He walked through a large room filled with couches, chairs, and fireplaces on either end.
“Hey, Alex,” a man yelled from across the room. He had an Australian accent. It was Caravelle. He crossed quickly from across the room. “Merry Christmas.”
Fortuna walked up to Caravelle and shook hands warmly.
“You’ve outdone yourself. Great party.”
“You’re late,” said Caravelle. “Several of the prize Sheilas have already been taken.”
“I’m here for the eggnog.”
Caravelle laughed. “Yeah, right. I know why you come to my parties.”
“I like to see you too, in all sincerity. You know that.”
“Of course I know that. By the way, what was the name of that girl you shagged July Fourth?”
“She was your guest. How the hell should I know? She was good-looking, wasn’t she?”
“Wars have been started over uglier girls,” said Caravelle. “She was someone’s guest, as I recall.”
“Any equals tonight?”
“Leona Lewis is here.”
“I’m not into celebrities,” said Fortuna. “Although, she is a stunner. What about models? Did you do your usual cattle call over to DNA?”
“You know it. You’ll find something you like, I’m sure. Thanks for coming, Alex.”
“I wouldn’t miss it. By the way, is that a personal O’Keeffe? It’s stunning.” Fortuna nodded to the wall above the fireplace. A massive Georgia O’Keeffe painting sat above the black marble mantel. A simple yellow adobe home sat beneath the sun, the dark brown hills behind it capped with snow.
“Not for sale. Unless you really wanted it. Funny money sort of thing.”
“How much funny money?”
“Five million.”
Fortuna paused and stared at the painting. “Done.”
“Can I at least keep it through the end of the party?” Caravelle laughed.
“Yes. Just don’t sell it to someone else.”
Fortuna went to the bar and ordered a mojito. He circulated through the party. He spoke with several people he knew; the CEO of ABC, a partner at Blackstone he went to Princeton with, others. He had another mojito, then another.
He went and sat next to a blond model from Russia, Olga. She had stunning eyes, and a longish, sharp nose. She was with a friend, another Russian, with long brown hair. Fortuna preferred the blonde. They sat on a big red leather couch, speaking to each other in Russian.
“Hello,” he said as he sat down next to them.
“Hi. Merry Christmas,” the brunette said. Her Russian accent was heavy.
“Hi,” said the blonde, smiling at Fortuna.
Then, in Russian, the blonde said to the brown-haired beauty, “He’s cute. Should we take him upstairs and fuck his brains out?”
Fortuna smiled. “That would be nice,” he responded in perfect Russian.
Their momentary surprise was followed by laughter.
On the way through the entrance foyer, he stopped at the bar and grabbed two bottles of Cristal and three glasses.
He led the girls upstairs to a suite of rooms at the western end of the house, overlooking the swimming pool.
They started by climbing into a warm bubble bath in the big marble tub. Fortuna watched as the two girls kissed each other. One of the models moved down and went down on the other as he watched for several minutes. Then they moved over next to Fortuna, and he wrapped his arms around both of them. The brown-haired girl went beneath the water and went down on him while he kissed the blonde. When she reemerged, to catch a breath, they all laughed. The two models took turns.
After the bath, they went to the bedroom. They each wore big terry cloth bathrobes. The blonde went to her small clutch and pulled out a small silver box. Fortuna pulled a large, walnut-framed mirror off the wall. The blonde laid out several lines. Fortuna grabbed a crisp bill out of his pocket and rolled it up. They took turns snorting the lines of cocaine. Soon, the robes fell off and they started to have sex.
Hours later, they fell asleep as the sounds of partiers below died off and the sound of the ocean slapping at the shore created a soothing rhythm.
Much later, Fortuna awoke, his arm still wrapped around the sleeping blonde. The brown-haired girl’s feet were next to his head. He looked at his watch; it was five forty-five in the morning.
Fortuna quietly got up and put his clothing back on. He left the room and went downstairs.
He circled back through the big living room to take another look at
the O’Keeffe. Beneath the painting, on top of the mantel, an envelope with the word “Alex” sat.
He opened it.
AF,
If you feel like a game of squash, call me. Hope you enjoyed Team Russia. I’ll have the O’Keeffe delivered to Manhattan.
—Caravelle
Fortuna walked to the closet and looked for his overcoat. It wasn’t there. He walked to the door. Outside, bitter cold greeted him. It was refreshing. He saw the Aston Martin at the far edge of the circle. He walked to it, and climbed in. The keys were in the ignition. He turned on the car and ripped up the long pebble driveway.
Back home at his East Hampton estate, he went straight to his office and called Karim in Manhattan.
“Good morning,” said Karim. “No call yet from Buck.”
“I talked to him last night,” said Alex. “Where’s the remote?”
Karim didn’t answer for a second. He cleared his throat. “The one in the East Hampton house is in the bottom drawer of the desk. The one here in Manhattan is in the ivory box below the Caravaggio.”
Fortuna opened the bottom desk drawer and removed a silver object, slightly larger than a television remote. The remote detonator had two keyboards, one with letters and the other numbers. A thick black antenna folded against the side.
“Give me the codes.”
“The codes? Why?”
“Just do what I
fucking
say, will you?”
“They’re programmed into the speed dial.”
“All forty-one?”
“Yes—but the cells are not all ready. You can’t just—”
“Then give me the code for one that’s ready. A big target.
Now.
”
“Okay, okay. Press twelve.”
INTERMODAL FACILITY AND BREAK-BULK WAREHOUSE
PORT OF LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA
Neqq felt the first tremor as he sat in the cab of the reach stacker, and he knew.
