Tin Man

by Dale Brown

  operation could unravel very quickly. The police

  will not rest until the ones responsible for killing

  their own are found and punished--or eliminated."

  Bennie nodded that he understood. "Okay, Colonel

  , okay. No way they'll connect me with you," he

  assured Townsend. The guy was like a chess master,

  Bennie thought, always thinking several moves

  ahead. "And I'll get to work right away."

  "Very good," Townsend said. "We'll get you your

  chemicals so you can start producing as soon as possible

  ."

  Bennie had that same damn sensation again-the

  feeling of a long, slow slide into doom. Dealing with

  a guy like Townsend had to be like dealing with the

  devil himself. But the money-Jesus, with most all

  of the Satan's Brotherhood out of the way, it would

  be raining and pouring meth money. And the level

  of fear would be so high that no one, not even the

  Mexicans, would dare get into the meth trade in

  California for a few months at least. Bennie would

  be raking in money. And clearly Townsend and his

  army weren't interested in cooking.

  Bennie held out his hand. "You got a deal, Colonel

  ," he said.

  Townsend smiled that awful smile again, holding

  up the Calico as he switched it to his left hand so

  Bennie could not fail to see it-and shook Bennie's

  hand. "Very good. Let's get to work, shall we?"

  As Bennie moved off to supervise the startup of

  his new lab, Reingruber came over to Townsend. "I

  am weary of these greedy idiots, Herr Oberst. We

  risk all we have to transport some chemicals so we

  can make a few dollars, when the real money is sitting

  there waiting for us to take it."

  "Patience, Major," Townsend replied. "The city

  is not yet in a sufficient panic for our purposes.

  Continue to monitor the target and report if there is

  any movement. If the local authorities do not act a

  bit more decisively soon, we may need to implement

  Phase Three of our plan. But I have a suspicion

  that, as the Americans are so fond of saying,

  'The shit will hit the fan' by itself very soon."

  SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION

  HEADQUARTERS,

  BERCUT DRIVE, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

  MONDAY, 16 MARCH 1998, 0802 PT

  C

  aptain Tom Chandler stepped into the conference

  room a few minutes after the morning

  briefing began and took a seat in a corner. Shielding

  his face behind his FBI National Academy coffee

  mug, he surveyed the division members present and

  his heart sank.

  His guys and gals looked whipped. After ten days

  of twelve-hour shifts, weekends included, they were

  ashen and exhausted. Everyone was chugging coffee

  to try to stay awake. Personnel assigned to SID

  could dress casually-it was an all-undercover

  unit-but most of them looked as if they had been

  sleeping in their clothes, which was probably not far

  from the truth. Hats, apparently hiding unwashed

  hair, were everywhere.

  The lieutenant in charge of operations, Deanna

  Wyler, was giving the morning briefing. She normally

  dressed like a high-powered executive around

  the office, emulating the captain; but today she

  wore black BDU's, a rangemaster's cap, and combat

  boots, and had her sidearm strapped to her waist

  with a black web belt. Wyler, who was normally

  responsible for administration, training, and liaison

  with other divisions in the department, had probably

  been to more crime scenes and labs in the past

  week than she had in the entire six months before.

  Chandler had heard through the rumor mill that

  Wyler was a couple of months pregnant. Selfishly,

  he had not ordered her to stay away from labs or

  explosion scenes because he desperately needed the

  manpower out on the street. She hadn't told him

  she was pregnant, so officially she wasn't-which

  meant that in effect, she was accepting part of the

  responsibility for any damage, illness, or birth defects

  . .

  Fuck that, Chandler yelled at himself. if anything

  happened to that child because it was exposed in

  utero to any drugs or precursor chemicals at one of

  those lab scenes, it would haunt him for the rest of

  his life. He would never ever forgive himself.

  "We have the preliminary investigation report on

  the explosions ready to go to City Hall and the

  chief's office," Wyler began, distributing folders to

  each officer with the investigation summaries.

  "What we had was a total of twenty-five meth-lab

  explosions, all occurring within eight hours of one

  another. The labs all appear to be similar: They

  were all thionyl chloride hydrogenation reactors,

  approximately twenty to forty gallons' capacity

  each."

  "Twenty to forty gallons?" someone exclaimed.

  "You mean liters, don't you?"

