Dark Prophecy

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  “I don’t know why you can’t do that from out here.”

  “I told you,” Roger said patiently. “I have to make sure the first wave goes off. If not, I may have to do some improvising from inside.”

  Abdulia was brilliant in so many ways—Roger was routinely dazzled by the way her mind worked. But she hadn’t been in the military. She didn’t fully understand bombs, gases, poisons. Not like Roger did.

  “I understand,” she said. “I love you, Roger.”

  “You, too.”

  Roger had memorized the list of numbers. All of them: old-fashioned beeper numbers, assigned to defunct beepers he’d picked up cheaply a few weeks ago. Each beeper was attached to an explosive device he’d sent to certain mailrooms in particular companies. Back in Iraq, he’d helped provide security for a crew of freelance reconstruction teams. Among them were some of the best demolition men in the business. Over beers, they talked about how easy it was to bring down a building, as long as you had the right amount of explosives in the key structural places. Roger listened to that, filed it away. He spent a lot of his time in Iraq filing things like that away. Nerve agents they’d discover in some stockpile, then have to destroy. Ways to bring down buildings. Roger figured such knowledge would come in handy in the future. Maybe he could work for one of these outfits, even—stateside. He’d impress them with how much he’d retained.

  Of course, that hadn’t quite worked out. Roger had been left with a head full of knowledge and not much practical application for it.

  Until now.

  Roger dialed the first number.

  Time for the tower to start tumbling down.

  Somewhere, distantly, something went boom.

  chapter 79

  When the Niantic Tower explosions began, everyone in the immediate vicinity thought it was another Big One. Workers scattered under conference room tables, perched themselves in doorways, and waited for the worst. Earthquakes, though, have a unique sound. They start with a rumbling—like a planet-size tank running over an endless field of speed bumps. It’s a sound unlike anything you’ve ever heard, unless you happened to have experienced an earthquake before. This rumbling is followed by a shaking, back and forth, back and forth, which is both longer and more severe than you’d imagine. Finally comes the desperate and fervent prayer that the building’s designers were doing their job, and had indeed prepared for the worst temblor that Mother Nature had to offer.

  But the occupants of the Niantic Tower quickly realized that the noise and the vibrations were not caused by an earthquake.

  chapter 80

  Dark’s eyes snapped open when he felt the blast pulsing through the concrete floor. A few seconds later, the screaming began. God, no. Was he too late? Pressing his hands on the ground, Dark pushed himself up to his feet. Blood splatter trailed across the floor and down the stairs right to the door. Roger Maestro had made his getaway, set the charges. Dark prayed that the security team was able to remove some of the packages and send them down to the basement.

  He raced down the fire stairs. On the floor below, the steel door flew open and smoked poured into the tower, followed by a swarm of frightened office workers.

  “Did any of you see a strange man on your floor? He would have been cut and bleeding?”

  A chorus of confused noes. Dark muscled his way through the frightened crowd to the floor proper, looking down to see if he could find any traces of blood drops. Nothing. Where the hell had he gone?

  There was another loud BOOM. Closer this time, as if it was just on the floor above them. They’d intercepted many of the packages, but there were still some left. Dust particles fell from between the drop ceiling tiles. Lights flickered. People screamed. Dark crouched down instinctively, waiting for another blast, counting the seconds. Five seconds later there was another rumble—somewhere else in the building. He was setting these fucking things off one by one. That meant Roger had to be inside the building. He was triggering them. His plan wasn’t to bring the whole building down right away.

  He’d give himself an exit strategy.

  Roger Maestro leaned against drywall in the empty office and wondered what the building looked like from the outside. He remembered watching the 9/11 attacks with Abdulia not long after they first met. Roger knew he’d be deployed soon, that the life he knew would soon end. It was unfair. They held each other, lit candles, ate dinner in silence. That night, their son was conceived.

  After 9/11, the world had seemed to pay attention. But only for a little while.

  Roger spent nearly three years in Afghanistan and saw his baby boy only in little snatches of time. A few photographs, a halted and confused conversation over a bad cell phone connection. By the time Roger returned, the boy treated him like a stranger. When he hugged him, the boy wriggled as if he couldn’t wait to pull himself free. Abdulia hugged her husband instead, consoled him, told him it would just take time.

  Roger often thought of those burning towers in lower Manhattan, like candles slowly sinking into white frosting and disappearing into the cake. Was that what it would look like now?

  Soon he would be outside, triggering the second set of charges. He supposed he would find out then.

  Because that was the point—to duplicate the horror of that sunny September morning. First the fire and the smoke, then the jumping and the screaming and the fresh shock. And then the tower would come tumbling down.

  Fire stairs were designed to literally be the last safe passage out of any given building. The Niantic Tower had two—east and west—from the thirtieth floor to the bottom. As the building tapered to a point, there was a single fire tower running up one side. Dark thought about it. A military man like Roger Maestro would stay below the thirtieth floor to avoid limiting his options.

  And if the blood splatter led away from the east stairs, then Maestro would have to be in the west stairs, making his way down.

