by Peter Telep
* * *
Johnny frowned at the kid, who had introduced himself as Aaron. “Son, are you kidding me? These are the only regulators you carry? Really? I’ve spent a lot of time underwater, and I know this stuff is garbage and way overpriced.”
The kid drew back his head because Johnny had just criticized the Atomic Aquatics T3 titanium regulator, one of the best pieces of dive gear money could buy. Johnny knew it. The kid knew it. But Johnny wanted to be that know-it-all jerk customer looking for something for nothing and putting the kid on the defensive.
As Aaron opened his mouth, the door sounded and in walked Willie, chatting on his cell phone. Josh came in behind him, feigning amazement over the rows of colorful tanks, fins, and goggles. Willie hung up and met Aaron’s gaze. “How you doing, Chief? Can we get some help over here?”
* * *
Corey had timed it perfectly. First, he had thrown open the rear door’s deadbolt and turned the switch on the doorknob. The moment Willie had entered through the front door, Corey had opened the back. He knew if he simply opened the rear door without Willie’s help, a beep would alert the kid. Admittedly, there was a slight double-beep but hardly enough to raise suspicion. Next, Corey had slid a piece of cardboard into the gap, covering up the striker plate and holding the door slightly ajar. Now with the door propped open just enough to avoid activating the alarm, he crouched over and returned to the sales floor. He came up behind Johnny, realizing they had to move fast because cold air was seeping through the cracks of that open door, and the kid seemed hypersensitive to the chill.
“She’s calling me again,” Corey said with a groan. “We need to go.” He widened his eyes.
Johnny took the cue. “Hey, sorry about that,” he told Aaron. “We’ll have to catch you tomorrow or something.”
“Yeah, okay,” said the kid. “Don’t rule out those regulators. Go look them up online. You’ll see what I’m talking about.”
“I will. Thanks.”
As they headed for the door, Josh lifted his voice. “Hey, bro, we’re going on our first diving trip to Cozumel, and we need a lot of gear and advice. I hope you work on commission, too, because we’ll be your big sale for the day, trust me.”
Corey led Johnny out of the shop and around the side of the building.
“Did you call those guys?” Johnny asked
“Yeah, we could waste half the night trying to bypass the alarm, or we can get the show on the road.”
“Roger that.”
They reached the rear door, and Corey held up his palm. “There’s a computer, printer, and I found card stock that matches the courier cards. I need time on that computer.”
“Let’s do it.”
Literally holding their breaths, they ghosted across stock room and reached the desks. Corey settled into a chair while Johnny kept watch on the sales floor from behind the cracked door.
The computer was password protected, but Corey knew a simple hack to bypass that. Within thirty seconds, he had access to the desktop. Within a minute he swore under his breath in excitement.
* * *
Johnny had worn the colorful insignia of Master Bullshit Artist for many years, but he wondered now if that honor should go to Josh or Willie. They read the kid’s body language, his tone, his desire to impress them with his broad range of diving experience, and they expertly exploited his ego, turning it against him. While he rattled on about his past adventures and how those trips had taught him so much about diving, Corey typed and occasionally traced an index finger along the computer’s screen. This went on for another five minutes, with Corey using his phone to snap a few photographs of his discoveries.
At one point, Aaron swung toward the counter, and his gaze drifted up to the door. Johnny edged back and signaled to Corey. After playing mannequin for several seconds, he stole another glance and saw how Willie had maneuvered himself between the kid and the counter, firing questions like shotgun shells.
Meanwhile, Corey was out of his chair, digging behind the laser printer, which he had tipped onto its side. Johnny looked his question, and Corey just waved him off and returned to work with a small pocket knife he kept on his keychain. Within another minute, he tugged free a circuit board-looking thing with a ribbon cable hanging from the side. He shook it in his raised fist like a trophy, then set it down and replaced the printer’s panels. Johnny checked the door once more before Corey whispered for them to leave. They slinked to the back of the stock room. Corey called Josh, and they timed another opening and closing of the doors to avoid a second beep.
