A cube van had been rented and modified. Tyra had one of her agents crisscross the city to find some orange cones and signs that said CITY OF VANCOUVER PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT, signage that was, according to the locals, far too common a sight and easy to pilfer.
It was well past 3:00 a.m. before all of the preparations were complete. The plan was foolproof. Tyra took a fast-acting, short-lasting sleeping pill that gave her four hours of sleep before the mission became operational.
54
At nine o’clock, three judges filed into the Court of Appeal. McPhail, et al., stood up at the appellant’s side of the counsel table. Lee Penn-Garrett gave the judges a nod from the respondent’s side. Curiously, the appellant’s side was stacked high with casebooks, written arguments, case notes, factums, briefs and summaries on multiple issues, and, of course, a small archipelago of personal computers, some linked to LexisNexis, some containing electronic versions of the masses of materials that the lead counsels, together with an army of juniors, had assembled through the night. Penn-Garrett was leaning back, stretching, precariously balancing on the rear two wheels of his wheelchair. His side of the counsel table was completely clear. Blank. Not even the omnipresent yellow legal pad. Some wags likened a table without briefs and case law to an emperor without clothes. The speculation was rampant that Penn-Garrett was no longer fully engaged, that his once brilliant legal mind had been dulled by age, and was as empty as the counsel table before him.
As the clerk sweetly chimed, “Order in the court,” McPhail, et al., stood up, Penn-Garrett didn’t, and the quorum entered. Every knowledgeable person in the courtroom groaned or shook their head as the quorum bowed to counsel and sat down. There had been a last-minute change. The central chair had been taken over once again by Madam Justice Westin, the brilliant but often eccentric and usually acerbic judge; a judge who had tossed counsel out of her courtroom for wearing brown instead of black socks, for having tabs that were too wrinkled, or for wearing gowns that were in need of dry cleaning.
She looked up at counsel and nodded in the direction of McPhail and the rest, who introduced themselves with the typical formulaic opening: “May it please the court, my name is McPhail, initial D., and with me is . . .”
When Westin looked at Penn-Garrett, she saw a mischievous twinkle in his eye. He knew her well, and loved to play her. “Good morning, my lady, my name is . . .”
That prompted a cranky reply from the bench. “How many years have you been practicing, Mr. Penn-Garrett? Do you not know the proper way to introduce yourself to the court? ‘Good morning, my lady,’ is completely inappropriate. Do you get that?”
“Not really, m’lady. I’m a good morning type of person. My parents taught me to say ‘good morning’ when I meet people for the first time in the morning. I don’t quite see the court’s problem.”
“You wouldn’t. Try to remember the correct way to do it the next time.”
“I can’t promise, m’lady. At my age, I seem to be developing some sort of memory impairment, but of course I will do my best to comply with your direction.”
With that, McPhail began. Madam Justice Westin gave him about fifteen minutes to gain a good head of steam before she started. “Back up, Mr. McPhail. Are you really saying that a court has no jurisdiction over those who appear before it? Really?”
It went downhill from there. McPhail cited a case from the twenty-first century, and Judge Westin responded with a case from the eighteenth century. McPhail cited a case from the English House of Lords and Westin cited one from the US Supreme Court.
McPhail tried a different tack. “M’lady, it isn’t just anyone who has been sitting downstairs in cells for forty-eight-some hours now. It is the director of an American intelligence agency, instructed directly by the president of the US. He is traveling under a diplomatic passport as a government emissary. He can’t be forced to testify. It is completely improper to—”
Westin interrupted him. “What are you suggesting, Mr. McPhail? Are you saying to this court that the rank of someone before it should matter? That, somehow, someone of importance, or self-perceived importance, even someone in the president’s executive circle, has more rights, or different rights, than a person in the streets? Is that where you are going? Do we need to talk about constitutional law here? Should we start with the Magna Carta? That was 800 years ago.”
“Yes m’lady, I remember when they passed it,” came the crack from Penn-Garrett. Westin gave him a black look before turning back to McPhail.
