Swift Vengeance

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “I’m not going. I’m in this thing, Ali.”

  He looked at me, nodded, then veered into the southbound foot traffic.

  Up ahead of us, Hector stopped just short of the grassy mall to hike his pants, still apparently gazing at the statue bathed in light.

  Ali and I drafted in behind a bunch of grunts in desert camo, followed them all the way to North Harbor. Then I branched away, angling between a big Latino family dressed in their holiday finest and a Chinese tour group, many-footed and serious. All of whom bore me back onto the Tuna Lane sidewalk and into even heavier foot traffic.

  I lumbered along, Inconspicuous Ford, a natural heavyweight in a suit and tie on a collision course with one beheading terrorist, his esteemed colleague, six armed FBI agents, fifty thousand cash, and two oblivious giants making out. Kept bumping into people, apologizing softly, my eyes trained on the briefcase, visible through the legs of the passersby. Turned my attention to Hector, plodding across the mall toward the money, his phone to his ear again.

  I slowed and let the pedestrians eddy around me. Over their heads I had a good view of Hector as he moved across the mall, looking up at the statue again with a worried half-smile. He stopped, raised his phone, and took a picture of the big kiss, then turned around and lifted the phone for a selfie.

  A middle-aged Vietnamese couple sat down on Ali’s vacated bench. Hector looked at them and shot another picture of himself. The couple talked and gestured and showed each other pictures on their phones, unaware of the cash at their feet, seemingly delighted to be alive in this time and place.

  Then the man threw his head back laughing and knocked the briefcase over with his foot. Stopped laughing, leaned forward to give the case a good long consideration, then reached down and set it back upright. Said something to the woman, who said something back, and they both laughed. Another exchange. After which each of them looked out across the mall in different directions, apparently looking for someone to match the forgotten briefcase. They looked like people trying to ID a distant relative at a train depot or an arrivals gate, before the world became too dangerous for that. After a few moments of this, they stood and walked away.

  Hector watched them leave, hustled to the bench, and plopped himself down. He took more pictures of the statue, lowered his phone, and looked around.

  I could see Smith and Lark just beyond the statue, watching Hector from behind the nurse’s gigantic white shoe. Taucher and O’Hora had moved closer in, fussing over angles as they shot their own pictures of the kissers.

  Blevins to the team, by text:

  What’s he doing?

  TAUCHER

  Sitting by money.

  BLEVINS

  When in possession take him down.

  LARK

  All over him, Sarge.

  Hector set his hands on his thighs and looked around anxiously. Raised his arms over his head, arched his back, and rolled his shoulders like a boxer. A small girl in pink sweats and boots charged Hector, touched his bench, then fled squealing back to her surprised parents. Dad raising an open hand to Hector. Mom petting the little girl’s hair. Hector on his phone again, nodding, then sliding it into his hoodie pocket.

  He reached down without looking and pulled the briefcase onto his lap. I hoped the others knew exactly what Blevins meant by “take possession.” I didn’t. O’Hora and Lark easing in now. Taucher and Smith, too, looking toward Hector but not directly at him.

  Hector lowered one elbow to the case, raised his fist, and set his chin on his knuckles. The Thinker. Seemed to come to a decision. Took the handle of the briefcase in his left hand, stood, and started across the mall toward North Harbor Drive.

  O’Hora and Lark closed, badges proffered, free hands on their guns, still holstered.

  I moved closer. Saw Hassan at the edge of my vision.

  O’Hora, not unfriendly: “Police, Mr. Padilla. We need to have a word with you.”

  “Who are you?” asked Hector, not stopping.

  “Drop the briefcase and raise your hands, Mr. Padilla.”

  “But I just found it.”

  O’Hora, louder: “Drop the case and raise your hands, sir.”

  Hector stopped. “I’d like to see some ID.”

  Lark: “That would be these badges, Mr. Padilla. Now, please drop the briefcase and raise both hands.”

  A ripple of silence widened around me, spreading from person to person like a secret. Bodies in retreat and advance. Bodies uneasy.

