Mohammed slapped his palm on the table so hard his computer monitor rocked. He was frustrated nearly to the point of screaming. He shoved his rolling chair back and stood up. He paced the room, his breath coming fast, his anxiety skyrocketing.
Having heard the noise, Khebat came to the door. “What is it?”
“DeathMerchan6o6o6 absolutely lives online. Nearly every time I log on, he’s already logged on. Depending on the site, there are always icons indicating he’s active. I’ve never seen him go more than a few hours without being active. He’s logged off nearly all of them now and he hasn’t been active for over twenty-four hours. I’m worried he’s done something stupid.”
Khebat looked concerned. “If he drew the attention of the police then we might have lost our only asset. He would be known to them. He would be entangled in the American legal system, which might make him more apprehensive about being a willing participant in our plan.”
The way in which Mohammed looked at his colleague confirmed that this was exactly what he was afraid of. “I’ve sent a few messages but I don’t want to seem desperate. Right now I’m just trying to monitor him and see where he’s active. As of a few minutes ago, he’s not been active anywhere.”
“That’s concerning.”
“I agree,” Mohammed said. “It’s as we’ve said before, if you deal with the vulnerable and weak-minded, those very traits which make them useful to us also make them a liability.”
“What are you going to do?”
Mohammed shrugged. “What can I do? I’m going to watch and wait.”
“This makes me nervous. I cannot forget the look on Machmud’s face as the boiling oil ran into his ear.”
Mohammed did not reply but it was clear from his sense of urgency he had not forgotten that image either. How could anyone forget it?
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do,” Khebat said.
Mohammed thought. “How many American social media accounts do you have now?”
“Over a hundred,” Khebat said. “I’m not sure exactly.”
“Do you have six young women who live in the mid-Atlantic or southern U.S.?”
“Most certainly.”
“Pick out six. When the mouse re-emerges from his hole, he may need encouragement. If we have to, we’ll let those six form a relationship with DeathMerchant6o6o6. We’ll have them begin to comment on his video and request to be part of his network. We’ll have those girls tell him they are real-life friends of CamaroChick19. He’ll want to be part of the group. It may make him more compliant.”
Khebat nodded. “Excellent. More peer pressure.”
“Also, if he’s as inexperienced and isolated as I suspect, he will be more eager to please young ladies. Especially a group of them.”
“I will prepare the accounts.”
“Do nothing with them yet,” Mohammed said. “Just have them ready.”
Khebat paused in the door. “There’s another option.”
“What?”
“Do you have more pictures from the account you used to create CamaroChick19?”
Mohammed nodded. “I have more pictures and access to more. This person is still active on social media and posting new pictures every time I revisit her account. I have links bookmarked to all of the accounts I take pictures from.”
“If you can get a new picture, something that might raise his interest, I have a compiler that will embed a keystroke logger and malware into the image. The malware will give me a backdoor into his computer. It won’t help us now, but once he views the image we can monitor what he’s doing.”
“Excellent,” Mohammed said. “I’ll prepare an image immediately.”
“Put it on a USB stick and bring it to my machine.”
Mohammed returned to the account from which he had been taking the pictures. Though he rarely paid any attention to the details of the account, other than to check the country of origin, he did notice this one belonged to an American teenager by the name of Amanda Castle. He found a picture of Amanda on a homebuilding site and copied it to his own hard drive, then to a USB memory stick.
He shoved his rolling desk chair back from the computer table, pulled the USB stick from his laptop, and took it into Khebat’s room. It was a stark, carbon copy of Mohammed’s own bare quarters. No one in the west could understand how much of an improvement it was over the caves and hovels of his real home. He would take this empty apartment any day.
Khebat extended a hand and Mohammed placed the memory stick in it. Khebat plugged the drive into his machine and brought the picture up on his desktop.
“Pretty girl,” Khebat commented.
Mohammed shrugged. “If you like infidels.”
Khebat opened a piece of software and entered data into several blank fields. When he was done, he clicked a button with his mouse. The software ran for several seconds and then Khebat closed the program.
“Done!” he said, pulling the drive from his laptop. “Send this to DeathMerchant6o6o6. Ask him some stupid question, what he thinks of the picture or something. As long as he opens it, the programs will embed in his machine. Then we’ll be able to see what he’s doing.”
“If he comes back online,” Mohammed added.
“He will. The kids have an addiction. They can’t stay off forever.”