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Chapter 19
JARED GOES SHOPPING
It was still dark outside when Jared opened his eyes and looked through the open window in the
living room. It took him a few groggy seconds to realize that he had fallen asleep on the couch,
once again, still fully clothed with the television flickering. He’d come home from work at midnight
and probably dozed off around 2:00 a.m. watching his favorite program, Antiques Roadshow. Given
that it was now almost 6:00 a.m., he had maybe—3:00, 4:00, 5:00 . . .—pulled off four whole hours
of sleep. For Jared that seemed like something of a record.
Most nights he was kept up by his idée fixe: the Silk Road, a case that Jared was trying to solve
alone, but that was mired in soupy bureaucratic minutiae and nonstarters. Every direction he had been
turning to was tangled in red tape. Bosses, bosses of bosses, and people he didn’t even know existed
in government were starting to ask what this young newbie agent was doing and why he was doing it.
Should an HSI agent really be going after a Web site that appeared to be selling a few bags of drugs?
Weren’t there more important things that kid should be working on? Who the fuck did he think he was?
The case had been such a burden, with all the work adding a heavy strain to Jared’s marriage,
and his wife, Kim, growing understandably frustrated that Jared spent less time in the house than he
spent out of it. On top of that, all the hours were not amounting to much. He had no leads and no idea
how to tackle a Web site that was a den of anonymity.
Thankfully for Jared, that was about to change.
For weeks he had been working on his plan of attack. He knew he couldn’t find the leader of the
site—or leaders, perhaps, he acknowledged—as they were securely cloaked by the Tor browser
online. But he also knew how any crime network worked, and that if you start at the bottom, you will
eventually make your way to the top. The bottom for Jared meant buying drugs. Lots of drugs.
He hadn’t anticipated how difficult it would be to buy narcotics online. Not because it was hard
to procure heroin or crack from the Silk Road (it was actually shockingly easy) but rather because no
one in the Department of Homeland Security had ever before embarked upon an online drug-shopping
spree. Unlike seizing some contraband at a port or orchestrating a controlled delivery in the street to
arrest someone, online drugs were a true Wild West with no existing protocols. It took several layers
of approval, numerous meetings, and copious paperwork before Jared was finally allowed to
commence his binge-shopping on the Amazon of drugs.