Good point. “I don’t know that they will. I don’t think they’ll recognize each other. However, the burden of each bomb doesn’t look like it’s big enough to take out a city block, but if you put them together . . .” She hated saying it. Hated thinking about what would happen if they didn’t stop it. Stopping it required a very precise strike. One that didn’t trigger any backup issues they couldn’t also stop.
The statistician’s voice came back again, and Eleri could almost see the woman. She seemed so calm, just working her numbers and occasionally speaking something important. “So, five points because one person from each cell will meet up? Is there something different about each of the bombs?”
Eleri asked Donovan but he shrugged. So nothing smelled different about them. “I think it’s just an increase in blast load. They probably don’t know they’re meeting up. Also, the one we saw has a remote detonator, so the cell members can probably survive the blast.”
“Give me a sec.” But she only took a second to produce the first one. “Santa Monica.” Then she paused. “Downtown . . . But not sure exactly where in either place.”
She was on speaker at the home base. “Send teams.”
She wanted to send in SWAT, but “Santa Monica” and “Downtown” were too big to get anyone into position, and they couldn’t just drive around without being seen.
Eleri started pulling up maps, as she zoomed in, the woman’s voice came again. “UCLA. Remember these are my guesses. UCLA is at least a smaller target. If I had to guess Santa Monica, I’d go for the pier. Downtown there are a hundred tall buildings.”
Eleri wanted to say “one more” but she bit her tongue. What if she was wrong? There could easily be more than five, so she didn’t say it.
The statistician did.
“Pasadena!” She was excited. “If I use five as the expected number, it works. I think this is it. Do you want to dispatch more teams?”
“Yes.” Eleri tried to stay calm. Tried not to yell, “Yes! Dammit, Yes!”
“Donovan,” she spoke his name clearly, so those listening over the speaker at the Bureau wouldn’t get confused. “Call the other car, have them turn and head downtown. Tell them Walter knows it like the back of her hand and they should listen to her. Also tell them she’s been tailing Ken Kellen for days and she’ll have some insight.”
She only half heard him as he repeated all of that. She didn’t even see the other car peel off and turn. Eleri stayed in the back seat. The SUV stopped and started, but she wasn’t looking out the window, she was staring at the map, zooming in and out. Then she asked the statistician, “The Rose Bowl?”
“That’s what I was thinking. I’m currently checking that.”
Eleri had no clue what math the woman was doing exactly, but she was checking the convergence of the routes against the likelihood of a place being a target.
“The numbers look good,” she said. And by ‘good’ she meant ‘likely to be hit’ which was ‘bad.’
Five targets. She had three agents who understood what was going on. She had two consultants who knew the game, but one was carrying a bomb and out of communication—not to mention possibly almost rogue. The other was just a consultant and couldn’t lead a strike.
Eleri leaned back against the seat, taking long deep breaths.
This was what the FBI was good at.
Though they weren’t all NightShade and had no NightShade directive, they were great at coordinating and taking down. It’s why no one knew about the Red Line Ricin Attack or the Candlestick Park Bomber. There were others, too, but these had been cases that Eleri was personally involved in. She’d been profiling at the time of the Red Line Ricin Attack and had been low man on one of the teams.
So she had to trust that these guys would step up for her and take the cells down before they could inflict any damage. Just like she had stepped up when they called her in the past.
“Oh shit.” Marina spoke from the front. She must have been looking at Donovan’s set up even as she drove. It was Donovan who filled Eleri in.
“Rollins is headed up the front walk of the observatory.”
“Of course he is. It’s heavily populated.”
Then she heard a spark from home base. “I just lost my guy. He walked up to the woods and hopped a moto-cross bike. I can’t keep up. I’m sorry.”
Eleri was just getting ready to ask, when he volunteered what she needed. “We are on Western Canyon road and he headed into the woods toward the observatory.”
“Sounds like confirmation to me.” The statistician came in.
“Can we get SWAT close, but hidden? We can’t run a takedown if they’re hitting different sides of the building. Fuck.” She whispered the last word, as though by not barking it she took away some of its power. She whispered her next line too. “We need to get out of the car.”
When she realized no one heard her, she said it again. “Marina, take us to the front, drop us off and park. Come find us. We need to get out of the car.”
She spoke then to the home base office. “Tell them all we need boots on the ground, but plainclothes.”
That meant not SWAT. It meant the officers. She kept talking even as she climbed out of the car. “Tails should keep following. Weapons at ready. Patch me through.”
She looked up suddenly, trying to appear normal as she entered the observatory. Where was security? Eleri glanced around.
There were several guards, but if there was a detector, Rollins had passed it cleanly. She wouldn’t. She was packing. She would light the place up and that was bad.
“Donovan, go grab that guard and get us in with no fanfare.” She didn’t even look at him, just faked a smile and caught Rollins heading around a corner.
Shit.
She had to catch up to him, but there hadn’t been enough time to scope the place out, to make plans. That must have been the plan all along.
Double shit.
