Support and Defend (19 page)

D
OMINIC
C
ARUSO RETURNED
to Volta Park at ten a.m., and he stood behind a fence, watching 1598 34th St NW on the other side of the road. He was still dressed in his gray coveralls, and now he wore his hard hat and his sunglasses.

Dom fit in to the fabric of the neighborhood perfectly, no one walking their dog or driving by would notice him at all, not that there was much automobile or foot traffic on the street at ten a.m. on a Friday.

Most home break-ins happen in daylight because that’s when people aren’t home, of course, but there is also something about the middle of the day that causes natural defenses to diminish. People who look like they belong are rarely noted and almost never suspected.

Dom crossed the street at the corner, then he walked down to 1598, and he stepped onto the property as if he had every reason and right to be there. He took the steps down to the basement entrance, and here he stood shielded from the street and anyone who passed.

Dom seriously doubted Ross had a tenant in a private apartment down here, but he knocked nonetheless, then rang the doorbell. When no one answered after a minute, he repeated the process upstairs, and only after he was certain no one was home did he go back down the steps and move around to the tiny narrow driveway.

Next to the electric meter on the side of the house Dominic found the telephone junction box. He used a screwdriver from his backpack to open the panel, and then he simply unplugged the outgoing phone line.

If the security system had been wireless, he would have had more difficulties, but the little sign sticking out of a planter on the front stoop told him all he needed to know. This particular company did not offer wireless home security in this area, so Dom felt comfortable he could defeat the system with ease.

He went back down to the basement entrance, where again he was invisible to the street. He did not pause, he did not second-guess himself. Instead he pulled a lock-picking set out of his backpack, knelt down, and went to work. He defeated the old door’s deadbolt and knob lock in eighty seconds.

He opened the door extremely slowly. Immediately, the burglar alarm began chirping. This notified the homeowner that he or she had sixty seconds to disarm the alarm before it sounded and, under normal circumstances, contacted the monitoring station.

But Dominic had prevented the outgoing call, so the alarm was more an annoying noisemaker than a security device.

He kept his shades on and his helmet low on his head as he entered the house, still holding on to the door and moving at a glacial pace. At this stage he was on the hunt for motion- detector cameras, the type Ross might have attached to his wireless router. These would work independently of the home security system.

Dom pegged Ross as a techno buff. He had a background in computers, after all, so he could easily set up his own enhanced home-monitoring system using his wireless network.

Dom walked slowly now, his entire body moved less than three inches a second, meaning each step through the house took ten times longer than normal. Off the shelf, motion detectors were typically set to notice movement that tracked faster than three inches a second, so Dom and his teammates at The Campus had spent many silly yet laborious hours of training to defeat motion sensors by walking through hallways like windup toys whose springs had had sprung, giving them little energy for movement.

This required patience and care. If Dom bumped something on a table here in Ross’s home, if he dropped something out of a pocket, if he kicked something on the floor, or if he simply moved one inch per second faster than planned, the camera would notice him, and Ethan Ross would get an urgent text message on his phone alerting him to a disturbance at his home. A motion-capture photo would be sent along with the text, displaying Dom in his residential-construction worker getup, and real-time video would be recorded at a website run by the security camera’s manufacturer.

The alarm began sounding loudly throughout the house after a minute, but Dom ignored it, knowing it was a small risk anyone in the area would even hear it, a smaller risk anyone would call the police if they did, and an infinitesimal risk the police would show up in time to catch him in the act.

He found what he was looking for three minutes after entry. He’d taken the stairs up to the main floor and entered the kitchen from a rear entrance to the hall. A small camera was on the kitchen peninsula and facing the living room and the front door. Dom approached the camera from behind, so he moved at a normal pace, and he simply flipped a switch on the back that turned it off.

Free to move around the ground floor at will now, he found the locked security system box on the wall in the hallway and had it open in ten seconds. He unplugged the alarm, stopping the shrill siren. He left the box open and the wire dangling from it while he resumed his hunt throughout the house for electronic eyes.

He expected to discover another wireless security camera facing the back door, so he was not surprised when he found it overlooking a glassed-in back porch, but this cam was trickier than the first, because Ross had hidden it at the top of a pantry closet with a small hole cut through the door. He considered flipping off the entire wireless system in the house, but there would be a record of that in the router’s memory, so after spending a minute trying to figure out how he could defeat the device without opening the door and triggering it, he simply decided to avoid the entire back porch altogether, even though in front of the camera’s lens stood a wicker settee and a coffee table full of loose papers that appeared to contain some handwritten notes.

