Scorched

by Laura Griffin

  But might just as easily be nothing.

  Gage’s phone buzzed and he snapped it up. “We’re almost there . . . Okay, good.” He clicked off. “He’s meeting me at the entrance.”

  “What about LeBlanc? Where’s her backup? The FBI should handle this.”

  “Yeah, well, soon as they figure out which way is up, they can have at it. Stop here.”

  She swerved into a drop-off lane reserved for taxis and glanced around.

  “Where am I supposed to park?” she asked, panicked. He was trying to rush off without her. He was trying to sideline her again. She’d known what he was up to the instant he’d tossed the keys at her back at the motel.

  “I’m sure you’ll find something.” He pushed the door open. “I’ll call you when we get in there and let you know where to meet us.”

  “Like hell you will.” She grabbed his hand. “I know what you’re doing, Gage.”

  “Kelsey.” He shook his head. “There’s no reason for you to jump in the middle of this.”

  “I can help ID him! You know I could and you’re—”

  “Just follow the plan, okay? Find a place to park and wait for my call.” He turned to look over his shoulder as Derek emerged from the subway station.

  She felt another spurt of panic. “Gage, please. Let the FBI deal with this.”

  “We will.”

  “You don’t know what he’s planning.”

  “I know I’m not going to sit around and wait for a bunch of suits to show up while some terrorist launches an attack!”

  Kelsey closed her eyes. It was exactly what she was afraid of. They weren’t going to wait for anyone.

  He reached over and cupped his hand behind her neck. “Relax, okay? We’ll get this under control. Hell, he may not even be here.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  He looked at her, and she knew she was right. He believed this was happening here. Now. He believed this was the zero hour. It was that damn sixth sense he talked about—that frog vision.

  Only this time, she had it, too.

  • • •

  Elizabeth gazed at the wall of video monitors and tried to appear undaunted. Tried and failed. Picking one man out of the thousands of commuters flooding through gates and waiting on platforms was next to impossible. And yet she kept trying because she felt certain he was out there. Dr. Shamus had told her that Trent Lohman grilled him for nearly an hour about the design intricacies of this commuter rail system—ostensibly in order to help the FBI safeguard against a potential terrorist plot. What Shamus hadn’t realized was that he was talking with one of the plotters.

  “Is this really all you’ve got?”

  She glanced up at the extremely unhappy-looking SEAL standing at her elbow. Gage Brewer held a computer printout showing the FBI’s most recent picture of Adam Ramli. The man wore a beard, green military fatigues, and a deadly scowl. Gage also held a second printout showing Ramli’s passport photo in which he was clean-shaven, smiling, and impossibly young looking—the all-American kid next door.

  “He’s not going to look like either of these,” Gage said. “He’ll be trying to blend in with the twentysomethings out of Silicon Valley. There are thousands pouring through here, and these security people are just staring at the screens. They’ll never recognize him.”

  “Which is why we need more eyes,” Elizabeth said. “Where’s Kelsey?”

  “On the way.” Gage’s face hardened and he looked again at the monitors.

  “Check it out,” Derek said, pointing at a screen. “What’s that man doing?”

  They all eased forward, crowding one of the security people seated at a bank of monitors.

  “Just checking his backpack,” the guy said. “See?” He gave them a cool look as the innocuous commuter zipped his pack shut and stepped on an escalator. “Good thing we didn’t take him down.”

  Elizabeth ignored the sarcasm. Clearly these people were less than thrilled about this drop-in visit by an FBI agent and two oversized “associates” dressed in ball caps and jeans. She, Gage, and Derek made quite a trio, and Elizabeth knew their disheveled appearance was making it difficult for the shift leader in charge of security here to take her seriously, despite the badge she’d flashed when she’d arrived. Since the instant she’d walked in here, he’d been highly skeptical. Elizabeth had already called the San Francisco field office to report the threat and request immediate backup, but no one had shown up yet, and she had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t being taken seriously by them, either.

