Gavin read a portion of the complaint from the U.S. Department of Justice. “He was an expert in social engineering passwords. A confidence man.”
Jack slowly sat back down behind his laptop. “That doesn’t explain how he got so good at compromising these targets with open-source intel.”
Gavin shrugged. “Prison, Jack. You can learn all sorts of bad stuff in prison, because that is where all the bad people are.”
“Not all the bad people, Gav. We run into a shitload of them out here on the outside.”
“Okay. You got me there.”
“What’s he doing now?” Jack asked.
“Beats me.”
Jack typed his name in a Romanian search engine. Seconds later he said, “I’ll be damned. He works at a company in Bucharest called Advanced Research Technological Designs.”
Gavin was typing now, looking the company up in a database he kept on computer hackers. Even before he finished inputting the name he said, “Wait, I know those guys. Son of a bitch!”
“Who are they?”
“They are damn good hackers, but that’s just the start of it.” Now he looked at results in his database, reading through details of the company. “Yeah . . . they started out selling prescription pain pills online for a while, then they branched out into online fraud. They got bigger and bigger, attracted a deeper bench of hacker talent because their social engineers had gotten so damn good at getting passwords and admin access to websites.”
“How do you know about them?”
“They’ve done some sweet social media scams to get information on bankers, mostly in Europe, but it made the news.”
Jack cocked his head. He’d never heard of this. “What news?”
Gavin looked up from his monitor. “News in my world, Ryan. Not on Entertainment Tonight or whatever you watch when you leave here.”
Jack just closed his eyes for a moment and let Gavin’s snarky comment roll off his back.
“Yeah,” Gavin said as he read some more about ARTD. “I remember now, three or four years ago at the Black Hat conference. It’s a get-together of all the world’s hackers.”
“I know what the Black Hat conference is. Must have been on ET.”
“Right. Anyway, a guy did a presentation on a hack this company in Romania carried out on the largest cell-phone provider in Holland. Ripped personal ID info from hundreds of thousands. They could never pin it on ARTD but one of their former employees claimed their hackers pulled it off.”
Jack said, “Are they good enough to do this thing at OPM?”
“Talent-wise, I don’t think so. Plus, they’ve never gone after government networks like this in the past. Still . . . this Dalca guy clearly works for them, and he clearly communicated with Vadim Rechkov, passing the intel about Hagen.”
Jack launched to his feet. “Good enough for me. See ya.”
“Wait! Where are you going?”
“I’m going to Romania.” He turned and rushed out of the conference room, racing toward the elevators.
Gavin Biery moved slower, but he did move. “Not without me you aren’t!”
48
Jack saw an open door to Gerry’s office, so he walked right in, only to find Gerry talking to John Clark and Ding Chavez.
“Oh . . . sorry, guys,” Jack said. He noticed the ultraserious expressions on the three men. “I’m obviously interrupting something.”
Gerry said, “No, I’m glad you’re here. I was about to call you and Dom in. We just got off the phone with Dan Murray. He’s asked us to aid in the hunt for Musa al-Matari and his people here in the U.S. We are considering moving Dominic, along with support, as soon as we can get some place to send him.”
Jack said, “Because of his FBI credentials?”
“That’s right. It will give him freedom of movement around crime scenes, and it’s safe to assume the ISIS terrorists will attack again, sooner, rather than later.”
Clark said, “Sorry, Jack, but you won’t be on this trip. The potential you could be recognized on a domestic op like this is too great.”
Jack said, “That’s good news, actually. I came to request that you send me, along with some help, to Bucharest. Trust me, nobody’s going to recognize me there.”
Gerry said, “I’ll grant you that, but what’s in Bucharest?”
Gavin stepped into the office behind Jack, who was still in the doorway. He answered Gerry Hendley’s question. “A guy named Alexandru Dalca. He is the person, or one of the people, exploiting the Office of Personnel Management files and turning them into targeting packages against American military and intelligence.”
Gerry reacted with surprise. “I’ll be damned! You actually found who is responsible for the breach?”
Jack said, “We think so, but we don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with yet. We know where this man works, but that’s just about it. Not sure if his whole company is involved, or if he is protected or propped up by some other group. What we do know is that we need to get over there, shadow this man Dalca, and try to figure out what the hell is going on.”
Gerry looked to Clark. “What do you think?”
Clark said, “Since we have no idea of the scope of the breach and which government employees have already been exposed to this guy, it makes sense to use our people instead of just notifying Mary Pat and Dan. Dom will need support on his operation here in the States, but in an in extremis situation he can get help from law enforcement. Jack in Romania, on the other hand, will be on his own if we don’t send others along with him.”
Gerry said, “So let’s give some extra support to Jack.”
Clark said, “What do you think, Ding?”
Chavez just shrugged. “I think I’m heading to Romania.”
Gavin Biery, still standing behind Ryan, cleared his throat.
Jack said, “We will have a need for tech support. I’ll want to run a full surveillance package on this guy, and we don’t know what we’re up against yet. If Gavin could come along, it would be helpful.”
Clark gave Gavin a hard look. “Let me make myself perfectly clear. Tech . . . support . . . only.”
