“Are you prepared for another?” the DCI asked. After a few minutes he was sure by the look on the NSA’s face that he wasn’t.
Six
UNPLEASANTNESS
The freeways at 4:30 A.M. were a wonderful thing. In an hour they would be packed, which was usual for the weekdays. Art’s Bureau Chevy had already made the trip from downtown north on the 110 freeway to Pasadena, and was heading south again, past the western fringe of the L.A. skyline. He could see the Hilton to his left, empty but strangely alight in the predawn darkness.
Art took the gently sweeping transition road from the 110 south to the westbound 10. He wondered if rural types would be surprised by the amount of cars at this time of the morning, and he almost laughed aloud when he realized that at one time many years before this traffic would be equivalent to rush hour. It was a problem with few solutions. Mass transit had to take up some of the slack and remove some of the single-occupant cars from the road. But then Art knew he wouldn’t ride the bus. Oh well. So much for examples. Maybe that’s why I’m not a parent, he thought.
He shook the thoughts from his head, realizing that he was wide awake and that it would be a bitch to get back on a normal sleep schedule. So it would take a few days. Who knew how long the hours would be like this? Back to the work at hand.
The Khaled brothers more than likely fell into the category of first-time visitors to Southern California, just two of the thousands who found their way there every day. Some came to visit Disneyland. Some came for business meetings or conventions — the downtown area was perfectly suited for this purpose with its many business hotels and the numerous meeting facilities. But the Khaleds did not come for any of these reasons. They did, however, share one important trait with the flood of tourists: ignorance of the area. The route between their two known destinations, LAX and Pasadena, would have needed to be a simple one. Interstate 405 north to Interstate 10 east to the 110 north to Pasadena. That was the quickest, most direct route, one that could be easily explained in a simple set of directions. Art believed they had made the unknown stop between the airport and the motel on the day they arrived, to pick up the weapons almost certainly. It wouldn’t have made sense to make the stop between Pasadena and downtown on the day they hid out in the 818. Too many things could have gone wrong, and one delay had the potential to throw the timing all off. Yes, they had done it as Art thought. It had to be.
But where? Finding a specific location in the city of Los Angeles and its adjacent suburbs would be a major task for a newcomer. The seemingly endless grid system of streets stretching from the freeways was akin to a maze, simple if one was only slightly familiar with them, but potentially an impossible labyrinth where a first-time visitor might lose himself.
Behind him, above the pairs of white dots in his rearview mirror, the predawn horizon was just beginning to show traces of a bluish glow. Soon the yellowish cast that signaled sunrise would spread across the skyline, and with the daylight the crush of cars would come. The traffic…the countless streets…the unfamiliar language emblazoned on the green highway signs — the Khaleds would have felt bombarded by the newness. Their native land was pristine and rich in history, ancient-looking and simple. Or it had been at one time. The brothers must have reacted with wonder to the abundance of glass, and lights, and billboards…
Wait… Art’s gaze locked on a billboard. The painted image of a red stone-and-glass tower was lofted fifty feet above and to the right of the freeway. “A weekend in L.A., just $99 a night.” Art jerked his eyes back to the road. It could work…
He speed-dialed his cell. It was answered in the Hilton immediately. “Eddie, I’ve got an idea.”
“Shoot,” Eddie answered through the burger in his mouth.
“It’s not even five and you’re eating that…never mind.
Listen, the shooters had to get their gear somewhere, right? And I figure, more than likely, they had to get it before they got to Pasadena.”
“Yeah. They wouldn’t have put it off till the last minute, and they wouldn’t have risked a face-to-face with Jackson.” A swallow followed.
“Or vice versa. He wouldn’t have gone for that. Like you said, Ed, the shooters didn’t give a damn about themselves, but Jackson — he seems like the kind of guy who didn’t want to take any chances before he split. For both of them it would have to be a clean pass, which got me thinking…well, I had a spark.”
“What hit you?” Another bite.
“A billboard.” Art leaned forward, checking his right side mirror as he moved to the exit. “The downtown Hyatt. Right up there to slap me in the face. It would be easy, clean. All Jackson would have needed to do is rent a room somewhere for a day or two and stash the weapons. Then he could have put the key for the place with the directions in a locker at the airport.”
“It’d work.”
“But it would have to be a place close to the freeway: someplace they couldn’t get lost finding. I don’t know, maybe no more than five or six blocks from the freeway. Probably off the Ten, or maybe the Four-oh-five. Just some cheap motel would do.” The red light at the off ramp’s bottom only made Art hesitate. Running lights was a perk. “How much manpower can we shift to check out the motels in the area?”
There was silence as Eddie checked the roster. “I show thirty-five teams we can move around.”
“Good.” Art turned left, back onto the freeway, heading east. “Put out pictures of all three. Someone at one of those places must have seen one of them.”
“If they did as you think.”
Art moved over three lanes. “There’s always an ‘if’, Ed.”
It was the second viewing of the recording for Bud and Herb. The president stared intently at the pictures. He had commented early on about the clarity.
“These look as if they were shot from the upper floor of a building nearby,” the president commented. “Where did these come from?”
“A modified KH-twelve,” Landau replied. “Normally you’d be briefed in a transition period on ‘National Technical Means.’ ”
“Of course. I’ve heard of the KH-twelve, but not about any modifications.”
Bud was the most knowledgeable of the two advisers on the subject. “Basically the KH-twelve ENCAP — enhanced capability — is a hybrid between a standard KH-twelve and the Hubble Space Telescope. Its existence is super secret. It was put up by the shuttle in two flights: One took the bare pieces up, and the other assembled the sections and fueled it. There is nothing in space that even compares.”
“From seeing these I can’t imagine anything that would.”
“These are ‘real-time’ images — recorded, of course — but we should have some enhanced stills in a short while.” Bud froze the picture on the Oval Office’s normal television, below which sat a pricey video player. The frozen frame showed just the 747 sitting near a building.
Director Landau noticed the shaky quality of the images on the standard video player. “Given the time, sir, we could have watched the feed directly in the situation room as it happened, but we’ve found it’s usually better for the crew at Belvoir to screen it.”
“No opposition to that. This is fine. Shall we?”
Bud touched the remote and the picture began to move. He pulled a small notebook from his jacket. The video counts where significant events appeared on the recording were written inside. “Watch from the right, sir.”