“North tower support, roger that.”
The banner looked better than anyone had dared to hope.
“South tower support ready to secure bottom line,” Keith announced. “Ground support, can we get a final visual?”
Christopher let a few seconds pass, watching for the breeze to vary. The Tyvek sheet rippled only slightly when the wind slacked off. “Ground support confirming the banner looks great. Go ahead and tie down.”
“South support, roger.”
“North support tying down.”
The banner curved like a taut sail. Truly, a photo op for the ages. The walkie-talkie squawked again. “North tower support announcing bottom line fully secured. We’ll be on our way down when south confirms.”
Beat Gordon’s voice brought him back to the bridge deck.
BEAT: Mike, I’m hearing sirens approaching—
Christopher hiked up as tall as he could in the bucket seat. The dashboard clock read twelve past seven. Thirty-four minutes in.
“South tower support announcing bottom line secured. Let’s get the hell off this thing.”
“North support descending.”
“North tower descending.”
“South tower coming down.”
Beat Gordon was describing the cavalry’s arrival.
BEAT: I can see what looks like five—no, six police motorcycles proceeding cautiously up the span. They’re hugging the edge of the roadway and moving pretty slow, but it looks like law enforcement has joined the party at last.
“Ground support to tower crew, you guys are champs,” Christopher said into his microphone. “Stay focused, ignore the cops arriving on the bridge. Your job is to get down safe. No shortcuts.”
“Damn straight,” Marty said. “Still listening, but will not respond unless there’s a problem.”
“Roger, assuming the same for all tower crew.”
—
The tac squad approached, like giant insects in their bulbously visored helmets, flak vests bulging under a carapace of motorcycle leathers. Allison didn’t turn around. She didn’t see the sergeant wave Beat Gordon away, and wasn’t listening to the pulsing thwack of a helicopter arcing in from the southwest.
Her attention was glued to a beefy, middle-aged trucker facing off with Zac. Scott had gotten a bad feeling as soon as he saw a driver, outfitted in Dickies and a Peterbilt cap, away from his vehicle. Allison didn’t take long to get there herself. “I only caught some of what he’s shouting about,” Scott said. “Lettuce wilting in his truck, maybe?”
The man had been dressing down Zac with escalating urgency, his gestures becoming wilder, now almost convulsive. Zac was steadily retreating toward the blockade line. As the rest of the leafleting team noticed, they began to follow at a careful distance.
The SFPD’s advance guard was clustered at the base of the tower when the trucker lifted his shirt and pulled a tire iron from his waistband. Waving it recklessly, he clawed the air like an enraged beetle.
Zac backed into the space between two cars. Gregor shouted from the next lane over, trying to draw the man’s attention.
Allison panicked.
First ducking under the blockaders’ linked arms, she vaulted over a chained pair of car doors like O. J. Simpson before the fall. Allison sprinted past Christopher, hurtling toward the nascent brawl. Gregor and Freddie were converging on the trucker from the opposite side. The man hauled back, on the verge of manslaughter. Gregor and Freddie closed in. His face contorted with fear, Gregor lunged, catching the weapon at the apex of its swing and snatching it out of the trucker’s hand. In the same movement he pivoted the lethal thing around, as if to bash the life out of Zac’s attacker.
“Gregor, no!” Allison screamed. Correcting her bearing a fraction of a degree she flew to intercept irrevocable tragedy, blocking Gregor’s strike with an instinctive morote ude uke. He dropped the steel bar, stunned, bending at the waist to cradle his roughly checked arm; but momentum and fury still propelled the driver’s fist forward.
As if the absence of his club hadn’t even registered, the trucker drove an overhand punch hammer-hard into Zac’s temple. The smack of flesh on bony flesh cut through a haze of running engines, sirens, and helicopter blades.
Zac staggered back.
The driver stumbled forward.
Everybody else stopped, as if time itself had seized up.
Zac wavered, then buckled. He hit the tarmac headfirst, with a heavy, crisp-liquid thud, like a cantaloupe dropped to the sidewalk.