Stepping to a corner, she tucked her head down and her shoulder up, she even tried to look like she was on her cell phone. “Rollins is inside the observatory. Which means we are close to time. What are the other targets?”
They should know them by now. The cell members should be dead on and starting to converge. Unless it was staggered timing, but that would be bad news for the last group.
“Just getting ready to relay that. One—Rose Bowl. Two—Pier. Three—UCLA Medical Center. Four—you, Griffith Park Observatory. Five—downtown Tower Theater. All have plainclothes agents getting into place. Most have three if not four cell members reported entering. SWAT standing by at all except Pier and Tower Theater. ETAs are five and eight minutes.”
Eleri fought to keep her breathing under control. Five minutes would be fine.
She kept the tablet tucked away, she didn’t need it to track Cooper. Yet.
Her eyes frantically scanned the room until Donovan appeared at her side and the guard let them through, sending them into the main part of the Observatory cleanly. No beeps, no bells. She let out a small sigh. Step one of a thousand.
Just then, Marina Vasquez appeared at their sides and had the guard let her through with them.
Eleri smiled at her like she would a friend, then offered her a hug as though she hadn’t seen the woman in a while. While she was close, she whispered. “Head to the right. See if you can pass a cell member or an agent. See what you can get. Keep us posted.”
Marina offered a squeeze back and a reassuring, “Got it. See you on the other side.”
Eleri hoped like hell she meant on the other side of the building and not anything more ominous. But there wasn’t time to clarify.
“This way.” She motioned to Donovan as though she really wanted to view the exhibit and steered him through the center portion of the building and off to the left.
Her heart matched her feet as she fought to keep up with the pace Cooper Rollins set, even though she could tell he was hanging back to help them. She was practically skipping to keep up, and it was diffi
cult to look as though she was simply wandering the exhibits.
Donovan put a hand on her arm. “We’re good. He’s leading us.”
“Sure, but what if he doesn’t lead us to the other three? What if the strike points are different?” How would they find all five? If even one bomb got through, people would die.
A voice came over her earpiece. Hers was concealed, Donovan’s not so much. His slight jerk indicated that he got the same message.
“Three people already entered the Rose Bowl. They are heading down into the tunnels. Fourth member appears to be arriving. We are putting an agent on him.”
“Updates.” She spat out the word. She wanted a snapshot of where everyone was. She got it—so much rapid-fire information that she let Donovan tug her along behind him as he followed Cooper and she assimilated and organized everything she thought she understood.
Cooper Rollins disappeared through yet another doorway as she put it all together. They were getting in place but if the cell members were meeting up, they weren’t there yet.
She was counting on them meeting up. Unsure if they were suicide bombers or hoping to get away in the chaos of the crowd afterward, she couldn’t tell what the set-up would be, but she was praying they were smart.
And Ken Kellen was smart.
He knew how to build the IEDs. He was operating with additional information from Colonel Ratz on how to make the bombs better. He’d made them lightweight, with a relatively light load. But if he put them together, he’d get a lot more out of it. That was the smart move.
So Eleri had to count on those backpacks and bags getting as close to each other as possible.
And if she was wrong?
If she were close enough when she was wrong, she’d pay for that mistake with her life.
No one was setting down their bags yet. No one had yet met another member and shaken any hands. Not one agent had passed another tailing agent. Yet. So there might still be time.
Or it could all come together in the next five seconds.
Eleri held her breath and took the next turn to see Cooper Rollins take a door to the outside. Once again, he turned to the left, taking the terrace around the building. He could go right back to the parking lot from here, and Eleri frowned.
Almost no one was over here, and why would they be? It was out of the way. There were no exhibits here, not a great view, unless you liked the canyon and the drop-off area.
Rollins paused, admiring the tops of the trees he could see from where they stood. They were tucked too far around to see much of anyone else. Eleri whispered into her mic. “Vasquez?”
“Far right terrace. No activity.”
Eleri whispered another check in for the observatory and found two others, the one on his dirt bike only somewhere ahead of the agent who was on foot still tracking and only able to give a general direction. Another agent was following the cell member up from a bus drop-off toward the front of the building.
Each time they got closer together, Eleri felt her heart rate increase.
Just then, Cooper took a small turn, and looked at the other people milling just beyond the corner of the building. Then with no fanfare he looked at her and Donovan and tapped his ear.
He was getting something.
Then he jumped a little and disappeared.
She’d blinked and he was gone. “Donovan!”
Her harsh whisper broke the air of the beautiful day but didn’t solve anything. Donovan didn’t even look at her. “Hands.”
Sure enough, as she looked at the railing, she saw fingertips let go. Then he really was gone.
Cooper Rollins had jumped the fence.
43
Eleri found herself at the terrace railing, her feet having flown to the spot where Cooper Rollins disappeared. It wasn’t too far a drop to the canyon floor, but the ground rolled away in a steep slope.
Hands already planted on the rail, Eleri didn’t think twice. She hopped the railing just like Cooper.
