Mike Maden - Drone

Tonight’s automated search had focused on El Paso and the terrible massacre that had occurred just over a week ago. RIOT had just found the string of tweets, and they were all being generated by a single event: an uploaded video file. RIOT had found the video link as well, so Navarro opened it.

It was a cell-phone video of the Cinco de Mayo massacre.

Holy crap!

This was the smoking gun his division had been looking for.

The video was dark, shaky, and suffering the pangs of autofocus—the attack had been at night and the scene was lit primarily by a distant street lamp. Nevertheless, the video was generating quite a stir in the blogosphere. The video showed the two killers blasting away with their machine guns, death-metal music screaming in the background. Unfortunately, audio quality was poor because of the cheap microphone in the cell phone that shot the video.

Navarro located the video on the original Facebook post in question and dubbed a clean copy for the DEA’s use. Navarro then reflagged the El Paso automated-search packages in order to catch the rising tidal wave of interest in the video, now surging to several hundred hits and climbing by the minute. It was about to go viral.

At the same time, the search bots were also sifting through the comments on the video posted on various web, Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook pages. Just like old-school serial killers needed to keep physical trophies of their gruesome work, psychopaths in the social-media age often uploaded video of their crimes—a kind of digital trophy.

Navarro now had the time to fiddle around with the video clip he’d just copied to his own hard drive. He majored in computer science as an undergrad, but he had taken a couple of filmmaking courses as electives, including a class on nonlinear editing where he had learned to use Final Cut Pro.

Navarro opened his copy of FCP and dropped the video clip into the timeline. He played around with the filters to improve the quality of the image, slowing the shaking and enhancing the sound. He then experimented with the zoom feature. He played the newly edited clip a half dozen times, alternately slowing or speeding the clip. Something began to strike him as odd about the two shooters.

Navarro had avidly followed the El Paso massacre story. He had an aunt and uncle who lived in that city, and two cousins who had recently graduated from the Frida Kahlo Arts Academy. Navarro stopped the video clip loop. Rewound it. He put the two killers right in front of the open doors of the Hummer and paused it again. He studied the shooters. Examined the Hummer again.

That was it.

Navarro snatched up his phone and speed-dialed his supervisor.

The White House, Washington, D.C.

President Myers sighed. It seemed as if each new closed-door meeting was more crowded than the last.

Seated around the table were DEA Administrator Nancy Madrigal and Attorney General Faye Lancet, who was the head of the DOJ, under which the DEA operated. The director of ICE, Pedro Molina, sat next to his boss, DHS Secretary Bill Donovan, one of Myers’s closest advisors. Bleary-eyed Sergio Navarro was also at the table seated next to his boss, Roy Jackson, the head of the DEA Intelligence Division. But the rest of Myers’s trusted inner circle was also in attendance, including Mike Early and, of course, Sandy Jeffers, seated to her immediate right. Dr. Strasburg sat strategically across from her.

Protocol, not preference, put the vice president on Myers’s immediate left. If it were up to her, Greyhill would have been seated in the men’s room.

Everyone had hot coffee or bottles of water and iPads on the table in front of them. They listened intently.

Jackson adjusted his wire-rimmed glasses. He was a bookish, middle-aged African American just under six feet tall but well over three hundred pounds. He shifted in his chair, a nervous habit. The chair creaked under the enormous load. He picked up the video controller.

“One of my IAs, Sergio Navarro, brought this video to my attention just three hours ago. Whoever shot this was lucky they weren’t killed in the attack. We estimate they were standing about one hundred yards south of the north-facing vehicle at an oblique angle of approximately forty-five degrees. That meant the camera operator was out of the shooters’ line of sight, otherwise they likely would have been gunned down as well.”

“Any idea who shot the video?” Greyhill asked.

Jackson nodded at Navarro. He knew his IA was not only racked with fatigue but also intimidated by this morning’s briefing. The young analyst had never even met the DEA director before, let alone the president and other cabinet officials. But Navarro had made the discovery and Jackson wanted him to get the credit.

“The video was posted to Facebook under a pseudonym,” Navarro said. “I ran the sensor pattern noise profile against SPNs in our database, but we came up short.” SPNs were the unique digital fingerprint that every silicone chip embedded in a digital-camera image. “We’re still working on that.”

“Where was it posted from? Maybe that will give us a clue,” Greyhill suggested.

Navarro leaned forward. “That’s the interesting part. We can’t locate the server. We can’t even identify it. Pretty sophisticated firewall.”

“Isn’t that suspicious?” Myers asked.

“Not necessarily. Whoever posted it was smart enough to know that they would be the only material witness to the killing. They probably wouldn’t have posted it if they weren’t sure they couldn’t keep their identity secret,” Donovan said.

“Which makes them a prime target,” Early added.

Myers referenced her iPad. “What do these comments mean?” She was referring to the viewer posts on the Facebook page.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Spanish. I came up through the Russian desk,” Jackson said.

“You didn’t get them translated? There might be a clue,” Myers asked.

Jackson hesitated. “Actually, yes. Agent Navarro translated them for me. I have it on a separate report.”

“What do they say?” she demanded.

Jackson shook his head. “Just a bunch of crackpot comments. Vile. Not worth the time.”

“I’ll be the judge of that, Mr. Jackson. Read them aloud, please.”

Jackson reluctantly opened another file folder on his iPad and pulled up a sheet of translated comments. “Most of the names are nicknames or posted as ‘anonymous,’ but we’re running them down.” Jackson cleared his throat. “I’ll just start at the top, the most recent posts. The first one reads: ‘The whore’s son deserves it.’ Signed, RicoPico. The next one reads: ‘Man, I wish I had a gun like that. I’d kill me some gringos, too.’ Signed, PanchoVilla247. The third one reads: ‘What was he doing there anyway? Probably hitting the bong and banging his students.’ Signed, AztecaNacion. The next one reads—”

“Thank you, Mr. Jackson. I think I catch the drift. Please continue with your presentation.”

Jackson gratefully closed the document and pulled up the original presentation file folder. “We estimate the person shooting the video was between five ten and five eleven, judging by the height of the image, which means that the camera operator was most likely a man,” Jackson added.

“So I take it we have some good video footage?” Jeffers asked. He was growing impatient. He wanted to see the video.

“I’m afraid it’s not like the movies, sir,” Navarro said. “Most cell phones utilize poor-quality plastic lenses with a fixed focal length and no shutter, and this particular video was shot in extremely low resolution, only 480 dpi, probably because the cell phone was low on memory. The true cost for the whole camera on these phones is less than forty dollars, usually. So the overall image quality we have is very poor. I cleaned it up as best I could, but there just isn’t enough data there for us to enhance the image any further at the moment.”