McPhail began to stutter, something that he had not done since high school. “Of course we are all equal before the law m’lady. I am not suggesting otherwise. But the circumstances here are of such a nature that a modicum of common sense is required.”
“What are you suggesting now, Mr. McPhail? That Mr. Alexander is in some way more equal than anyone else, or perhaps that this court is bereft of common sense? Where are you going with this?”
She pounded on him for the better part of an hour before he sat down, pink with rage that this judge could so embarrass him before an international television audience.
At that point she looked at Penn-Garrett, who was still smiling and cantilevering on the back two wheels of his wheelchair.
“We do not need to hear from you, Mr. Penn-Garrett.”
“Thank you,” he said. “The three of you have a nice day now . . .”
“Mr. Penn-Garrett, you are completely out of line.”
“I don’t really think so. Try and relax a bit,” he replied. He wanted to call her by her first name, Anie, as the two of them went back almost fifty years, but he thought the better of it. This was, after all, spectacularly good news. He pulled out his phone and texted Dana before the judges had left the courtroom. Daniel Alexander would stay in lockup until Dana either called him as a witness or released him from the obligation of testifying. The director of TTIC was now in the slammer at the pleasure of a lawyer called to the bar for less than a year.
55
In Courtroom 401, two floors below the Court of Appeal, McSheffrey and the others. were ready for another round with Dana Wittenberg, who was set up with her three computers, a mountain of transcripts, briefs, and question notes floating amid it all. She was again confronted with a witness that she had only met once, for one superficial interview. While presumably the witness was going to say important things, Dana had only a vague idea what those things might be. Kumar Hanaman was nervously standing in the witness box, and the judge had given Zak and Richard, dressed in ill-fitting, somewhat wrinkled suits, permission to sit in the well of the court, near the witness box.
Judge Mordecai entered the courtroom. As he did, Lee Penn-Garrett appeared in the rear of the court and was wheeled to the well by the sheriffs.
“I’d like to say,” began Judge Mordecai, “nice job in the Court of Appeal, upholding my order and all, but really, you didn’t do anything, did you?” “No, m’lord,” Dana replied.
“But it really had nothing to do with you. We all know that they’re completely random up there, so it’s like they get it right fifty percent of the time, you know, just by accident. Anyway, Ms. Wittenberg, who do we have on the stand today?”
“Mr. Kumar Hanaman.”
“Proceed then.”
At 10:05 a.m., Tyra surreptitiously placed a large barrister’s briefcase beside one of the planters near the east end of the foyer. The case had hidden within it a flash-bang grenade.
At 10:08, Tyra called the security center of the courthouse. This center, located in the basement not far from cells, was large and modern with a staff of four. There were a total of eighty cameras: two in each courtroom and another forty showing scenes of the foyer, barristers’ lounge, library, and the registry. Twenty more cameras were aligned so that any view could be had of any street adjacent to the building, another ten in the cells area, and another twenty in the various hallways and judges’ chambers—170 cameras in all. The sheriffs in charge of the monitoring hub were linked
via shortwave technology to all the other sheriffs in the building. There were also some large screens available. If a judge were to activate a knee switch in an emergency, that particular courtroom would be shown on the large screen. There were also two large additional screens. These showed the feeds of the cameras in Courtroom 401. The Lestage trial had been a particular source of anxiety for the sheriffs.
The phone rang. All four looked at it. It rang twice more before anyone picked it up.
“Security center.”
“There are two bombs in the building. You must evacuate or people will be killed.”
The technician replayed the call, which had been digitally recorded, through the security center speakers. “Is it serious?” he said.
“We get so much of this crap,” another operator said. “We’ve never yet, in the forty-year history of this building, had a bomb go off. Crazies call this stuff in just for its entertainment value.”
Tyra had parked her van near the intersection of Smithe and Hornby streets, directly below where the eastern wall of the courthouse met Robson Square. The orange cones had been put out, and Keith and Ron were in the back of the van performing a last check of the drone.
