Roaches Run

by John Wasowicz

  But if Landry knew the van might be spotted by the police, why didn’t he move it last night?

  **

  A HELICOPTER carrying Stone swooped down over Roaches Run and landed in the southbound lanes of the G.W. Parkway, closed from the 14th Street Bridge to the edge of Old Town. Stone jumped out. She was immediately surrounded by fellow officers. No one had approached the van and no one had exited it.

  As the chopper landed, the command center received a text from Phil Landry. It read: “Tell that policewoman to call off her stormtroopers or I’ll blow this van to kingdom come.”

  The communication was relayed to an electronic tablet handed to Stone. She read it and then looked around. “Let’s get some drones in the air,” she said. “And launch a small vessel over there as well,” she commanded, pointing to the water. Then she responded to the text: “Phil, no one is going to rush the van. We’d like to find a peaceful solution. Let’s find a way out of this. S. Stone.”

  She pulled her phone from the pocket of her blue windbreaker and called Katz. “I’m down at Roaches Run now. Landry just texted the command center from his phone. He’s inside a van in the parking lot threatening to blow up the vehicle. Where are you?”

  “I’m already on King Street. I left my office about ten minutes ago, as soon as I got a call about Landry being located. I should be at Roaches Run in another ten minutes.” Katz noticed the traffic lights at each intersection along King Street were all green. “Maybe five,” he amended as he cruised across town from Duke Street to Slaters Lane.

  “Roger that,” she said. “Look me up when you get here. I may need your valuable counsel.”

  As Katz hung up, a roadblock appeared ahead. He slowed, unbuckled his seat belt and reached in his pocket for his badge. He came to a full stop and flashed the badge at two officers in armor holding long guns.

  “Good to go, Mr. Katz,” one of them said, waving him forward. “Please be careful. We don’t want to lose you.” He nodded and proceeded along the parkway past Daingerfield Island and the airport.

  The azure sky was gone and clouds the color of creamy wool covered the sky. Gravelly Point was to his right, Roaches Run to the left. The place was a parking lot filled with cruisers, ambulances, fire trucks, bomb squad vehicles, and a couple of SUVs used to transport bomb-sniffing dogs.

  There were over 100 law enforcement officers at the scene, Katz calculated. He brought his car to a stop right on the parkway and got out, jumped over the guardrail separating southbound and northbound lanes, and proceeded to the parking area. He could see Stone up ahead. The only non-official vehicles in the parking lot were a sedan and the white van. The cab was empty. There were no windows on the side or back of the vehicle. Yellow police tape created a perimeter around the van. No one was standing closer than 30 yards away.

  “Any more communications?” Katz asked as he came alongside Stone.

  “He just texted,” she said, showing him the screen of the tablet she held in her hands. It read: “S. Stone: Do you think I’m a fool? The second I open the door they’ll blast the living daylights out of me. I’m not coming out! And if you don’t pull back, you leave me no choice.”

  Katz thought it odd the message was addressed to S. Stone. “I don’t get it,” he said. “This isn’t like Landry. Martyrdom isn’t his game.”

  Stone shrugged. “What’s he got to salvage? Blowing himself up might be the easiest way out of this. It’ll buy him headlines for a couple of days. He’ll like that.” She typed: “It’s time to give it up. Come out with your hands over your head.”

  That was followed by a series of exchanges.

  “Get back or I’ll blow this tin can.”

  “Don’t be a fool. We can sort this out. I give you my word.”

  “You have 2 minutes to clear the field. Then I’m gonna blow.”

  “Don’t.”

  “Have your people move further back. 30 yards isn’t far enough.”

  Katz looked over Stone’s shoulder, reading the one-liners being lobbed back and forth. “How does he know how close the LEOs are to the van?” he asked.

  Stone paid no attention, busily typing a return text. Behind her, a large message board projected the online communications.

  “Let’s pull back,” someone hollered. “If that idiot carries out his threat, we don’t want anyone getting hurt.”

