The Eighth Day

by Tom Avitabile

  “Don’t know. Could’ve been anytime before the dinner.”

  “When was the last time you saw it?”

  “The day I got it. Then I forgot about it until that night.”

  “Did you have any robberies or break-ins during that time?”

  “No.”

  “Mind if we check your home?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  ∞§∞

  Agent Brooke Burrell exited her car first. The NYPD Tactical Patrol Force emptied out of a step van as five more agents surrounded her. She knocked on the door. Enrico answered as expected, it being 6 AM, after all.

  Holding up a folded piece of paper, she identified herself. “Mr. Hernandez, I’m Agent Burrell of the FBI. I have a warrant to search these premises for material evidence in a matter of national security. Would you step aside, Sir?”

  Maybe because he was groggy, or maybe because he was pissed at being awakened, or maybe it was just that no woman was going to come into his castle and start giving him orders in his underwear, he responded, “Hell no, get away from my house!” He attempted to shut the door. All Brooke had to do was tilt her head toward the door to get the three big bulls in flak jackets and helmets to slam a battering ram into the door, smashing it open. Two more team members hustled a bikini-brief-clad Enrico to the floor and cuffed him. Bringing him upright and sitting on his couch, the forensic teams went to work straightaway, dusting for prints and retrieving fibers. One cop secured the unwilling Enrico’s fingerprints.

  ∞§∞

  When Brooke left two hours later, Dennis, who had watched the operation go down, took the opportunity to cross the street and introduce himself. She was smaller than he expected; more refined than the policewomen he had known in New York. She greeted him with a welcoming smile.

  “Hello, Mr. Mallory, nice to meet you.”

  “Pleasure. How did it go?”

  “Like in the book. Got a lot of latents. Maybe one of those prints will be your bearded wonder’s.”

  “How was Hernandez?”

  “He chose the hard way, but we persuaded him to see our point. He’s just an angry citizen. He’ll get a suspended sentence for obstruction and no jail time.”

  “Thanks for all your help,” Dennis said. This agent was no older than his daughter.

  “No problem. I hear you were an above-grade cop.”

  “I had my moments. You’ll let me know if you turn up any interesting evidence?”

  “As long as my supervisor approves, you’ll know what I know.”

  “Thanks.”

  ∞§∞

  “One latent print lifted from Enrico’s drawer matched an ex-Army Corps of Engineers grunt named Thomas Regan,” Brooke Burrell told Mallory a few days later in her FBI office. “He received the Purple Heart for being wounded during the invasion of Grenada while attempting to rescue medical students who had been taken hostage. The Army photo of him was a rough match to the pictures Harv took, when you allow for the twenty-five years, twenty pounds, a beard, and thinning hair that separated them. His last known address was in Thousand Oaks, California, in 1989. No record since. No credit cards, no license, no police records, and no death certificate. He just vanished into the American fabric.”

  “Until he went shopping in Enrico’s dresser drawer.”

  Burrell nodded. “So Regan risks a break-in and covers his tracks for the sole purpose of stealing a 250-dollar ticket to a high-society wingding?”

  “This guy is focused and dedicated. I have to assume he has thought this out. I can’t believe he left a partial. Probably missed it in his wipe down.”

  “You think he’s that careful?”

  “The .25 caliber revolver that was found in the ballroom was wiped clean. And that would have been before he intended to use it.”

  “It isn’t a dead match but it looks like your ‘beard’ is Thomas Regan. We’ll have all the airports and train and bus stations alerted with composites.”

  Brooke’s cell phone rang. “Yes, he’s here right now.” She passed the phone to Dennis. “It’s Special Agent in Charge Palumbo.”

  “Hello, Mallory here.”

  “Mr. Mallory, we’ve never met, but Jack Flanagan asked me to extend the professional courtesy. How are they treating you back there in New York?”

  “Like a VIP. Can’t complain. I’m guessing this is not a customer satisfaction survey.”

