THREE
Arthur Petrie sat up in the limo’s back seat, head pounding, but eyes wide, and blinked at his aide. “What do you mean they have the guy? Just like that? How?”
Across from Arthur, Shepard squirmed in the limo’s jump seat like he was about to confess to chopping down a cherry tree.
Arthur sighed. Shepard’s pussyfooting when he had to share classified information with his own boss always made Arthur’s head hurt, which was the last thing he needed just now.
Shepard said, “The unclassified euphemism in the mid-2000s was ‘The Find.’”
The acting secretary turned up his eyes and scanned the limo’s headliner. “Does this look like a fucking TV studio to you, Shepard?”
“Sir?”
“I want an answer, not a Jeopardy question.”
Shepard pressed his lips together, then said, “Yes, sir. By my second tour in Iraq, among other intel methods, the U.S. was already tracking insurgent’s phones by their GPS chips, and eavesdropping by a ‘backdoor’ built in to most phones to defeat their encryption systems. Even when the insurgents thought their phones were off. Not that anybody admitted it then. When I asked why we were finally getting decent intel, one guy just told me ‘The Find.’”
Shepard frowned. “A few years later, it turned out the NSA was doing more or less the same thing to people here in the U.S. Sort of made some of us wonder what kind of government we’d been fighting for. Today most of the manufacturers have stopped building in backdoors. Or at least they’ve stopped admitting it.”
Arthur cocked his head. He had never understood why government surveillance offended otherwise clever people like Shepard. Government’s job was screwing over the governed, and it couldn’t do its job if it didn’t know what the governed were up to.
Shepard said, “We knew from what the Kenyan saw that the bomb was detonated by what we assumed was a phone that was located somewhere between the center of the Golden Gate and the bridge’s North Tower. At the time, there were thousands of phones behind the start line at the south end of the bridge, but just the one near the north end.”
“But he threw his phone away.”
Shepard shook his head. “This phone’s not in the bay at the moment. So he threw away something else.”
“What was that?”
“This guy improvised a radio-controlled explosively formed penetrator. If he was smart enough to build and deploy an RCEFP, he was smart enough to know that a high-profile event like this race might rate shutting off the cellphone towers in the neighborhood. Exactly so a phone in a bomb couldn’t receive a detonation command from another phone. The towers weren’t shut off, but he couldn’t have planned on that.”
“Then how—?”
“Kids’ walkie-talkies can do directly what two phones do via cell towers. Especially if the guy holding the transmitter’s fifty yards from the receiver, like he was. Amazon’ll deliver a pair of walkie-talkies that don’t have tracking chips for under sixty bucks.”
Arthur stroked his chin, nodded.
Shepard said, “What NSA’s tracking is a phone the bomber probably had in his pocket while he waited for Colibri’s car.”
The secretary narrowed his eyes. “Why would he have a phone in his pocket? If he’s so smart, he knows about tracking chips. Does this guy want to get caught?”
Shepard said, “Actually, that’s exactly what he wants. At least the psychologists say that’s the most probable scenario. Or maybe he’s just not that smart. Bomb building’s not simple, but it’s not rocket science.”
“But NSA’s rocket science is. For whatever reason he’s carrying this phone? And they’re tracking it?”
Shepard nodded. “They place it in a house in Redwood Heights. That’s a residential neighborhood on the south side of Oakland. Local SWAT’s clearing the area and surrounding the place right now.”
The secretary’s eyes widened. Whether smart, stupid or suicidal, Arthur Petrie wanted to kiss this guy right through his ski mask. The confirmation hearing narrative had just changed. Now, the story would be how in six short weeks Arthur Petrie had flipped a dysfunctional agency like he had flipped all those on-the-skids malls of his. Terrorist bomb hurts nobody except some rich guy. Terrorist nabbed within forty-eight hours. Case closed.
Arthur Petrie had transitioned from real estate speculator to politician in the first place by being shocked—shocked!—at problems he knew dick about, then blaming them on somebody else. The tactic had propelled him from the House to the Senate and now almost into the cabinet.
But these circumstances were new to him. Government was actually about to do something efficient and useful. Better yet, he could take credit for it.
Arthur drummed fingers against his chin.
Of course, there was always the danger that whoever had actually done the work might get the credit, and he would look like a clueless bystander.
Suddenly the forward Suburban blipped its siren, then Arthur was thrown left in his seat as the convoy cut to the right across traffic and shot down an exit ramp.
Shepard said, “Sir, before I woke you I took the initiative to redirect us to the field operation command post in Redwood Heights. Apparently the media’s got wind. I thought somebody in authority, like you, should be on site to keep the media informed.”
The acting secretary rubbed his chin stubble. Shepard’s bag contained an electric razor reserved for Arthur. He didn’t ask for it. Haggard warrior was the better look. He could even get the protective detail boys in the Suburbans to Velcro him into one of those bulletproof vests they wore.
He reached across the compartment, slapped Shepard’s knee, and smiled. “Now that’s political IQ, Shepard! A politician’s aide puts himself in his boss’s shoes.”
Shepard squirmed in his seat. “Actually, sir, I was just putting myself in the shoes of the grunts on the ground. When the Congressional junkets came to Iraq we’d use the politicians as bait.”
Arthur straightened, brows-up. Shepard didn’t seem that devious. Maybe he had underestimated the man. “You put members of Congress in the line of fire?”
