Bounty

by Michael Byrnes

  “Nothing yet?” asked his partner, Hector Rivera, seated next to him in the unmarked Chevy sedan.

  “Nada.” He lowered the binoculars.

  Dollar Rent A Car had tracked the transponder on the white Ford Fusion parked outside the motel room door. It was the same car captured on surveillance cameras at a Mail Boxes Etc. store in Puerto Vallarta two days ago, when the fugitive had shown up to see if his prize money had arrived. Detectives had quickly determined that the fake passport used to secure the post office box for “Thomas L. Berry” had also been presented to the car rental agent at Benito Juárez International Airport, and it matched a one-way United Airlines ticket from JFK to Mexico City Wednesday evening.

  “When are they going to get here? What are we supposed to do if he tries to run?”

  “Patience, amigo. Patience. There’s nowhere he can hide anymore.”

  Castillo checked his watch. The police most certainly should have arrived by now, which was a problem, because south of the border, the U.S. marshals weren’t free to roam about like some posse of Lone Rangers. The apprehension of an international fugitive was designed to be a joint effort. There were procedures to follow—treaties and all sorts of shit said so. Problem was that some municipalities cooperated with the U.S. authorities and some didn’t, because politics and bullshit knew no bounds.

  He stared at the motel, weighing the facts. Certainly Alan Bateman couldn’t be planning to drive east or south to Belize or Guatemala, knowing that border agents would immediately nab him. No, Bateman was going to attempt a getaway by sea. That had to be his plan. Why else would he have come to this seaport? At the docks, a few hundred dollars could buy him a stowaway’s seat on a cargo ship or a fishing boat, no questions asked. Providing, of course, that the crewmen didn’t recognize him and decide to cash in on his bounty. Whatever his plan, however, Castillo was determined to ruin it for him. Badly.

  Given the motel’s squalid condition, Castillo was surprised that the front desk manager had neither contacted the authorities nor attempted to kill the fugitive to score the huge bounty being offered by that loco Grim Reaper website. That kind of dinero could change a man’s destiny. Castillo couldn’t help but fantasize about the ways he’d spend it all, starting with a first-class ticket to Las Vegas for some epic debauchery—luxury suite at the MGM, marathon poker matches, bottomless cocktails served by topless waitresses, and a no-holds-barred threesome…He’d have it all.

  “What do you think the police are waiting for?” Rivera said.

  “Who the fuck knows,” he muttered.

  “Don’t you think he might have already slipped out the back and walked down to the docks?” Rivera pointed out the windshield toward the dark expanse of the Gulf of Tehuantepec, downhill maybe a half kilometer to the west. There tankers were tethered to the inner harbor’s piers, bathed in sodium lights. “It’s right there.”

  “No,” Castillo said unconvincingly. “Besides, the police chief said he’d post plainclothes officers down there.”

  “The chief also said he’d have officers here,” Rivera scoffed.

  “Fuck you, Hector. Just fucking relax, will you?”

  “I’m just saying…”

  When another five uneventful minutes went by, Castillo began to question his own logic. It was odd that the police had yet to show. So maybe they were hoping to catch the fugitive themselves without the meddling marshals watching?

  Rivera tried again: “I say screw the police. We should go in there and—”

  The motel room door opened.

  Castillo leaned forward, gripping the steering wheel.

  Out came a man dressed in shorts, a T-shirt, and sandals. Castillo grabbed his binoculars to have a closer look. “Chingada madre.”

  “That’s him, right?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Thomas Berry’s el otro yo was cautious and alert. They watched as he dipped back inside the motel room, then reemerged lugging a big canvas duffel bag, like the one Castillo used to carry baseball gear to his stepson’s games. He pulled the door closed and walked quickly to the Fusion, loaded the bag in its trunk, and got behind the wheel.

  “Fuck.” Castillo pounded the steering wheel with his fist. “We can’t let him go.”

  “We can detain him until the police get here…can’t we?”

  “We’ll sure as fuck find out.” Castillo grabbed his shotgun off the floor. “Let’s go.”

