Arrest Record, Part 14 By Jacksantoro1@yahoo.com
The others had left, but Ed had asked Barton to stay behind, as he wanted to clear up a few details that might be important in the future. Harold and I lounged on the couch while Ed and Barton occupied armchairs.
"About these cell phones that can't be traced," Ed began. "Can't we single out terrorist conversations, anyway? Then we get an idea of the area where they're operating. I know that a few years ago the NSA (National Security Agency) developed a super-computer that can scan millions of telephone conversations and pick out key works such as bomb, gas, WMDs, explosive, and the like."
"That technology still exists, and in fact NSA has improved on it. Now they can monitor and scan billions of telephone calls and do it in several languages. Unfortunately, we're getting less material these days because the countermeasure is childishly simple. The terrorists copied what organized crime did decades ago when they realized that the FBI was tapping their telephones. They use code words. Instead of using the word bomb' they'll say package.' Instead of saying terrorist cell' they'll say study group' instead. These are a couple of the substitutions we've learned that they use, and you can see how this makes the task immeasurably harder."
"Yes, the possibilities are endless," Harold mused. "They can say theater' instead of target' and make it sound like an entirely innocent conversation. You'd need a human being to listen to millions and millions of phone calls containing these words, trying to figure out their real meanings from the context."
"Yes," Barton conceded. "As you can see, I wasn't exaggerating the difficulties. Rather, I was understating them." Barton's candid and scholarly manner was very appealing, and even a few minutes after meeting him we were chatting like old friends.
"I can see why we're going to be more dependent than before on people such as Ted and Paul," I offered.
"Yes, they have special skills that can develop information we can't obtain any other way," replied Barton.
"Ted seems like such a nice guy," Harold said. "I can't understand how he can torture people."
"I've known Ted for years," Barton explained. "He actually is a very decent and even compassionate man." As Barton said this, I remembered that Ted was the one who had given the homeless man a slice of our pizza. "He sees what he does as necessary to prevent a greater evil. To his way of thinking, and mine, he takes lives of the guilty to save even more innocent lives. I don't know if he told you but he lost his wife during the September 11 attack."
"No, he hadn't told us, but we'd figured it had to be something like that," Ed said. "All members of the task force lost somebody."
"It worse than that," Barton continued. "Ted's wife was pregnant." I saw tears in his eyes as he said this.
"We-didn't-know," Ed choked out. I averted my eyes.
"In any event," Barton added, "Ted doesn't do much torture. He can get a lot out of them with drugs these days. There are mind-altering drugs for this purpose. I don't know the specifics but some drugs are very effective in making unwilling subjects disclose information."
"I'd read that administering a paralytic agent, such as synthetic curare, can stop a person's breathing for a couple of minutes and absolutely terrify them," Harold contributed. "They'll talk to avoid going through that again."
"That might be," Barton admitted. "As I'd said, I don't know the specifics. Ted and I never discussed this."
"Well, I hope you can keep us up to date about what you get from the local taps," Ed told him.
"I've got something that will be instrumental in keeping you informed," Barton said as he reached into his rather large briefcase. Extracting a flat black box about a foot square he continued: "This is a satellite phone that can also receive e-mails. It works a bit like a laptop, in that it displays messages on an LCD screen. I'll keep in touch with that device while you're on the road." With that he got up to leave. We said our goodbyes and he walked out.
"Well, let's get showered and changed," Ed said. We undressed and I noticed that Harold had a condom on his penis. I was glad of this. After last night's demonstration of his increased sensitivity he was enthusiastic about wearing the condom 24/7.
On the road Harold sat in back, studying the manual on the operation of our new satellite phone/e-mail device. He powered up the phone and keyed in a few functions.
"Okay, here's what we've got so far," he said after reading several screens. "Barton's people have installed two more taps to land-lines, based on intercepted calls. They also picked up a couple more calls to the untraceable cell phones, but can't tap those. So far they've identified three people they're sure belong to the local terrorist cell, and two more possibles. Judging from the context of the conversations, they think there's going to be a coordinated attack in one week." That seemed consistent with what we knew, that Amir was to complete his deliveries within five days. Harold passed me a wire ending in a plug that fit into the cigarette lighter.
