Hellfire (Sisters In Law Book 2)

by John Ellsworth

  "We need to meet. I have good news." Message 1.

  "I have found us a place. Cash rent accepted. Pack and we can move you." Message 2.

  Attached to the email was a PDF. She opened it and studied it corner to corner. It appeared she was viewing the inner walls blueprint for Windsor School District's Elementary School Number 9.

  They had selected School 9 for several reasons. First, there was a hill just across the street from the front of the elementary school. The hill would redirect the blast of the bomb back toward the school. Hussein had discovered this effect and tactic by studying the United States' bombing plans for World War Two's nuclear attack on Hiroshima. That city had been selected at least in part because of the surrounding mountains. They would keep the blast force focused rather than blowing out and harmlessly dissipating. Same with the grade school and its hill. Second, the grade school was selected for its high population. It was in an upper middle class neighborhood where two lesser grade schools a mile apart had been consolidated into one "super school" as they were called by the Chicago School District. CSD also had moved another 250 students from a third school that wanted in; it was a parochial school that had closed its doors due to seriously declining enrollment after a key parish priest had been indicted. It had been a sad occasion and a shocking one, but the authorities thought the kids would be better served by integrating them into a public school.

  At the time of Sevi's receipt of the blueprint, the school's enrollment was 2500 students. Hussein predicted an 85% mortality rate if the bomb in the van exploded in the school parking lot; a 70% mortality rate if parked along the street. An ancillary plan called for blocking both ends of the street on the morning of the attack with rented vehicles. That would make ingress and egress difficult, if not impossible, for first responders, including EMT vehicles. The plan, he assured Sevi that same night as they met for dinner, was hardening day by day.

  "Hardening?" she asked.

  "More difficult to prevent."

  After meeting that night with Hussein, Sevi returned to her room and again locked her door.

  She inserted Jamie's thumb drive in the Mac's USB port. For the next ninety minutes she traced through his code. It looked professional, she decided. She would give him an A. Then she found the routine for the video enhancement and began sketching ways to improve the execution of the code to make it run faster. By eleven o'clock that night she saved all her work and shut down her machine. She then unplugged Jamie's thumb drive and took it upstairs to him.

  He was awake, of course, hunched over his machine.

  "Can I come in?"

  "Sure."

  "Here's the code enhancement."

  "Shit, that was fast!" he exclaimed.

  "I would have had it sooner. But I had a dinner date."

  "Anyone cool?"

  "No, not cool. Just an old friend from home."

  "From Syria? That sounds interesting."

  "From Turkey."

  "Wow."

  "Anyway, please try the code and tell me what you think."

  "I'll have some metrics for you by sunup. Maybe we can have breakfast and talk?"

  "Sure," said Sevi with a smile. She stretched her arms overhead. "So sleepy. Off to bed for me. Good night."

  "Good night. And thanks."

  "Oh, before I forget. I came up with a name for your new software."

  "Tell me."

  "What about calling it TRAC?"

  "Means what?"

  "TRACE RECOGNIZE AND CAPTURE."

  "TRAC. I love it, dude."

  She raised her hand for a high-five and they slapped together.

  "TRAC it is."

  "Good night, Jamie."

  "Night."

  Eager to move his project along, Jamie lodged the thumb drive in his laptop's USB port. He located the port with his finder and double-clicked the code file. His development software opened the file Sevi had saved and he went straight to the routine for video enhancement. He tested it, measured it, sampled it with a real video feed, and was happy to learn the speed had been increased to a useful state. Now that was something, he thought. He was delighted.

  Then something else caught his eye. There was an attached document, a PDF.

  24

  She parked in a visitor's slot in the north lot. The grade school was a multilevel complex, sprawled along two-thirds of a city block. Its sidewalk was tree-lined and NO PARKING signs and a red curb kept the traffic flowing smoothly in and out of the lot throughout. Hundreds of cars pulled up and loaded and unloaded. It added a flavor of small chaos to the large chaos of the yellow buses that sat nose-to-tail in the early morning, restricting access to the sidewalk that paralleled the huge parking lot.

