Sting of the Drone

36

The sunlight had disappeared behind Beacon Hill two hours ago. Looking out on people hurrying home across the Plaza and the streets choked with traffic, Judith Wolosky calculated that she had another two hours of paperwork before she could walk home.

“What kind of name is Roble Adam?” Robert Gallagher asked as he walked into the spacious office of the Special Agent in Charge. “No s at the end.”

“No s at the end? Well, I guess the answer is not that his great-great-great started the Revolution and then made beer down the street?” Judith replied.

“Get your coat, we’re going flying,” Gallagher instructed.

“You’re planning on the usuals like where and why?” she said moving toward her coat closet.

“Portland. Staties got a chopper waiting for us at Logan,” Gallagher said. “Mr. Roble Adam is the guy in the Park Street subway pictures. Turns out he lives in Maine.”

They headed for the elevator to the parking garage. “Flying a State owned helicopter in the dark over water in winter. Sounds like a great idea so far. What about the why part?” she asked.

“So Roble is a Somali name. Means he was born in the rainy season. Who knew they had a rainy season? Joyce got back to me around eleven last night. She ran her new Facial Recognition app that can extrapolate a frontal image from a top down and some side shots. She got a pretty good full frontal facial off the images from the T. Made a composite,” Gallagher said as the elevator descended to the garage. “I got it to DHS before midnight and they got me a name around noon from the Maine driver’s licenses. Roble Adam. Portland.”

“Thank God we didn’t have to hold a press conference again and ask for Crowd Sourcing help,” Judith said, thinking of the Marathon case. “Maybe this guy won’t know we’re coming and so he won’t try to bolt.”

“He wasn’t at the address on the license. So our guys from the Portland office flashed his picture to some Somali community leaders. They dropped the dime on him right off. Living with some cousins in South Portland.”

“Patriotic Somali-Americans. And we have him in custody?” Judith asked, getting into the waiting FBI Chevy Suburban, driven by a young, new Agent.

“L and S,” Gallagher said to the driver. “No, under surveillance. He just got home to his fleabag apartment in South Portland. The Portland SWAT’s going in with our guys now.”

“Nice of them. Portland SWAT got lots of tanks like Boston? This going to be all over the TV?”

“I asked our guys in Portland to keep it low key, use encrypted channels on the police radio. Too many people listening to the scanners these days.”

“So Dr. Fernandez, Joyce, was helpful then in creating an image that people could ID a guy from,” she noted as the car pulled out onto Government Square, headed toward the Sumner Tunnel and the airport. “I told you she’d be good.”

“She was, yes, she was.” Gallagher looked out the window of the truck, which was now weaving its way through the rush-hour traffic with occasional whoops from its siren and the steady flashing of red and blue lights. The traffic nonetheless hardly moved for three blocks. “Yes, I told her the Bureau would take her to dinner at Locke-Ober as a way of saying thanks. Don’t suppose the Bureau will pay?” The Suburban went up over a sidewalk and bounced down near the entrance of the tunnel.

“Was that a rhetorical question, Special Agent Gallagher?” Judith replied. “Or am I invited, too?”

“Rhetorical.”

“What I thought,” she replied. “Can we make a call while we’re in the tunnel? I want to thank that old geezer bartender from Fenway, who is actually forty-five and a computer whiz in DC. Shall I tell him you want to take him to Locke-Ober, too?”

“Send me back to Kabul,” Sandra Vittonelli said loudly. “At least in Afghanistan, I usually knew who my enemies were. In Washington and with the job out here, I can never tell.”

Ray had never seen her so out of control. He was beginning to think she might quit, in which case the program would really be at a loss.

“I get sued by some woman from Philadelphia for killing her son in Austria while I am supposedly in an undercover position here where nobody knows who I am. One of my pilots and his wife get killed when a gas pipeline bursts and you two tell me it’s murder. Another pilot gets drunk and is run over by a Mack truck, literally. Then this,” she threw the Presidential Directive limiting drone strikes onto her desk. “And now you tell me my chief pilot is under an IG investigation and will probably be suspended while they investigate. Fuck it. Honest to God, Ray, fuck it. Maybe Dugout would like to fly the Goddamn drones?”

Ray looked at Dugout in a way that made clear he should not answer that question.

“I’ll do what I can to stop them from ordering his suspension, but the Inspector General is fairly independent,” Ray offered. “What I gather is that they don’t have a smoking gun, or they would already have done something. Just an anonymous tip, probably from someone on the staff here, probably someone who has a beef with Erik for whatever reason.”

“But he’s going to know he’s under investigation?” she asked.

