3rd Degree (18 page)

She knew she wouldn't be able to sleep. The answering machine was blinking. She'd been out of touch all day. She ought to check her e-mail, maybe just to get Jill off her mind.

She went to her computer and checked out the Chronicle's front page. The story of the day was ricin. Jill's COD had got-ten out. Her death, coupled with Bengosian's, had put the city in a panic. How easily could ricin be obtained? What were the symptoms? What if it got into the water supply? Were there antidotes? How many people could die in San Francisco?

She was about to check her e-mail when an Instant Mes-sage bubbled through. Hotwax1199.

Don't waste your time trying to trace this,

the message began. Cindy froze.

No need to even write it down. It belongs to a sixth-grader in Dublin, Ohio. He doesn't even know it's gone. His name is Marion Delgado, the message continued. Do you know who I am?

Yes, Cindy wrote back. I know who you are. You're the son of a bitch who killed my friend Jill. Why are you contacting me?

There's going to be another strike, the answer appeared.

Tomorrow. Not like before. A lot of innocent people are going to die. Completely innocent people.

Where? Cindy typed. She waited anxiously. Can you tell me where? Please!

This G-8 meeting has to be canceled, the mes-sage returned.

You said you wanted to help, so help, god-damnit! These people, the government, they have to own up to their crimes. Murdering innocent people, just for oil. Multinationals on the loose, preying on the poor across the world. You said you wanted to get our message across. Here's your chance. Make these thieves and mur-derers stop their crimes now.

There was a silence. Cindy wasn't sure if the messenger was still there. She didn't know what to do next.

More words appeared on her screen.

Get them to acknowledge their crimes. It's the only way to stop these deaths.

This was something else, Cindy was thinking. The writer was reaching out. Maybe a sliver of guilt, or reason, holding back the insanity.

I can tell you want to stop this insanity,

Cindy wrote.

Please, tell me what's going to happen. No one has to get hurt!

Nothing. No further reply came.

“Shit!” Cindy pounded the keyboard. They were using her, that's all. To get their message out.

She typed:

Why did Jill Bernhardt have to die? What crime did she commit? Stealing oil? Globaliza-tion? What did she do?

A full thirty seconds elapsed. Then a minute. Cindy was sure she had lost the messenger. She shouldn't have gotten mad. This was bigger than her anger or her grief.

She finally rested her head against the monitor. When she looked up, she couldn't believe it. More words had appeared.

Jill Bernhardt didn't have anything to do with G-8. This one wasn't like the others. This one was personal, the message read.

SOMETHING TERRIBLE was going to happen today. Cindy's latest e-mail assured us of that. And her strange pen pal hadn't been wrong yet, hadn't misled her or lied.

It was a sickening, helpless feeling to watch the dawn creep into the sky and know: in spite of all the resources of the U.S. government, all the fancy vigilance and warnings and cops we could put out on the street, all my years of solv-ing homicides... August Spies were going to strike today. We couldn't do a thing to stop the killers.

That dawn found me in the city's Emergency Command Center, one of those “undisclosed locations” hidden in a nondescript cinder-block building in a remote section of the naval yard out in Hunter's Point. It was a large room filled with monitors and high-tech communications equipment. Everyone there was on edge. What were August Spies going to pull now?

Joe Molinari was there. The mayor, Tracchio, the heads of the fire department and Emergency Medical Task Force, all of us crammed around the “war table.”

Claire was there, too. The latest warning had everyone freaked out that this new attack could be a widespread one involving ricin. Molinari had a toxins expert on alert.

During the night we had decided to release Hardaway's name and description to the press. So far we hadn't been able to locate him, and the situation had only gotten exponen-tially worse. Murder had given way to public safety. We were certain that Hardaway was involved somehow and that he was extremely dangerous.

The morning news shows came on. Hardaway's face was the lead story on all three networks. It was like some nerve-racking doomsday countdown straight out of a disaster movie, only much worse. The thought that any minute in our city a bomb could go off or a poison be spread, maybe even by plane.

