“Perhaps you shall wait for the bridge,” I said. “I plan to be there one terror attack ahead of you.”
I’d had all I could take of the FBI for one day. I didn’t blame Costa. At least, I didn’t believe it was fair to blame Costa. He was a clean-up guy caught in a situation where the mess-avoidance team was required.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said as I returned to the Pilot.
To his credit, Costa remained silent.
CHAPTER 45
Red Wing, Minnesota.
Beth was waiting for me when I dragged my weary backside through our front door and into the foyer.
“Glad you’re home, Babe,” she said from her seat on the red leather sofa. “I was starting to worry.”
“Home is the sailor home from the sea,” I said, “and the hunter home from the hill.”
“You know it’s been a tough day when you lead with A. E. Housman,” she said.
Actually, Housman wrote his “home is the sailor” poem in tribute to Robert Louis Stevenson who’d penned the original. But she was close enough for me. I smiled.
Beth’s eyes turned upward, trying to remember something.
“Clay lies still, but blood's a rover; breath's a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over. There'll be time enough to sleep.” She turned to me. “That’s Housman, too, right?”
“Poetry by a man who’s never journeyed very far, I imagine. Maybe he wrote the Caribou Coffee ad,” I said. “Life is short. Stay awake for it.”
Beth laughed.
“My motto is grab a few winks when you can,” I said. “And I’ve slept in enough shell shattered shacks and mucky mudholes to bear that one out.” I plunked down next to Beth, folding my head onto her shoulder. She responded by reaching up with her near hand and patting my cheek.
“That’s some fine alliteration,” Beth said. “But you’re making me tired.” She stifled a yawn. “Are you ready to turn in? Or do you want to bring me up to speed on the missing ricin?”
It wouldn’t have been fair to keep Beth waiting for an update. I removed my head from her shoulder and turned to face her, one knee resting on a red sofa cushion.
I told her about the unproductive visit to the Cho house, the missing wife, and finally, how Costa and the FBI were beginning to wear on me.
“Now we’ve got to wait for the FBI to tear that house apart looking for ricin before we can take another step forward,” I said. “Pardon my French, but the slow-moving cogs in this law enforcement wheel are starting to piss me off.”
Beth nodded, commiserating.
“Frustrating,” she said. After a moment, she sat forward abruptly. “Maybe there’s something we can do in the meantime after all.”
Part of me wanted to leave whatever it was till morning. But the counter-terrorist operative part prevailed.
“If you have an idea,” I said, “let’s hear it.”
“Do you have an address for Park Heating, or for the Chos’ home?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Both.”
“There are only a few popular ISPs that serve the entire Twin Cities area,” she said. I must have looked as clueless as I felt. “Internet Service Providers,” she said.
“Ah.”
“The ISPs frequently use customer addresses as unique identifiers,” she went on. “I just might be able to hack into their databases and find out what websites the Chos and their employees have been looking at lately.”
I was feeling more awake at the moment. Probably adrenaline.
“So you might be able to identify their terror target based on the web pages they’ve been viewing,” I said. I was actually pleased I had followed Beth’s line of thought through the computer jargon.
“Precisely,” she said. “Now, how about you give me those addresses – and phone numbers if you have them – and I’ll get to work.”
I read the requested info from my cell phone as Beth took notes on her computer.
“Now . . . what can I do to help,” I asked, thinking I already knew the answer.
“Not a thing, Babe,” she said. “So it’s probably a good time to . . .”
“. . . catch a few winks?” I said.
“I think it would be best if you got some rest,” she said. “Best for both of us.”
Her logic was unassailable. I kissed her cheek and climbed the stairs toward bed.
CHAPTER 46
Ames, Iowa.
Kent Evans knew he needed sleep. A break. Some respite from the unending internet searching . . . and failing. But one final decision needed to be made first. The location of his last stand.
He downed the remaining couple ounces of cold sludge that sloshed in the bottom of his coffee mug hoping for a final jolt, then returned his fingers to the keyboard.
The ideal spot to launch an animal epidemic would be . . . . His brain struggled for the answer.
An FMD epidemic had happened before in the United States, he knew. True, it was a long time ago. But how had that virus spread? Maybe he could duplicate what nature had once accomplished on its own.
His fingers flew over the keys, striking too many errant ones to spell out a coherent search. He arrowed back. Deleted. Corrected. His mental fatigue was turning a simple internet search into a challenging labor.
When he finally thought the search words were correct, he reached across the keyboard and pressed Enter. Now he closed his eyes and prayed for the solution to his dilemma.
When he opened them, he’d found his answer. The largest FMD epidemic in U.S. history occurred in 1914 when diseased animals were transported to the stock yards in Chicago.
Stock yards. Of course.
Kent’s veterinary drug business had taken him to many of the area’s stock yards and livestock auction sites. These places were the meeting grounds for livestock from all over the region. But he was known to the operators at the yards in Clinton, Decorah, and Oskaloosa. Hell, they knew him at every stock yard in the state. That was a problem.
Then it hit him. A brilliant idea. What if there was a stock yard in Ottawa County, Minnesota? Wouldn’t that be the ideal location?
