Dantes' Inferno (13 page)

She collided with Special Agent Purcell as the smaller woman suddenly rounded a hallway corner.

“Follow me,” Purcell ordered.

“Where's Church?” Sylvia kept pace stride for stride.

“Manning the command post.” Purcell pushed open an exit door, stepping out into hot air and blinding sunlight.

“What command post?”

Purcell said, “Thanks to Dantes we've got ourselves a bomb.”

A bomb has a heart. If you doubt me just hold a ticking bundle in your arms and see if you don't feel the thrill of new life.

Mole's Manifesto

9:11
A.M.
The lure of danger is exerting its influence like gravitational pull.

Uncomfortable in the hot bright air, M approaches the shadow of the building on Spring Street just as the first wave of law enforcement and public safety officials arrive. A quartet of men, focused and deadly serious, flow from their vehicles; they are dealing with a bomb threat. He recognizes Detective Church, LAPD, in the process of establishing a command post.

M has reason to be here, too. Credentials.

His pulse doesn't even jump when a fast-moving cop crosses his path, almost shoving him out of the way. Around him, employees, tourists, and city residents populating courtyards and sidewalks are still unaware of atmospheric changes. Not for long.

Keeping pace with his neighbors, he observes an unmarked sedan as it pulls around the corner of Spring toward Temple. In the distance, a fire truck rumbles. Too soon for sirens. Official emergency schematics will focus on maintaining order, preserving crowd control, avoiding panic, averting chaos.

M has always found social psychology—behavior of the
masses—entertaining. The collective consciousness of fear follows a surprisingly predictable course. At this very moment, he feels the first shift, subtle, fast moving. Expressions alter—pedestrian faces registering surprise, then concern. They glance at each other but nobody is totally spooked. Not yet.

Within minutes, a state-of-siege mentality will override the normal bureaucratic pace of everyday city business.

Danger is something he knows well—it comes with the tools of his trade.

Ammonium nitrate. Acetic anhydride. Paraformaldehyde.

PETN. Acetone. Mineral oil.

Datasheet. M-118. M-186.

Recipes for mass destruction.

M is the cook, and his expert hands—with almost delicate bones—always find their mark. The hands of a bomber scarred by experience. Hands of a collaborative artist. Of an extremely careful man.

Always cut a perfect fuse.

Always double prime.

Always wear cotton, silk, or wool; man-made fibers melt.

Never allow yourself to become insolent or brazen unless you've grown weary of this world.

Never turn your back on the beast.

Golden rules for the art of improvised death. There are many more. Rules for the kitchen. Rules for the field. M's learned them over the years. He's learned the hard way.

Like Dantes . . . who knows the rules of safety, too.

He smiles hesitantly at a passing woman, asking, “What's going on?”

He sees her double take, the look of concern. He hears her fading response, “Maybe a fire?” as she breaks stride, then continues on.

Ah, yes
. Now, he can feel them reacting; the faint seepage
of panic is like blood as it dissipates in calm ocean waters.

He is guessing here—officials will cave in and decide to evacuate. The extortion note implies a connection to Dantes; the location, the importance of the building's occupants, and its symbolic weight for LA all tip the scales in favor of extra precautionary measures.

Your average bomb search in a large building is best carried out by informed employees and public safety officials without full evacuation. It's cheaper and more efficient to allow building security to patrol familiar territory, with the backup of fire department and bomb squad personnel who will deal with suspicious objects or possible devices.

Usually it all comes to naught.

Most bomb threats are hoaxes.

But this isn't your
average
bomb scare.

It's all part of the big plan. Project Inferno. Carefully orchestrated, already embedded in the very heart of the city, its veins and arteries, its central nervous system. He has spent months laying out a fastidious grid of destruction. Now hell is just a hop and a skip away. He watches the FBI and ATF agents—chests puffed, ready to piss on their territory—pulling up in their respective bureau vehicles.

He is careful not to laugh out loud. But damn, he feels good.

Always
—it never fails—there comes a time when the poetry, the artistry takes over, and then the technique, the anal precision, the pain fades away underneath a pure and rarefied hum. He is humming now.

M is invisible—blending in with purpose—walking past the perimeter, flashing his credentials. Not one eyebrow raised.

He is a man who creates his own history. Months earlier,

he decided upon a position at a consulting firm. With his résumé, how could they refuse to hire him?

It is his job to track earthquake damage, to map underground systems, to know the city's infrastructure and how it works—under normal conditions and in crisis. He shares responsibility for public safety.

He nods when he hears, “No radio communication, and check in at the command post.”

“Right.”

He scans the crowd for eyes that flicker with recognition, for faces that sign their own death warrants because he cannot afford to be recognized.

He is less than fifteen hundred meters from Metro Detention and the Roybal Federal Building. The hair on his arms stands erect. Dantes is so close he should be able to read M's mind.

I'm thinking of our years together—especially that day when I died and you went on to become the esteemed professor, the underground outlaw bomber, the famed author and idolized cult hero
.

