Chapter 461

I was up early; truthfully, I just cat napped most of the night. There were just so many things on my mind. I wondered what was going on with Andy this morning; it was already 10:00 there. No news was good news, I hoped.

Then there was the information out of Diya’s phone; would it help or was it just another dead end? After all, it had been three weeks since the MSU attack. How many of the numbers in there had been trashed?

The final straw for today was the two subpoenas I had to honor, even when I had more pressing things I needed to do. The Senate Embassy Steering committee was the first one at 10:00.

Bob was at the concrete box as I leaving. I stopped to say hello.

“Do you have time for quick tour?” he asked. Then he added, “Marcy added some changes.”

“No, not really; I have a very busy day today. I have to testify before Congress and have a lot to do beforehand. I’m hoping to get the chance over the weekend. I hear you have a lot of people working. I want to thank you for that.”

“Do you carry a tube of KY, or is that one of those where they just screw you over dry?” Bob asked just before broke into a laugh.

“Be careful, I just might let you go in my place,” I responded as I opened the door on my SUV.

I was making coffee in the second big coffee maker at 06:50 when the crew started coming in. There was already a group of people with coffee cups and mugs from the other offices draining the first one. They knew they were welcome to get a mug as long as we were not holding a meeting.

That was another thing I learned; most office managers in this underground complex didn’t want workers from other departments walking in and out of their offices.

Those workers seemed appreciative of the chance to get a few minutes with us. That was one thing about this floor - the coffee aroma traveled and drew people like a magnet.

The rest of the task force was now making the early start time. I suspected they were afraid they would miss something.

I had Cassy make copies of the reports that had come from Diya’s phone for each of the law enforcement agencies. The Department of Education people didn’t need copies, besides they were still trying to figure out how to run the reports I asked for two days ago.

I slid Diya’s phone on the table, “The new pass code on this phone is 12345. This one is all the incoming calls. This one is outgoing calls. This one is the contact list and this is the text,” I said as I passed out the copies.

“I have to spend most of the day on the Hill. When I get back I want to see the results of your day. Use the tools at your disposal; check all the numbers to see if they are still active.”

“See if they were stupid enough to have activated the GPS. If they were, where were they on the day of the attack? See if there was a flurry of calls between any of the phones before, the day of and the day after the attack. Find out which phones were and are the most active among all the phones.”

“Between the possible GPS and all the cross-tower pings and the cross-number checks, you should be able to come up with some very useful data to tell me when I get back,” I replied.

“Yes ma-am we should, and then I want to know how you got into that phone and all this out of this phone in just 12 hours without court orders,” Rex replied.

“You have heard it before, if I tell you I will have to kill you,” I replied.

My phone started ringing, “Jones,” I said.

“Ma-am; Major Holland Dent from the remote flight operations center in Tucson; I was told to report to you every day at this time with a report for the drone flight over the assigned location. There was no activity in the last 24 hours.”

“I was ordered to request new operational orders from you Ma-am,” he said.

“Your existing orders are to observe and report, I amend those orders changing the reporting criteria. I am to be notified immediately anytime there are any changes at the property, visitors and any vehicle traffic. The second change is for there to be infrared imaging done at least once a day if that is possible,” I replied.

“10-4 Ma-am that is indeed possible. I will amend and publish the orders for all operators,” he replied.

“Thank you Major, that is all,” I replied.

It was 0900; I had sent a text to Kent Dalton and Len at 0700 that I wanted a joint VCATS with them at 0900. They paged that they were on line right on the money.

“I need to let you know that we think we have found where the suicide vests and truck bombs were made. I have an Air Force drone stationed over it 24/7 for a week. There has been no one there in the last 24 hours. If there is no activity in the 7 day period I will authorize it to be raided. If there is a sudden burst of activity it needs to be raided then,” I said, and then added.

“If they have abandoned the site I am concerned that it may be heavily booby trapped. After all, Saif was a master explosives maker for vest, car bombs and IEDs. Would you want your SWAT teams to conduct the raid or do you want me to see if I can get a bomb unit from one of the Army or Marine bases that have field experience finding those things?” I asked, and then added.