"Can you plug that in so that we can keep this thing charged?" he asked. I nodded and inserted the plug into the socket on the dashboard. Nothing much happened until we arrived in Pontiac, where we checked into a hotel. We arranged ourselves in the usual pattern, Adams and Spicer with Amir, Ted and Paul down the hall, and Harold, Ed, and me next door to Amir's room. Six agents from the Detroit office took rooms on the floor below. Our judgment was that the canister Amir was to deliver the next day would be employed in Detroit or the vicinity.
Our room was crowded, as all of us including the local agents had gathered for a quick conference. Ed led the briefing:
"Look, we've had our share of surprises during this operation, so I can't tell you specifically how it's going to come down tomorrow. It might even come down this afternoon. We'll have to be ready for anything, including a rotating mobile surveillance if the delivery takes place on the street. We'll keep in close touch and be ready to react quickly as it develops." With that, the others left. We stripped down and showered, and I noted that Harold removed the condom before getting into the shower and how diligently he put it back on after drying himself. We dressed again, as Ed had suggested we might have to be ready to move that evening, but by ten, when nothing at all had happened and Amir had gone to bed, we decided to call it a night. If Amir's contact called him, he would delay the meeting as much as possible by telling him that he'd been sleeping and had to get dressed. This would give the rest of us time to get ready. Harold turned on the satellite phone and was soon summarizing the latest news from Barton's people: "There was one phone call to a land-line in Detroit. The caller said that the laundry would be ready for pick-up at the Vagabond Cleaners store tomorrow. This is the Vagabond Hotel. The Detroit office has agents staking out the location right now. They'll follow the contact when he comes here." Harold got on the radio and relayed the information to the other agents. "Well, it looks like it's set for tomorrow," Ed concluded. He turned to Harold. "How would you like to do Princeton tonight? That way, you can stroke each of us off." "You know how I love to handle a cock with skin on it," Harold replied with a broad smile." We quickly undressed and took our places on one of the beds. Harold took off the condom with the open end and I lubed him with Astroglide and rolled a regular one onto his prick. He'd hardened under my touch and was very ready. I was not quite hard yet. He grasped my prick at the base and his tongue flicked out, licking at the end of my foreskin's nipple. The light delicate touch around the orifice, where the outer skin meets the inner lining, was very exciting. I sighed in delight as Harold continued the light, teasing touch around the tender nerve endings with his warm tongue. Now I felt the tip of his tongue insinuating itself into the nozzle at the end, probing for my weeping teardrop slit. My helmet was swollen and the meatus already pouting when his tongue touched it and began drilling into it, making me cry out suddenly. He worked his tongue inside my fleshy hood, producing a delicious stretchy feeling in my foreskin's nerve endings. This heightened my arousal. "Okay, let's do it," he said as he lifted his head. I lay on my left side and lifted my leg, and felt his prick slide between my thighs. Ed placed a folded towel under my prick, which Harold was now squeezing rhythmically. Harold lovingly stroked my long foreskin as it filled with my erection. I felt him thrusting between my thighs, the blunt end of his prick nudging my scrotum with each forward lunge. All three of us were keyed up from the anticipation of our mission and the long periods of inactivity, because the waiting had set our nerves on edge. Because of this tension, I felt that we'd be having our orgasms more quickly than usual. I saw that Ed was rock-hard, although neither Harold nor I had touched him. However, he'd been watching the action, and I was sure enjoying what Harold had been doing to me vicariously. He'd been working himself up just by rolling the nipple of his foreskin between thumb and index finger, and now the bulge of his helmet filled the end of his fleshy tube. The outline of his flaring corona was clearly visible through the tightly stretched foreskin, and the pucker at the end was wet and dripping. Harold worked my foreskin up and down my helmet in long tight strokes, inflaming the nerve endings to match his rapid thrusting. I didn't counsel him to slow down, as we both needed relief from the nervous tension. I think Ed understood this as well, because I saw him holding a small cigar shaped vibrator in his left hand. "In a few seconds I'm going to hit the underside of Harold's cock with this," he said. "You look like you're really close, from the way your tip's so dark." He was right. My helmet felt really congested, full of blood, and I knew