At 10:10, Tyra tapped out another number on her cell phone. She called the phone that was in the briefcase that was attached to the fusing mechanism of the grenade. The phone buzzed once. This action activated the grenade’s timed fuse. Five seconds later it went off. While it was not designed to kill, the detonation was powerful and very loud and could be heard throughout the courthouse and in the security center. It took out parts of the east glass wall of the foyer.
“Foyer cameras,” ordered the commander of the security center. Instantly the foyer camera feeds were flipped to the large screens. The outside glass wall beside the grenade had been shattered, and the air was full of dense, heavy smoke.
“Shit!” he said, reaching for the intercom. No further debate was needed. “There has been a bomb threat. Everyone please evacuate the building immediately. Please evacuate the building immediately. Please go to the predesignated muster stations.”
Both Richard and Zak heard the explosion in the foyer. Both were instantly up and jumped in front of the witness box, shielding Kumar from the gallery. Neither had guns; the chief justice had vetoed that. Another second passed when the announcement was heard over the court intercom:
“Evacuate. Evacuate immediately.”
“Which way do we go?” shouted Richard at the sheriffs. “Front or back?”
“Only court personnel through the back,” one barked. “Jury members, prosecutors, Wittenberg, follow me, please. And you two,” he was pointing at his two colleagues, “bring Lestage down here as well. Everyone else out the front. Take the central steps to the foyer, turn left, and muster at the northwest exit of the building. Madam Clerk, lock the courtroom doors when everyone is out.”
“Don’t like this, Richard,” Zak said under his breath, making sure Kumar could not hear. “There is only one person they’re after, and that’s Kumar.”
“They?”
“Yeah. They. Either the CIA, or a private army put together by Yousseff, or the RCMP, or hell, a plot by Pakistan or Russia. Whoever they are, they are after Kumar.”
“If it’s the CIA, the president has completely lost his mind,” Richard replied.
“If it’s the CIA, they’ll be crafty; it will be a multifaceted attack. If we muster where everyone else musters, we could be surrounded by them. And they’ve probably got a sniper crew as well. We’ve got to stay in the building.”
At 10:12, Keith and Ron opened the rear doors of the van. Immediately behind the van, a second five-ton rented cube van had been parked, obscuring the view of the one-way eastbound traffic on Hornby.
“Take her out, gentlemen,” Tyra ordered. Keith and Ron complied, lifting the multiarmed drone above their heads. Tyra had started the eight motors using her iPad. They instantly whirred to life, and the drone carrying the M32 grenade launcher shot skyward. Less than ten seconds had elapsed from the rear doors of the van opening to the moment the drone gained altitude.
The drone gained altitude and was hovering over Robson Square, some twenty feet above a broad pedestrian walkway that connected the western portion of the square to the eastern wall of the courthouse. At the same moment, the sniper on the Four Seasons balcony fired two shots into the upper eastern glass wall of the foyer. The glass plates that remained intact after the explosion were shattered, leaving multiple openings sufficiently wide enough for the drone to traverse.
Both cameras on the drone were functioning perfectly, and Tyra eased the craft through the opening. She moved it another twenty feet skyward, so it was level with the terraced northern entrance to Courtroom 401. She kept the drone hovering in that position, with one camera, and the grenade launcher pointed toward the courtroom door.
Back in Courtroom 401, a bewildered Kumar looked at Richard and Zak.
“What’s happening?”
“We don’t know,” said Zak. “It’s an attack of some sort. Stay with us.” The courtroom emptied rapidly, but the three stayed by counsel table. One of the sheriffs saw them and shook his head. “We need to follow the proper procedures, gentlemen. Especially when some kind of explosive device has gone off in the foyer. The three of you, get up here and muster with everyone else.”
“We think the attack is meant for us,” said Richard. “They want to prevent Kumar from testifying.”
The young sheriff was a protocol-bound officer and was unable to think outside the box. “There will be other sheriffs there to protect you. Now evacuate the courtroom.”