Shepard shook his head. “No, sir! Not bait for the insurgents. Bait to draw off the camera crews. So we could go to war in peace.”
* * *
Seven minutes later the Lincoln and the Suburbans, their lights and sirens long since off, were waved over on a steep street of fifties-vintage bungalows. The landscaping was mature but overgrown, and most of them had the curb appeal of dog kennels.
The cop who waved them over was black, younger than Shepard, and wore a rain slicker. One of those clear plastic shower caps covered his cop hat, and a walkie-talkie’s stubby antenna protruded above the raincoat’s lapel. The last person Arthur had seen dressed like that was when he was twelve, and the person had been a school crossing guard.
Arthur’s protective detail piled out of the Suburbans, heads on swivels, cleared the area, then waved him and Shepard out of the Lincoln. Nobody even offered Arthur a bulletproof vest.
Shepard, who was nothing if not a quick study, hopped out, popped open the golf umbrella in his hand, then held it above the car door while his boss climbed out quite dry. Also quite bravely, considering his torso was unarmored against sniper fire.
The cop in the rain slicker approached them, saluting like a Boy Scout. He leaned close and spoke up to be heard over the drum of rain and the rush of runoff down the curbside gutters. “Mr. Secretary, I’m Officer Gerald Waters.”
“You’re in charge, here?”
“Of outside agency liaison for this critical incident, yessir. The incident tactical commander’s closer to the objective while the other elements move into position.”
The secretary looked around.
A black SWAT van, rear doors open to a depopulated interior, was parked twenty yards further up the street. Another slickered cop closed the van’s doors, then scurried back inside the van’s cab.
What the hell? Arthur Petrie was the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Frigging Security, but instead of the command post he was out here in overflow parking with a PR flack dressed up like the safety patrol.
The black cop cleared his throat. “May I orient you to the area of operations, Mr. Secretary?”
That sounded professional. Arthur nodded.
The black cop walked them across the street with two of the protective detail’s members trailing behind.
The lot that the cop led them across was vacant except for a worn concrete slab and a rusted roll off hopper, overstuffed with a jigsaw of shingles, plaster, and slabs of sledgehammered brick.
When the black cop reached the slab’s back edge, he stopped and pointed out and down.
Below, streets just like this one snaked and climbed the side of the wooded rise they stood atop. On a clear day, Arthur supposed, this lot had a view of Oakland. But a teardown in this shithole neighborhood was stupid, as whoever was flipping this property was about to find out. Arthur had fled the private sector because the marketplace punished human stupidity. Whereas government was based on the proposition that human stupidity was infinite.
The black cop pointed. “That one.”
A football field down and away from them, Arthur made out through the gauze of rain the red tile roof of a smallish single story.
The view plus the slab provided a perfect vantage to see whatever the hell was going to happen, and also a spot with a stage and a backdrop from which to give interviews after it did happen.
The black cop, whose name Arthur now wished he had remembered, said, “The surrounding residences are clear. Nobody home on workdays when school’s back in.”
The secretary pointed at the red roof. “You’re sure the cell phone that was on the bridge is in that house?”
The black cop shifted, foot-to-foot, nodded. “Your people told us that, sir. They also said the phone’s moving around in there, not stationary.”
Shepard was listening with his own phone to his ear, then held it to his chest and said to Arthur, “We’re just now getting a profile of this guy. Well, of the guy who owns the phone and rents that house.”
The secretary peered down and sucked a breath in horror. What if they had surrounded only a phone? What if the phone’s owner was escaping into Mexico right now? While a decoy beagle waddled around an unmarketably outdated kitchen with a phone taped on its ass? Arthur asked, “Has anybody actually seen a person moving inside that house?”
Before the cop could answer, his walkie-talkie crackled. “I got eyes on a target. Left front window. White male, bald, camo T-shirt. He just pulled a curtain back. Still peekin’ out.”
The secretary exhaled. At least he wasn’t going to have to read headlines like “DHS Surrounds Pooch While Bomber Escapes.”
“Weapon?” It was a different voice. Authoritative.
“Nothing visible.”
“Range?”
“One six zero. But—”
“But what? Hostage?”
“No evidence of one. But—damn!”
Static crackled for as long as it took Arthur’s heart to thump twice. It was chilly here, but he was sweating and the cannonball in his gut throbbed.
Arthur, Shepard, and the cop leaned forward, staring down like tourists through the downpour at the red-roofed house surrounded by wet greenery, while rainwater coursed off their umbrellas.
Arthur blinked back dizziness, shook his head to clear it.
He couldn’t see any sniper, and the dizzier he felt the less he cared.
“Lost target. He dropped the curtain. I think he’s moved away from the window. I think he might’ve made us, Lieutenant.”
Silence, then the sniper said, “Front door opening!”
Arthur’s heart thumped and his head throbbed worse.
The sniper said, “Never mind. He just let the dog out.”
Below, a tiny, gray speck of a dog ran out from beneath the trees and crossed the street.
The authoritative voice said, “I don’t like—”
All in one instant the red roof tiles a football field away parted and bloomed as a flash like the risen sun startled the crap out of Arthur Petrie.
It seemed to take forever for his heart to beat again, and dizziness blurred his vision.
Then he felt nothing.