Tanner nodded “This sounds like Rhee. Hit four different stores, steal the ammonia nitrate, then set a fire to cover the theft.”
“Sounds like he has something big planned,” Liam said.
“They also found two bodies at one of the sites,” Danielle continued. “Both shot in the head at close range. Neither one is Asian.”
“What’s he going to do?” Choi asked.
“Anything that will help to complete his mission.” Tanner looked around the room. “He and his people are highly trained and capable of extreme violence on their own.”
A phone started chiming. Vessler reached for her device and glanced at it. “It’s the office.” She stood. “I have to take this.” She walked over to the window and answered it.
“So back to Rhee’s next move.” Choi leaned forward. “What could it be?”
“I don’t know,” Tanner replied. “I thought protecting the drug lab was his top priority but—”
“Oh my God.”
Everyone turned to look at Vessler, who had uttered the oath.
“How many?” she snapped. She paused, listening. “How many agents are in the office?” Another beat, her face darkening. “Brock, listen to me. Take Meechim, Howes, Daniels and Gonzales. Get over to University, find Gloria Glimsdale and take her into protective custody now. And Brock? I want you and the others in full tactical gear, and don’t take shit from anyone. Until I say otherwise, Gloria is your only concern. Understand? Get going.” She broke the connection, shuddered and took a deep breath.
Everyone waited for her to speak.
At length, Vessler said, “George Glimsdale’s dead. Him, his wife, and his two youngest kids.” She closed her eyes. “They were all found dead in their home, tied up, tortured, their throats cut.”
“Rhee,” Tanner rose from his chair.
“We don’t know that,” Casey said.
“The local cops think it was Colombians.” Vessler stared out the window as if mulling this over.
“But you don’t think so?”
“Hell, no! The Colombians got pushed out of the area a couple of years back by the Mexican cartels and haven’t reestablished a foothold in the local drug trade since then. The DEA has no operations running against them either here or over in Oakland. So them killing George and his family don’t make any sense.”
“Who’s second in charge?” Casey asked.
“Bill Derer. He’s on vacation with his family, skiing at Mammoth.”
“I’ll get him back.” Casey, rose to his feet. “Until then, Agent Vessler, I’m putting you in charge of the local DEA office.”
Vessler took a deep breath. “Then I better get back to the office. Come on, Danny.”
“Right behind you.”
After the two left, Danielle brought up a new screen on her computer and pecked some keys. “I’ve got something. Hong’s calling a meeting of the Black Dao’s senior leadership. It’s at the Black Jade Dragon Restaurant, today at noon.”
Tanner glanced at his watch. “Three hours.” He looked at Casey. “How fast can you get Derer back here?”
“We have to find him first.”
“Black Bear Lodge,” Danielle said. “I have the phone number right here.”
Casey closed his eyes and shook his head slightly. “Give me the number.”
“What are we going to do, Boss?” Liam asked.
Tanner exhaled. “No telling when and where Rhee is going to use that ammonia nitrate. So, the gloves come off. We’re going to have a talk with Billy Hong about a drug lab.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The day would go down in San Francisco history as the Day of Fire.
It started on the world famous Golden Gate Bridge. Two tanker trucks, filled with a combined 17,000 gallons of gasoline, were being escorted across the bridge by a pair of Golden Gate Security vehicles, heading north. They stayed in the right-hand lane, traveling at the bridge’s posted speed limit of forty-five miles per hour.
The three-man North Korean team waited until the tankers were on the bridge before they made their move. Driving a blue cargo van, the trio prepared to show the Americans the folly of opposing the Marshal’s Will.
“Ready?” the driver asked.
“Ready,” replied the gunner, checking the Type 69’s 85mm warhead. “How’s the wind?”
“Steady at nine knots,” the third man reported. “Coming out of the west-northwest.”
The gunner hefted the RPG launcher over his shoulder. “Stand by with the second launcher, in case I miss with this one.”
“Standing by.”
“Here we go.” The driver accelerated to fifty, then sixty. The van shot past the trailing security car, then the rear tanker. By the time it reached the lead tanker, it was doing seventy-five, the driver weaving through the late morning traffic in and out of the other two lanes. By the time it flew past the lead escort car, it was going eighty miles an hour before the driver shifted into the right-hand lane and slowed to thirty-five.
A hundred and fifty yards ahead of the lead tanker, the gunner climbed a step-stool and pushed open a hatch cut into the van’s roof. As he rose, he leveled the RPG launcher in the direction of the tanker, adjusted for the wind, and fired.
Traveling at over six hundred miles an hour, the four and half pound warhead closed the 130 yards between the van and lead tanker in about half a second, passing over the truck’s cab and striking the trailer tank two feet below the top. As it passed through the steel, the warhead exploded, sending a plume of white-hot molten copper into 8,500 gallons of gasoline.
The equivalent of twenty-one tons of dynamite exploded, obliterating the tanker, the lead security vehicle and the trailing tanker, which also exploded. The twin fireballs smothered all six lanes, incinerating nine cars, melting the asphalt and super-heating two dozen of the bridge’s steel cables. The shock-wave smashed into another fifteen vehicles, throwing most into death rolls that shattered windows and killed the occupants. Three cars crashed over the side and plummeted into the water below. Cables that were already red-hot snapped under the sudden pressure. Forty people died in a blink of an eye, and another twenty-one were severely injured.
As for the instigators of the attack, they were already off the bridge, moving north at sixty miles per hour. They took the Vista Point exit right after getting off the bridge and parked the van. As the sightseers assembled to watch the thick, dark smoke rising from the smoldering bridge, the three North Koreans walked over to a waiting sedan. They got in, left the tourist lookout and headed north, driving the speed limit.
San Francisco’s BART system is the fifth busiest heavy-rail rapid transit system in the country, carrying over 400,000 people on a typical weekday. As such, it was easy to miss the two Asian men in dark suits who walked into the 16th Street Mission Station. Both carried briefcases and looked like ordinary businessmen. No one noticed them separating and getting onto different trains.
One got on the Richmond — Millbrae line, heading south, while the other headed north on the Dublin/Pleasanton line. Both men slid the briefcases under their seats. Despite the dozens of people around them, no one noticed the action, so caught up were they in texting, checking their e-mails or social media, talking on the phone or otherwise not paying attention to their surroundings.
When they reached the next station, both men exited the train, abandoning the briefcase under the seat. New people boarded and still no one noticed the briefcase.
When the north-bound train slowed as it entered the Powell Street station, the timer inside the briefcase detonated the ten pounds of Semtex inside with it. The explosion ripped through the train car with lethal force, killing everyone in the car and severely damaging the cars in front and behind it. All of the windows blew out, sending shards of glass and steel into the passengers on the platform like a monstrous shotgun blast. Smoke and flame poured out of the destroyed car. The only sound some people could hear (those whose eardrums weren’t blown out) were the wails of the injured.