Chapter XLIV
CHAPTER XLIV
It is not illegality that draws the attention of law enforcement but carelessness. Traditionally, Devin Vaughn’s activities had been models of good practice, criminally speaking. Vaughn was ambitious but not greedy and didn’t gamble unless the odds favored him. Like Blas Urrea, he aspired to respectability because respectable men had a better chance of avoiding prison time or a violent death. If Vaughn was successful enough, the origins of his fortune, like that of all the great robber barons of American history, might ultimately be forgotten. Small thieves, Vaughn’s father used to say, get sentences, but big thieves get statues.
Devin Vaughn’s financial difficulties, combined with his desire to hurt Urrea, had led him to take chances he would otherwise have avoided. The result was that he had become a person of interest to the U.S. Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, the FBI’s Financial Intelligence Center, and the Drug Enforcement Administration, with the FIC taking the lead. A federal court in Virginia had authorized electronic surveillance of Vaughn and five named accomplices, including Aldo Bern, which meant that federal investigators were now aware that Vaughn was under threat from a cartel boss, a consequence of a classic falling-out among thieves. It didn’t take them long to identify the boss in question.
The FBI’s contacts in Mexico’s Policía Federal Ministerial and the Agencia de Investigación Criminal confirmed a recent flurry of unusual activity in Blas Urrea’s camp. Something had been taken from Urrea, something valuable, and he was convinced Vaughn was the culprit. Pressure was put on the PFM’s informants to provide more details, but most of them were at the periphery of Urrea’s activities, not part of his inner circle. Nevertheless, whispers were overheard: Vaughn had taken “ los ninos de Urrea .” Except, as the PFM quickly established, Urrea’s family was safe and well. If he had any illegitimate offspring, the PFM was not aware of them.
While efforts continued to establish the identity of the “children,” a conference call between the FBI and DEA discussed the possibility of using Vaughn’s difficulties to pressure him into becoming a federal witness in return for protection. Officially, it was decided that the two agencies would await further intelligence before engaging. Unofficially, and over Chinese food at Mama Chang’s in Fairfax, the core members of the cross-agency team agreed that what they were waiting for was not more information but for Urrea to make a move against Vaughn. Federal agents would then have the opportunity to swoop in, and Vaughn would be advised that next time, they might not be able to save him. Metaphorically spilling his guts to law enforcement would be preferable to having them literally spilled by Urrea’s torturers. It was a hazardous strategy, but with Vaughn under surveillance and the chance that Urrea would strike sooner rather than later, it was felt to offer the best prospect for a satisfactory outcome.
But should events go south, and the agents prove too slow to protect Vaughn from injury—or, saints preserve us, death—it wasn’t as though the world would be significantly poorer. Vaughn remained a trafficker of narcotics and had, until recently, been the business associate of a Mexican whose preferred method of dispatching his enemies was to lay them facedown on a rock and split their skull with a sledgehammer.
In other words, and to use legal jargon, Devin Vaughn was screwed.
THE FBI HAD INSTITUTED three forms of surveillance on Vaughn. The first was termed stationary-technical : small cameras hidden in cars and vans parked near Vaughn’s home in Manassas, the vehicles regularly alternated from a pool of twelve registered to phantom companies and individuals. Vaughn’s home was also the subject of fixed surveillance from two points: an office block overlooking the rear of his property and an apartment for sale in a complex almost directly opposite, the locations employing thermal imaging and infrared cameras.
But the most important of the three, theoretically at least, was electronic monitoring, so his email and telephone communications, and those of his cohort, were now being shared with the bureau. But since Vaughn, for all his problems, hadn’t fallen to earth with the last shower of rain, he did his best to avoid writing, transmitting, or saying anything that could be used against him in a court of law. As an added precaution, he had boxes of burner phones stored in his basement, and the numbers being used by the subjects changed on a near daily basis.
Unfortunately, even burners weren’t protection against federal eavesdroppers. In Vaughn’s case, the monitoring involved the use of StingRays and KingFish, or stationary and portable cellular phone surveillance devices. These mimicked wireless carrier cell towers, forcing devices within a set range to connect to them instead. With a grid established around Vaughn’s home, it was a comparatively simple task for the agents to identify the new numbers upon activation and lock on to them accordingly, along with any other nearby phones.
So far, the eavesdropping on Aldo Bern’s cell phone had provided the best material, which was unsurprising given Bern’s responsibility for much of the day-to-day running of Devin Vaughn’s operations. While Bern had obviously instituted protocols against using proper names in calls, the agents were aware that he had identified at least one of those whom Urrea had sent against Vaughn, and some form of pre-emptive strike was about to be made. But where, or how, the agents were unable to establish.