Six Seconds (20 page)

49

Blue Rose Creek, California

Daniel Graham was Maggie’s savior.

Standing alone in her kitchen making coffee, she studied his business card then glanced at her kitchen calendar, circled with dates for her psych sessions.

She didn’t think she needed therapy.

All she needed was to find Logan and hold him. Find Jake and talk to him.

Her overdose was an accident. She’d wanted to kill a moment, not herself. Graham had revived her will to fight, to keep her promise to find her family.

As the coffeepot filled, Maggie stole a glimpse of him.
He was on the sofa in her living room. He’d arrived saying he’d talked to Dawn Sullivan’s husband, that he had new information.

Graham checked his watch.
This was a mistake and he knew it, yet something kept him here. The first thing he should’ve done was alert Vic Thompson at the county sheriff’s department,

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and the FBI, to his Vegas lead. He could still do it and have time to make his flight to Calgary today.

Do it, then. Take care of business, then get the hell home.
So what was stopping him?
He looked toward the kitchen where Maggie was.
The aroma of fresh-brewed coffee floated into the living room and he resumed looking at the album Maggie showed him. Logan blowing out birthday candles. Good-looking kid. Logan at the wheel of Jake’s rig. The Conlins at Disneyland. The Conlins at the beach. Jake smiling. A happy family man. Maggie glowed. No question, she was pretty in these portraits of family bliss.
Graham had killed his chances for that kind of life.
He closed the album.

“Here you go. Cream and sugar on the side.” Maggie set a tray down. “What did Dawn’s husband tell you?”
Graham explained that it appeared that Jake had sold or traded his rig at Desert Truck Land in Las Vegas.
“Oh, my God!” Maggie said. “That’s the first solid information I’ve had.”
“Now I’ll pass this to the county and the FBI who can work with people in Las Vegas to follow this up.”
“No, wait,” Maggie said, writing in a small notebook. “I want to go there first.”
“Excuse me?”
“I want to go to Desert Truck Land in Las Vegas. Now! With you, to follow this up. Together.”
“I can’t. I have to fly back today.”
“Please. This is the only real hope I’ve had. And it’s because of you. Please. We can drive to Las Vegas in three or four hours. Then maybe the people there will tell me more about where Jake went. What if he’s living there? I’m so close to Logan now, I can feel it! Please.”
Graham weighed the idea.
Everything about the Tarver case gnawed at him.
If he talked to Jake Conlin about Ray Tarver’s con spiracy story, he might find answers.
Or more questions.
But then there were the optics. Taking a civilian along on a case and into another jurisdiction beyond yours was not smart.
Neither was jumping into a raging river.
But Graham did it because he knew it was right.
And if it hadn’t been for the little girl, he wouldn’t be alive today.
He had to keep trusting his gut on this. Something was emerging, he knew it.
The logistics of Maggie’s idea were not difficult.
Graham could change his airline ticket, drop his rental car in Las Vegas, fly from there to Calgary on a later plane, maybe by tonight.
“I have to check out of my hotel, make some calls, then I’ll be back to get you in about an hour. We’ll go in my rental. I’ll fly home from there.”
Tears glistened in Maggie’s eyes. She hugged Gra ham and smiled.
Her first real smile since the day Logan vanished.

50

Pysht, on the Juan De Fuca Strait, Washington

Fog cloaked the north shore of Olympic Peninsula as Kip Drucker eased his SUV along the old trail road to the small cove.