  Shaking his head, brow furrowed, Hector walked toward O’Hora and Lark with unusual purpose, then did a funny little soccer step that angled him away from them.

  O’Hora and Lark drew their weapons.

  Shrieks and curses and a disordered scramble. Air taut with fear. Some held their ground and some crept closer, crouching, cell phones brandished.

  O’Hora, gun steady on Hector: “Police! Drop the case! On your knees with your hands up!”

  A young woman: “He doesn’t have a gun!”

  Hector, turning toward the agents but not stopping. “I found this briefcase. I can use it at work!”

  A middle-aged man: “It’s just a briefcase!”

  O’Hora, loud: “I am Agent O’Hora of the FBI! Padilla—to your knees!”

  Hector stopped and faced Agents O’Hora and Lark with a flummoxed expression on his face. Guns ready, Lark stepped closer to Hector while O’Hora circled behind him.

  Hector dropped the briefcase. Looked around, went to his knees, and raised his hands. In a fluid rush, O’Hora holstered his firearm, charged from behind, and slammed Hector to the ground, face-first.

  The agent pushed his knee into the small of Hector’s back, straight-armed his face to the dirt, and raised a plastic tie from somewhere inside his coat.

  The blast was sharp and loud, blowing O’Hora and Hector raggedly up and out. Concussion. Power. Cries and wails, bodies swaying like trees in a sudden gust. A hot jab to my face. Lark blown flat. Bodies scrambling and circling and frozen in place. Little girl in the pink sweats and boots screaming clumsily toward her parents. Vietnamese couple running hand in hand. Smoke and sparks and the sweet reek of burnt flesh, parts of things dropping from above, some flaming, some smoking, and a downward lilt of fluttering leaves that were twenty-dollar bills.

  Time paused.

  Turn of earth, dome of sky.

  Time creeping back, cautious, half-speed.

  I stood back up and ran into the storm.

  Taucher, Smith, and Hassan were already near the blast site, weapons drawn. We faced one another over the bloody heaps of Hector and O’Hora, and I saw Taucher’s helplessness and her anger, but most of all I saw her disbelief. And with the return of my equilibrium, I realized exactly what had happened.

  Instinct took my eyes to the Tuna Lane parking lot, where the door of the black Town Car swung open and Blevins jumped out just as a white sedan slowed behind him. The pop of gunfire, flashes in the darkness, the sedan jumping into the line of cars streaming onto North Harbor Drive.

  I barreled through tourists, a clot of them rushing against me, toward a tour bus parked on North Harbor. Then past the Town Car, where Blevins lay sprawled faceup on the asphalt. An older woman had kneeled beside him, praying in a language I didn’t recognize. I drew my weapon and angled toward the exit as the white sedan turned onto North Harbor, headed for downtown, a thousand streets, two handy freeways, and freedom.

  Traffic moving. The sedan disappearing into the city.

  I trudged back to Blevins.

  41

  I WATCHED from the comfort of my home office as Caliphornia was loosed upon the world.

  An evil, a star.

  At first he had no name except to us.

  The social media were first: scores, then hundreds, then thousands of shared Facebook postings and YouTubes of the carnage, all multiplying
dizzily—an explosion on this side of the world instantly fanning out to the other and back again.

  At first it was all amateur video of carefree San Diego, America’s Finest City, the moody bay and the invincible Midway, Hector’s confrontation with O’Hora and Lark. Then the sudden, vicious, oddly small-looking explosion that ripped apart O’Hora and Hector so finally. Followed by jerky video of onlookers running in various directions, their cries and wails and many languages, the pounding of shoes and the squelch of wind on microphones, hanging smoke. Eyes wide in faces slack with fear. Money fluttering in the air. Brief, shaky video of a woman praying over a man in a parking lot. Neither one of them clear enough to identify.

  Next, the professionals—networks, cable, PBS—regular programming canceled or delayed. Even most of the advertising. Fast as you could turn channels, graphic scenes of Caliphornia’s violence flashed past; the man himself was neither pictured nor named.