the rim was flaring out because of the way my foreskin felt as it rode over the swollen ridge. I knew Harold was close to the brink from his rapid breathing. Now his strong fingers gave my supple hood a twist each time he snapped it over my thick rim, and I felt an intense tickle begin in my corona. My breathing was shallow and rapid like Harold's, and as my eyes closed I saw Ed's hand bringing the vibrator down to slip under Harold's thrusting penis. I heard Harold yelp as the hot buzzing filled his glans with sensation and his fingers tightened on my straining prick, starting the hot tingle that would trigger my climax. I cried out as a hot spark shot down my shaft to the root, and a hard contraction deep inside sent me into ecstasy. Hot sperm boiled out of my prick as I moaned helplessly, and I felt Harold's hard thrusting prick throbbing against my perineum as he shot his load into the enveloping condom. Harold and I grunted in unison as our bodies strained against each other. His body slammed against mine with every thrust, heightening my sensations as I discharged my fluids. Now Harold's grunts took on a higher pitch as the intense buzzing of Ed's vibrator continued to fill his hot thrusting glans with sensation. We both strained with the frenzy of our orgasms, until we were drained. I slowly recovered from my daze, but Harold was still in the depths of his afterglow as I opened my eyes. Ed was still sitting in front of me, slowly stroking his foreskin and occasionally touching the vibrator to the puckered tip of his nipple. I knew he needed relief, and I pulled myself away from Harold and took the vibrator from Ed's hand. As I grasped Ed's prick around the middle of the shaft to stroke his hood over the head, he picked up the towel and wiped my prick, milking it t squeeze out the last drops. Now I worked his foreskin in slight strokes, placing my mouth near the end of his prick, inhaling the delicious fragrance of his foreskin. Each time I pulled his hood back far enough to uncover his long slit, I touched my tongue to it. I also pressed the vibrator against his hot spot, under his glans. I saw that Ed's scrotum was drawn up tightly against his body, signaling that he was close to climax. I drew the foreskin back to his rim and saw that his helmet had turned the characteristic dark purple that precedes the explosion. My tongue tasted the thick clear honey that flowed from his long slit, and I drilled my tongue-tip inside it to search for more, stretching the lips and making him gasp. His glans felt rock-hard against my tongue. Now Harold had revived and moved next to Ed, his fingers between Ed's thighs, tickling the hairs sprouting from the tight scrotum. Ed's breathing was rapid, and he began to grunt each time I pumped his foreskin, making it ride over the swollen corona. I knew he'd be discharging joyfully within seconds, and I pressed the vibrator harder into the triangular groove under his swollen helmet as his legs began to tremble. Ed's sharp yelp pierced the air as his prick throbbed between my tightly encircling fingers, and a heavy torrent of cream shot from his gaping slit into my waiting mouth. I swallowed hard, just in time to receive another hard jet of juice from his throbbing glans. I pulled his foreskin back hard to bare the entire helmet down to the rim, running the vibrator under the eaves as my lips closed over his ront dome. Ed's cried of joyful agony filled the air as his chlorine scented sperm poured into my mouth. I felt each throb in my fingers as well as in my lips. I relished the beauty of his orgasm as I continued to swallow his semen, but no I backed off because his helmet was becoming too sensitive. His throbs continued, but his jets were weaker. Finally his orgasm subsided and Ed became utterly inert, exhausted by his biological storm. It was 11 P.M. and we were more than ready for sleep. I quickly milked the last drops from Ed's prick while Harold threw his cream-filled condom into the toilet and applied the one he'd removed before, to keep his circumcised glans protected and moist. We then gathered in each other's arms and went to sleep.
We were up at six the following morning, still groggy from sleep, but room service delivered an ample supply of coffee and the usual extra breakfasts, which I brought to Amir's room as soon as the waiter had disappeared. Even though I was pretty sure that the waiter was not part of the terror network, we were not relaxing our precautions.
We were showered and dressed by seven, and now we waited. Harold checked the satellite phone, and gave us the news that the surveillance team had reported that the person at the suspect number in Detroit had appeared, leaving his apartment at eight and proceeding to make a phone call from a public phone. A moment later the radio buzzed and Spicer told us that Amir had received a call from his contact. The contact would be at his door at ten. Ted, Paul, and the other agents quickly gathered in our room for a conference.
