The Hunt for the Dark Web’s Biggest Kingpin, Part 5: Takedown

Rabenn remembers the environment of that battle room as extra useless silence and sweaty, anxious rigidity than eagerness or anticipation. He knew the potential for attaining a Ross Ulbricht–fashion arrest and seizing Cazes’ laptop computer in a stay, logged-in state—to not point out his cellphone—was a protracted shot at finest. Even in any case their worldwide conferences and planning calls over the previous months, and despite his standard hard-driving enthusiasm, Rabenn discovered himself quietly anticipating their plan to fail.

Throughout the desk, Sanchez was logged in to Roosh V. She checked Rawmeo’s profile and confirmed to the group that he was on-line and energetic: Cazes was at his keyboard. It was time.

Then, moments later, a voice piped up from the convention cellphone on the desk. “Oh God,” it stated. “We shut it down.”

It was the staff in Lithuania. Someway, the brokers there had by accident crashed the AlphaBay server earlier than they may end imaging it. In a matter of moments, Cazes could be tipped off that AlphaBay was down, presumably as a consequence of foul play. All he would wish to do was shut his laptop computer and the sport could be over.

There was no alternative: The staff within the convention room frantically informed the brokers on the bottom that they wanted to arrest Cazes and do it now.

Pisal gave a cue through police radio to the 2 feminine brokers within the grey Toyota Camry on the mouth of the cul-de-sac. Simply the day earlier than, the NSB colonel and his staff had scrapped the postal supply plan. The native put up workplace had warned them that Cazes by no means signed for packages himself, that his spouse typically got here to the door as a substitute. In order that they’d needed to suppose up a last-minute various. Their plan B now centered on that inconspicuous Toyota and an agent who glided by the nickname Nueng, sitting within the driver’s seat, whispering Buddhist prayers to herself to sluggish her racing heartbeat.

A couple of seconds later, a loud clang rang out throughout the cul-de-sac, adopted by the sound of steel grinding on concrete. The Camry had simply plowed its rear fender into the fence of Cazes’ two-story house, bending the entrance gate, dragging it off its rails, and making a clamor that ripped by means of the quiet of an in any other case peaceable morning on the outskirts of the Thai capital.

The safety guard on the finish of the cul-de-sac started shouting in exasperation at Nueng. Hadn’t he simply informed her to again straight out? Nueng and the opposite agent in her automotive stepped out of the automobile, and Nueng stood on the road, scratching her head in a show of haplessness, apologizing and explaining to the safety guard that she was nonetheless studying to drive. At that second, a vertical shutter opened partially on a second-floor window on the entrance of the home—a element, seen on the surveillance video feed, that despatched a wave of pleasure by means of the battle room at NSB headquarters.

They’d gotten the format of the house on an earlier journey to the spec home, and so they knew that this was the master suite. Had Cazes stepped away from his pc?

A second later, Cazes’s spouse, Sunisa Thapsuwan, got here out from the home’s entrance door and poked her head across the bent gate. The petite Thai lady, carrying a protracted nightshirt over her pregnant stomach, kindly reassured Nueng that it was superb, that she and her pal might depart. However Nueng, doggedly enjoying her half, shouted—as loudly as attainable, attempting to challenge in order that Cazes might hear inside the home—that she wanted to pay for the injury.

“I need to pay for it!” she pleaded. “I don’t need to pay for it within the subsequent life!” Her palms shook as she channeled her adrenaline into the nervousness of a poor one that owes one thing to a wealthy particular person.