said. “We need to seal this vent up.”
Suddenly there was a flash of white light and an almighty explosion that deafened O’Hare. He was in a world of silence. Then a white powdery cloud filled his vision.
Meyerstein was watching, transfixed, the real-time feed from Special Agent Kevin O’Hare’s camera. Her team stared in disbelief and shock as events unfolded. Puffs of what looked like fine dust filled the plasma screen.
“Adam, speak to me,” she said. “What are the readings?”
“Hang on a few moments, Martha…the readings from Kevin’s bacterial spore detector are just coming in. Now…Shit, his alarm’s going off! Martha, it’s gone off! One of those devices is spraying out the spores right now.”
Martha and her team could only look on aghast. Then phones began ringing. A sense of foreboding swept the room.
“We will need fifteen minutes to confirm if this is indeed the virus. We have to use sampling and analysis such as colony counting and polymerase chain reaction.”
Meyerstein said, “I think we’ve got to assume the worst. We must prevent widespread contamination, Adam.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as we have something.”
Then the line went dead.
Fifteen minutes later, the phones were still ringing like crazy. Meyerstein had just come off the phone after a terse conversation with the President’s National Security Adviser when Horowitz called to say that the substance had tested positive. There had been a confirmed biological attack on New York City. But it had been contained, the air ducts sealed off, the building evacuated.
As she struggled to come to terms with the enormity of what had happened, a live feed from the FBI HQ came through. The welcome face of Special Agent Stephanie Carlyle, was staring back at her, surrounded by the rest of the team on the fifth floor.
Meyerstein said, “I’m hoping for good news, Stephanie.”
“We have something which appears linked to our investigation,” she said. “We’re putting this into the system as we speak.”
“What have you got, Steph?”
“We’ve been speaking to the wife of a former NSA contractor, Thomas Wesley. This guy gets a knock at the door in the middle of the night. It’s the DCIS and he’s asked to go with them for questioning. But this is where it gets interesting. His wife calls the family lawyer to get Wesley representation. When the lawyer calls DCIS, they didn’t know anything about it. The wife is very concerned, naturally, and contacts the FBI.”
Meyerstein sighed. “Steph, what’s this got to do with our investigation?”
“Wesley used to have the highest clearance, so had access to all categories of information the NSA gathered, until they sacked him after he made a big faux pas, and subsequently lost his security clearance.”
Meyerstein rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Enough of the background. Will you please get to the point?”
“We have two of our guys in Maryland speaking to the wife. Wesley recently met with an old friend of his, Congressman Lance Drake, about a decrypted intercept call that had alarmed him, and no one was taking seriously. His wife said shortly before he was dismissed, he was working on an intercept call, which apparently he had decrypted. He continued working on it in secret at home. But here’s the kicker: he believed he’d decrypted something about some kind of threat against America.”<
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Meyerstein felt a growing sense of excitement. “What kind of threat?”
“We don’t know. But she said it had become an obsession, and he had bombarded Congressman Drake, imploring him to listen.”
“Why don’t we know about this?”
“His wife said he tried to contact the NSA, but no one would listen to him.”
“This is a goddamn huge red flag if ever there was one.” Meyerstein thought back to all the missing pieces of the jigsaw, which could have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
“Wesley’s wife said he broke down one night, said he was scared. He wanted people to listen; he was talking about a terrorist attack, but no one wanted to know. Eventually he decided to speak to the Congressman.”
Meyerstein felt her heart begin to beat faster. “What about Wesley’s computers? Laptops? Cell phones?”
“They were all taken away last night.”
“Goddamn.”
Meyerstein considered her options for a few moments before she spoke. “I want the two best computer specialists we have over to Congressman Drake’s office. And I want two more at his home. Roy will get this legalled. We need to find out if Wesley sent any emails to Drake. And I want everything we can on Thomas Wesley. Get back to me as soon as you possibly can.”
She paced the room and looked out of the window at the skyscrapers on the Upper East Side. The smart apartments, the glass towers, only yards from Central Park and hundreds of miles away from her family in the Washington suburbs. She missed her children. She wondered what they were doing at school at that moment. She closed her eyes. She wanted to hold her children tight to her chest. She wanted to know they were safe. She knew they were, but she just missed that intimacy.
Her mind flashed back to the hospital room in Florida, Jon Reznick’s daughter fighting for her life in a coma. She felt guilty. She couldn’t possibly comprehend what he was going through. She imagined having to face such gut-wrenching agony Reznick was facing, watching helplessly as your child’s life lay in the balance.
She pushed the negative thoughts away and focussed on the investigation.
