Hot Wire (21 page)

"Maybe it's a dummy," I said desperately.

"Not a chance," Brown said. "That's an old Russian city-buster. Ten or twenty megatons. If it goes off, millions of people will die." He looked like he wanted a drink bad. "They've been warning about domestic terror attacks for years. Maybe they need another 9/11 for some reason. Something bigger this time: something that will really scare the hell out of people." He leaned forward, staring into space. "If a nuclear weapon went off in the United States, people would be so terrorized they'd go along with anything. The administration could start World War III, suspend the constitution, impose a full-blown police state. They could round up anybody who got in their way, stick them in FEMA camps. They could do anything they wanted."

"Screw that." Arn was going nuts. "What do they want with
us
?"

"Nothing," Brown said grimly. "You're witnesses, that's all. Pests. They recovered Chase's documents, so they don't care about you anymore. I work for the NewsWire, so they'll probably question me about my contacts – make sure they haven't missed anybody – but they're just cleaning up loose ends." He looked over at me. "Did you notice the labels on those crates out there? This must've been Ligar Shipping's warehouse."

"So what?" I didn't like his expression. "What's in them?"

Brown shrugged. "Stuff they were shipping," he said. "Legal cargo. It doesn't really matter. Ligar Shipping was a front, an import-export company. They set it up so they could ship the bomb from their stockpile on the east coast, but the company had to appear to be legitimate. It had to be involved in legitimate business." He took one last drag, then dropped his butt on the floor and ground it out with his shoe. "They have to shut it all down now. Destroy all the evidence."

"What's that mean?" I was getting this nasty chill.

"They moved the Lexus here," he said. "Why do you think they did that?" He gave me this twitchy smile, then started digging around in his pockets for another smoke. "They didn't care if we saw their faces and they didn't even care if we saw the bomb. Get the picture?" He found a cigarette, lit up and blew a thin stream of smoke at the floor. "They've probably got a plane waiting somewhere. Oakland Airport, maybe. They'll leave us here with the rest of the evidence, then get as far away as they can and push the button."

Footsteps approached outside, then the lock on the door rattled and I almost peed my pants. Arn clenched his fists, his face drawn and pale, but Brown just stared at the floor, resigned to whatever was coming, I guess. A couple seconds passed, then the door opened and Baldy walked in with a revolver in his hand, looking us over.

"All right," he said, his eyes bored. "Let's go."

"Where are you taking us?" I asked.

"Come on." He waved his gun at the door.

We shuffled into the warehouse and he made us stand by the Lexus with our hands clasped behind our heads. They'd left the keys in the ignition. Deja vu. Chase's briefcase and the suitcase full of money were still sitting on the table on the other side of the car, but they might as well have been on the dark side of the moon. Forty or fifty feet away, the circle of arc lights glared down on that giant bomb.

Baldy ignored us for a while, talking to somebody on a walkie-talkie while a couple thugs covered us with sub-machine guns. The warehouse stretched away in front of us, the dock off to our right somewhere, and I could just see the rain falling outside a window in the distance. Goons with dollies were moving around in the narrow aisles that ran between the stacks of cargo and I could hear more of them yelling back and forth on the other side of the building. On our left, behind the Lexus, a passage wide enough for a car led to another open area with some gas pumps and a garage door that probably opened onto a service alley behind the warehouse.

Some guy wearing a headset mike walked by with a clipboard, ignoring us completely, then he turned down one of the aisles and headed into the maze of crates, getting smaller and smaller. A train whistled somewhere. Crossing bells chimed in the distance. Looking down an aisle in front of us, I could see a couple suits loitering around a forklift about fifty feet away. They were smoking. Came off relaxed. Brown was right: no one seemed very worried about being discovered, so they must've had some kind of official protection. I couldn't tell how many people were in the warehouse, but there were a lot of them.

Arn was staring at the suitcase on the table.

"That's the money?" he whispered.