“The IG guys arrive late tomorrow. You probably want to tell him today,” Ray suggested.

“Can’t,” Sandra said. “He’s taking Major Dougherty’s body back to his parents in Chicago. Finally got it out of the County Medical Examiner. Erik is really broken up about Dougherty’s death. He thinks that somehow he should have done something more to help him. Instead, he told him go get drunk and gave him his car. Now it looks like maybe he got into the accident because he was drunk. Bruce was a really good pilot, really nice guy.”

Ray glanced at Dugout in a way that said something. Dugout nodded as if he understood.

“I’d suggest maybe we want to let Dugout set up in Room 103, Spook Ops, to run traps on a few things. He might also look at the records from the Red Sea op, without leaving any traces that he has been looking.”

Sandra stared at Ray. She knew not to ask. “It’s already been set up for him. I ordered it when you called last night. Sergeant Miller will take you down there now, Dug.”

When they were alone, Sandra and Ray sat down at her small conference table. “I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t quit,” he began.

“The fuck I can’t. It’s a free country.”

“I’d like to keep it that way,” he said.

“Yeah and all that stands between tyranny and perdition is me and the program. Don’t start with that crap, I’ve heard it all before and it’s not true and you know it,” she said. “It’s just getting too hard and nobody gives a shit except us. Do you think those people out there on the Vegas Strip think the drone program is making them safer? They don’t even think about it. They think they’re perfectly safe, except maybe from whack job fellow Americans with assault guns every now and again, randomly.”

Ray stood up and walked to the glass wall. He looked out at the Control Room, at the Big Board with video feeds coming from drones all over Africa and the Middle East. “They’re not supposed to think about it. That’s the whole point, Americans should not have to worry about terrorism here.” Ray said softly, trying to lower the temperature in the conversation. “If there is another terrorist attack in the U.S. like 9/11, we will lose more of our freedoms in response, just like we did the first time. Warrantless wiretaps, throwing U.S. citizens in military prisons without trial, cameras everywhere, privacy out the window.” He turned back to face Sandy. “We are what stops the next attack. We get them before they get here. That’s what the people on the Vegas Strip want, that’s what most Americans want.”

Sandra walked to her desk and picked up a file. “We’ve been running Pattern of Life flights on a bunch of huts up in the mountains in Yemen. HUMINT says the AQAP bomb maker is up there. The flights show nothing but guys with guns up there for over a week now. No women. No children. Not even any unarmed men. The government in Sana’a says they can’t go up there, too unsafe, terrorist territory. Can I still get a Kill Call?”

Ray took the file. “The AQAP bomb maker? The guy who keeps trying to get someone’s undies to explode on a U.S. plane? I’d say he’s a direct threat to Americans. Someday he’s going to kill three hundred people, many of them Americans, in some 777 coming in from the Gulf and flying in over a U.S. city. Let’s schedule the call.”

“The emphasis is on the second syllable, ah-dam,” Roble Adam told Bobby Gallagher in the Portland FBI office’s interview room.

“You don’t want the coffee?” Gallagher asked. “It’s getting late. You’re tired. You need a little jolt to remember things?”

“I don’t know what you put in it,” Roble replied.

“It’s black. You want milk and sugar?”

“I don’t want your drugs. What drugs did you put in it?” Roble asked.

Gallagher put the two Starbuck cups next to each other in the middle of the table. “Pick either. I will drink the other one. After that, if you want, you can try drinking yours. Or not, I don’t care.” Roble didn’t pick.

“All right, Roble, I want you to know where you stand right now. Even if you don’t say another word, we already have enough evidence to charge you with murder of the police officer, possession of explosives, and terrorism,” Gallagher noted.

“You know what this is, Roble?” Gallagher asked, as he put a key on the table between them.

Roble inhaled and blinked, but didn’t answer.

“The Portland bomb squad is at the storage company now. They have a little robot. It’s cute. You should see it. It’s looking at your bomb right now. I just saw your bomb on the video feed. Is it RDX? That’s not easy to get,” Gallagher said.

Roble closed his eyes.

“Roble, in a little while they’re going to take you away, to Virginia. There are CIA people and others waiting to interrogate you. You know how the CIA interrogates people, Roble? Did you see the movie about getting bin Laden?”

Roble quickly opened his eyes and stared at him. There was fear in his eyes, but also anger, rage.

“Look, I know you’re just the lowest-level guy on the scrotum pole, the guy they got to carry the bomb. I can help you, but you have to tell me before they take you away. Then it will be too late,” Gallagher said. “But there are still things that can happen here in the next few minutes that may change the rest of your life forever. And those things are up to you, but not for long.

