Border War

by Lou Dobbs

  He heard a soft knock at the front door, then Kat calling out his name as she stepped into his small living room. Somehow he summoned the energy to stand up and greet her halfway across the room with a hug and kiss. She set her bulky purse on the end table and dug out a folder that contained a bound notebook with the NSA logo across the cover.

  “What’s that?” Eriksen asked, reaching for the notebook.

  Kat playfully kept it away from him. “Remember the thumb drive you gave me? This is the data from it.”

  “There was data on it? I knew it. What was it?”

  Her eyes narrowed and she pushed her hair behind one ear. “You could have gotten me in trouble with this. I had to enlist the help of others. Considering what’s on here, that doesn’t look good.”

  His anxiety rose to see what three men had died over. He reached for the notebook a second time. Kat pulled it back. “Hold on. I’m serious. You need to hear how well this was encrypted.”

  “Why does that matter?”

  She pulled the file close, holding it tight as if it were filled with money. “Whoever made this formatted it with a Mac. They hid the files in blank sectors on the drive, called file slack, then encrypted it with 256-bit encryption. That’s why the PD couldn’t see anything.”

  “What the hell does that mean, Kat? Why should I care about nerd stuff?”

  Her eyes narrowed as she pointed a slender finger at him. “Why should you care? Because we had to use some expensive servers to crack it. That raises eyebrows, you know. To make things worse, whoever made this added a script to e-mail themselves when the encryption was broken. Plus, the data on here? The NSA might not like me doing this for you as a favor. A thumb drive trying to e-mail out of the NSA isn’t good for my career.”

  A wave of interest mixed with shock overwhelmed him. All he could think was, God, I need to get some sleep. He said, “I didn’t think of you getting in trouble, I’m sorry, Kat. Did the e-mail go out?”

  She relaxed visibly. “No. We used servers that weren’t connected to the outside. Standard protocol. Whoever did this is smart, and from what I can see, they’re in over their head.”

  He held out his hand again to take the file. She paused, then gave it over. He said, “Did you have a look at the e-mail?”

  “It’s just an anonymous hushmail address. Hushmail is very private, so I can’t find anything about it. The information is in this file. I had the tech scrub the servers that decrypted the files. I don’t want anyone at the NSA tracking this back to me.”

  “So you won’t get in trouble?”

  She shrugged, and he opened the file.

  A massive spreadsheet. It was probably the one thing in the world that could distract him from Kat at this moment. He wanted to study it thoroughly but just took a quick look to see that the payments were from one source to hundreds of other bank accounts and businesses. He sat down at the table and started to thumb through it.

  Kat said, “You can keep the notebook, but I can’t stay very long. I think there is a matter of payment, which involves giving me your full and undivided attention at least for the next hour.”

  Eriksen had never heard of a better idea.

  * * *

  Lila used the secure phone in the back room of the Border Security Task Force office. It was a common room with five secure telephones that could be encrypted to speak to other secure telephones. The room offered no frills; it had plain tan walls and no furniture other than the table with phones and two chairs. The door shut with a secure seal to ensure all calls were completely private in the soundproof room.

  Each line was paid for and operated by a different agency. No one wanted to take responsibility for maintaining a communications link at great expense and then explain why other agencies used it and didn’t maintain their own. It didn’t look too much different from a normal phone except for a screen showing that the line was encrypted and when it was connected to another encrypted phone.

  In this case, the phone was actually operated by the CIA although the placard in front of it claimed the DEA controlled it. In fact, the DEA never got any of the records from this phone. That way no administrator in Washington, D.C., could ask why a drug agent in El Paso made calls to Tel Aviv, Moscow, or Pyongyang, or Toronto, for that matter. Today, Lila was speaking to an analyst back at Langley. This guy was a database specialist who had contacts with everyone from the FBI to the Department of Motor Vehicles in Idaho.

  He answered in an unofficial tone. “This is Chuck. My phone has a valid encryption. You may now speak.”

  “Chuck, it’s Lila. How’s life back in northern Virginia?”

  “I don’t mind it, but I would think a Virginia Tech grad like you would miss it very much. Especially if I were thinking about it from the barren wasteland of West Texas.”

  “Texas has a certain charm about it, and I don’t care what anyone says, the people are very nice.”

  “The people not elected to office. I’ve been listening to that senator talk nonstop about immigration and terrorism. That woman was not treated kindly by immigrants sometime in her life.”

  Lila let out a short snort of laughter. “I’ve actually met her in the last two weeks. I think you’re confusing a political view with a personality. She’s really very interesting. Considering her background, she’s right, too.”

  “What’s she look like in person?”

  “Every bit as pretty in real life as she is on TV. But more importantly, she’s smart. She’s not just book smart from Princeton, but common sense smart, too. I’m not saying I agree with her, I’m just saying she knows what she wants and she understands the dynamics of getting it.”

  Chuck said, “I bet you didn’t call on the secure phone just to chat with me about a freshman senator from Texas.”

