FOUR
Arthur Petrie lay flat with his back against something cold, hard, and wet. His head ached, and liquid trickled off his face and into his open mouth.
“Mr. Secretary?” The voice in Arthur’s ears was familiar, urgent.
Arthur opened his eyes, blinked away streaming rain, and coughed it from his mouth. “What happened?”
Shepard and one of the protective detail men knelt over him, tight-lipped faces silhouetted against the clouds behind them.
The PD man said, “The house blew up, sir.”
“I knew that.” Arthur moved arms, legs, wiggled fingers and toes. “I meant what happened to me. Am I alright?”
Shepard took Arthur’s face in both hands, then cocked his head and peered into the older man’s eyes.
The ex-platoon leader nodded. “I’d say when you fainted you cracked the back of your head on the concrete.” He smiled. “You got your bell rung pretty good, sir. But I’ve seen plenty of worse concussions.”
Arthur blinked again, then Shepard grasped his elbow to help him up.
“Ow! Fuck.”
“Sir?”
“Let go! I think I hit my funny bone when I fell.” Arthur sat up on his own and rubbed his elbow until the numb burn in his arm faded. “How good did my bell get rung?”
“You were out six minutes, Mr. Secretary.”
Someone was shouting in the distance, and the protective detail man stood and turned toward the shouts.
A flint-eyed, helmeted man wearing black SWAT gear, with a silver lieutenant’s bar on his uniform, muscled past the protective detail man. The cop stood, booted feet apart, while he pointed down at Arthur with a trembling finger. “You didn’t even ask where my people were! We weren’t even in position yet. You could’ve killed my guys!”
Arthur recognized the authoritative voice that had crackled out from the black cop’s walkie-talkie.
Arthur stood, then touched the back of his head and discovered a lump that felt as big as a Titleist. “What?”
The SWAT unit’s commander stalked to the edge of the concrete slab and stared down, waiting with hands on hips until Arthur joined him.
Where the red-tile-roofed bungalow had been was only a circle of flattened, smoking vegetation. At the circle’s center yawned a crater filled with flaming rubble, including scorched red roof tiles. The windows of neighboring houses were shattered, and a water spout fifteen feet high jetted from a broken pipe near the crater’s center.
The SWAT commander said, “Don’t bullshit me. You called a fuckin’ drone strike down on Oakland!”
The Acting Secretary of Homeland Security turned to Shepard, who was back on his C-phone. “We did?”
Shepard rolled his eyes. “No! That’s ridiculous! The guy in that house didn’t let his dog out to save it from a Hellfire missile he didn’t know was coming. He blew himself up.”
The pity, Arthur thought, was that, based on what he had seen of Oakland, if he had blown it up no jury would ever convict him.
The SWAT commander drew a deep breath as he stared down at the smoking crater, then turned to Shepard. “You’re telling me that was a suicide?”
Shepard held his phone against his chest, and nodded at it. “I am. The billing name on that phone is Eli Abney, Jr. A Specialist 5th Class Eli Abney, Jr., served three tours in Afghanistan as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal tech. He was discharged for medical reasons three years ago. VA records show he was meeting a contractor therapist from San Francisco at a VA outpatient center on MLK in Oakland, for PTSD treatment. But he missed his last three appointments. The third miss should have triggered a follow-up, but didn’t. He was fired from his job for excessive absenteeism, but applied for unemployment benefits anyway three months ago. That house down there has been in and out of eviction proceedings since he moved in.”
The SWAT commander crossed his arms and nodded slowly. “So. Adios to the psycho who bombed the ’Gate.”
“Psycho? He probably—he did—kill himself.” Shepard pointed below at the wreckage. “But it’s a stretch to say he was a danger to anyone but himself. Why would a guy who wouldn’t hurt a dog murder some tycoon?”
Shepard’s phone pinged again, he listened, then his shoulders slumped. “The employer that fired Abney contested his unemployment claim. It was Cardinal Systems.”
“Oh.” Arthur stared down at the rubble as the rain snuffed the flames to black smoke. Then he sighed. “Don’t suppose we’ll be lucky enough to find a suicide note from this guy in that.”
Shepard scowled as he peered at his C-phone. “We won’t have to. I’m looking at the note he texted to his therapist ten minutes ago.”
Arthur turned toward an approaching vehicle’s roar, and saw a local-news SUV, antenna mast folded along its roof, squeal to a stop thirty yards from him.
A blonde wearing a purple parka sprang out the front passenger’s door. She flipped up the parka’s hood so that it covered her hair, then turned back to the open door and began unpacking a microphone and its coiled cord from a black canvas shoulder bag that she had placed on the SUV’s front seat.
In the distance, an even bigger media truck lumbered up the residential street’s hill.
Arthur’s heart skipped. The moment called for decisive leadership and immediate action. He spun and faced the smaller of the protective detail men, who was about Arthur’s size, and pointed at the man’s black protective vest. “Take that off and show me how to wear it!”