Seven Unholy Days (9 page)

DAY TWO

WEDNESDAY

And there went out another horse that was red:

and power was given to him that sat thereon

to take peace from the earth,

and that they should kill one another:

and there was given unto him a great sword.

Revelation 6:4

14

11:13 AM PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

LAPD HELICOPTER #4

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA

             
“Sure am glad they got the power back on,” Captain Rusty Boskin said to his co-pilot, Lieutenant Hank Starling.

“Amen to that.”

“I can’t believe how quiet it is today after last night. You know, thugs remind me of cockroaches, living it up and raising hell in the dark, then scattering as soon as the lights come on.”

“Never thought of it that way, Rusty, but I guess you got a point. Hey, you want me to take the stick for a while?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Starling took the cyclic control and banked the little Huey west, flying the grids, criss-crossing the city at fifteen hundred feet above ground level while Boskin watched the ground for signs of traffic trouble and monitored the radio for calls from dispatch. Neither man saw the Beech Bonanza single-engine airplane at their six-o’clock high position.

On the bottom of the chopper, attached with two strong magnets to the fuselage just aft of the cabin, was a stainless steel cylinder, eighteen inches long and four inches in diameter. A black box was fitted on the forward end with a short cellular-style antenna angled downward from it. A one-millisecond signal hit the antenna as the Bonanza made a tight right turn and departed the area to the northeast. Inside the black box, a circuit switched modes from receive to transmit, now broadcasting on several frequencies within the 100MHz and 900MHz bands, blocking both police and standard aircraft radio traffic to and from the chopper.

At the same time, another circuit sent a five-volt signal along a red wire that ran from the black box to the rear end of the canister. The current hit an actuator, opening a tiny valve in the tail of the tube. The pressurized aerosol contents sprayed out from the valve in an ultra-fine mist, the wash of the helicopter’s rotor blades blasting it down and out in a reddish plume that spread thinner and thinner as it fell to the ground. Above and for’ard, Rusty Boskin and Hank Starling continued to enjoy an unusually quiet day as they canvassed the skies of Los Angeles, covering the city in the same thorough and conscientious manner that they always did.

On the ground, businesses were again open and Los Angeles was returning to normal. Donna Madsen waited in line at a gas station with Zack and Michelle in the rear of the Dodge Caravan.

“Mommy, Michelle won’t give me back my red crayon.”

“It’s my crayon.”

“Is not!”

“Is too!”

Donna turned around to face them. “If you two can’t play nicely, we’re not going to Disneyland.” The bickering stopped and Donna turned back around. She looked in the rearview mi
rror and saw four-year-old Zack stick his tongue out at his sister, a year older. Someone at the front of the line finished fueling and the line moved forward one car space. Donna cranked the air conditioning a notch higher and wished her husband Steve could have gotten the day off to go with them.

“Mommy, look at the helicopter,” Michelle said.

“That’s nice, honey.” Donna had seen a million helicopters and had no desire to see another one right now. She just wanted out of this line.

“It’s smoking,” Michelle said.

“That’s not smoke,” Zack said. “Smoke ain’t red.”

“Zack Madsen, don’t let me hear you say ‘ain’t’ again. You’re supposed to say smoke is not red.”

“See, Michelle? Mommy says smoke is not red too. Told you so.”

“Well it looks like smoke. Doesn’t it, Mommy?”

Donna finally looked out the window to see what they were talking about and saw the helicopter flying in a line parallel to the street they were on, about a hundred yards to the left and by now a quarter-mile in front of them. It was leaving what looked like a cloud of red dust in its path that drifted down. The dust was just reaching the ground across the street, where there was a park filled with people enjoying a mild day of Southern California sun.

As the dust settled into the park, people began grabbing their throats. Not just some of the people. All of them. She rolled down her window to get a better view and heard screams. People were rolling on the ground, clawing at their faces, thrashing about in violent spasms. At the front edge of the park, a man on the ground rolled into the street right in front of a car. Kerthump-kerthump. She gasped in horror. Now other people were running out into the street. Cars were shrieking to a stop and the sounds of vehicles hitting each other filled the air along with the screams.

It finally dawned on her that the red dust was causing this. She frantically rolled up her window, turned the air conditioning off, and pulled the minivan out of the gas line. The helicopter was far ahead of them now, but it was turning around and would soon be coming back toward them. She pulled out into the street and weaved a u-turn through the wrecked cars and people who were obviously dying. As she swung into a lane on the far side of the street, a woman ran toward them screaming, “Help me! Oh God, somebody help me!” Her face was covered in grotesque bubbles and blood poured from her eyes, nose, and mouth.

