In an instant, he converted some of the energy from the bellowing fire into a thick cloud of whirling dust. It pelted the eyes of those watching the scene, and they turned and hid their faces.
The thick, gray, and black dust obstructed his vision, but his mind was able to construct a precise and detailed image of all the objects of the scene. Then, he started to transform the top four floors of the Lejirri building. Section by section, and piece by piece, the metal frames began to liquefy and morph into water.
As the building fell, its heights became a gushing source of flowing water that splashed down, to soak the roof of the restaurant, immediately extinguishing all flames. People could feel the mist of the splash, but couldn’t see where it had come from. The rest of the Lejirri building crashed down on the ground, with the sound of crunching concrete and groaning, twisting metal.
Moments later, with the thick, dark dust beginning to disperse, people turned back around to peer through gray haze.
The danger had passed.
But within the crowd, he heard another voice shout, “The other one is falling!”
* * * * * * *
When the southbound lanes of the 101 had exploded, Sik watched with satisfaction from the truck’s side mirror, while he drove steadily down the street. Then, he turned his attention back on his own task.
He shifted the gears of the truck once more and pressed down harder on the gas pedal. As the solid heavy truck gained speed and momentum, adrenaline started to pump throughout his body. When the truck’s speed reached sixty miles an hour, Sik immediately cranked the steering wheel clockwise to maneuver the truck diagonally into the entrance of the Lejirri parking lot. The truck rammed into a compact car in its path, sending it spinning into another car.
Ahead, the fencing surrounding the Lejirri building shook, as the roaring fuel truck made the ground underneath it tremble. Sik grimaced and clenched the wheel. With a growl, he blasted through the fence, as if crossing a ribbon at a finish line. However, his true destination was still further away.
He pressed the gas pedal flat on the floor.
The truck raced through the center of the building, where the lobby was to be constructed. There was a momentary darkness, as the truck disappeared into the cavern-like expanse.
Unlike the man chasing him, Sik was confident, steadfast in his plan, and lacked nothing in his preparation. He steadied his arms on the steering wheel, trusting the roar of the engine, in the darkness, and the solid grip of the wheels underneath.
An instant later, with a thunderous crash, the truck pounded through the back wall of the Lejirri building, completely demolishing it.
Sik saw light once again. As he exited the construction site, he flattened the chain-linked fence, at the perimeter. Ahead of him was a cross street that he needed to plow through, in order to hit the targeted Geminnel office building, at the other side.
The five-story Geminnel building, overshadowed by the ten-story Lejirri, was the same building in which Sik had, some days earlier, calmly and methodically hid a leather brief case, inside a small meeting room.
With a jolt, the truck dipped down from the sidewalk onto the street. Cars screeched their tires and blared their horns at the rumbling truck, as they stopped in time to avoid the collision.
But they were merely white noise to Sik’s ears. With eyes burning with excitement, he saw his destination ahead and prepared himself for the collision, with a powerful confident growl, “Break it down!”
Reaching the other side of the street, the truck jerked up and over the sidewalk, catapulting into the large glass doors and concrete framing of the entrance to the Geminnel building. The calm, quiet, and cool air inside was shocked by hot turbulent air exploding through from the outside, as the fuel truck, with its fiery engine and red-hot exhaust pipes, crashed in.
People inside leaped away in fright, as they heard the sound of the enormous glass panes crashing down, and the sound of the fuel truck’s ten screeching, spinning, and burning rubber tires.
As the truck careened into the desk at the center of the lobby, the receptionist and guards frantically jumped away.
Immediately, Sik slammed his foot on the brake pedal. All ten wheels locked in position and scored the marble floor, making them crack and crunch into each other, as they were dragged out of their fixed positions.
