America Libre (24 page)

“Oh? What brilliant idea did our resident tactical genius concoct?”

Jo nudged Mano with her elbow. “Tell him.”

“Jesús is going to drive the empty truck to Compton and torch it.”

“Well, well… I must admit, that’s not a bad red herring, amigo.”

Ramon knew the truck driver would identify Jesús as an African-American to the authorities. Ditching the stolen truck in predominantly
black Compton would deflect the investigation away from them.

“OK, let’s face it,” Jo said soberly. “We didn’t get as much am-nite as we wanted. So we damn well better make what we have
count.”

After returning from lunch, Hank Evans double-clicked on Bill Perkins’s e-mail with the subject line “DDP.” An e-mail message
was a red flag—Evans knew his deputy would have delivered any good news on the investigation in person.

Hank,

Wanted to bring you up to speed on the DDP surveillance. They seem to be keeping their noses clean. Their main activity still
appears to be community service, i.e., ferrying food and medicine delivered by the Army for distribution within the Quarantine
Zones. Their organization is tight and has been difficult to penetrate. We are continuing with our efforts at securing a mole.
Our progress in the zones is slow as it is hard for any of our people to blend in.

—Bill

Evans noted that the worst news was buried in the middle of the poorly constructed paragraph. They had not yet found a mole.

C
huckie Buster was seething. Straddling his Dyna Glide, idling at the curb on Temple Street, he revved the throttle again and
looked over his leather-clad shoulder. Arrayed in a neat line behind him, eleven other riders waited impatiently to roll,
the roar of their Harleys echoing in the nearly empty streets of downtown Los Angeles.
Where in the hell is Stratton this time?
Buster fumed as a lone Neon crawled by.

Buster was the leader of the Wanderers in the Desert, a Christian motorcycle club from the First Church of Christ. The Wanderers
had been waiting more than half an hour to start an after-service ride to Lake Elsinore, but they couldn’t leave without Stratton.
After mechanical breakdowns had ruined rides in the past, the members had agreed never to ride again without someone driving
a chase van, and Stratton was the only one in the club willing to endure that humdrum task.

Buster turned off his bike, dropped the kickstand, and gave a throat-slash sign to the members behind him. The rumble of the
Harleys died away and the usual Sunday morning stillness returned to downtown Los Angeles.

Mano’s turban rubbed annoyingly against the roof of the rented Neon as he cruised along Temple, making a last check of the
blast zone. Ahead of him, he spotted a line of motorcyclists parked along the street and pulled to the curb a block ahead
of them. With only seconds left to act, he scanned the laptop beside him and disabled the charges set for that section of
street. Muttering a prayer for the bikers, he pulled the Neon back onto the road and drove away.

Walking toward the bike behind him, Chuckie Buster was stunned by a blinding flash, followed by a blast of heat that singed
his beard. Instinctively, Buster dropped to the pavement. The thunder of multiple explosions shook the ground, seeming to
come from everywhere at once as Buster huddled against the curb and prayed.

When the blasts finally ended, Buster raised his head warily. Black smoke billowed skyward, gradually revealing the devastation.
For blocks in every direction, traffic lights lay scattered like cordwood along the streets, a blackened crater marking the
base of each pole. Dotting each intersection was the mangled yellow carcass of a fallen traffic signal. Miraculously, the
poles where the Wanderers were parked were the only ones intact. They had somehow been spared.

Chuckie Buster saw it as a sign from God.

O
n the last weekend in September, the Sunday morning calm of downtown Los Angeles had been shattered by a wave of explosions.

Beginning precisely at 9 a.m., a series of blasts destroyed an electrical relay station, four power-line towers, and nineteen
traffic signals in the downtown area. From unexploded charges at the base of two utility poles, the LAPD determined the explosives
were made with ammonium nitrate, a commonly used fertilizer. There were no casualties as a result of the attacks, but much
of downtown Los Angeles was left without power. A special evening edition of the
Los Angeles Times
called the bombings “Blackout Sunday.”

During Monday morning rush hour, traffic in the central business district went into gridlock, snarled by the absence of signals
and a redeployment of traffic police to security duty. The situation worsened when car bombs exploded in three downtown parking
garages exactly at noon. Although the blasts caused no injuries, news of the bombings sent panicked office workers scrambling
out of the city. In the exodus, many commuters, trapped in the traffic, abandoned their cars and fled on foot.

They were the first to leave downtown Los Angeles in panic. They would not be the last.