“Mommy, I’m scared!” Zack said. Michelle started crying.

“I need you both to be brave and quiet,” Donna said as she tried to work her way through the horror on the street. “Can you do that?”

“Okay, Mommy.”

“Yes ma’am.”

Donna finally cleared the worst of the congestion and floored the accelerator. They were going to make it. She fished her cell phone out of her purse and dialed 911. “There’s a hel
icopter spraying some kind of poison over Santa Monica!” she screamed when someone answered.

“Ma’am, I need you to calm down. What did you say?”

In the back, as she had done a hundred times before when they were hot, Michelle reached up and turned the switch for the rear air conditioning in the van.

“A helicopter, it’s spraying some kind of red substance that’s killing people! Do something!”

“Ma’am, you’re breaking up. I can’t understand you.”

Donna’s eyes started stinging. Michelle and Zack screamed. “Oh God, no!” Donna said.

“Ma’am, are you there? Ma’am?”

After that, the emergency operator heard nothing except blood-curdling shrieks. Other operators were taking similar calls nonstop. One caller had the presence of mind to note the number painted across the bottom of the chopper. Dispatch tried frantically to reach LAPD Helicopter #4 via radio but got only silence in return.

The department had a number of other choppers, but the crews couldn’t get to them without walking through the outside air. One valiant crew tried and failed. Forty-one minutes after the canister activated, Lieutenant Brian Hallow of the United States Navy arrived in Los Angeles airspace in his F-18A Hornet after being scrambled out of San Diego. Unable to fly at the chopper’s much lower airspeed, the Naval Aviator made three passes across the front of the Huey and tried to get the crew to understand that they needed to follow him.

“What the hell is that showboat pilot trying to do?” Hank Starling said as the Hornet passed in front of them in a blur.

Rusty Boskin shook his head. “Damn Navy jocks.”

Lieutenant Brian Hallow had his orders. He swung hard around and came up on the Huey’s six-o’clock, bit his lip, and blew the chopper out of the sky with a brief burst from his 20mm cannon. “Returning to base.”

LAPD Helicopter #4 had covered an immense amount of ground before the F-18A arrived.

15

2:15 PM CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME (LOCAL)

YELLOW CREEK

             
We stood huddled around the television as a stunned anchorman delivered the news. “The unthinkable has happened. About an hour ago, at eleven-sixteen Pacific Time, a weapon of mass destruction was loosed on Los Angeles, California. The details we have so far are sketchy at best, but the reports we’re getting say that a highly toxic chemical gas, known in military circles as ‘Red Death,’ was somehow discharged into the atmosphere.” He stopped talking and listened to his earpiece for about ten seconds.

“These numbers are certain to increase, but we’re told that as of this moment, based on the population of the areas most a
ffected, officials are estimating that two million Americans have died in the Los Angeles area. That’s two million of our fellow citizens, dead. The number of seriously injured people that were exposed just slightly is estimated to be in the millions, as well. We now have a crew on the ground in Los Angeles, and we’ll go there live.”

The picture on the screen cut to the interior of a broadcast van, its four occupants clad in yellow HAZMAT suits. One of the network regulars was inside one of the suits and began to report. “To say the very least, we’ve never seen anything like this. The streets of Los Angeles are literally filled with dead bodies and wrecked cars. The gas apparently acts so fast that drivers simply died at the wheel of their cars. We’re not going to go outside this van, obviously, but we do have a camera set up to shoot through the windshield so the viewers can get a glimpse of what we’re looking at here. Parents, we strongly a
dvise that you do not let your children watch this footage. Again, we strongly advise that all children be kept away from the television for the next couple of minutes. We’ll start a thirty-second countdown now before cutting to the live camera, to give you time to move your children out of sight of your television sets.”

Thirty seconds later, the picture cut to a shaky view looking out through the windshield of the van. The scene was like som
ething from a disaster movie. As the reporter had warned, dead bodies were everywhere. The sidewalks were filled with them. Wrecked cars filled the streets, most smashed, many sitting at odd angles that they had come to rest at as they stopped, most obviously having stopped only when hitting another car or wall or telephone pole. The reporter kept talking, unnecessarily explaining what we were seeing on the tube. The close-up shots showed the gruesome effects of the Red Death gas; horrendous red sores, each about a half-inch in diameter, totally covered the face of the poor soul whose dead face was being broadcast around the world. His eyes were wide open, the whites replaced by blood red.