"I think we ought to revise our tactics," Ed began. "This time, let's wait until the contact is actually walking out the door with the canister. That way we won't risk taking down an innocent person." Ted saw the wisdom in that:
"Yeah, the hotel manager would have no reason to pick up the canister and walk out with it. At least we won't be making that stupid mistake again."
"There's no risk in letting him get his hands on the canister," Paul contributed. "We all know it's a dummy, anyway." As we all seemed to agree the others dispersed back to their rooms.
A couple of minutes past ten we heard a knock on the door of the room next door, where Amir was staying. I picked up the radio, buzzed the others on the net, and said:
"Showtime." Then we went quietly out the door. Ted and Paul were approaching from the other end of the hall, and we took our places beside the door. I knew that the other agents were standing guard inside the staircase and by the elevator.
The door opened and a short stocky man walked out with the canister in his hand, throwing a comment in Arabic over his shoulder. Ed and I were on him instantly, and had him on the floor before he could react. We handcuffed him and Ted slipped a syringe into the vein on the back of his left hand. The man went limp, and we knew he was heavily sedated.
"I guess we can take him into custody," Ted said. "He seemed to be operating alone. They won't miss him for a few days." This was wishful thinking, I thought. I personally did not know that he had no arrangement to report the pickup of the canister. We'd simply made that assumption throughout the investigation, until the incident in Chicago, when we'd discovered that more than one person was involved in picking up the canister from Amir.
Ted and Paul walked the man to the stairwell. The plan was to take him downstairs and out a back exit to a car, provided by the local agents. Their executive jet was waiting at the local airport, and the interrogation would begin as soon as the man was strapped down in the plane.
We went back to our room, where I expressed my concerns to Ed and Harold:
"I'd hate to see us blow this investigation because we didn't allow for the possibility that the contacts would have a backup or have to report the pick-ups. All we need is one slip and the network will be alerted."
"Remember our ace in the hole, Jack," Ed countered. "All the canisters are dummies, so they can't do anything with them. In any case, the only one we let out of our hands is the dummy with the GPS tracker inside."
"Yes," Harold said. "Think of what Barton told us. That's really scary. There might be a hundred sleepers out there that we don't know about." I knew what Harold meant. A "sleeper" was an agent who posed as a student or other member of the community, making no overt move until someone from the terrorist organization contacted him with orders. Sleepers could stay in place for years, remaining totally undetected. They could be anybody; students, janitors, businessmen, blending in with other people so as to be totally undetectable.
"That's true," Ed replied patiently. He understood that Harold wasn't being confrontational, but merely voicing the concerns that were evident to all of us. "Those terrorists have known for years that we had the ability to monitor some of their communication. The NSA has been listening in to their cell phone and satellite phone communications for years. That's why they don't use electronic communication at the highest levels, even in Afghanistan. They use couriers, a low-tech method that's invulnerable to electronic interception."
"Well, now it seems that they've discovered another method of electronic communication that's maybe not totally invulnerable, but almost impossible for us to detect, with those throw-away cell phones," I pointed out.
"Not much worse off," Ed said, answering my question. He went on: "We've been pretty successful so far, given the global picture. Although we've assumed after September 11 that another mass attack was just a matter of time, we've managed to prevent it so far."
"Yeah, we've all known that it wasn't a question of if, but when," I echoed dejectedly.
"That's right, and it puts us in a bad situation," Ed said. "Implicitly, the terrorists can make mistake after mistake, and still be successful in the end. We have to slip up only once."
"That's scary," Harold added. "One slip and thousands or millions could die."
"Yeah, that's what we face," I said. "Good thing we've got people like Ted and Paul on our side."
"That's why I have no problem with what they do," said Ed. "In principle the idea of torturing and killing prisoners is awful, but I always remember that the people they handle are not shoplifters and burglars. They're people who are prepared to kill millions, and perfectly willing to give up their lives in the attempt." At that point the portable radio buzzed and Harold answered. He listened for a couple of minutes and then rang off.
"Ted's on his way back here," Harold summed up. "He's got important news." An hour later Ted arrived and without preamble, began speaking:
"This guy's name is Moammar and he spilled his guts. We didn't have to put any pressure on him. The most important thing he said was that he doesn't have any backup here, and doesn't have to report in that he got the canister. That's one important worry out of the way."