Dom took the stairs to the second floor, where he found another motion detector, but this one was linked to the home security system, and had therefore already been disabled.

He looked at his watch. His breach and clear of the premises had taken seven minutes, twelve seconds.

For step two, the security eval, he did a quick walk through of the home, looking for evidence of a roommate who was not home but might return, a dog out for a walk with a walker, a live-in girlfriend who might pop home for lunch, kids who needed to be brought home from school early, or any indication that others came and went. From the closets he determined Ethan lived alone, although it was clear two people had slept in the bed the previous evening.

Dom knew from Albright that the man had a girlfriend, but the only photographs he found around the home were either of Ethan himself or of Ethan’s mother.

Next Dom focused on the file cabinet in Ross’s small home office. He thumbed through the meticulously indexed files until he found a tab that said Home Security. He pulled out the file, shuffled through some papers, and located an index card containing the password for the system’s key panel. He put the paperwork back where he found it, hurried downstairs, plugged the power back in to the wall box, and shut the case. At the key panel by the front door he typed in the password and disarmed the alarm, putting it in a dormant mode that would not activate if the doors were opened or closed.

Stage two was complete twelve minutes and twenty seconds after he entered through the basement door.

Still looking at his watch, Dom felt he probably had several hours before Ethan would return from work, but he didn’t have any information about a possible housekeeper, so he gave himself only thirty minutes to do what he needed to do inside the home.

Now came stage three; the SSE, or sensitive site exploitation.

He began upstairs in the bedroom, and he found a mobile phone by Ross’s bed, which surprised him. Most people have only one phone, and they keep it with them. For a brief, horrifying second Dom worried Ross was still somewhere in the house, but the thought quickly disappeared as Dom realized he’d already checked every room at least once. This guy simply owned more than one phone, for some reason. Dom checked the phone quickly for any telltales, anything Ross might have set up so he could know if it had been tampered with, then carefully confirmed the device was password-protected.
Yep. Damn.

Pulling intel off the device would take hacking equipment Dom did not have, but finding this phone was not a complete strikeout. He looked it over closely and decided it was new, the buttons were stiff and the case was pristine. He then carefully opened the back of the phone with a small screwdriver and photographed the number on the SIM card. Dom knew, with the right equipment, the subscriber identity module number could be used to track the phone or trace its usage.

He checked the living room next. It was rather stately for its small size, with high ceilings and antique bookcases. Dom didn’t have time to check all the books for hidden papers or other incriminating evidence, so he set his phone to record video of everything out in the open, paying special attention to handwritten phone numbers, parking stubs, receipts, and other items that Ethan generated in his day-to-day life that might be able to attach him to either a person or a place.

Dom spent the next several minutes looking through the wastepaper baskets, thumbing through mail and receipts, and filming everything as he went.

He didn’t have time to go through everything, but this was exploitation, not analysis. When he got back home he would feed the video file through analytical software that would identify, evaluate, and categorize words and numbers pulled from each image.

Dominic filmed a stack of books on a shelf, and a similar stack on the coffee table. Every last one of them had to do with computer security.

Of course, Dom knew that Ross’s girlfriend was a computer security expert, but these looked like textbooks, not something she would need, since she had earned her doctorate years ago.

So they belonged to Ross? Was this guy a policy wonk, or was he a computer programmer? Dom realized he was looking for reasons to be suspicious of the man, and this proved nothing in itself, but it was at least a little curious.

He kept searching.

A MacBook Pro sat on the living room couch. Dom checked it quickly for any obvious tamper detection traps, such as a hair attached to the lid and base that would break if someone opened it. Just like with the phone he found no telltales, which made Dom think Ross behaved just like most normal people, and he had mistakenly put his faith in a home security system that could be defeated by anyone with a screwdriver and a little knowledge.

Dom opened the laptop and confirmed it was, in fact, password-protected. He imagined there were answers to be found on the hard drive, but he didn’t have the resources to uncover them. He thought about David and his promise for logistical support from the Mossad, but he couldn’t think of a way to exploit the hard drive in the time he had to do so without Ross knowing someone had been snooping around his place.

No. That wouldn’t work. Dom would have to find clues somewhere else.

