Helens phone buzzed, breaking his train of thought. “Special Agent Gray here.”
Thorn sat still while she listened to someone on the other end.
“Right. I’ll be there.” Helen hung up. She looked sadly at him. “I have to go, Peter. Flynn’s called a meeting in five minutes to go over the preliminary reports on the monorail bombing.”
“Is he still giving you grief about sharing information with me?” Thorn asked seriously.
“Not much.” One side of Helen’s mouth twitched upward for an instant.
“Mike Flynn’s got a few too many other things to worry about right now. So I think he’s pretty well decided to turn a blind eye on us at least as long as he doesn’t trip over you every time he turns around.”
Thorn forced some humor into his own voice. “Got it. I’ll practice tiptoeing on eggshells.” He stood up. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?” he asked.
She nodded and came around the desk to kiss him goodbye. “Tomorrow.”
Thorn was on the Metro before he remembered what it was that had been bothering him about the terrorist communiques. Every one of them had been written or spoken in precise, textbook-perfect English. At first he’d thought that was because the terrorists wanted to avoid giving the FBI’s language analysts any regional accents or speech patterns that could be used to identify them later. But what if there was another reason? A simpler reason? Did all the statements sound like textbook English precisely because they were taken out of a textbook?
He thought hard about that all the way back to the Pentagon.
NBC had built a special set in its New York broadcast studios as a backdrop for its daily reports on the terrorist campaigns convulsing the nation. A giant electronic map of the United States framed the news desk and NBC’s top anchorman. Pulsing red lights scattered across the map marked areas officially confirmed by the FBI as terror attacks. A large monitor showed the grim, determined face of Senator Stephen Reiser, the Senate majority leader. He was being interviewed by satellite linkup with the Capitol Hill television studio.
“If I understand you correctly, Senator, you believe that the administration’s response to this wave of terrorism has been too weak and too hesitant. Is that right?”
Reiser nodded flatly. “That’s right, Tony.” He frowned. “For God’s sake, we know the kinds of people responsible for these atrocities. I see no reason on earth to keep tiptoeing around the way we’ve been doing. A little police or FBI raid here or there isn’t going to stop this thing.”
“What exactly are you proposing?” the interviewer asked curiously. Reiser was a rare politician one noted for his blunt talk and acid wit.
The senator did not disappoint him.
“A knockout blow. Something that would stop these terrorists in their tracks. I think the President should get up off his duff and declare a nationwide state of emergency. We should slap every known member of these extremist groups into preventive detention until we can sort out the guilty from the innocent. And if the police and FBI are too damned shorthanded, I think we should deploy the Army and Marines to do the job!”
“Wouldn’t the ACLU and other civil rights organisations object to ” the interviewer began.
“The hell with the ACLU!” Reiser interrupted sharply. “We’re at war, whether those idiots know it or not.”
Officer Carlos Esparo swore softly as the scene in his binoculars swam into sharper focus. He and his partner were stationed seven blocks from the improvised roadblock thrown up across a major street leading into one of L.A.‘s poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods. The roadblock wasn’t much not yet. Just a few old clunkers parked sideways across the street. But it was manned by punks. By gang members wearing their colors. By armed gang members. Most wore pistols tucked into their pants, and he could see at least one shotgun. The LAPD officer was willing to bet they had automatic weapons too. He’d had too many run-ins with the local street gangs not to respect their firepower.
They were stopping every car and truck headed into South Central. Only those driven by blacks were allowed through the roadblock. The others, those driven by whites, Hispanics, or Asians, were waved back with menacing gestures and shouted insults.
Esparo clicked the button on his radio mike. “No, sir. There’s been no violence. Not yet anyway. But I still think...”
The voice of his watch commander cut him off. “Don’t think, Carlos. The orders come right from the top. You just stay put and observe the situation. Got it? Don’t intervene unless they start getting out of hand. And even then, you check with me first. Is that clear?”
Esparo gritted his teeth. “Clear, sir.” He understood the reasoning behind his orders even if he didn’t like them very much. With racial tensions climbing every day, the LAPD could not risk sparking another disastrous riot. Even his request for a SWAT sniper team on standby had been refused. They were too busy guarding vulnerable installations and city officials.
The coils of razor wire strung across the quiet, suburban street west of Chicago seemed utterly out of place. So did the hunting rifles slung over the shoulders of the well-dressed, mostly middle-aged men clustered around a tiny portable heater. Their breath steamed in the freezing late autumn air and they seemed acutely uncomfortable. But they also looked angry and utterly fixed in purpose.
Against police advice, Oak Brook’s various Neighborhood Watch groups had decided to arm themselves against what they saw as a rising tide of terrorism and civil strife. Their members, mostly wealthy lawyers, doctors, and stockbrokers, were taking turns away from work to patrol the streets and to man checkpoints at key locations. All of them were determined to make sure that no “undesirables” bent on murder, rape, or pillage menaced their homes or families.
America’s social fabric was starting to come apart at the seams.
CHAPTER 17
BLACKOUT
A severe autumn storm the howling, roaring creation of high winds and driving sheets of ice-cold rain tore across Maryland and Virginia just after dark. The long, black wall of clouds came pouring down out of the Blue Ridge Mountains, scudding eastward across rolling hills, woods, and open farmland toward the Chesapeake Bay. Thirty miles northwest of Washington, D.C., the storm swept over the tall steel towers of the PennMarVa Electrical Intertie.
The intertie’s transmission lines linked Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia electric utilities together in a common power pool. Under normal conditions, the network enhanced each company’s market and power supply position.
Lines running north gave them access to cheaper hydroelectric power routed from Canada. The intertie also made it possible for member utilities to swap electricity back and forth to meet unexpected demand or to make up for out-of-commission generating plants.
Now, though, the power transmission network was a liability a weak point open to attack. Its long high-voltage lines were especially vulnerable where they crossed the Potomac.
Sefer Halovic turned his face to the bitter, clearising wind with something very like exultation in his soul. For him the storm was a manifestation of God’s power a vast and elemental force lashing out at America’s sophisticated technology and its material works. It was surely a sign of divine favor for his own secret war.