The Asset (28 page)

E
veryone got dressed and drank
coffee in the kitchen as the light came up outside. The storm had lifted and mist was rising from the ground, swirling in the morning sunlight. Kennedy felt cautiously optimistic. With Nuri and Mitchell, they had what it was going to take to get a shot at Lentz.

“This is a bug hunt, pure and simple,” Mitchell said, holding court. “We have to assume it's too late to do anything about Lentz's plan, which is under way. So, the best we can hope for is to kill the head and hope the body will die. If any of you disagree with that, then we got nothing else to talk about.”

Everyone nodded. Mitchell looked at Kennedy specifically.

“What about you, team leader? You going to sound off or what?”

“I'm with you. And I'll be stepping over you to pull the trigger.”

“Next step is to figure out what rock the bug is hiding under so we can stomp his guts out. Any ideas on how to do that?”

“He's got to be working the airports still,” Kennedy said. “Otherwise he would have gone ahead with the attack by now. I think we can intercept him at one of them.”

“Some of the airport data feeds are still active,” Nuri said. “Lentz couldn't knock out our mobile device trackers because they're satellite-based. I'm sure we can find something in there, especially if he's working with operatives embedded in maintenance crews.”

“Maintenance workers have to pass through security,” Kennedy said. “Millimeter wave devices pick up the chip signal in their badges when they walk past.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Nuri said.

“Sometimes the scanner antennas lock into the chip and deactivate it, so you get a bunch of pissed-off wrench monkeys yelling at TSOs.”

“So, we can see from the scanner data when maintenance badges go through checkpoints and match that up with the mobile devices that are in contact with Lentz's compound in Cuba,” Nuri said.

“In theory,” Kennedy said.

“In theory, I have a nerd boner for you right now,” Nuri said.

“Thanks?”

“I can't believe you lived this long,” Mitchell said to Nuri.

“Only the good die young,” Nuri said, licking her lips suggestively.

“What about the Cuban compound itself?” Mitchell asked. “I could pretty easily drop in on him Scarface-style with some mercs and a small army of local pirates.”

“He hasn't been seen there in weeks,” Kennedy said. “Juarez had eyes on the Isla de la Juventud airport and had sat images coming from the compound almost daily.”

“Then he's probably never going back,” Mitchell said. “He dusted it off like a good little villain. All right then, let's go to work on the data. He's in there somewhere.”

Kennedy and Love went through reams of mobile device and millimeter wave scanner data from all twenty-five bugged airports and fed it to a series of pattern recognition algorithms Nuri had written. It was a black hole of a time suck, with each airport taking over an hour to process and analyze.

While they crunched data, Mitchell and Nuri got to work procuring mission-critical items. Money was the first priority. They had the cash Kennedy had gotten from the safe house, but it was only a few thousand dollars, not nearly enough. After her trip to Havana, Nuri had broad access to the Cuban government's financial networks so she looked for accounts they had on US soil—most likely for funding espionage operations of their own. She found several in Boston, some at well-known institutions and others at lesser known investment banks and credit unions. All told, they had close to $150 million spread out around the city in shell-corporation
accounts. Nuri then captured account numbers, PIN codes, and personal data from a dozen different banks housing some of these accounts. She used that information to log in and make account signatories out of the cover identities she and Mitchell used in the field. Then the two of them went to the twelve banks and used their cover IDs to withdraw $9,500 from each account—sidestepping the banks' legal obligation to report transactions of $10,000 and higher to the feds—and bagging $114,000 in clean currency.

Mitchell stuffed a sizable cut into a suitcase and went on a tour of Boston, buying black market weaponry, mostly from the Irish gunrunners who supplied gangs and biker crews. Another chunk of money was set aside for mercs, military-trained killers with special operator backgrounds, like Mitchell's. He knew quite a few who would do just about anything if the price was right, so he put some guys on standby to assist once they pinned down Lentz's location.

On the Lentz note, Mitchell and Nuri also checked surveillance on his Cuban compound. It was a ghost town. Just to be sure, Mitchell hit up one of his contacts in Cuba and paid him to check out the place. He scoped it with infrared and didn't see any heat signatures. Nuri checked sat images and saw nothing inside the compound courtyard or perimeter of the property. Mitchell's guy cut through the perimeter fence and broke in. The place was empty.

Day 51

A
fter Kennedy and Love had
gone through all of the data, the dining room wall was covered with notes, photos, timelines, and other miscellany. Mitchell and Nuri, fully stocked for a homegrown black ops mission, were anxious to hear the results.

“Since Lentz hasn't been to his compound in God knows how long,” Kennedy said, “we gave up on trying to identify mobile app users at airports attempting to contact him through his Cuban servers.”

“I thought that was our best lead?” Nuri said.

“Our friend Rico, rest in peace,” Love said, “was a bug-happy guy. Most of the devices he managed to plant in Lentz's aircraft are still intact.”

“When the conditions are right, we can get spotty GPS tracking data and some cockpit chatter,” Kennedy added. “The problem is there's a lag of six to seven hours between the time that information is captured and when it gets to us.”

