“Guess you forgot my pizza,” he said, nodding at Jake’s empty hands.
“Tomorrow I’m gonna buy you one so big it’ll take a year for you to finish it.” Jake plucked a radio out of a charger and pulled a pair of high-powered military field glasses off a line of emergency equipment pegged to the wall. “I’m gonna find some high ground and see how I can help. Call me once someone has a plan.”
As he exited the truck he could see cops had already shut down surrounding streets and begun shaping the slow, sticky flow of the crowd away from the blast zone. Jake put his eyes to the cups of the glasses. His vision filled with the blue and red flares of lights flashing on top of patrol cars. Fire trucks swam into view. A crew at the far end of Santa Monica Boulevard was hosing down a line of parked cars that had caught flame. Memorial Square was now nothing more than a steaming black crater. Around the crusted ring lay charred corpses and debris.
Jake pulled into focus. Shards of glass twinkled under the glare of lights and he started to see people moving. Out on the periphery, a handful of brave bystanders were tending the injured. He wanted to be there, too. This was a battlefield and all his instincts urged him to rush into the thick of it and lend a hand. But that wasn’t safe and it wasn’t his job.
Keen to see who was watching, he scanned east along the boulevard, out toward where it eventually hit Wilshire and hosted the Beverly Hilton. Dark shapes loomed large and small, blurred and sharp. They flowed through his constantly shifting lenses. Jake’s brain processed the jumble and desperately tried to discern something or someone suspicious.
He caught a glimpse of Connor Pryce arriving and talking to a uniform. A paramedic’s van pulled up onto the sidewalk. Its back doors spilled light and men began unfolding steps. Jake shifted the glasses again and lost clarity for a few seconds. Eventually, he picked out a huddle of gang kids watching the show. One of them pulled hard on a reefer and it lit up in his mouth like he was chewing a firefly. Next came blackness. Emptiness. Nothingness.
Then a glint of light.
Jake swung the lenses back.
Three, maybe four hundred yards away, a man was standing back, far away from everyone else, almost hidden in a clump of trees.
He was watching through binoculars.
Jake’s instincts tingled.
People brought candles and flowers to a memorial service, not field glasses. There was a chance he was part of the terror cell. Maybe their escape route had gotten jammed up and he was scanning for a new way out.
One eye to the lens, Jake cut a route toward him.
The distance between them slowly closed.
He was no more than a hundred yards away when the man spotted him. For a second he stood and stared.
Then he ran.
Jake let the glasses drop to his chest and gave chase.
The guy disappeared into the blackness behind some fencing.
Jack sprinted across the boulevard, the FBI radio to his lips. “This is Special Agent Jake Mottram. I’m in pursuit of a suspect, heading north across the LA Country Club grounds in West Hollywood. I need an eye in the sky and units east and west of Santa Monica Boulevard. I repeat, there is a lone suspect and he may be armed.”
A reply crackled back but Jake was sprinting too hard to make out anything other than the fact that it was Ruis’s voice. The roadway was shut off so it was easy to cross.
Jake climbed the barrier and fought his way through a clump of bushes. He dropped down a banking. Felt the earth spring soft beneath his feet. Sprinklers had soaked newly cut grass. He raised the glasses and switched them to night vision.
Nothing.
As far as he could see.
Nothing.
An owl broke from a tree and made him spin left. Desperately he scanned the blackness. Through the green fog, he saw rabbits run for cover.
Up above him came the clack, clack, clack of rotor blades. He knew the sound well. It was a Eurocopter AS 550 Fennec. A burst of white light erupted from the night sun attached to the FBI craft.
A figure broke from a thicket and ran right-to-left sixty yards ahead of him.
Jake sprinted as fast as he could. Being tall and heavy made him slow over the first ten yards, but then he was like a train.
Ruis’s voice came through the earpiece. “Suspect heading west toward Comstock, Jake. West, west, west.”
The gap between them shrank to thirty yards.
The FBI man started to think of how this might end. He reached across his chest and slipped a service-issue revolver from its holster.
Another ten yards and he’d give the call.
The man stopped.
Jake threw himself to the ground. If he was going to be shot at, he wanted to be as small a target as possible.
The helicopter swooped low and showered the runner in dense white light. A voice boomed through the onboard Tannoy. “This is the FBI. We are armed. Put your hands up and get on your knees. This is the FBI, put your hands up now or we will shoot.”
Jake saw the man’s silhouette stretch and kneel.
The SKU leader kept his pistol trained on the suspect as he got to his feet and headed over. The downdraft from the copter shook his balance.
Five yards separated them.
Jake could see the guy wasn’t armed.
Nor was he Arabic or black.
He was middle-aged, stocky and white.
Mr. Average.
And he was terrified.
Jake still wasn’t taking chances. He pulled a pair of plastic restraining cuffs from his pocket and shouted above the noise of the copter, “Hands behind your back.”
They went back.
Jake pushed him into the turf and cuffed him. He rolled him over and patted him down.
No gun. No knife. No trace of detonators or explosives.
