A crane lifted a mangled motorized luggage conveyor belt, which had been blown into the corner of the ramp area, up against the terminal building wall. He moved cautiously over to the other agents supervising the recovery.
“What do we have, Ned?” he said loudly to overcome his helmet’s muffling effect.
“We found another body. Looks like ground crew. Could be the belt operator.” Joey bent down. The piece of equipment had shielded her upper body from the fire; the lower half, which was not behind the machine, was gone. Action, he thought, to steady himself as he blocked out the human horror he now probed. “What’s this?” He waited for the click of the crime scene camera, recording the position of each element before investigators touched it, then moved her hairless head with his gloved hand, revealing a hole in the right side.
“Look at the thorax, more punctures,” Ned said.
Joey called for the forensic pathologist who was piecing together a human remains jigsaw puzzle twenty feet from him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“What kind of drugs were you on?” the fuming chief of staff said.
Hiccock avoided the burning stare by taking in the objects on Reynolds’s credenza. There on a wooden pedestal was a baseball autographed by Carl Yastrzemski. “Thirty years ago she predicted exactly what’s happening now.”
“Aw come on, Bill. The woman wrote an anti-technology thesis when the cutting edge of technology was a five-tube table radio … and the Navy canned her ass.”
“The Navy was attempting to secure congressional funding for new ASROC shipboard computers. They didn’t want the doves in Congress using the Admiral’s writing to sink their programs.” He jutted his chin out toward the prized baseball. “Did you ever meet him?”
Reynolds turned his head to see what Bill was talking about. “You mean Yaz? Sure.”
“My father took me to see him when he played against the Yankees.”
“Don’t change the subject, Hiccock.” The telephone rang, and, picking up the receiver, Reynolds listened for a second, then relinquished it to Hiccock.
“Joey? No shit! Are all the forensics in? Can you fax that to me? Okay, as soon as you know. Thanks, buddy.” He hung up.
“Forensics? I guess that means the fuel truck did have a static strap,” Reynolds said wryly. “Is this new event something tied into your investigation?”
“There are two troublesome issues that could point it our way. One, the forensic team thinks they have extracted grenade fragments from the bodies of a guard and baggage handler. Two, the plane had a handful of top computer scientists from Santa Clara onboard.”
“Major brain drain for Silicon Valley.” Reynolds got up and grabbed the ball, rotating it like a pitcher, feeling for the seams behind his back. “Somehow computers are playing heavy into this. I have to admit your theory seems more on the money every day.”
Hiccock was impressed. The man just came as close to contrition as a hooker gets to fashion and he never even flinched. I guess that’s why he’s the second most powerful man in the White House.
“Yaz was past his prime when I saw him, but my dad said it didn’t matter, ’cause the basics stay the same. That’s why I need people like Admiral Parks on my team. She practically wrote the basics.”
“Just be right about her.” Reynolds tossed and caught the ball with a snap and replaced it on its pedestal. “Oh, Justice called. They sprung that hacker you wanted out of Elmira and have him over at the FBI ECL. Don’t you know any normal people?”
Chivalry and honor having been relegated mostly to the legends of the Knights of the Round Table or the Japanese samurai warriors, anyone would be hard-pressed to argue those values were alive and well today. The exception was in the underground network of cop-to-cop favors. Dennis especially believed this to be so after his phone call from Brooke Burrell, an FBI agent stationed in New York. She would become his contact into the Fed’s lab results and any further threats the bureau received that could affect his new job. He knew that he now owed Jack big-time. This old buddy of his had tapped a favor from the FBI, and that, to him, was a debt of honor.
The FBI lab results cross-correlated the letter to Taggert with ones received by a few high-tech companies throughout the New York area, seven on Long Island, four in New York, three in New Jersey. Although they didn’t have the name of the writer yet, they had deciphered a pattern. That news gave Dennis a little comfort in their numbers. It meant his protectee, Miles Taggert, was one of fourteen. In those numbers there was a little security. He asked Brooke if he could be alerted if any moves were made on any of the other thirteen.
She repeated the wishes of her boss, “‘Whatever he wants,’ he said.” She did not have to add so long as it doesn’t violate agency or federal guidelines. It was enough for Dennis to know that his juice, and that of Jack and whomever else he had tapped, was still fresh and had some kick left in it.
Hiccock arrived at the FBI electronics lab and immediately spotted and approached a longhaired, geeky-looking guy. “You must be Vincent DeMayo.”
“No, I am Special Agent Foster. I think you are looking for him.” He pointed in the direction of Brooklyn, New York, or so it seemed to Hiccock, as he followed the finger to a man who could’ve been right out of the mob movie Goodfellas. Black shirt, black tie, black, black, black. He was thirty-something and, obviously, still cocky after three years in Club Fed. He was seated in front of Krummel’s computer.
“Vincent DeMayo?”
“The name’s Kronos, man. It’s my online persona. Kronos, the keeper of time.” He made a clockwise motion with his right index finger as if he were tracing the second hand of his watch.
“William Hiccock. I am your bailee, the one keeping you from doing time.” Hiccock made a counterclockwise motion around his watch. For an instant, Hiccock thought he might have made a mistake pulling the strings with the president to get this mob-nerd freed from prison. But his research showed Vinny DeMayo had beat the best encryption software and blasted through firewalls guaranteed impenetrable by the world’s largest banks and governments, all in the name of organized crime. Hiccock was counting on the fact that all a computer whiz like “Kronos” cared about was cracking code — the bigger the better — and using cool equipment. Hiccock’s mob, the U.S. government, could probably lure him with bigger machines and harder codes to crack than that other mob.
Their eyes locked in a kind of macho stare down. After a few seconds, Hiccock nodded toward the computer. “Anything unusual?”
“There are no obvious hack or chop marks in any of this freakin’ code.”
“What about the not-too-obvious?”
“That is my specialty. And I don’t see anything at my level of genius in this pile of crap here either.”
“Modesty becomes you.”
“Mr. Hiccock,” Hansen said, interrupting, “I think this is something you’ll want to see.”
Hiccock and Kronos followed him into another room that contained the equipment Hiccock had purchased at the auction. Somehow, the equipment, older than the FBI techs themselves, was working, albeit with wires and cords everywhere. Duct tape and wire ties seemed to be holding it all together.
“Whoa!” Kronos said, “look at all this crap.”
“Crap is a relative word. You can’t use a computer to find out what’s happening inside a computer if you don’t know what you are looking for. This old collection of analog equipment works on the output, not the insides.”