  Terror has apparently struck again in America tonight, this time in San Diego, where two FBI agents, a suspect, and two bystanders have been killed in a wave of coordinated public attacks just moments apart . . .

  Reporters and stunned witnesses muttered under the light-blanched Unconditional Surrender, San Diego’s chief of police and mayor, a U.S. representative, and, later, a senator all weighing in. Followed by a hurried press conference with FBI, Homeland Security, and JTTF.

  The two dead FBI agents are Directing Special Agent Darrel Blevins, sixty-three, and Special Agent Patrick O’Hora of San Diego FBI, who was forty-four . . . The dead suspect has not been identified.

  I turned on the radio, too, and every time I landed on a strong signal, it was about the terror in San Diego.

  Also reported dead at the scene are two visitors, possibly in port aboard the Azure Seas.

  Just before nine o’clock, the IS-affiliated news agency Amaq claimed through Al Jazeera that “an IS detachment has claimed four lives in San Diego, California, and one IS martyr has entered heaven.”

  At nine p.m. Caliphornia introduced himself to the world. He posted on the big popular platforms—encryption and secrecy be damned. He was after fame and he was ready to crow:

  I am Caliphornia. I pledge bayat to Islamic State. San Diego is mine and Bakersfield is mine and Grass Valley is mine. I am Caliphornia. I am a part of you and I am inside you. You will know me by the knife, the bullet, the bomb, and the fire. You will know me well but not at all. I am everything you see and fear. I am Caliphornia. Mashallah.

  His posts had pictures of a long-haired young man with his face partially covered by a scarf-sized version of the California flag—spelled Caliphornia—with the beheaded bear traipsing through its own blood. Or the same young man partially hidden by bars of shadow and light, or wearing sunglasses with palm trees reflected on the lenses. In some he was bearded, in others clean shaven.

  The terrifying video clips of Caliphornia dangling Kenny Bryce’s and Marlon Voss’s heads stayed up for nearly half an hour on social media feeds before their cyber-security could scrub them off.

  The president of the United States Tweeted his disgust at the “barbaric attacks,” and promised “very massive retaliation, very quickly.”

  My Internet slowed to a crawl.

  We are aware of this problem . . .

  My mobile apps froze and unfroze and froze again.

  We are working to resolve these issues . . .

  We’ve made a star out of him, I thought. The biggest since bin Laden. Exactly what they wanted.

  * * *

  —

  Let me see that snout of yours,” said Burt Short.

  He turned the office desk lamp to my face. Peeled back the bandage and took a long look at the stitch he’d put in my cheek. It had taken him longer to remove the small ragged shard than it had to take the stitch. My cheek burned and my right eye watered. The scar would be on the side of my head opposite the boxing scar. I wondered how many more scars I’d collect on my face in this life.

  Lindsey sat on my office couch, Zeno lying bulkily between her and the world, his head on his front paws, eyes open. She had watched with me in stunned silence as Hector and O’Hora were detonated again and again.

  “Where’d you learn to take stitches, Burt?” asked Lindsey.

  “The Philippines.”

  “Were you a paramedic or something?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly, holding my cheek to the light. “Good. Clean. Keep it dry for a couple of days.”

  I turned back to the computer monitor—back up to half-speed now—where Hector was running past Smith and Lark with his funny little stutter-step. I picked up my phone, left open to Facebook, where a frozen image of Voss lay in the scattered snow on the running path.

  Then looked at the wall TV, where Taucher’s boss of bosses at the Western Region JTTF, Frank Salvano, said: “We consider this a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. The FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force will bring their full weight to bear on this investigation. If this man calling himself Caliphornia is responsible for these heinous crimes, we will bring him to justice, and we will do so with relentless pursuit and conviction. We have no higher priority at this time.”

  Salvano was tall and almost gaunt, with short silver hair and rimless glasses. The anger in his voice was substantial. He offered a hotline number, which trailed along the bottom of my TV.

  Then Taucher called, finally. I shooed off Burt and Lindsey, closed the office door.