Once outside, Johnny asked, “What did you get?”
Corey leaned back on the wall, awestruck and fighting for breath. His eyes finally met Johnny’s, and while he opened his mouth, the words seemed beyond him, scattered in the enormity of the moment. The best he could muster was, “Come on.”
* * *
Once they had all rallied back on the car, with young Aaron none the wiser, Johnny nodded at Corey, who had finally collected his thoughts.
“All right, guys, listen up,” Corey said. “I got into that computer and hacked into a private Google account. Someone was updating another person about quote ‘the dive training.’ The dates coincide with the story Pat was telling us. We can assume Shammas was reporting to Nazari from that computer.”
“Good ole Pat came through,” Johnny said. “What else?”
“So I checked the browser’s cache. Someone’s been doing a lot of searches for cargo ships coming into the Port of Houston. They downloaded a list of expected arrivals and saved it as a pdf file right there on the desktop. I snapped a picture of it. Someone highlighted the arrival day and time of a ship called M/V Mawsitsit. I searched the name. She’s a 950-foot-long Panamax Container Ship registered in Panama.”
“What’s Panamax?” asked Willie.
“Panamax means the largest ship capable of transiting the Panama Canal,” Corey explained, reading more data from his phone’s screen. “The American President Line names many of its ships after gems: garnet, jade, and so on. Mawsitsit is a special type of jade—bright green with intense black iron streaks.”
“What do they want with that ship?” Johnny asked.
“Could be smuggling something—or someone—in or out of the country. Either way she’ll reach the port some time tomorrow night.”
“What do you think?” Josh asked Corey.
“I think we should go down there, but that ship’s not the only reason.”
“You got more?” Johnny asked.
“Yeah, I pulled up their inventory system, and there was a lot of back and forth between the dive shop and a place called the Blackberry Island Marina. I even saw a name on one of the invoice’s that looked familiar. Mahmoud Fahmi. He’s the same guy who owns the land down in West Virginia where they built the camp.”
“Imagine that,” said Johnny. “So where’s this marina?”
“It’s in Port O’Connor, Texas, only a hundred miles away from the Port of Houston.”
Johnny grinned. “Easy day.”
“Yeah, and guess what? Port O’Connor is a tourist destination. Lots of sport fishing going on there. Charter boats, the whole nine. It’s a place where guys like Nazari and his jihadi buddies wouldn’t stand out.”
“How you’d get to be so smart?” Willie asked Corey.
“Drinking beer and hanging out with knuckle draggers like you.”
Willie snorted. “Right on.”
“So what did you take out of that printer?” Johnny asked.
“Well I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if we could see every print job? Every courier card? We’d know exactly what he was doing, wouldn’t we.”
“How would we do that?” asked Josh. “I assume our guy went in there, printed his cards, and went home. There’s no record of what he did.”
Corey shook his head, his voice now quavering with excitement. “That’s a business printer. Customer data is valuable. They back it up in the cloud, yeah, but the p
rinter has its own hard drive and keeps a backup of every print job.”
“Yeah, but wouldn’t they erase that data?” asked Josh. “Use some program that does that automatically once a month or something?”
“They might, but you have to go into the software and turn off that function. The default setting was on, so I assume our guy never turned it off.”
“Maybe he didn’t know to turn it off,” Johnny said. “He just borrowed the printer and thought if he didn’t save anything there wouldn’t be any record. Like me, he never thought about the printer having a hard drive.”
“Or at the very least he knew the data was password protected,” Corey said. “We could be wrong, but I think it’s worth a shot. Only problem is, I can’t get into the hard drive. I know a few basic hacks, but I’m not that good. That’s why I pulled it out of the printer.”
“Now we can see what’s on it?” Johnny asked.
“It’s not that easy. The data on this thing is AES encrypted, and without the key, we can’t see shit. We’ll send it over to Jon Mellot at the Athena Group in Gainesville, just like we did when we helped those Brazilians figure out who hacked into their computers, remember? The guys at Athena can scan the chip with the right equipment and retrieve the key.”