  Across the street was a row of houses built on the downward slope of a jutting promontory of a rather large hill. For the Midwest the ground swell was remarkable, probably five hundred feet in elevation.

  Christine exited the Escalade and fixed her sunglasses on her face, as it was a bright, sunny June day and hot. She was alone; she had purposely told her driver to wait behind at her building's coffee shop while she visited the school rendered in the blueprints given to her by Jamie.

  "Why would she have these, mom?" he asked the morning after Sevi had returned the thumb drive.

  Christine plugged the drive into her laptop and viewed several screens, noting though the legend at the bottom edge of all drawings: Windsor School District Elementary School Number 9.

  "Did she say anything when she gave you the drive?"

  "No, she just said she thought she'd improved the routine I was working on."

  "Has she ever mentioned anything to you about schools or grade schools or students or anything like that?"

  "No. I mean we talk about lots of things. But nothing about a school."

  Christine's first impulse was to casually ask Sevi about the blueprints. Why, she wanted to ask her, would you have the blueprints to a grade school?

  But she reconsidered. She decided she first would visit the school and nose around for herself.

  After climbing out of her car and slipping on her sunglasses, she began the walk up to the school entrance. She was immediately surrounded by fifty or more school children walking past. She watched as they chattered, played tag, breaking off in clutches of three or four and talking as they stole glimpses at members of the opposite sex--smiles, laughter, all the sub-mature expressions and eruptions common to the grade school era. Christine threaded her way through them, coming up to the door and encountering a security desk. Two fortyish gentlemen--armed with pistols on their utility belts--blocked her admittance.

  "Purpose of your visit, ma'am?" asked the nearest guard.

  "I'm here to see--the principal."

  "Do you have an appointment?"

  "No. Uh--I'm a lawyer and I have a legal matter to discuss with the administration."

  "Do you have identification?"

  "As a lawyer? Sure, I have my bar card."

  "May I see that?"

  Christine opened her shoulder bag and retrieved the card that proved she was a member of the Illinois State Bar Association. She held it up for review.

  The guard read it, took it from her hand, flipped it over and examined her signature, then raised a finger. "Excuse me one minute."

  He turned to the mike mounted on his shoulder and pressed a button. He spoke rapidly and quickly into the mike. Within seconds a response crackled back. Evidently they were going to see her even without an appointment.

  "Please proceed to the end of this hall and then take a left. All the way to the end, glass doors. Thanks for your cooperation."

  "Thank you."

  The waters parted and Christine began her walk.

  At the glass doors she paused and checked her agenda with herself. She planned some kind of inquiry about some manufactured issue. Maybe an injury report. That would do.

  The receptionist told her the wait for the Assistant Principal, Evelyn Ridnour, would be fifteen mi
nutes. Would Christine like a bottle of water?

  Christine accepted the water and found a waiting room seat next to a lamp. She withdrew her tablet from her shoulder bag and began logging into her office network. Within seconds she had the PDF of the blueprints up on the screen. She began her review. Minutes later she had grown restless. Something wasn't adding up here. She went to the receptionist's window and got directions for the restroom--an ostensible need.

  Back in the hall, she continued further into the building. Along the hallway she passed a chemistry lab--chemistry in grade school?--and at the far end found herself trying the locked door to the gymnasium. Through its glass panes she viewed a collection of girls about thirteen playing volleyball on four different courts. It was a huge gymnasium and Christine was impressed. She watched the games for several minutes, going over in her mind what she might have expected to find in coming here.

  What was it?

  The blueprints included the interior walls of the school. Why on earth would Sevi have blueprints of the exterior and interior walls of a grade school?

  As she watched the girls batting the volleyball back and forth, an idea began to coalesce in her mind. How could she have been so blind?