—
She can’t move. Allison sees her life flash by like a shattering window—everything crashing into chaos—and can’t twitch a finger in response. Blood begins to pool beneath Zac’s head. Now she understands what it means for scales to fall from blindered eyes. The world as it stands is revealed. The real and the raw sink like a pickaxe into yielding turf.
Their banner ripples in the ocean breeze.
The climbers descend into the tac squad’s waiting cuffs.
Zac lies inert on the roadway.
Jonah. She can see him before her, frantic, and knows sure as daylight that she’ll be in jail when he hears. Then Buzz. What will this be to him, this violence snaking into a home they assured him is safe?
Sirens. She’s hearing sirens. Has she been paralyzed, or has only a fraction of a moment passed?
Meg will crucify them, and the coalition will pile on. The driver’s aggression will be painted inevitable. And their inability to guard against it.
Zac’s blood, pooling.
Freddie squeezes past the man who struck Zac down. Kneels. His white hair shining.
This is it, she thinks, as if she were watching someone else’s calamity. All these years on borrowed luck.
Today is the day the piper collects.
THIRTY-THREE
Christopher turns at the sound of his name. Loosened tie askew, he stands and opens his arms.
Nora has found him staring at the hospital waiting room’s wall. She has Jonah and Buzz in tow. Buzz looks away as the others embrace. “This place creeps me out,” he mumbles.
“Where’s Zac?” Jonah asks.
Christopher thumbs over his shoulder, toward the swinging doors. “There’s a nurse, Jennifer something. She said Zac’s got some pretty bad hemorrhaging where his head hit.” His voice catches. “They have to open him up to stop the bleeding.”
“Jesus God—”
“Will he be okay?”
“We don’t know yet, Jonah. The doctors won’t know until they can see the internal damage.”
Jonah blinks.
“Have you eaten anything?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t, Nora.”
“Not okay,” she said, laying a hand on his arm.
Buzz drifts off to a corner of the waiting room. He throws himself into a chair and fires up a handheld game console.
“Can we see him?” Jonah’s voice has gone smaller.
Christopher registers the shift. “Not yet,” he says. “Not for a while.” He sits, and gestures the two of them into chairs beside his. It feels wrong that he is the adult here. He is the adult and Jonah is the child. Zac is in mortal danger, and he has to explain. “Tell me who got arrested.” He’s stalling.
“All four of the climbers,” Nora says.
Christopher is glad to talk about anything else.
“Allison too,” she continues. “Some of the blockaders dodged their way to the island, and got rescued by Eddie’s crew when they circled back to the East Bay. You must have seen the CHP take down names and license plates before they let the drivers go.”
“I did,” Christopher says. “With ride-alongs. Just escorted them off the bridge. And they never caught on to the buffer rows. That we were in on it. Twenty minutes after Zac’s ambulance took off I was on my way here.”
“Gregor’s working with Brendan to find the three blockaders we haven’t accounted for.”
“How’s Gregor doing? And who’s not accounted for?”
&
nbsp; “Gregor’s okay. Freaked out, but who isn’t? Sherri Baldwin, David Kahn, and one of the USF kids are still missing. They’re probably at Moscone, lost in the crowd. So you saw Freddie take over negotiations with the cops?”
“He did good,” Christopher says. “I really didn’t expect the police to let that many perps leave under their own power.”
“They had a serious mess on their hands, especially with—everything we didn’t plan on. CHP wanted the bridge open.” Nora shrugs. “So Freddie gave them options.”
“I could see it in his body language. That hunker down, strike-’til-they-fold thing.”
“Union guys.”
The waiting room vibrates when they fall silent, a low hum of hidden machinery punctuated by Buzz’s electronic game. Christopher’s tongue curls at the acrid aftertaste of Nora’s words: everything we didn’t plan on.
“Becca and Mickey and two other girls rode the bikes to get away,” Jonah says.
Christopher nods. “That’s good.” He isn’t really sure what he means. His pocket chirps.
Nora murmurs something in Jonah’s ear as he fumbles for the cell phone. Jonah shrugs, then slouches over to sit with Buzz. Christopher squints at the cell’s display and lifts it to his ear. “Dad? How did you get this number?”
