“Humph Evunhs,” he said into the phone, chewing furiously.
“Hello?” said the voice in his earpiece.
“Hank Evans,” he said after swallowing.
“Good morning, Hank. Bill Perkins,” Evans’s deputy said hurriedly. “Have you gone through your e-mail yet?”
“No. What’s up?”
“Washington issued a new directive this morning. All Hispanics in the intelligence community are being reassigned to non-critical areas. They’re no longer cleared for any information rated ‘secret’ or higher. They’re saying it’s—you know—security issues.”
Evans’s face reddened. “That’s absurd. Everything we touch is rated ‘secret.’ A Hispanic won’t be able to walk into any of our offices—or even file a field report.”
“I know, Hank.”
“Well, the politicians who hatched up this half-baked scheme are in for a rude surprise,” Evans said, the rolls of flesh under his chin quivering. “We’re going to have some very serious ‘security issues’ if we turn every Hispanic in the intelligence community into a cook or a janitor.”
Since the passing of the Quarantine and Relocation Act, Evans had done an about-face on the threat from radical Hispanics. Thanks to the chaos caused by the Bates resolution, he had come to believe the Hispanic issue was now the most serious security challenge the nation faced.
“What do you want us to do, Hank?”
Evans’s mind began to work again after venting his wrath. “Maria Prado has been working on getting a mole into La Defensa del Pueblo. You need to pick up the ball on that.”
“Right, Hank. I’ll get started on it as soon as I can,” Perkins replied and hung up quickly.
Evans picked up the rest of his donut and started to hurl it into the trash can, then changed his mind. He may have lost his temper, but he hadn’t lost his appetite.
As Phil Saunders eased his rig into the parking lot of the SmartStop near Culver City, California, the sun was setting into the smog-banked horizon. He’d made over five hundred miles today and was going to reward himself with a good dinner and a solid night’s sleep.
After killing the diesel, Phil climbed down from the cab and made a quick scan of his rig. The bags of fertilizer on his stake bed were still tightly stacked. Satisfied with the condition of his load, he headed for the restaurant.
As he walked past the long line of rigs, a svelte redhead leaning seductively against a GMC pickup flashed a big smile and crooked her finger enticingly. Well, now. Maybe there’s an extra treat in store for ol’ Phil tonight, he thought, turning toward her.
Finding a hooker at a truck stop was not unusual. But this one stood out from the mostly overweight and cheerless women who worked the eighteen-wheel circuit. Not much older than thirty, she wore a tight halter top and cut-off shorts, her crimson hair a curly mass towering above large hoop earrings. She was every trucker’s dream.
“Hello, darlin’. My name’s Phil,” he said in his best Burt Reynolds voice.
“Hi, there,” she said with a sultry smile. “You look like a fella who could use some company.”
“I guess that depends on how much it costs, honey.”
“It’ll cost you a hundred,” she said sweetly, then looked at her watch. “But I haven’t got much time.”
Phil winked, a gleam in his eye. “Why don’t we go back to my rig? Ol’ Phil’s got him a sleeper.”
“Why, that sounds real cozy,” the redhead said, slinging her small purse over her shoulder and taking Phil’s arm.
After reaching the truck, Phil unlocked the cab. “Here we are, darlin’,” he said, gesturing toward the open door, admiring the redhead’s slim figure as she climbed into the cab. This is one lively little hottie.
Following her inside, Phil was stunned to find the redhead pointing a silver revolver at his face. The steadiness of her hand left little doubt she knew how to use it. “There’s been a little change in plans, darlin’,” the woman said calmly. “Put your keys on the console—nice and slow—and step back into the sleeper.”
Seconds later, Phil saw a man’s face appear at the window of his cab. Keeping her gun trained on Phil, the redhead let the man in. Phil tried to memorize the man’s appearance, hoping he’d survive the ordeal. The man was black, below average in height, with a slight build, his hair done up in a once again fashionable Afro. A brightly patterned shirt open at the collar revealed a heavy gold necklace that glistened against his dark skin.
