Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(53)

That wasn’t the answer we’d been expecting and we all sat forward.

“Run that by us again, sir,” Ned said.

“We have several ongoing contracts with the U.S. government, including the FBI, Special Agent Mahoney. Ryan told me after your call yesterday that we had had a request from your director just last week, asking us to look for links between the dead agents.”

That was news to us.

Mahoney said, “And?”

“Just the obvious ones so far,” Vance said. “Agency interactions. A few overlapping assignments. But they were all seemingly corrupted by the cartel and then murdered by a…rogue vigilante force, I guess you’d call it.”

Sampson said, “You pick up any kind of chatter prior to the attacks?”

Vance nodded and looked to Farr, who had returned with a tray of drinks. She said, “We mined LA Basin cell phone data in the day prior to the attack on FBI Agent White’s family in Pasadena. Looked at in retrospect, you can tell the Alejandros were gathering an army to retaliate.”

“But nothing about the vigilante force?” Sampson asked.

“If they were communicating, they were doing it over some kind of localized supersecure network,” Vance said. “We’ve picked up nothing on them so far.”

Sampson said, “Can you tell us how you look?”

Paladin’s CEO said, “Again, we use the supercomputers to sift through whatever the government authorizes us to sift through: cell phone data, computer data, internet traffic patterns, GPS location data, video, audio. Sometimes we have a specific target. More often than not, we’re looking for possible targets.”

I said, “You work for the NSA as well?”

Vance laughed. “Wouldn’t that be the holy grail for us? No, for the most part the NSA does its own work of broadly monitoring the nation’s communication lines in real time. We’re more focused on the past. We’re given a load of data after the fact and we sift through it until we find what our clients are looking for.”

I said, “What else do you know about the cartel? Is this vigilante force correct? Have the Alejandros corrupted every law enforcement group operating in the southwestern United States?”

Vance said, “Well, that’s for others to decide. We provide data and certain interpretations of it. After that, it’s up to others to—”

Ding!

The sharp alert came from the CEO’s laptop on his desk.

“Sorry,” he said, frowning as he got up and crossed to it. Vance moved his mouse and studied the screen before looking up at us. “Three bodies were just dumped on the steps of the Mexican supreme court in broad daylight—a Mexican general, an unidentified American, and Marco Alejandro’s cousin Enrique. They’ve got confessions pinned to their shirts and were covered in a banner that said ‘Death to traitors. Death to the Alejandro cartel.’”





Chapter





60




Mahoney got to his feet. “That’s our case. What else do you have in that database of yours?”

Vance said, “About the three dead men?”

“And about the Alejandro cartel,” I said. “Who’s running it now? And who’s got such a beef with the cartel they’d be willing to pull a homicidal stunt like this?”

Vance said, “I can’t tell you any of that because I honestly don’t know. We have not been given the green light to do that kind of precision sift yet.”

“But you can do it.”

“We can try.”

“I’ll get the FBI director to authorize your precision sift,” Mahoney said. “And we’ll want a bunch of other questions answered while you’re at it.”

“Such as?”

Sampson said, “Who is M? Who or what is Maestro? What’s the common denominator that points to one person or one group of people? Why has Maestro declared war on the cartel? Where does M get all his information? And how does he manage to keep track of people? It’s as if he has access to real-time NSA-level data.”

Vance frowned. “I’d have to see the data you’re relying on to support that, Detective. But I agree it sounds as if this Maestro or M must have an edge.”

I said, “And a small army, including someone who supposedly died in Afghanistan five years ago.”

The CEO sat back. “For real?”

“Perfect biometric match for a dead man,” Mahoney said, nodding.

“Where do you want us to start?” Vance said. “You need to imagine the data that might yield what you are looking for and get it for us.”

“Start with the most recent attack on the Hernandez family,” I said. “Find the cell phones that organized the attack.”

Vance squinted. “They probably used burners. But if we get the right data, we could look for communications going to Mexico from the greater DC area. And with the right permissions, we can look at all security feeds within ten miles of the attack site.”

Mahoney said, “We’ll get that authorization to you ASAP.”

Vance smiled as he shook our hands. “Whatever you need, gentlemen. Paladin is here to help in any way we can.”

Out in the parking lot, Mahoney read a brief from Washington. “They want us all on the next flight to Mexico City,” he said.