The Enemy Inside (13 page)

Suddenly a huge flash erupts off to our left, a billowing ball of orange and yellow flame. It lasts for a few seconds and is quickly engulfed in dark black smoke. I can’t tell where it’s coming from, somewhere off in the distance.

“Airport runway,” says Herman.

It’s the right location. It appears to be in the area of the blast deflectors at the end of the runway where the jets turn up their engines for takeoff. But as we approach the area I can see a large passenger jet sitting there waiting for clearance. No problem.

The smoldering flames, the smoke that is now several hundred feet in the air, are beyond the airport, just to the other side.

Herman takes a left on Laurel and races toward the smoke. Another left on Pacific Highway and there it is. The flaming remains of a fuel tanker truck, both trailers ablaze.

Herman brings the Jeep to a stop in the middle of the road. Traffic is shutting down. People are running frantically away from the gas station where the truck is parked. A fueling hose already on fire snakes from the front trailer into a hole in the blazing concrete apron of the station fed like a burning fuse into one of its underground tanks.

Under the center section of the truck’s rear trailer, its crumpled nose embedded and flaming, almost unrecognizable, is what is left of the black sports car. Herman was right. Its hard convertible top has been opened and peeled back either by the force of the collision or the blast that followed. The searing heat generates its own wind. In the dancing flames, two figures still strapped in their seats, little more than bobbing skeletons, seem to dance in the heat waves that rise up from the blistering asphalt pavement under the car.

Without warning, the blast hits us, a gust of searing heat so intense that I don’t even hear the sound of the explosion as the shock wave passes through us. I shield my face with one hand and turn away as Herman and I try to huddle, taking what cover we can below the dashboard of the Jeep. The concussion rocks the car and leaves us momentarily stunned. I can hear nothing but the pounding of my own heart, as if I have been immersed in a sea of instant silence.

As I raise my head above the dash I see that most of the truck is gone. Only the frame of the tractor with its engine block and dual rear axle remain, the melted rubber from its tires still flaming as black smoke rises from the wreck. There is no sign of the car or its two occupants, only a massive molten hole in the ground where moments before I had seen it.

FIFTEEN

A
na Agirre methodically tracked the location of the signal as she drove south down I-5. She continually glanced across to the passenger seat of her rental car as she watched the beeping signal on the map overlay from her open laptop. The signal was being fed by a small satellite antenna on the car’s dash that was wired into the computer.

Just as she passed under Interstate 8, less than four miles from the city center, she looked back up at the road and saw a massive ball of fire as it erupted in the distance somewhere off to the right of I-5. Whatever it was, she guessed that it was no more than two, maybe three miles ahead. The ball of flame continued to roll high into the sky as if in slow motion, brilliant yellow turning to orange until it was enveloped in a thick veil of black smoke. Both hands on the wheel, she glanced back over at the computer and its beeping signal. The location of the explosion and the signal on the map caused the muscles in her stomach to tighten.

She veered to the right onto the shoulder of the freeway and gunned the small car, passing a line of slower vehicles. Traffic on the highway began to pile up as she got closer to the column of smoke. The roiling black cloud, like an evil genie out of its bottle, reached several hundred feet into the air as it drifted across the elevated freeway ahead. She could see cars, their front ends dipping in a parade of red lights, as drivers stomped on their brakes.

Agirre took an exit and found herself emerging down a long ramp from the freeway onto a broad surface street. It was three lanes in each direction divided by a raised curb and the cylindrical concrete pillars supporting the overhead freeway. There were signs to the airport ahead. She followed them and within minutes found herself driving through a dense fog of black soot. She turned the fan of the air con to the off position on the little car’s dash to keep the acrid smoke from filling the passenger compartment.

Ana began to wonder if they had used her equipment to bring down an airplane. If so, she would be running for cover for the rest of her life. The US authorities would turn over every rock to find out who was responsible. If they found any trace of the equipment it would lead back to her. She navigated blindly for three blocks until the breeze off the ocean began to clear the air, pushing the smoke to the east, toward downtown.