“Josh, find us the nearest FedEx office,” Johnny said. “Willie, how’re we doing on gas?”
“Still got half a tank.”
“Hey, I got it already,” said Josh, pointing at the iPad’s screen. “FedEx office in Estherville. They close at 1700. We have time.”
“Good,” Johnny answered.
“Question for you, Corey,” Willie began. “You pulled that hard drive. When will the guys at the shop realize it’s gone?”
“I’m not sure. Probably the next time he goes to print something. He’ll probably get an error message that the hard drive is not found.”
“Hopefully the kid won’t try printing anything, close up shop, and we’ll be good to go until at least tomorrow. After that, who knows?” said Johnny. “Best we could ask for, though. Excellent work, Corey. I’m putting you in for a nickel raise.”
“Thanks, Boss.” As they left the parking lot, Corey added, “So the good news is, we’ll get this hard drive shipped down to Athena.”
“And the bad news?” asked Johnny.
Corey frowned. “We’ll never reach Texas in time.”
“Why not?”
“It’s over a thousand miles away. Sixteen, maybe eighteen hour drive, with stops for gas and bathroom breaks. And that means leaving now with no detours. That also means no mechanical issues with the car.”
“Well, damn, we need to fly,” Johnny concluded.
“How do we fly without tipping off Plesner?” asked Josh.
“What about using cash?” Willie suggested.
“That still won’t work,” Corey said. “The airline reps have orders to hit the panic button when they see that. One way cash tickets are red flags to the Feds.”
“Wait a second, what about old Lance?” Johnny asked them all. “He came to the funeral. I was bullshitting with him. He’s in Kansas City now. When he got out, he got all into flying. He was telling me about this plane he’s got. But damn, I don’t have my contacts list. They were in my phone that we mailed back home.”
“Your contacts are backed up online,” Corey said. “All we need to do is log into your account, and we’ll get you Lance’s number.”
“That’s great. I bet Lance can give us a ride down to Texas.”
“We’ll head there right after the FedEx,” said Willie.
“Hey, Johnny, your phone’s ringing,” Corey said.
Johnny recognized the number and held his breath. “What do you got for me, Mark?”
Gatterton hesitated. “A buddy of mine from Richmond called...”
“Mark, you still there?”
“Yeah, Johnny. Donna Lindhower is dead.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“She was walking back to her car after lunch, and some bastard hit her, dragged her body for a quarter mile.”
“Oh, no...”
“Yeah, hit and run. Then her husband left me a message. She confided in him, said she was digging into some corruption at work. I told him not to say anything, but I don’t know what he’ll do. It’ll probably be on the news. I should’ve never doubted you, Johnny. Plesner had her killed. I just know it.”
“I’m sorry, Mark. I feel like it’s my fault.”
“It’s not. And whatever you’re doing, don’t stop.”
“Hell, no, we won’t. We’re fat kids on cupcakes, right?”
“That’s right—and that’s why I’m going after Plesner.”
“So now it’s my turn to talk you out of it?”
“Good luck with that.”
“All right, Mark, you hit ‘em from that end. But talk to me... what’s Plesner’s deal? He can’t be a jihadi, can he?”
“No, but there’s a reason why he’s covering for them.”
“Yeah, a reason so important that he’s willing to kill anyone in his way.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“There was always a Marine willing to take the shirt off his back for us. That wasn’t a coincidence. We used to joke that we’re the Marine Corps mafia, but it’s more serious than that. Even sacred. And it’s the only reason why I’m still alive and talking to you.”
