“This isn’t a university. There is no sabbatical.”
“Let’s take it to the president then.”
“Goddamn it, I’ll fire you right here, right now!”
“You don’t want to do that, Ray.”
“Is that a threat?
“No, it’s common sense.”
Reynolds sat back. “Enlighten me.”
“The whole reason I am involved in this is because the president didn’t have any options presented to him. What if the FBI is wrong? What if the society didn’t create the subliminal screens that programmed the terrorists? If I am on leave, we pick up right where we left off. If I am fired …”
“You are not supposed to be that good at political positioning. Leave granted, but if the FBI wins the day, you’re fired.”
“If they are right, I’ll resign.”
“Either way.” Reynolds watched Hiccock and saw him forming a thought. Ray braced himself for some kind of blackmailing, butt-saving, last-ditch effort on Hiccock’s part.
“Look, Ray, as much as I hate to say this, for the good of the country, I hope they are right.”
Reynolds rolled his eyes. “You are a fucking Boy Scout, aren’t you?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Anchorman Marvin Weitterman sat in a tight, cramped studio in front of a sharply illuminated green screen. The color, so saturated and vivid, enabled the circuitry in the control room to separate his outline from it and replace the background with anything his producer desired. On the studio monitor was the result of this video trickery, a composite picture of him sitting in front of the “virtual set” of CFN’s MoneyTime.
A graphic appeared over his left shoulder. It read “SHAREWARE.” Marvin looked into the camera, reading the intro of his next story off the teleprompter. “Philanthropy in the cyber age? Many thought it went the way of the manual typewriter, but some anonymous donor is giving out free ‘Pocket Protector’ day-trading software, or shareware, to anyone who wants it. Her or his only request is that you send ten dollars to a charity of your choice. Brian Hopkins has more.” He waited until the red tally light on his camera went off, indicating that the viewers at home were watching the prerecorded report. He turned to the monitor showing the tape feed and asked the people in the control room, “Have you seen this? It is an amazing program. It protects your investments round the clock and is so fast it beats anybody to the punch.”
“Thirty seconds,” the floor manager called out, indicating there was a half-minute left to the taped report.
“You know this could have quite an impact.”
Like shooting fish in a barrel, SAC Joey Palumbo thought as he sat on the front wheel of a long-abandoned tractor, which was now more of a vine-covered topiary of a tractor. He was officially awaiting reassignment by order of the director and present here at the scene purely as part of his investigation into the grenade attack on the airliner at SFO. As he surveyed the impressive number of men and material assembled under such incredibly tight secrecy on the Dunhill farm, he amended his previous thought. Like shooting fish in a barrel … only with Recon scouts, armored personnel carriers and high-altitude infrared imagery. That imagery of the Sabot stronghold two miles off told a different story than Joey expected. It showed that the Sabot Society, for all its operational ability in the field, was less than professional about its own security arrangements for the meeting. Not a lookout, sensor, or even a mean dog on a chain was detected at T minus twenty. In fact, twenty minutes before takedown, Joey thought this whole meeting might be a decoy deliberately set to embarrass the FBI. Either that or the Sabots were really dumb.
Inside the ramshackle barn, Bernard opened the meeting. He was especially proud of a little piece of theatrical intrigue he was about to introduce to his cell leaders. He got the idea from reality television.
“In front of you are envelopes. The contents are your targets for the next phase. Each one of you will take his envelope over to the grill and open and read the contents there. Then you will place the paper into the fire. You will not discuss your target with anyone other than me.”
As he glanced over at the glowing coals, Bernard started doubting his decision to place the open barbecue grill so close to the wooden wall of the barn. If, as the paper burned, the walls were to catch fire, this place would go up like a stack of matches. As the heads of thirteen cells watched, he went to move the hot grill. He was ten feet from the burning coals when he heard the sharp sound of breaking glass, followed a split second later by a concussive wallop that slammed his body into the base of the grill, tipping it over and spilling the hot coals. A total of three flash-bang grenades detonated in very rapid succession. The weatherworn timbers and notched joints of the old barn shuddered and rattled. Years of settled dust and microscopic grain fibers were rocked loose and instantly became airborne. All fourteen people in the room were temporarily blinded and rendered deaf in an instant, which was the intended purpose of the Mark 4 concussive flare. A second later, eight fully armed agents stormed into the barn.
DuneMist was zipping his fly when the explosions rocked the porta-potty in the corner of the barn. Protected from the flash-bang by the fiberglass construction, he instinctively grabbed his .38 revolver. He cracked the door of the plastic outhouse just as an agent in full SWAT gear approached. The ensuing seconds went by as if in slow motion. DuneMist raised the .38 and fired point-blank into the agent’s chest. The stunned officer reeled back. The spasmodic reaction of his muscles caused him to involuntarily squeeze off a three-shot burst from his Mac 10.
The hot coals from the tipped barbecue ignited the strewn hay by the wall. Grain dust instantly combusted into a ball of fire. The air itself was now aflame, immolating FBI and society members alike. Agents in the second attack wave had to switch from takedown mode to rescue mode as their intended targets, and many of their own, suddenly became fire victims.
Joey Palumbo approached with that second wave. Their principal job was to collect physical evidence. That part of the operation was the most important from both a legal perspective and a national security point of view. If this action were to fatally wound the Sabot Society, the death certificate would be issued on the physical evidence they recovered. The postmortem would also determine whether this horrendous wave of terror was merely interrupted or permanently halted.
But evidence recovery would have to wait as Joey Palumbo and company dealt with the human tragedy unfolding before them. Shielding his face from the heat with his forearm, he ran toward the tinderbox. A man engulfed in flame stumbled out the door, clawing at his face. Joey swept the man’s legs out from under him and started rolling him on the ground, pumping his hands, making momentary contact against the man’s boiling skin and saving his own flesh from severe burns. Two other agents took over, rolling and snuffing out the man’s clothing and hair. Joey headed back to the doorway. Choking on the thick acrid smoke, he peered through the flames, but not a soul was moving.
The bureau’s D.C. op center was tapped into the tactical operations radio traffic from the takedown scene. The cool, professional, by-the-numbers radio chatter normally associated with any well-coordinated, well-executed apprehension of suspects had suddenly turned into pandemonium. The color washed from Tate’s face as he sat down hard, stunned, as what seemed like a walk in the park a few seconds before turned into a human barbecue.