  Stone turned to Katz. “What did you say?” He was no longer there. From the corner of her eye, she watched as he jumped the guardrail and got back in his car. “Where the hell is he going?” she asked out loud. Her question was met with empty stares.

  “Clear the area,” someone repeated. The LEOs and EMTs on foot moved back, and there was a roar of engines as others began maneuvering their vehicles further away from the van. Stone looked down at the tablet.

  Meanwhile, Katz raced down the parkway, took the ramp for southbound I-395 and exited onto Route 110. He drove under the 14th Street Bridge to the aquatic center, parked, and ran up the embankment to Green Point. From that vantage point, he overlooked Roaches Run, Gravelly Point, Reagan National, and the Potomac River.

  Stone was carrying on her communications.

  “Don’t do this, Phil. Don’t make it worse.”

  “Have everyone get back further. 60 seconds and counting.”

  Stone sensed Landry was not backing down. “Get everyone away from the van,” she shouted. “I can’t stop him killing himself, but I don’t want him taking out any of our people.” Everyone started to back further and further away from the van. With thirty seconds left on Landry’s time clock, no one was within 1,000 feet.

  “That’s more like it. T-minus 30 and counting.”

  “What can I do to talk you off the ledge? This is insane.”

  Like Katz, Stone found Landry’s actions incomprehensible. The media painted Landry as a rogue cop responsible for the mayhem that occurred earlier today. Yet she knew he had nothing to do with the train incident. Linking Landry and Spates was irresponsible on Tom Mann’s part. It might attract readers, but it had no basis in fact. Furthermore, none of the H-Pack backpacks confiscated around Lafayette Square contained bombs. While the documents found by Landry’s assistant suggested that Landry was concocting some kind of crazy plan, there was no evidence that anything had actually come to fruition.

  It was anyone’s guess as to the cause of the explosion at the GreyStone Hotel, Stone reasoned. It could have been connected to the construction. Again, she was irked at Mann for drawing conclusions based on pure speculation. She was confident that he had not gotten those quotes from anyone in law enforcement. She was certain that he made them up.

  While Landry might be complicit, Stone thought it was improbable he’d ever be indicted of a crime, let alone convicted of one. So why is he threatening to take his life?

  BREAKING NEWS

  This is a developing story

  Tom Mann, City Editor © The Chronicle

  Nearly 25 years ago, on July 27, 1996, a bomb exploded at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Ga.

  The 100th anniversary of the modern Olympics was marred by a terrorist attack. However, that bombing was only part of the tragedy. In addition to one dead and over 100 injured, it destroyed the reputation of Richard Jewel, a 33-year-old rent-a-cop who was mistakenly identified as the bomber.

  No one is going to make a misidentification like that today.

  Phil Landry, a counterterrorism expert with a checkered past, bears complete responsibility for putting the D.C. area on edge at the outset of the Memorial Day holiday weekend.

  He coordinated a train explosion earlier this morning over the Potomac River.

  He led law enforcement authorities on a wild goose chase for would-be terrorists carrying bombs in H-Pack backpacks to Metro stations.

  He planted explosives in the GreyStone Hotel that destroyed the edifice’s southwest corner earlier today.

  And he is currently threatening the lives of dozens of federal, state, and local officials.

/>   Shortly after noon today, Landry texted a Chronicle reporter. In the text, he threatened to harm officers who have surrounded a van where he is hiding out at Roaches Run, the wildfowl sanctuary south of the 14th Bridge and across the G.W. Parkway from Reagan National Airport and Gravelly Point.

  “I will kill the LEOs [law enforcement officers] surrounding me if they dare come any closer,” he texted to this reporter.

  A Questionable Career in Local Law Enforcement

  Landry has a history of being at the center of controversy. Twelve years ago, he was investigated for a series of questionable convictions obtained from penny-ante criminals.

  According to people familiar with an internal investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice, Landry pressured individuals into confessing to crimes they did not commit to rack up a string of high-visibility “wins” for the department.

  According to sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity, Landry threatened to prosecute family members of the individuals unless they confessed to crimes on which he wanted to “close the book.”