  “What’s to say he hadn’t already released the toxin?” Derek asked. “He could have come through here hours ago.”

  “Not according to our detectors,” the shift leader said. “After 9/11, we installed biohazard sensors at every station. We’ve had them checked three times since yesterday when the alert went out about the anthrax letters. As of six A.M. this air was negative for biohazards.”

  Elizabeth was encouraged by the news but dismayed by everyone’s ho-hum response. Apparently this security team routinely dealt with crank calls and false alarms, and no one seemed eager to shut down a rail system that transported more than three hundred thousand people a day based on Elizabeth’s tip. But she knew this was real. Even if the info from Ben Lawson at the Delphi Center hadn’t reinforced the theory that something was going down today, Gage’s and Derek’s body language would have convinced her. The super-cool spec ops warriors who ate terrorists for breakfast were on red alert.

  “Whoa, got something.”

  Everyone turned toward the childlike voice of a young woman seated at a computer monitor. While the other dozen or so security personnel here were monitoring real-time developments, she and several coworkers were combing through older footage from when the trains started running at four A.M.

  Elizabeth leaned over her shoulder now and watched a group of people standing on a subway platform.

  “What did you see?” she asked.

  “Well, it was very brief, but I thought I saw a man slip into the tunnel.”

  “Rewind it.”

  She did. Everyone peered over her shoulder at the grainy video image. The commuters were mostly loners dressed in a range of clothes from business suits to athletic shorts. A clump of teenagers stood at one end of the platform horsing around with one another. All of them wore backpacks or had satchels slung across their bodies.

  “See him?” The woman pointed at a man dressed in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. “Watch what he does.”

  “Pretty big backpack,” Derek observed.

  “Can you recognize his face?” Elizabeth asked them.

  Gage shook his head. “Not with the hood.”

  The man stepped toward the platform. Another step. Then—blink—he was gone.

  Elizabeth’s breath caught. “He disappeared.”

  “Let’s see if he comes back,” Derek said.

  They waited tensely, all eyes trained on the screen.

  “Where is that?” Elizabeth asked.

  “Montgomery Street Station,” the woman said. “In the Financial District, underneath Market Street.”

  Elizabeth’s stomach tensed. Gage traded looks with Derek, and she knew what they were thinking. Of the forty-four stations within this system, only fifteen were underground, so they’d been focused on those. Anyone who’d researched the best place to carry out an attack would be looking for a densely populated and enclosed space.

  Elizabeth held her breath as she watched the monitor. No one emerged from the tunnel. In the dark corner of the screen, a flicker of light grew bigger as a train approached. People edged toward the yellow stripe.

  “If he went in, he has to come out,” Gage muttered.

  And then he did. The man with the hood hopped back onto the platform just moments before the train glided to a stop.

  “Freeze it,” Gage ordered.

  The man on the screen halted, suspended in time. His hood was cinched around his face and the backpack was gone.
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br />   “That’s him,” Gage said.

  “What time is this?” Derek demanded.

  “Uh, looks like . . . seven oh two. That’s fifteen minutes ago.”

  Elizabeth whipped out her phone and frantically dialed for backup. She glanced at the shift leader, who no longer looked skeptical. Meanwhile, the SEALs were already out the door.

  “Montgomery Street Station!” she yelled. “We need to move.”

  • • •

  Gage leaped through the doors the instant they opened. He and Derek elbowed their way through the crowd and across the platform, where another train was hissing to a halt.

  Gage stopped and waited at the wall where Ramli had disappeared. He pressed his fist against the tiles, and with every second that ticked by he imagined millions of deadly spores taking to the air.

  “What’s the word on that evac?” Gage asked Derek beside him. The whole way over here, he’d been on the phone with Elizabeth, who was a train behind them.

  Derek shook his head.

  Gage had already called Kelsey and told her to stay the hell away. She’d agreed without argument, which was why he expected her to show up at any second.

  The doors whisked shut and the train groaned forward. It became a silver streak and then was gone. Gage hopped into the rail pit and was almost pulled to his knees by the suction.