  “As usual, you’re right. I have a couple of single fingerprints. Probably from two different suspects that the local PD can’t find in any database. One print is from a bullet casing, and one is from a thumb drive left at the scene of the shooting.” She gave a slight smile as she heard Chuck laugh on the other end of the line.

  “This is for a local crime?”

  “A series of connected homicides.”

  “I’m sure they just ran the prints through IAFIS at the FBI. That’s leaving out a whole lot of potential matches through job applications and the military.”

  “That’s why I’m calling you. If I were able to get you a copy of these two prints, do you think you’d be able to check every possible database?”

  “Of course I could. The more important question is if I will. Please tell me this has some link to an official investigation not conducted by some backwoods police department.”

  “It is part of something I’m working on officially. The problem is I have not officially documented it, for legitimate reasons. Is that enough for you?”

  “I was just asking.”

  “And for the record, Chuck, no one would call the El Paso Police Department ‘backwoods.’ I’ve been very impressed by how it handled the investigation of the murder of a witness under federal protection and the possible murder of an HSI agent.”

  “It could take a few days, but I’ll pull out all the stops.”

  “Thanks, Chuck, you rock.”

  * * *

  Tom Eriksen sat alone in the Border Security Task Force office while Lila was back in the secure telephone room. He had barely slept. Kat Gleason had made him promise that he wouldn’t stay up and read the report from the thumb drive. She said he needed his rest and she wanted him to worry about it tomorrow. She emphasized the point by distracting him for more than an hour. Then, just before she left, she looked at him with those big blue eyes and extracted his solemn word that he would not touch the report until morning.

  He would never break a promise, but it still hadn’t kept him from tossing and turning all night.

  Now he had the report on the information from the thumb drive in the neat NSA notebook opened on his desk. He had been pori
ng over it for more than an hour. It was really nothing more than a giant spreadsheet but appeared to be the records of one entity—whether it was a person or business he couldn’t be certain—and the money being spent was enormous. These were all expenditures, with no revenue coming in. At least none that was shown here. The key was trying to find out who controlled this main account.

  There were hundreds of deposits into dozens of separate bank accounts, almost always in amounts less than $9,999. This was a figure that was often noted by Customs and narcotics agents because if a transaction under $10,000 didn’t require the federal form known as a currency transaction report, or CTR. There might have been some reason to transferring the money electronically in this amount as well. Some of the accounts had as many as fifty separate deposits over the past year.

  The second feature of the spreadsheet was that payments of all types, including ones as large as $65,000, were being made to businesses across the country, but especially in Southwest Texas.

  It all came back to trying to determine the identity of the company paying out this money. Big money.

  The individual accounts could be identified, but trying to find who sent the money would be tough. It could be filtered through a number of accounts.

  The businesses were another story. Most of them looked legitimate and would have records. His concern was that if he went to one of the companies and started asking questions, he had no way to keep them from warning whoever paid them in the first place.

  Then he saw a single payment of $13,350. There was nothing unusual about the entry in the spreadsheet except for the company that received the money. Lopez Building Supply. The last time Eriksen had dealt with Curtis Lopez, he was trying to save his landlord’s son from a beating in front of the house. This was the opening he needed to unravel the mystery of the thumb drive.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Kat Gleason briefed her boss on the different intercepts she was working on. She had had to wait until Lila Tellis was finished in the secure telephone room. The NSA phone had an outstanding video feed, unlike the other secure phones. On the screen was her handsome supervisor, who had shown great confidence in her ability and let her work on a variety of things. He was in almost every respect the opposite of Tom Eriksen’s supervisor at the FBI.

  The tall former marine said, “Is the task force providing any good intel?”

  “Not that much yet. But I’ve made some good inroads talking with the FBI and DEA representatives.”

  “Don’t get too close to any of them. We operate on a different level. Plus if they knew the full extent of our communications abilities, they’d be hitting us up to tap every two-bit drug dealer in West Texas.”

  Kat kept a straight face, making a mental note to keep things cool with Tom around the office. She didn’t want word getting back to headquarters.

  On the video screen her supervisor said, “What’s the status on your intercepts that show ongoing activity?”

  “A fixed landline in Peru associated with the Shining Path has been talking to a cell phone in Colombia. We’ve got people working on the subscriber information. It looks like they may be trying to revitalize the cause and launch a new offensive. They’ve received new funding from narcotics profits and have noticed the cutback in U.S. commitment to narcotics interdiction aimed at the poppy fields in Colombia. For a while the DEA hit the Colombians so hard it caused Afghanistan to be the key producer of opium without competition.”

  “It just goes to show you that the U.S. can’t let up in any area without consequences. No one has given the DEA much thought since 9/11, but if they don’t start hitting those poppy fields again, assholes like the Shining Path will use the profits to stir up all kinds of shit. Too bad the Colombian military didn’t completely kick the shit out of them when they had the chance.”

  Kat said, “Should I put that in my report?” She was relieved to catch a hint of a smile from her supervisor. She went on to say, “I’m still monitoring the calls into Texas talking about killing a ‘big mouth.’”

