The Last Line

by Anthony Shaffer

  Carballo didn’t think about it, didn’t let himself think about it. There was a job to be done. He and Herrera continued to walk down either side of the aisle, tossing grenade after grenade into each shop front as they passed it. Each of them had started with twelve grenades in his bag. Carballo was down to his last three when he saw a mall security cop ahead, running toward him.

  Mall cops weren’t armed, but they could still be trouble. Without slowing his walk, Carballo reached into his bag, extracted a Mini-Uzi, released the charging handle, and sent a burst of 9 mm rounds slamming into and through the security guard. The Mini-Uzi, a smaller version of its more famous big brother, was less than fifteen inches long with its folding stock removed and weighed less than eight pounds with a full magazine. With a cyclic rate of fire of better than fifteen rounds per second, it sounded like a miniature buzz saw. The security guard flopped backward, arms pinwheeling, and came to rest sprawled across an ornamental tree planter. Carballo turned and loosed the rest of his magazine randomly into a crowd of shrieking people, dropped the empty magazine, and snicked home a new one.

  Three more shops, three more grenades. He dropped the now empty canvas bag and strode toward the front entrance. He hoped Mannie was behind him, but he didn’t stop to look. Mannie was a big boy and could take care of himself.

  As he emerged onto the sidewalk once more, he nearly collided with a a traffic cop in shorts, helmet, and a windbreaker riding a bike. That one wasn’t armed either, but Carballo cut him down with a burst from the Mini-Uzi, slamming bike and rider sideways into a brick wall. Other people on the sidewalk shrieked and scattered. Carballo snapped off the rest of his magazine in a quick succession of bursts until the weapon was empty.

  More gunfire sounded from inside the mall. It sounded like Mannie was having fun. Kicking up his heels, just like he’d said.

  Fuck him.

  He reached the idling automobile and yanked open the passenger-side front door. “Vámanos,” he said, sliding in.

  “What about Mannie?”

  Carballo looked at his watch. Nine minutes had passed. “Un tecado gilún,” he said. “Leave him!”

  As more explosions sounded from the mall, blasting out the glass doors at the entrance, the getaway car sped off down the street.

  In the distance, sirens wailed.

  Chapter Four

  CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

  LANGLEY, VIRGINIA

  1318 HOURS, EDT

  15 APRIL

  “I’ve never heard of this,” Larson said. “Damn it, why weren’t we informed?”

  The five men had gone down to one of the OHB’s employee cafeterias for lunch. As they ate, they continued to discuss the technological twist Teller and Procario had been describing to them.

  “Hey, new stuff is coming out all the time,” Teller told him. “This thing is still in beta, but it would be easy enough to get you guys a copy, let you try it out.”

  “So it’s like a virus—” Chavez began.

  “A very, very smart virus,” Teller said.

  “—and it just leaps from phone to phone?”

  “Right,” Procario said. “It’s called peer-to-peer transmission.”

  “And it creates a map of phone use,” Chavez said. “That’s … amazing.”

  “Hey, welcome to the twenty-first century,” Teller told him. “All the thrills of sci-fi, and outmoded Dark Ages concepts like privacy magically become a thing of the past.”

  The system they’d been describing had recently come from a high-technology think tank in Washington, one of dozens of corporate entities in the town feeding information, analyses, tools, and, occasionally, informed guesswork to the policy makers. Teller knew that something similar had already been field tested by the NSA, but the deep-black National Security Agency didn’t like to share with anyone.

  The software was called Cellmap.

  “So how do we deploy it?” Chavez wanted to know.

  “We find a cell phone that’s part of the net we want to map,” Teller told him. “It would have phone numbers of other contacts. It uses those to locate other phones on the network.”

  “Kind of like a computer virus making copies of your e-mail list,” Wentworth suggested.