As she eased into an intersection behind traffic, Ana saw the burning wreckage off to her right, the smoldering remains of a truck. Next to it was a cavernous hole in the ground belching smoke and flame, the odor of gasoline wafting in the air. The electronic baying of emergency vehicles in the distance could be heard as they approached the scene, first responders. She looked for burned bodies on the ground. She couldn’t tell how many might have been killed.

Ana hesitated for only a second. She knew it was now or never. She had to recover the equipment. She was furious, seething with anger. They had used her equipment in a garish display of pyrotechnics that was certain to result in dramatic news coverage. She could see cameras on some of the light poles along the street. This meant that authorities would have videotape of the seconds leading up to the crash and its resulting explosion. These pictures would make international news. Depending on the body count, the images would spur authorities to dig deep looking for the answers as to the cause.

Cars were stopped on the road ahead of her. Ana didn’t care. She drove up onto the sidewalk to get around them. She kept going, one eye on the bleeping signal still emitting from her laptop as she approached the location. It was now less than two hundred meters ahead. Ana knew that if they turned off the equipment she would lose the signal and, with it, any hope of recovering her equipment.

Bright graffiti covered part of the exterior of what had once been a spit-polished building owned by the military. A man in his early thirties wearing a blue hardhat and white coveralls climbed down the shaky steel ladder fixed to the structure’s rear wall, a kind of fire escape. The place was an old warehouse once used by the navy to mothball supplies. It had been turned over to the city during one of a series of base closures designed to bring down government costs. Instead, costs skyrocketed and the building lay largely abandoned, used mostly by vagrants who lit fires inside its crumbling walls on chilly nights.

As soon as the man reached the bottom rung he jumped the four-foot gap to the ground, then looked back up to his colleague. “Send it on down!”

The man on the roof was similarly attired. He passed a sealed case the size of your average rolling luggage over the parapet on the roof and lowered it quickly on a rope to the man on the ground. Anyone seeing them would think they were doing maintenance, except that it was getting late, already well past dusk.

The man down below unfastened the rope from the handle on the case and lugged the heavy ribbed, stainless-steel box toward a car. The case contained a laptop, an external power pack, and two large batteries, enough energy to operate the computer and the small antenna for three hours.

The man’s car was parked a few feet away next to a white utility van they had rented to carry the larger part of the load. It took maybe thirty seconds to open the trunk of the car and load the box inside. When he was finished, he headed back toward the ladder. By then the rope had disappeared once more up onto the roof of the building.

Blaring horns and the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance. The man at the bottom of the ladder looked nervously in the direction of all the commotion, about three blocks away. He cupped his hands to direct a restrained shout up to the man on the roof. “Hurry up!” It was getting dark. With all the squad cars descending on the area, headlights coming from an abandoned building might draw attention.

Up top, the other man stuck his head over the edge of the roof and looked down. “Gimme a second. I don’t want to drop it.” He disappeared back to his task. A few seconds later, a large heavy tubular tripod was eased over the edge of the roof and lowered to the ground.

The man down below undid the rope and carried the tripod toward the van. By the time he returned there was no sign of the rope or his compatriot up top. “Get a move on. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Go ahead!” said the man on the roof. “I can handle the rest.”

“You sure?”

“Yes! Go!”

The man on the ground wasted no time. He jogged toward the car. In less than a minute he was out on the road, headed the other way, away from all the flashing lights and the high-grade action down the street.

His partner on the roof had only two more items to load up, the fourteen-inch satellite antenna and the coil of cable that came with it. He strapped these together with a cable tie, wrapped the end of the rope through a metal bracket on the back of the antenna, and lowered the whole package over the edge of the roof and down. As it settled onto the ground he dropped the rest of the rope over the side. He climbed up and over the parapet onto the ladder and down. By now it was nearly dark. He moved quickly to gather up the antenna, cable, and the nylon rope as he headed toward the van.