He keyed his radio microphone and gave his dis patcher his location.
“Vanessa, Stan wanted me to follow up that CPB call first thing this morning.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection had alerted the Clallam County Sheriff’s Department that a small craft may have illegally unloaded contraband from a larger foreign vessel in the Strait, which forms the border with Canada.
The report originated from a Chinese cargo ship. Chinese crew members had noted the larger ship was out of Yemen and was navigating suspiciously. The captain took a few days to mull over the incident before reporting it to U.S. authorities.
The Chinese crew witnessed the smaller craft land ing on U.S. soil some five to seven miles southwest of Clallam Bay, near Pysht. Wind-driven swells and fog had hampered an effective search.
“I’m going to investigate this zone,” Drucker told his dispatcher.
“Ten-four. And, Kip, I’ve stacked your other calls. First one is Chester Green. Wants you to go to his place for more on his stolen boat from the weekend.”
“Ten-four. Seventy-one out.”
Drucker had two years in as a deputy with the patrol division. He and his wife planned to start a family once he made detective. He still had a lot of course work before he could take the exam. His wife wanted to get going on the baby thing.
Pay attention, he told himself as he walked the desolate shoreline.
Drucker’s sergeant had instructed him to look for anything out of the ordinary. Should be easy as nobody lived out here. Nothing around for a mile or so in either direction. Pysht was beautiful. The name came from an old Indian word. Something about the wind, Drucker couldn’t remember.
The fog cast everything in gray and silver-white. It was surreal the way it blotted out the forest and the Olympic Mountains. Water lapped against the beach and gulls shrieked. Drucker contended with the smells of dead fish and seaweed, while welcoming the occa sional trace of spruce and cedar.
He’d gone nearly a mile, and had come to a large piece of driftwood where he’d decided to turn back. That’s when he heard the chink of glass.
A beached wooden shipping crate jostled gently in the surf. It contained two-dozen brown bottles of

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liquid. Beer. Made in Nigeria, according to the faded red lettering.

Drucker looked at it, as he tugged on his latex gloves and pulled out a bottle to check the labels. The water had loosened most of them.
Big Mountain Taste. Nigerian Blended Ale.
Drucker tried to twist a cap. Not a twist cap. His keys jingled as he reached for his jack knife, flipped to the opener and popped the cap. He held his nose over the contents.

It was beer. No question.
He dripped some on the rocks, watching it foam, wondering how it would go down chilled on a Sunday during a Seahawks game. He glanced at the other bottles in the crate, noticing one had split along the seam.
Drucker plucked it.
Leaking, droplets hissed on the rocks. Not like beer foam.
Plumes of smoke rose; smoke with an odd smell. Kind of like medicine, but different. Drucker set the bottle down on the rocks. A tiny thick cloud of smoke rose as the liquid seeped from the bottle.
“What the hell. That’s not beer.”
Drucker reached for his shoulder microphone and called his dispatcher.

Within minutes of Drucker’s dispatch, his call reached the highest levels of national security.
His report pinballed among local, state and federal agencies to Washington, D.C., where intelligence ana lysts captured it. They red-flagged it as evidence sup porting earlier foreign intel concerning a Yemini ship bound for the U.S. with hostile cargo from Africa. Connecting dots.
Was it a potential puzzle piece of an impending attack during the papal visit?
But few in the security chain possessed the clearance needed to access that analysis. It was shared on a needto-know basis.
On the ground at Pysht, Drucker had been advised to treat the mysterious substance as a potential explo sive, or biohazard.
Offshore, vessels from the U.S. Coast Guard, Wash ington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, and Clallam County, kept watercraft from nearing the site.
No residents lived within a one-and-a-half-mile radius of the area. Drucker was told that immediate evacuation was not necessary. A public announcement was not necessary. Backed up by Washington Highway Patrol and local firefighters, Drucker sealed the scene, as state emergency biohazard experts arrived to make a preliminary assessment.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Ex plosives dispatched a team from the Seattle Field Division to study the substance. The FBI dispatched an evidence response team from the Seattle Field Office to pursue foot and tire impressions leading from the site, treating it as if it were a crime scene.
At the same time across the country a mechanism had been triggered.
An elite new unit drawn from several federal agen cies and the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force had been deployed.
The team of ten personnel, and some seven hundred pounds of state-of-the-art equipment, lifted off in a small, unmarked twin-engine jet from its military base at Indian Head, Maryland.
Dr. Tony Takayasu headed the unit. Like the CBIRF, its mission was rapid response to help local officials in threats involving chemical, biological, nuclear or radio logical incidents.
Takayasu had been seconded from the Livermore Lab in California. He’d headed secret military research on the creation and detection of unknown substances. He was one of the world’s authorities on molecular structures.
Next in command was Karen Dyer, a Harvard pro fessor of advanced chemistry. She also held degrees in physics and DNA research from Berkeley.
Other members included a leading field doctor from the Center for Disease Control, a veteran technician from the FBI’s Explosives Unit who’d worked on the Unabomber case, the World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing. There was also a nuclear physicist from Los Alamos, and several military personnel expert in ex plosives and biological, nuclear and chemical warfare. As their jet crossed the country, Takayasu and his team studied updates sent to them from investigators on-site.
Some three hours later, their plane landed at an airfield near Clallam Bay normally used to transport convicts from the state prison nearby. They were met by a convoy of waiting emergency vehicles which ferried them and their equipment to the site.
Upon arrival, they waited for county and state public safety officials to complete the decontamination process before they were debriefed.
“We’re not sure what it is. We haven’t been able to identify it,” a state official said, as members of the new