The anchor kept a dialogue going with the reporter, getting explanations of how the crew had survived the calamity, what emergency procedures were in place in the city, and so on.

I watched a few minutes more of the broadcast, then followed Abdul back to the control room. Tark and the entire FBI gang stayed in the lounge.

“Abdul, take a break,” I said when we got back to the co
nsole.

“I am fine and will continue to work.”

I admire a tireless work ethic but I also needed a few minutes alone to do some snooping. “Seriously, go take a walk, clear your head.”

“If you are insisting, Matt Decker.”

“I am,” I said with a pat on the back. He reluctantly walked outside. Now that Rowe had the emails, and had probably shared them with the others, dealing with them could get dicey and I wanted to know who they were. I was inside the FBI’s internal database within three minutes and had Bob Rowe’s file on screen. Twenty-two years with no complaints, not to mention commendations for meritorious service. Steady track toward major management. Unmarried and no ties. He was a textbook career agent without a blemish.

Potella’s record did not have the same new-penny sheen. Walter Potella had a temper that had resulted in three co
mplaints and one suspension during his fifteen years with the Bureau. Pay grade GS 12, which put his salary in the fifties. He came from a middle-class family, no ties to money, which meant he spent over two weeks’ salary on one suit of clothes.

Fifty-two-year-old Walt lived with twenty-eight-year-old wife Tiffany--no, I’m not kidding--in Falls Church, so I tapped into the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles. His DMV file showed two entries, a Range Rover and a Mercedes, both bought within the past few months at a combined cost of nearly two hundred thousand dollars. If data files had a scent, Potella’s would surely reek with the malodorous stench of rotten fish.

I heard Tark and Potella coming down the hall and made a brisk exit from the world of covert research. The email came about five minutes later:

Return-Path:

Delivered-To: x7ijljAweRRv -deckerdigital:[email protected]

X-Envelope-To: [email protected]

X-Originating-IP: [66.156.171.40]

From: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Subject: Consequences

My Dearest Mr. Decker:

It is quite apparent that you chose to ignore my earlier warning regarding circumvention of the Decree of Darkness. Reinstate the Decree within one hour and meddle no more, or suffer more consequences.

Underneath the text was a picture that looked like a frame from the video we had just seen on television. It was a ghastly shot of a man’s ravaged face, his blood-red eyes open and sta
ring right out of the screen. Across the picture in big stencil-looking letters was one word:
 

CONSEQUENCES

    Rowe wasn’t in the room so I showed the email to Potella and Julie Reynolds. “Nice of you to share this one with us,” Potella said.

“You people didn’t exactly ride in on a wave of cooperation, Potella, so why don’t you knock off the hostile badass routine and let’s work together for a change?”

“I’m just getting started.”

Julie Reynolds, standing behind him, rolled her eyes.

Potella called some deputy director at FBI headquarters, who called the Director, who called the President, who called me. The process took four minutes.

“Mr. Decker, this is the President. I want you to shut ever
ything back down immediately. All of it.”

“Yes, Mr. President.” He hung up without saying goodbye. “Abdul, what’s it looking like in the other regions?”

“I am saying rough twenty-four states up plus our own sixteen,” he said.

“Start bringing all our grids down, right now. I’ll get a me
ssage out to the others to do the same,” I said.

I noticed that Potella was staring at me, holding a file folder in one hand, slowly tapping the edge of it on the palm of his other hand. “Decker, I’ve got our people doing everything po
ssible to trace that email,” he said. Looks like he’s turned this into a personal issue between you and him.”

“I noticed.”

“Any insights you care to share with us?”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Potella?”

“It means that whatever you know, I want to know. And if you don’t come clean, I’ll bust your ass this damn minute for obstruction of justice.”

“You’ve lost it, Potella. And considering the fact that we’re all supposed to be working on issues of national security here, you’re about a vindictive prick who can’t put petty issues aside.”

His fleshy face knotted into a swirl of angry red jowls and fierce eyes, and he started toward me. Rowe had obviously heard the commotion and ran into the room. “Potella, back off.”