  Rivera beamed a smile and pulled his Glock from the holster strapped below his Kevlar vest.

  # 42.02

  Alan Bateman slipped the key into the Fusion’s ignition and started the engine. Only when he put the car in reverse did he glimpse the two armed men, maybe ten meters out, charging toward him beneath the glow of the streetlights. So he hit the gas. Hard.

  That’s when the detonator clip wedged beneath the right rear tire snapped shut to complete a circuit that sent an electrical charge to the blasting cap plugged into the block of C-4 strapped to a chunky magnet stuck to the gas tank.

  The detonation was deafening.

  The dazzling, all-consuming fireball was so fierce that Houdini himself would not have been able to escape it.

  National Law Journal @TheNLJ • 3h

  When it comes to the legalities of @Bounty4Justice, the jury is still out: free speech, or terrorist threat?

  bit.ly/1Wmt32.ukl

  # 43.01

  @ Brooklyn

  8:45:55 EDT

  Novak had just finished his eggs and bacon and was on his second cup of coffee, reading the opinion columns in The New York Times—two journalists going head-to-head over Bounty4Justice, one positing it as an advocate for the disaffected masses, the other branding it a threat to both civilized society and the rule of law—when Knight called with the news of Alan Bateman’s death by car bomb in Mexico.

  “Jesus. That was fast,” Novak said. “They’re sure it was him?”

  “The marshals had clear visual. There wasn’t much left of him after they put out the fire, but they’ll run the standard DNA tests anyway. They’ve also got dental implants that can confirm his identity. It’s him. But look, I wouldn’t ruin your Sunday morning to reminisce about a chump like Alan Bateman. There’s something else, too. And it’s a doozy.”

  Knight wasn’t easily rattled, so Novak prepared for the worst. “All right. Hit me.”

  “It’s Voronov. He’s dead.”

  Novak felt his heart sink. He set down his coffee mug, suddenly feeling a bit light-headed. Can’t be, he thought.

  “They found him a couple hours ago,” Knight said. “In his car, parked along the river in Moscow. They’re claiming he had a heart attack. Considering the timing, it’s bullshit, if you ask me.”

  Still stunned, Novak went quiet for a long moment.

  “You still there?” Knight’s voice called out through the receiver.

  “Did he kill himself?”

  “No one’s saying. If it wasn’t suicide, you can bet your ass it was a very clean hit ordered by the Kremlin or some billionaire oligarch who lost some money during that Web blackout yesterday. Don’t hold your breath for an autopsy, is all I’m saying. I wanted to talk to you first, because I know how you are. One of the downsides of being a good guy is that you have a conscience, and you take things personally. Last thing I need is my trusty deputy feeling too down about it. It’s a shame what happened and all, but there’s no way we could possibly have foreseen this. And it’s not like he was a Boy Scout, either. Understand?”

  It wasn’t Novak’s first bout with guilt, and it certainly wouldn’t be his last. In his line of work, feeling deeply shitty from time to time was an occupational hazard. “Yeah. It is what it is, I suppose. Not like it can be undone.”

  “Remember, I’m the one who authorized that teleconference with Voronov. And I know damn well that we didn’t overstep our bounds. The way I see it, Voronov considered our proposal and acted on his own volition, even advised us that he’d consult his superiors before taking a
ny decisive action. Can’t see how you or I or the FBI can be faulted for that. Odds are he would have blocked the website with or without us putting in our two cents.”

  Knight’s reasoning made Novak feel a little better. But Voronov had seemed like a decent man, and he certainly wasn’t the first of his kind to die mysteriously in Russia. They played by very different rules over there. In fact, their tactics were not unlike those of Bounty4Justice, if less public.

  “We have a big meeting tomorrow morning, and I need you to stay focused, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Keep your chin up. Watch the game later, have a few beers. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow.”