  Roger dialed a number, but heard nothing. He knew this number corresponded to the twenty-second floor. He was on the nineteenth now, directly underneath. He would have heard something. What had happened? That accounted for the third misfire in eight strikes. Too many to be chalked up to chance. Something was wrong.

  As he thought about it, he quickly dialed another number.

  chapter 81

  By the time Riggins and Constance arrived at the Niantic Tower, smoke was already pouring out of broken windows and people were streaming from the revolving doors. Riggins had been in D.C. during 9/11, in a Special Circs briefing room, watching the live feeds, waiting for instructions to do something, anything, wishing he could have been in front of one of those doomed buildings to help. Well, today appeared to be his lucky fucking day.

  They pushed their way past the frantic crowds and made their way to the security desk. Constance had a photo of Dark ready. “Has this man approached you?” she asked.

  The stunned security guard nodded his head and immediately started to worry for his job. “Yeah, he had Homeland Security credentials . . . wait, was I not supposed to let him through, or something?”

  “Do you know where he is?” Riggins barked.

  “He went upstairs—he told us to stop all packages and start evacuating. Wait—who the fuck are you people?”

  Riggins flashed his badge. “We’re FBI. Special Circs division, and yeah, we’re coordinating with this guy. But his cell must be off. We need to find him immediately. How many other guards do you have stationed in the building?”

  “A dozen, but they’re scattered throughout the building. Your friend had them pulling packages.”

  “Let us through.”

  “Are you kidding?” the guard said. “We’re trying to get everybody out.”

  Dark’s new lady friend had led them right to San Francisco.

  When Riggins squeezed the fake EMTs with the fake ambulance in a private garage—threatening to pound them with the full fury of the U.S. Department of Justice—they shrugged their shoulders and spit out a name. She’s one
of you, anyway, they said. Not that that was extremely curious. Riggins started making gentle inquiries, seeing what the name “Lisa Graysmith” meant. At first nobody returned his calls. Then some bureaucrat he didn’t know called and made vague threats if Riggins didn’t quiet down about this “Lisa Graysmith.” Bingo. Riggins went to Wycoff—perhaps the first time he’d ever been eager to hear that prick’s voice—and asked him to rattle some cages. Told him that this “Lisa Graysmith” came up as a person of interest in their Tarot Card Killing investigation.

  While he waited for Wycoff to get back to him, Riggins checked his own Special Circs case files, seeing if maybe she was a loose end. To his astonishment, she was.

  On computer, anyway.

  In the actual files back in Quantico, her name didn’t come up at all. Sure, there was a Julie Graysmith—a victim of the Body Double killer a couple of years ago.

  According to the files online, however, “Lisa” was the victim’s older sister.

  But on paper, no Lisa.

  What the fuck?

  Wycoff called back. “Lisa Graysmith” was off-limits. Hidden behind layers of diplomatic security and the State Department. No way she could be involved in the Tarot Card Killings, as she was “on assignment” elsewhere in the world, and that would be that, fuck you very much. Which Riggins assumed would be the case. He thanked Wycoff, told him it must be a name mix-up. Weird.

  Yeah.

  Twenty minutes later a man who refused to identify himself told Riggins that if he wanted to talk to Lisa Graysmith, he might try the Niantic Tower in San Francisco. She’d just reported a possible terrorist attack on the building.

  “Does she belong to a certain company? Can you give me a number, or even a floor?” Often, intelligence officers would operate out of false front companies.

  “You are,” the voice said, chuckling, “an FBI agent, are you not?”

  The only thing more obnoxious than politicians on a crusade were intelligence types hopped up on their own importance.

  “Thanks.”

  Though now that they’d arrived at the tower, Riggins could see why the man thought this whole thing was so fucking funny.

  Riggins ignored the guards, hopped over the security turnstiles, and ran back behind the elevator banks. Constance followed. Once they’d reached the fire towers, they had to fight their way through even more frightened people, coughing and crying and trying to figure out how their Monday morning had gone so wrong.

  “Why don’t you stay with the guards,” Riggins told Constance. “Maybe you can find Dark on their surveillance system.”

  “What,” Constance said, “and have you die a hero up there so you can haunt me the rest of my life? No thanks, Tom. I’m going up.”

  “God, you’re stubborn.”

  “And that’s why you love me.”

  “Love’s not even the word,” Riggins said, then started to wave his beefy hands in front of him, urging the panicked crowds to make way, make way. This was crazy. This was impossible. Yet, they were doing it anyway. Welcome to Special Circs.

  chapter 82

  Dark wasn’t even sure what floor he was on. The smoke was black and thick, burning his eyes, clotting in his mouth. Alarms and screams sounded in his ears. He crouched down to his fingertips and balls of his feet—something he’d been practicing for months. Dark took some grim satisfaction knowing that his paranoia had finally come in handy.

  “Where are you?” he shouted. “Keep shouting so I can follow the sound of your voice!”

  There were screams—to the left. Dark moved quickly along the carpet, staying low to the ground, looking for any traces of Roger. Give me a drop of blood. A boot print. Something. There were more screams. Dark, as always, found himself torn. On one hand, the victims. On the other, the monster. Logic dictated that if you slay the monster, you help the victims. But what do you do when the monster is running away, and the victims are screaming for help?

