Every customer who clicked on the "Acknowledge" button was actually sending a message, but not to the retailer. The message was one of the phony returns, and went to the IRS. When the IRS tried to track the messages, they'd find they came from thousands of individuals all over the country, all of whom denied knowing anything about it.
The attack was continuing the following day when LuEllen and I loaded into the rental car and went for a noon-rush-hour drive on Interstate 10. We picked the Interstate because if we were moving fast, we'd be switching phone cells every few minutes.
"Hate to waste a perfectly good phone," LuEllen grumbled.
"That's why we got it," I said. Using one of the new cold phones, I direct-dialed Welsh at her NSA number. Nobody answered.
"Not there," I said, hanging up.
"What does that mean?"
I thought for a moment, and then said, "I told her I'd call her. But it's Sunday, and maybe she thinks we've only got her home phone. I'll bet she's home, sitting on the phone."
"With a bunch of FBI agents."
"Yeah, well."
I dialed her home phone and she picked up on the fifth ring. On the fourth ring, I said to LuEllen, "Maybe they don't fuckin' care." I was about to hang up, when I heard the phone shuffle, and then her voice.
"Hello?"
"This is Bill Clinton. I spoke to you last night. Did you go to Laurel?"
"Yes, we did. Is this a cell-phone call?"
"Yes."
"Then we will have to be circumspect. We looked at the account you were speaking about, but there wasn't any traffic of the kind you described, between the gentleman here and the gentleman from Dallas."
"There was last night."
"We think that the file in question may have been altered. Did you place an administrative account named B. D. Short on the Laurel installation? For your own uses?"
"No, we didn't."
"Then someone unknown has been burning files."
"I told you who it was."
"We are looking into that," she said. "We want you to stay in touch, though, and we also want to send you a file and have you look at two photographs. Can you take a quick transmission if I switch over?"
"Just a minute." I wasn't ready for that; it seemed uncommonly cooperative. I turned in the car seat, reached over the back, got out the laptop, and turned it up. "I'm just bringing it up," I said.
"I'll have to say, to be honest, that I didn't appreciate your approach last night. You scared me."
"I regret that," I said. I had the line that would go from the modem to the phone wrapped in a bundle, and fumbled it as I tried to pull off the rubber band while still talking on the phone. The bundle dropped between my legs and I had to lean forward to get it. As I did, with my head at a low angle, I noticed a helicopter a mile or so ahead, hovering above a line of buildings. I picked up the bundle of wire, undid the rubber band, and clipped it into the laptop and the phone, and called up my communications program. A moment later, I was ready.
"Switch over anytime," I said.
"It's about a hundred K, so it'll take a minute or two," she said. "If you're ready, here it comes."
I got a tone and hit the enter button on the laptop; a moment later, the download began.
"What's going on?" LuEllen asked.
"They're shipping a couple of pictures they want us to look at," I said.
"An unusual show of cooperation," she said wryly, echoing my own thoughts.
"Yeah, I." And as I started to say it, I looked right out the passenger window. There, a half mile away and running parallel to us, was another helicopter. "Shit!"
"What?" She'd picked up the tone in my voice as I plucked the wire out of the computer and shut down the phone.
"We were set up. They're tracking the call and they've maybe got us isolated. See that chopper straight ahead? We've got another off to the right."
"Aw, man, Kidd, what do we do?"
"Don't do anything, yet; keep the speed steady," I said. "In case they haven't spotted us."
"The front chopper is sliding this way."
"So's the side guy," I said. An exit was coming up, with signs for a shopping center. I could see it to the north, a big one, with what looked like an enclosed parking garage. "Take the exit, take the exit."
She cut right and took the ramp, "What next?"
"Take a left. There's a shopping center over there with a covered ramp. If they've isolated us, we won't be able to run from them as long as they can see us."
It was a cool day, and I was wearing a light sweatshirt over a golf shirt, and had a jacket in back. I peeled off the sweatshirt and began wiping down every surface I thought we might've touched, and at the same time tried to look for the choppers. The one that had been to the right was closing fast.
"I think they've spotted us," I said. "Get in the parking ramp."
LuEllen ran a stoplight, took a hard right into the shopping center, went the wrong way up a one-way drive and into the parking ramp, under cover. "We were in the backseat," she said. "We were in the back, we've got prints. We used the radio."
I'd spotted a parking space: the inside end of it, against the wall, was slightly lower than the outer end. "Right there. But don't go in head first. Back into it."
"Why?"
"Do it, goddamnit."
I crawled over the seat into the back, wiped down everything, stuffed the laptop back into my briefcase, and got out my old Leatherman tool as LuEllen maneuvered the car. When she killed the engine, I said, "Pop the trunk. Get out. Don't touch anything."
She did, pulling her hands inside her jacket sleeves, wiping frantically along the way. I hopped out, wiped the handles, then ran around behind the car, dropped to the ground between the barrier wall and the back of the car. I got the Leatherman out of my pocket and unfolded a long pointed blade with a serrated edge. After a couple of timid attempts to do it by hand, I pulled off a shoe, stuck my hand in it, and smashed the blade through the gas tank. Once I got a hole, the rest was easier, enlarging it to the size of a dime. A steady stream of gasoline flowed out and began pooling under the car and I slid out from under and stood up.
As I did, LuEllen said, "Kidd, I hear the chopperthe chopper's coming in."
"You still carry a lighter?"
"Jesus, you're gonna blow up the garage." But she got it out of her shoulder bag, a cheap blue-plastic Bic, and handed it to me. I stooped and fired it into a finger-wide trickle of gasoline. The flame caught and we ran.
Ran for fifty feet, until we were away from the car, then slowed to a walk. There were people further down the structure, but they were paying no attention to us. I could hear the chopper, somewhere, the beating sound seeming to come from all around. Then the fire jumped up from behind the retaining wall, and I heard somebody yelling; and then we were inside.
A mall is a mall is a mall. We either had to get out of this one in a hurry, or hide. I said so to LuEllen. Run or hide.
"This way," LuEllen said, grabbing my arm.
"Where?"
"Backside exit."
We walked across the width of the mall, to the far exit. "Look for somebody, a woman, getting out of her car. Spot the car. Spot the woman."
How many people have you seen getting out of cars in parking lots? A million? But try to see somebody getting out when you need to see them, and they don't. We could see that there was excitement on the other side of the mall. A couple of people running, but they were the best part of a block away. I was looking toward them when LuEllen said, "There."
I looked where she was looking. A woman was climbing out of a deep-red Dodge minivan. She was wearing a hip-length teal-colored jacket and carrying a purse. When she passed the back of the minivan, she casually turned and pointed her hand at it, and the tail-lights blinked. Then she dropped the keys in a side pocket of her jacket.