The Eighth Day

by Tom Avitabile

  “A retired detective?” the president said in amazement.

  “Yes, Sir,” Agent Palumbo said. “I was alerted that this detective was working for the CEO of a private company. The perpetrator was believed to have threatened the detective’s client. At the time of the blast, he was following him as a suspected stalker.”

  “Wait, then why was the FBI involved?” the president asked.

  Joey was thrown a little. “Sir, there was a slim chance that what the detective had stumbled onto was Homegrown connected, but I made the call to offer him some low-level assistance.”

  “Well, you had the right instincts.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t until right before the explosion that he or our agent Brooke Burrell knew of Regan’s true intention.”

  “That detective saved millions of lives and this country from a disaster of unprecedented proportions,” Hiccock said.

  “Was he married?” President Mitchell asked.

  “Yes, Sir.”

  “I want to talk to the wife as soon as she is up for it.” He then jotted something down on his notepad. Everyone waited until he was finished, then he zeroed in on the director. “So, is the bastard who attempted this another homegrown?”

  “It appears he is a member of the Sabot Society,” Tate said. “We are checking that now. His computer and profile are being inspected.”

  What’s the Sabot Society? Hiccock wondered. He was about to ask aloud when Mitchell nodded and turned to his chief of staff. “Okay, Ray, you get all the facts and have it written up. I’ll address the nation at 11 AM.”

  Everyone in the room assumed that this was the end of the briefing and started to leave. The president then called out, “What was his name? The cop. What was the man’s name?”

  “Mallory, Sir. Dennis Mallory.”

  ∞§∞

  “Ya got a minute?” Hiccock grabbed Joey’s arm and hustled him into an empty White House office before he could answer.

  Joey pried Bill’s hand from his arm. “What’s this all about?”

  “I should kick your ass, pal-o-mine.”

  “Why you gonna do that?”

  “Thanks for telling me about Operation Homegrown, you hard-on.”

  There was a noticeable change in the color of Joey’s face. Hiccock knew he had hit a nerve. Bill pounded his finger into Joey’s chest to accentuate every word of his next sentence. “Share, you said, remember?” Hiccock then held up his hand, mocking the secret gesture from one Blade to another. “Ah, bullshit,” he muttered and stepped away.

  Joey’s mind raced. “Okay, let’s share. Community colleges aren’t that bad.”

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Jeez, are you hungry? Let’s grab some eggs.”

  Down in the White House mess, Joey and Bill sat over scrambled eggs and bacon. The FBI agent looked around. Hiccock could see that there was no one but food service people in the room and they were thirty feet away.

  “It’s called Operation Homegrown,” Joey said. “It’s classified. The Homegrown Op is about to make a big play for the controlling council of the Sabot Society.”

  “Sabot Society? I just heard Tate use that name in the briefing.”

  “As near as we can tell, they are an anti-technology terrorist group that has been behind all these attacks.”

  “You have proof of this?”

  “Enough to ruin the party they’re planning.”

  Hiccock was now dealing with a whole new set of circumstances. If this group were the bad guys, the search was over. He sat staring at a point on the wall for a minute, as the full ramifications sank in. Out of the twenty or so questions that immediately formed in his mind, the one that escaped his lips was, “Sabot? It’s a little obvious, don’t you think?”

  “How so?”

  “When the industrial revolution came to the Netherlands, it threatened to put many factory workers out on the street. One machine could now do the work of ten, twenty men. So the workers in Holland would jam the machinery and destroy it by sticking their wooden shoes in the gears and cogs. Those wooden shoes were called sabots. That’s where the term sabotage comes from. They sabotaged the technology of their day.”

  “Well, our modern day shoeless creeps are the ones behind all this. They’re web-based and have been in existence for at least seven years that we know of … how do you know all this crap about the Netherlands, anyway?”

  “That’s one my dad told me.”

  “How is the old IRT driver?”

  “Doing great. He and my mom moved up to Roscoe. Pop gets his minimum adult daily requirement of trout fishing and my mother’s happy he’s not bitching.”

  “I remember when we used to cram into his motorman’s cab and look down the track. That was cool. Hey, you know what I still think about? When your dad drove the number four train and he would let us stay at the 161st Street–River Avenue station.”

  “How many Yankee games did we watch for free from that supply shed at the end of the platform?”

  “Yeah, two bottles of Coke and the transistor radio and we were in heaven.”

  “Dad retired from the MTA back in the mid-nineties. I’ll tell him you were asking.”

  They both paused as the memories of hot summer afternoons in that tin shed, looking out the open door onto the emerald-green field of the house that Babe built, faded off into a smoky mist.

  “You know, Joey, you’re just doing your job. I mean whatever shitty thing that egomaniacal boss of yours has you doing to me or against me, I know it’s your job. I don’t take it personally.”

  Joey looked Hiccock in the eye. “Clean start from today forward.

  When this is over, I want you to come out to the coast and meet Phyl and little Joe … spend some time. Maybe go fishing or catch a few ball games.”

  “Yeah, that would be nice, when all this is over.”

  Joey lifted his glass of orange juice, “To this being over.”