A few moments of clumsy keyboarding later, he had his answer. Central Livestock owned a sales barn in Zumbrota, Minnesota, not twenty miles from the farm he’d infected on his first trip. Anyone investigating a second FMD outbreak in Ottawa County would be forced to assume the culprit was a local. Maybe the FBI or CDC would even link the new case with the cover-up at the Holton farm, thinking that containment efforts had failed.
Kent needed to know more about his target before he could plan entry and exit strategies. He reached for the coffee mug and absently tipped it. Nothing but grounds.
Turning back to the web, he searched for details or maps concerning Central Livestock in Zumbrota. What he found was better than either – a nine minute YouTube video tour of the facility, including clear shots of the barns, pens, and auction ring. His luck was turning. His aim was set . . . and Zumbrota was the bullseye.
CHAPTER 47
Suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Sun-Hi Cho’s early morning visit to the clandestine internet email account she shared with the general in Pyongyang had confirmed her suspicions about mission timing. He had directed that the attack should be carried out that very day. Sun-Hi would simply have to make any adjustments to the plan that the time change required.
* * *
It was 10:00 o’clock as Mrs. Cho browsed the shoe racks at the Nordstrom Department Store in Southdale Mall. She needed to kill time before the appointed hour. What could be more anonymous than a woman shopping for shoes at Nordstrom?
As she shopped, her mind wandered.
When Southdale was built, it was the first enclosed shopping mall in the world, she remembered. It had opened in 1956 . . . before she was born, but after the imperialist police action that had divided the Korean Peninsula into North and South. It had, no doubt, been the brutal Minnesota winters that had catalyzed the idea of an
indoor shopping venue. She cursed the parents that had brought her to this wasteland, and loathed the husband – the dead husband – who had forced her to remain.
But the mall designers? Long may they live. Were it not for the Twin Cities’ wide selection of indoor shopping malls, she didn’t think she could have survived this frozen tundra.
All that misery was in the past now, or soon would be. There was no way on earth she would remain in Minnesota after her work here was done – and that time would be later today.
She continued to examine the footwear selection. Most of the fall fashion shoes hadn’t arrived yet from Italy and Portugal. The knockoffs from Tokyo and Beijing would never meet her discerning standards. Still playing the part of the upscale American shopper, clad in tan Manolos and carrying a large Louis Vuitton bag, Sun-Hi Cho moved on to the lingerie department.
CHAPTER 48
Red Wing, Minnesota.
“Babe.”
I thought it was Beth’s voice. Maybe I was dreaming.
“Babe. It’s almost 6:00 o’clock,” the voice said. “I’ve got bacon and eggs on the stove . . . and a pile of work waiting for you on your cell phone.”
I opened my eyes. It was Beth all right, bending by our bedside, her hand on my arm. I tried to sit up but my bones hurt and I lay back.
“Uff,” I said finally. “Did you get the license of the bus that just hit me?”
“Yes, I did,” Beth cooed. “And it’s waiting for you at the kitchen table.” She stood up straight and left the room.
Sometimes, mornings can be cruel.
* * *
The bacon and eggs were great and the coffee even better. I showered, shaved, raked a comb through my salt and pepper shock, donned clean clothing, and slapped on a smidgeon of after shave for good measure.
Now, if I could find where Beth had put my phone, I’d be ready for my day.
“Beth,” I called as I trotted down the steps to the main floor. “You don’t happen to know where my cell phone is, do you?”
“On the dining room table,” she replied from the front porch.
I collected the cell, refilled my mug with java, and joined Beth. The air was cool in the early morning, even in August, and the birds sang brightly.
“‘Tis a fine day to be gone a huntin’,” I said.
“‘Tis,” Beth said, cuddling her coffee mug in both hands as she raised it to her lips. Her voice was weary.
“I couldn’t help but miss your presence in our marital bed last night,” I said. “You were working this whole time?”
“I’ll admit to that,” she said, covering a yawn with her forearm. “Working. But I succeeded in dredging up enough data so I can pass the baton to you at this point . . . at least, I hope so. I sent everything to your email.”
“I’m sure I’ll find something to do with your work product,” I said, holding my phone aloft. “Might you give me a quick summation?”
“Sure, Babe.” Beth crossed her legs on the settee. “Here’s the scoop.
“The Chos’ work and home internet services are both with the same ISP – Centurylink. That made hacking the accounts a little easier. I copied the last two weeks’ worth of web traffic on both IPs to a proxy server and sent you a link. Click on it and you can browse through everything they were looking at on the internet.”
“Awesome,” I said, not at all sure what a proxy server might be.
“I found their cell numbers, too – Mr. and Mrs. Cho, that is. If she has her cell with her, and turned on, you can GPS track it with the Tailgate program on your laptop.”
“I didn’t know I had a Tailgate program on my laptop,” I said.
“You just got it last night.” Beth smiled. “There’s an icon on your desktop.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said.
“If you can’t figure out how to use the program, you’ll have to ask Gunner,” she said with a smile that turned into another yawn.