He kept coming and Rowe stepped in front of him. “Walt, back off right now or I’ll have you removed from this case. I’m ASAC here and this is not a request. It’s an order.”

Potella spun and stomped out of the room, blasting a series of obscenities over his shoulder as he slammed open the front door and stepped outside. Julie Reynolds had stood up in the corner and had a look on her face that suggested a mix of amazement and embarrassment. Rowe slowly shook his head. “Decker, I’m really sorry about this.”

“I appreciate you calling Potella off, but this is getting old. I do not have time to deal with this crap.”

“I’ll have a talk with him. The Director has seen both emails, and while he wasn’t happy, he concurs that we don’t have time for bickering.”

“Maybe I need to have the talk with him instead, see if he’ll agree to a truce until we can get this case under control.”

“Suit yourself, but you won’t get anywhere. Potella came to the Bureau from an old school police department. He thinks you embarrassed the agents that were after you, and by extension, in his mind you’ve embarrassed every law enforcement agent in the country. He’s a good man but he’s also a dinosaur. The cloak of secrecy around your case has done nothing but ferment the angry mentality. You obviously pulled big powerful strings and the agents who actually worked your case won’t even say what it was all about. Although the brass obviously don’t have a problem with you, you’re like some phantom enemy among rank-and-file agents. And now these emails pop up. Potella won’t change his mind.”

“Just the same, for the good of all involved, I’m going to try.”

“Good luck.” Rowe left the room. At least he had come around. Far better to deal with one case of vengeance lust than two.

I turned to head outside and felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Julie Reynolds. “Mr. Decker,” she said as she looked around to be sure no one could hear her, “I’m sorry, too.”

“Thanks. You ready to tell me what else is troubling you, Agent Reynolds?”

“I’m new and I can’t afford to lose my job, Mr. Decker. I’d be black-balled.”

“I won’t break your confidence, Julie. You have my word.”

She glanced around the room again, then walked back to her desk in the corner. I followed. “Let me show you something I ran across while I was filing case reports,” she said as she tapped the keys of her notebook. A document soon appeared onscreen:

FBI CASE NO. 6298-5534

LOCALE: YELLOW CREEK (MS) FACILITY

RE: PERSONNEL ASSIGNMENT

As per ASAC request, the following personnel are assigned to the above referenced case until further notice.

Barry Pearson – Technical Specialist

Marcus Givens – Technical Specialist

Margaret Drummer – Technical Specialist

Daniel Roper – Technical Specialist

APPROVED BY HUMAN RESOURCES, WASHINGTON DIVISION

“There’s a problem here,” I said. “The team that’s here is all male. What happened to Margaret Drummer?”

“The problem is bigger than that.”

“How so?”

“None of the people on that list are here.”

“Are you serious?”

“Every person listed above is a legitimate full-time Bureau technician, not hackers pulled out of their bedrooms. It caught my eye because I personally know Daniel Roper. I managed to get an email through to him, and he hasn’t heard anything about being assigned to this case.”

“Then who are these people?”

“I took the liberty of finding out,” she said. “Earlier today, while everyone else was out of the room, I asked their names, told them I had to do some benefits paperwork.”

“And?”

“They’re nobodies, Mr. Decker. All of them. Low-level hac
kers busted for a variety of minor cyber-offenses, non-destructive for the most part. All on mild federal probation.”

I thought about it for a moment and said, “Now I unde
rstand why they were getting nowhere on the work assigned to them. They’re—”

“—not experts at all,” Julie said.

“Exactly. They were put here to fail. You realize what that means?”

“There’s a mole in the FBI.”

“No doubt about it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet but I’ll be careful that it doesn’t lead back to you, Julie.”

“Thank you. When it all comes out, I don’t mind cooperating but right now I’m at the bottom of the food chain and I don’t want to be booted out of here.”

“Understood.”

I walked casually over to the line of workstations where Neo and his merry band of incompetents were still getting exactly nothing done. After watching for a couple of minutes, I said, “How goes it?”

“Not, dude. This stuff is bitchrod hard, man.”

“Keep at it.” I hung around the area until I was sure Rowe was back in the room, then shook my head as if I didn’t unde
rstand. As planned, he saw it and walked over.

“Problem, Decker?”

“Yeah, I need a word with you.”

“Shoot.”

“Let’s go to the lounge.” I headed that way. He followed. Tark was there, looking over system logs and glancing up at the television occasionally. “I’m concerned about the tech team, Rowe.”