  “Pretty much. Even if the user didn’t save contact phone numbers, the phone would still have a list of all the numbers it’s called in its memory. Cellmap nestles down in the phone’s memory, gets the list of numbers, and starts sending copies of itself phone to phone. Doesn’t need cell towers. Doesn’t even need the phone to be switched on. It jumps from phone to phone to phone all by itself—and periodically it uploads to a satellite, which zaps it back to you.”

  “Pretty soon,” Procario told them, “you build up a map of phone connections. Even if the opposition is doing onetime use with call cards, it keeps track of the phone. If they throw the phone away and get a new one, the system is redundant enough to fill in the gap as soon as the new phone comes online.”

  “Right.” Teller nodded. “And the best part? Every cell phone on the network has the potential to become a bug.”

  “The phone doesn’t need to be on?”

  “Nope. The phone has a microphone, and the virus operates on very low levels of power. You activate a target’s phone from here, and it starts transmitting conversations from the guy’s pocket.”

  “I’d heard the NSA could listen in through telephones,” Wentworth said, thoughtful. “Pick up on key words and relay conversations automatically, even when the phone is off.”

  Teller nodded. “They’ve been doing that for a while, though there are legal issues to using it inside the United States, of course. Cellmap, though, is a lot more flexible, and it puts active bugs in the pockets of everyone in the target network. Doesn’t take long, either. A few seconds, even allowing for satellite transmission time.”

  “Incredible.”

  “So we need to get someone down to Mexico,” Chavez said, “have them find a phone and plant the virus.”

  “Why can’t we plant the virus from here?” Wentworth wanted to know. “We could give El Chapo a call and infect his phone from here.”

  “Uh-uh,” Teller said, shaking his head. “Doesn’t work that way. You have to use a special install program to shoehorn the virus into the phone’s memory, and we can’t do that long distance. Yet.”

  Chavez looked at Wentworth. “Sounds like a good way to learn if Los Zetas are working with Sinaloa,” he said.

  “I was thinking that,” Wentworth replied. He looked at Teller. “How would you two like to take a little all-expense paid trip south of the border?”

  Teller’s eyebrows arched up his forehead. “Us? Why?”

  “Because sending someone who understands the tech is better than trying to teach someone down there from up here. And because, like we said, we don’t happen to have any assets in Mexico right now. And you have a reputation for … unconventional thinking.”

  Procario chuckled. “It’ll take you off the McDee’s radar for a while, Chris.”

  “There is that.” He looked at Wentworth. “What would our org chart look like?”

  “You’ll work for Dave here,” he said, nodding at Larson. “You’ll be with WINPAC, under the Directorate of Intelligence. Or…” He hesitated. “What do you think, Dave. Maybe S&T instead?”

  S&T was the Directorate of Science and Technology, which included the Agency’s research and development branch.

  “No,” Larson said firmly, shaking his head. “Absolutely not. That would put them under Colbert, and he would want to be in on the new toy. All the way in, and he wouldn’t want to deploy until we owned it. We need boots on the ground down there now. Anyway, I’d rather keep them in my stable.”

  “Fair enough.” Chavez grinned at Teller. “So, you cowboys up for this?”

  Teller grinned. “Does this mean you’re recruiting us?”

  A shrug. “Only if you want me to.”

  “I’ll let you know after MacDonald’s IG wi
tch hunt is over.”

  “Jesus,” Wentworth said. “You have an inspector general on your ass?”

  Teller grinned. “It’s an ‘administrative investigation,’ not the Pentagon Papers. No big deal. Okay, we’ll run your little errand for you. What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Nada, amigos,” Chavez said. “Absolutamente nada.”

  “What’s our legend?” Procario asked.

  “We’ll fix you up as a couple of norteamericano journalists,” Chavez said.

  “Huh.” Teller wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. “Haven’t the cartels been offing journalists lately?”

  “Only Mexican journalists,” Wentworth said.

  “At least so far,” Procario said with a dark chuckle.

  “And since you two are clean skins,” Chavez continued, “you should escape their radar.”