  Due to pressure from Landry, several individuals went to jail for confessing to crimes that they did not commit, the sources said.

  One of those individuals was Trey Carr, who was released from the penitentiary last year. “I don’t hold no grudge against him, but what he done was wrong,” Carr said when contacted by this reporter earlier today.

  An Investigation Gone Awry

  The inquiry into Landry’s activities was terminated after people questioned the integrity of the person heading up the inquiry. That person — Fernando Pena — was accused of lying, stealing, and cheating, all crimes of moral turpitude that would have made him ineligible to conduct the investigation and would have tainted the inquiry’s findings.

  Landry was responsible for planting the stories about Pena. Those stories were contrived and false. No one feels more embarrassed to say that than this reporter, who was complicit in allowing Landry to sell a false story to the public.

  Mea Culpa

  Landry fed this reporter information about Pena that had the effect of discrediting Pena and exonerating Landry. Over time, it became apparent that the information was false and misleading. This reporter has remained silent — until now.

  **

  MO KATZ stood on the bluff overlooking Roaches Run. He watched as LEOs withdrew further and further from the van. Across the parkway and behind the barricades at Gravelly Point, he observed a crowd of bikers, runners, and onlookers. A helicopter hovered over the railroad trestle adjacent the 14th Street Bridge, which was shut down to traffic. Traffic backups grew on I-395 and around the Tidal Basin. An airborne drone looped around Roaches Run. A small craft sped across the waterfront at the sanctuary.

  The wool blanket of clouds now covered the sky. There was a promise of rain in the air. In the distance, thunder rumbled and lightning glimmered. As Katz scanned the area he spotted a man in a hoodie by the soccer field at Gravelly Point. He was looking through binoculars and had a phone in his other hand. A laptop was set up next to him on a small aluminum and canvas chair. The man was facing Roaches Run.

  Suddenly, a fireball accompanied by a loud boom flashed across the parking lot. The van split apart like popcorn exploding from a pan. Flames spread out in all directions. Pieces of the van and the car parked next to it shot across the lot and glass shards dropped to the pavement like confetti. The smell of burning rubber and fuel filled the air. The explosion set off antitheft systems in several vehicles.

  Beep! Beep! Beep! The devices barked like electronic dogs.

  The remnants of the van settled into dozens of mini bonfires across the parking lot.

  It happened as fast as the striking of a match.

  Everyone who had moved back now raced forward. Fire trucks and ambulances revved up their engines and hastened toward the van. Firefighters in full protective gear jumped out and quickly manned hoses to douse the flames. They warily approached the steaming wreckage in search of Landry.

  Distracted by the explosion, Katz had taken his eyes off the man with the binoculars. Now, as he looked back to the spot where the man had been, nothing was to be seen.

  The entire parking lot was now a crime scene. Pieces of the van’s interior — seats, computers, screens, table, papers — were strewn about everywhere. Every item was burnt or smashed. The sedan was heavily damaged as well, with chunks of it blown away.

  Amidst the debris lay pieces of a body. The pieces were more lumps of charred meat than a body. Some bits of skin, clothes, and hair were still smoldering. LEOs and EMTs stood among the remains. There was no life-saving to be done here. The smell of burnt flesh joined the other noxious odors from the explosion, and those who weren’t wearing masks covered their mouths and noses with whatever was handy.

  As a finale to the mayhem, the clouds burst open and a spring shower began to rain down. Police rushed to their vehicles to grab tarps and plastic canopies to cover the materiel at the scene.

  “What a fucking mess,” someone uttered.

  Ignoring the rain, Stone hollered, “Get the forensic crews and coroner over here right away! I want this stuff photographed and catalogued before anything is removed from the scene. Get me fingerprints!” As she spat out orders, people scurried about.

  Meanwhile, Katz had abandoned his lofty perch and driven back to Roaches Run.

  “Where the hell have you been?” asked Stone when he returned.

  “Testing out a theory,” he said. They stepped away from the center of activity. “It seemed to me that the person you were communicating with had x-ray vision. I mean, he knew what was happening outside of the van. I wanted to find out.”