  That got an audible laugh. “Fair enough. The fact is that your lead is bringing us into an area of national security. I might not be able to keep the door swinging both ways much longer.”

  “I hear you. I won’t expect anything further, then.”

  “Of course, I now also have to make a pitch to appeal to your sense of patriotism. If you find out anything that can help us, you’ll be forthwith.” Joey employed the grammar of New York cops to stress his point.

  “Of course. And thank you for everything you’ve done to help me thus far.”

  “We are all on the same team here.”

  “Do you want to speak to Agent Burrell?”

  “I’ll call her back later. You be good … oh, how’s your wife?”

  That genuinely surprised Dennis. “Why, fine thank you. I’m touched that you asked.”

  “From what Flanagan said, she’s one tough lady.”

  “Amen to that, brother.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Cats & Bugs

  BLOWING UP Sperling High Voltage was an extra-points project because, with one blast, Tommy Regan not only struck a blow against technology, he made an object lesson of man’s cruelty to the environment. The people who died from noxious fumes resulting from the fire became poster children for America’s disregard for chemical and biological safeguards. In one fell swoop, he had won the admiration of the Sabot Society and ELM, the Earth Liberation Movement. This next attack would be spectacular, in the aftermath of which no politician or government official could deny the danger or ignore the raping of this planet any longer.

  Luckily, magnets were not on any federal agency’s watch list. There were no public outcries to regulate magnets. They just cost a bundle. So Tommy reached out to the Sabot Society.

  Voyeurger: In order to prepare the Cat, I will need $7,000 to cover veterinary costs.

  SABOT: I don’t think that will be a problem, especially after how well your last pet project was received.

  Voyeurger: Have them priority mail their intentions to me.

  SABOT: I will alert all our members.

  It was amazing. Within three days, the post office box he rented from Pack, Wrap, and Mail on Sunrise Highway was stuffed with U.S. Post Office blue-and-red Priority Mail packets. They were the perfect carriers, these solid cardboard envelopes that offered not a hint of their contents. Less than five dollars’ worth of stamps got second-day delivery. They were dropped in standard, anonymous mailboxes leaving no way to trace the sender.

  Outside the store in his rotting Camaro, Tommy opened envelope after envelope, calculating their contents. There were twenties, fifties, fives, and tens, some wrapped in newspaper in a further, though unnecessary, attempt to hide the contents. Within two weeks, he had $8,432 dollars in cash all collected, transported, and delivered through the courtesy of Uncle Sam’s post office. What a great country!

  Alinco permanent magnets were awesome devices. A one-pound magnet could lift an engine block. The two magnets he needed cost $1,200 each, for which he paid cash, no questions and not even a raised eyebrow. Edmund Scientific out of Tonawanda, New York, supplied the next crucial element of his surprise package, a four-pound gyroscope. It was a 24-volt model. He had already located eight-ounce RV model batteries that put out 24 volts from Radio Shack. Designed for model planes and boats, they were lightweight. Each one cost $189. He bought four. The expensive part was the C-4. It took him three weeks to locate the guy on the Internet who once said it would not be a challenge to acquire certain “plastics” for rapid remodeling wor
k. Rapid being the three ten millionths of a second it would take to detonate the four pounds of deadly putty.

  It was a devilishly simple device, once he figured it out. The basic principle was based on a cat’s ability to land on its feet. Of course, making something that performed like a cat was no small task. He even toyed with the notion of using an actual cat, but he thought it might bring about unfavorable Karma to initiate the genocide of possibly 10 million with the death of one of God’s innocent creatures. No, he would not sacrifice a cat to help man pay for his sins.

  The cat solution came to him as he was watching some kids play Frisbee in the park. The disc always flew level as long as it was launched level. It was, he reasoned, because of the angular momentum of the spinning disk.