The double doors at the back were already open. He skipped up into the cargo area and carefully deposited the antenna onto the floor. He secured it with a tie-down so it wouldn’t fly around.

As he stepped out of the back of the van and closed the doors, he was busy searching for the keys in his pocket. He barely noticed the brief red flicker of the laser-guided broad head as it rocketed toward him. In less time than it took to blink, the rotating razor-sharp edges at the arrow’s tip tore into the center of his chest. The momentum of the arrow carried it through his body as the glowing tip just missed his spine and came out his back. Skewered like a piece of meat, he dropped to the ground like a sack of flour. All of it without a sound, the difference between Ana and the people who abused her equipment.

She moved quickly across the graveled pavement behind the building. She looked in the back of the van and quickly realized that only part of the equipment was there, the antenna and some cable.

By the time she reached the man on the ground, the muscles in his legs were still twitching. A froth of bloody bubbles emerged from the corner of his mouth carried on a shallow breath. He was still alive, but he wouldn’t be for long.

She laid the bow on the ground and got up close to his face. “Where’s the rest of it? The box with the computer?” She grabbed him by the hair and pulled his face up to hers so he could see her in the darkness. “Is it up on the roof?”

She realized he couldn’t speak and watched as the life went out of his eyes.

Agirre took a deep breath and then allowed the man’s head to settle back onto the ground. She reached around behind him with gloved fingers and quickly unscrewed the broad tip of the arrow from its shaft. She examined it to make sure that no part of the razor’s steel had broken off to become embedded in the wound.

Ana then dropped the arrow’s tip into a small plastic bag and slipped this into her coat pocket. Then with enough force to raise his back off the ground, she stood and pulled the fletch end of the shaft with both hands until it slipped from his body. She made no effort to wipe the streaks of blood from the shaft on his coveralls. She wanted no telltale signs offering any clue as to what had killed him.

The rotating flared razors on the tip of the arrow would have made a massive wound obliterating any pathologic evidence as to its cause. The frayed threads of cloth where the arrow had pierced the coveralls, front and back, might offer a hint to a bow hunter. But most pathologists were used to dealing with gunshot and stab wounds, where they would collect ballistic evidence or measure the shape and depth of a knife wound looking for toolmarks on bone. In this case they might venture a guess, but there was nothing left behind from which to form any real conclusion, no toolmarks or ballistics that could be matched to a weapon.

By morning, the removable razor edges of the broad head would be dancing in the sandy surf beneath the ocean off the end of some pier. The wooden shaft would be burned. The light compound takedown bow would be reduced to its three component parts and slid back into their plastic tube, less than a foot in length. Checked with other luggage at the airport, it had cleared both security and customs coming from France, as had the arrows after they were reduced to pieces to be assembled on arrival.

Ana found the keys to the van on the ground next to the dead man’s left hand. First she climbed up onto the roof of the building where she had seen him coming down. There was nothing there.

She had arrived at the corner of the building just in time to see the first man jump into the car and drive away.

There was no sign of the large steel case. Maybe he had put it up in the front seat. She picked the bow up off the ground and went around the vehicle toward the driver’s-side door. When she opened it, her heart missed a beat. There was no sign of the box, the computer, or the one-of-a-kind software inside it, items that she feared could be traced back to its makers, and from them to her.

By lowering the front passenger seat of her rental car, Ana was able to load the antenna, cable, and tripod into the vehicle. She would rent a storage locker to stash the stuff until she could find the rest.

SIXTEEN

T
he ragtop on my old Jeep is singed and the passenger-side Mylar window is partially melted from the heat of the blast. Whatever took control of the flashy high-end car that carried Ben to her death, it was clear from what I saw that her boyfriend who was driving was helpless. The fact that Alex was unconscious, and from everything we know couldn’t operate a car in his condition, raises the obvious question: Was Serna killed in the same way? Was Alex just the passenger payload in a guided missile?