In the morning light, the twisted, mangled wreckage was barely discernible as a tanker truck. News helicopters circled above, bringing the mutilated image to their national audiences as they awoke. The New Jersey Turnpike was closed for two exits around the plant, making that morning’s rush hour a slowly moving parking lot. The rest area was jammed with emergency support vehicles and news crews using long lenses to pull in the sobering pictures from almost a mile away.
Bill Hiccock had fallen asleep just after midnight, having flown back late to D.C. He was awakened at 3 AM by a call from Joey Palumbo to tell him of the thwarted attack. At 8:30 AM, he, Tate, and Palumbo briefed the president and Reynolds.
“Sir,” Hiccock said, “what we know right now is that the attack was to be carried out by Thomas Regan, against American Cyanamid at their chlorine processing station, up there in New Jersey. There was enough chlorine gas in those tanks to form a cloud twenty miles wide. The EPA estimates that with the prevailing winds last night, the cloud would have made its way to New York City within three hours of the blast. Five to seven million people would have been instantly gassed, most dying in their beds. The CDC adds another three million dead by week’s end from the lesser doses that would be inhaled as the cloud dissipated.” Hiccock closed his briefing book.
“My God! It would have been like a nuclear attack. How was it foiled?”
Tate continued the report. “An agent out of the New York office was following up on a lead when the perpetrator was observed planting the bomb on a tanker truck. She and a retired NYPD detective gave chase. The detective died diverting the truck away from the storage tanks.”
“A retired detective?” the president said in amazement.
“Yes, Sir,” Agent Palumbo said. “I was alerted that this detective was working for the CEO of a private company. The perpetrator was believed to have threatened the detective’s client. At the time of the blast, he was following him as a suspected stalker.”
“Wait, then why was the FBI involved?” the president asked.
Joey was thrown a little. “Sir, there was a slim chance that what the detective had stumbled onto was Homegrown connected, but I made the call to offer him some low-level assistance.”
“Well, you had the right instincts.”
“Actually, it wasn’t until right before the explosion that he or our agent Brooke Burrell knew of Regan’s true intention.”
“That detective saved millions of lives and this country from a disaster of unprecedented proportions,” Hiccock said.
“Was he married?” President Mitchell asked.
“Yes, Sir.”
“I want to talk to the wife as soon as she is up for it.” He then jotted something down on his notepad. Everyone waited until he was finished, then he zeroed in on the director. “So, is the bastard who attempted this another homegrown?”
“It appears he is a member of the Sabot Society,” Tate said. “We are checking that now. His computer and profile are being inspected.”
What’s the Sabot Society? Hiccock wondered. He was about to ask aloud when Mitchell nodded and turned to his chief of staff. “Okay, Ray, you get all the facts and have it written up. I’ll address the nation at 11 AM.”
Everyone in the room assumed that this was the end of the briefing and started to leave. The president then called out, “What was his name? The cop. What was the man’s name?”
“Mallory, Sir. Dennis Mallory.”
“Ya got a minute?” Hiccock grabbed Joey’s arm and hustled him into an empty White House office before he could answer.
Joey pried Bill’s hand from his arm. “What’s this all about?”
“I should kick your ass, pal-o-mine.”
“Why you gonna do that?”
“Thanks for telling me about Operation Homegrown, you hard-on.”
There was a noticeable change in the color of Joey’s face. Hiccock knew he had hit a nerve. Bill pounded his finger into Joey’s chest to accentuate every word of his next sentence. “Share, you said, remember?” Hiccock then held up his hand, mocking the secret gesture from one Blade to another. “Ah, bullshit,” he muttered and stepped away.
Joey’s mind raced. “Okay, let’s share. Community colleges aren’t that bad.”
“Huh?”
“Nothing. Jeez, are you hungry? Let’s grab some eggs.”
Down in the White House mess, Joey and Bill sat over scrambled eggs and bacon. The FBI agent looked around. Hiccock could see that there was no one but food service people in the room and they were thirty feet away.
“It’s called Operation Homegrown,” Joey said. “It’s classified. The Homegrown Op is about to make a big play for the controlling council of the Sabot Society.”
“Sabot Society? I just heard Tate use that name in the briefing.”
“As near as we can tell, they are an anti-technology terrorist group that has been behind all these attacks.”
“You have proof of this?”
“Enough to ruin the party they’re planning.”
Hiccock was now dealing with a whole new set of circumstances. If this group were the bad guys, the search was over. He sat staring at a point on the wall for a minute, as the full ramifications sank in. Out of the twenty or so questions that immediately formed in his mind, the one that escaped his lips was, “Sabot? It’s a little obvious, don’t you think?”
“How so?”
“When the industrial revolution came to the Netherlands, it threatened to put many factory workers out on the street. One machine could now do the work of ten, twenty men. So the workers in Holland would jam the machinery and destroy it by sticking their wooden shoes in the gears and cogs. Those wooden shoes were called sabots. That’s where the term sabotage comes from. They sabotaged the technology of their day.”
“Well, our modern day shoeless creeps are the ones behind all this. They’re web-based and have been in existence for at least seven years that we know of … how do you know all this crap about the Netherlands, anyway?”
“That’s one my dad told me.”
“How is the old IRT driver?”
“Doing great. He and my mom moved up to Roscoe. Pop gets his minimum adult daily requirement of trout fishing and my mother’s happy he’s not bitching.”
“I remember when we used to cram into his motorman’s cab and look down the track. That was cool. Hey, you know what I still think about? When your dad drove the number four train and he would let us stay at the 161st Street — River Avenue station.”
“How many Yankee games did we watch for free from that supply shed at the end of the platform?”
“Yeah, two bottles of Coke and the transistor radio and we were in heaven.”
“Dad retired from the MTA back in the mid-nineties. I’ll tell him you were asking.”
They both paused as the memories of hot summer afternoons in that tin shed, looking out the open door onto the emerald-green field of the house that Babe built, faded off into a smoky mist.
“You know, Joey, you’re just doing your job. I mean whatever shitty thing that egomaniacal boss of yours has you doing to me or against me, I know it’s your job. I don’t take it personally.”
Joey looked Hiccock in the eye. “Clean start from today forward.
When this is over, I want you to come out to the coast and meet Phyl and little Joe … spend some time. Maybe go fishing or catch a few ball games.”
“Yeah, that would be nice, when all this is over.”
Joey lifted his glass of orange juice, “To this being over.”
Bill raised his coffee cup and clinked. “To this being over.” He took a sip and put down the cup. “How can you be sure that these guys tonight are the guys?”