By seven, a few of the inevitable Hardaway sightings had started to trickle in. A clerk was sure he'd seen him in Oak-land at an all-night market two weeks ago. Other calls came from Spokane, Albuquerque, even New Hampshire. Who knew if any of them were for real? But all the calls had to be checked out.

Molinari was on the phone with someone named Ronald Kull, from the WTO.

“I think we should issue some kind of communiqu‚,” the deputy director pressed. “No admissions, but say that the organization is considering the grievances, if they show a cessation of violence. It'll buy us time. It could save lives. Maybe a lot of lives.”

He seemed to have gotten some agreement and said he would draft the language. But then it had to be approved, by Washington and by the WTO.

All this red tape. The clock ticking. Some kind of disaster about to strike at any moment.

Then, like the e-mail foretold, it happened.

At 8:42 A.M. I don't think I'll ever forget the time of day.

KIDS HAD BEEN DRINKING from a water fountain at the Red-wood City Elementary School. They got sick.... Those were the first chilling words that we heard.

Every heart in the room slammed to a stop at the same time. 8:42. Within seconds, Molinari was patched through to the principal of the school. A decision was made to evacuate it immediately. Claire, who had strapped on a headset, was trying to get through to the EMS vehicle carrying the kids who had gotten sick.

Never before had I seen the most capable people in the city so utterly panicked. Molinari carefully instructed the principal: “No one touches the water until we get there. The school has to be cleared right now.”

He ordered an FBI team on a copter down to Redwood City. The toxicology expert was hooked right into our speakers.

“If it's ricin,” he said, “we're going to see immediate convul-sions, massive broncho-constriction, with intense, influenza-like symptoms.”

Claire had gotten patched through to the school nurse. She identified herself and said, “I need you to carefully describe the symptoms the children are showing.”

“I didn't know what it was,” a frantic voice came back. “The kids were suddenly weak, showing signs of severe nau-sea. Temperatures were almost a hundred and four. Abdomi-nal pain, throwing up.”

One of the emergency copters had already gotten to the school and was circling, relaying film from above. Children were rushing out of the exits, guided by teachers. Frantic parents were arriving on the scene.

All of a sudden, a second report crackled over the air-waves. A worker had collapsed at a construction site in San Leandro. That was on the other side of the bay. They didn't know if it was a heart attack, or something ingested.

As we tried to follow up, a news flash broadcast came over one of the monitors: “Breaking news... In Redwood City, the local elementary school has been evacuated after chil-dren were rushed to a nearby hospital, having collapsed, showing signs of violent sickness, possibly related to a toxic substance. This, on top of broadcast alerts of possible terror-ist activity today...”

“Any more reports of illness from the school?” Molinari spoke into the phone.

“None yet,” the principal replied. The school was com-pletely evacuated. The helicopter was still circling.

Suddenly a doctor from the ER gave us an update. “Their temperatures are one oh three point five to one oh four,” the doctor reported. “Acute nausea and dyspnea. I don't know what's causing it. I've never had experience with this sort of thing before.”

“You need to take immediate mouth and nasal swabs to determine if they were exposed,” the toxins expert was instructing. “And chest X-rays. Look for any kind of bilateral infiltrates.”

Claire cut in. “How are the pulmonary functions? Breath-ing? Lung activity?”

Everyone waited anxiously. “They seem to be function-ing,” the doctor reported.

Claire grabbed Molinari's arm. “Listen, I don't know what's going on here, but I don't think this is ricin,” she said.

“How can you be sure?”

Claire had the floor. “Ricin attacks through a necrosis of the vascular cells. I saw the results. The lungs would already be starting to degrade. Also, ricin has a four-to-eight-hour incubation period, does it not, Dr. Taub?” she asked the toxi-cology expert on the line.

The expert begrudgingly agreed.

“That means they would've had to have been exposed during the night. If the lungs are symptom-free, I don't think it has anything to do with that water. I don't know if this is some kind of staph attack, or strychnine.... I don't think it's ricin.”

