Vengeance For Gabriel, page 7
The elevator doors opened to a small reception area without any furniture. There was a wood door in a metal frame and a four-foot by four-foot glass window with a little pass through cut out. The sign on the door matched the name that was on the directory. There was no phone, computer, or anything you might expect in the receptionist’s area and the interior office space was not visible to them.
Several heavy knocks on the door followed by the announcement of their presence went unanswered. An officer knocked out the receptionist’s window with the butt end of his assault rifle. After clearing the chards of glass that remained in the frame, he climbed through the window with a boost from a fellow officer.
The officer that breached the office opened the front door and the team entered, again announcing their presence. The members of the strike team methodically worked their way down the main hallway, indicating room by room that it was clear to proceed. Each of the offices they passed were completely vacant. Roger reminded them not to touch anything they did not have to, not even a light switch for fear of tripping a booby trap.
A door was ajar on the end of the hallway. As the team approached the last room to be scanned, the sound of computer fans running could be heard. An officer inspected the door jamb, looking for a trip switch before he pushed the door open with the tip of his rifle, then stepped into the room, checking his surroundings.
“Clear!” He announced. Roger and Michelle followed next, also scanning the room. The only furniture in the room was a large desk without a chair that had four computer monitors and a single keyboard sitting on it. A camera was mounted on the wall behind the desk and two others were skillfully located on the ceilings to provide complete surveillance of the room. Eerily, the entire team knew they were being watched.
Roger made his way around the desk first. The screens all had four quadrants showing video feeds monitoring the work being done at the blast site from different vantage points. Roger looked under the desk, careful to follow his own advice and not touch anything. There were four computer servers with ethernet cables running to wall jacks.
Realizing the value of the evidence he saw in the room, Roger instructed those that had breached the office and those still arriving to withdraw from the entire floor to preserve the crime scene. He would need to get a team of forensic specialists here right away to go over every square inch of the fifth floor, and the equipment would ultimately need to be transported to Quantico for inspection and analysis.
If there was a fingerprint or a clue to be found, they would find it. If there was a way to trace the computer or camera feeds, they would find that too. Roger was hopeful this trove of evidence would allow the FBI to identify a suspect.
Michelle joined Roger behind the desk. Each monitor’s view had a countdown timer overlaid in the upper right corner of every feed. Roger looked at his watch to confirm his timer and the computers were in sync, as he expected they were. With total incredulity, Michelle slowly brought herself to say, “This bastard is sharing his work with others on the dark web.”
Michelle pointed to where she observed a chat feed in the lower left quadrant of one of the screens. “This is being hosted for a live audience!” She was able to see the real time comments. “Look at this!” Michelle continued. “There are hundreds of fans or followers watching.” She read the scrolling messages for a while. The contents of the messages from the viewers ranged from outrageous to so disgusting they were making Michelle want to vomit.
These people were praising the work of this madman, sending well wishes for his continued success and offering support, hoping to bring down the FBI. Other anti-government comments scrolled by that seemed unrelated to the bombing, which were most likely from voices with their own agendas wanting to be heard. The comments were like daggers to the heart, being twisted ever so slowly as the messages scrolled on. On and on the messages and comments continued.
“There really are a lot of cruel people out there with a twisted perspective of reality.” Michelle paused to catch her breath, allow her blood pressure to settle and pull herself together.
In a calm voice, Roger tried to give Michelle a more tranquil perspective. “These are only the sheep; we need to find their shepherd.” As he looked around the room, he took out his cell and called the Bureau’s Chief of Operations. “Vince, I need a team of computer experts down here at 555 Long Street, there is a surveillance system monitoring the site running live here that needs to be looked at, then taken to Quantico. I will also need a forensics team to go over the entire fifth floor, lobby, and elevator.”
Michelle demonstrated less control than Roger as she turned and shouted at the camera behind them, assuming whomever was watching could hear her. “You are misguided people; WE ARE going to find each and every one of you!” How she wanted to rip the wires out of the wall and smash the screens to make it all stop. She could not even pull the plug; in case it had a fingerprint on it and that added to her frustration too. The lone keyboard, presumably left for them was inviting, but she knew she could not touch it to answer these anarchists. That would be a fight for another day, not a distraction to consume valuable time right now.
Michelle had read enough of the comments that were particularly vile, vulgar, and clearly written by uneducated people that she needed to walk away. These were just uncivilized suggestions from web sleuths trolling the dark side of the web. Their misuse of words, poor spelling, awful grammar and incorrect or perverted variations of the truth were abhorrent she thought.
There would be no reasoning with these people, and if they were apprehended, they would have nothing of value to share even if the FBI tracked them all down, as Michelle had so succinctly noted the agency would.
These were the pawns in the mastermind’s game, the disciples of his ill will who felt powerful when sitting in front of their keyboards with anonymity, but they were in fact the weakest humans in all of humankind.