Gavin said, “Trust me, I’ll stay out of trouble.”
Jack said, “If tailing Dalca, getting some cams and mics on him, and searching his computers doesn’t pan out, maybe we can turn up the heat, confront him, and make him think we have more knowledge than we really do.”
Gerry said, “Bluff, you mean. John, what do you think?”
Clark said, “I like it. We’ve certainly pulled it off before. Gavin and Ryan seem as certain about this call as can be.
“I know a guy in Romania, ex-Army. He was a founding member of their Brigada Antiteroristă, the USLA, back in the late seventies, and he’s worked as a fixer for foreign media and business interests traveling in Bucharest. I’ll reach out to him and try to hire him to help you guys out with translation and logistics.”
“Sounds perfect,” Ding said.
Gerry called Dominic into the conference room, while Clark called Adara and Midas, both taking a lunch break in his farmhouse kitchen in Maryland, putting them on speakerphone. He then told all three about Jack and Chavez’s plan to go to Bucharest to tail a personality implicated in the OPM breach.
Gerry added, “Ding, I want you to take Midas along. He’s new here, obviously, but he’s got experience in advanced force operations with Delta’s recce squadron, which is all about going in light and covert for recon and such.”
Chavez said, “Happy to have you on board.”
Midas replied over the phone. “I appreciate the opportunity.”
Dom was sitting right next to Chavez. “And me as well, I assume.”
Gerry and Clark exchanged a look, and Dom realized it had to do with him. “Something wrong?”
“Not exactly,” Gerry said. “We have
another role for you right now.”
Dom stiffened. “What role?”
“We are going to use you domestically to try to help the FBI run down these terror cells. Dan Murray requested you specifically. If we can get a handhold on a live terrorist, we might be able to get him to talk faster than the DoJ ever could.”
Dom went from defensive to excited in an instant. “That is a good idea.”
Clark said, “Adara, do you remember when I told you, in no uncertain terms, that I’d make sure you and Dom wouldn’t be working together, at least at first?”
Adara’s voice over the speakerphone was hesitant. “You mean just last week? Yes, I recall that conversation.”
“Well . . . forget I said that. I need Dom in the USA on this because of his FBI credentials. And I need Midas overseas because of his experience. No offense, but his Delta Force background trumps your Navy background when it comes to covert reconnaissance.”
Adara said, “I’d be a fool to argue that logic.”
Dom stiffened up again. Coming to terms with the fact he’d be operational with his own girlfriend.
Adara, on the other hand, was already making plans. “I’ll start requisitioning surveillance gear from outfitting. I’m sure we’re going to have to bring some tech into this.”
Clark said, “Good, Adara. As soon as there is another attack, you and Dom will travel to it. You might have to go commercial if the Gulfstream isn’t back from Europe yet.”
Adara asked, “And what about you, John?”
“I’ll remain here at the office, but be ready to help in any capacity necessary.”
The meeting ended, and everyone in the office, save for Gerry and Clark, shuffled out seconds later, all focused on their missions. The two older men sat there quietly, until Clark said, “This means we’re just waiting on another military or intelligence officer to get murdered by terrorists somewhere in the country.”
Gerry nodded. “You better help Dom and Adara get prepped. The way things are going, I doubt they’ll have much time at all before they’re off.”
49
Walid “Wally” Hussein left the Ahlul Bayt Mosque in Brooklyn at seven-thirty, following a small group out after morning prayers. He turned right on Atlantic and headed back for his car, checking his phone for any missed calls as he strolled.
His Chevy Suburban was parked on the street and he climbed in, fired the engine, then pulled out into traffic.
Hussein was a thirty-eight-year-old special agent for the FBI, and he worked in the Counterterrorism Division of the New York field office in Lower Manhattan. His morning drive was always something of a pain in the ass, but he was a lifelong resident of Brooklyn, so a half-hour commute to go the three miles from his mosque to his office didn’t faze him like it would some FBI transplant from Nebraska.
He listened to his voice mail as he drove north, a message from a fellow special agent at the field office telling him they’d received something promising on the tip line, so he needed to haul ass into work so they could check it out.
Hussein looked at the bumper-to-bumper traffic in front of him on Adams and he called the other agent back.
“Special Agent Lunetti.”
“Hey, man. Got your message. I’m headed in, but if it’s out this way you might want to come to me. The bridge is backed up this morning.”
Special Agent Lunetti was a local as well, born and raised in Queens. “Hey, Wally. How’s it goin’? No . . . this is over here. A tipster said a guy who looked like one of the BOLOs from the ISIS attacks checked into a two-star joint near the Bowery. The Windsor. You know it?”
“Forsyth and Broome?”
“Yeah. If you want we can meet in front of the Y a couple blocks south of there. Head in on foot. How’s that sound?”
“Sounds a lot like the four dry holes we went to yesterday.”
“You’re probably right, but whatcha gonna do?”
“This, I guess. Is the subject still at the hotel?”
“Caller says she doesn’t know. Said he checked in yesterday, she thought he looked familiar, but didn’t know where from till she saw the pictures again this morning on the Today show. She works at the hotel, and can meet us outside.”
