Riding the Snake (1998) (45 page)

The footprints led to a huge round concrete drain, almost ten feet in diameter. It was a gigantic underground water run-off that headed diagonally back toward the airport; inside the dark tunnel was a small river of dirty water. In a storm, Wheeler guessed, it would be a raging river of spill-off from LAX that emptied flooding runway water into the ocean. The metal grate across the opening, which was designed to keep people out, had been cut out and removed. The white-hot burn of an acetylene torch had scarred the remaining ends. While Wheeler waited for Tanisha and Al, he saw something buried in the sludge and water, at the bottom of the concrete drain. He reached down and picked it up. It was a sodden black backpack. As soon as Al and Tanisha got to him, Wheeler showed it to them.

Al examined it, saying, "That looks a little like one of the packs those Bamboo Dragons were wearing. Hard to be certain-- I was two piers over, using binoculars." Wheeler turned it inside out, looking for a manufacturer's tag. He found it sewn to the inseam. It said: MADE IN CHINA.

Chapter
42.

Food Fight

They were gathered in the Situation Room in the basement of City Hall. It was a big, windowless, half-basketball
-
court-sized underground chamber, connected to fifty phone lines and satellite TV communications. There were screens on two walls that could project maps or satellite images, and now reflected graphic line drawings of the huge Los Angeles airport's runways and support buildings. There were two dozen desks in the room, and several private offices around the perimeter with curtained-off glass windows looking back in toward the room. There were ten TV screens, which were set to monitor the four national networks, plus the four local TV stations in Los Angeles, along with CNN. A separate screen was for remote TV cameras.

The room was almost never used, the exceptions being two earthquakes and one race riot, which had all been dealt with from this underground chamber.

The Mayor was on the phone in one of the perimeter offices. The Governor was in the air flying to L
. A
. from Sacramento. The
y h
ad a direct line to the White House Situation Room, where half
-
a-dozen specialists on nuclear threat scenarios were gathered to heckle and raise the level of confusion.

Nobody was in charge. It had become that horrible phenomenon of modern government: a jurisdictional food fight.

Present in the L
. A
. bunker was one-star Air Force General Robert "Kicker" Clark, head of the California National Guard. He was a jet pilot and ace from the Vietnam War, a no-nonsense kick-'em-in-the-ass kind of leader. Next to him was the southwest section's FBI Special Agent in Charge, Douglas Pardee. Then there was CIA Area Director Rogers St. John. Behind him sat Carter DeHaviland, looking dismayed. There was a gray, colorless man from State, named Lew Fisher. He had been in Los Angeles on other business, and the State Department had rushed him over. Next to him was the geek from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency). L
. A
. Police Chief Carl Leddiker was dressed for a parade, looking like a high school band leader in full uniform. Everybody had his own "secure" phone jockey. The room was full of tension, snapping and buzzing like a broken toaster.

"You can't tell the fucking citizens there may be a nuke at the airport. We're gonna have a stampede," Chief Carl Leddiker was saying to FBI SAC Douglas Pardee.

"You've got how many people living out there by the airport?" Pardee responded, "A million, give or take a few hundred thousand. They're all in the fall-out radius. You can't clear a million people driving down streets with bullhorns announcing a fucking gas leak. They won't leave. You gotta put it out straight on the network news what the situation is here."

"You'll panic the whole damn town. We've done studies on mass evacuation. The freeways will jam. We've got traffic flow chart analyses that say we'll have a world-class cluster-fuck."

"I don't give a shit. You gotta tell 'em what's going on. It's our asses if the airport mushrooms up and we knew the bomb was there and kept it quiet," Pardee argued.

Then his phone rang and he snatched it up. It was his NEST Commander at the airport. Everybody got quiet as Pardee listened to the report, then hung up.