  Bill raised his coffee cup and clinked. “To this being over.” He took a sip and put down the cup. “How can you be sure that these guys tonight are the guys?”

  “We got them, dead to rights, front-to-back on the Sperling Chemical explosion. And we got the guy in last night’s Jersey blast chatting with them. ”

  “Won’t nabbing him spook your play for the whole society?”

  “We let it out that the bomber died on the truck. His cohorts will think he was vaporized, and, along with him, any connection to them.”

  Hiccock nodded to the logic of this but something else rippled his brow. “Sperling is in the same kind of high-tech support business that Mason Chemical is in, so I can see the connection. But that yo-yo tried to blow up American Cyanamid. From what I know of them, they seem too low-tech … but maybe.” Bill took a sip of his coffee. “So are you saying the Sabot are the ones doing the subliminal work?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know if we have connected it that far. But the web is their principal means of organization. It would seem logical.”

  “So who’s the brains of this outfit?”

  “We’ve been on the ass of Bernard Keyes, a postal employee from the Midwest.”

  “Postal employee … disgruntled, I’m sure.”

  “Enough jokes about that. This guy is real and he is the center of the ring.”

  “But, Joey, one thing: what we found is a level of code-writing so sophisticated that it had your FBI geniuses and my cyber asshole stumped for days. You’re telling me a mailman wrote it?”

  “He talks to his Sabots on the web. Maybe he also recruited that particular talent there. Hey, we busted a busboy in Brooklyn a few years back that got into the accounts and files of people on the Forbes “100 Richest Americans” list. A fucking busboy! He was a high school dropout and foreign national, as I remember. Computers are truly the great equalizer.”

  “Yeah, now any idiot can be a crook.”

  “Or terrorist.”

  “Or, apparently, an FBI agent. So what, if anything, wil
l you need from me?” Hiccock said cautiously.

  “When we take these guys down, we’ll need to use everything you’ve learned as evidence.”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?”

  “What?”

  “I owe your boss an apology.”

  “Tate? Why?”

  “He was right all along. It was a known group. This isn’t going to be pleasant for me, you know.”

  “Listen, let’s just be glad it’s over, okay?”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Hiccock tried to take a sip from an empty cup.

  ∞§∞

  Cynthia Mallory long ago resigned herself to the uncertainty hanging over each day of being a cop’s wife. All of that mercifully ended when Dennis retired. Since then, the one thing that never occurred to Cynthia was that she would survive him. She was the afflicted one. She was supposed to be the one who had the uncertain future. The irony was not lost on her that the very bargain Dennis made to save her life ended his.

  The fact that Dennis Liam Mallory was a hero was not news to her. Now that the rest of the world knew it as well changed nothing about her grief. She declined the media’s requests for interviews.

  Cynthia did, however, accept a call from the President of the United States. He was very nice and informed her that he was fast-tracking approval of the Presidential Medal of Freedom for uncommon valor and sacrifice in service to America for her husband. He told her that the nation owed her husband a debt that could never be repaid. In the same breath, he also vowed that she, her children, and grandchildren would never want or need anything ever again. It was a small price to pay, he said, for the continuance of the ten million lives her husband saved with one selfless act of courage.

  Her daughter made a simple concise statement to the press. “The Mallory family wishes to thank all those who have expressed support and prayers for us during our time of grief. We plan a private family memorial.” Here’s where she choked up a little. “And we request that in lieu of flowers, contributions be made to the National Institute for Neurologic Disorders and Stroke in my father’s name.” Looking up to the heavens she took a deep breath then spoke, “Daddy, you always were—and always will be—a hero to us all.” She steeled herself and, quelling the quivering of her bottom lip, dry swallowed then added, thank you and God bless America.”

  Miles Taggert, shaken by the death of Dennis, did more than send a check to the NINDS. He endowed The Dennis Mallory Neurologic Disorders and Stroke Pavilion at NYU Hospital, fueling it with enough of his fortune to ensure that it would perpetually be the epicenter of the latest technology, techniques, and treatments for the disease that almost claimed Mrs. Mallory. A second grant, more quietly created, was the Dennis and Cynthia Mallory Endowment, which provided economic support for the families of police, firefighters, and other first responders to afford treatment at the facility.

  Agent Brooke Burrell’s initiative in “interrogating” the prisoner by perforating his leg on the asphalt that night amounted to little more than a cautious footnote on “public discharge of a weapon” on her bureau commendation of service. At age twenty-eight, she was elevated in rank to Assistant Special Agent in Charge–New York office. She visited with the widow Mallory and found closure for herself and a genuine affection for Cynthia.

  After extensive “legal” interrogation, Tom Regan could only tell the feds what they already knew: he was nuts and he chatted with other nuts online. His computer’s hard drive confirmed that he was well ensconced in the Sabot chain of communications.

  The noose was tightening on Sabot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Dogs in Heaven

  “WHEN CAN I GET A DRINK?” Janice said, smiling at the attendant.

  “Soon as we are airborne, Ma’am.”

