Terror: Zeb Carter Series, Book 4 Page 5

  Beth shot out of her chair so fast that it toppled. She righted it impatiently and turned back to them. ‘You didn’t see all those gun sites and forums they visited through their fake accounts? Few of them were into guns. But all of a sudden, it was as if a button was flicked in them and all got interested in weapons.’

  Broker thought about it for a moment and then nodded. ‘Yeah, I spotted that. But I still don’t get where that leads us. These are random shooters.’

  ‘Random,’ she snapped her fingers. ‘Meg and I have a theory about that.’

  Zeb leaned forward, intrigued. The sisters’ lateral thinking abilities, their ability to connect invisible dots, was legendary.

  ‘The National Security Advisor wants us to anticipate the shootings and prevent them. That’s impossible. Agreed?’

  Heads nodded vigorously. There was no agency, no entity in the world that could do that.

  ‘In that case, we proceed differently. Hate, that was common in all the men. Yes?’

  ‘Yeah,’ they chorused dutifully.

  ‘Loner males, no families, no friends, went to work, came home and logged onto these sites. Correct?’

  Another set of yeahs.

  ‘There are millions of right and left wingers out there. Many of them as hate filled as our perps. But how many of those are lone men?’

  ‘A few thousands, maybe millions,’ Chloe ventured.’

  ‘Remember that killing in New Zealand?’ Meghan spoke for the first time, her hair lit by a ray of sunlight.

  Heads nodded. An Australian extremist had gunned down fifty people in two mosques and critically wounded dozens more. It turned out that he was fueled by white nationalism, intent on creating divisions among people. An anarchist, a Muslim hater.

  ‘He was steeped in the internet. He went to all those forums where people like him frequented. He had that sick manifesto he posted online. Heck, he even filmed his horrific act.’

  ‘Yes, we know all this. Your point?’

  ‘My point is that people can be turned by online extremism.’

  ‘We know that as well.’

  ‘Here’s the thing,’ she said slowly. ‘Broker said these killers were random. What if they weren’t?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘What would happen if such killings occurred every month, every day, across the world?’ Meghan crossed her arms across her chest, her eyes flitting over them like a seeking beacon.

  ‘That’s not possible,’ Bear objected. ‘There aren’t that many killers out there –’

  ‘Six shooters in a week. Did you think that was possible?’

  ‘Things would just come to a standstill,’ Chloe cupped her chin thoughtfully. ‘People would be scared to go out. Business would stop. There would be riots.’

  ‘Yes!’ Meghan wagged her finger in approval. ‘Societies would just crumble, because no government can stop such killings and their citizens wouldn’t be content with helplessness as an answer.’

  ‘Remember what’s happening in the world right now,’ Beth clicked on a remote and the map of Germany came up on the wall. ‘Right wing parties have gained seats in various elections. Not just there,’ another click, a map of Europe, ‘but all across that continent. France, Hungary, Poland…Freisler and Walters are very popular with many people in those countries. Britain. A country at war with itself over Brexit. A people divided. India, the world’s most populous democracy, is in the midst of elections. Indonesia has its problems with fundamentalist terrorism. Mexico is in a constant state of war with cartels.’

  ‘You’re saying –’

  ‘I’m saying democratic world governments have never been weaker. These killings, and if more such acts occur with regularity, will leave them in a perilous position.’

  She’s got a point. We’re seeing that in many parts of the world, Zeb acknowledged. Lack of trust in political leaders. The rise of dictatorial governments.

  ‘How do you find such killers?’ he asked slowly, liking the sisters’ theory the more he thought about it.

  ‘Hold that thought. I’ll get to that. But first, to address any doubts you still might have, we ran an algorithm, looking at probabilities. Guess what?’ Werner came back with a low number. Very low.’

  ‘Back to your question, Zeb,’ Beth joined her sister at the desk. ‘There’s a list somewhere. Maybe many lists of people of the right psychological profile. Those who wouldn’t need much to turn into killers. Drill down into those names, find the right targets, manipulate them and that’s your result.’ She jerked a shoulder in the direction of the TV. ‘Killers.’