“You guys are no match for what’s out there,” Zak replied. “It’s probably the CIA.”
The sheriff chuckled. “The CIA, huh? My vote is on aliens escaping from Area 51. Now get up here.” He drew his gun. “I mean now.”
“Psst, Rich,” whispered Zak. “Look how he’s holding the gun. When you walk past him, take it from him. We need weapons.” “Hooyah,” Richard whispered.
The three of them slowly walked up the aisle with the sheriff pointing his gun. Richard could see that it was a Sig Sauer .40. Nine bullets. Probably hollow point. The gun was definitely too much for the sheriff. The three filed by, first Zak, then Kumar, then Richard. As Zak approached the double doors, he intuitively crafted a little diversion. “Jesus Christ,” he swore. “Just take a look out there.” He pointed, the sheriff looked, Richard grabbed the sheriff’s gun by the barrel, and with a slight wrist rotation, twisted the gun out of his hand. Before the sheriff could react, Zak turned around and slipped the sheriff’s headset and mouthpiece off and pushed him down the aisle.
“Stay there and don’t move,” Richard ordered. “They are after Kumar, and we need a gun or two.”
The sheriff didn’t respond and sheepishly sat there as the three peeked out the double doors. There was nothing suspicious. People were flowing out of the building through the eastern and western exits.
At 10:14, Richard peeked out into the foyer and saw the heavily armed M17 Sentry drone. “Zak, back!” he yelled. “Sentry drone, carrying a grenade launcher, looks like an M32.” He twisted his body in an effort to move both Zak and Kumar out of the line of fire, but he was a split second too late.
In the van, Tyra, who had memorized the faces of Richard and the rest, instantly identified him. She touched a red icon on the iPad. At the same moment, one of the sheriffs, standing on the terrace outside the courtroom, pulled his gun. He wasn’t certain what exactly he was looking at, but it wasn’t a friendly craft. He aimed and took a shot at the Sentry. The bullet grazed but did not damage the center pod of the drone. It did, however, cause it to wobble, pitch, and yaw at the instant Tyra touched the “fire” icon. The grenade was launched skyward, hit the glass ceiling, and detonated, taking hundreds of square feet of glass and steel with it. The glass shards showered onto the foyer and terraces below, causing multiple injuries.
“Damn,” Tyra swore. She did
n’t wait for the courtroom door to open again. She fired a second grenade that tore the door and a portion of the northern courtroom wall apart. From the vantage point of the camera attached to the drone, she could see directly into Courtroom 401. She fired two more grenades through the destroyed wall, directly into the courtroom itself.
Richard and Zak dragged Kumar into the courtroom and pressed him down between two rows of gallery seats. “Stay down you guys,” said Richard. “There’s more coming.”
An instant later, Tyra’s second shot tore apart the northern wall of the courthouse. Because of the downward slope of the large public gallery, and because of the position of the three of them squeezed between two rows of seats, no shrapnel cut them, although the blast wave temporarily robbed all three of their hearing. Kumar was struggling to get up and run, but Richard and Zak kept him down. Tyra’s next two shots flew through the courtroom and took out its southern wall. Again Richard, Zak, and Kumar were spared. Richard looked up and saw the Sentry drone fly into the courtroom. He saw the camera rotate and fix on them. The barrel of the M32 moved toward them.
Richard took out the Sig Sauer that he’d taken from the sheriff and fired several shots at the drone. Two shots connected with the central body of the device, and it wobbled and crashed. Richard fired four more shots into it, and all of the lights and engines on it died. It was 10:15.
As the smoke and noise receded, Zak cautiously stood up. “Jesus, that was close, Rich.”
“I don’t think it’s over, Zak. This a professional hit. Some two-bit mobster couldn’t have got their hands on a Raytheon Sentry drone. This is government. You know how they work. There’ll be a guy with a handgun walking around outside. There will be snipers somewhere. They’re giving Kumar the royal treatment. We’re sitting ducks in here.”
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