—Johnny Johansen (FBI interview, 23 December)
By 0900 the next morning, Johnny and the others were crammed aboard a Cessna T210N Turbo Centurion II. They cruised at over 200 mph and at an altitude just shy of 10,000 feet. Although Lance Wertmuller had followed in his father’s footsteps to become a Marine, he had spent most of his teen years wishing he were a pilot. After eight years in the Corps, he earned his undergraduate degree in Aeronautical Science and networked his way up the corporate ladder. Nowadays, the blocky German with the boyish haircut and easygoing demeanor sat in the cockpit of Gulfstream jets, shuttling rich entrepreneurs around the country. He often told the story of the billionaire businessman he had been flying to New York. The man had confronted Lance with a Styrofoam cup filled with urine, explaining that he had peed in the cup because the lavatory was too narrow and he could not get the “proper angle.” Lance had rolled his eyes and explained that yes, the lavatory was narrow, but that the man should have simply sat on the bowl and gone about his business that way. The billionaire had blushed with embarrassment but still foisted the cup on Lance.
When not dealing with the fabulously rich and clueless, Lance took short hops in his own plane, picking up women between airports. “I use my toy to become their toy,” he joked. Even at fifty-two, he waltzed through Neverland like a man half his age and was the envy of POMs (Prisoners of Marriage) everywhere.
The previous evening, Willie had driven them 355 miles from the dive shop to Kansas City, where they had linked up with their friendly neighborhood aviator. Lance had balked about the weather along the route, arguing that it was safer and faster to depart in the morning. He convinced them to remain at his house in Blue Springs, where he treated them like royalty, ordering takeout from the most expensive steakhouse in town. Johnny had pulled him aside and shared an abridged and somewhat vague version of their investigation, emphasizing that they needed to reach Texas as discreetly as possible. Lance agreed to ask no further questions and had refused to accept money for fuel. “It’s on me.”
Given the plane’s range and cruising speed, Lance estimated they would arrive at Tanner’s Airport (located about twenty miles northwest of Port O’Connor) between 1300 and 1400, leaving them ample time to conduct reconnaissance and reach the Port of Houston.
Meanwhile, Josh was coordinating with his colleagues from Warrick Marine, who had a warehouse and testing facility in Corpus Christi, about eighty miles southwest of the Blackberry Marina. His aim was to secure gear, but after talking to them, he hinted at something even more impressive but needed Warrick to confirm. Corey reported that his frie
nds at the Athena Group had received the hard drive. He had stressed the time-sensitive nature of obtaining that key and searching for files matching the courier cards, which he had described to them in detail.
With plans moving forward and Johnny’s impatience mounting, he glanced across the patchworks of farmland below, ranging from the deepest browns to palest ivory. He imagined the old man seated beside him, wearing his black cap and scowling at the small plane when C-130s were his usual ride.
“What am I doing up here?”
“I just wanted you to know I haven’t given up.”
“Well, good for you.”
“Dad, I’ll find out what happened. I swear I will.”
* * *
Charles Plesner climbed into his BMW and pulled out of his driveway, unaware that he was being watched. Mark Gatterton had parked his rented Hyundai across the street and a few doors down behind several other cars in this upper-middle class neighborhood. He waited until Plesner reached the first intersection, then kept loosely on his tail. They left the suburbs, heading west on I-66 for about fifteen minutes, transiting the Roosevelt Bridge and arriving moments later at the storied National Press Club building on 14th Street. Plesner chose the subterranean PMI garage on the north side of G street between 14th and 13th Streets. Gatterton kept more tightly behind, finding a spot just a few cars down; however, Plesner was already heading across the garage. Gatterton double-timed into his path, reaching the elevator doors as they were about to close. Plesner shoved his hand between the doors, allowing Gatterton to enter.
“Timing is everything,” Plesner quipped.
“Yes, it is,” Gatterton muttered, then glanced away.
They had met only once before, several years ago, and Gatterton was betting on the fact that a self-absorbed asshole like Plesner would not remember him, despite Gatterton’s media presence. Unkempt hair and three days’ worth of beard contributed to Gatterton’s anonymity; nevertheless, he avoided direct eye contact.
Now, here they were, alone, Gatterton catching his breath and glancing furtively over toward the slight man peering over the rim of his bifocals. Something he read on his smartphone made him sigh in disgust. He flicked his glance toward Gatterton, frowned, then returned to his phone. Was something there? Familiarity? Recognition?