  Reuters Top News @Reuters • 15h

  U.S. most-wanted fugitive Alan Bateman killed by car bomb in southern Mexico.

  reut.rs/1rS2M3Gz

  # 44.01

  @ Manhattan

  Monday, 10/30/2017

  07:30:00 EDT

  The strategy meeting took place in the stately executive suite on the twenty-third floor, where tall windows provided a fantastic view out over Federal Plaza to the South Street Seaport and the Brooklyn Bridge. Assistant Director in Charge Patricia Hartley occupied the head of the long table, with the rising sun at her back. Seated to her right was the cyber chief, James Cooper. To her left was the counterterrorism chief, Bonnie Karasowski-Fowler. The SACs had just returned from a weekend powwow at headquarters in Washington, and they both looked as if they’d gone through hell and back.

  Seated at the opposite end of the table was Chief Tabatha Cranston from the DOJ’s Southern District of New York, Criminal Division, flanked by two young, dapper deputy attorneys general. Knight, Novak, and Walter—the grunts of Operation CLICKKILL—filled the chairs in the middle of the table to Hartley’s left, and sitting across the table from them were Captain Agner and his boss, Police Commissioner Robert Kemper.

  Hartley thanked everyone for coming and quickly passed the baton to Karasowski-Fowler to begin the briefings.

  “As you might imagine,” the SAC said, “a dead congressman has everyone in Washington downright panicked. Not to mention the body count Bounty4Justice has racked up in only a few days. There’s no terror threat bigger than anarchy. That said, the current thinking is that the criminal investigations—given their unique circumstances and the fact that there’s no reliable way for our profilers to confidently pinpoint potential assassins in advance—are best handled at the regional level. Therefore, the response, sadly, promises to remain largely reactive.”

  Commissioner Kemper frowned. He had a habit of stroking his chin in confrontational situations, and from the looks of it, Novak thought he just might draw blood before they adjourned.

  Kemper said, “Folks, we don’t have the resources to provide any meaningful level of protection for all these new targets. We’re barely keeping our head above water as it is. In less than a week, this damn thing’s turned the city into a free-for-all. Now you’re basically telling us to order more body bags?”

  Hartley threw the SAC a lifeline: “Bob, we share your frustrations, believe me. We’re just as stretched here in this office. If this were strictly a local issue, we could promise more support, but let’s face it: Bounty4Justice has the whole country under siege. We can’t go tripling the ranks overnight. You know that. So let’s just hear what everyone has to say, and then we can try to figure things out.”

  Kemper’s shoulders went slack, and he resumed the chin rubbing.

  Karasowski-Fowler went on to summarize the steps headquarters was taking to coordinate efforts between the Bureau’s fifty-six field offices and state and local police departments, how the reporting structure and processes would work going forward, and how information would be data-pooled so that statisticians could use correlation and regression to extrapolate behavioral trends. She offered her staff to assist the commissioner in holding town hall meetings with the local precincts, which he readily accepted. In closing, she reiterated that the Bureau was sailing in uncharted waters. “The way I see it, we’re at the mercy of the technology,” she concluded. “Until we crack that, we’re just spinning our wheels.”

  On that note, the baton passed to the cyber chief.

  Cooper cleared his throat and his jaw jutted forward, as it invariably did when his mind sought true north. “Simply put, everyone in Washington is finally figuring out what we’ve been trying to tell them all along: this is no ordinary botnet or rogue website, and our current tool kit, frankly, isn’t up to the challenge of infiltrating Bounty4Justice.” He detailed some of the intrusion attacks they’d attempted, to no avail—largely Structured Query Language script injections and other Trojan malware sent to the website’s access points to sniff out vulnerabilities and nip at it around the edges. “The NSA’s top brass were there, as expected, and they maintained that this is not blowback from the Snowden leaks.”

  He talked in detail about the ongoing analysis and tactical response undertaken at Fort Meade. It sure sounded to Novak like the nation’s top cyberspies were feeling emasculated by Bounty4Justice, too. Not good.

  “I caught quite a bit of heat for not moving more aggressively to take the website offline sooner, as you might imagine,” the cyber chief said. “Then this incident in Russia went down on Saturday. Before breakfast, I’m a moron. After breakfast, I’m the genius who avoided a catastrophe here in the States.”