"Yeah," I said, feeling sorry for myself. I'd had it in my hands for a couple minutes. Back at Yah Joe. That was the closest I was ever going to get to so much cash.

Baldy sat down at the table, turning his chair around and folding his arms on the backrest with his gun pointing in our general direction. We stared at each other for a while, then Crewcut walked out of the stacks, smoking a cigarette. He stopped to talk to one of the guys working on the bomb, checked his watch, then came over to us and walked up to Brown, studying him like he was some kind of fungus.

"Adam Brown," he said. "I knew I'd heard that name before."

"We checked you out." Baldy scratched his head with the barrel of his gun. "Dickwad."

"You used to work for the L.A. Times," Crewcut went on. "You were Matthew's bottom boy in the Washington Bureau until they caught you selling kiddy porn."

"That's a damn lie." Brown flushed, dropping his hands.

"Keep them up, scumbag." Baldy gestured with his gun and Brown clasped his hands behind his head again, breathing hard, his left eye twitching. He looked like he was about to bust a gut.

Crewcut smiled.

"The drunk of the Bureau," he said. "Sheet for contempt, lewd/vag, DUI. You tried to pass yourself off as one of those old-school reporters, but you were just another left-wing whore printing classified material leaked by unnamed sources in violation of a dozen federal statutes." He blew a cloud of smoke in Brown's face. "Now you're a hack for some no-name scandal rag and you've been feeding dirt to Matthews on the side: politicians screwing male hookers, junky executives, bureaucrats on the take. It's good shakedown material if Matthews wants to smear a candidate or rig a city contract. Isn't that right?"

"I haven't see him in years," Brown said.

Crewcut shook his head.

"We know you work for him," he said, his eyes flickering over me and Arn, then focusing on Brown again. "I know your kind, all right. You're a typical product of government-media incest, a front for criminals and subversives. You specialize in blowing assets and undermining national security and you'd screw a dog for access."

"I told you," Brown said. "I haven't talked to Matthews for years. The first time I saw him since I left Washington was at the Emeryville police station the other day."

"Bullshit," Baldy said, frowning at one of his fingernails.

"Who else have you discussed this with?" Crewcut asked mildly. "How did you learn about Chase?" He glanced at me. "Someone must have tipped you off about Little Miss Muppet here."

Brown was about to answer when a voice jabbered over Crewcut's walkie-talkie. He raised it to his ear, listened for a minute, then tried calling somebody else. When they didn't answer, he pulled out his gun and turned to Baldy.

"That was the dock," he said. "We've got traffic on the access road."

"What kind of traffic?"

Crewcut shrugged. "It's probably nothing, but you better check it out." He glanced over at the bomb. "I tried the gate, but they didn't answer."

"It's the goddamn weather."

Baldy headed back through the stacks and Crewcut sat down at the table, holding his gun on Brown, his face flat and hard under the track lights. The two guards looked uncomfortable. Kept shifting around. Brown stared at Crewcut like a rat trapped by a snake and he didn't look too steady.

"What was that about?" Arn whispered.

"They think Brown works for Matthews," I said.

"So?" He gave me a dirty look. "So what?"

"They've got it all wrong," Brown said hoarsely.

Time dragged by, the rain beating on the metal roof. Crewcut just sat there for a while, blowing smoke rings and checking his watch, then he got another call on his walkie-talkie. It didn't look like good news. He talked to whoever it was for a minute, then turned to the guards.

"Check with Three," he told them. "We might have visitors."

They glanced at each other, then ran off, heading for the back of the warehouse and leaving us alone with Crewcut. He stood up and called to the guys working on the bomb: "What's the status?"

"Final diagnostics," one of them shouted back.