When the truck jerked to a stop, Sik quickly glanced down at the floor of the passenger’s seat. There, an unconscious woman was curled up. He said to himself, almost reluctantly, “You need to leave her there. This is part of the plan.” Then, hurriedly, Sik turned his head back around, opened his door, and leaped out of the truck. He sprinted past the shiny aluminum tank, and within it, the water had been mysteriously transformed back into fuel.
He ran across the burnt and crumbled lobby floors and out through the shattered entrance. Turning the corner, he dashed away, before anyone could react. As he sprinted further east, away from the building, with his arms pumping and lungs burning, his father’s dog tags jostled in the open air, over his chest.
Running swiftly, Sik reached a hand into his pant pocket. “Where is it?” he asked himself, and then added, “Quick! Get it!” From the pocket, he withdrew a small, black remote control. Raising the remote up to his chest, he noticed his father’s metal dog tags reflecting the light of the afternoon sun. A twinge of guilt entered into his heart. But then focusing on his task, he dismissed it. He needed to dismiss it.
Quickly, he glanced back at the Geminnel building.
He clicked a button on a remote.
Instantly, explosives embedded under the rear suspension of the fuel truck ignited, blasting apart the aluminum fuel tank, and igniting the high octane fuel within. Simultaneously, across the street, explosives strategically placed on suspension beams, along the first floor of the Lejirri building, also ignited.
From the longhaired man’s viewpoint, down Kenmore Street and looking towards the Lejirri construction site, the two explosions in the two buildings appeared like one tremendous conflagration, centered within the taller overshadowing Lejirri building.
* * * * * * *
At that same moment, in the third floor of the San Diego FBI office, Etelson had her mobile phone on speaker, as she spoke to Martin B. and Martin T.
“Yeah. This gene sequence from the blood in the red pearl has been making us lose sleep, Marty,” Etelson disclosed. “Rye and me have been racking our brains on this, but none of the ideas have gotten us anywhere. We’re kind of at our wits end.”
Martin T. responded, “On our side, I have queried other colleagues and brainstormed with Martin. Und unfortunately, Agent Etelson, we have been unable to come to anything conclusive. The gene sequence is, as I have said before, quite perplexing, in both its existence and its function.”
There was a protracted silence as Etelson and the two Martins struggled in their thoughts.
Then, Etelson began to concentrate on the words Martin T. just stated.
“Well you said that the gene does not encode any possible known protein definition and does not match any known organism’s function,” Etelson said. “What that tells me is we found something completely knew and undiscovered, correct?”
As Martin B. spoke, he pushed up his horn-rimmed glasses. “Correct, this is something, until now, completely undiscovered. However, the protein it generates is chemically unstable, and almost instantly, degenerates into its fundamental molecules. Thus, yah, it would appear to be useful for only a brief moment, in its very brief lifetime.”
The two Martins were at a workbench in their lab, facing the whiteboard upon which Martin T. had previously drawn the example gene sequence for the two agents. Standing next to Martin T., Martin B. held in his hand a beaker half-full of red cranberry juice.
Martin T. added, “Also, the gene sequence, from the third victim, is an entirely different sequence than the one we found from the second victim. And it is similarly an unknown sequence. From a biological and chemical standpoin
t, the genes appear to be of little value or utility.”
Etelson swiveled left and right in her chair. When she heard Martin T.“s last sentence, she stopped. An idea started to form in her mind. ‘Well, that’s quite an interesting statement you said there, Marty. So, let’s look at this from a perspective that’s not either biological or chemical.’
Etelson paused and then began once more, saying, “Because while I knew you guys would be looking at it from that perspective to solve this puzzle, I’ve been trying to look at it differently.”
She stopped her words again as her next theory finished coalescing in her thoughts. Then, she opened her mouth to state it but quickly hesitated. She wondered whether she should even pose it. Finally, she brought herself to say, “This is a complete shot in the dark, but here it goes: what if those gene sequences represented numbers?”
Martin T. answered, “Hmm. Yah, I do not follow.”
“Well, remember how you drew that diagram of a gene and gave one-letter representations of each of those four molecules?”
