Brad Thor - Takedown

Lawlor had no choice but to go along for the ride. His only hope was that if any leads were to come of this that they came soon-real soon.

Before showing Lawlor and Caldwell into the small third-floor conference room chosen for the interrogation, Director Maxwell led them into another room across the hall. “Like a caged tiger,” he remarked as he pointed to a bank of monitors that showed a very agitated Mark Schreiber pacing back and forth. “After Stanton, he had the greatest access to the operation. It wasn’t difficult to put two and two together. The failed polygraph sealed it.”

Once he felt the men had seen enough, the lieutenant general said, “Go and work your magic.”

For some reason, Maxwell just rubbed Lawlor the wrong way. He wanted to tell him what he could do with his “magic,” but instead kept his opinions to himself and followed Caldwell out the door and across the hall.

When they walked in, Schreiber stopped pacing. He looked the two strangers over as he tried to figure out who they were. Caldwell wasted no time in enlightening him.

“My name is Agent Stan Caldwell,” he said as he held his credentials straight out from his shoulder in perfect form-a bit of Bureau conditioning he’d never really been able to shake. “I am the deputy director of the FBI. And this gentleman,” he continued as Lawlor did a casual flip-open, flip-closed of his badge and ID, “is Agent Gary Lawlor from the Department of Homeland Security. We’re going to ask you a few questions. Are you okay with that?”

Schreiber nodded his head.

“Good,” replied Caldwell as he and Lawlor sat down across the table from him. “Why don’t you take a seat?”

The young man did as he was told while Caldwell flipped open the file folder Maxwell’s assistant had given him and pretended to read through it. He’d already memorized the salient details as they made their way from the director’s office. “I see you’ve been with the NSA for five years.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Schreiber.

“Do you like your job?”

“It has good days and bad.”

“How would you characterize today?” asked Caldwell, not bothering to look up from the file. Lawlor, though, had his eyes locked on the suspect.

“Today would definitely be a bad day,” the young man answered.

At that, Caldwell looked up from the file and responded, “I’d be inclined to agree with you. Do you have any idea why we’re here?”

Schreiber hesitated a moment and then stated, “I would imagine it has something to do with the impromptu polygraph I was given earlier.”

“And you’d be correct. Listen, Mark, you can save us all a lot of time here. Just tell us why you did it.”

“I did it because Stanton wouldn’t listen.”

“Listen to what?” asked Caldwell.

“To me.”

With all the computer geeks employed by the NSA, the deputy director of the FBI wasn’t surprised that this case was quickly boiling down to attention. While most of these people could be brilliant at manipulating data or analyzing intel, many of them lacked the rudimentary social skills necessary to properly function in the real world. They’d rather hack sites, write code, or play video games in their off time than go out in the world and interact with other human beings. They served a vital role for the nation, especially with how rapidly technology was changing, but then something like this happened.

It had long been Caldwell ’s belief that a lot of these people were ticking time bombs. It was only a matter of when, not if, they would explode, and then the results were anybody’s guess. Based on Stan’s experience, it happened in one of two ways. Either the violence would manifest itself in a physical form such as a workplace shooting, or it would be more intellectual. The classic I’ll show them how much smarter I am betrayal was exactly what they were witnessing right now. Caldwell was sure of it. It was one of the worst ways an employee who handled sensitive information could lash out, and it could prove just as deadly as if Schreiber had managed to smuggle in an automatic weapon and a backpack full of pipe bombs to take out as many of his superiors and coworkers as possible before turning the gun on himself.

“So you decided to make Joseph Stanton listen to you. Is that it?” asked Caldwell.

“In a way.”

“I don’t blame you. In fact, why stop with Stanton? Why not make all of the NSA listen to you?”

Schreiber looked confused. “Is that what this is all about?”

“What do you think? Did you actually believe the rest of the agency wouldn’t find out what you’ve done?”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal and definitely not something that should involve the FBI and DHS.”

Caldwell placed his arms on the table, leaned forward, and said, “I’ve got news for you. Treason is a very big deal.”

“Treason?” replied Schreiber. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about leaking the location of four top secret NSA facilities in New York City to enemies of the United States.”

“I never leaked anything!”

“Mark, you failed not one but two polygraphs. And you’ve already admitted that what you did was because Stanton wouldn’t listen to you. So let’s not play any more games. Too many people have died because of this. If you agree to fully cooperate, I’m prepared to offer you a deal.”

Schreiber’s chin was pulled back almost to his chest and his eyes were wide. He looked like a frightened horse whose reins were jerked hard. “People have died? You mean people at the New York facilities?”

“Yes, Mark. And depending on the depth of your involvement, that means you are also an accessory to the murders of multiple federal employees. I know for a fact that the government will seek the death penalty.”

Schreiber was panicked and beginning to sweat now. “The only thing I’m guilty of,” he pleaded, “is violating a few server security protocols, not treason, and definitely not murder.”

“I’m not a computer person,” replied Caldwell, “but if what you’re telling me is that you knowingly violated security protocols and that those violations led to the exposure of four classified locations, then you are in very big trouble.”

“But I didn’t expose those sites!” Schreiber insisted. “All I exposed were their servers, and even then, it was only for a couple of minutes. Someone would have had to have been waiting right there to have been able to gain anything by it. They would have had to know that I was going to do it, but I didn’t tell anyone. Not even Stanton.”

Now it was Caldwell ’s turn to be confused. “What are you talking about?”

“Part of my job is to monitor the four locations in New York. When two of them started acting funny, I brought it to Stanton ’s attention, but he brushed me off. He could be that way, especially if he had other things going on he thought were more important. He told me not to worry about it and to try to help out elsewhere. He said that on account of the terrorist attacks, the NSA was going to have everyone working overtime.”

“What was funny about the two locations?” asked Gary.

“Nobody was responding to my e-mails. It didn’t make sense.”

“Why not? After the attacks, a lot of the infrastructure was overloaded and went down.”

“I know,” replied Schreiber. “Like the telephones. But all of our data transfer operates via satellite uplinks and downloads.”

“Have you seen the news? There’s hell of a lot of smoke and ash in the sky.”

“It doesn’t matter. Only water molecules can wreak enough havoc to interrupt transmission, and it wasn’t raining in New York. Even if it was, we had contingency systems in place.”