Quantico, Virginia
December 12, 2017
Dan fought his way through the morning city traffic and turned south towards the Marine Corps base at Quantico. Sandy had scheduled a meeting with the FBI investigator assigned to assemble the evidence from the Veterans Day incidents and to determine if there was anything to connect them.
Meg Andrews opened the door to the crime lab and stepped into the hallway. He had expected the typical FBI agent that you see on TV: dark-haired, tough and business-like. Meg didn’t fit the mold at all. She stood about five feet tall with a well-proportioned but diminutive frame topped with shiny copper hair cut just above her shoulders. Her eyes were light green and had a striking transparency. Her flawless light skin had a constellation of freckles under her eyes and across her long straight nose. The bright red lipstick seemed out of place on a mouth with pert lips. She exuded an air of efficiency and matter-of-factness, someone very dedicated who followed the book. Meg checked Dan’s identification card and had him sign into the nearly empty log book placed on a podium outside the evidence lab door. The “lab” was actually a cafeteria that had been slated for demolition. Divided into sectors, the evidence had been color-coded with shipping tags and segregated into four discrete areas representing each of the Veterans Day incidents.
After a quick orientation around the floor’s perimeter, Dan asked, “It looks like you’re working a 100,000 piece jigsaw puzzle here and don’t know how many pieces you have or even whether they all belong to the same puzzle?”
“That’s a good analogy,” Meg said brightly, “And I don’t want to sugarcoat the situation, but we’ve made some progress here in the common area that you might be interested in.” The two walked over to another part of the floor that had been cordoned off with bright pink surveyor’s tape and contained tagged material from each of the areas. Both Meg and Dan put on latex gloves and paper booties before lifting the pink tape.
“I’ll tell you upfront that the links are still a bit tenuous at this stage, but I’ve got some preliminary ideas. No conclusions yet,” said Meg, flashing a smile that revealed an even set of white teeth.
Meg seemed to be cautious and methodical, traits that were aligned with this type of work. Dan wondered whether she might get so far down in the weeds with the myriad details that she would not see the big picture.
“Good morning,” boomed a strong, energetic voice behind them. Both turned, and Meg introduced the man approaching the tape as her boss, David. He obviously kept track of what outside visitors were visiting his facility and made sure that he met all of them. Tall with wire-rimmed glasses and a professionally styled shock of brown hair, he looked more like a college engineering professor than an FBI agent. He ran the FBI Training Academy in Quantico and had been quick to offer the cafeteria for the forensic work after the Veterans Day attacks.
“Welcome to Quantico, Dan. Glad to hear that you are part of the DHS team. Meg has been doing some great forensic work for us here. She’s a very focused and dedicated scientist. If there’s anyone that can find the correlations between these incidents if they are out there, it’s Meg. Is there anything new?” he asked Meg from behind the pink tape.
“Not this morning. I was just telling Dan that any physical evidence links between these events are still speculative, and we are letting the evidence and science lead us to findings, not the other way around.”
“Good. Let me know if you come up with anything new. The Director is keenly interested in this project. Dan, it was a pleasure to meet you and again, welcome. I’m sure that’ll we’ll get to the bottom of this. Please give Sandy Matthews my regards.”
“Yes, I’ll do that,” Dan replied, wondering how he and Sandy might have been connected in the past and thinking that his glib welcome seemed too practiced. David nodded, did an about face and headed out the cafeteria doors.
The two turned back to the evidence, and Meg surprised Dan by immediately complaining about her boss’s constant interest in her work, saying, “He might as well take over the effort for all the time he spends down here. I guess there’s a great deal of pressure from above to come up with some answers. I know it sounds petty to complain and I really enjoy my job and all, but there’s just something about him that rubs me the wrong way.”
Dan replied, “Look, I’m new to all of this and don’t consider myself an insider by any means, but I do know Secretary Lewis and my boss’s boss, Admiral Wright, are under the gun to find any linkage that exists or rule it out altogether. Based on what I’ve seen here so far, that’s a tall order.”
“Well,” replied Meg, a frown pinching her face, “What I’ve been able to put together scares me a little. And it’s more a case of what we expected that didn’t show up. Let me explain. Ever since 9/11, we’ve been working on a database that has tried to fingerprint every terrorist incident by looking at the sources for materials, assembly methods and packaging. This is extremely sensitive data, and I really can’t tell you anything more except that our research is very sophisticated, and we are generally able to profile the attack. It’s all been after the fact but we are getting closer to triangulating the key overseas sources.”
“Makes sense. Is there anything new or different in these Veterans Day events?”
“That’s just the problem with this material. We are looking for correlations against our database and frankly haven’t found any. There have been a few things that would point to Al-Qaeda but they seem too contrived. A shard of metal with some Arabic characters stamped on it…that sort of thing. My conclusion is that these attacks were put together by a new team or organization that has left no fingerprints.”
“A new Al-Qaeda affiliate?”
“Maybe. But what I’m really thinking is that there is an independent cell that’s working right here in the US.”
“What points to that?”
“That’s the problem. It’s more my gut than the science, but I can tell you that we’ve picked up much more US-related content in the material that we’ve collected from these sites.”
“Could they be trying to throw us off the scent?”
“That’s possible. They are obviously a very clever bunch and are testing us each and every day. It scares me.” She shivered involuntarily. Meg’s confident exterior belied the personal vulnerability she felt.
“If you’re right, that is different and frightening. I’ve always been hopeful that Al-Qaeda would not be successful in recruiting people from here in the States.” He felt a sudden wave of emotion as he said the words and turned his head away from Meg and the evidence scattered all over the floor. Recovering, he cleared his throat and asked, “By the way, did you get anything from the Norfolk tunnel failure last summer?” Dan didn’t know whether Meg even knew about his personal connection to that tragedy.
“Not much. A lot of the evidence was either destroyed by the explosion or silted over by the tides. The reconstruction effort began shortly after they’d removed the cars and people in them, and everything in the tunnel ended up being pumped back into the bay so we may have lost some evidence there. We did get a fix on a high-tech boring machine that may have been used to excavate the silt and sediment that covered the tunnel to place the explosive. We traced it to a small company in Switzerland that manufactures mining equipment, and our investigative team is following up with them. The company only manufactures a few units each year so our team is tracking down all the units sold in the last few years.”
The two spent several hours examining the evidence floor, failing to find anything that Meg overlooked. She got additional pieces in several times a week but the stream had slowed to a mere trickle and some of the stuff sent in had no connection at all.
After removing their gloves and booties, they walked out to the lobby. She promised to keep him in the loop if her investigation produced anything new.
“Thanks, Meg. I appreciate your taking the time to show me where you are on connecting the dots. I’m sure we’ll be talking soon.” He saw the start of a faint smile on Meg’s face before he left. He wasn’t sure what it meant but he certainly liked her professional approach to the investigation. Plus, she seemed like someone who could be trusted.
He left the base with a growing worry. Home grown and directed terrorism was a whole new ball of wax that no one was ready to deal with. Already after 2:00 p.m. the beltway traffic would be starting in an hour so Dan headed east from Springfield and went into downtown Alexandria for some crab cakes and coleslaw before heading home. He decided that a good run would give him a chance to think about what he’d learned in Quantico and see if he could make any other connections to Meg’s work.