Hank Evans sat at his desk, fighting a severe case of drowsiness. He’d overdone the spiked Christmas eggnog in the officers’
mess during lunch, and now he was paying the price.

This depressing place could drive anyone to drink
, Evans thought, looking around at his new office. It was barren, harshly lit, and smelled of crayons and mold.

After the attacks on downtown Los Angeles, the CIA had evacuated its regional headquarters. Much to Evans’s dismay, his office
was moved from a stately federal high-rise overlooking the National Cemetery to an abandoned elementary school at the center
of Army Outpost Bravo, just outside the northern border of Quarantine Zone B.

Evans leaned over the desk, hands propping up his chin, staring dully at the pile of reports from his field agents in the
zones. Reading them would be a long and useless task—he knew their efforts had been futile.

The loss of all Hispanic operatives had crippled the CIA. Few Anglos possessed the language skills and cultural subtleties
to penetrate the growing number of rebel groups surfacing within the zones. In Evans’s opinion, the CIA had better information
on the numerous foreign enemies the nation faced than the Hispanic insurgency at home.

As the domestic situation had worsened, the bloated CIA bureaucracy finally began to shift its attention away from its foreign
operations to the escalating crisis. Evans felt it had taken too long. As it was, the CIA was barely keeping up with the overseas
conflicts. This growing challenge on the home front was stretching the Agency’s resources to the breaking point. Some hard
decisions would need to be made in Washington. Given its present resources, Evans knew the Agency could not sustain intelligence
networks on this many fronts at once. It was impossible—and demoralizing.

He needed more coffee. As Evans rose to get another cup, Bill Perkins popped his head into the doorway. “Hank, I’ve got some
good news,” he said, smiling. “We might just have ourselves a mole at La Defensa del Pueblo.”

“Come in. Sit down,” Evans said, retreating to his chair, grateful for the distraction. “What’s the scoop?”

“I told the Army intel guys to keep their eyes open for me and they came up with someone who looks promising. His name’s Ernesto
Alvarez. He’s a gangbanger they busted for trying to bribe a trooper on guard duty. He wanted the soldier to make himself
scarce for a while. My guess is he had a shipment of drugs coming in. Anyway, after they nabbed him, Alvarez told the intel
guys he’d give them information on the leaders of La Defensa del Pueblo if they’d release him. The names he provided check
out—Ramon Garcia and Josefina Herrera.”

“That’s no big secret, Bill,” Evans said, recalling Maria Prado’s report on the rally in Salazar Park. “Garcia and Herrera
have both appeared publicly at DDP functions in the past. Anyone could have that information.”

Perkins looked crestfallen. “Well, it’s the only break we’ve had so far, Hank.”

Evans didn’t want to disappoint his subordinate. He knew Perkins, juggling overseas assignments, had scrambled to come up
with something. “Well, there’s a chance this gangbanger might be able to help us. Like you said, we haven’t got any other
leads or inside sources right now.”

Perkins seemed relieved. “I’d like to put him on a retainer, Hank. I’m worried that if I turn this guy loose, he’ll bolt and
we’ll never see him again.”

“How much?”

“Well, if he’s a dope dealer, it’ll take some serious coin to keep him coming back. I’d say ten thousand a month.”

Evans considered the request. Their funding was being cut again. But with so little being produced by their fieldwork, their
budget allocation for this type of intelligence gathering was still pretty much intact.
Better to use it than to lose it
, Hank told himself.

“OK, Bill. I’m going to go with you on this one.”

“I’ll get on it. My gut tells me this guy’s the real deal,” Perkins said as he rose from his chair.

“Let’s find out. And soon.”

M
ano stared at the tops of the skyscrapers visible over the west wall. Without their once-familiar lights, the buildings were
hazy silhouettes against the night sky. Had it been worth it? They’d succeeded in depopulating downtown Los Angeles; there
was little doubt of that.

In the weeks following Blackout Sunday, they’d detonated a succession of bloodless explosions in downtown parking lots. Wells
Fargo had been the first company to announce they were relocating their corporate headquarters to a more secure location.
Other downtown companies soon followed.

As Jo had predicted, the flight of the corporations was the start of a stampede. Worried parents insisted USC close its downtown
campus. The Los Angeles Library moved its collection to regional branches, shuttering its landmark high-rise. The Opera and
the Philharmonic discontinued their seasons. Without clientele from downtown workers and arts patrons, most restaurants and
bars closed their doors.