  Constance had a spatial mind; she almost never needed a GPS. Once she fixed on the location of the elevators and the fire stairs, she was able to direct people with dead certainty—even though she’d never before set foot in the Niantic Tower. The FBI vest she was wearing gave her instant authority, but it was also the look in her eyes. This was a woman who knew the way out, who would not let you down.

  “This way!” she shouted. “Follow the sound of my voice.”

  All the while, she kept careful watch for Dark.

  Despite the strange evidence, she knew Dark wouldn’t be part of something like this. He was trying to stop it—as always, throwing himself into fires because he felt a moral compulsion to stop arsonists everywhere. But what Constance couldn’t figure out—and honestly, what hurt—was why he didn’t involve them. Not Special Circs, not Wycoff. But Riggins and herself. What had they done wrong? Weren’t they worthy anymore?

  Constance pushed the thoughts out of her mind. She could feel hurt later. Now she needed to get as many people out of this building as possible.

  She moved quickly, clearing a floor, then following the last straggler down another flight, all the while fighting the urge to flinch whenever another explosion went off. This was a slow-motion nightmare.

  Then she saw something odd: a man with a phone in his hand. Not hurrying down like everyone else. Taking careful steps. Dialing a number. She watched his thumb move over the buttons. Ten digits, pushed deliberately. There was a three-second pause, and then Constance flinched again—another explosion, this one faint, distant.

  By the time he started dialing again, the pieces had come together in her mind. By the sixth digit, Constance had her Glock 19 out. By the seventh she was yelling for him to freeze. He pushed another number and she let off a shot, above his head. That got his attention. Slowly, he turned on the cement stairs and looked up at her on the landing. Thumb over a digit. Which would be the ninth digit. Only one more to make a call.

  “Don’t,” Constance said.

  “Please,” the man said, his face screwed up in an expression of worry. “I’m just trying to call my wife. She’s going to be worried sick.”

  “Put the phone down.”

  “I don’t understand—did I do something wrong?”

  His lip trembled. His skin was pale, glistening with sweat. But Constance looked at his eyes. They were cold, hard. Nothing there at all.

  “Final warning,” Constance said, taking a step down closer.

  “Okay, okay, okay ...”

  As he stooped down to place the phone on a stair, his expression changed. The coldness of his eyes spread to the rest of his face. Constance’s trigger finger twitched, and then without warning he came charging up the stairs at her, two at a time, fast—incredibly fast. She fired—and missed. It was all happening too fast. By the time she took a breath and pointed a gun in his direction he was already on top of her, smashing his forearm into her hands, knocking the Glock aside. The shot ricocheted off cinder block. The man made a V with his thumb and index finger and thrust it into her throat. Constance dropped to her knees, dropped her gun. She couldn’t breathe. It felt like a rock had been shoved down her trachea. Two objectives raced through her mind, both at cross purposes. One: defend herself. Two: recover the gun and shoot this bastard. Still choking, she reached for the gun. That’s when he flattened her against the concrete landing by pushing a knee into the middle of her back. Once she was immobile, he grabbed her head with two large, rough, dry hands.

  Constance knew what he was trying to do.

  Would do, in another second.

  She reached out for her Glock, which had landed on the step below. Wrapped her hand around it.

  Immediately she felt one of the big hands leave her head. A second later it smashed into her elbow. Constance felt her arm break, then go partially numb.

  She refused to let go of the gun.

  Constance had always modeled her career after Steve Dark’s. Taken her interoffice cues from him; learned how to piece together a difficult case from him. S
he wanted to be like him so badly, she even tried to inhabit his life in a weak moment. And now Constance knew what she had to do, because Dark would have done the same thing in this situation. Despite a six-foot-two, 220-pound man focusing his body weight onto the middle of her spine, hands wrapped around her head, arm broken in probably more than one place.

  She aimed the best she could.

  Then she fired her Glock down the stairs, blasting the cell phone into a million pieces.

  Roger cursed himself for not thinking ahead. His commanding officers had always told him that he was a good soldier, but he didn’t have a mind for strategy. Roger Maestro was someone you deploy with a specific objective. You didn’t have Roger Maestro plan your war. Roger understood that, was at peace with that. Which was why he was glad to have Abdulia.

  Only now, he’d failed her.

  With an annoyed grunt, Roger slammed the FBI agent’s head into the concrete, knocking her unconscious. Then Roger stood up and made his way down the stairs to his broken phone. He picked it up, hoping that somehow it was operational . . . but no.

  There were a few options—none of them good. One was to stay inside the building, make the calls from one of the hundreds of empty cubicles available to him. But their plan depended on the tower falling, and triggering the second—and more lethal—wave of explosives from the outside, across the street. He couldn’t do it from inside without it being a suicide mission.

  Or Roger could make his way outside and make the calls from Abdulia’s phone . . . but no. She was already away, taking care of the details of the final card. Their plan depended on him holding onto his phone.

  A disposable? Not enough time . . . even if Roger knew where to buy one. They’d spent a lot of time in the city, but he never thought to notice cell phone shops. Roger had worried about many details, but not about finding another phone.