  Janice had taken the seat up front in the little Air Force jet that she and the Admiral and Kronos, who were already asleep in the rear, were suddenly ordered to take back to Washington, D.C., without warning. She was amazed how fast the plane went from the passenger terminal into the air, as if it just jumped into the heavens the second the door was closed. This proved what she always thought about commercial air flight—they just made you wait because they could.

  Her Campari and soda smoothed over the cracks in her parched throat. She considered opening the folder holding the psych analysis of two more perpetrators, but thought better of it. Instead, she flipped off the overhead light, hit the seat button, and pushed back as the jet climbed through the clouds almost vertically.

  As the scene outside her window flickered from the last remaining layer of cloud to what at first looked like cotton as far as the eye could see, she thought of her mom. What would she say if she saw her now? Here she was, a whole jet at her disposal, doing important lifesaving work, answering the call of her country when her country needed her most. Eunice Tyler would probably find something wrong. Some small detail Janice had overlooked. Anything from the shoes she chose to go with her outfit to the shade of her mascara to just the sheer extravagance of the whole situation. “But Mom, I need to get there to do my job for the nation. You want me to fly standby because it’s cheaper?” She had noticed in the past that every negative-thought voice in her head sounded like her mother.

  The fact that Janice and her mother didn’t get along was no secret. The reason, however, was a little harder to discern, even though her college and professional associates were convinced it was due to a rift arising from her parents’ divorce. They made that prognosis during the self-analysis and group critiquing that was the first and most basic training psych majors underwent on their way to their doctorates. But what she never shared, because she herself was only recently made aware of it, was the true reason.

  “Mr. Biffles” was a silly name for a dog, but that’s what little eight-year-old Janice Tyler wanted to call this raggedy Scottish terrier her father got her for her birthday. Mr. Biffles soon became the first object of love in little Janice’s life. He slept at the foot of her bed, waited for her to come home from school, cried when she cried, even ate when she ate. Sometimes, to her mom’s consternation, from her plate. Mr. Biffles was her doll, her baby, and her best friend.

  One day Mr. Biffles’s leash broke. Her mother, never one to waste a cent, decided that there was no reason to spend perfectly good money on a new leash. She simply took a twist tie from the box of garbage bags and attached the leash to the collar with it. Out the door went Mr. Biffles and Janice for his afternoon walk. A block from the house, a Labrador retriever was strutting down the street on the long leash of its owner. Mr. Biffles caught sight of the Lab and started barking and pulling at the leash. “No, Mr. Biffles, stay,” was reinforced by the usual sharp tug on the leash. Only this time the flimsy wire tie broke. Mr. Biffles, sensing freedom from the restraint, bolted across the street, right into the path of an oncoming car. The yelp the little dog made as he was run over echoed in her ears. She could still hear it. On that afternoon, little Janice Tyler learned two terrible lessons from life. They were indelibly etched in her psyche and would take years to correct. The first: if you love something it will die and go away, so never admit that you love anything. The second: being frugal sucks!

  The next major developmental step on the way to becoming a psychologist came when she was sixteen and her father gave her, against her mother’s wishes, her first phone. It was a pink princess phone. While the phones of that day were big, bulky, and usually black, the princess was a cute oval design with the handset spanning an illuminated dial in the middle. It was the girl’s phone. Her mother’s fears were realized as Janice spent hours on it with her girlfriends. Talking god knows what, her mother would complain. What Eunice Tyler could never have fathomed, however, were the many nights and afternoons Janice spent with her friends on the phone as she first listened, then dispensed advice. Through these first “sessions” she discovered a natural gift for understanding the human condition.

  When she was nineteen, Jimmy Shea was her crus
h, her love, and her boyfriend. Janice also became enamored with Jim’s mother. She was a psychiatrist. In the Midwestern town where Janice grew up, it was rare for a woman to be a professional. And she was divorced! There was a television show back then called One Day at a Time. To the media mongers in New York and L.A., it was a timely situation comedy about a single divorced woman wrestling with her career and kids. In Janice’s hometown, seemingly locked in the fifties, it was pure science fiction.

  Being a doctor meant Mrs. Shea made a good income. Jim had a nice car, and their house was three times bigger than Janice’s. Young Janice also noticed and admired Jim’s mom’s confidence and that she never quibbled over anything as trivial as money.

  When Jim broke up with her, Janice was devastated. Sadly, the girl who had helped all her friends solve their emotional dilemmas really had nowhere to turn when her own love life came crashing down around her ankle bracelet. Oddly enough it was Jim’s mother who talked her through it. Her wise advice and explanations of what Janice was going through taught her that being a psychiatrist was a good thing; you really could help people and psychiatrists made a ton of money. Enough money to never have to be frugal, stingy, or just plain cheap. With Mrs. Shea’s help, Janice had found her path.

  As the whine of the engines lulled her to sleep, forty-five-year-old Janice Tyler, now the lead psychological investigator into the worst terrorist attack America had ever suffered, drifted off to sleep. Her last conscious thoughts were of Mr. Biffles and how he would tenaciously clamp his teeth into his tug toy and never relent, even if you picked him straight up in the air with it. Actually, she realized, that must have been the part he loved most—going straight up.

  ∞§∞