L.A. Bytes (33 page)

The Caltran’s worker’s eyes bugged out. He backed up, hands coming up in a warding off gesture.

Adnan lunged toward the open door. His partner spun back around, but before he could bring the Sig back on target, Adnan kicked it out of his grip. The knife in his hand fl ashed and the Frenchman gasped. The gasp became a liquid gurgle. A spray of blood fi lled the van with the sharp stink of metal.

Adnan stumbled back, the knife falling from his bloody fi ngers. It clinked against the metal truck bed.

David tasted blood. He rolled onto his knees, his bound hands behind him. He felt, rather than saw, Adnan jump out of the van.

Knowing he only had seconds to act, he threw himself forward, feeling the knife handle under his chest.

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“Get out of here,” Adnan shouted at the Caltran’s guy. “I’ll shoot.”

An agitated Adnan bound back into the van, slamming the door behind him. He scrambled toward the front, but not before David saw that he now held the Sig.

The van engine rumbled to life and the truck shook as it backed slowly out and jolted to an abrupt stop, throwing David back, then forward. The knife skidded out from under him. He tried to roll with it, but the van’s sharp movements kept him off balance. The van picked up speed over rough ground, then the wheels whispered with a steady cadence. They were on pavement.

Picking up speed.

David began to hear other vehicles alongside them and when they slowed he knew they were traveling through traffi c. Surface streets, since their speed was nowhere near enough for highway traveling. The truck slowed, sped up, swerved into another lane.

David heard the impatient stutter of horns and brakes squealing on hot pavement, all typical sounds of driving in L.A.

They stopped, the truck idling for a minute or two, then lurching forward again.

Going where?

Wednesday, 11:30 am, Temple Street, Los Angeles
Chris stared at the silent Blackberry. “David? David!”

He was jostled by someone who reeked of sweat and piss. He fumbled to hang onto the phone.

“David!”

He punched in Martinez’s number.

“Diego here.”

“Martinez, I talked to him. I talked to David!”

“What? Whoa, slow down, Chris. When did you talk to him?

Where is he?”

“I don’t know. Can’t you trace the call? Our plans are both through Wireless Planet. Call them. There’s a GPS on his phone.

You can track it.”

“They will,” Martinez said. “Now, where are you?”

“Downtown.” Chris looked around. “Downtown, on...

Temple, near Los Angeles.”

The crowds pulled Chris along. He left the street people, Homeland Security, and the ragged band of indifferent protesters behind. The suits got newer and Armani and Brut replaced the stink. An errant breeze brought the whiff of Kenneth Cole and he felt an ache at David’s familiar fragrance.

South of him the skyline loomed; the seventy-three story First Interstate World Center, the Bank of America and Wells Fargo towers delineating the downtown proper.

He hurried along Temple, driven by demons and the fear that threatened to overwhelm him. He couldn’t give in to despair now.

He couldn’t give up on David. That would be the worst betrayal of all.

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He passed the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, the new home of the Los Angeles Archdiocese that had opened to so much media hoopla back in 2002. Ahead the 110 converged with the 101 and the roar of traffi c became an overriding hum that grew with each step. He wouldn’t fi nd David going that way. He should go back to Los Angeles Street, try and fi nd some pretext to take a closer look at any delivery trucks he saw there.

Chris moved down Temple. A siren screamed ahead of him.

A black and white roared up Hope Street and swung west on Temple, a second one followed less than a minute later. An ambulance, its siren ululating into the silent watchfulness that fi lled the streets, followed.

Chris’s heart slammed into his throat. Had David been found?

He elbowed his way through the mob. Once he passed Hope, the foot traffi c slackened and he picked up his pace, jogging the last block, only slowing when he spotted the kaleidoscope of lights from the emergency vehicles at the mouth of the 101 on-ramp.

A small crowd of onlookers clustered at the south end of the ramp the police had shut down. At fi rst Chris couldn’t see anything, then he made out the man-sized shape near the bush-choked verge cut off from the on-ramp by a sagging chain link fence. Swallowing a lump of fear, Chris edged through the crowd to get a better look. A uniformed offi cer circled the body, snapping pictures. Chris could see enough to know the guy was dead. His black beard was covered with blood, and more blood on the ground had already drawn fl ies.