  “Watch out for that third rail,” he said, taking out his flashlight. “It packs a thousand-volt punch.” He led them into the tunnel, sweeping the flashlight beam around.

  “You take that wall, I’ll take this one,” Derek said as they set out at a jog.

  The walls, the ground, the rails—everything was covered by a thick layer of grime. The tunnel smelled wet, and Gage remembered they were near the bay. A rat scuttled into a drainage pipe. About twenty yards away, he noticed a shadow within a shadow and rushed toward it. It was some sort of access nook, with a metal ladder stretching up to the maze of pipes and ducts above.

  “We got a package,” Gage said. He neared the spot and shined his flashlight on it. It was the backpack they’d seen earlier, only it looked slack and empty hanging from the ladder. Gage glanced up. A few rungs above his head was something else—something that had likely been inside the backpack. He stared at it for a moment.

  “Holy shit.”

  “What?” Derek asked.

  “A birdcage.”

  “A what?”

  “A cage with an IED inside.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “No idea,” Gage said. The setup was unlike anything he’d seen. Why build a cage around something that was going to explode?

  This cage was smaller than the others he’d seen in Utah—about the size of a shoe box turned on its side—but it was made of the same wire mesh. Inside was a homemade explosive. Gage’s blood ran cold as he saw the lightbulb and remembered Mark’s words. All he’d have to do is put it in a fragile container—a bottle, a jar, a lightbulb . . . Gage shifted positions to view the other side and noted the timing device with green digital numbers: twenty-four.

  “Think that’s minutes or hours?” Derek asked.

  The twenty-four became a twenty-three.

  “Fuck.” Derek looked at him.

  The ground beneath their feet vibrated. A distant rumble. Gage glanced down the tunnel as the train rounded a curve and the first light winked into view.

  “This nook’s only big enough for one of us.” He looked at Derek. “Haul ass back to the platform. Tell Elizabeth and every cop you can find they’ve got twenty-two minutes to clear this place out.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Derek notified everyone he could and got back to Gage just as another train roared through. Gage squeezed himself out of the nook and stepped onto the ladder.

  “Here.” Derek handed him a pair of latex gloves and a paper mask that he’d swiped from a janitor’s cart. “Not exactly a hazmat suit, but can’t hurt.”

  Gage pulled on the gloves. “How’s that evac going?” he asked, not looking up from his work. He had the flashlight pressed between his neck and shoulder as he used his pocketknife to slice through a strip of duct tape that attached the cage to the rungs.

  “It’s under way. The challenge is getting the trains to stop coming. Four different lines run through this station, so closing it is a big fucking deal. Practically means shutting down the whole system, and the security guy said their daily ridership is three hundred fifty thou. How’s the time?”

  “Fourteen minutes.” Gage made another careful slice. He was in the zone. Cold as ice. Hands steady. Laser-sharp focus on the task at hand.

  “You sure you want to move it?” Derek asked.

  “Yep.” One last slice, and it was free. Carefully, Gage pulled it away from the rungs. “Good news is, this explosive’s a joke. We’re talking extremely low-order detonation. Bad news—if it pops at all, it breaks the lightbulb where he put the anthrax.”

  “Shit.”

  “Exactly. Let’s get this out of this tunnel.”

  Derek led the way, making sure the path was clear. The ground started vibrating and he heard a distant clatter.

  “I thought they were shutting this place down,” Gage said tightly.

  “So did I.”

  In the distance, a shriek of metal. Derek hopped onto the platform and glanced around, surprised to see the area clear. But that was going to change as soon as that train stopped.

  “Here.” Derek held out his hands and took the device from Gage. The approaching train showed no sign of stopping and the shriek reached a deafening pitch. Gage hitched himself onto the platform. The train whisked past almost as soon as he was out of the pit.

  Derek stood motionless as the train streaked by, trying not to think about how he held a weapon of mass destruction in his hands.

  “You okay?” Gage looked him in the eye.

  He nodded.