“Yah, A, G, C, and T for adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine.”
“Yeah, those bad boys. You had two strands: one strand was one sequence of A, G, C, and T, and the other strand was another yet differently ordered sequence of those letters.”
“Now I follow, yah.”
“Well, when I was a kid, my grandmother used to play games with us, in order to teach us both Hebrew and math, at the same time. She would give us an English word and we would have to write down the Hebrew word and add up the numerical values of the characters of those words. That’s because each letter in the Hebrew alphabet carries its own numerical value.”
“I see where you might be going, Agent Etelson,” Martin B. commented, “It is an intriguing direction.” He took a sip of his cranberry and suspended the beaker just under his lips.
“Cool. So, what if we assign a numerical value to those letters that represent each strand of the gene sequence? 1 for A. 3 for C. 7 for G. And…”
Martin T. finished her thought, “20 for T.”
“Hey, pretty fast there, Marty. Yes, so Marty, can you do that? Do you have those sequences in front of you for the second victim?”
“Yah, I do. I will assign the values and calculate the total for each sequence.”
They waited for Martin T. to finish on his computer.
“One strand sums to 39 and the other strand sums to 77,” he reported.
Etelson replied, “Ok, I knew we were gonna get a pair of numbers. So, now I had to figure out: What things are usually represented by a pair of numbers?”
Martin B. contributed, “For example, geolocation: latitude and longitude.”
“Exactly!” she replied. “Marty, what location is that on the globe, 39 lat and 77 long?”
“Hold on, I know a web page just for that. Ok. Hold on…yah, it is at the western edge of China.” Martin T. shook his head. “…oh no, not good?”
Martin B. reminded, “Remember, that there are also directionally negative numbers.”
“Ok,” said Martin T., “Let me try different combinations of negative and positive numbers…”
They waited in earnest.
“Ok,” Martin T. reported, “Using positive 39 and negative 77, the result is in the vicinity of Washington, D.C.”
Etelson pulled up to the phone, excited, she said, “Alright! So, the second victim has the sequence for Washington, D.C. Now, let’s do the third victim’s sequence. Marty, do your magic.”
“Ok. Let me see. Ok, I have the numbers. Now let me try the different combinations of negatives and positives…yah, the result is: positive 34 and negative 118, Los Angeles, California.”
“Very nice,” Etelson said, “So, the second victim who was found in New York City gives the location of Washington, D.C. The third victim who was found in Washington, D.C. gives us Los Angeles, California. Guys, are you following me on this?”
“We are impressed, Agent Etelson. And we are following. Please conclude,” Martin T. answered.
Etelson concluded, “If there’s a fourth victim and she’s in Los Angeles, then our perpetrator, Kessian, is telling us the location of the next victim.” Emphatically, she slapped her hand on the desktop.
At that moment, Stevens rushed out of the elevator and strode hurriedly toward her.
Just before reaching her desk, he exclaimed, “Multiple explosions! Couple that with an anonymous tip that Kessian was seen at a pool hall in the same area. What are the chances that they’re related? And guess where it is…”
“Los Angeles!” Etelson replied confidently.
Taken aback, Stevens asked, “How did you know?”
Amazed, Martin B. gazed out in awe, from above his cranberry beaker, and said, “Brilliant.”
Looking up at his colleague, Martin T. remarked with a grin, “Agent Etelson, I believe Martin is in love.”
Amused, Etelson smiled, as she stood and picked up her jacket, from the back of her chair. “Ok, guys, thank you very much as always. We’ll talk again.” She grabbed her phone and put it in her pocket.
As she inserted her arms through the jacket sleeves, she began to briskly walk.
Then, she gave Stevens a quick nod and said, “We’re rollin’.”
* * * * * * *
The longhaired man heard another voice gasp, “It’s coming down!”
Perplexed, he turned around to try to find what was falling.