“Brendan,” Nora says under her breath.
Christopher nods. His father is saying just that. “No, I’m fine… . Yeah… . Yeah, it was. Zachary… . No, you’ve met him. Zac—tall, very skinny… . We’re at SF General… . Could be better. Subdural hematoma is the preliminary word… . Not yet, just the surgical nurse.”
Nora crosses over to the boys and leans in to whisper. Buzz offers a noncommittal smirk.
“No, Marshall didn’t call… . Not since I saw him, maybe a week after I was over for dinner. He emailed a few times.”
Christopher can barely pay attention. He closes the phone when his father is satisfied, and stares at it for a moment before sliding the device back into his pocket. He isn’t used to being so reachable. It’s not so bad, he supposes. Today, at least. He’s grateful to be reachable today.
“He saw the news?” Nora asks from across the room.
“Radio,” Christopher says, startled to remember he’s not alone. “Worried it was his nogoodnik son got carried off in an ambulance. They didn’t give Zac’s name out?”
“They have to talk to his family first,” Jonah says.
“Probably so.”
Buzz remains deeply involved in his game.
“Any luck reaching Kansas?” Christopher asks. He crosses over to the others.
Nora shakes her head. “Not yet. Why was your dad asking about Marshall?”
“He’s been away,” Christopher says. “Doesn’t explain himself. Dad wondered if he told me anything.”
A young nurse in scrubs pushes through the swinging doors and all but Buzz turn toward her expectantly. Christopher introduces Zac’s local clan. Her manner projects gravitas, a little at odds with her rosy cheeks and earthy solidity.
“I’m sorry we have to meet in these circumstances,” she says softly.
“This is Buzz,” Jonah tells the nurse, since Christopher hadn’t. Buzz looks up but doesn’t return her understated smile.
“Mr. Coyle has been stabilized for surgery,” she says, “and the doctors are scrubbing up now for a craniotomy.”
“What does that mean?” Jonah asks.
“They’ll find the source of your friend’s internal bleeding and try their very best to fix it.”
“He’s not my friend,” Jonah says. “He’s one of my dads.”
“I’m sorry,” the nurse says. “I didn’t know.”
Nora wraps her arms around Jonah. “How long will the surgery last?”
“We can’t say exactly. Ninety minutes to two hours is average, but there might be delays for any number of reasons.”
“Can we talk to the doctor?”
“Yes, of course. The presiding surgeon is Dr. Gupta. He’s very skilled, both careful and experienced. He’ll come out to explain after the operation.” She turns to Christopher. “Have you contacted Mr. Coyle’s parents?”
“Nora’s been working on that.”
“We left messages,” Nora says. “Zac’s family lives in the Midwest, in Topeka.”
“It would be good to reach them as soon as possible.”
Christopher stops breathing. When he sees Nora’s eyes fill he looks away quickly.
“Thank you,” he manages. “We’ll keep trying.”
The nurse turns and slips back into the hospital’s interior. The susurration of rubber gaskets beats a fading rhythm as the doors swing after her, then still.
THIRTY-FOUR
His digital watch vibrates. It’s two o’clock in the morning, and Chagall wakes instantly. He stills the alarm and lies motionless in the cab, pressed against the seat, listening through rolled-down windows. Tree frogs and crickets. A rustle in the rafters of the Staplehurst barn. An owl, perhaps, or a nest of insomniac swallows.
The long drive has left him stiff. Daytime sleep followed by hours of shoveling and hauling hasn’t helped. After he dug ignition matériel out of a fallow field, each of the ammonium nitrate pallets had to be torn down, then rebuilt around a propane cylinder stippled with blasting caps. Chagall pulls himself upright, feels for the keys dangling from the ignition switch, finds the truck’s pedals with socked feet.