Just field glasses and a face full of fear.
In one pocket he found car keys, a BlackBerry and a wallet. The other yielded a pack of Kleenex and a small bottle of baby oil.
Jake got the picture.
He’d stumbled on a Peeping Tom. A pervert who’d been distracted by the bomb while out watching courting couples in cars down the back roads off Santa Monica Boulevard.
17
California
For a second, Shooter looked away from the TV on the canteen wall and studied the faces of his coworkers as they watched the news. These were life’s bottom-feeders, the dregs of society, none of whom would ever be more famous than they were now. Perfect companions on a night like this.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” shouted an older man. “Some people have no respect. To bomb a memorial service, what the fuck has the world come to?”
A young redhead who worked the switchboard started crying.
Shooter felt stranded.
He knew he had to seem sympathetic. It was important not to look out of place. But he couldn’t match this extremity of emotion.
A driver pointed to the screen. “Turn it up. Someone turn the damned thing up so we can hear what’s being said.”
The remote was close enough for Shooter to grab it and adjust the volume. He was grateful for the chance to somehow seem involved.
“We are coming live from the Sun Western Mall,” announced a gravel-voiced male anchor, “where the shootings of forty-eight hours ago have been followed by another massacre—this time at what is believed to be the hands of callous terrorists.”
The screen filled with shaky aerial footage.
“Death came,” continued the anchor, “in the form of an explosive that had somehow been placed at the very spot where the flowers and tributes were laid by friends, family and mourners.”
Aerial shots cut to ambulances speeding from the scene, sirens whooping to clear the roads.
“Eyewitnesses say there are at least fifty people either seriously injured or dead. Casualties include city officials and policemen, hit either directly by the explosive or by glass and metal from the mall and cars parked nearby.”
A s
tudio director switched to a gruesome scene that turned the stomach of just about everyone in the room.
Except Shooter.
A young redneck swore at the set. “Motherfucking Al-Qaeda. We should have blown up the whole goddamned country, not just that bearded prick Obama.”
“Osama,” shouted a woman. “Obama’s our president. You mean Osama bin Laden, you jerk.”
People laughed.
Shooter didn’t.
He was transfixed by the carnage. A collage of life and death. Such vivid colors and immense emotions.
A camera picked out the clothes of the last little boy to be seen before the bomb went off. He had laid down a clay model he’d made for what people had supposed was his grandmother.
Shooter watched the idiots around him go mawkish and sentimental.
The supervisor entered the room. A big, fat Polish guy called Januk Dudek who stank from never washing and had a wife-beater’s temper.
He glanced at the screen and his round, sweaty face was unmoved. “Turn this shit off. There’s work to do. “ ’Less you fuckers want me to find other people to do it?”
18
Sun Western Mall, LA
The runner with the field glasses turned out to be a forty-year-old minor sex offender named Shane Garvie. He lived alone and had a string of convictions for lewd and indecent behavior in public places.
The night’s one brief moment of amusement came when everyone realized Garvie had thought he was the sole focus of an FBI manhunt.
Without being prompted, he’d confessed to being in possession of hard-core pornography, using teenage prostitutes and having three ounces of dope in the glove box of his SUV.
Soon after 2:30 a.m., the Bomb Squad finished with their robots and Labradors and declared the immediate area around the mall and blast site to be free of secondary devices. They needed a short break before sweeping the inside of the mall. Thousands of shop workers were going to have an unexpected day off tomorrow.
Jake was impressed to see Chief Rawlings walking the scene. Okay, so he was a renowned political fox, but it was still good to see him putting in the street time. Crawford Dixon was there too, even though antiterrorism wasn’t under his brief.
Predictably, Angie wasn’t in the truck where he’d left her.
To his relief he found her out on a patch of fried grass, squatting in the middle of a group of grieving relatives. She was trying to help them through what would undoubtedly be the most difficult moment of their lives.
Angie looked up and saw him. Managed a smile. One that said give me a minute.
He hung back and checked messages on his phone until she was done. Finally, he saw her hug several women before they went their own tearful ways. By the time she came over to him, she looked more exhausted than he’d ever seen her. Jake lifted his arm so she could rest up against him as they walked. “How you doin’, hon’?”
She pressed close. “Take me home, baby. Take me to our bed and hold me until I sleep.”
They walked through debris and saw Dixon and Rawlings, deep in earnest conversation. The two men looked up and saw them.
Crawford waited until they were up close and spoke directly to Jake. “NIA have just had a communiqué from Al-Qaeda saying the bomb was nothing to do with them.”
The former Marine looked shocked. “Then who? Syrians? Iranians? North Koreans?”
The section chief shook his head. “Bomb Squad says the blast was from a device activated in the open above ground level, not sunk in earth or hidden in a vehicle.”
Jake pulled a face. “What does that mean? We’re talking a suicide bomber in the crowd?”
“Too early to say,” answered Rawlings. “Problem with this event is that every fucking thing was thrown together last minute.” He grew crosser than he intended. “Mayoral office and governor’s office have been falling over each other’s freaking egos, fighting about who does what, who says what, who stands freakin’ where. Bottom line—I’m betting checks that should have been done didn’t get done.”
