Richard Clarke - Sting of the Drone

“The FBI 302, the report on their interview with the kid they busted in Maine, says the big man behind the attack met him on the street in front of what turns out to be a cyber café. I got the date, went back to their logs for that day, around that time, and found a user who connected to three different anonymizer sites in twenty minutes, obviously a terrorist cloaking his identity,” Dugout said.

“Or someone doing insider trading on Wall Street,” Ray suggested. “Still, how does this help us?”

“Lots of ways. First, I checked on whom he was contacting. Whom. Found out he was hitting Virtual Private Network servers, as yet another way to hide his communication by using encryption and tunneling through the Internet. And I did a trace route on where he connected to using the VPNs. One guy was in Kiev. One some place in Pakistan. And one was in, drumroll, Texas.”

“Wait, I didn’t follow all of that, but if he was using anonymizer Web sites and then VPNs how could you go back and find what he did?’ Ray asked.

“We’ve been worried about those anonymizer sites for a long time, been inside them a long time,” Dugout explained. “The FBI can’t do it because they could never get a search warrant. But I don’t have that problem. Then again I don’t want to use what I found out as evidence in court, because then we would have to reveal how we discovered it and that might not be strictly legal. So, don’t ask, but for lead information, for stopping attacks….”

Ray sat down, looking at the bank of computer screens. “So you have confirmed there is a Ukrainian and a Pakistani terrorist link and maybe they have somebody in Texas.”

“As they say on the late-night television ads, ‘but wait, there’s more,’” Dugout said, hitting a keyboard. “The guy who used the cyber café is this guy, I got his picture enhanced by some nice people at MIT. The cyber café actually is very law-abiding and keeps a few hidden cameras running to stop kiddie pornsters and other pervs. So now we have his picture.”

“Great job. Who is he?” Ray asked.

“Again, I used the Facial Recognition Database and, presto, his picture shows up in the Customs and Border Protection database. It’s a ninety-nine percent probability that it’s the same guy. When he landed at Logan Airport, here we see his CBP-taken photo there, he was using an Indian passport with a U.S. visa granted to him at our consular section at Embassy Delhi. Name on the Indian passport is Birbal Malhotra. I gave it to FBI and CIA.

“The CIA Station in Delhi is already talking to RAW, Indian intel, that’s what they call it, RAW, to see who he really is.

“There is no record of this guy anywhere is the U.S., not with the name on the Indian passport. The FBI thinks he’s using an alias. They also think he may have taken a boat from Portland to Canada. They are checking video, passenger manifests, talking to crew. We should know more soon, but meantime maybe the FBI should release his picture to the media.”

Ray pursed his lips and squinted, a sign Dugout recognized as his boss not liking an idea. “Maybe not yet. We don’t want to cause him to go to ground, or, worse yet, launch some attack now before we can get him. I’ll talk to Burrell and the FBI Director. Let’s give it a day and see what turns up on who and where he is. Can you track down where in Texas the VPN server was and who it was connecting to?”

“Working on it, geez, always more he wants,” Dugout said, turning his back on Ray and hitting another keyboard. “‘With whom it was connecting, by the way.’”

Raymond Bowman got up from his seat. As he was about to open the door to leave, Ray remembered something. “What about that Red Sea attack? Did Colonel Parsons do anything wrong?”

Dugout kept his back to him and kept hitting the keyboard. “There is no indication on any video file anywhere that there were any civilians killed in that attack.”

“And no indication that Erik or anyone altered any database in any way?” Ray asked.

This time Dugout spun around on his chair to look at his boss.

“Please. When I do a file wipe, I never leave a trace.”

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19

CYRIL E. KING AIRPORT

ST. THOMAS, U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

“If you or your company ever needs to fly again, please think of us first,” the copilot said as Bahadur stepped out of the Cessna Citation, onto the short flight of stairs from the cabin and into the bright Caribbean sun. “And have a happy holiday with your family down here.”

The flight from Fort Lauderdale had been short. At no time had he seen a security official. There was no inspection or need to show identification at the Executive Jet terminal when he departed Florida and no need to go through Immigration upon landing in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Ghazi and his Ukrainians had leased the business jet for the flight and arranged for the onward transport. He took the ferry across from Red Hook to Cruz Bay on St. John, the run lasting twenty minutes at most. Then there was a scary taxi ride on too narrow and too twisting roads to near the other end of the island. There, half an hour late, the man with the speedboat arrived at the teetering dock. Half an hour more and he had left the United States and was in Britain, or at least the British Virgin Islands, landing on another ill-kept dock, this one a mile from the Immigration pier on Tortola.

At the back of a bar in Road Town, he met the courier, who gave him the identification documents. He was now neither the Pakistani Ahmed Bahadur, nor the Indian Birbal Malhotra. He was an Australian national who had arrived in Tortola two weeks earlier and was now booked on his return flight to St. Kitts and then on BA to Heathrow. One of Bahadur’s men from Australia, one who looked something like him, had flown in to the Virgin Islands two weeks before. He had done little but sleep, drink, and fish since then. The Ukrainians had made the appropriate adjustments in the databases and the documents. Despite all the improvements in passports and facial recognition, fingerprints and iris scans, in the end, identity was only as good as the software running the databases and most of that was easily accessed and altered.

After the courier had left, Bahadur sat alone in the dark, sipping his rum drink. In a few hours he would be en route to London, where he would be a transit passenger scheduled first to Dubai and then on to Melbourne. He had no intentions of going to Melbourne. From Dubai he would catch a flight to Karachi and then take the long drive up to DG Khan. There he would wait with Rashid Qazzani to see how many of the bombs went off at the same time, how many of the more modern train systems had derailments and crashes from the Ukrainians hacking, and how devastating Ghazi’s attack would be. Then he would collect his reward from Qazzani. For him as a somewhat fallen Muslim, Bahadur thought, it might indeed be a Merry Christmas.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19

NEAR PAIUTE GOLF RESORT

NORTH LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

“Your life can go on for years. It can have meaning, it can be constructive,” she said, still in a haze from the drugs.

“Oh, I am quite sure of that,” Ghazi replied. He was wearing a ski mask and it was making him sweat and scratching at his stubble. “Do not worry, Dr. Parsons. You are not going to be raped. You are not going to be tortured like the prisoners at Abu Ghraib. We are not even going to kill you.”

“Then what, why, who are you?” She struggled to see clearly in the darkened room. She thought she might be in an old mobile home.

“Why? We want you to be our witness. You will deliver our claim of responsibility. You can explain our motivation. You are a shrink. You are good at getting to motivation. You will watch videos of what the drones have done, killing innocent people. Later, after we get our revenge, you will go to news shows and explain what we want, why we did it, and how Americans can make it all stop from happening again. What we want is very easy to remember. Two things. U.S. out of all Muslim countries, beginning with Afghanistan. Your President said they would leave, but some are still there. Second, no more drones flying over our Muslim lands.”