The focus point shifted to a monitor in the middle of the array, a young woman of Middle Eastern appearance interviewing a cabbie on the streets of New York.
“Miss, what’s to say? It’s open season on the one percent. It’s bombs and guns in New York. All the VIPs are disappearing or going nuts in Congress. You know what I think? I think it’s the antichrist. I think it’s the goddamned end of the fucking world. First we’re gonna eat each other and everything’s gonna fall apart. Then all those angels with fire and lightning are gonna come down and fry us. You know what I’m gonna do tonight? I’m gonna go to church. I’m gonna light some goddamned candles and pray my ass off that God’s got a place for me in heaven.”
The man rolled up his window and the cab sped off. The reporter turned to the camera, her face troubled, her words stuttered.
“This is Maryam Tavazoie, Al Jazeera America, in New York.”
All the monitors went dark and the figure in the chair brooded in silence for several moments. From the faint afterglow of the screens, a weak line reflected off a hard surface.
A toothless smirk.
14
Angel Lightfoote poked her head around the doorframe. “John, the kids — they’re not all right.”
Savas sat behind his desk and held up his index finger with one hand and cradled the landline receiver in the other. The digits of his free hand also tapped onto a cell phone as he texted.
“Right. Ronald, look, I have to go. Thanks for the report and I’ll share it with the group.” He hung up the phone.
“Forensics?”
Savas nodded. “Yes. Residues found at the car and boat bombings match. Synthetics. Nothing special that we can trace.”
She nodded, the fluorescent lighting reflecting brightly off her scalp. “Come with me. We need to talk.”
Five minutes later they were exiting an elevator and stepping onto the basement floor. Savas smiled as he looked around the maze of monitors and racks of computers.
"Love what you're doing with the place, Angel. Looks more and more like the Bat Cave."
Lightfoote gestured toward several rows of servers. "That's the Hernandez pile, all Manuel's machines that can still keep up. Most of the connections to law enforcement and other agencies — not to mention the satellite uplinks — are now ported to the Great Wall." Her hand swept toward a much large bank of computers racked in metallic girders, floor to ceiling.
"Glad to see the money's well spent."
Lightfoote shook her head. "Everything's been augmented, enhanced. More aggressive than the old crises center. Militarized. It’s cyberwarfare out there now." Lightfoote sat at a long table with several monitors. “We’ve been stalking both of Senator Moss’ girls. One is at UCSF, the other Georgetown.”
He sat down next to her, watching windows displaying two young women’s faces. Video footage streamed and maps and other surveillance software recorded locations and other information. “So there’s a problem, or I wouldn’t be down here. Disappearance?”
“No, it’s a lot more subtle. The women are fine. So far. No sign of anything on their social media, personal emails, or phone conversations. We correlated their routines to video surveillance footage over the last few months. Nothing to indicate that they are functioning under duress.” She turned toward Savas and winked, the piercings running across her face inches from him. “But we’re playing with some inside information.”
She cleared the active windows and opened several CCTV montages displaying footage from numerous cameras. There seemed little relationship between the locations, angles, or time the video was captured. Lightfoote stared at one intensely and then hit a key, freezing the playback.
“There. See, that’s Anna Moss, right there, backpack, pony tail. She usually takes this route on Wednesdays. This is footage from two weeks ago. Look there,” she indicated on the screen.
Savas squinted. A dark blur was above and behind the student, but he could not make out what it was. “What is it?”
She stared at him with her eyes angled upward, nearly rolling them. “Watch.” Frame by frame, she advanced the footage. The Moss daughter moved jerkily as if caught by a strobe light, pedestrians and cars around her as well.
And so did the blur. Savas felt his pulse quicken. “It’s tracking her,” he whispered. “It’s a drone.”
Lightfoote smiled. “He can be taught! Watch closely. It shadows her up the street and then, there, lifts off into the air and is gone. We’ve got hundreds of hours of footage of the sisters. That let us catch the drones in ten or fifteen events. No doubts, John. We’ve tried to use image enhancement, but didn’t get much. We’re also taking known drone models and creating cross-sections at different angles and using image recognition software to score similarity. But whatever the models, these women are being stalked. By drones.”
“That’s it, then,” he said. “Imagine the kinds of photos you could get with these things. The kind of photos that when sent to a parent with the right note attached would petrify them.”
Lightfoote nodded. “And you don’t even have to put organic assets in play or touch the ground around the targets.”
“Wouldn’t someone notice these things?”
“Probably, but what would they think? There are kids’ toys as big as some of these, and in several states law enforcement groups are beginning to use drones. And whoever is behind this isn’t stupid. They don’t hang around long. So, somebody sees one? Then what? Before they can do much it’s gone. Not much to report without sounding like a UFO nut.”
“No wonder she jumped when I asked about drones. She’s a smart woman. She would have connected the bombing and these drones shadowing her daughters. And it’s almost a certainty that Craig from Goldman was calling her about her vote flip-flops. If it hadn’t been for the other CEO murders and kidnappings, I might have thought he was killed for that.”
He stood up and placed his hands on his hips. “That’s great work, Angel. You’ve linked the killing to the threats on Congress. With the meltdown there yesterday, it looks like she was the canary in the coal mine. We can use this to pressure the rest, make them open up about the blackmail.”
“You’d think that the victims would have noticed their peers’ behavior. Teamed up. Gotten some crowd bravery and brought the blackmail to the attention of someone by now.”
Savas nodded. “Maybe. But it just happened. They probably thought they were the only ones, working in a panic, tunnel visioned and focused on whatever personal nightmare was threatening to consume their life.”
Lightfoote stood up as well, continuing to stare at the blurry drone images on her monitors. “Drones of all sizes exist. Some able to handle large payloads. Some able to be mounted with weapons. And they’re invisible to radar. They could fly right up to the president with a bar of Semtex strapped to them. Or pop over to the Indian Point nuclear plant. They can go anywhere, John. They can photograph people’s bedroom windows, follow their kids, spy on the routes of world leaders. I’d be worried if I were you.”
A chill ran through him. “I am, Angel. I think we need to find out who is making drones in this country, what they’re making, and who the hell they are selling them to. Look for patterns in purchase and shipment. Anything.”