Chapter 747 A greater threat
After finishing speaking, Rossi turned to look at Danny, "Detective Reagan, I hope that the NYPD and FBI will jointly hold a press conference to announce to the public the recent street attacks as soon as possible. The murderer who was a passer-by had been shot dead by the police on the spot."
Danny nodded and turned around to leave. He didn't even bother to let the medical staff in the ambulance check his body. After all, he was an experienced police detective. , how could you not see that something was fishy right now.
Today the streets are full of patrolling police officers and FBI agents wearing body armor, especially FBI agents. The three conspicuous yellow letters on the body armor clearly indicate their identities.
But yesterday, the murderer who was able to avoid police surveillance and continued killing people under the surveillance camera with confidence, today foolishly launched an attack less than two intersections away from them, and was naturally shot to death. If there wasn't something fishy about it, even a fool wouldn't believe it.
Although the previous BAU profiling has not been officially announced to the public, Danny was almost fully involved in the profiling process. It was a multi-person operation, organized, and almost always committed crimes in the surveillance area, and he could always avoid being directly captured by the camera. Looking at the guy who apparently committed suicide at the hands of the police today, some answers are on the horizon.
“They understand the FBI’s response to different levels of threats, have counter-surveillance skills, are extremely organized and hierarchical, and can even make people willing to die. What does this mean?”
In the afternoon, everyone gathered in the Federal Building Operations Center. Dana Moger and Frank Regan, who had just returned from the press conference, had expressions that could not be described as ugly after listening to Rossi’s analysis.
“Terrorists.” Mr. Director said coldly.
If Frank Reagan regards the city of New York as the territory he protects, then terrorists are the most threatening destroyers of this territory. Although the damage caused to the city by "911" has long been It has been cleaned up, but the scars left in people's hearts can never be erased.
"What is their purpose for doing this?" Dana Moger cast her sights on her old lover Rosie.
Rosie tilted her head slightly and motioned for Red to speak.
“If you think of a random shooting on the street as a bomb attack, it becomes clear that the other party is observing and estimating the speed of the police response, and then they know when to detonate another bomb.
The goal is to first cause panic and onlookers, and then wait for an opportunity to attack the second batch of emergency responders.”
“Just like the first batch of police officers and police officers who rushed into the Twin Towers. None of the rescuers expected that the building would suddenly collapse and bury everyone inside.”
Frank said this with a look of pain on his face. He was also one of the first police officers to rush into the scene. Just as he was escorting several civilians out of the scene, the building collapsed behind him, killing him. All his colleagues were buried in it.
Reed, as always, was unemotional in his analysis and only used a neutral tone, "It sounds crazy, but it is also very smart. Attacking passers-by again and again is just a practice again and again.
Even if there had not been this suicide attack and we had caught the murderer before, we would have only thought it was a serial murder case and would not have revealed their true purpose. They even studied it very carefully. We tried hard to imitate past cases."
"So the terrorist organization we are facing has at least eight operatives, and they are all dead soldiers?" Hannah's beautiful eyes widened, the situation changed too quickly. , making her a little unable to react.
"There are now 7 left, but this is only a conservative estimate. They are training these people's mobility through street attacks, ensuring that they are willing to kill or commit suicide for the ultimate goal, and at the same time confusing us. It really kills two birds with one stone." Jiejie replied.
As the first person to discover the problem and invite the BAU to solve the case, Joyner made a small mistake because she did not know Jack's identity, but she is also the person who has made the greatest contribution to this case so far.
But she didn't feel proud at the moment, because a bigger threat was right in front of them, and they had no idea about it.
“It does sound like the most clever way to plan a terrorist attack while minimizing the risk of exposure. But the question is what is their ultimate goal?” Joyner’s question is one that no one can answer. The answer is, because there are too many targets for terrorist attacks in the New York area. Let's still take "911" as an example. The direct economic losses that could be calculated at that time, including insurance compensation, casualties, reconstruction, etc., were as high as hundreds of billions of dollars.
The New York Stock Exchange was shut down for nearly a week. After reopening, the stock market plummeted, and the economic losses it caused are simply incalculable.
Especially Manhattan, the most central area of New York, is an isolated island in itself, connected to the outside world through a limited number of tunnels and bridges.
The bomb attack that Jack encountered on his first day in New York only destroyed an old apartment. Dana Moger followed the emergency plan and directly ordered the closure of all bridges and tunnels in the city. and stations.
Imagine if there were one after another bombing attacks, especially if all the follow-up attacks were IEDs or even suicide bombs targeting emergency and rescue personnel, how long would Manhattan Island be shut down?
Thinking of this, almost everyone's backs suddenly felt chilly, and beads of sweat appeared on their foreheads.
The few people at the scene who could still keep their composure, apart from Jack, who always had a "good attitude", were probably only Rossi, Dana Moger and Frank Regan. Although Hotchner still faced There was no expression, but that ugly face said everything.
"Is there still no information from DHS (Department of Homeland Security), NSA (National Security Agency) and CIA about the threat of domestic terrorist attacks?"
Rosie looked at Dana Moger. After analyzing it with Jack, he called her, and half a day had passed.
The latter shook his head, "The feedback from the CIA is that, except for a few major forces that are focused on surveillance, there have not been any new noteworthy organizations recently, such as DHS (Department of Homeland Security) and NSA (National Security Agency). ) are still trying their best to investigate domestic terrorist organizations."
Jack suddenly thought of a possibility that he had ruled out before, "The NSA has previously traced the whereabouts of unidentified funds from the Durange drug trafficking group, nearly 1,000. Ten thousand US dollars is enough to launch a large-scale attack, but there is still no result? "
The answer this time was Jubal. He has been paying attention to and following up on this information. After all, the gang The guy almost blew up the federal building before. "I only know that it flowed into the country, but its final destination is unknown. I immediately contacted my friends at the NSA to see if there is any latest progress."
At this time, there was a sudden commotion behind the operations center. Everyone looked up and saw Garcia appearing there at some point. Surrounded by several nerds from the IT technology department, they were arguing fiercely about something.
"Did you find anything else, Garcia?" Hotchner asked with a frown.
Garcia stood up from her seat nervously, "Yes, yes, I think we are in trouble. We re-checked the NYPD surveillance system and found that the system had traces of being hacked and someone copied it. All the videos of the crime scene were obtained.
The other party was watching everything that happened at the scene from the beginning."
"I remember that the bureau only spent a special amount of funds this year. to update the system and upgrade the firewall, they assured me that the money would not be wasted. ”
No matter how calm Mr. Director was, his face now became a little uneasy.
Garcia quickly explained, "They are very smart. They did not directly use hacking methods to invade the system. Instead, they used 'credential stuffing' to crack the accounts and passwords of some police officers who had access rights, and then used various NYPD The branch’s Wi-Fi logged into the police system and downloaded these videos.
If we hadn’t noticed that the number of downloads of these video data in the system was abnormal, we might not have discovered it at all.”
(End of this chapter)