Okay, not just like Cooper. Her jump was far less graceful and for a moment, as she hung on the other side seeing the drop now at a more accurate measure, she was afraid.
But she was far more afraid of those bombs going off. Despite all the tails and all the agents out today, Cooper Rollins was their best lead. And he was disappearing into the woods in front of her.
So Eleri let go.
Her feet hit the ground with a sharp sting to the soles despite her cushy sneakers. The impact slammed all the way up her legs even into her spine, but she didn’t have time to get her feet under her. Gravity and the slope of the ground pulled her forward, and she was falling and stepping while at the same time trying to stay upright.
She’d made it two feet when she was slammed into with a grunt.
Automatically, her hands came up and she managed to grab an elbow and get a hand flat on a back.
“Donovan!”
He’d tipped into her, the grunt from the hard landing to his already sore ankle.
“Are you okay?” It was low, frantic, the sound of the worry deep in her soul.
“Fine.” He pushed it out through the lie of his clenched teeth. The sharp intake of his breath snapped as he, too, was forced into a downward run lest he take her tumbling with him.
There wasn’t time to worry about old injuries. New ones would be far more devastating, and even as she couldn’t see her feet or pay attention to the uneven ground she was running over, Eleri looked up to see Cooper, Donovan, and the backpack disappearing into the trees.
What the fuck was he doing?
There was no one out here.
Then she heard the buzzing in her ears for what it was. Updates.
The cell member still up at the observatory was headed around the left—meaning he was coming to her side. He’d skipped the entrance all together and simply hopped a low fence and walked into the canyon. She was pretty sure it was national or state park territory. What that meant legally she had no clue. There had barely been time to figure out where these guys were going, let alone what the rules and regs were in the locales.
Her feet pounded along beside Donovan, far behind Cooper Rollins as another update came in. The two at the pier had turned from the end and headed around the back of the community center. The agents voice sounded puzzled. “It’s closed.”
“Us, too.”
“What?” Eleri asked, stopping for a moment. She could chase Cooper, she could listen, she could think, but she couldn’t seem to do all damn three. So she stopped and waved Donovan on, thinking she’d catch up to him.
“Downtown, Tower Theater. They left. My guy is headed now into the building for The Lofts. They’re closed for remodel. He had a key.”
“Closed?” She felt her face contort with the stupidity of the information.
That wasn’t the smart way to bomb someone. One of the cell members had been under the pier with a bomb. The smart thing was to take strategic pylons out. Not head to the top or into a closed building.
Downtown, in an empty building. What did that prove?
“Rose Bowl.” She stated it, but they understood.
Three agents there. “Full of fucking people. Kids. Some kids’ concert thing.”
Her heart stopped.
The signal scrambled then. A moment of static and it was just gone.
Eleri looked up, scanning as far as she could through the relatively dense trees and scrub. Where was Donovan? Why had she thought that she—five-foot-two to his six-plus—could catch up to him? He’d run track, and she couldn’t have been any more stupid.
Scanning the forest for any movement, she got more and more disheartened. She should be running, moving, but she didn’t even know which direction to start. Eleri tried a deep breath, knowing that panic was not the way to go, but she’d lost her comm and her partner and her back-up was on the other side of the fence.
She tapped frantically at the earpiece, but nothing happened. She took it out, put it back in. It simply was not working.
Her first thought as she picked up speed was to call it in, but her comm was dead.
She was just thinking that was bad, very bad, when she heard another sound off to her right.
“El!”
Short and sweet, maybe only she knew it was for her. She stumbled as she turned and only then did she catch sight of the dull red t-shirt Donovan wore. He was shrugging out of it, stuffing it up in a tree.
“I think Ken Kellen’s here.”
“What?” Her shock almost made her shout it.
“I think I smelled him. Is your comm out?”
“Shit. Yes.” She shook her head trying to sort out what might have taken out both their comms, why Ken Kellen was here, and what the hell she was going to do now that she had no communication at all even though she’d found her partner . . . who was slowly stripping his clothes.
“Donovan.” She only said his name.
“He’s that way, following Rollins as best I can tell.” Donovan pointed her in that direction and gave her a shove, still not wanting her to see him change.
She granted him that and would have looked over her shoulder to tell him to be careful, but the ground was still falling away beneath her feet as she sunk deeper into the canyons and deeper into the plans of a madman. She didn’t want to disrespect Donovan, so she wished him good luck the only way she could right now.
Eleri clutched the grisgris still at her neck and said a prayer she knew from Grandmere, from a summer childhood a lifetime ago.
“Bon Dieu, keep him safe. Bind him from trouble. Aida-Weddo, protect him from this forest he walks.”
So Eleri ran toward the sound of the bike, until it stopped and the forest around her went dead silent.
Donovan kept his head low. He hadn’t been able to smell clearly when he was upright, but down on all fours, his nose to red clay, his nasal passages more open in this form, he got the scent for certain.
The NightShade Forensic Files: Fracture Five (Book 2) Page 38