Threatcon Delta (8 page)

K
ealey ran into the open center of the uppermost floor of the JIB, where Harper had already shaken the wasp’s nest to life. All the intelligence agents and support staff were shouting into phones or typing furiously, screens flashing.

“Silver Bells,” Harper told Kealey.

The Bing Crosby song started playing in the back of Kealey’s mind, warped by the sounds of anxiety all around him and his own urgency.

“It’s one of their earliest Christmas events on Main Plaza, giant tree, choir concert, mariachi band, Santa Claus, and it’s about to start in a few minutes.”

“Security?” Kealey asked.

“Local police and the mayor’s detail, also police.”

“Was the mayor’s presence announced or spontaneous?”

“We don’t know but she’s front and center with her husband and two boys. They’re getting her men on the phone for me.”

But as an agent was motioning Harper to pick up a desk phone, Solomon Gill called out, “Sir! Explosion in San Antonio city center!”

Everyone in the room heard him. A half second later and they resumed their activities at a frenetic pace, trying to get details.

“How do you know?” Harper asked.

Gill held up his phone and said, “Twitter.”

Harper picked up the desk phone, said, “Officer! Officer, hello?” He dropped the phone. “He’s gone. That’s good, they’ll be hustling the mayor and her family to a secure location.”

“Probably separate locations,” Kealey said. “I need a map.”

An anonymous voice called across the room, “Confirmed car explosion on East Commerce Street!”

“Give me a magnification of the plaza!” Harper called. “And the feeds from the security cameras!”

Hands slid three laptops onto the table in front of him and Kealey. One had a street-view map of San Antonio, zoomed in on the cathedral and Main Plaza. Another had feeds from six cameras pointing in different directions across the plaza. They showed people running, crouching, screaming, chairs overturning, all in silence. One camera was almost useless, half-obscured by the lights of the big Christmas tree in front of the cathedral. The third laptop showed the white façade of San Antonio City Hall a block away, blank and empty, no activity.

“Confirmation, Mayor Garcia is alive!” called an agent.

“Alive and safe? Alive and wounded? Alive and with her family? Alive and what?” Harper shouted back. There was no answer.

A fourth laptop slid onto the table, showing the Alamo. Police were locking down the area but there was no panic, no running, no sign of trouble, just precautions.

“Anything happening on the River Walk?” Harper called out.

A voice answered, “Nothing on the stretch near the square, we’re checking on the rest of it!”

“Damn it, what else,” Harper muttered to Kealey. “Am I missing anything?”

“The church.” Kealey stabbed his finger at the cathedral behind the big Christmas tree.

“Anything on the church?” Harper shouted.

A voice called, “Some of the crowd is running into it.”

“That’s all we need, a sanctuary from one bomb exploding with another,” Harper grimaced, then ordered the room, “Tell the local force their first priority is to secure that church, get the people out of it and the place shut down.”

Kealey motioned at the map and said, “The good news is, if they were after the church they probably would have driven the car off the street onto the plaza and into the building.”

“Hope you’re right,” said Harper. “What else?”

“Those are the identifiable targets,” Kealey said. “Anything else is blind darts.”

They heard, “Confirmation, no unusual activity anywhere on the River Walk!”

“Could it just be the car bomb?” Harper asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Kealey said, staring at the screens, “but he came all the way from Iran for this.”

“Update on the mayor!” Harper yelled at the room.

“Working on it!”

Kealey and Harper watched helplessly as the security cameras recorded the terror of San Antonio’s citizens.

“I forgot it was Christmas,” Harper murmured. “The weather was so warm.”

“Me too.” Kealey said, thinking,
the mountain was so high.

A
bejide had determined there were only three directions the police could take the mayor. North was not an option as the explosion would take place at the juncture of East Commerce Street and the plaza. This was almost the exact location, it turned out, where the mayor’s SUV dropped her and her family for the concert.

East was a possibility but a slim one. Holiday shops, vendor carts, and trees congested the path across the plaza to the river. The panicking crowd would hit several bottlenecks there and make the area even more difficult to pass through. However, on the off chance the mayor’s security detail did choose that direction, Abejide had planned the fastest route to run ahead of them and jump down into the small, sunken park between the plaza and the river. Once there, the spot would actually be helpful for her. The park was full of stone blocks of different sizes, creating crannies Abejide could tuck herself into. The stones were low enough that she could maintain a sightline, curl around a stone block, and aim. They would make an exit trickier, but she knew she would have a spare second no matter where she was located. Without the sound of a gunshot, the mayor’s security detail would react first to the result of Abejide’s action, which would be the mayor falling to the ground. There would be a moment of recognition that something was wrong before anyone looked up and around, and in that moment Abejide could join the crowd of frightened, running citizens.