"Okay, NEST is deployed on site. They already have one detection platform on a helicopter and they're about to take off and scan the field. Two more are in jeeps and are starting at opposite ends of the field, working toward the center. Most of the heavy commercial airliners are gone, but in half an hour I'm locking the field. Nothing else leaves. We're getting the rest of the civilians off the premises. My NEST Commander says he can do a thorough sweep of the field and buildings in six hours. We only have two. In that time frame he can give the place a onceover lightly, scanning for nuclear trace elements, move in and narrow down if he gets any Geiger ticks."

The room was silent.

"How does the detection platform work?" Chief Leddiker asked.

"Classified," the FBI SAC shot back.

"I still wanna know what we're gonna do with the perp," Lew Fisher from State said. "You gonna put him on his plane, fuel it up, and send him outta here if we can't find the bomb? Then what? We pray he keeps his word? You want my opinion, that plan sounds motivationally deficient."

"And from a tactical point of view, it sucks," General Robert Clark said. "This guy isn't going to keep his word. He's a low-life criminal. He'll leave and never look back. We're gonna be hunting around in radioactive rubble trying to find each other's dicks."

"He passed the lie detector test when LAPD asked him that," CIA Director Rogers St. John said.

"You show weakness to a guy like this, you encourage him," General Clark said. "Let's make him wonder what the fuck is happening. It's gut check time. The best show of strength wins in a deal like this."

"It's my city. I'm in charge," the Mayor said. He had come out of the side office to join the argument. "I'll make the decision."

"Not hardly," Pardee replied.

And so it went, until the National Defense Team at the Situation Room in Washington cut in on the speaker phone. "You had better pull it together, fellas. Stop arguing and get proactive," somebody back there boomed over the large telephone speakers.

"I think we let him go. Trust the lie detector. We'll never find a bomb in two hours," the Mayor said, thinking he didn't care about Willy one way or another. If LAX got nuked, his career in politics was over.

"I have three Tomcats at Edwards ready to go," General Clark shot back. "If you put that bastard in his plane and let him take off, I'll scramble those three birds and torch him on my own authority. I don't give a shit about airspace or corridors of neutrality. This guy gets a heat seeker up the ass. That's my promise."

"Who's gonna take responsibility for that bonehead move?" Pardee asked.

"I will!" the General replied. "They can have my star if they don't like it. We gotta stop coddling these bastards."

"Let's just all calm down," the Mayor said. "We're not shooting him down. Let's go back and take this one step at a time."

They had retrieved the flashlight and walkie-talkie from the survival kit on the Avon, and Wheeler handed Tanisha one of the matched Smith & Wesson .44s. He kept the shark rifle, which was a thirty-ought-six, with a sportsman's nine-shot clip. They had asked Al to go back to the Cashflow and radio their position to Major Crimes. They helped him get the Avon out through the surf, then they walked back into the tunnel, wading through the sludge and ankle-high water until the light behind them had completely disappeared and they were moving along blindly in inky blackness. The battery on the flashlight was weak, so Wheeler only turned it on from time to time, shining it up the cavernous concrete pipe looking for offshoots, trying to conserve the power. The drain they were in seemed to be heading back toward the north side of the airfield. Then without warning the tunnel began to vibrate and shake. They both froze in fear, unable to see anything as the terrible noise enveloped them. Then the sound slowly disappeared and the vibrating stopped.

"Airplane," Wheeler said "We must be right under the runway." They stood in stunned silence trying to get their hearts slowed.

Tanisha had thought it was an earthquake and they were about to get buried alive.

"This is all related," Wheeler said, talking as much to calm them as anything. "What did you call it in Hong Kong? Claustrophobic? Never trust a coincidence. We've got way too much activity in one place. It's gotta be tied together," he said. "Ready?"

She nodded in the dark. "You're sure beginning to sound like a cop."

"Is that a compliment or a slam?" he asked.

"Depends if we get out of here alive."

Another jet thundered down the runway above them, rumbling and shaking the cement tube. They both froze until it was gone. "Shit ... I wish they'd stop with that," she whispered.