  He was rewarded with some reserved smiles.

  “I want to thank my team for its due diligence and prudence.” Cooper gave a nod to the opposite side of the table. “By now, everyone’s heard that Russia is publicly accusing the U.S. of engaging in an all-out cyberwar. And, of course, there’s the highly suspicious death of the Kremlin’s media czar yesterday. For a long time, Putin’s been accusing the CIA of inventing the Internet as a tool for espionage and disruption. Lord knows these latest developments only help him further his case in Russia. On the news this morning, I saw him spinning stories about how Max Voronov had been manipulated by CIA agents, and how they’d poisoned Max so he wouldn’t talk. Buckle up, because there’ll be plenty more to follow. Just another day in the Motherland.”

  Novak was relieved that Cooper and Hartley were taking the mishaps in Russia in stride. Still, he held himself accountable for his part in stirring up an international incident, and he felt terrible that Voronov had become the fall guy.

  Cooper continued: “Needless to say, Bounty4Justice is now considered a national security threat, both foreign and domestic. That means the CIA will be pumping its informants for leads. It also means that our request for FISA warrants should be fast-tracked for FISC approval.”

  Hearing that the FBI now had its trump card, the trio from the Justice Department were all smiles. Novak could tell that Agner and Kemper seemed pleased, too, and with good reason. The eleven judges of the highly secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court had the authority to grant the FBI no-holds-barred permissions to weed out foreign intelligence agents operating within the United States. FISA had been dancing with the Bill of Rights in the interest of national security since its inception in 1978, and exponentially so in the wake of 9/11. Now it would be in the midst of the fray again.

  “Our hope is that once the NSA can fully exploit its databases and capabilities,” Cooper said, “we’ll start connecting the dots. And in the past few days, we’ve identified plenty of dots.”

  Now the baton passed to the middle of the table, for the battle reports from the trenches.

  “We’ve had a very busy week,” Knight began.

  Novak passed out printouts of his most up-to-date spreadsheet as Knight gave a brief status report on the targets, focusing mainly on the sixteen active targets that resided within the New York office’s jurisdiction. He touched on the hostage rescue team’s Virginia raid that netted Furlong, the patsy marine sniper with the rock-solid alibi, and added that the search was still under way for the real shooter, who’d stolen Furlong’s identity. Then he shifted to a more upbeat t
one as he recapped the interception of the cash shipment in Dallas and the raid on Echelon in Jersey City, which revealed how Bounty4Justice had distributed its novelty pledge pins via the Sorvino crime family.

  “It’s safe to say that we’re hot on the money trail,” Knight concluded.

  Walter started off his brief by providing context for the Russian crisis. He explained that ransomware wasn’t a new concept and described how for years cyberthugs had been spreading malware, such as the infamous CryptoLocker, which locked down hard drives with encryption software and demanded a fee, or ransom, for the decryption key. And techniques like DNS sinkholes and redirects—often employed by the FBI to divert malicious botnets before they reached their intended target servers—were being retooled by cybercriminals to carry out phishing scams that lured unsuspecting victims to look-alike banking and retail websites in order to capture personal data. In that respect, he explained, Bounty4Justice was putting a new spin on time-tested cyberschemes.

  “What we’ve witnessed in Russia, however,” Walter stressed, “is taking these tactics to an entirely new level. Hijacking the network of an entire country and possessing the technology to create the trip wires to set off that kind of response?” He sighed. “This is epic stuff. But we’re making good headway in attacking the website at its periphery. I’m confident we’ll soon be able to work our way to the middle.”

  He reported that the task force had initiated a number of honeypot operations, with NCFTA agents trolling chat rooms, posing as Bounty4Justice sympathizers. “Though we’ve heard nothing meaningful thus far,” he said, “the fact remains that hackers like to brag. And a hacker who takes down Russia will eventually want the glory of a victory lap. We intend to be there when it happens.”