Without a word, the man took the keys from the console and deftly guided the eighteen-wheeler out of the truck stop and onto I-405 South. This pimp must have made an honest living at one time, Phil noted silently.
An hour later, Phil found himself bound to a chair in an abandoned gas station outside Compton, a swath of duct tape covering his mouth. In the dim streetlight entering through the windows, he spotted a broken pneumatic pipe fixture protruding from the wall. After hearing his rig pull away, he began rocking the chair toward the wall. If he could get the tape binding his hands against the sharp edge of the plug, he might be able to free himself.
Inside Phil’s semi, Jo removed the red wig and said, “That should hold ol’ Phil for a while,” as Jesús Lopez pulled the truck away from the gas station. After a ten-minute drive, Jesús stopped the rig in an alley along the L.A. River and killed the lights. Moments later, a group of men emerged from a storm sewer along the riverbank and began unloading the truck, feverishly passing the bags of fertilizer hand-to-hand in a line leading into the drain. In less than two hours, the ammonium nitrate was stockpiled in a vacant textile warehouse inside Quarantine Zone B.
Drenched in sweat, Mano approached Jo and Ramon. “We’re done,” he said, breathing heavily.
“It’s a good thing that stuff only explodes when you mix it with oil,” Ramon said, smirking. “With the heat your team worked up, we could have all gone up in a bang.”
Mano rolled his eyes. “That might possibly be funny if you’d actually done any work, old man.”
“Any idea how much am-nite we have?” Jo asked.
“Not as much as we’d like,” Mano answered. “I’d guess around ten tons.”
Jo nodded. “That’s cutting it close, but it should do.”
“You see,” Ramon said defensively, “I still think it would have been better to buy this stuff through one of our dummy companies.”
“Let it go, Ray. You were outvoted,” Jo shot back. “You agreed any big purchase of ammonium nitrate would have sent up a red flag with the government. Mano and I felt this way was less risky. Besides, Mano came up with a great plan to ditch the truck.”
“Oh? What brilliant idea did our resident tactical genius concoct?”
Jo nudged Mano with her elbow. “Tell him.”
“Jesús is going to drive the empty truck to Compton and torch it.”
“Well, well… I must admit, that’s not a bad red herring, amigo.”
Ramon knew the truck driver would identify Jesús as an African-American to the authorities. Ditching the stolen truck in predominantly black Compton would deflect the investigation away from them.
“OK, let’s face it,” Jo said soberly. “We didn’t get as much am-nite as we wanted. So we damn well better make what we have count.”
After returning from lunch, Hank Evans double-clicked on Bill Perkins’s e-mail with the subject line “DDP.” An e-mail message was a red flag—Evans knew his deputy would have delivered any good news on the investigation in person.
Hank,
Wanted to bring you up to speed on the DDP surveillance. They seem to be keeping their noses clean. Their main activity still appears to be community service, i.e., ferrying food and medicine delivered by the Army for distribution within the Quarantine Zones. Their organization is tight and has been difficult to penetrate. We are continuing with our efforts at securing a mole. Our progress in the zones is slow as it is hard for any of our people to blend in.
—Bill
Evans noted that th
e worst news was buried in the middle of the poorly constructed paragraph. They had not yet found a mole.
THE QUARANTINE AND
RELOCATION ACT:
Month 4, Day 11
Chuckie Buster was seething. Straddling his Dyna Glide, idling at the curb on Temple Street, he revved the throttle again and looked over his leather-clad shoulder. Arrayed in a neat line behind him, eleven other riders waited impatiently to roll, the roar of their Harleys echoing in the nearly empty streets of downtown Los Angeles. Where in the hell is Stratton this time? Buster fumed as a lone Neon crawled by.
Buster was the leader of the Wanderers in the Desert, a Christian motorcycle club from the First Church of Christ. The Wanderers had been waiting more than half an hour to start an after-service ride to Lake Elsinore, but they couldn’t leave without Stratton. After mechanical breakdowns had ruined rides in the past, the members had agreed never to ride again without someone driving a chase van, and Stratton was the only one in the club willing to endure that humdrum task.