They moved farther down the tunnel in the darkness, not sure what they would find. Their hearts were beating wildly, their faces shiny with sweat, even though the deeper underground they went, the cooler the air was becoming. They continued along silently for almost twenty minutes, turning on the flashlight every so often to make sure there were no tunnel offshoots they should examine. Occasionally, rodent eyes shone back at them in the flashlight's dim beam. Tanisha didn't look too close. She didn't want to see how big they were. As they continued sloshing on, both lost track of time. Finally, Wheeler thought he heard something. He stopped abruptly and put his hand out to warn her. They stood silently in the ankle-deep water, holding their breath, their ears straining to hear any sound. Then Wheeler heard it again. . . .

The distant sound of a baby crying.

Chapter
43.

No Feast Lasts Forever

Fu Hai was huddled in the wretched flickering darkness, soaked from the waist down. He had fallen several times in the concrete tunnel. The moss and algae growing there were so slippery it was sometimes impossible to walk. All 180 Snake Riders were now deep underneath L
. A
. International Airport. Dry Dragon had brought candles, and once they had stopped moving he had lit some. Every half-minute or so the tunnel would rumble and vibrate as jumbo jets took off overhead. Each time it happened it seemed to Fu Hai as if the world was about to end. He felt helpless and insignificant. The Snake Riders whimpered in the candle-lit gloominess, terrified of this rumbling, dank place.

They had stopped at a wide spot where two tunnels intersected the main one. Dry Dragon made them stand and wait. There was a ledge where the side tunnels intersected, and Fu Hai placed his burning candle there. Several of the other Snake Riders put theirs up beside his. The babies in their mothers' arms were crying loudly from starvation. Their screams echoed in the enclosed concrete darkness, fraying everyone's nerves. Then Dry Dragon took off his large backpack and handed it to Fu Hai.

"Put this on," he said in Fukienese. "I must leave to go tell the Red-Pole vanguards that you are safe and waiting, so we can get the trucks to take you to a nice place where you will spend the night."

"What is in the pack?"

"It is provisions for later," Dry Dragon said, because he had been told to say that. "You must not open it." This he had also been instructed to say.

Fu Hai took the backpack and shouldered himself into it. It was very large and extremely heavy; the straps cut into his shoulders. "How long will you be gone?" he asked.

"Not long. You must keep these peasants quiet. They will panic unless you talk to them."

Another jet took off, vibrating the concrete. Everybody froze, including Dry Dragon, until it was gone.

"I must have the flashlight and the gun, or I cannot protect them," Fu Hai said. "The candles will be gone soon, and in the dark they will be uncontrollable."

Dry Dragon gave Fu Hai the Russian machine pistol he had been carrying, because he still had a Russian 7.65mm automatic tucked in his belt. Then he gave Fu Hai the flashlight, because he thought that even in the dark he could find his way out. There were no intersections between here and the beach to confuse him. "I will not be long," he said, then he turned and left Fu Hai in the flickering candlelight.

Fu Hai was deep underground with almost two hundred people, but he had never felt so alone. He tried to concentrate on America. He tried to picture the wide streets and beautiful cars he had seen on the one television the laborers in the silkworm factory in Khotan were allowed to watch. The Communists had banned American programs after Tiananmen Square. He thought of the bright, beautiful kitchens in the homes on those programs. He remembered the blond women with perfect hairdos and beautiful white teeth. They never seemed to have to clean their houses. He thought of his pitiful sister, Xiao Jie, who struggled to keep house in a windowless hovel with dirt floors. Almost toothless, with unwashed hair, she toiled while her husband scraped shit out of latrines. Fu Hai was determined to change her world and save her from an early grave. He would finally bring happiness into her sorry life.

Fu Hai was so close, so near. Only hours separated him from his new life.

"I cannot keep him quiet," a woman said into Fu Hai's ear, startling him and interrupting his thoughts. She was holding a screaming baby. "His crying is making the others mad."