  ∞§∞

  “Five dead including one who was in the Sperling plant. She was a bookkeeper working late,” Nichols, the assistant to the director, told his boss. “The other four were poisoned watching the flames. Nitro traces are leading our agents on the scene to suspect dynamite. They are focusing on one of the delivery trucks as the point of origin, and that truck was loaded with a chemical used as a coolant for high-voltage transformers.”

  “Anything from EI on this?” EI was Electronic Intelligence, a once small, now major part of the bureau’s crime-fighting arsenal. The whiz kids down there had ways of determining what some online pervert trolling for twelve-year-old boys in a chat room had for lunch. EI provided the big payoff on Bernard Keyes, the FBI’s number one suspect in the rash of recent homegrown events.

  “Yes, Sir. Homegrown 1 sent this e-mail at 9:04 PM EST. It only contained two words, ‘Sperling. Ultimate.’” The suspects on a big case like this were code-named in their order of discovery. Homegrown 1 was actually Homegrown 1 and only.

  “Have you confirmed that it’s a genuine claim of responsibility?”

  “The timing is close, but it is incontrovertible. The factory blew at nine, four minutes before the e-mail was received. However, it wasn’t on the fire call boxes or radio frequencies until 9:05, a minute after. So no way it was just someone responding to a scanner call. The first report didn’t get out to the media until twenty minutes after that. We got ’em, Sir.”

  “What is the operational plan then?”

  Nichols smiled. “Sir, something’s fallen into our laps. E-traffic out of Keyes’s location indicates a meeting of their top cell leaders has been called.”

  “When?”

  “Three days.”

  “Can we identify whomever he e-mailed the meeting notice to?”

  “EI was able to pick up his outgoing keystrokes. They have determined he posted the call for the meeting to an old bulletin board.”

  “Meaning?”

  “They communicate without leaving a routing trail but we’re watching the billboard. It’s a challenge because people don’t have to enter one or reveal themselves in any way in order to read the postings. Our guys are working on it.”

  “The good news is we know the location of the meeting place, so we stand a good chance of apprehending the entire ring.”

  “Seems probable, Sir, especially since we’ve kept security on Homegrown airtight. The Sabot will have no reason to suspect we are on to them.”

  “Nichols, I want you to personally call everyone with knowledge of Homegrown and remind them one more time how critical containment is on this. And let them know you are calling for me!”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “You have my approval to wait for the meet to get all of them. One proviso: if we learn of any bombings or potential acts of terror in the next three days, we jump all over Homegrown 1, stop it cold, and chase down these cells some other way.”

  “Of course, Sir. I’ll write up the operational guidelines and have them on your desk for you to sign in fifteen minutes.”

  “Take twenty, I don’t want any mistakes.”

  “Yes, Sir,” Nichols nodded as he took leave.

  Alone in his office, Tate ran through the next few steps in his mind. He reached for the telephone to call Reynolds to ask for a sit-down so he could see the president’s face when he told him he had solved the case. Better yet, Homegrown 1 was about to be joined by Homegrown 2 through 10 or 20.

  On second thought, he decided to call the San Francisco office.

  ∞§∞

  It was 6:30 PM in Oakland. The setting sun, hanging low over the Pacific, bathed the ball field in an amber wash. Joey Palumbo was sitting on a dusty bench watching his nine-year-old master the strategy and mechanics of playing Little League second base. This was the perfect time, watching his son grow up. Joe Jr. was the greatest achievement of his and his wife Phyllis’s lives. Watching his son turn two and discovering that birthday cake wasn’t just intended for one’s mouth, Joey had an epiphany and suddenly understood what true selflessness meant. This was someone he would gladly die for.

  Although he loved his wife and intellectually knew he would sacrifice himself for her as well, their love was somehow, somewhere, at some point far out in the abstract, conditional. Especially if she divorced him or, someday, God forbid, she turned against life and went on a self-destructive path. But there was no limit, no threshold that his son could cross that would erode Joey’s selfless devotion to Joe Jr. Down deep in his soul, at the very center of his being, he would be willing to make a draconian deal with any devil to trade his life for that of his son’s.

