Cyberstrike by James Barrington & Richard Benham

Author:James Barrington & Richard Benham [Barrington, James & Benham, Richard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 31

J. Edgar Hoover Building, Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C., United States of America

‘You can’t arrest a man for sitting at a cafe and drinking a cup of coffee. Nor for associating with three other men you don’t happen to like the look of. It’d make our lives a whole lot easier if we could, but we can’t. We’re stuck with due process and probable cause and all the rest of that crap.’

It was early afternoon and the debrief was going more or less as Grant Rogers had expected.

The FBI attracts people who want to make a difference to American society, a bigger difference than they could make if they became police officers, and they regard themselves as members of one of the most elite of American law enforcement organisations. Some of them also tend to regard the law as having a certain degree of flexibility when in pursuit of criminals or suspected criminals, their view being that the end in many such cases is more than sufficient to justify the means.

Grant Rogers didn’t agree with this attitude, mainly because as the agent in charge of the operation he would be signing off on the case and everything he and every member of his team did would be scrutinised, checked and double-checked by the desk-bound upper hierarchy of the Bureau, the seat-shiners. If any corners were cut or the correct procedures not followed Rogers, as the ASAC, the assistant special agent in charge, would be the one facing a disciplinary hearing. And although he had been told that the operation had to remain entirely covert, he was personally convinced that putting a little pressure on the subjects might actually be a good idea. If a target knows he’s attracted the attention of the authorities, he might start making mistakes or do something stupid. But of course he couldn’t say that.

Dave Nicholls, one of the more junior agents assigned to the operation, had just echoed Rogers’s own private views about the surveillance operation that morning.

‘I didn’t say we should arrest them,’ Nicholls protested, his Texas drawl making him sound like a frontiersman though he looked more like a sharp-suited accountant with somewhat pointed features clustered below a thatch of neatly cut black hair. ‘All I said was let’s lean on them a little. Let them see the same guy maybe two or three times the same day, that sort of thing. Nothing close up and personal, just enough to spook them a bit, make them jump at shadows.’

Rogers shook his head.

‘Can’t do that right now,’ he said, ‘because these guys haven’t done anything wrong. About all we can do is take a look at the transcription of whatever the shotgun mics managed to pick up and see if FACE was able to put any names to the three unsubs sitting with the target.’

The operations room they were using had the usual suite of electronic equipment including multiple computers, projection screens, whiteboards, telephones and so on, and Rogers guessed that if any of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.