"Why did he open up so fast?" Ed interrupted.
"Because he's scared shitless," Ted answered. "He said he volunteered to be a martyr because he thought they'll kill him if he refused. He accepted their standard offer, that if he died a martyr his family would receive fifty thousand dollars. That's the same deal Amir told us about. Now Moammar has a mother still alive and three sisters, and they're living in a hellhole refugee camp in Palestine. Without money there's no way they'll ever get out. That's the motivation the terrorists accepted. But the real reason was that he was afraid for his life."
"So not all these terrorists do it out of idealism," concluded Harold.
"Shit no!" Ted agreed. "In some ways the terrorists are like the mob. Behind the religious trappings they rule with fear and intimidation. Anyway, there's a third reason. Moammar was a dead-end kid in Palestine. He would have been that way the rest of his life, living in a tent, no running water, lousy food, and all that. Volunteering was his ticket out of that, and a way to bring his mother and three sisters out of it too. Meanwhile, he'd be living in comfort in America. I guess I'd have to say relative comfort. He was attending college, and he was getting a stipend of five hundred dollars a week, and the cover story was that the money was coming from a rich relative. Five hundred doesn't buy you a life of luxury, but it's a hell of a lot better than living in a vermin infested refugee camp."
"So what else happened?" I asked. Ted's account was riveting, and we all wanted to hear more.
"Well, he was living here, under deep cover, and enjoying life. He didn't have to do anything but attend school, and didn't even have to get a certain grade level. Nobody bothered him, and he began to get used to the easy life. This lasted for three years. Then the call came. Suddenly, he knew that the good life was almost over. His assignment was to pick up the canister and wait for further orders. They'd told him that when he got the order, he was to go to Metropolitan Airport, go no farther than outside the security zone, and shoot the contents of the canister into the air conditioner return grill. He'd be able to get a good blast into the air conditioner before anybody would be able to stop him. Even if a cop was nearby, he'd be able to release enough to infect the entire building before getting shot. If he got shot dead, he'd be instant martyr. If somehow nobody noticed, he'd be infected himself, and would be a martyr a couple of weeks later."
"So when he found out that D-Day was close, he really got scared?" Ed prompted.
"Exactly," Ted confirmed. "I really don't know if he would have gone through with it if we hadn't caught him. He told us he was thinking of running, but he also knew that the organization would spare no effort to track him down if he betrayed them. He was screwed in the end, whatever he did." Ted paused.
"Anything else?" I asked.
"Yes, there is," Ted said. "It's no surprise. It's not really anything we couldn't have figured out. He said that they'd told him that the virus was designed to have an incubation period of a week. That way, shooting it in an airport would infect people who would be literally all over the country even before anyone knew that they'd been infected. This was an essential characteristic. We wouldn't know we'd been hit until it was too late to do anything about it. Multiply that by about a dozen targets and the effect would be horrendous."
"Yes, I can see that," Harold said. He was very quick on the uptake. "If it had been a chemical agent or a fast-acting infectious agent, the damage might have been limited. We might have had a chance of setting up quarantine. With a week's incubation, it would be beyond control. Even when the first people fell ill, it would take days to figure out it was the result of a deliberate biological attack, and even longer to try to take countermeasures."
"So we ducked the bullet again this time," Ed reasoned. "Well, we'd better set up a conference as soon as possible. We can't afford any fuck-up that exposes our investigation now. We want to get not only all the contacts in custody, but discover as many of the sleepers as possible. As long as they're out there, there's always the prospect of another attack."
"I think this means we might have to let the contacts walk away with the canisters," I said. "Then we keep them under surveillance and see who they contact."
"That sounds like a plan," Ed said. "The interesting part will be when D-Day comes and they spray. How long will it take them to figure out the attack didn't work? How long will it take them to figure out why? They'll probably be running around like chickens with their heads cut off for awhile. They'll probably want to send at least one of the canisters back for analysis if they think that the virus got inactivated somehow. "
"They'll be facing a crisis," I said. "They might get really careless in their panic. That might give us some openings we could drive a truck through."
Continued in Part 15