  His secure bureau cell phone rang. He got up and distanced himself from the other parents. “Palumbo.”

  “How are you, Joe?”

  He knew the director’s voice. “Fine, Sir, and you?”

  “I’m having a great day, Joe. We got a concrete match to Homegrown 1 on the explosion and fire on Long Island.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Within the last hour. NCIJTF has him typing the credit note four minutes after the blast.”

  “It is a good day, Sir.” There was an awkward pause, Joey trying to decide why he got this call, probably before the president. Then he found out.

  “Has your friend come up with anything?”

  “Our agent Hansen tells me they have found the means of recruitment.”

  “The subliminal thing?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Hiccock’s not dumb, Sir. If he is going that way, there’s probably something there.”

  “Of course, that doesn’t rule out Homegrown 1. I mean he could be behind Hiccock’s subliminal theory.”

  “That’s true, Sir. Should I call him and see?”

  “Joe, I need you to find out what you can, but I don’t want to tip him off that we are as close as we are.”

  Joey didn’t like the sound of this. “Can I ask why?”

  “Homegrown is about to expand. We found out the perpetrators are having a big meet in three days and we expect to be there when they do.”

  “Sir, Hiccock has clearance.” Joey had the unsettling thought that he may have just pushed a little too far.

  “Joe, I am asking you to ascertain what he knows without jeopardizing Homegrown.”

  Joey resented the implication that his friend was a security risk and considered telling his boss to go to hell. But looking toward the infield as his son bobbled a routine ball to second, it was all too plain to him that his little second baseman wasn’t going to get a baseball scholarship to Harvard. After a deep breath, the father in the agent said, “Yes, Sir.”

  “Let me know as soon as you know anything, okay, Joe?”

  “Certainly. Good night, Sir.”

  As he folded his encrypted phone, Palumbo seriously considered his next action. He had pretty much kept his old buddy out of the loop, feeding him nothing of any consequence. Now he was being asked to see if Hiccock was going to scoop the FBI before they could have their little dog-and-pony show in three days.

  How do I do this?

  ∞§∞

  Kronos was confused. He had flown all the way to bum-fuck
New Mexico and then was driven two hours and 300 minutes to this place in the middle of nowhere. He knew Hiccock was summoning him here to meet some kind of Navy Admiral, but as the car drove up, he saw nothing but Army crap: soldier jerks, trucks, and satellite dishes. He thought about it and laughed to himself. What did I expect? To see them pull a ship up to this shack in the middle of the desert. Hiccock and Tyler stepped off the small porch into the desert’s oppressive midday heat to greet him.

  They entered Parks’s home. Looking around the inside, the sparse furniture, curtains on the windows, and wood burning stove reminded Kronos of a family trap restaurant on Route 4 in Paramus, New Jersey. The politically correct environment of the eatery was corporately designed to look like a country home. It was a ploy to get people’s minds off the portion-controlled servings as mandated by the head office in Milwaukee or someplace. Except for the Sun Microsystems minicomputer in anvil cases, this house looked like a small corner of that restaurant, complete with an old grandmother.

  Taking it all in, Kronos turned to Hiccock. “So where’s the Admiral?”

  “She’s at the computer,” Hiccock said, pointing.

  Kronos was enraged. “She? She’s, she’s … she’s an old broad!”

  “Mind that tongue, boy. She is an old Admiral broad. And she forgot more than you’ll ever know.”

  Kronos felt the skin on his face start to heat up. He bit the inside of his cheek, pivoted on his heels, and stormed out the door.

  “Come on, Kronos,” Hiccock said, following him. “This isn’t some hacking competition. People are dying out there wholesale. We have to try everything.”

  “Look, I hacked for the mob. I made them millions. I was Electronic Enemy Number One for four years. I got pride. Why do I have to work with her? What could she possibly know?”

  “Let’s go find out. I left her with her first computer four days ago.”