  Roger rose and picked a basketball off the floor. He ran his fingers on its surface and spun it idly on a finger. ‘What you’re describing, it’s possible?’

  ‘Suicide bombers. Terrorists. How do you think they get turned? Apparently normal men and women, kids, grow up with hate in their minds. They are led to believe killing is their purpose. Psychological conditioning happens all the time.’

  ‘But none of these men grew up in those environments,’ he protested.

  ‘They did. Online. The internet is where hate resides these days. It doesn’t stay there, it’s spread from there, through forums, social media, dark message boards, the darknet, places that don’t exist for ordinary people.’

  ‘These men turned into killers just by watching videos, listening to speeches, interacting with other creeps?’

  ‘Now, you’re getting to the details,’ Beth’s smile shaded the sunlight in the room. ‘Sis, you want to lead this?’

  ‘We suspect there’s a program out there,’ Meghan’s hands spread wide, indicating the outside world. ‘Most likely more than one. Algorithms that identify such people. Push content to them. The more responsive they are, the more such filth gets pumped to them. That’s how they get turned.’

  ‘Such algos can be written?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You can write them?’

  ‘They can,’ Broker answered. He had been a highly-reputed hacker for the National Security Agency before hooking up with Zeb and joining the Agency. He had mentored the twins, had taught them everything he knew and they had then gone beyond. ‘If they had it in them to be so totally immoral. These programs aren’t written by ordinary Jane or Joe techie. Someone who’s got no sense of right or wrong, or even someone who buys into these people’s beliefs…they are the ones who write them.’

  ‘All that,’ Beth added, ‘but also, these programmers will be some of the best out there. These are high-end algorithms, highly technical, highly complex –’

  ‘The internet companies would have such techies, wouldn’t they?’ Chloe rested her feet on Bear’s lap and closed her eyes with a sigh when he started massaging them.

  ‘Yeah, but for all the bad press they’re getting, I don’t think those organizations will have those algos.’

  ‘What’s their agenda?’ Roger tossed the basketball to Bwana who caught it with one hand. ‘I mean, whoever’s behind these killers. What do they want?’

  Meghan smiled triumphantly at what his question meant. He had bought their theory.

  ‘We don’t know,’ she acknowledged. ‘But we can find out.’

  ‘By asking the right people,’ Zeb decided. ‘People who would employ such programmers. Like cyber criminals.’

  ‘You knew! When did you work it out?’ Beth narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.

  ‘That thing you said about low trust in governments? That’s when. Remember Israel?’

  They all nodded. A deadly spymaster had manipulated public opinion in that country by orchestrating a series of killings. He had brought the region to the brink of nuclear war.

  ‘If that could happen,’ Zeb shrugged, ‘your theory is entirely plausible.’

  ‘What if Beth and Meghan are wrong?’ Chloe asked soberly.

  ‘We’ll know soon enough. If the killings start again.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  Meghan was wrong.

  There weren�
��t many programs. There were just two algorithms. Their names were self-explanatory to those who knew about them.

  The List software trawled social media and identified men with the right psychological profiles. While it was just one algorithm, three clones of it existed. One was maintained by a team of developers in Asia, another was tended to by a second bunch of men in Europe and the third was in the US, in the middle of nowhere in a small town in Colorado.

  The Content algo did what the twins had figured out. It pumped the right material, videos, speeches, advertisements, to the men on the list. That program too was localized so that the relevant material was pushed to men in different countries.

  List did more than identify targets. It monitored the men and ranked them in order of conditioning. If a subject started frequenting a particular message board regularly, started posting more often, he moved up the list. To such men, Content displayed ads for weapons in the subject’s country. And if that man visited that website, the target was ripe.

  The three teams that maintained List’s versions knew of each other. They had dashboards in the offices they worked from and whenever a man went on a killing spree, that team recorded a win.