“We did some research on you after we figured out it was you in the subway. Actually, you’re not a bad guy and your family, they’re good people. Your mom came here to this country from Somalia during the wars there, came with almost nothing, to make a place here that would be a better place to raise children. She worked hard, all for you, you and your sister.”

Roble Adam glared at him. Gallagher continued, “And you, you made the football team here in high school, you helped out your mom, you protected your sister. Then these guys come along and recruit you, they use you, they spoil it all for you and your mom and your sister.”

“They had nothing to do with it, my mother and my sister,” Roble insisted.

“Actually, in some ways, Roble, you are the victim, the three of you. All of the Adam family has become victims because of what those guys, the recruiters, did to you. They’re the bad guys in this whole thing, not you. I know you didn’t mean for that cop to get hit by the train, he was—”

Roble interrupted, “He fell over, man, I didn’t even push him. He fell and he hit his head or something.”

“It was dark in there,” Gallagher added, “I know, I know. We may not have to make it a murder charge. I just need your help to identify the people who did this to you and your family. That’s all. And they don’t deserve your protection, not after what they did to you and your mother and sister by getting you involved in all this. You just have to tell me, but now, before they take you to Virginia.”

Roble sighed. “Tell you what?”

“Who recruited you?”

“They found me online. Then they came to our apartment one night. After a while, the big man came to town to meet me,” Roble replied. “I thought they were you guys, some fucking FBI sting. But they said they would tell me just before something blew up, something they were going to blow up. And they did. They told me about that Marriott in Kuwait like an hour before it happened. Figured they weren’t FBI after that.”

“What were their names?”

“They didn’t say, ever,” Roble answered.

“We’re going to need you to describe them to an artist,” Gallagher said. “Tell me about the big man. Where did you meet?”

“On the street, he came out of a store,” Roble said. “Like a light blue store, what you call it, aqua. On Exchange Street.”

“And then what happened?” Gallagher asked.

“We talked while we walked down to the water. I left him by the boat, the one that goes to Canada.”

“He got on the boat?” the FBI Agent asked.

“Not while I was there. He told me to walk away.”

“What did he ask you to do?”

Roble waited a moment. “He asked me to do surveillance, a trial run he called it, then when he tells me to, to leave a bomb in the train tunnel in Boston. His guys showed up with the bomb the day after. We went together and rented the storage locker.”

“When were you supposed to leave the bomb?”

“He said he would e-mail me. He created an e-mail account for me. I was supposed to check it every day,” Roble said.

“We’re going to need that account. Did you ever get an e-mail?” Gallagher asked.

“Not yet.”

“All right, Roble. This has been good and I will do all that I can to make sure they don’t hurt you, but what else can you tell me now, something valuable that I can use to get you a break,” Gallagher said. “You know what’s valuable.”

Roble thought. “He said it was important that I not go early or late because it had to go off simultaneous. Yeah, that was the word, simultaneous. He said before the end of the year, the Christian calendar, he called it.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t let them torture you. It won’t happen.”

Gallagher stood and walked out of the room. Four other FBI men came in. Gallagher knew they would fly Roble Adam to Virginia, where the Special Interagency Interrogation Team awaited. He also knew that torture had stopped years earlier when the President took office.

“No more hijacking drones,” Yuri asserted as soon as Ghazi entered the room. “We lost two of our guys on that plane. I worked with one of them, Ivan, for twelve years. We lived together for almost three years before he got married.”

“I’m sorry. Guys who worked with us a lot were the pilot and copilot. They died, too,” Ghazi answered. “But people die in this business. It’s not all sitting behind a computer for most of us. There’s risk. Did you figure out what happened?”

“What happened is that they had another command frequency to talk to the bird. One we didn’t know about,” Yuri said, walking back to his bank of desktop and laptop computers. “And, obviously, they had an air-to-air missile on the bird. Something we also had not seen before.”

“All right. Forget about hijacking drones. We did it once. We got the publicity. Made them look like they couldn’t control their own robots,” Ghazi said. “Now let’s worry about our Attack Day. We need to make sure everything will work.”

“Our stuff will all work,” Yuri said. “The guys who are attacking the older subways, that’s your problem. When is A-Day?”

“It’s coming,” Ghazi replied. “And our drones? Remember, the drones are part of A-Day, too.”

“They’ll work fine.”

“I may want to do a preliminary operation with one of them to see how much damage we get with one. When can you have one ready?” Ghazi asked.

“Give me a couple of days,” the Ukrainian replied.