  What do we have here? Children. Acres of children. Just like the children Sevi lost in the Hellfire attack.

  Christine turned and began a hurried walk back to the Assistant Principal's office. When she arrived at the door, she walked right on by, continuing to the end of the hall and beyond the security station, until she was back outside in the hot May sunshine.

  As she placed the sunglasses back on her face, she realized her hands were shaking.

  Sevi--could it be? Could she be planning to attack this school?

  Restraining herself from breaking into a run, Christine race-walked to her Escalade.

  She pulled the seat belt across and fastened it. Her chest felt tight and a sour taste had come up in her mouth. She pulled out her cell.

  "Win? Chris. We need to meet. Durant's restaurant. Be there in thirty."

  * * *

  Durant's was a beloved Chicago steak and chop shop where many of the legal community's older members often took their midday break. It was dark inside and the maître' d' told Christine that her party had already arrived. She was shown to a side table and found Winona, sitting facing the kitchen. Christine came up behind and patted her friend on the back. "Hey. Thanks for coming."

  "You sounded upset. What's happening with you today?"

  Christine explained to Winona about Jamie's coming across the blueprints on the thumb drive. She recounted her visit to the grade school and the moment she'd had her insight.

  "Is it possible, Win? I mean you know Sevi almost as well as I do. What's your take?"

  Ever the suspicious police officer--retired or not--Win's forehead furrowed. "It bears looking into, certainly. I mean we're not going to come right out and accuse her or confront her--that gets us nowhere."

  "Right, we don't tip our hand because she then goes off on her own and does whatever she has in mind anyway. We've got to stay in close contact with her. So here's what I'd like to do. I know you've got a full caseload you're working up--"

  "Not the least of which is Sevi's case itself--"

  "So I'm thinking. Maybe you should take up her surveillance. Get on her. Thoughts?"

  "Exactly what I was thinking. Do we have access to her computer?"

  "She keeps her laptop with her at all times. Even when she showers. No, I'm exaggerating there. I don't know what she does when she showers."

  "Hey, that's not so far out there. We should definitely think about that. What about Jamie, can he access her laptop?"

  "Well, she does use our WIFI at home."

  "Can he hack that?"

  "Jamie? Are you kidding? Just say the word with that kid."

  "Okay. Let me talk to Jamie. Let me take it from here. You need to stand aside on this and let me deal with Jamie. I don't want any suspicious glances or words between you two that Sevi might pick up on."

  "I agree. You approach Jamie."

  "Where is he now?"

  Christine checked her watch. "Still in school. Another hour. Why, you heading there?"

  Winona was already standing. "I'm on my way. Madison High?"

  "Yes. Junior class."

  "I'm on it."

  Winona hurried from the restaurant.

  Christine's waiter appeared with two menus and a puzzled look. "She had to go," Christine explained. "But I want a drink."

  "A dry martini," she told him.

  "And I never drink before five."

  Never.

  25

  It was like someone ordered all thirty-one Baskin-Robbins flavors, there were so many of them.

  Lawyers, that is.

  Some came from the Department of Justice. These were the wise owls (three-piece suits, black eyeglass frames) who would protect the United States government from the likes of the woman whose family was murdered by a missile.

  Some came from Blackguard (early-to-late fifties, round bellies, sagging jowls) who would protect the DuMont brothers' two hundred billion dollars from the greedy hands of the Syrian woman whose wedding day was incinerated by a Hellfire missile specially delivered by the DuMonts. (The brothers had privately joked: "Never let it be said we didn't bring a little something to the wedding party to light up the festivities.")

  To top it off, the manufacturers of the Hellfire missiles and the sub-contractors also off-loaded a passel of black suits from crammed Cadillac Escalades lined up along Dearborn and blocking through traffic. By the time Judge Alphonse LaJordia took the bench, every seat in the courtroom was claimed. And every seat claimed was populated by the smooth, fatty butt of some lawyer who looked and thought like all the other lawyers present.