  Content’s developers were isolated from the three teams. There were eleven of them, in a building that looked like a warehouse, in the Nevada desert. Banks of solar panels stretched as far as the eye could see, around the establishment. That solar farm hid their servers’ heat signatures. If a lay person visited them, an admin official would explain that the building was a server farm for an internet company. The paperwork was in place to support that cover and several employees in that organization were well-rewarded to maintain that legend.

  On the third day from the Mexican shooting, Leslie sent a message to Williams and Smith.

  Do we have targets? I have a few.

  Yes, the replies came.

  Let the killing begin.

  Chapter Nineteen

  A conference call between Zeb and his team, Daniel Klouse and Clare. The Agency Director was in Mexico, meeting her counterpart in a covert-ops outfit, but she broke off from the discussions to attend the call.

  ‘The twins have a theory,’ Zeb said and gestured to the sisters to come closer to the speaker phone.’

  ‘Of course they would,’ Klouse snorted in amusement. ‘Meg and Beth,’ he said proudly, ‘are the brains in your outfit. The rest of you are mere door-kickers.’

  Chloe rolled her eyes, Bwana mock-grimaced, but none of them took any offense. They knew how he felt about the sisters.

  ‘You’ve found something?’

  ‘Not quite, sir,’ Beth replied. ‘We have this theory,’ and rapidly explained it.

  ‘Sounds plausible,’ Clare thought about it for a moment. ‘What do you need from us?’

  ‘We might have to access some databases,’ she said delicately.

  ‘I betcha that’s the first time you’re asking permission,’ Klouse guffawed. He sobered quickly. ‘The President has spoken to world leaders. There is nothing he won’t do to restore peace, order. Do what you have to. Clare and I will find a way to cover your backs.’

  ‘Now what?’ Bear demanded when the call ended.

  ‘Now, we go talk to Esteban Valdez.’

  * * *

  Travis Garrity knew nothing of that call. Nor would he have cared had he known.

  He wheeled his truck out of the drive in front of his house and nosed out on Walnut Avenue in Irvine, California. It was a bright morning. Blue skies, fleecy clouds. An airplane winked silver high above.

  It was a perfect day for killing.

  Garrity was pumped. The twenty-eight-year-old shelf stacker had visited his favorite forums the previous night. ‘Going shooting. Gonna get me some chollos. Watch the news,’ he posted. His online buddies cheered him on.

  He hung a left on Red Hill Avenue, following the traffic. It wouldn’t do to get a speeding ticket, not today. He patted his AR15, gleaming, black, next to him, and fingered the helmet on his head. It had a wireless camera that broadcast everything that he saw and sent the feed to his online hangout.

  He turned right on Barranca Parkway and drove inside the enormous parking lot of the big box store. He climbed out, grabbed his weapon and concealed it against his side. Closed his eyes momentarily as he felt the sun. A gun, the sun, wait, that rhymed! He giggled and winked when a mom looked his way. She turned away quickly and wheeled away her baby and her shopping.

  Garrity trotted up the sidewalk and entered the cool inside of the store. Single mothers and fathers carrying shopping baskets. Elderly people lugging their groceries. A few teenagers. And several store workers.

  He positioned himself next to the entrance, brought out his rifle, said ‘here we go,’ in his mic and opened fire on his targets, the Hispanic employees.

  Chapter Twenty

  Meghan broke off from her briefing and paled when the news report flashed on their office TV.

  They crowded around it and watched and heard. Travis Garrity. Single, white, male, killed by cops but not before he had gunned down thirteen shoppers, three of them women. All of them of Hispanic descent.

  The shooter’s live feed was picked up by the internet and his sick deed was watched, liked and shared by millions before the large internet companies acted and shut down the video.

  California’s Governor made a short statement. The President spoke to reporters as he was boarding Marine One. The TV anchor broke down and sobbed as she covered the killing.

  ‘That’s our proof,’ Meghan said quietly and turned off the TV. ‘Let’s get back to Valdez.’

