After leaving a message for Mondari, I opened a file on Umar Patek, the bomb maker in the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people. Patek’s file included his apprehension in the town of Abbottabad, Pakistan, on January 25, 2011. Other arrests in northwest Pakistan occurred close to the same time. Four months later, a raid in Abbottabad killed Osama bin Laden. Did Patek give up bin Laden’s location? I’ve pinged different intelligence officers I know who might be aware of the truth, but I’ve never gotten a definitive answer.
When the name Abbottabad faded from the news, the gathering of bomb makers there stuck with me. Perhaps subconsciously I was trying to connect the chatter about a Lebanese financier’s successful Mexico meeting to the C-4 allegedly tracked as far as a warehouse in Phoenix and the rumor passed by Denny Mondari of a bomb maker smuggled into the country.
Somewhere near Las Vegas was a bomb maker. Right or wrong, that was my conviction. If the target is the drone program, what’s next? More than enough agents had been and still were looking at Strata Data Mining. I had called one of them earlier and she downplayed any worry about the pilots in training. Find the bomb maker, I thought. Find the C-4 and we’ll shut them down. But nothing is as simple as that, and what began as a nagging worry was morphing into the very real possibility that with the help of a trained sleeper cell, the goal might be to wage a much longer campaign.
“Special Agent Grale, I’d like to introduce you to Special Agent Jane Stone’s parents.”
I looked up and saw Jane in her dad’s face. Same clean cheekbones, strong jaw, and light in the eyes that even grief couldn’t extinguish. I saw where Jane got her easy rapport.
“We loved her,” I said. “I’ve been with the Bureau nineteen years and have never met anyone I liked and respected more than Jane. I’m very, very sorry for your loss.” As they started to move on, I said, “If you want to talk more, I’ll be here.”
Jane’s father did return. He was agitated and watching to make sure his wife didn’t follow.
“I’m hearing on TV that Jane made a mistake that got her killed. Is that true?”
I saw the agony the question brought him. The truest thing to say was, “Yes, Jane should have waited until the bomb squad cleared the vehicles,” but I couldn’t do that.
“Knowing her, I’m sure she had a very good reason to be where she was when it detonated.”
To me that sounded hollow, but it seemed to help him. He gripped my hand.
“Jane told me you never quit. Find them.”
“We will.”
I said it so easily, yet Venuti was right. So far I had nothing but disconnected facts, fragments, hunches, shadows of patterns, and news today of a June 17 plane crash of a four-seater Cessna hijacked from an American couple who’d been murdered on the airstrip of a ranch they owned in Mexico. A second look at the plane’s wreckage in the dry mountains at the edge of the Imperial Valley pointed to a bomb in contrast to the engine failure the FAA preliminarily cited. Lacey had found that out this morning and was awaiting a transcript of radio communication between the pilot and an air traffic controller as the plane had crossed into US airspace. No cargo and no other bodies were found in the plane. The pilot had radioed in an oil pressure problem, made an emergency landing, took off again, then crashed, all the same day the plane was stolen. According to the DEA, this pilot did occasional work for the Sinaloa cartel. Did he ferry someone from Mexico?
I left a message with the FAA and fielded a call from the DOD investigator Sarah Warner, who said, “Let’s meet and talk. I want to confess and repent, and we’ve got an overlap going you need to know about. Name a place for coffee.”
“Gaudi Café. Repent?”
“I’m serious.”
At Gaudi’s I bought two iced coffees and carried them outside to a table in the shade. It was pushing 105 degrees, but dry heat. Warner smiled and I leaned back against a smooth shaded concrete wall with the cold cup in my hand. I was tired and thinking about Julia and the memorial on the drive here, but trying to focus on Warner’s urgency. I took another swallow. Good coffee and much needed. Cold brewed forty-eight hours, I’d read inside.
She exhaled and sighed. “You’re not going to like this,” she said.
“What happened to repenting?”
“I’ll get there. Denny Mondari approached us in June about working as an informant. He told us about his relationship with the FBI and we made an inquiry, but we didn’t say anything about his offer to us. It was my responsibility to tell your office we were starting a relationship with him, and I held off because you were a question mark.”
“And now you’re over that, so that’s not why we’re meeting. Did Mondari call you today?”
“He did and asked me to find out through your supervisor if there’s someone else at the FBI he can work with other than you.”
“He asked that today?”
“Yes.”
“Let him know I was in tears when you told me.” Warner smiled her crooked smile. “What’s the Department of Defense’s interest in Denny Mondari?”
“He claims he’s tied in with some hackers we’d like to talk to.”
“Hackers are his tribe, so that might be true. But you need to be careful with him. He’s helped us, so we haven’t looked hard enough at his other activities. That’s changing.”