The Cloud Collector Read Online Free Page B

others, both Palestinian-born Americans with Hamas-based relatives in Gaza, all part of the Hamas–Al Fatah reconciliation.’
    â€˜I don’t remember arrest publicity,’ complained Singleton. ‘When’s the trial? On what charges?’
    â€˜There wasn’t a trial. I followed the Syrian-led group through their Facebook cutouts into their operational e-mails. They were buying weapons for Hamas through Mexican suppliers, shipping through Colombia on a drug-supply route. I introduced an e-mail through Colombia to the gunrunners’ Gaza control, showing they were operating a weapons-supply business on the side. All three got taken out by a Hamas hit squad.’
    â€˜So we’re setting up our own Murder Incorporated and you’re inviting us to become part of a botnet hacking group to operate it?’ Singleton calmly asked.
    â€˜Absolutely not,’ rejected Irvine, anxious to introduce the carefully prepared justification. ‘We got bogged down in an illegal war in Iraq, we got bogged down in Afghanistan—where no invader has ever won a war—and we’ve crossed too many borders of too many countries clandestinely fighting terrorists. And what’s the universal condemnation against America every time? Collateral damage, killing or maiming civilians. We identify a target in Pakistan, a Predator drone drops its bombs or fires its missiles, kills two or three terrorists—if we’re lucky—and wipes out twenty innocent old men, women, and children. You know our kill score of innocents so far in Pakistan? Three thousand and rising. And with every one of those innocent deaths also dies every hope of our ever winning hearts and minds and stopping America from being the most vilified and hated nation on the planet. This way there’s no collateral hurt. Those we trace who don’t kill each other we pursue and punish, legally if at all possible. No dead innocents, no America Go Home banners, no American-flag burning.’
    â€˜Didn’t we leave loose ends in Boston?’ relentlessly persisted Singleton.
    â€˜Again, very definitely no!’ insisted Irvine, believing he was winning the inevitable moral argument. ‘Through the Syrian we got to two more whose supposedly hidden Facebook exchanges claimed Al Qaeda affiliation. The FBI has the entire group under blanket surveillance—with court-approved wiretaps on cell phones, landlines, and Internet connections—until this new Al Qaeda–affiliated group and other associates are identified. From the Colombian Facebook traffic there was a steer to the three-man Boston assassination team. The Boston assassination trio are based in Miami; their day job is acting as the conduit for a cocaine cartel working out of Medellín. Everything’s now with the Drug Enforcement Administration, who didn’t have the Miami three flagged until we told them.’
    Marian said, ‘I logged other partial penetrations, following the guidelines you set for us. How many more fatalities have there been with your intervention with those?’ Once again it wasn’t an accusation.
    â€˜Two in Washington, a month and a half ago,’ responded Irvine. ‘Both were Americans, former infantry who’d done four tours between them in Afghanistan. Came home not just disillusioned but anti-U.S.; converted to Islam and met their recruiter, an Iranian named al Aswamy, in an Arlington mosque. I got that from al Aswamy’s Facebook. He was using a binary code, half-encrypted on his private Facebook wall, the other half on a different time and day by cell-phone texts, read properly only when the two halves were put together. There was also a reference to another radicalized Muslim group in Annapolis; they’d apparently rejected al Aswamy after he made a recruitment approach: they’d identified him as a Sunni. They were Shiites.’
    â€˜I got their cell number for you,’ remembered