Figuring out where the arsonist had gotten the recipe wasn't easy — between sorting through World Trade Center Conspiracy Nut Jobs who claim that military grade thermite was used to knock down the towers on 9/11, and the stupid teenage boys videotaping themselves burning up things and posting them on the web site, he wasn't having much luck.
That it wasn't apparent where the arsonist obtained the information was, in itself, a clue. They were dealing with a smart crook.
Looking for similar crimes didn't yield anything either. This stuff could be used to burn the locks off safes and doors, and any number of things that a clever criminal could use it for.
Yes, thermite had been used in crimes, and even stolen military Thermate-TH3 grenades, but none in this manner.
He expanded his search to anything involving murder, fire and cars. The computer spent a while chewing on it. Then it popped out a long list of crimes. He reorganized the list based on the most recent being first.
What the hell was going on in Denver? There had been an attempted car bombing, another one that had succeeded and then someone cooked in their car.
The FBI/police liaison officer in Denver was out to lunch so he left a message in the voicemail. Maybe he would hear from the guy today. Glancing down at his watch, he saw that it was that time and his stomach grumbled — breakfast had been a while ago.
The Albuquerque FBI office was pretty much off on a road of its own and literally across the street from an empty field, so there were no restaurants close to the building. Rather than taking a chance with the awful food in the vending machines in the basement, he reached in his drawer and pulled out his lunch. Biting into his warm ham and cheese sandwich, he contemplated the evidence he had accumulated.
The lab rats were still working on finding the identity of the victim. Even if they had dental records of missing people, it wouldn't do much good because the arsonist had melted the teeth out of the victim. Same thing for the fingerprints. Nothing was found in the car. He was waiting for results of the DNA analysis — they had extracted some from the marrow of a femur.
He didn't hold out much hope for that. There were over twenty thousand samples of DNA waiting to be processed in the state of California alone associated with criminals.
Seeing that he didn't have much else to do, he called the lab.
The tech who answered the phone spent a few minutes tracking down the information. Yes, they all were short handed, overworked and definitely underpaid for the job they had to do.
Eventually, the tech came back on the line and said, “They have a hit on the Military DNA Database. A guy by the name of Brent Foster.”
He wrote down the particulars on the victim. He first checked the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database. Sometimes it ran slow, sometimes glacially slow, and without having much more than a name, it could take a while. While it ran, he went and got a Diet Coke from the pop machine. Cracking it open, he took a sip as he chewed on his sandwich. He was able to finish his first sandwich and was halfway through his second when the information popped up.
Whoever had killed Mr. Foster had done the world a service. He was a “person of interest” in half a dozen contract style killings, and suspected of being part of a larger organization that murdered people for very large sums of money.
He opened another window and accessed the Sentinel case management system. It was due to be replaced, and/or upgraded again, soon, but was a great deal better than the old IBM terminal based ACS — Automated Case System — in which it took the navigation of over thirty pages to be able to input one page of information.
Shuddering to think of how much the Sentinel system cost and how much it would be to replace it again, to maybe bring it up to the year 2000 in technology, much less anything better than that, he typed in the particulars about the assassination organization. He wasn't looking for solid details as much, but more likely the contact information of someone he could call or e-mail and find out information on the group. Yes, it was almost like wasting time, following links, but when he closed this, he wanted everything lined up and ready to go for prosecution. While his case closure rate wasn't the same as many of the other investigators, he almost always got convictions.
As he paged through the rather incomplete information, he didn't learn much more than he already knew. The organization worked mostly internationally, and while they did charge a great deal of money, they had a very good success rate. It appeared as though, if you were targeted, it would be best to make your peace with your higher power because you were as good as dead.
At the bottom of the file, he found that further inquiries were to be directed to the CIA. He sighed. Dealing with the CIA, even before 9/11, was difficult and now was even more like having to drive dirty pins into your eyes. Robert Hanssen, God rot his twisted, greedy soul, made the already paranoid agency even more so. As a result of Hanssen's spying for Russian and Soviet intelligence agencies, the CIA wouldn't tell you the time of day without it being triple checked, audited, analyzed and weighed against any possible repercussions.
There was a way around that, as he liked to say, “It wasn't who you knew, but what you knew on who you knew that got things done.”
He dropped a quick e-mail to a friend in the DC field office. Maybe they had something more than appeared in Sentinel. The vast majority of information the FBI accumulated was still kept on paper somewhere, not accessible by any computer.
His phone rang and he answered it. It was the FBI/police liaison officer in Denver. He quickly explained the nature of his inquiry. As usual, Denver PD was overwhelmed with the usual crimes, murder and mayhem so all he could was illicit was that someone would forward the case files to him as soon as they could.
The only thing that he had left to do was put in a request for Brent Foster's military records. He filled out the necessary information, hoping that it would come back to him before he retired.
Then his pager went off. The Ronald Reagan Bandits had hit another bank. Shit. He grabbed his gun out of his drawer and clipped to his belt as he ran out of the door, his half-eaten sandwich still sitting on his desk.
Tyrannicide was starting to meet its goals. In a few days, more targets would be assigned, and then it would release its communique and start the next phase of the project. It had already constructed a list of new targets and was, using an adaptive neuronet subroutine, assigning them to resources to be eliminated.
Funding was accumulating and would soon be at the threshold required for the next phase. More and more credit card machines had upgraded their software and were now sending thousands of dollars an hour into various accounts a fraction of a cent at a time. This money was moved around electronically and mimicked the transactions of usual electronic commerce. Tripwires had been set up so that if anyone took a close look at any of the accounts, the money would be moved out microseconds later and disappear overseas. It would then be moved back into other operational accounts in smaller chunks.
Everything wasn't completely going to plan though. One of the targets on the initial list was still alive — Jackie Winn. Leo Marston had disappeared, but the person assigned to either recruit or kill him — Brett Foster — had recently used a credit card to rent a hotel room in Denver. An inquiry into the military databases, the FBI's Sentinel system and NCIC had been placed by the Albuquerque FBI field office. This was a data set that didn't have any possible programmed routines. Tyrannicide made the decision to gather more information before proceeding with Foster — but it was highly probable that if he was still alive, he would need to be eliminated.