everywhere.” She entered something on the notebook computer and scanned the file on her screen. “The police reports indicate that all of the agents were shot except one, who had his throat cut. There was nothing else in the warehouse except a few empty boxes and several shattered plastic DVD cases. Whoever was operating there, whatever the extent of their activities, they pulled up stakes and got out of there fast and completely.”
“So the Bureau raided what they thought was a fairly tame retail piracy operation,” Blancanales said, “and instead got heroin smugglers?”
“That’s just the beginning of it,” Price said. She switched the image on the plasma screen back to that of Mok Thawan. “Thawan is a known quantity, with an Interpol dossier a mile long. Specifically, he figures prominently in organized crime centered in southern Asia. He’s an enforcer for a group that calls itself the Triangle.”
“The Triangle runs heroin from Thailand and Burma to the United States,” Brognola said. “Just about every major law-enforcement agency, foreign and domestic, is aware of its activities, but precious little has been done about it up to now.”
“Why is that, Hal?” Schwarz asked.
“A combination of factors,” Brognola said, sounding weary. “Corruption in the local governments, especially in Thailand. There is some evidence that the Burmese government is directly involved, too, but it’s less overt, which might mean it’s even worse.”
“If they bother hiding it, there’s something to hide,” Encizo said.
“Exactly.” Brognola nodded. “The Triangle is also incredibly violent. They respond with ruthless, overwhelming force whenever threatened. This bloodbath in New Jersey is nothing compared to the slaughter of government troops in Thailand last year, when a joint DEA-Interpol task force got close to the Triangle’s operations there.”
“If they’re so big a problem,” McCarter interrupted, “why haven’t we targeted them before now?”
“Until recently,” Brognola said, “they’ve been ghosts. International law enforcement has been a step behind the Triangle for the past three years. Several attempts to penetrate the organization with undercover agents have also failed.”
“Every one of the agents has turned up dead or gone missing entirely,” Price explained. “Interpol claims to have at least one agent unaccounted for, but nobody’s heard from him or her for at least six months.”
“Likely swimming with the fishes,” McCarter concluded.
“The massacre in New Jersey has the Man agitated,” Brognola said, “and for good reason. The sad but direct fact of the matter is that we cannot allow government agents to be killed en masse on U.S. soil, not without mounting a response.”
“You don’t mean to tell me this is about making a statement?” McCarter demanded. “Bloody Christ, Hal! Is that what we’ve come to now?”
“You know better than that, David,” Brognola said sternly. “There are certain political realities, yes,” he explained, “but what’s changed is that we finally have a way to track the Triangle and get out in front of their operation.”
“Bear and his team—” Price nodded to Kurtzman, Tokaido, Delahunt and Wethers “—have conducted an extensive investigation into financial accounts and networks known to be linked to the Triangle.”
“By ‘extensive,’ she means ‘illegal,’” Wethers said with a faint smile.
“Very.” Price glanced at Brognola, whose expression had gone sour. “Using Interpol and U.S. federal agency records as the jumping-off point, we’ve gotten to know the Triangle intimately, exposing portions of its operation, identifying links in the poppy production and heroin trafficking, and discovering certain key facts.” She looked to Delahunt.
“First,” Delahunt said, “the Triangle operates a conventional bootlegging ring that appears to smuggle several different consumer products. Counterfeit designer clothing, the DVDs found in New Jersey, consumer electronics…it’s very extensive, perhaps the biggest ever to operate internationally.”
“The Triangle is piggybacking the distribution of the heroin on the smuggling of their retail goods,” Price said. “They’re using the same network, but sheltering the more serious criminal activity with the bootlegging.”
“It’s brilliant,” Blancanales put in. “Vice is always easier to understand than legitimate commercial activity. It offers a unique shield, for if the smuggling is discovered, those exposing it will be tempted to stop at the piracy, thinking they’ve found what there is to find.”
“Bloody right,” McCarter said. “Nobody trusts a guy who says he’s got nothing to hide. But if you think you’ve found him out—”
“You stop looking for whatever else he might be doing,” Blancanales finished. “Multiply that across an entire organization and you have a very clever strategy for covering the true depths of a criminal enterprise.”
“Trickery of that type goes only so far, of course,” Brognola said. “That’s why the Triangle is so ready and willing to do violence to shield its activities. When discovered, they immediately hit, and hit hard, then fade from view. The method has served them well until now.”
“What’s changed, Hal?” Schwarz asked.
“I’ll answer that,” Price said. She tapped a couple of keys and an exploded-view mechanical drawing of a satellite appeared on the plasma screen opposite Brognola. “This,” she said, “is NetScythe. It’s an experimental military spy satellite developed by DoD in conjunction with some of the more brilliant boys and girls at NASA.”
“What does it do?” Schwarz asked.
Price nodded to Tokaido.
“It is really very amazing,” Tokaido said, pointing to the plasma screen. “NetScythe uses a combination of fuzzy-logic algorithmic processing, digital satellite imaging and an advanced telescopic array very much influenced by the Hubble Space Telescope. This allows it to track targets on the ground, very specific targets that correspond to complicated threat or interest profiles developed by analysts on the ground.” He pointed to himself, to Wethers and to Delahunt. “By inputting our target criteria and our warning flags, we can have NetScythe track Triangle assets on the ground, from space. When those assets move, be they people, vehicles or people and vehicles moving to and from specified target profile locations, NetScythe’s heuristic meta-analysis can predict where those assets may move to next.”
“Bloody hell,” McCarter said. “The thing predicts the future?”
“In a way, perhaps,” Hunt Wethers said. “It’s a bit more complicated and not quite as definitive as that, but essentially, it will tell us how to get ahead of the Triangle’s operatives in order to target components of its organization. Much more important, analysis of the target assets may tell us where the links in the Triangle’s chain are located. We can use what we know to learn what we don’t know. With several Triangle assets designated, we can find others of which we were previously unaware.”
“It’s the break we’ve needed to dig into the Triangle and root it out,” Brognola said. “But there are other considerations at play.”
“Which brings us to the second very important piece of information we uncovered.”