Wally Hussein looked ahead at the traffic again. He was still half a mile from the Brooklyn Bridge. “Okay. It’s gonna take me another twenty to get—”
Something caught Hussein’s attention on the sidewalk on his right. The movement of a long narrow cardboard box falling to the ground behind a man walking into the street. His eyes turned to the motion, and he saw a black man just as he stepped out from behind a donut cart and into the street, some thirty or forty yards away. The man had pulled a long device out of the box before discarding it, and he hefted it on his shoulder. It was a tube with a fat end shaped a little like a football.
Hussein knew he was looking at an RPG-7 grenade launcher, and it was pointed right at him.
“Holy shit!”
The flame and smoke of the launch of the device were the last things to register in Special Agent Wally Hussein’s mind before he died.
—
David Hembrick was knocked to the ground by the explosion of the FBI agent’s big SUV. He dropped the empty rocket launcher and his sunglasses fell from his face but he left the weapon and the shades in the street and crawled back to his feet. He began running to the east through Willoughby Plaza, knocking into a few stunned passersby as he made his escape from the crime scene. A woman sitting on a bench locked eyes with him as he passed, and he wanted to draw his Glock and shoot the bitch, but Mohammed had been clear. His job was not to martyr himself, it was to get away and live to fight another day.
The woman pointed at him and screamed, but Hembrick kept running through Willoughby Plaza, his heart pounding from the terror of the action.
He made a left on Pearl Street, and immediately saw two NYPD officers approaching, responding to the loud noise. Neither of the cops had his weapon out, and at first they let Hembrick rush past, as others were fleeing the area and it didn’t look suspicious at all to race away from an explosion.
But Hembrick made it no more than ten yards up Pearl Street before the busybody on the bench said, “There! That man! That’s him!” and Hembrick heard the order to halt come from the NYPD.
He kept on running. Hembrick was twenty-six, both officers were over forty, and he had a twenty-five-yard head start that turned into a fifty-yard lead by the time he made a right in front of the Marriott. In front of him was Jay Street, and he took off for it.
There was a security camera out in front of the Marriott, not the only one in the neighborhood, but this was the only one Hembrick stared directly at as he raced by.
At the curb on Jay Street, a silver Chrysler 200 was waiting for him with the passenger-side door open.
David Hembrick dove into the car, while the back window rolled down. Husam leaned out the window, hefted his Uzi, and centered it on the first of the two cops, now just thirty yards away.
Husam fired short, controlled bursts, slammed rounds into the body armor and extremities of the stunned cops, hitting both of them in their Kevlar, but also tagging one man in the underarm and the other in both legs.
The Chrysler raced north on Jay with Ghazi behind the wheel, following the GPS on his windshield away from the flow of morning traffic into Manhattan. They hit the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in two minutes, exited at Metropolitan Avenue, and parked in an underground lot near the Graham Avenue subway station.
The three men entered the station and separated at the bottom of the stairs, and then all three entered different cars on the first train heading into Manhattan. They made a connection and arrived at Penn Station shortly after nine a.m. Here they moved separately through the morning crowd, and then each boarded a different car on the first train heading to Newark Liberty Airport.
At the airport train station they separated for the day, following plane tickets they had purchased online from their phones en route, and they all boarded flights within an hour of one another. Hembrick flew direct, both Husam and Ghazi made connections, but all three of them would arrive in Chicago by the midafternoon.
—
After the chaos that ensued at the FBI New York field office with the murder of one of their special agents, it was past noon before anyone checked out the tip of the man at the Windsor hotel. He was still there, in his room, and he was questioned, but his alibi stood up.
He had nothing to do with ISIS and the attacks here in America.
—
Musa al-Matari sent the recording of the killing of a Shiite FBI agent on the streets of New York City to the Global Islamic Media Front. The image quality was fair, although the camera attached to David Hembrick’s chest with bungee cord moved along with him as he stepped into the street, fired, and fell back on the ground, so the image stabilization was poor.
No matter, the Yemeni sitting in his room in Chicago knew the wizards at the GIMF’s headquarters in Raqqa would make the adjustments necessary to create a masterpiece as good as an American action film.
Al-Matari had watched the act in real time, and at first he was certain his cell member had been killed in the blast. Hembrick had been instructed to make sure he fired the RPG from a minimum of fifty meters away, but obviously with the thrill of the hunt and impending kill he’d neglected to take his distance into account, and nearly fried himself by launching the grenade at thirty meters.
Still, al-Matari was pleased. A dead FBI agent and two wounded NYPD officers would bring him new recruits, and his three soldiers had all escaped without any injuries.
There had been three more attacks in the past twelve hours, two of them by self-radicalized young men who had pledged allegiance to ISIS on social media while in perpetration of their crimes. A man in Connecticut had emptied half a magazine from his AR-15 pistol into a Marine Corps recruiting station before he’d been felled by a Marine who’d carried his own weapon, but not before three other Marines had been wounded. And a thirty-five-year-old man in Kansas City had opened fire with a shotgun on a random city bus, killing six. While this attack had not been directed at the military or intelligence communities, al-Matari was proud to see the wellspring of insurrection building in America, and he knew it would grow exponentially.