East was a remote chance, though, so before the bomb exploded the young woman had already circulated through the assembled seats toward the tall Christmas tree and the cathedral behind it.

West was a distinct possibility. There were two exit routes leading west out of the plaza, on either side of the cathedral toward City Hall. Reviewing the territory a month earlier, Abejide had ruled out the northern exit as it was too close to the planned explosion site. The southern route was a short passageway between the cathedral and the neighboring cathedral center, a two-story, white stone building with red timbering supporting the roof, frequently used for wedding receptions. The passageway would not be overly obvious to stampeding citizens. Since fewer people were likely to notice and use this route, it was very possible that the mayor’s security detail had already pre-selected it in case of emergencies. The short passageway opened into a small courtyard with a fountain before continuing past the cathedral to the street.

The advantage of this route for Abejide was height. She could accomplish her task while standing on the ground, but it would be easier and more effective if she were either lower than or elevated above the mayor. Being higher was preferable and it didn’t have to be by much; she did not need a roof. The scalloped stone edge of the fountain would provide about a foot-high boost but better yet, there were usually outdoor chairs and tables placed around this courtyard. A chair would elevate her by two feet and be easy to jump on and off from.

However, this route made her own exit significantly more difficult. She could not count on there being enough of a fleeing crowd to melt into. Her precious moment saved by not using a gun would be spent on jumping down from her chair. The cathedral center had columns she could run and dodge behind but she would probably be noticed and the columns would obstruct her sightlines. She did not intend to switch from hunter to hunted all in an instant. She decided that if this was the route they chose, she would follow her jump from the chair by squatting and cowering. Since she was a woman and no weapon would be visible, it was likely that the mayor’s security would look at every other person in the courtyard and up on the roofs as well before their eyes would come back to her. By then she could have scuttled in pretended fear to the building, behind the columns, giving herself enough of a lead that when she stood and ran she would not feel like there were crosshairs on her back.

But the most obvious choice for the mayor’s security was south. A straight, broad stretch of plaza pavement led past the cathedral and cathedral center to Dolorosa. The path would be full of the escaping crowd, yes, but in the short time required to jog it, the security guards could call the mayor’s SUV. Since it had so recently driven away, it would not take long for the driver to circle around and approach on Dolorosa. The safest location near a bomb site was a vehicle that could speed away from it. Abejide could not afford to let them get too far down this route, which meant her optimal window for accomplishing her mission was just after the moment security hustled the mayor away from her seat, during their rush past the cathedral.

Which was why Abejide was already standing next to the tall Christmas tree before the station wagon exploded. The tree was positioned visually in front of the cathedral but still in the plaza, so that the mayor and her security would have to pass between the tree and the church. The red, yellow, and blue tree was surrounded by what she believed was called a “white picket fence,” consisting of movable sections a few feet long. The rails that capped the fence sections were a good size for a hand to grip and were festooned with ribbons and garlands. Apparently someone was scheduled to give a speech next to the tree, since a microphone and chest-high sound speakers were positioned there and wired. Abejide had already visually followed the wires to check for the person responsible for running the sound equipment; his table was established behind a tree. It was not likely that his first thought would be to save his speakers.

A thin lamppost with a security camera stood just outside the white fence but close to the tree, ensuring that from one angle, at least, the view of the camera was blocked. Abejide stood in the blind spot, pulled her weapon from her pocket, and carefully removed the small, hard plastic cover. It was so small that to anyone watching she would look like she was handling a phone or similar gadget. But now—pre-loaded, highly sensitive to any pressure at several different points, and in the hand of its maker—the weapon was extremely dangerous.

The bomb exploded.

Abejide flinched, screamed, acted horrified for whichever cameras might see her. She put on a perfect display of terrified paralysis, looking this way and that to see where she could run but unable to choose any direction. She held her hands to her chest as if trying to hold herself together, hold back screams, but was actually creating a cocoon for the weapon in her hands, protecting it from the jostling she was receiving from the frightened concertgoers. And wherever her head turned to look, she moved her eyes so that she was seeing nothing but the mayor.

Immediately after detonation, Mayor Garcia and her husband flung their arms and torsos over their sons sitting between them. They stayed in that position until the three policemen of the security detail reached them and leaned over them, supplanting their human shield with their own bodies. Standing up but hunched under a dome of uniformed chests and arms, the Garcia family hurried in the direction the guards guided them, south toward Dolorosa. The thin screams of one of the twin boys seemed to pierce through all the wailing of the crowd.

Abejide saw the family’s faces clearly. The mayor was arguing with her husband and the reason became quickly apparent. One of the security guards was already trying to peel the mayor’s husband and sons away from the mayor’s side. The guard was leaning to the right and Abejide knew instantly that he was going to steer the family west through the courtyard while the mayor was escorted to Dolorosa to meet the SUV.

