After lunch, Anita and Kathy stayed in the kitchen talking. Jack came into the kitchen and said, “I checked the wire services and the eastern shore papers. They contained a news item about an exploding propane tank causing a fire. Three people died in the explosion and fire. Their identities are being withheld until positive identification can be made. I also checked on the progress of the Maryland State Police investigation of the three dead bodies at the Fisherman’s Inn. The latest bulletin said the men had been armed and apparently had fired their weapons. The weapons are now undergoing ballistics analysis. More information will be given to the media as the investigation moves along.”

Anita said, “Obviously, they must suspect something other than an ordinary case of three guys shooting each other. At least one of my shots was not a through and through, and they probably will find at least one of our slugs from the bodies and discover it was not fired by the weapons the men held. Then the investigation will move to a higher level. If, and I say if, those weapons are matched with any of the recent sniper hits, this investigation will be taken over by the Feds and splashed all over prime time TV and front pages.”

Jack said, “Well, we’ve done the best we can do with the Jason cell. Let’s move on to the New York Bomber cell. I’ve got some ideas I want you to hear.

“I’m worried we have so much going on requiring our 24/7 attention that we are going to get tired and make mistakes. Look at the problem in New York. We don’t have the resources to take down the cell in one quick strike, but we have a near perfect tip to give to the cops or FBI. The problem is we have no credibility, and tips like this one might be sat on for too long. We have nearly complete data on the New York cell. We know who they are and where they are. We even know what they plan to do and a time frame for their action. From my experience on the police force, our information seems to be a slam dunk for any law enforcement organization. We need to give them some hard information they can quickly and easily check.”

Kathy replied, “Yeah, okay. But data from unknown sources have about a 90 percent chance of being filed away until it is too late. We have to give them something not only solid but attention-getting. I think we should go over the data we have on Jason Inc. and see if we can give them anything without revealing our participation in the Fisherman’s Inn or Tilghman Island action.”

Jack added, “I think we have to include some information that will immediately get their attention. Believe me, they would just as soon investigate us as some vague unknown terrorist organization. Let’s review what we know that the FBI does not, or they know but haven’t released to the media. The more detail the better. The Feebies get off on detail.”

Anita replied, “Okay, we know the IDs of the two dead guys on the hillside. We know where they lived. We know what kind of weapons they carried, and both the Steyr-Mannlicher SSG-69 and the VAL Silent Sniper were fired twice. These are rather esoteric weapons for general use in the U.S. Both are sound suppression weapons ideal for urban sniping.”

Jack said, “Good, we can include information about the weapons as an attention getter. Nothing about these weapons was revealed in the media. I also suspect these weapons were used on other sniper kills. If the Feds make ballistics match with other murders, the proverbial shit will hit the fan. The media will be all over the story. I don’t see how putting the data about the weapons in our message to the FBI could possibly lead back to us.”

Jack continued, “I see the transmission of information to the Bureau being more of a problem than the actual information itself. There are two aspects to the problem. The data itself could not be traced back to us, but the physical aspects of how we get the information to the Bureau could be. A mistake and a fingerprint, a drop of sweat or saliva recovered from the message and the trail to us begins. A phone message can be traced to the site of the call, taped and be gone over by a forensics team including voice print analysis. Accent, education level and sometimes even ethnic groups can be distinguished.”

Anita said, “Jack, you just scared the hell out of me. You are the law enforcement here. Can we send some information to the FBI without getting caught?”

“Yes. We should be able to rough out something in a couple of hours.”

Anita said talking about the FBI made her head hurt, and she was going out for a run.

The next morning Jack and Kathy sat over a breakfast of Belgian waffles and melon. Anita was out walking Shadow before going to a local gym.

Thinking over the FBI problem, Kathy said, “We agreed to tell the police about the weapons. That’s the least threatening to us and would be a powerful statement of credibility for our other information on the New York cell. Now we have to figure out how to send the information to the FBI.”

Jack said, “Agreed, but the real problem is how to get it to the FBI without their crack forensic labs finding something to start them backwards on the trail to us. How about this, instead? We do not send it directly to the FBI. We send it instead to the Maryland State Police, a much smaller and less paranoid organization. A letter mailed to a high ranking state police officer would have a high probability of actually getting to him. By sending it to an office or home, the letter will be handled by more people, and by the time it is subjected to top forensic lab techs, the letter will be so contaminated it will be hard to even start a work back investigation targeted at finding the sender. The information will be so startling, the state police will almost immediately push it up the chain to Homeland Security or more likely take it directly to the FBI.

“The preparation of the letter and the purchase of the paper, envelope and stamp have to be done as you would work a project in a laboratory white room. No fingerprints, no DNA, mailed from outside this area, and dropped in a busy mail collection box in a large metropolitan area with no camera coverage. Everything is handled with gloves and printed on a printer we’ll destroy as soon as the letter is mailed.”

Kathy nodded and said, “Go for it.”

***

Buy “Justice Beyond Law” on Amazon, as well as the rest of the Jack Brandon series and other books by Barry Kelly, a former CIA agent and adviser to President Reagan.