“That gives us no time to put a team together,” Mitchell said. “We could get data saying he's in Denver, but a lot can happen in the six or seven hours before we get the next feed.”

“Right,” Kennedy said. “So, I figured if we knew his aircraft registration number, we could track him that way. Juarez knew the numbers, but he never passed that information on to me, and I couldn't find it in any of
the Rico debriefing files. So, Love listened to every second of the cockpit chatter Rico's bugs had recorded.”

“It was a bitch because of the engine noise and Rico's accent,” Love added, “but we were able to piece the number together.”

“I checked it against airport records at Isla de la Juventud and Havana, and the address matched Lentz's compound,” Kennedy said.

“Tracking an airplane by its registration number is easy. There are a bunch of sites that normal people can use to do that,” Nuri said excitedly.

“True,” Kennedy said, “but those sites don't always have information on private aircraft, which is the case with Lentz's jet. We're going to need you to get into FAA flight records and piggyback on their in-flight trackers so we know where he's headed. Depending on destination, we might have enough time to get a team there.”

“Hack the FAA?” Nuri asked. “All I have to do is take down one more big government agency and I'll get my Girl Scout hacker badge.”

Kennedy laid a full-year calendar with notes and circled dates out on the table.

“We also worked on trying to establish a timeline for the attack,” he said.

“We talked about that,” Mitchell said, perturbed. “Even if we know when it's going down, we don't have the ability to stop it.”

“Agreed,” Kennedy said. “But any information on timeline is useful in the event that some of us don't make it and whoever is left needs to call in the cavalry.”

“Sure, if we knew that we could call them in now,” Mitchell countered. “But we don't have that data, so how is this anything other than guesswork?”

“Because behavior analysis is my specialty,” Kennedy said. “Just hear me out. Terrorists are basically psychotic public relations whores. In addition to wanting to hit us when we're most vulnerable, they also want to do it when they'll get the most media attention for their cause.”

“It's like when you're dropping an album or releasing a movie,” Love said. “You have to be strategic about it to maximize the Oprah moment. The choice of 9/11 was basically branding, a tongue-in-cheek play on our emergency number, which makes the date more memorable. Trust me, no one thinks of anything else when you say September eleventh.”

Kennedy said, “Since we couldn't think of any dates that have the same
double meaning, like 9/11 or 10/4, we figured Lentz might be going the route of choosing a sacred cow, a time when we're happiest and, more important, most vulnerable.”

“There goes Christmas,” Nuri said.

“Actually, we were thinking Thanksgiving is a better option,” Kennedy said. “Christmas is too religious and centers on one group. Thanksgiving is secular, so almost everyone takes part, regardless of culture.”

“It's like Christmas without Jesus and expensive gifts and a looming credit card hangover,” Love said. “You can fuck with Christmas, but if you fuck with Thanksgiving, you're kicking us right in our patriotic nuts.”

“Yeah, but who's flying on Thanksgiving?” Best asked.

“Hardly anyone,” Kennedy said, “but
the day before
Thanksgiving is the busiest travel day of the year. More planes in the air, more human cattle in the airports. If you really want to ring our bell, the day before Thanksgiving is the knockout punch.”

“Every time Lentz has acted in the past,” Nuri said, “it's been at the height of what Langley calls
cultural vulnerability
. Like when he helped to incite protests in Egypt during Ramadan, taking advantage of people having their minds on the holiday. He's used election riots and other forms of unrest in Myanmar to get his hooks into their natural gas reserves. I think the day before turkey day is a solid bet.”

“The day before Thanksgiving is twelve days from today,” Kennedy said. “If Nuri can work out the FAA hack, we might have a shot at intercepting him as he makes final preparations.”

“Which brings us to our next problem,” Mitchell said. “If we find him, what are we looking for? We sort of know what he looks like. We know the number of his private jet. But what we don't know is how he's moving freely around the country sabotaging commercial aircraft at busy airports. You don't do that without a cover, my friends.”

Nuri turned, nodding.

“True. He's got to have a serious layer of smoke and mirrors to pull this shit off.”

“Especially since it's highly likely he's traveling with the nukes,” Mitchell said. “If I were him, that's how I would do it. It's old tech, so if they were handled improperly, they could be useless. And who the hell would you trust to deliver them for you?”

“Isn't that dangerous, taking them on the plane?” Love asked.

“As long as the detonators aren't attached to the bombs, they don't present any extra risk to him and his flight crew. My money's on him making deliveries.”

“For that to happen, he'd need to be able to operate at each airport with very little oversight,” Kennedy added. “Like a politician or foreign leader.”

“Some celebrities get that kind of treatment,” Love said. “If you're big enough and rich enough, you can get away with murder on private jets. Literally.”

“Jesus, that's it,” Kennedy said.

“What?” Mitchell asked.

“Celebrity travel. It's one of the biggest loopholes in TSA protocol because of their trusted-traveler bullshit,” Kennedy explained. “If you're a big music act or touring theater show, or Johnny Depp and his Yorkies, you can preplan your trip with TSA and bypass most of the security procedures so you never get hung up in any of your tour cities, which might cost millions in revenue.”