  “Clean skins” meant that Teller and Procario were unknown to anyone in Mexico, including even Agency personnel at the American Embassy. They would have to assume that the cartels had their own spies there, seeking to spot fresh CIA officers arriving to take over from the ones blown by Richard Nicholas.

  “You know,” Wentworth said, “there really ought to be a way to infect a target’s cell phone remotely.”

  “You’re thinking about Nicholas?” Chavez asked.

  “Yeah. We have his number—”

  “Can’t do it,” Teller said.

  “Hey, even if we could, he probably ditched his phone right off,” Procario pointed out. “He knows if you get him on the line, you could pinpoint his position by GPS.”

  “We’ll get him from the other direction,” Teller said, “when we tag his new buddies and they tag him.”

  “Speaking of phones,” Wentworth said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. There was a new text message, and he took a moment to read the screen. “That was Andy. We need to get to a TV,” he said, pocketing the phone again.

  “We can use my office,” Chavez said. “It’s right down the passage outside.”

  “What’s up?” Procario wanted to know.

  “Not sure. He just texted me about a terrorist attack in L.A. He says it’s all over CNN.”

  Minutes later, they stood in Chavez’s office, staring at a television monitor. Black smoke billowed from the front of a large, modern-looking shopping mall. Fire and police vehicles crowded the street outside, roller bars flashing. “… about fifteen minutes ago,” a woman’s voice was saying. “As yet there is no indication of who is behind the attack, though authorities here say that it might be al Qaeda.”

  A red marquee banner was running across the bottom, declaring TERROR ATTACK IN SANTA MONICA.

  “Not al Qaeda,” Larson said. “Not since we capped OBL.”

  The reporter was still talking. “… and eyewitnesses claim that at least three men began throwing hand grenades or explosives into shops inside the mall, then proceeded to fire indiscriminately into crowds of shoppers with machine guns…”

  “Doesn’t sound like AQ,” Procario said. “They would’ve used a truck bomb to try to bring down the whole building.”

  “They’re still lying low, anyway,” Teller said. “They don’t know what intel our SEALs pulled out of the Abbottabad compound. The sons of bitches have been running scared ever since.”

  “So who did it?” Wentworth asked.

  “Maybe Hezbollah?” Chavez suggested.

  “I don’t think so,” Teller said, shaking his head. “Their number-one target is Israel, and they don’t want to get the U.S. too mad at them. They don’t stand to gain anything by shooting up American shopping malls.”

  “A lot of us think it’s AQ trying to smuggle those nukes into Belize,” Larson said. “We can’t count them out after bin Laden’s death, not by a long shot. They hate us, we know they’ve been trying to get their hands on tactical nukes for years, and now they just might have done it.” He jerked a thumb at the television screen. “This could just be the beginning, the opening move in an escalating campaign. Start with Hollywood shopping malls, and end with a nuke in the D.C. Mall.”

  “Aw, hell, and maybe it was a disgruntled employee,” Procario said. “Wait until we hear something other than hot air from CNN.”

  “No waiting,” Larson said. “I want you two on a plane tonight, if we can swing it. Better still … Ed? How about if you go with them?”

  Chavez reached for his phone. “I’m on it.”

  “We don’t need an army,” Teller said. “We want to stay inconspicuous.”

  “Three men is not an army,” Wentworth said. “I’ll feel better about you going if you have some decent backup.”

  “We’ll need something to go on,” Procario told Wentworth. “A target. Someone who’s likely to have a phone connection with at least one of the cartels.”

  “We have a contact with CISEN,” Wentworth said. “We’ll have him meet you, fill you in on local color.”

  CISEN was the Centro de Investigación y Seguridad Nacional, an intelligence agency under the secretary of the interior but reporting directly to the Mexican president.

  “Whoa there,” Procario said. “What if this CISEN guy is owned by the wrong people?”

  Despite attempts at reform, the Mexican government was riddled by corruption. In a country where a police officer made a few dollars a week and the drug lords could offer bribes of millions, no one could be trusted.