The minutes passed slowly as the doctors in Redwood City ran through the first series of diagnostic tests.

An EMS team was already on the scene in San Leandro. They reported that the construction worker there was having a heart attack and had been stabilized. “A heart attack,” they repeated.

Minutes later, Redwood City reported back. A chest X-ray showed no deterioration of the lungs in any of the children. “The blood work showed traces of staphylococcal entero-toxin B.”

I watched Claire's expression.

“What the hell does that mean?” Mayor Fiske demanded.

“It means they've got a severe staph infection,” she said, exhaling. “It's serious, and it's contagious, but it's not ricin.”

THE RINCON CENTER was full at noon. Hundreds of people chatting over lunch, scanning the sports pages, rush-ing around with bags from the Gap or Office Max. Just relax-ing under the enormous plane of water that fell from the glittering roof.

The pianist was playing. Mariah Carey. “A hero comes along...” But no one seemed to notice the music or the player. Hell, he was awful.

Robert sat reading the paper, his heart beating wildly. No more room for talk or argument, he kept thinking. No more waiting for change. Today he'd make his own. God knows, he was one of the disenfranchised. In and out of VA hospitals. Made crazy by his combat experience, then abandoned. That was what had made him a radical.

He tapped the leather briefcase with his shoes, just to make sure it was still there. He was reminded of something he had seen on TV, in a dramatization of the Civil War. A run-away slave had been freed and then conscripted to fight for the North. He fought in some of the bloodiest battles of the war. After one, he happened to spot his old master, shell-shocked and wounded among the Confederate prisoners. “Hello, massa,” the slave went up to him and said, “looks like bottom rail's on top now.”

And that's what Robert was thinking as he panned the unsuspecting lawyers and bankers slopping down their lunch. Bottom rail's on top now....

Across the crowd, the man Robert was waiting for stepped into the concourse - the man with the salt-and-pepper hair. His blood came alive. He stood, wrapping his fingers around the case handle, keeping his eyes fixed on the man - his target for today.

This was the moment, he told himself, when all the fancy speeches and vows and homilies turn into deed. He tossed down his newspaper. The area around the fountain was jam-packed. He headed toward the piano.

Are you afraid to act? Are you afraid to set the wheel in motion?

No, Robert said, I'm ready. I've been ready for years.

He stopped and waited at the piano. The pianist started up a new tune, the Beatles: “Something.” More of the white man's garbage.

Robert smiled at the young red-headed dude behind the keyboard. He took a bill out of his wallet and stuffed it in the bowl.

Thanks, man, the pianist nodded.

Robert nodded back, almost laughed at the false cama-raderie, and rested his briefcase against a leg of the piano. He checked the progress of his target - thirty feet away - and casually kicked the briefcase underneath the piano. Take that, you sons of bitches!

Robert started to drift slowly toward the north entrance. This is it, baby. This is what he'd been waiting for. He fumbled through his pocket for the stolen cell phone. The target was only about fifteen feet away. Robert turned at the exit doors and took it all in.

The man with the salt-and-pepper hair stopped at the piano, just as the Professor said he would. He took a dollar bill out of his wallet. Behind him, the eighty-foot column of water splashed down from the ceiling.

Robert pushed through the doors, walked away from the building, and depressed two preassigned keys on the cell phone - G-8.

Then the whole world seemed to burst into smoke and flame, and Robert felt the most incredible satisfaction of his entire life. This was a war he wanted to fight in.

He never saw the flash, only the building wrenching in a rumble of concrete and glass, doors blowing out behind him.

Start the revolution, baby.... Robert smiled to himself. Bottom rail's on top now....

THERE WAS A LOUD SHOUT in the Emergency Command Center. One of the guys manning the police frequency yanked off his headset. “A bomb just went off at the Rincon Center!”

I turned to Claire and felt the life deflate out of me. The Rincon Center was one of the city's most spectacular settings, in the heart of the Financial District, home to government agencies, business offices, and hundreds of apartments. This time of day, it would be jammed. How many people had just died?