“Are you suggesting someone at the White House might be involved?”
“Not directly. But you know the White House is a sieve. Although this administration is better than most, it wouldn’t surprise me if details about the Sea Arrowwere released to the wrong people.”
“Can you give me the security list?” Ann said.
“Sure, it’s in my office—if you don’t already have enough on your plate.”
“At this point we have to cast a broad net. I’d like to check the history of any recent technology thefts of a similar nature. Have you dealt with any foreign espionage cases?”
“Not since I’ve been at DARPA,” Fowler said. “Our issues are mostly lost computer disks and the like. But I’ve been here only a year. We had a few espionage cases while I was with the Army Research Laboratory, both suspected Chinese and Israeli spies, but we never had enough to prosecute.”
“The bagmen in this case seem a bit out of character for the typical espionage operatives,” Ann said.
“True, but you never know who’s footing the bill.”
“I suppose,” Ann said. “Any idea of the impact to the Sea Arrowprogram?”
“I’m not technically savvy enough to know, but apparently the program hinged on Heiland’s supercavitation model, which would totally transform the Sea Arrow’s capability. Now that his original research is lost, the program may be set back several years. No one believes they can duplicate Heiland’s work easily without his designs.”
“I can’t believe they robbed us of them in Alexandria. How could they have known?”
“Hard to say. Perhaps someone was tracking you after the incident in Tijuana. I’d have to think there was a third member of the party in Idaho, monitoring events. Somehow they arranged a jump on us here at short notice.”
He gave her a worried look. “Maybe you should check into a hotel for a few nights, just to be on the safe side.”
“No, I’m fine,” she said, her own safety not a concern.
“Still, I’ll follow up with the Alexandria police to make sure they patrol your town house on a regular basis.” He rubbed his jaw beneath the bandage. “I’d like to see those guys go down hard.”
Fowler turned into the parking lot of the DARPA headquarters building in downtown Arlington. Ann preferred to work at the DARPA site rather than her NCIS office across the river in Anacostia, having commandeered a small, windowless office next to Fowler. With her laptop computer, she could access nearly the same criminal resources while establishing relationships with the DARPA team working on Sea Arrow.
As she returned to her desk, she felt oddly energized. Aside from its importance to national security, the case had become personal. She shrugged off the physical and emotional drain of the past few days, motivated to dig into the evidence and discover who was behind the thefts and murders.
Her first call was to the FBI field office in San Diego. An agent named Wyatt was managing the local investigation.
“Have you heard anything from Mexico yet?” she asked.
“A few things,” Wyatt said. “The two deceased males, both in their early thirties, were not Mexican nationals. Colombian passports were found on both bodies. I can give you the names, but in all likelihood they’re phony. We checked with the State Department in Bogotá, and both names came back negative with the Colombian government.”
“The passports were fake?”
“Yes, high-quality counterfeits. We checked the prints on the deceased and found no matches in either the FBI or INTERPOL databases. Our best guess is, they were low-level hired muscle. Customs showed that they actually came into the U.S. with three other men a few weeks ago. They crossed the border at Tijuana with temporary visitors’ visas.”
“Any of them go by the name of Pablo?”
“No, nothing close to that.”
“How about the pickup truck and the boat?”
“The truck was recently purchased from a used-car dealer in Tijuana. Paid cash, registered to one of the Colombians at a taco stand’s address in Rosarito Beach. I’m afraid the Mexicans haven’t found anything on the boat.”
“Any record of their activity while in the U.S.?”
“We’re still looking. Interesting thing is, five individuals were recorded crossing the border in the truck, but only three returned. We followed up your tip about a possible break-in at Heiland’s company office. Surveillance video shows a janitor entering Heiland’s office after hours. The individual appears to match the passport photo of one of the Colombians.”
“Wyatt, I suggest you call the Spokane field office when we’re finished. Two men were just killed in Bayview, Idaho, after a break-in at Heiland’s lake house. I’ll wager a month’s salary that those are your two missing men.”
“How about a bonus if one is our janitor?” Wyatt asked. “They seem to be a persistent bunch, that’s for sure.”
“Agreed. Do you have anything else?”
“We had an explosives expert examine Heiland’s boat. He confirmed that a charge of low-grade plastic explosives was embedded in the boat’s interior and mechanically detonated. The wiring looked to have been in place for some time.”
“So Heiland triggered the explosion,” she said—Pitt had been right after all—“Any idea why?”
“He may have been aware of the threat or maybe just sensitive to the nature of his work. Was it anything worth killing over?”
“It would seem so.”
“There’s one more bit of mystery tied in with the event.”
“What’s that?”
“The autopsy report on Eberson. Based on the physical evidence and the position of his body at the back of the boat, we believe he was not killed by the explosion.”
“His feet were tangled in fishing line,” Ann said. “I assume he panicked when he couldn’t get clear of the boat and ended up drowning.”
“Actually, the pathologist says he was dead before he hit the water.”
“Was he shot?”
“No—” Wyatt fumbled for the proper description. “His skin showed signs of severe burns. His death was attributed to trauma related to burn damage.”
Ann had seen his gruesome blackened limbs but assumed it had to do with his body’s submersion at such depth. “Why doesn’t the pathologist think he was killed by the explosion?”
“Because his surface burns were atypical of fire damage—and extended beneath the skin. In other words, he cooked from both inside and out.”
Ann shook her head. “From the inside?”
“The damage is consistent with acute microwave irradiation.”
Ann fell silent, trying to make sense of the report.
“Could it have anything to do with the equipment Heiland was testing?” Wyatt asked.
“I can’t imagine. It was still in its case.”
“Understood. It’s got everyone here stumped, too. I’ll send you the report, and we can talk again.”
“Thanks, Wyatt. And let me know if you hear any more from Mexico.”
Eberson’s death was an odd twist that didn’t make any sense. If Pablo’s crew was going to kill him, why didn’t they simply shoot him? And what could have caused the microwave irradiation?
Ann beat Wyatt in phoning the FBI’s Spokane field office—and confirmed what she’d already guessed. The two men killed in Bayview had also carried phony Colombian passports. They had arrived in Idaho on a private chartered flight, which accounted for their ability to bring in weapons. The charter operator was being investigated but had no apparent connection to the Colombians.
Ann opened her laptop and began scouring national law enforcement databases, searching for criminal acts in the U.S. by Colombian nationals. In the National Crime Information Center’s system, she assembled a list of such felonies prosecuted in the past five years. Aside from a few random murders and a bank robbery, the major crimes were primarily drug related, concentrated in Miami and New York. A search of the FBI’s Guardian Threat Tracking System also failed to trigger any obvious links.