"Make it fast." For the first time, Crewcut looked nervous. He paced around, scanning the stacks of cargo, then he called somebody else on his walkie-talkie. "Can you hear me all right?" he asked when he got through. "Yeah. It's the same here. Dead spots and interference. What? I don't know yet. They're checking it out right now. Keep your eyes open and make sure everybody's still in contact. We're almost ready to clear out." Voices called back and forth on the other side of the warehouse, but it was impossible to tell what was going on.

"What's happening?" I asked under my breath. "Can you see anything?"

Brown shook his head. He was staring at the bomb with a look of growing horror. "They can't do it," he whispered. "Somebody's got to stop them..."

A few minutes later, I heard this whizzing sound and an electric cart rolled out of the stacks on our right. Baldy was driving and he had a couple of goons with him. He circled around the bomb, avoiding the cables snaking all over the floor, then pulled up next to the office and the three of them got out, hurrying over to the table. The goons were carrying shotguns and they came off tense.

"Company," Baldy said. "The gate don't answer and we got a black van parked in the alley. Dock spotted a car circling the perimeter and they picked up some burst transmissions."

"I heard." Crewcut turned to the goons. "Sweep the back and check the other end of the alley. I sent Three to get a make on the van. It could be somebody working late in one of the other buildings."

"What if we can't raise you?" one of them asked.

"You're having problems, too?" Crewcut checked the time again.

"Everybody is," Baldy told him. "Reception stinks all over the warehouse. I tried you twice, but couldn't get through."

"Something's wrong." Crewcut thought about it. "If you can't reach me, report back to the dock. I'm getting through to them all right."

"You should get over there yourself."

"I can't leave until everything's ready."

The goons climbed into the cart and rolled away.

"I sent a couple guys to check the gate," Baldy went on. "Maybe it's a false alarm. Their radio could've crapped out again or it's interference from those transformers in the lot." He looked over at the bomb. "How's it coming?"

"Final checks." Crewcut dropped his cigarette on the floor and crushed it out, scanning us like a meat inspector. "Go ahead and secure them in the office."

"OK," Baldy said, waving his revolver in our direction. "Back in the office and keep it zipped."

A gunshot made everybody jump.

Small-arms fire. A single shot. It sounded like it had come from the lot in front of the warehouse, but I couldn't tell for sure.

"What the hell?" Baldy ran into the stacks, heading for the dock.

Crewcut waved us back with his gun, trying to raise somebody on his walkie-talkie. The guys working on the bomb were looking around in confusion.

"Finish the diagnostics!" he yelled at them.

His walkie-talkie crackled, a voice gabbling through bursts of static. He shouted a question into the transmitter, adjusted the squealch, then tried it again, but he wasn't getting through. He was still trying when the electric cart came back again, flying out of one of the aisles and lurching to a stop next to the table. The two goons he'd sent to check the back hopped out with their shotguns.

"Contacts in the alley," one of them said, out of breath. "Don't know how many. Couple guys on the roof next door and some more coming in through the lot."

"Could you tell who they were?" Crewcut asked.

The goon shook his head. "Three warned us off before we got outside. They spotted them with Night Vision. Couldn't see much, but somebody's out there."

"Are your radios working?"

"Off and on. Getting a lot of interference."

"We're being jammed." Crewcut looked around. He was about to say something else when two or three shots went off, echoing through the warehouse, and we heard a lot of yelling. The place was so huge it was hard to tell where the noises were coming from.

"How much longer?" he shouted at the guys working on the bomb.

"Almost there!" They were really scrambling now.

He turned back to the goons.

"Tell them to evacuate," he said calmly. "We only need a few more minutes."

The goons jumped into the cart and took off again.

Crewcut made some more calls. Couldn't reach anybody. Dropping the walkie-talkie on the table, he sat down where he could watch us and pulled out a satellite phone. The thing must've been on a different frequency because he got through to somebody. I couldn't hear what he was saying, but I figured he was warning his employers that something had gone wrong. It was strange. Somebody was raiding the warehouse, but he didn't try to get away. Didn't seem all that worried. Maybe he thought he was covered no matter what happened.