  “Any ideas who they’re talking about?”

  “I haven’t discussed it with anyone, but my guess is it would be an informer for law enforcement. The drug cartels have shown less reluctance to cross the border to deal with problems.”

  “Any corroboration?”

  “None.”

  “Keep listening, and try to figure it out before we spread it around. Especially if any of the calls come into the U.S. We’ve gotta protect our turf.”

  Kat wasn’t sure she agreed with the protecting-turf option most federal agencies exercised. But she respected her boss and knew that he’d been around a long time. She signed off the call and went back to her regular duties.

  * * *

  Tom Eriksen parked in the rear of Lopez Building Supply. There was a small walk-in office in the front of the sprawling complex with a warehouse and a huge loading-dock facility in the rear. He now understood how the three Lopez brothers had hidden the cost of the materials they had loaned to Marty. Eriksen had no idea the family-run operation was this large.

  He sat in his car for a few minutes, watching the activity on the loading dock and hoping to notice one of the three brothers he’d talked to in front of his landlord’s house. Finally he saw the stout Curtis yelling at someone on the loading dock.

  Eriksen calmly slipped out of the Taurus, crossed the parking lot, and climbed the short flight of stairs onto the dock. He could tell by the way Curtis’s eyes cut from the small Hispanic man he was yelling at in Spanish to Eriksen that the surly warehouse supervisor didn’t recognize him immediately. Finally it sank in and Curtis said, “You come by here to pay up for your boy Marty?”

  Eriksen shook his head and said, “Not today, but I promise it’s coming. Even if I have to go to Marty’s dad, you’ll get the money.”

  Curtis had eased closer to him during their short exchange. Now he said, “Then I guess we’ve got nothing else to talk about today.”

  Eriksen didn’t move. He had dressed casually in Dockers and a loose button-down shirt that covered his display badge and the gun on his right hip.

  Curtis said, “Are you hard of hearing or just stupid? Because if you didn’t come by to pay up the debt we should’ve collected a few weeks ago, then you need to understand you’re about to get your ass thrown out of here. I’m better prepared this time, and I got enough boys on the dock to handle you.”

  Eriksen calmly scanned the dock and counted four men besides Curtis. It was probably enough, but he figured he could give them a pretty good run for their money. He slowly reached in his rear pocket, pulled out his ID, and let Curtis see the FBI logo.

  “You’re a cop?”

  “Actually I’m with the FBI.”

  That changed Curtis’s attitude. He looked around the dock and then focused back on Eriksen. “What are you doing here?”

  “I need to have a look at your books again.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s part of an investigation. You guys aren’t in any trouble, but I think you might be able to identify someone who bought some supplies.”

  “Why should I let you just walk in here and look at our books?”

  “I’ll give you a choice of reasons. The easy way is I could just kick you and your brothers’ asses again. Or I could talk to your dad about the supplies you fronted Marty without telling anyone here. Either way it’s gonna ruin your day.”

  Curtis put on his best fake smile and said, “Right this way.”

  * * *

  Hector showed his normal caution when he stepped into Pablo Piña’s study. He’d avoided the most powerful man in the region for several days because he liked to focus on one issue at a time. His current employer would not appreciate the contact with the Dark Lord of the Desert, even though Hector realized Piña and Don Herrera had to be associates.

  Hector didn’t want to wait on his job from Herrera. He wouldn’t have another window of opportunity to kill his target in the U.S. for a few mo
re days, and he thought it was best to confront Piña about whatever the man wanted to talk about.

  Hector appreciated Piña’s security. He had the latest in scanners and technology to ensure no one could smuggle a weapon or listening device into the house. Hector had no doubt that he was on some sort of closed-circuit TV at that very moment. He still wasn’t worried. If Piña had wanted him dead for some reason, he would’ve sent a dozen of his punks.

  Piña followed the rules of etiquette scrupulously, offering Hector all sorts of refreshments, but the big man merely wanted to get down to business. Piña took the hint and said, “Without Manny, operations are suffering. I have no one with enough experience and intelligence to run things the way Manny did. I was hoping you might be interested in the job.”

  This truly was a surprise to Hector. He’d worked for different drug cartels over the years but had gravitated toward the enforcement side of the business after he found the management of people to be tedious. Too often they wanted to tell him personal problems and give him excuses that he cared nothing for. At least when he was offered money to kill someone, he either worked alone or with a few assistants. Just the thought of why he had switched to this profession made him miss his cousin. He had been crazy and unpredictable, but Hector could trust him. That was rare in this life.

  Piña gave him time to think but finally grew impatient, saying, “You are respected and honorable. Those are two of the traits I look for above all else.”

  Hector listened to some more of the drivel that came out of Piña’s mouth, then finally said, “I have a question.”

  Piña stepped out from behind his desk and gave him a big smile. “Of course, anything you want to ask.”

  “Why did you send Manny to kill Martinez in the U.S.?”

  Piña went through the full explanation of how the doctor had allowed his son to die of a drug overdose. “Manny didn’t necessarily agree with me, but he always carried out my orders.”