  She was at the hospital with Lark and Smith. She and Lark had been far enough away from Hector to avoid shrapnel, for which she thanked God. Smith had been hit, but his motorcycle leathers had protected him. Hector’s micro-bomb was made with carpet tacks—cheap, sharp, and heat-retentive. Joan’s voice sounded thin and spent.

  “Our special agent in charge just left here,” she said. “Turns out our Washington friends have some, um, deep reservations about my idea to lure a known murderer into a public place. And the resultant loss of life. Although—of course—all of us involved last night, from the SAC on down, couldn’t wait to nail Caliphornia’s butt to the floor. SAC said I should consider a voluntary reassignment to Washington. Said he didn’t want to write me an official reprimand—just yet. I demanded they let me finish this out with Caliphornia. Then I insisted. Then begged. I’m still in. Skin of my teeth.”

  I couldn’t think of anything reassuring to say.

  “They’ve been waiting for something like this,” she said. “I put body and soul into protecting my city. Now that I’ve failed, all I feel is tired.”

  “People won’t die aboard Glorietta, thanks to you.”

  “They died tonight instead,” said Taucher. “And Caliphornia got away.”

  I felt the moments moving by. Heard something in the background, radio or TV or the chatter of hospital staff.

  “So, how can Raqqa Nine get our young terrorist to trust us again?” she asked, almost dreamily. “Do we blame him? Claim that the FBI was watching him, not us? We could say that moneybags Hassan is furious and on his way home. That our fifty thousand dollars are gone. That we are out of faith in him.”

  “He won’t trust Raqqa Nine again,” I said. “Not after this.”

  I glanced at my phone and the computer monitor, both still devoted to the death and destruction. Bodies on the ground, covered. Twenty-dollar bills falling through the air. I’d seen the real thing, but I still couldn’t take my eyes off it. Hypnotic, I thought. For the whole country. For the world.

  On my TV BBC news feed, Amaq, again quoted by Al Jazeera, stated that “donations to Islamic State have been flooding in . . .”

  “On the hush, Roland,” said Joan, “we think Hector’s bomb was detonated by remote. This is preliminary. Very.”

  “Why kill Hector?” I asked. “It cost Caliphornia a soldier and fifty grand.”

  “Look at this spectacle! Caliphornia’s intro
duction to the world, through the martyred Hector. Think like a terrorist, Roland.”

  I listened to her breathing, soft and slow.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’m still in this game, whether the SAC wants me here or not. Look, we know that Caliphornia is murderous, suspicious, and completely out of trust. Is he going to blunder into our You Got It stakeout? Doubtful. But, if there’s any way we can get to him, the Bureau is a thousand percent ready. No expense spared, nothing they won’t consider. Is there something personal to Benyamin Azmeh, maybe? Something important enough to get him out of his hole? He’s hot right now. He’s lucky, therefore risk-tolerant. Maybe you can exploit that. Think of a way, Roland. You’re good at this kind of thing. The Bureau has trouble thinking outside the box sometimes. Hell. We are the box.”

  “Lindsey,” I said.

  A beat. “Bait?”

  “Let me think.”

  * * *

  —

  Later that night, the SDPD identified the suicide bomber as Hector O. Padilla of El Cajon, and the two dead innocents as Mr. and Mrs. Glen Nguyen of Miami. Pictures of all three. The couple was the one I’d seen, much in love and delighting in their travels and amused by the mystery briefcase at their feet. Hector looked his usual self, pleasant and befuddled.

  The San Diego chief of police also said that “the murder of Agent Blevins and the suicide attack by Hector Padilla were coordinated acts of terror.” She added that “radical extremism is behind these acts,” and that so far as her department could determine, “Caliphornia, and the gruesome videos accompanying Caliphornia’s taunting claims, are authentic. We will stop this person or persons,” she said flatly. “It’s only a matter of time.”

  Then, after a two-hour hiatus, Caliphornia himself stormed onto the digital stage again, boasting through a new Facebook post that his jihad had just begun and that the Kuffar will have their throats cut as they sleep at night. Allah-hu Akbar! Hector is in Paradise! You will know me again before forty-eight hours have passed.