Buster turned off his bike, dropped the kickstand, and gave a throat-slash sign to the members behind him. The rumble of the Harleys died away and the usual Sunday morning stillness returned to downtown Los Angeles.
Mano’s turban rubbed annoyingly against the roof of the rented Neon as he cruised along Temple, making a last check of the blast zone. Ahead of him, he spotted a line of motorcyclists parked along the street and pulled to the curb a block ahead of them. With only seconds left to act, he scanned the laptop beside him and disabled the charges set for that section of street. Muttering a prayer for the bikers, he pulled the Neon back onto the road and drove away.
Walking toward the bike behind him, Chuckie Buster was stunned by a blinding flash, followed by a blast of heat that singed his beard. Instinctively, Buster dropped to the pavement. The thunder of multiple explosions shook the ground, seeming to come from everywhere at once as Buster huddled against the curb and prayed.
When the blasts finally ended, Buster raised his head warily. Black smoke billowed skyward, gradually revealing the devastation. For blocks in every direction, traffic lights lay scattered like cordwood along the streets, a blackened crater marking the base of each pole. Dotting each intersection was the mangled yellow carcass of a fallen traffic signal. Miraculously, the poles where the Wanderers were parked were the only ones intact. They had somehow been spared.
Chuckie Buster saw it as a sign from God.
THE QUARANTINE AND
RELOCATION ACT:
Month 4, Day 12
On the last weekend in September, the Sunday morning calm of downtown Los Angeles had been shattered by a wave of explosions.
Beginning precisely at 9 a.m., a series of blasts destroyed an electrical relay station, four power-line towers, and nineteen traffic signals in the downtown area. From unexploded charges at the base of two utility poles, the LAPD determined the explosives were made with ammonium nitrate, a commonly used fertilizer. There were no casualties as a result of the attacks, but much of downtown Los Angeles was left without power. A special evening edition of the Los Angeles Times called the bombings “Blackout Sunday.”
During Monday morning rush hour, traffic in the central business district went into gridlock, snarled by the absence of signals and a redeployment of traffic police to security duty. The situation worsened when car bombs exploded in three downtown parking garages exactly at noon. Although the blasts caused no injuries, news of the bombings sent panicked office workers scrambling out of the city. In the exodus, many commuters, trapped in the traffic, abandoned their cars and fled on foot.
They were the first to leave downtown Los Angeles in panic. They would not be the last.
Hank Evans sat at his desk, fighting a severe case of drowsiness. He’d overdone the spiked Christmas eggnog in the officers’ mess during lunch, and now he was paying the price.
This depressing place could drive anyone to drink, Evans thought, looking around at his new office. It was barren, harshly lit, and smelled of crayons and mold.
After the attacks on downtown Los Angeles, the CIA had evacuated its regional headquarters. Much to Evans’s dismay, his office was moved from a stately federal high-rise overlooking the National Cemetery to an abandoned elementary school at the center of Army Outpost Bravo, just outside the northern border of Quarantine Zone B.
Evans leaned over the desk, hands propping up his chin, staring dully at the pile of reports from his field agents in the zones. Reading them would be a long and useless task—he knew their efforts had been futile.
The loss of all Hispanic operatives had crippled the CIA. Few Anglos possessed the language skills and cultural subtleties to penetrate the growing number of rebel groups surfacing within the zones. In Evans’s opinion, the CIA had better information on the numerous foreign enemies the nation faced than the Hispanic insurgency at home.
As the domestic situation had worsened, the bloated CIA bureaucracy finally began to shift its attention away from its foreign operations to the escalating crisis. Evans felt it had taken too long. As it was, the CIA was barely keeping up with the overseas conflicts. This growing challenge on the home front was stretching the Agency’s resources to the breaking point. Some hard decisions would need to be made in Washington. Given its present resources, Evans knew the Agency could not sustain intelligence networks on this many fronts at once. It was impossible—and demoralizing.