Michelle walked to the casement window at the far end of the room; it overlooked the site, but from a much lower altitude than Roger’s apartment. She could not see directly into the enormous hole where co-workers and friends perished, some of whom she knew, and others whom she briefly met at conferences and meetings. The urgency of the tasks at hand left her little real time to think about them, she was also still in a state of denial. She would shed a lot of tears thinking about them, but anger and frustration were the only emotions she was in touch with for now.
Roger spoke, bringing Michelle away from her thoughts. “The equipment is extremely clean, no dust accumulation, someone had to be here recently.” It was clear to Roger that any trace or shred of evidence would have been wiped down or eliminated in anticipation of their eventual arrival. However, he knew they still needed to get a forensics crew in to do their work.
Roger continued scanning the room, absorbing the incredible reality of the moment, then he asked Michelle to call Harlow.
“Can you get me a complete work up on this address? Ownership records and anything you can learn about this address including who pays the bills.” Follow the money Roger was thinking, follow the money, and he realized this was where Matthew could help too, so he dialed his number next.
After asking Matt to get the Department of the Treasury’s FinCEN involved, Roger returned to his inspection of the premises. Roger began thinking aloud. “I assume this feed was live before the explosion. So maybe Vince’s people will be able to retrieve the video?”
“Makes total sense for a warped mind.” Michelle responded with a sense of disdain, making a sarcastic remark. “I’m surprised he didn’t sell tickets.”
“Good point.” Roger replied, confusing Michelle for the moment. “This lunatic went to great lengths to orchestrate this show, and he had to let these trolls on the internet know he was making this streaming video available somehow, promoting it if you will. Let’s have Harlow’s team look deeper into that too.” Suddenly the live feeds all went black for a moment. Then the monitors flashed a few times, it was an obvious tactic to attract their attention as a message appeared on all the computer screens.
It read:
Roger, I Did Not Expect to See You So Soon.
The hair on Roger’s neck raised, things couldn’t get any more personal than this! Roger looked to Michelle who was awestruck, this was not a bot, it was someone who had done their homework and was orchestrating the moment. What else did this person know? Michelle wondered if this was the same person who had choreographed the hack Harlow’s people discovered on the FBI’s computers. The questions started adding up faster than they could be answered. The words being typed across the screen now read:
Hello Michelle.
Somehow, the assumption that if this person knew Roger’s name, they would know Michelle’s as well, made the second greeting less shocking. There was a calm, cordial, yet extremely sinister tone to the simplicity of the messages.
Roger and Michelle had just encountered a control freak no doubt, evidently not on the timeline their foe had planned. This was confirmed in the choice of words, ‘I did not Expect to See You So Soon,’ indicating in fact that there was an expectation to have contact with Roger, and presumably Michelle, at another point in time.
In Roger’s mind, the preparation for a duel had been set and he would willingly accept the challenge. Roger took the bait, breaking the FBI’s protocol. He typed on the keyboard ‘Who are you’? He hoped engaging this nefarious individual would produce a clue or mistake.
Somewhere on the dark web, a man’s hands, olive in color, were typing a response on a sleek, unusual ultra- modern keyboard. His fingers are perfectly manicured, and he is wearing a large oval gold signet ring engraved with an image of an angel on his right hand. On his left hand is a tattoo depicting three bold number fives, inked in solid black Algerian style numerals, encircled with a line drawing that is a pair of wings. The cuff of a white shirt extending beyond the sleeve of a black linen suit is adorned with cufflinks that also have engravings of angels.
The response was simply:
We’ll talk more at another time Roger.
Chapter 14
Wheels Up
The next morning, Roger and Michelle were seated on a plane buckling up their seat belts. Their travel plans indicated the 10:29 am flight out of John F. Kennedy International Airport was due to arrive in Montana by 1:43 pm at Bozeman Yellowstone International Airport. Roger and Michelle were heading to the largest of twelve commercial passenger airports in Montana.
Bozeman lies only a stone’s throw away from the borders of Idaho and Wyoming. The itinerary made it sound like a short flight, but it would be two hours earlier in Montana, as the arrival time was listed as Mountain Standard Time, making the total flight a little less than five-and-a-half-hours in all. Roger still would not get there fast enough; he hated time zones too.
At Bozeman, a Gulfstream Jet and four local FBI field agents would be standing by to accompany Roger and Michelle on the next leg of their trip to a small town called Hayes. Their destination was just off Route 66, with a population of 843 according to the most recent census.
From the time the plane taxied down the runway, until it achieved a cruising altitude of over thirty thousand feet and leveled off, Roger held onto the armrests tightly. He was very tense and incredibly stressed. In stark contrast, Michelle enjoyed the sensation of lift off and the view of the skyline from her window seat. The plane banked suddenly and rattled a bit from the change in direction against reasonably mild headwinds. As the wing dipped, it afforded Michelle a breathtaking bird’s eye view of New York City below them.
Michelle also noticed Roger was experiencing a fair amount of nausea, turning a pale shade of green. She thought about requesting a barf bag for him, then considered it might not be well received. She turned back to the view, feeling bad for Roger, as the aircraft headed out over the ocean. The plane was still banking and steadily gaining altitude while leaving the big city behind.