Five minutes later he was back upstairs in Ross’s office, flipping through the paper on his desk, then digging inside the drawers. In a file folder he found a copy of Ross’s clean title on a 2013 Mercedes Benz E-Class coupe. Red. Dom took a picture of the VIN. If he could find it later—either here at Ethan’s house or in a parking lot near the Eisenhower Building, he would attach a slap-on GPS locator under the bumper so he could track the vehicle with an app on his phone.

On a whiteboard on the wall by the desk Dom saw Ross had written a few notes to himself, and he sucked these up into the video recording.

His watch chirped, alerting him he had ten minutes remaining of his allotted thirty. He went downstairs for a quick check of the kitchen, and here he looked through drawers and cabinets and at cans and jars. He recorded matchbooks, pens and notepads with logos, even the names and vintages of the wines in his wine rack. He found small plastic pill bottles on the peninsula, and they stood out because unlike most prescription medication, there were no markings on any of the bottles. Inside each he saw several pills, with each bottle containing pills of a different color and shape. Dom photographed them carefully, and then put them back where he’d found them.

He had just started to check for trace markings on a blank notepad attached to the refrigerator when he heard a noise, like a footfall, on the small brick porch outside the front door of the row house, just twenty-five feet from where he now stood. He was understandably startled at first, but within a half-second he deduced it must have been the mailman.

Dom stood there for a moment, watching the mail slot, expecting his assumption to be confirmed when a stack of letters and ads fell to the floor. While he watched, he reached over and flipped back on the wireless security camera covering entrance and the living room.

But just as he flipped the switch, Dom heard the unmistakable and panic-inducing sound of a key sliding into the lock of the front door. The door latch clicked instantly, and a shaft of light from outside raced toward him along the hardwood floor.

D
OMINIC DROPPED
flat on his chest in the kitchen behind the peninsula, shielding himself from the entryway. He spun himself around to face the doorway at the back of the kitchen, which led to the hallway that ran along the northern side of the first floor. He began pulling himself forward with his hands so his sneakers didn’t squeak on the polished floorboards, using his cotton coveralls to slide silently.

Behind him, he could hear the front door close and someone in the living room walk over to the wall security system keypad and punch a couple buttons.

A male voice muttered, “What the fuck?”

Dom suspected this was Ross, and he’d obviously just noticed the security system was disarmed, meaning either someone had changed it or else he had forgotten to set it this morning when he left for work.

Dom kept pulling himself across the floor, slowly but surely. While he did so he thought Ross would have to be either incredibly switched on or a complete obsessive-compulsive to have no doubts he had remembered to alarm the system.

There was an entrance to the hallway to the back stairs from the living room, and another from the back of the kitchen. Dom hoped like hell Ross would bypass the kitchen altogether, but he heard the creaking footfalls on the hardwood as Ross began moving in his direction.

Dom picked up the pace, moving along the floor. He kept his legs up and pulled himself with his forearms, using the low friction of the slick surface to slide along on his chest and hips. It took all his upper-body strength to accomplish this, and doing so without grunting with effort was difficult.

He pulled himself into the hallway out of view, and he’d just kicked his legs out of the kitchen when the kitchen light snapped on. Ross was just fifteen feet behind him at the light switch, and very possibly still heading his way toward the stairs up to his bedroom.

Dom launched to his feet and moved straight back down the hall, making his footsteps as soft as possible and doing his best to keep them in perfect cadence with the louder steps of Ross behind him. Dom passed the staircase on his left and ducked through the open doorway of a tiny laundry room on the right. The dark space was barely enough room for a stacked washer and dryer, but Dom pressed himself hard against the appliances to stay out of view from up the hall.

He heard keys dropped on a counter, and the footsteps behind halted for an instant, but then they started up again.

Looking directly ahead, Dom could see the stairs in front of him. If Ross climbed the stairs he would only have to glance down and to his right to see a man in gray coveralls and a white hard hat leaning back into his washer and dryer.

Ethan Ross entered the hallway on Dom’s left and began climbing the stairs.

Dom pushed himself against his backpack with all his might, backing himself up another inch or two. He was furious for allowing himself to get into this compromised and dangerous position. He had a pistol in a shoulder holster under his coveralls, but he wasn’t about to pull it on a guy who, so far, Dom had enough evidence to suspect only of being a rich mama’s boy. If Ross saw him, Dom could do little more than run for the front door.