If your public had known the truth they would've slapped you from your pedestal sooner, Dantes
.

I know damn well what you're thinking, friend
.

You're faced with the coward's dilemma
.

You've lived a lie. Isn't it better to take it to the grave?

You're trapped in a coward's nightmare—and the only way out is down to hell
.

I never took the coward's path. I took my punishment like a man. And I've nursed my grudge until it's burnt a sweet hole in my brain
.

I died
. His smile faded.
And you stood me up at my funeral, Dantes
.

In contemporary terrorism, criminalists must focus on the political bomber, the man who believes the urgency of his cause justifies the death of innocent people.

Leo Carreras, M.D., Ph.D., and Sylvia Strange, Ph.D.,
Profiles in 21st Century Terrorism

9:21
A.M.
“Move away from the barricades!”

Sylvia stayed close to Special Agent Purcell.

They were just outside the federal building—at the corner of Temple and Los Angeles Streets—and an LAPD uniformed cop worked hard to stay cool while he maneuvered a DPS sawbuck, inching it toward a growing crowd of onlookers.

“The hell's going on?” a large, bombastic woman draped under a bright red muumuu challenged the officer. “I have files for the mayor's office.”

“No deliveries, ma'am. Step away from the barricade.”

“The hell I'm not, and don't you ‘ma'am' me—”

With fleeting pity for the beleaguered cop, Sylvia tuned out the exchange and focused on Purcell, who was moving very fast. They traveled west on Temple toward Main Street. Between snatches of the agent's terse cellular exchanges and a monosyllabic Q&A session, Sylvia was getting a rough picture of the situation.

City officials had agreed to cordon off a five-block perimeter between First and Temple from Hill to San Pedro;
motorized traffic already snaked around the crowds of curious spectators. Under the direction of uniformed officers, a steady stream of pedestrians had just begun to flow from the fortified area. Law enforcement, the fire department, and emergency personnel were working with somber efficiency. They'd hit the street, code 2, urgent, no sirens.

The bomb squad was on the way to look for a bomb—that search would be based upon information that had come from Sylvia's interview with John Dantes.

But which information?

Purcell refused to comment on that subject; she was too busy with her cell phone.

The federal agent flashed her credentials at the jittery LASO deputy manning yet another barricade, this one at the corner of Main Street. They turned south.

Sylvia thought the Civic Center complex, with its various plazas, was beginning to take on the surreal look of an abandoned city. As she followed Purcell gratefully into shade cast by a tall building, she heard music blasting from someone's radio, a fluid male voice urging the listener, “Live and die in LA.” The sound faded and exploded again: “I love Cali like I love women—”

The rest of the song's lyrics were lost as Purcell gestured down the block. “Church wants to talk to you.”

Sylvia could see the detective conferring with two other men and a woman; they were roughly 150 feet away, at the opposite end of the block. Apparently, the command post consisted of two unmarked sedans angled together, a bomb squad van parked in between, roughly three hundred feet from City Hall's south entrance.

“Our supervisory agent should be here any minute,” Purcell continued. “The chief of police is on his way in from Westwood.” The federal agent exhaled a soft stream of air. “The evacuation started with the mayor's office.”

“The bomb's at City Hall?”

Purcell answered the phone instead of the question.

Sylvia walked away from the agent, calling over her shoulder, “I didn't ask to be part of this—you demanded my help.”

“Where are you going?” Purcell called, hand over mouthpiece.

Without slowing, Sylvia pointed toward Church.

In his suit and gray fedora, LAPD badge clipped to belt, the detective paced from van to cars. He shot her a look, raising one finger in acknowledgment as he simultaneously barked into a telephone. Because of the danger of accidental detonation of a possible improvised explosive device, handheld radio communication would be kept at a minimum.

Sylvia glanced back over her shoulder and caught sight of two ATF agents—identifiable by their jackets—jogging across the street. Then she saw Special Agent Purcell moving forward to head them off. The top of Purcell's dark curls would barely tickle the ATF agents' formidable chins, but she had puffed up her chest, ready to do battle in the agency turf wars.

If the situation ran true to form, the LAPD and the fire department and the various SOs would join in the fray—all jockeying to be top dog. Questions of agency jurisdiction weren't easily settled, especially in dense urban areas, where indelible boundaries could never be drawn.

Sylvia skirted the vehicles and the command post, continuing another twenty feet to the corner of First Street. She stopped near the perimeter barricades.

She heard a baby crying, she saw the faces of curious spectators, but she wasn't aware of individual features. Bodies and buildings seemed to melt together, glazed by heat, stress, and optical illusion.

The previous ninety minutes had taken their toll, and the tension she'd managed to dance with all morning had broken through her defenses to step hard on her toes. She felt weary, inadequate,
frightened
—and that was the good news.

M was watching. He had to be. He'd arranged a spectacular show—and bought himself a front row seat.

Snatching a cigarette from her pocket, she looked out at the expanse of concrete, focusing on City Hall, her gaze drawn up the twenty-eight-story tower. LA's ziggurat.