“Guy in the back of the van just nailed him and drove off.

Never said a word,” a gruff voiced Latino in the garb of a Caltran’s worker said. “Bastard almost nailed me.”

“Jesus, they shoot him?” another orange-vested man whispered.

“Fuck if I know—”

Chris turned to ask the guy who was in the back of what truck when another uniformed cop appeared in their midst.

“Step back, please, people.”

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Reluctantly the crowd broke up. Chris watched the cops corral them like dogs after sheep and take them off to be interviewed.

He knew better than to try to slip away. The cops had made him, and any attempt to disappear would only rouse their suspicion.

He let himself be moved toward the second black and white by a trim, good looking African-American offi cer. His name tag said Ridley. He looked Chris up and down and Chris knew he was wondering what a guy who looked like him, who clearly wasn’t a Caltran’s worker, was doing down in this end of town. He wasn’t even dressed like the usual downtown crowd with their Prada suits and silk ties, so he couldn’t even claim he’d strayed from the offi ce for a little excitement.

Hell, he knew what he looked like to this cop: a Silver Lake twink trolling the wrong part of town.

Chris could hardly tell him the truth; that he was looking for his husband and a truck full of explosives. But he had to say something to the questions he knew were coming once they got the preliminary vital statistics out of him.

“So tell me, Mr. Bellamere,” Ridley asked. “What brings you here?”

Chris shrugged. “I heard the sirens and wondered what was going on.”

“Just curious, hmm?” Ridley said. “Something must have brought you downtown.”

“No, not really.” Chris sighed. “Listen. Before we start this dance, you might want to call Detective Martinez Diego at the Northeast. Clear up a couple of things.”

“Martinez?”

“Detective—Northeast.”

“He someone special to you?”

Chris grinned, knowing what Martinez would make of that assumption. “I’ll be sure to tell him you asked.”

Ridley wrote something down and stepped back. “We’ll be in touch if we have any other questions.”

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Chris nodded and turned away. That was when he saw the cell phone lying beside a clump of weeds next to the shrouded body.

He froze, then edged closer to the yellow crime scene tape.

It couldn’t be... It
looked
like David’s cell. The blue one Chris had given him last Christmas.

Without thinking he moved toward the barrier of yellow tape.

A uniformed shape blocked his way. He ignored Ridley’s scowling face and was about to push past him to get to the phone when Ridley blocked him again. He turned away and pressed David’s speed dial. Not caring if the cop watched him, he stared at the phone on the ground and waited while his phone connected and began ringing.

On the ground the abandoned phone lit up and Chris barely heard the trill. He spun away and dialed Martinez.

Martinez’s impatient voice answered on the fi fth ring. As soon as he recognized Chris, the voice changed. “You fi nd something?”

“He was here,” Chris shouted. He told Martinez about the cell phone and the dead body. “They got a Caltran’s guy who saw it.”

“What was the offi cer’s name?”

“Ridley.”

“I’ll talk to him.”

“I’m heading back to Los Angeles Street,” Chris said. “Those maps suggest that’s his target, right?”

“Chris, stay out of this—”

Chris broke the connection. He looked back the way he had come; no cops were paying him any attention. He hurried down Temple, passing the Ahmanson Theater and the Mark Taper Forum, pausing at Grand for the lights to change. An orange Metro Local bus roared through the intersection. He stopped behind a woman in a severe Donna Karan and a corporate hairdo—the look ruined by a slutty pair of Jimmy Choos. He ignored the temptation to tap her on the shoulder and tell her L.A. BYTES
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that Sex and the City was so last decade. Instead he joined the surge of lawyers and clerks as they obeyed the walk sign and hurried to the other side.

At the opposite curb he nearly ran up the woman in the Choos, stumbling to a stop in front of an impatient cab driver who was trying to inch around the corner. Choos had her cell in hand, viciously stabbing the keypad, then holding the misbehaving device to her elegant, diamond-studded ear.

A cab driver found an opening and sped out into traffi c, eliciting a barrage of horns as he cut off several vehicles.