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unit pulled on camouflaged hazardous-material suits and gas masks. “We don’t think it’s a germ or nerve agent. What we can tell you is that the case labelled beer held twenty-two bottles containing beer. Two contained an unknown substance. We need to identify it. Our concern is how many bottles, or cases, have penetrated the border. Somebody’s up to something.”

Takayasu’s team muscled their equipment to the site. It was protected by yellow police tape and a huge canvas canopy. They set to work to collect a sample of the liquid, analyze and identify it in order to determine whether it was lethal.

Each team member conducted examinations and undertook various component testing using advanced equipment, such as micro UV laser fluorescence bio sensors. They ran a number of protocols and formulas. They swabbed, chilled, burned and baked on-site, ana lyzing residue, processing it through secure laptops with links to databases across the country.

“I don’t get it, Tony,” Dyer said. “This liquid sub stance defies our on-site testing. What the heck is it?”
Takayasu was stumped, shook his head and kept working. At sunset he walked from the site and removed his mask, enjoying the cool refreshing air. He gazed out at the water.
The fog had lifted in the twilight and he recalled himself as a seven-year-old boy walking into the bed room of his newborn sister. She was so still. He’d alerted his mother, whose screams he still heard. His sister had died. Later, when he was a high-school student, Takayasu went to the county office and obtained her death records. The cause was sudden infant death, a syndrome that still perplexes many. It drove him to devote his life to science, to unravel that which is unknown.
Takayasu shifted his attention back to his current challenge and considered calling his wife in the east. He was going to miss his daughter’s violin recital in Georgetown. He’d reached for his cell phone, when some of the others approached him.
“What do you think?” one of them asked.
Takayasu showed them his notes where he’d circled
C3H5(NO3)3?
“Nitro?”
“No, not nitro,” he said, “in some ways it exhibits similar characteristics but it’s not nitroglycerin.” Taka yasu gazed at the water.
“You look troubled, Tony. You got any thoughts on this?” Dyer asked.
“We’re going to have to do more work in the lab.”
“Sure, but what is your gut telling you?”
“I suspect this is a component that is to be applied to another. It could also be a substance not yet fully pro cessed. At a conference in New Zealand I recall learning about a wild theory or research going on in China. Something involving nanotechnology and radio trans missions. All of it undetectable. What I’ve seen here strikes me as being remotely similar to one of the theo retical components.”
“We’re talking about some kind of explosive?” the FBI bomb expert asked.
“It’s just one component, but I have no clue about the form of delivery.”
“So it could be anything, then?”
“Anything.”

51

Rat City, Seattle

Near Seattle’s southern edge at the fringe of a ne glected urban nightmare, an unmarked government sedan stopped at an aging apartment complex.

Two well-dressed federal agents entered, scanned the tenant list of the apartment’s lobby panel, then buzzed E. R. Glaxor.