  * * *

  Esteban Valdez was a cartel boss, but he was unlike any of his peers. Other gang bosses lived in hiding. They were rarely photographed and while they controlled the world’s largest criminal outfits, their whereabouts were rarely known. The FBI, DEA, several alphabet agencies in the US as well as in Mexico were eager to talk to those heads and hence, they lived their lives underground.

  Not Esteban Valdez.

  He was out there, speaking at this conference, presenting at that awards ceremony, donating handsomely to a charity. His dark-haired, handsome visage was one of the most recognized faces in Mexico.

  Valdez was the head of one of the world’s largest cyber-criminal gangs. However there was no proof of his illegal activities. He had legitimate business interests. He owned a shipping company, a trucking firm. He had stakes in a telcoms conglomerate.

  ‘All false,’ he replied indignantly whenever reporters questioned him. ‘America’s FBI have questioned me, and let me state that I presented myself to them voluntarily. They investigated me thoroughly. What did they find? Nada. The Federales looked into me. They too found nothing. All these are baseless rumors, spread by my rivals. I lead a clean life and have nothing to hide,’ he would say piously.

  The world’s intelligence agencies knew otherwise, however. They suspected the Mexican employed hundreds of hackers in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Juarez, Tijuana, wherever Valdez had offices. Those programmers sent out phishing emails, suckered innocents and defrauded them of their savings, the world over.

  They also operated cyber-porn sites, online blackmailing campaigns and many other internet criminal activities.

  Proof. Evidence. The intelligence agencies of the world lacked those when it came to Valdez. Sure, they had witnesses and snitches, but their statements ended up being withdrawn or contradicted. Many of those people died in mysterious circumstances.

  ‘Not my doing,’ Esteban would say, wide-eyed, fresh-faced, the very picture of innocence, as he went about running his criminal empire under the noses of the law enforcement authorities.

  The Mexican’s guileless exterior hid a vicious, ruthless streak. Those who crossed him died savagely. Some were beheaded, others watched their wives and girlfriends raped by masked men and then were killed. A few men were burned alive in public. Of course, none of the killings had any connection to Valdez. The cartel boss was out in the public
, visible, whenever such a gruesome act was committed.

  Questioning him wasn’t going to be easy.

  * * *

  ‘He no longer gives interviews,’ Beth said tightly. ‘Ever since a series of reports broke, suspecting him of running cybercrimes, he’s gone quiet. He surrounds himself with heavies and his public appearances are carefully staged.’

  ‘He would have the right kind of programmers? Those who could do that,’ Bwana pointed to the dark, TV screen.

  ‘Oh, yeah. There are rumors on various internet boards that some of the brightest techies in Silicon Valley quit their high-paying jobs and went to Mexico. There aren’t many employers there who pay those kind of wages. Valdez’s gang is one of them.’

  ‘That isn’t proof.’

  ‘All those men, and they’re all men,’ Beth carried on, ‘have gone underground. No sightings, not a peep out of them.’

  Bwana had the last word.

  ‘Let’s go crack some heads.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Planning.

  Carrying out a hostile operation in a country that supported the US in the war against drugs had its challenges.

  ‘No Federales, no politicians, no Mexican involvement of any kind,’ Meghan said firmly. ‘They shouldn’t get a whiff of our mission.’

  Because Valdez owned politicians, police and army officers. It was how drug cartels work. Viciousness at the street level and corruption at the higher ones.

  ‘Where will he be?’ Bear cleaned his Glock and reassembled it in smooth moves.

  ‘The Royal Hotel, in three days’ time. One of the fancy ones in Mexico City,’ Beth brought up pictures on the wall. ‘A block behind the Plaza de la Constitucion.’

  The city’s main square was a busy place, host to cultural events, political gatherings and tourists. The hotel, on the Calle de la Palma, was one of the most exclusive ones in the city. The country’s president often stayed there, as did visiting dignitaries. It had played host to British and European royalty. Its owners had spared nothing in making it one of the fanciest, and safest establishments in the city, catering to the super-rich and the super-famous.