When the beverage service began, Roger was able to get a Scotch on the rocks that took the nervous edge off, allowing him to finally relax. He had calculated the alcohol would metabolize from his system before the plane landed, thereby not impairing his judgment. Michelle hoped it was not going to be a turbulent flight for his sake.
Passengers were spaced out about the aircraft on an almost empty flight. When the plane settled into a smooth motion free mode, so did Roger’s stomach and some color came back to his face. It did not take long before Roger was himself again. He would have a few good hours if all went well, then the plane would have to descend. That also meant he would soon have to contend with the second connecting flight. The signal that it was safe to move about the cabin was given by the pilot, so Roger immediately made a break for the restroom.
When Roger returned, he looked much better. He retrieved his shoulder bag from under the seat and set the bag down next to Michelle, removing two very large documents. These were dossiers relating to 555 Long Street that Matthew and Harlow had prepared. He handed one to Michelle and started with a cursory review of his copy, flipping through the pages to determine the makeup of the report he was going to be reading.
The Table of Contents was followed by a brief Introduction, then a few pages of Factual Findings, followed by a few pages of Hypothesis and the bulk of the brief was Supporting Documentation. The tail end of the report included a Summary and Conclusions page and finally an Appendix.
The factual findings section stated FPS Engineering was a corporation doing business as Five Point Star Engineering Services, for which there were no company registration matches on record anywhere in all fifty states. The same was true for the corporation that owned the building at 555 Long Street. Roger was not surprised by these findings.
The team had done a first-class job of organizing this document. The Department of the Treasury had tremendous experience tracking assets of tax cheats, drug lords, and fraudsters. In an effort to shield real estate holdings from seizure, layers of shell corporations were often used to conceal an owner’s identity. Finding the owner of a piece of real estate was not always easy, but eventually if you peeled back enough layers you would get to the principal you were looking for.
The adage: Follow the money, always applied and this case proved to be no different. The team had researched the building’s deed history through title searches, reviewing title insurance documents and so forth. Roger suspected there were shell corporations to weed through until he finally got to where the money flowed from. Eventually all these entities in the chain of custody for the deed led to a name.
The deed dated back to the beginning of record keeping and was held and passed down through a family that owned a large amount of ranch land in Montana for more than a century. It was transferred into a corporate name for the first time twenty-four years ago. The source of that money came from a bank account at Lone Star Savings and Loan of Montana. Roger checked with the bank and determined the account was still active. Hence the visit the FBI was going to make today with the current signatory on the account, who was identified by the bank as Arnold Archer, an attorney.
Chapter 15
Trip to Hayes
When the Gulfstream jet landed at Hayes’s tiny airport, two off-road jeeps were waiting, along with four agents from Montana’s capitol, Helena. Agents Clark, Haberstone, Gordon and Light piled into one vehicle. Roger and Michelle climbed into the other jeep and Roger led the way. The GPS showed two routes and Roger selected the shortest one.
The team travelled across rugged and very tough terrain, but it was amazingly beautiful. The big Montana sky was filled with windswept clouds. The hilly land was mostly golden grass as far as you could see in any direction, sparsely populated by small green shrubs here and there. The outcroppings of red rocks were magnificent. The worst part of the trip was a mountain pass road they encountered along the way, which was not much wider than the jeeps. The ‘road’ would be comfortable on horseback, but it was extremely narrow for a vehicle. Without guard rails, one error could put their jeep over the edge and into a thousand-foot freefall.
Occasionally Roger would stop to assess their predicament, but there was no going back, reverse was not an option and there were no opportunities to turn around, so they pressed on. This was a treacherous road under the best of circumstances, probably not passable for the majority of the winter season.
When the team finally made their way to Hayes, they found a quaint town showing years of aging. It was a classic rural American town complete with a post office, bank, general store, and not a national franchise to be seen.
Hayes had hitching posts, not parking meters that lined the town’s only street which was about the equivalent of two long city blocks. A large brick building had a column of business shingles hanging from an eve extending over the doorway. One below another, the signs read: Town Hall, Courthouse, Sheriff’s Office, and Post Office. All the other buildings in town were constructed of wood more than a hundred years ago. A bit further down the road a two-story building had a sign in the window reading, The Lone Star Law Office. The white capped mountainous background towered over the town, any photo of which would make a lovely postcard.
Roger parked in front of the attorney’s office. As he turned off the jeep, Michelle’s BrAIn Pad hummed. Harlow’s secure message read; FPS Engineering was one of the subcontractors on the construction of the new wing of the office about twenty years ago. Michelle and Roger looked at each other in disbelief, this meant there was a clear connection between FPS Engineering and the New York bombing. The FBI now had another tiny piece of a large puzzle to work with.
Roger instructed the agents from Montana to wait in their jeep. Michelle shook a hanging strand of brass bells that doubled as a wind chime, as per the instructions on a note taped to the door of the attorney’s office. A voice from overhead bellowed.