“What about motive?” interjected Angie. “Standing over there with survivors and victims’ relatives, I’ve been asking myself who stood to benefit most from an atrocity like this?”
Rawlings looked perplexed. “And did you give yourself an answer?”
“I did. And it’s one hard to accept. The only person I could link motivationally to this memorial is the shooter in the mall.”
Crawford Dixon grew agitated. “Angie, you know as well as we do that bombers are a different breed to Sprees. The first is meticulous, the second impulsive. Their signature is as dissimilar as they come.”
“That’s not completely true and this man is not a Spree.” Her voice was insistent. “Believe me, it’s a big mistake to think of him like that.”
The TV light of a news crew flickered less than twenty feet behind them.
“This conversation’s over,” said Dixon angrily. He leaned close so he couldn’t be overheard. “Doctor Holmes, I told your boss directly, now I’m telling you. I do not want you trying to work this case—directly or indirectly. That’s an order.”
19
California
Januk told everyone to stay late. It was their punishment for idling around in front of the TV set and not doing their jobs properly.
“Too much talking, too little working!” he shouted across the canteen.
The big Pole marched over to the monitor on the wall, pulled out the plug and tore it off the flex.
“Hey, man, there’s no need to do that. We’re on a break.” The protest came from Stevie, a young driver with black, greasy hair and biker tats on his arms.
Januk stomped his way across and hurled the plug at him.
Stevie jumped to his feet. “You fucking mad Polack.”
Januk grabbed him by the front of his overalls and hauled him over the table, knocking food and drink everywhere.
Shooter watched in fascination. The big supervisor had so much raw and wonderful rage but no control over it.
Such a waste.
Januk punched Stevie in the head.
A woman screamed.
The supervisor yelled into the driver’s face. “You call me a Polack? You piece of American shit.” He smashed his forehead into the man’s nose and dropped him to the ground like a sack of trash.
Stevie lay moaning. His hand touched his busted nose and he stared in disbelief at the blood flowing over his fingers.
Januk’s fists were balled tight. Veins in his neck rippled like ropes. He turned slowly and glared at the watching crowd.
Shooter could see the brutal moron was clearly enjoying his moment in the spotlight. This guy wanted to fight everyone. He wanted to pull down the sky and smash up the earth.
No one was stupid enough to challenge his rage.
Except Stevie.
Stevie was mopping blood and simmering with humiliation and hatred.
Shooter looked at him and knew what was going to happen.
The driver reached for a steak knife still lying on the table.
He grabbed it and rushed the back of the supervisor.
The blade rose.
Came down in a vicious arc.
Shooter crashed into him.
He got there a split second before steel found flesh.
They tumbled to the floor. The knife clattered across the tiles. Stevie stretched for it.
Januk had turned. Now he understood what was happening.
He stamped on the driver’s wrist.
A roar of pain filled the room.
People ran for the exit.
Two of the older men closed in on the supervisor. “Enough now, boss. Come on.”
Another driver went to help Stevie.
Shooter got to his feet and picked up the knife.
Januk watched him cautiously.
Everyone tensed.
Shooter placed the knife on the table. The click of steel on wood was the only sound in the room. He looked from one man to
the other. “How about you say this never happened?”
Stevie’s nose dripped blood into his hands. “What?”
His friend passed him a wad of table napkins. “That way you don’t get done for attempted wounding.”
“And Mr. Dudek here don’t get prosecuted for assault,” added one of the older men.
“Then we have a deal?” Shooter asked.
Januk nodded.
Stevie blotted blood and managed, “Yeah, I guess so.”
Shooter left the room, conscious that the supervisor was following a few feet behind him.
Januk shouted in the corridor, “Hey, wait.”
He turned.
“I want to say thank you.”
“There’s no need.” Shooter walked on. As much as he’d have liked to see one of the men kill the other—it didn’t matter which—he knew that would have meant the police coming to interview everyone, and that was something he really didn’t want to happen.
20
Douglas Park, Santa Monica
It was 5:00 a.m. when Jake woke and found the bed empty.
He wandered through to the lounge and found Angie awake. She was sitting in her PJs on the sofa with a laptop across her thighs. Her right arm was out of the sling but still bandaged and hanging limp. An empty coffee cup on the floor said she’d been working when she should have been sleeping.
“Morning,” she managed brightly. “What woke you?”
“You not being there, baby.”
“How sweet.” She tilted her head so he could kiss her.
He obliged, then added, “You should still be resting, not doing that. What is it anyway?”
Angie ignored the rebuke. “Coffee’s still hot, if you want some.” She smiled and lifted her mug so he could refill it as well.
Jake took it. “What did your last slave die of?”
“Sexual exhaustion.”
“Not a bad way to go.” He headed into the small kitchen. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I know. I was being evasive, not forgetful.” She lifted her arm protectively and swiveled around so she could see him while she spoke. “I think I cracked the anagram.”
The Big Kill Page 5