He needed more coffee. As Evans rose to get another cup, Bill Perkins popped his head into the doorway. “Hank, I’ve got some good news,” he said, smiling. “We might just have ourselves a mole at La Defensa del Pueblo.”
“Come in. Sit down,” Evans said, retreating to his chair, grateful for the distraction. “What’s the scoop?”
“I told the Army intel guys to keep their eyes open for me and they came up with someone who looks promising. His name’s Ernesto Alvarez. He’s a gangbanger they busted for trying to bribe a trooper on guard duty. He wanted the soldier to make himself scarce for a while. My guess is he had a shipment of drugs coming in. Anyway, after they nabbed him, Alvarez told the intel guys he’d give them information on the leaders of La Defensa del Pueblo if they’d release him. The names he provided check out—Ramon Garcia and Josefina Herrera.”
“That’s no big secret, Bill,” Evans said, recalling Maria Prado’s report on the rally in Salazar Park. “Garcia and Herrera have both appeared publicly at DDP functions in the past. Anyone could have that information.”
Perkins looked crestfallen. “Well, it’s the only break we’ve had so far, Hank.”
Evans didn’t want to disappoint his subordinate. He knew Perkins, juggling overseas assignments, had scrambled to come up with something. “Well, there’s a chance this gangbanger might be able to help us. Like you said, we haven’t got any other leads or inside sources right now.”
Perkins seemed relieved. “I’d like to put him on a retainer, Hank. I’m worried that if I turn this guy loose, he’ll bolt and we’ll never see him again.”
“How much?”
“Well, if he’s a dope dealer, it’ll take some serious coin to keep him coming back. I’d say ten thousand a month.”
Evans considered the request. Their funding was being cut again. But with so little being produced by their fieldwork, their budget allocation for this type of intelligence gathering was still pretty much intact. Better to use it than to lose it, Hank told himself.
“OK, Bill. I’m going to go with you on this one.”
“I’ll get on it. My gut tells me this guy’s the real deal,” Perkins said as he rose from his chair.
“Let’s find out. And soon.”
THE QUARANTINE AND
RELOCATION ACT:
Month 8, Day 6
Mano stared at the tops of the skyscrapers visible over the west wall. Without their once-familiar lights, the buildings were hazy silhouettes against the night sky. Had it been worth it? They’d succeeded in depopulating downtown Los Angeles; ther
e was little doubt of that.
In the weeks following Blackout Sunday, they’d detonated a succession of bloodless explosions in downtown parking lots. Wells Fargo had been the first company to announce they were relocating their corporate headquarters to a more secure location. Other downtown companies soon followed.
As Jo had predicted, the flight of the corporations was the start of a stampede. Worried parents insisted USC close its downtown campus. The Los Angeles Library moved its collection to regional branches, shuttering its landmark high-rise. The Opera and the Philharmonic discontinued their seasons. Without clientele from downtown workers and arts patrons, most restaurants and bars closed their doors.
Now, less than four months after Blackout Sunday, the central business district of Los Angeles had become a ghost town—every day of the week.
But their strategic victory came with a price. An Army patrol had stumbled onto one of their explosive-making centers near Montebello last week. The young vatos at the site tried to put up a fight, using handguns against automatic rifles. All four were killed.
They’d paid with their lives for plans that they’d had no part in shaping. Although the four young men had not worn uniforms, Mano knew they’d been soldiers all the same.
From his backpack, Mano produced four small wreaths and placed them solemnly against the wall. After saying a prayer, he began walking toward his apartment feeling both proud and ashamed.
Back home, as he crawled silently into bed beside Rosa, he once again recalled Jo’s advice about sending his family away. After almost six months, he was still no closer to a decision. With the first Relocation Communities now complete, waiting any longer made no sense.
Six sleepless hours later, as the first glimmer of daylight crept into the room, Mano had made up his mind. Now would come the hardest part yet: breaking the news to his wife.
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