That was hitting below the belt. Gunner was even worse with computers than I was.
“Or Bull,” she said. “I taught him yesterday.”
I would have asked more about that comment, but it was obvious Beth was worn out. She’d been up all night after all.
“Okay,” I said.
“Finally,” she said, “as of 0400 hours the FBI had found neither the ricin nor Mrs. Cho.”
I was definitely not going to ask how she’d acquired that last tidbit. No good could come from pulling that thread.
“Great,” I said. “Thanks . . . bunches.” I stood, and taking both of her hands in mine, helped her from the settee. “I’ll take it from here, my computer goddess. You get some sleep.”
“I believe I’ll do that,” Beth said, shuffling her way through the front door and into the house. I planned to check on her in a few minutes to make sure she’d arrived safely in bed.
Now alone on the porch, I returned to the wicker chair and opened Beth’s email on my phone. I decided to start with the Chos’ business internet account. Mr. Cho was the prime suspect after all. He was the one caught with his fingers in the ricin jar, so to speak.
I opened the file on the – what did she call it? Proxy server? – and scrolled through the business data, just to get some idea of how much there was and how long it might take to review it all.
Park Heating and Cooling didn’t seem to have used their web connection all that much in the past two weeks. There was a fair amount of email traffic, of course, but I didn’t really expect Cho to speak openly about a ricin plot in his daily correspondence. If I saw emails from a suspicious account . . . well . . . that would be a different story.
I paged through websites featuring HVAC parts, hand tools, office supplies, welding helmets and rods, accounting services, and – Wait, what was this? – Victoria’s Secret? Probably a gift for the little lady. I paged through to the final purchase. Women’s silk pajamas.
Good choice, I thought.
It hadn’t been more than a quarter hour and I had flipped through all the web pages accessed by anyone at Park Heating between the date Rodney’s meteor fell and last night. Nothing here offered any clue about where the attack might be set to occur. I moved on to the web visits from the Chos’ home computers.
My initial run-through showed considerably more web usage on this account . . . probably thousands of pages. I decided to start on the day Rodney’s meteor went missing and work my way forward.
It was clear that these were mostly Mrs. Cho’s web visits. She liked shoes and had made hundreds of visits to online shoe sites. She also enjoyed shopping malls. She’d researched opening and closing times, special events, and sales dates at all the big area malls – Rosedale, Southdale, Ridgedale, Brookdale, HarMar, and of course, the Mall of America.
Shortly after the mall searches, I began to see other mall-related info – maps, drawings, interior schematics, attendance data, heating systems.
I paused.
It was possible that Mrs. Cho was just very thorough in her shopping style, or that her husband’s company was looking for new customers and needed to know how these malls were heated and cooled, but my gut told me I was looking at something else here.
I changed the viewing options to zero in on images only. Now the schematics stood out like snow storms in May – retail spaces, parking configurations, transit maps. And the outline of the structure had become identical in every image. Mrs. Cho was no longer looking at multiple malls. She had narrowed her searches down to one – the Mall of America.
In addition to the maps and diagrams, Mrs. Cho had viewed pictures of features inside the mall – the Ferris wheel in the theme park, the roller coaster, the stacked escalators with four floors of open space surrounding them. This place was a terrorist’s dream – and a counter-terrorist’s nightmare. Targets everywhere, and each one richer than the last.
It was clear to me now . . . Mrs. Cho was our terrorist, not her husband, and her target was MOA.
I had to tell Costa. I punched up his cell.
“You can’t even let me get to the office first, can you?” he answered.
“Hey. It’s not my timetable. I could’ve have used a couple more hours in the sack this morning, too.”
“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. The terrorists dictate the schedule. Have you called me today with questions, or answers?”
“Some of each,” I said. “May I?”
“Hit me,” he said, without much enthusiasm.
“First off,” I said, “have you found Mrs. Cho? Is she in custody?”
“No. We haven’t found her,” Costa said. “But it is only a matter of time. And I am not at all convinced that she has anything to do with this plot anyway. The lab crew spent the rest of the night scouring that house and they didn’t find so much as a speck of ricin.”
“Have your computer geeks looked at her computer yet?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said, a touch of annoyance in his voice. “They grabbed the desktop box from the family room. So far, they’ve found nothing interesting.”
“How about Mrs. Cho’s laptop?” I asked. “Or her web visits?”
“We didn’t find a laptop, Beck,” he said. “Maybe she didn’t own one. Some people don’t, you know. And the web history on the desktop was pretty normal stuff . . . nothing unusual.”
“Well, I have it on good authority that someone at the Cho home was researching MOA pretty intensively over the past week. Diagrams, pics, schematics . . . everything a terrorist might want to know if she was planning an attack there.”
“MOA?” he said. “The mall?”
“Yeah. And can you think of a more high profile terror target in the Twin Cities? There must be close to a hundred thousand people through there every day.”
“How, exactly, do you know what the Chos were researching on their computers?” Costa asked.
“Look, Agent,” I said. “If you want to investigate me tomorrow, be my guest. Today, we’ve got a terror attack to defuse.”
9 More Killer Thrillers Page 93