  “Miguel de la Cruz,” Wentworth said, “is as solid a man as you’ll find. You can trust him with your lives.”

  “Funny you should put it that way,” Procario said, “because that’s exactly what we’re going to be doing.”

  “We could split the team,” Teller said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I get off the plane by myself and meet this de la Cruz guy. Frank and Ed deplane later and shadow us. If de la Cruz pulls a fast one, they’re both there to ride to the rescue. They can also sweep us for tails.”

  “That sounds reasonable,” Wentworth said. “Besides, Ed knows de la Cruz. It’ll make contacting him easier.”

  “You’ll all have to go in wired,” Larson said.

  “Just so we can stay in touch with each other,” Teller said. “I don’t want the opposition picking up anything unusual about us.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Okay,” Teller said, nodding. “This is starting to sound like a plan.”

  “And while we’re at it,” Larson told Wentworth, “it wouldn’t hurt to have them check out Belize City as long as they’re down there.”

  “You want us to check out the Zapoteca?” Teller asked.

  “It would help,” Wentworth said. “We have a brand-new lily pad in Ladyville. That’s less than ten miles from Belize City. But we’ll need someone to go in and confirm the target, eyes on, before we sent in a strike team.”

  “Lily pad”—also known as a cooperative security location, or CSL—was the military’s slang term for a local facility used by the United States for training in counterterrorism and drug interdiction. Generally, there were no U.S. personnel permanently stationed at these bases, but equipment and supplies could be prepositioned there, and there was a large runway available so that troops could be flown in on short notice. As such, it differed from a forward operating site, or FOS, a base that usually had a small permanent force of troops or contract employees stationed there.

  “I trust you understand,” Procario said, “that the more objectives you pile onto the mission, the more likely it is that all of them will fail.”

  “Hey, it’s not like you’re being asked to take down El Chapo Guzmán, okay?” Larson said. “You go down there and interact with cartel personnel, do what you have to do to spread your virus. If you happen to be in Belize when you do that, you can swing by and eyeball the docks, see if the Zapoteca is in port. Listen, this is crucial. If someone is bringing stolen suitcase nukes into Belize, we need to bring them down, and we need to bring them down hard. Understand me?”

/>   “Of course,” Teller said. He looked at Procario and shrugged. “Not a problem.”

  “Not a problem,” Procario added, “unless the bad guys have security beefed up in Belize because they don’t want outsiders snooping around their nukes. Did you think of that?”

  “I’m sure,” Larson said with an unpleasant half-smile, “that the DIA can find a way to cope.”

  “Okay,” Chavez said, closing his phone. “We’ve got three seats on a 747 out of Dulles, eighteen thirty tonight. Nonstop all the way to Benito Juárez.”

  “Good,” Larson said. “I like going by way of Juárez. We don’t want to tip off the black hats in Belize that we’re interested in the area. These guys can get a private flight from Mexico City to Ladyville, go in quiet without showing our hand.”

  “You boys up to date on your shots?” Wentworth asked.

  “I’m not sure—” Teller began.

  Wentworth waved his hand. “Not important. We can bring your shot records online and give you what you need down in the dispensary. And we’ll have your passports and other papers ready for you in a couple of hours.”

  Teller looked at Procario. “Cheer up, Frank. It’s a holiday in the land of sun and fun!”

  “Maybe,” Procario said. He was staring at the news broadcast as talking heads in the newsroom speculated on who might have launched the terror strike against Los Angeles. “But whether it’s Hezbollah, al Qaeda, or plain old home-grown narcoterrorists, we’re going to need some heavy backup on this one.”

  “Like what?” Larson wanted to know.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Teller said. “How about some U.S. Navy SEALs?”

  “We’ll see what we can arrange.”

  “You’d better. I don’t want to get shipped home like Henrico Ferrari. I get claustrophobic in small spaces like cardboard boxes. And my feet smell.”

  CAFETERIA

  ECCLES FEDERAL RESERVE BOARD BUILDING