The engine catches, stutters, roars to life when he gives it gas. He boots a laptop loaded with autopilot and trigger-decision software. While the computer executes test routines, Chagall steps into his shoes and climbs down into musty darkness to stretch, methodically working kinks out of his back, arms, and legs. The truck’s cargo doors are padlocked shut. Limbered up, Chagall sweeps the barn with a flashlight. He confirms that a hinged electric scooter stowed behind the driver’s seat slides easily in and out of its cubby, then fastens a strap securing the first of his escape vehicles to the back wall of the cab. Chagall unbolts and opens the barn’s wooden doors. He dons a thick watch cap, a ballistic vest, then a leather jacket to hide the body armor.
Over his own engine’s noise he makes out the diesel hum of a tractor-trailer hurtling south, a couple miles distant over flat fields. Chagall steps up and into the driver’s seat, pulls the truck forward, then dismounts to close up the crude building. All he hears now is his own bobtail. The roads are forsaken at this hour, in this sparsely peopled place.
Not inclined to prayer, not given to ceremony of any kind, Chagall pauses to take stock nonetheless. The next time he touches ground the truck will be seconds from impact, lumbering toward its destiny. Everything he knows and has is bound up in the next hour’s performance. By four o’clock the deed will be done or his mission aborted. By six he’ll be holed up in Lincoln, or captured, or dead.
He climbs aboard and lets out the parking brake. The transmission engages with a lurch, and tires bite the graveled road. Chagall pauses at a screen of cottonwood that borders the property. There’s no traffic approaching, right or left.
He inches onto southbound blacktop, flicks on the headlights, and builds up speed.
—
Between Staplehurst and Valparaiso he encounters six vehicles. Two commercial semis, a late-model Caddy with tinted windows, two half-ton pickups, and a police cruiser. Nobody gives him a second glance, not even the state trooper. Near the Lincoln airport, clusters of residential tracts punctuate dark stretches of farmland. Runway lights stretch away to Chagall’s right like garish strings of jewels. The next exit is his.
He swings north, away from a housing development through which he has mapped multiple, forking escape routes. Harvest Springs. Lawns and swimming pools sucking down the aquifer. Chagall would be glad to see its McMansions razed, but he can’t pull all the weight. Past vacant lots and shabby warehouses, he turns into a freshly paved straightaway. A half-mile ahead, metal halide lights illuminate his target, hard white stars against the empty surrounding acres. There are
no fences. Concrete bollards meant to stop the likes of him come standard issue now on new construction, but none will be placed here until next week. Romulus ferreted out quality intel.
Chagall douses his lights, pulls over, and retrieves the autopilot kit from beneath the passenger seat. Two electromagnetic motors, a rangefinder mounted on a lusterless black box, and a system of rods, joints, clips, and bolts. With agility sharpened by meticulous rehearsal, he fastens the apparatus to anchor plates set into the dashboard and ceiling, then braces its frame against the seatback. One motor controls a rod attached to the gas pedal. The second steers. The laptop governs both, responding to signals from a fiber optic gyroscope enclosed in the box. Control panes on the backlit screen show all but one connection green. Chagall patches into the last wire, the one branching back to the payload.
His bomb-on-wheels is ready to roll. Using a cell phone, he establishes contact with the thermite devices barnacled to the AgBio structure’s great transfer beam. A cryptic sequence tapped on the keypad primes their triggers.
Opening the door, he reaches behind the seat to release the scooter, pulling it out just far enough to telescope the frame. If he’s nervous, he doesn’t know it. At this stage of an operation Chagall is all about procedure. He knows exactly why he’s executing this plan, but to think about that now would only dull his concentration. He works his hands into a pair of leather gloves, and straps pads over elbows and knees.
A second cell is configured to disguise his voice through a software filter. He punches in a speed dial code. The phone rings once. Twice. On the fifth ring a man’s voice answers.
“Security.”
It’s the smoker, Chagall thinks. Must have taken time to snuff his cigarette. He punches through trigger codes on the first phone. The thermite will light up in a matter of seconds.
“Listen carefully,” he says. A success signal flashes on the trigger phone’s screen. “The research building you are guarding has a bomb in it. The bomb will explode and the building will be destroyed in three minutes. You must activate the fire alarm to clear the building immediately.”
“Who the hell is this?!”
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