  "You would have thought one lawyer per defendant would have sufficed," said the red-faced jurist as he took the bench in his flowing black robe. "Maybe next time I'll enter an order. Or maybe the Northern District should have a local rule that, on photo-op day in any lawsuit each defendant may be represented by but one lawyer. Gentlemen--and ladies--I presume that after the TV crews dissipate and the newspapers smell foul elsewhere, that the teams will be winnowed down to one lawyer per name on the complaint? Am I right, here?"

  Failures at improvisation, the entire retinue was momentarily struck dumb. No one had even a monosyllable in reply. Instead, they studied each other and a frantic digging through briefcases ensued while everyone waited for the alpha dog to show.

  The quiet was shattered when a husky female voice replied, "Federal Rules of Civil Procedure make no attempt to limit the number of attorneys a litigant may field. It may be presumptuous of me, but please allow me to maintain that a local rule that seeks to narrow and confine the FRCP would die on the vine if tested in the Court of Appeals. That said, I would think no, Your Honor, our teams probably will not see our seconds and thirds left in the dugout when the plate beckons."

  Christine, alone at counsel table--not even Sevi was along for this organizational meeting--turned to see the speaker. She had, Christine thought, used a whole bunch of words to say damn little. Who could it be?

  Maybe half or just less than half of the defense lawyers were female. Christine was at a loss to discern which of them in the entire crowd had piped up. So, she waited.

  Judge LaJordia pursed his lips and blew a steady stream of oxygen as he eyed the speaker. "And you are? For the record, madam?"

  "Sorry, Your Honor. I'm Martha J. Mattingly and I represent the Department of Justice. First chair."

  "Well, Ms. Mattingly of the first chair, despite your protestations methinks we'll just go ahead anyway and issue the first order of the court. All counsel except first chair counsel for each defendant shall leave the courtroom at once. There's so damn much hot air blowing through my courtroom I'm opening the windows. Not literally. Leave now, please."

  A sudden clamor erupted at the judge's order. Everyone leave except first
chairs? What the hell was the judge thinking? Had he suddenly collapsed in on himself, a supernovae whose light was blinking off? After all, Judge LaJordia was the Chief Judge of the Northern District of Illinois. He was well known--not only throughout the Seventh Circuit but through the other circuits as well, all the way out to Hawaii--as the thinking judge's judge. He was a nonpareil jurist, his nearest challenger in the brains department probably being Big Blue over at IBM. Could he even issue such a decree? Just chase everyone out? Shoo them away like flies?

  The less testicular-enhanced among the bar slammed shut briefcases and shoulder bags and closed down laptops and began leaving en masse. Within minutes the courtroom was eighty percent cleared--cured, rather, as one newspaper wag would have it. Then, what was left of the first wave proceeded to inventory its remaining numbers. Eleven; that was it. Eleven attorneys to defend against the lone woman at the plaintiff's table. Her presence momentarily stumped them again: she hadn't yet been heard on the judge's previous order.

  "May it please the court, my name is Christine Susmann and I represent Sevi al-Assad, the plaintiff in this case. If your honor hadn't sua sponte cleared the courtroom of the briefcase-bearing second and third strings, I would have made the same motion to do so myself. So, for the record, I join with the court in its efforts to whittle our numbers down to a manageable size. Short of that, we faced an hour of self-introductions any time we came into court for even the most mundane business."

  Judge LaJordia immediately raised a hand, shutting her off.

  "Miss Susmann, I can assure you--and everyone remaining--that mundane business is never transacted in my court. All business here is important."

  "Sorry, Your Honor, I didn't mean to suggest--"

  "I know you didn't. But in case anyone else might get the wrong idea, I felt forced to characterize further what it is we do here." He looked directly into the TV camera when he said this. He even spoke slowly enough the newspaper writers could get it all down word for word. Then he smiled broadly at Christine. No harm, no foul, said his smile. She returned the smile and took her seat.