As the dust cloud further settled, he noticed the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, on the 101 Freeway, and heard sirens of fire trucks approaching. Then, he turned back around. To his surprise, he saw the burning Geminnel office building across the street. Within it, a red blaze engulfed the first and second floors, billowing out plumes of black smoke. The flames traveled their way up, to consume higher through to the top of the building. Water lines had ruptured, preventing sprinklers from engaging.
The building began to buckle, ready to collapse down on itself.
People were streaming out of the emergency stairwell exits, at both ends of the building.
Quickly, he tried to figure out how he could keep the building from collapsing, in order to give time for the people to rush out. He scanned the structure, trying to find its main suspension columns and cross beams. Coming up with an idea, he then shifted his eyes down toward the rubble of the fallen Lejirri building.
In an impressive instant, he dematerialized crumbled concrete and twisted metal of the Lejirri building, and then re-materialized them onto the Geminnel building to fuse them into its suspension beams and concrete columns.
Immediately, the building stopped its lean and began to stabilize. Nevertheless, he wasn’t sure how long their integrity would hold, in the intense heat. “I’ve gotta stop the fire,” he thought quickly, “that’s the only way to keep it from tumbling down.”
His mind raced, as he thought of ways to stop the flames, thinking of one option after another, and running one scenario after the next. But in his excited state, he couldn’t decide. Growling at himself, he said, “Damn it! Get a hold of yourself and pick one!”
Struggling with his frantic thoughts, he began to sense the crackle of raging flames, the whooshing of hot air, and the snapping of burning wood. Finally, with an idea in mind, he focused his attention around the whole perimeter of the Geminnel building. Then, he began to squeeze in air all around the building, creating a layer of containment completely around the edifice, by adding one very dense layer of air upon another. In time, the building looked as though it was encapsulated and sealed within a gigantic glass enclosure.
Soon, the crowds started to hear the attenuating sounds of both the flames and the rushing hot wind. They began to see the sides and edges of the building strangely glow, with the colors of the fires reflected from inside.
As the flames inside the building consumed oxygen, they depleted their own fuel. The enormous fires, at the heart of the building, were first to wane. Moments later, the fires thro
ughout all the floors had drastically diminished. Soon, the flames disappeared, and the last of the glowing embers also faded away.
He sighed in relief, thinking he had been successful.
But he hadn’t completely thought through the consequences of his solution. The seal he had created, to suffocate the blaze, also acted to suffocate the people attempting to escape it. They were inside the building gasping for air, within the stairwells.
He could sense their distress and became unnerved.
Exasperated, he began to race toward the building. A feeling of desperation mingled with foolishness, irritation, and disappointment built up within himself.
As he sped past clusters of people, his mind made the enclosure around the building disperse. Air and oxygen immediately rushed in to fill the vacuum.
Many witnessed him sprint and squeeze through the crowds packed along Kenmore Street.
He reached the Geminnel building and dashed toward the door of the west stairwell exit, and then jerked and pulled the door open.
From the bottom of the stairs reaching up two flights, there were maybe fifty to seventy people packed inside. Many of them gasped for air to once again fill their lungs. Others were either sprawled out over the steps or sitting upright, coughing and deeply inhaling. But all were breathing once again. Even some began to stagger to their feet.
Seeing that the people were recovering, he then, immediately, turned his attention to the other end of the building, at the east stairwell exit. He sensed there were no more than twenty people there. They too were reviving.
He sighed, saying, “Oh, thank God…I’m not that pathetic.”
Quickly, he helped a woman up from the floor and carried her out of the stairwell. Slowly, others began to walk out on their own strength.
When he went back in, he asked urgently, “Is there anyone else up there? Maybe hurt or stuck somewhere?” His voiced echoed up, bouncing off concrete and metal.
They gave quiet responses of, “I don’t think so. I don’t know. Don’t know really.”
RB 01 Through Flesh & Bone Page 30