As the tremor moved the ground, in that first moment, he did not even have the time to move his hands from the gears of the big machine, but he did have time to register the feeling of soft material on his neck, chamois from the sweatshirt he’d purchased from the Target store in Long Beach, soft down against his skin, the last memory he would have on this earth.
The tremor occurred less than four seconds after the detonator that rested in Neqq’s locker received an electronic signal sent via cellular transmission, a signal telling it to pulse on. The tremor occurred less than three seconds after the detonator pulsed on and sent two identical negative ion sparks into the suitcase-sized glob of octanitrocubane mashed into the space below the foot joist in the locker. Less than two seconds after the charges turned, there occurred a reaction in the chemical makeup of the material, causing its cubane atoms to suddenly, atomically, turn upon themselves and flee the once-stable assembly of like atoms and seek oxygen and carbon, to seek it with such hunger and force that the
air became like food before a ravenous, starving wolf; the air became consumed outward from the locker in white fire and heat so intense that, could it be measured, it would have resembled the air less than a quarter mile from the bomb that fell on Nagasaki.
By one second before the tremor in Neqq’s cab, the massive explosion catapulted outward and leveled the large warehouse and tore across the great plain of decking at water’s edge, striking wood, steel, container ships moored at deck edge, gantry cranes on the docks, and, of course, people. It liquefied anyone and everyone in the warehouse, Mr. Sargent, the men and women who worked in the cafeteria. There was no pain, no recognition, nothing; no time.
The crater grew as the air fed the explosion to life. And when it reached Neqq’s cab halfway across the container field, nearly a half mile from the locker, it was moving at more than a thousand miles per hour. The containers were flung like cards in a windstorm. What terminated Neqq in point of fact was a steel beam from a container blown across the sky. It sailed across the sky like so many others and separated Neqq’s torso from his waist like a knife through butter, though it was soon joined by a wall of destroyed steel and metal; he was soon but a smattering of small parts, the largest the size of a Tootsie Roll, most just wet molecules within the slowing, but still growing, crater of destruction.
Soon the Port of Long Beach was a ball of fire, destroyed by one man, a boy really, who just five years before had, in his wildest imagination, dreamed only of saving enough money to purchase his own cow and join his father farming in the dry plains near Jamrud, growing enough wheat to make bread to feed himself, his mama and papa, and perhaps even a family of his own.
WASHINGTON SPORTS CLUB
M STREET, N.W.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Jessica’s cell phone rang as she was getting off the treadmill at the Washington Sports Club, practically deserted at such an early hour. The ring tone—three quick beeps that chimed repeatedly without stopping—meant the call was from CENCOM. Despite her already-elevated pulse, Jessica’s heart jumped.
“Tanzer,” she said.
“Hold for CENCOM Commander Fowler,” said a voice, then two quick clicks.
“Jessica, it’s Bo. We have a level red.”
Suddenly, across the television screens that filled the walls in front of the dozens of treadmills and StairMasters, rowing machines and other pieces of exercise equipment at the tony sports club, the images all became one; a live shot from a distance of several massive mushroom clouds—orange and black explosions spread out over the horizon—flames ballooning out at several points. She ran to the nearest screen and read the ticker at the bottom of the screen.
“Long Beach?” she asked.
“Affirmative,” said Fowler, the agent in charge of FBI Counterterrorism Central Command. “The port’s been wiped out.”
“Chiles?”
“Already en route to the White House. You’re to meet him there. A car should be out front as we speak.”
“Stay on the line,” she said.
Jessica ran through the exercise room to the woman’s locker room and grabbed her clothing from the locker then ran from the club. She walked quickly down M Street toward a black sedan that was parked in front, steam coming from the exhaust pipe.
“What have we got?” she said into her phone as she climbed in the backseat.
“It’s a fucking mess, Jess. We have a massive explosion of indeterminate cause that occurred less than ten minutes ago at the Port of Long Beach. The detonation happened on shore, based on what the satellite images are telling.”
“So it wasn’t shipborne.”
“No. There are forty or so piers at Long Beach. Most were destroyed, along with several ships, one of which was an Exxon supertanker. According to someone at the company, they had not begun off-loading product yet, which means almost two million barrels of petrol is helping fuel the fire.”
“How many dead?”
“No estimates yet. There are thousands of port employees. It was the four to noon shift, which is the busiest time. Rough estimate: a thousand to two thousand.”
Jessica finished changing her clothing in the back of the sedan as it sped toward the White House.
“Let’s prepare an elevation memo for the president. We need to move to severe, clamp down at the ports immediately, airports, the usual. I want that on my BlackBerry in three minutes.”
“It’s already there.”
“You’re good, Bo.”
“I had a good teacher.”
She closed the phone as the sedan entered the White House grounds
through the back gate, between the Old Executive Office Building and the West Wing of the White House. Her phone rang—again CENCOM.
“Tanzer.”
“CENCOM, hold please for Terry Savoy.”
Two clicks on the phone, then Savoy came on the line.
“Hi, Jessica, it’s Terry.”
“Hi, Terry.” She hesitated, thinking what to say, wondering whether Savoy knew yet. “How’s Teddy Marks?”
“I’d call him ‘spry,’ but he’d probably kick my ass for it.”
“Good. Look, I can’t talk for long. I’m heading into the White House. Long Beach has been struck by a bomb.”
“I know. That’s why I’m calling.”
“I’m going into the Situation Room. I need to call you back.”
“Wait, Jess.”
“What is it?”
“Remember what we talked about? Have you started looking at interagency?”
“Yes. I spoke with Chiles. I have a team in place. We’re looking at everyone who was in the meeting where Dewey’s exfiltration was discussed.”
“Are you walking into interagency?”
“Yes.”