  “Whether he had x-ray vision?”

  “No,” he smiled. “I wondered whether the person on the other end of the line was outside of the van.”

  She looked at him quizzically. “And?”

  “And I think he might have been. I saw someone with binoculars over by Gravelly Point looking this way. I honestly thought this was all a bluff. I never expected the van to blow, not really. But now that all hell has broken lose, it’s got me wondering.”

  She nodded. “Interesting theory. Keep me informed the more you test it out.”

  **

  “HEY, ROSCOE, it’s Mo Katz.”

  Roscoe Page was a legend in the D.C. area. A former high-ranking intelligence officer who had served both Democratic and Republican administrations, common among career civil servants, he was now making a fortune running a security and investigative firm at Tysons Corner. Their paths had crossed through the years. “To what do I owe the honor?” asked Page.

  “I have a question about tracing text messages.”

  “I assume this has to do with Landry texting Sherry Stone, Tom Mann, and others in the run-up to his dramatic exit,” Page said. It was already all over the news.

  “I’m just not convinced it was Landry.”

  Page was seated in his car parked in his driveway in McLean. He pushed back the seat and leaned his head back against the headrest. “What makes you say that?”

  “My gut. I needed to call someone I can trust, someone who understands electronic communications. Think of the terrorist attacks at the Pensacola naval air station in 2019 or in San Bernardino in 2015. There’s always a problem trying to access communications.”

  “You really think Landry’s alive?”

  “I think Landry was on the other side of the parkway by Gravelly Point. And that’s why I’m curious to know whether it’s possible to trace the source of those communications.”

  “So, to be clear, you’re not talking about the device? You’re talking about its location?”

  “That’s right. Landry was using his phone. The question is whether the phone was inside of the van.”

  “You don’t need my help, Mo,” Page laughed.

  “Why not?”

  “Just search the scene. If the phone is among the wreckage, you should have your answer. If there’
s no phone, call me. Otherwise, you don’t need my help or anyone else’s.”

  Katz felt foolish for not thinking it through.

  Sensing Katz’s embarrassment, Page said, “Don’t feel bad about it. There’s a lot going on.” Then he added, “What makes you think Landry would pull a stunt like that?”

  “To give himself a clean getaway,” Katz speculated. “I was at Roaches Run when Stone received the texts. There were things written that could not have been known by someone sitting inside the van, such as the location of personnel stationed around it. Plus, it doesn’t make sense that he would kill himself. There was no need for him to take such drastic action.”

  Page thought about it for a minute. “He was probably watching the scene on television,” he said. “I heard they found television monitors, or pieces of them, from inside the van. He would have known what was going on outside the van simply by watching the tube. Or maybe he had hidden cameras on the van. As to taking his own life, well, there are stories about his involvement in a string of wrongful criminal convictions. Everything was closing in. It doesn’t surprise me.”

  “Yeah, maybe you’re right,” Katz said.

  “If I can be of any further help, give me a call,” Page said.

  Page backed out of the driveway. An hour ago, he had received a call from Ari Hammond instructing him to release a copy of the Ruth Hammond report to Tom Mann of The Chronicle. Now he gets a call from Katz. There was no way these two incidents were unrelated, he thought to himself. He turned up the street.

  It was a forty-five-minute drive to Mann’s home in Brookland. Page needed to touch base with Abe Lowenstein. Whether or not Landry was alive, the whole thing was going to be an embarrassment to the senator unless he quickly initiated some damage control.

  **

  FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Lowenstein called Katz. “Do you have a few minutes to talk about Phil Landry?” asked the senator. “Of course,” Katz said.

  Lowenstein steered Katz’s confirmation hearing through the Senate four years ago. Since then, they had remained in close contact, often seeking advice from one another on a variety of issues, some legal, some not. As part of that relationship, Lowenstein entreated Katz to work collaboratively with Landry. Katz always resisted. The current revelations confirmed Katz’s suspicions and validated his resistance.