“Yes,” the tin-sounding response came through the intercom.
“Mr. Edwin Glaxor?”
“Yes.”
“Special Agents Blake Walker and Melody Krover of the Secret Service. We’d called in response to your concerns, sir.”
“Yes. Come in. Unit 615.”
The door lock buzz-clicked, allowing them to enter.
They stepped into the elevator. Krover, a new agent with the Seattle Field Office, had pulled Glaxor’s name from the list. Seattle agents had visited him twice. Her valise contained his file, which Walker had read a third time on the ride over. He’d read it before on his previous

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two flights to Seattle. The field people took pride in their work, and resented Walker’s micromanaging of their files.

Walker didn’t care.
Edwin Richard Glaxor, age thirty-six, was a night watchman who’d bombarded the Vatican with letters demanding “the pope resign and confess his crimes as the
anti-pope”
in an address to the United Nations, or Glaxor would “eliminate” him during his visit to Seattle.
“I have been authorized to prosecute the act,” he wrote.
Glaxor’s file, which included notes from his em ployer, indicated he talked to inanimate objects. He had no criminal record, no history of violence. Did not own, or have access to, firearms, or explosives. Other than “showing up at the rope” at various presidential visits along the west coast over the years and glaring at the president, Glaxor had not acted on his threats.
A pungent mixture of muscle ointment and cat litter greeted the agents when Glaxor opened his apartment door for them.
The black-framed glasses he wore were held together by white tape. He was overweight with stringy hair and greasy skin. His apartment was dimly lit.
“I am averse to light, that’s why I work nights,” Glaxor said as he sat in a large, somewhat elevated chair, while the agents stood.
“I am glad you’re here. Time is of the essence.” Glaxor spoke articulately and rapidly. “I’ve recently been in contact with the GHD, and he demands the pope end his tyrannical reign and resign before fate— that being me—intervenes.”

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Krover opened the file. “The GHD would be the ‘Great-Horned Demon’ you converse with?”
“Yes, the GHD’s manifested as a gargoyle in the park downtown as a conduit for communication.”
“Could we please let in a little light, Edwin? Just a bit?”
Walker opened the curtains slightly. Glaxor’s chair was a throne constructed entirely of Bibles. After lis tening to Glaxor’s nonsensical theories for nearly twenty minutes, Walker interrupted.
“Edwin, we believe your concerns warrant more research. We’ve talked to your family about a facility where you can discuss your situation with the appropri ate medical experts.”
Glaxor steepled his fingers, touched them to his chin and nodded.
“May I bring the data I’ve collected?”
“I’ll discuss that with the doctors, but it shouldn’t be a problem.”
“All right, I’ll do it.”
“Good, son. Under the circumstances, this is the right thing to do.”
Walker reached for his cell phone to advise Glaxor’s parents and psychiatrist.
Glaxor was a letter writer, like hundreds of other people on the Secret Service watch list. Part of the job was to be up to speed on the list, a file of several hundred people who had ever threatened the president, or a visiting head of state, even with an e-mail, a letter or a comment overheard in public.
People like Glaxor who weren’t in facilities were visited by agents in advance of VIP visits to update

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their threat status, chiefly to determine if they had the ability and opportunity to carry out their threat.

Glaxor’s family had agreed that he would undergo assessment in a psychiatric ward during the pope’s visit. Like the Secret Service and the FBI, King County and Seattle PD put him on their watch list.

This threat had been neutralized.
Back in the car, Walker reviewed his files. They had several more cases to double-check as part

of continuing advance work to assess threats and identify risks. They worked on everything, from poten tial lone assassins to terrorist groups. As Krover drove them to the next case, Walker inventoried his files to ensure he hadn’t overlooked anything.

They were in order, yet something niggled at him. Something that had arisen from one of the roundtable calls at Langley. As hard as he tried, Walker couldn’t identify it. And now, as the time for the northwest leg of the papal visit ticked down, it continued to irritate him.
Walker scanned the latest bulletin on activity and chatter concerning FTOs.
Nothing there.
At that moment, his BlackBerry vibrated with an alert from Homeland Security.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection investigating unconfirmed report of border penetration by unau thorized vessels suspected of at-sea transfer of hostile contraband. Location: U.S.-Canada border. Washington State. Strait of Juan de Fuca. Primary vessel registered under Panamanian flag. Vessel origin: Yemen. Secondary vessel origin: unknown.