It had only been seconds since the explosion. The Garcias were about to pass the Christmas tree. Everything had to happen very fast now.

The world took on a kind of silence for Abejide. It was not soundless; as an excellent hunter she still needed all her senses to be sharp. The sound of an approaching shouting voice could indicate that someone was about to get too close to her, notice her, or accidentally disrupt her plan in some way. The sound of a table scraping could be the worker of the sound equipment coming unexpectedly toward her instead of away from her. The rattle of a chair could be a sign that one was going to fall in her direction and interfere with her footing. She was aware of all of these possible sounds beneath the screams and cries, but she did not sense them viscerally. They registered on her consciousness abstractly, as if they were diagrammed on the sphere of her auditory world. In this way it felt like silence. Separated from her senses but even more alert, she was free to move as if she were in a bubble, smoothly and timelessly carrying out the sequence of events she had planned.

As the Garcias passed the tree, the security guard pulled the mayor’s husband and children toward the cathedral, already placing them on the trajectory for the courtyard. The mayor gave an extra squeeze to the last hand she held, one of the sons’. Then she grabbed one of her two security guards and pushed him in that direction as well. He resisted and there was a very brief argument and a bigger shove from the mayor. The guard jogged after the family. Now the mayor had only one policeman with her, but the pause had been the real fortune for Abejide.

The young woman held on to the lamppost and stepped up on the nearest white picket fence rail, steadying herself with one of the sound speakers. The fence rail was only the width of one of her feet and its decorations were slippery, but it would suffice. Wrapping her arm around the lamppost, she brought her other hand to her face as if calling desperately for someone. She was careful to use the hand that would block her face from any security cameras pointed at the cathedral and the tree. Looking like she was struggling to keep her balance, her arm around the lamppost reached farther and grabbed the weapon that she had placed on top of the sound speaker.

 

 

At Langley, Ryan Kealey suddenly stabbed his finger at a laptop. “What the hell was that?” he said.

Jonathan Harper looked at the array of security camera feeds. Kealey was pointing at the feed that was mostly obscured by Christmas tree lights. “I wasn’t looking,” Harper said.

“I barely caught it and it’s gone now,” Kealey said, “but I could swear it was a sleeve.” He yelled to the room, “I need eyes on the Christmas tree, right now, cameras, anything!”

But by the time someone communicated with the police arriving at Main Plaza, it was too late.

The mayor’s remaining security guard was visibly unsure of what to do with four sides of a woman to protect and only himself to do it. He switched to the mayor’s right side, trying to create space for her to move by holding out his arm against the crowd surging in the same direction. That left her open to the tree. The guard’s other arm was around her shoulders and she had adopted the universal posture of the besieged, shoulders up, head down, back of the neck exposed.

Abejide hugged the lamppost tightly, to all appearances for balance, but actually to steady her arm and hand. Bare-fingered—she had used surgical gloves during the preloading so no fingerprints would be found on the arrow—she squeezed the trigger of the crossbow that was the size of her palm.

In one of the odd coincidences that have run rampant through lives of inventors in every era of history, Abejide had been working on her own miniature crossbow three years ago when the news broke that an Israeli jeweler had completed a fully functional model. His was made of silver, gold, and steel. Hers was similar only in the steel bow and string, but the result was the same: an arrow half a finger long could be shot ten feet, silently, with severe impact. The arrow was only about the size of three matchsticks clumped together so Hernandez had doubted the efficacy of the weapon, despite the convenience. After all, wouldn’t the skinny arrow simply pass through its target altogether, leaving a remarkably clean hole? It would land a body in the hospital but it wouldn’t kill.

Her answer was to spend more time on inventing the arrow than it had taken to craft the crossbow.

Now, standing next to the Christmas tree, she knew before the arrow hit that her aim had been not perfect, but satisfactory. Perfect would have been hitting the jugular vein, but she had designed the arrow so that would not be necessary. Keyed to such sensitivity that the entire crossbow had to be shielded in hard plastic until just before use, the arrow tip would react to the slightest pressure, such as meeting the skin of a neck. Upon impact eight triangular, razor-sharp carbon points exploded from the body of the arrow, making a much bigger hole than the tip could cause.

Five feet away from Abejide, her arrow tip lodged in Mayor Garcia’s muscle. One carbon point pierced her windpipe and another pierced her jugular. Without a sound she dropped to her knees. The guard felt the drag on his arm and tried to catch her. There was no exit wound in the mayor’s neck, so blood was spilling from her mouth.

Abejide screamed and jumped down from the fence rail. She grabbed the first person within reach, pointing and pushing at him to look. “The mayor!” she shouted. He hurried to the fallen woman and several other people followed him. By the time the security guard looked up he had three or four faces gathered around the tragic figure. Abejide was not one of them.