  Gage glanced around the platform. It was eerily empty except for an owl-eyed security guard stationed at the base of the escalator. The sound of bullhorns at the top told Derek the transit police were still evacuating.

  “We need an enclosed room,” Derek said.

  “Not a bathroom—too many vents and pipes.”

  “Storage closet.” Derek nodded in the direction of a dull gray door on the far wall.

  Gage tried the door. Locked.

  Derek glanced down at the timer: Eleven minutes.

  Gage jogged to another door.

  “Jackpot.”

  It was a tiny closet packed with mops and cleaning supplies, and Gage wasted no time heaving everything out of it. Derek kneeled down and carefully placed the IED on the concrete.

  Gage immediately crouched down and went to work on the wiring. “Here’s what I need,” he said. “A metal container. Something airtight. Think paint cans, storage drums.”

  “You moved the bomb?”

  They looked up to see Elizabeth standing in the doorway. “It’s not a bomb,” Gage told her. “It’s barely a firecracker.”

  She gaped at them. “Why didn’t you wait for our bomb squad?”

  Gage shot Derek a look. It was a plea, really. He needed her out of here so he could concentrate.

  Derek stood up and steered her away from the closet. “It’s not a bomb,” he reiterated. “But it’s very fragile. We thought we’d get it out of the path of a train moving eighty miles an hour.” He reached for the knob of a neighboring closet and tried it again. He poked his head back in the storage room.

  “Yo, Brewer, toss me that knife.”

  Gage tossed him the knife, and Derek jimmied the lock as Elizabeth looked on. He glanced up at her. “You got a lock pick on you, now’s the time to speak up. Or an airtight metal container?”

  “Are you making light of this?”

  “Not at all.”

  Elizabeth’s phone buzzed and she jerked it to her ear. “LeBlanc.”

  Snick. Door open.

  “Yes, let her through. She’s with me. Okay, when?”

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nbsp; Derek jerked open the door and switched on a light. He surveyed the contents of the room: more mops and buckets, another janitor’s cart, a shelf stocked with toilet paper.

  A metal toolbox.

  “We’ve got an FBI bomb squad en route here,” Elizabeth said. “They’ll be here in fifteen minutes. We should wait for them.”

  “No time,” Derek told her, upending the toolbox and dumping everything out.

  “But they’re experts in ordnance disposal!”

  “Oh, yeah? And where do you think they get those guys?” Derek ripped out the plastic trays. “Hundred bucks says half of them are former SEALs.”

  Derek squeezed past Elizabeth and took the box to Gage. “No paint cans.”

  “Hazmat team’s also en route,” Elizabeth reported. “ETA two minutes.”

  Gage didn’t flinch. He was intent on carefully removing the timing device from inside a hole he’d created in the mesh cage. Derek looked at the clock. Eight minutes.

  “Is it defused?”

  Derek turned around to see Kelsey in the doorway. She was flushed and breathless and looked like she’d run the whole way here.

  “Almost,” Derek told her.

  Gage shot him a look that said Get her out of here.

  “What can I do?” Kelsey asked, looking determined. She’d conjured up a pair of gloves and a face mask, probably from the same janitor’s cart where Derek had swiped his.

  Gage didn’t glance up. “You can walk up that escalator and catch a taxi to the airport.”

  She looked at Derek. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing.”

  Derek checked the clock. Seven minutes. He glanced at Gage. Still ice cold. Hands steady. The only sign of stress was the bead of sweat that slid slowly down the side of his face.

  Kelsey stepped into the room. “Gage, look at me.”

  To Derek’s amazement, he did.

  “You see a lot of people around here who are vaccinated against anthrax? I see three. Now, give me a goddamn job.”

  Gage glanced at the toolbox. He glanced at Kelsey.

  “I’m about to put a lightbulb in there that’s filled with anthrax spores. See what you can do with that.”

  Kelsey disappeared. Derek watched the clock. Another minute ticked off. Kelsey returned with an armful of toilet paper rolls and started lining the box.