Chris sped around Choos, only to have the way blocked a few minutes later by a trio of corporate drones who had stopped to argue about something. He was about to shove his way through them when he caught the gist of their conversation.

“—well that’s weird, mine doesn’t work either.” Drone One tapped his Nokia angrily.

“What the hell—” Drone Two was staring down at his cell with a puzzled frown. “I was talking to Denny and it just cut out.

Damn, we were right in the middle of those contract changes we wanted.”

“Signal’s gone—”

Chris pulled out his own Blackberry and sure enough the search bar was blinking as it tried to pick up an active signal. He looked up, scanning the tops of the nearest buildings. He didn’t know where it was, but he knew damned well there was a cell tower nearby. There were probably several. There was no way anyone should be dropping signals here.

Someone slammed into him, nearly pushing him into Drone One. He sidestepped, managing to avoid hitting anyone. Drone One gave him a dirty look, but before Chris could snap back a response a car horn blared, followed almost immediately by a second one. Tires screeched and metal crunched and Chris jerked around to fi nd a heavy black SUV had plowed through the intersection into a Saturn, which folded nearly in half. A second vehicle following the SUV swerved to avoid both vehicles and
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ended up in the oncoming lane in front of a city bus. The Metro bus slewed out of control and blew through a crowd waiting at the bus stop. Everyone scattered. Chris saw a woman, clipped by the lurching behemoth, go fl ying into the base of a light pole, where she lay unmoving. If anyone else noticed no one approached her.

More tires squealed as desperate drivers tried to avoid the cars ahead of them, only to add to the growing tangle of metal and fi berglass as they failed to stop in time or were bumped by the driver behind.

People yelled, drivers were pinned in crumpled shells, pedestrians broke up in panicked knots. More horns joined the cacophony.

Only then did Chris notice that in every direction the traffi c lights were green. Up and down Temple and Hill and Grand, they had all changed at once. A Caltran’s truck jumped the curb and slammed through the courtyard of the Kenneth Hahn Hall of Administration. A plume of black smoke boiled out of the battered engine cowl. The truck sheared off a water hydrant.

Water spewed skyward.

Panic fl uttered at the back of Chris’s mind. He stared blankly at the useless phone in his hand. Adnan! It wasn’t the Court House he was after—he had fooled them into thinking that was his target. He was launching a cyber attack instead. Break lights!

“Idiot,” Chris muttered. “You goddamned idiot. You should have known...”

He looked around in desperation. He had to warn someone.

How many services had Adnan disrupted? He watched in horror as a Tracker climbed onto the sidewalk, trying to maneuver around a crashed SUV, nearly running down a couple with a baby carriage. All around him voices rose in confusion and incipient panic.

Spotting a pay phone near the east side of the Kenneth Hahn building, he shoved through the mob, dodging a bicyclist weaving in and out of stalled cars and bewildered pedestrians. He snatched L.A. BYTES
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the phone up and hit 911. His mouth went dry when he heard the rapid pulse of a busy signal. What was it? The Denial of Service attack Brad had spotted? Or had Adnan managed to get an actual worm into the telecommunications system? A DoS could be shut down pretty quickly, but a worm could take hours to clean up, days if it was really effi cient. Whatever it was, no one was going to be communicating with the outside in the immediate future.

Behind him he heard a car backfi re. At least he hoped it was a backfi re. If some Neanderthal had brought his gun along to the party, things were going to disintegrate fast.

Further away a man started yelling. Chris heard someone shouting “Terrorists” and “Madrassa” and his heart sank. It wouldn’t take too much of that kind of talk to incite a full-blown riot as people tried to fl ee an imagined terrorist attack.

Chris thought of the cops and paramedics he had left back at the on-ramp. Were they still there? How much time had passed since he left Ridley? Maybe thirty minutes? He knew cops, they wouldn’t be done by now.

The streets had grown more crowded as the government and legal offi ces emptied out. A black-frocked priest shepherded a group of weeping school children back to the Cathedral. Some life lesson: come out for a day and watch a city collapse into chaos. Chris felt an insane urge to giggle. He knew it was hysteria and pressed his mouth shut to contain the impulse. Too many people around him were succumbing, and it wouldn’t take much to blow them all over the edge.