  "I mean gallons," Wyler repeated. "We're talking

  a thionyl chloride reactor capable of producing close

  to forty pounds of pure crystal meth at a time."

  That was probably the one piece of news that could

  animate this bone-tired audience. The thought of a

  single lab making that much methamphetamine

  was astounding all by itself-to think that there

  were twenty-five of them set up out there at one

  time, and possibly more, was almost too much to

  believe.

  "Want some more unbelievable stuff?" Wyler

  went on. "How about very few signs of precursor

  chemical stores? No chemical dumps, no storage

  sheds full of chemicals, no hijacked trucks nearby.

  When those labs went up, the explosion took out all

  but traces of precursor chemicals. Now with that

  much pressurized hydrogen in the reactor, you

  know the fireball it produces is going to be big and

  hot. But in the past we've always found huge dumps

  full of precursors nearby, and an aboveground explosion

  wouldn't wipe out a below-ground dump or

  burial site. Some of the sites had chemical dumps

  nearby, but they hadn't been recently used.

  "Now, either the cooks were extraordinarily neat

  and tidy and cleaned up their precursors before

  starting to cook-very unlikely-or the chemicals

  came with the labs," Wyler said. "We did find remnants

  of trailers and hitches and stuff like that at a

  few of the sites, but that's not uncommon and we

  didn't think much of it at the time. We think it's a

  vital clue now. We now feel we're talking about a

  large, portable, self-contained reactor unit, mounted

  on a trailer and possibly disguised as a U-Haul or a

  home-built trailer.//

  Wyler let that information sink in a moment,

  then continued: "Now, as to the victims. With the

  exception of a relatively small but nonetheless unfortunate

  number of civilian casualties, it looks like

  the right folks got dead in those explosions. Get
/>   this: Of those identified so far, about seventy percent

  of the fatalities were Satan's Brotherhood

  members or associates. Over a thousand identified

  casualties. And all these DOA's were found well

  outside ground zero of the blasts, farther than fifty

  yards or so. That means anyone within fifty yards

  was probably Crispy Critters the nanosecond that

  lab went up. Although we'll probably have no way

  of knowing for sure for several months, if ever, it's

  safe to say that most of the Brotherhood members

  were closer than fifty yards to ground zero, and that

  the current Brotherhood death toll is just a fraction

  of the actual number. We could be talking about

  three, four, even five thousand casualties, guysmaybe

  up to eighty percent of the total known

  Satan's Brotherhood membership in the state of

  California."

  "Hol-ee shit," someone exclaimed.

  "Well, what are we sitting around here for?" said

  someone else, exchanging high fives with the detectives

  around him. "Let's get the hell out of here and

  go to Sammy's for some breakfast. Or better yet, I

  think I saw McLanahan's open for the graveyard

  shift. Let's go and get us a few pops and celebrate

  Tom Chandler rose -to his feet. "Seventy-three

  children were killed in those explosions-you want i

  to invite the parents of those kids to McLanahan's

  to celebrate with you?" he asked. The celebrating

  agents fell silent. "Whoever did this didn't kill all

  those Brotherhood bikers for our benefit-whatever

  they got planned for this city has got to be far worse

  than what the Brotherhood could do to us. Keep

  your damn minds on the task at hand: Let's find

  whoever did this and put his ass in jail, soonest."

  "We didn't mean any disrespect, Captain," one of

  the sergeants said. "But we been workin' twelve-,

  sixteen-, some of us even twenty-hour shifts. We're I

  burned out."

  "The chief is counting on us to get a handle on

  this," Chandler said. I

  A moan of resignation went up from the cops in

  the conference room. Police Chief Barona was currently

  in Washington, D.C., testifying to some Senate

  subcommittee on law enforcement about the

  need for more federal funding for law-enforcement

  programs for cities, citing the statewide meth-lab

  explosions as perfect examples of a crime rate almost

  out of control. If he did get any funding, it

  would probably be for yet another federal grant research

  study or education program, not for more

  cops. And it was a sure bet that the chief wasn't

  manning a command post or sifting through bags of

  body parts at three A.M. looking for clues.

  "All right, that's enough of the whining," Chandler

  said. "You'll all have one hour for Code Seven

  after this meeting-and I mean one hour, not an

  hour and a half, and not at home either-and then I

  want your butts back out on the street. Start hitting

  up your informants

  "The Cl's have scattered, Captain," one of the

  officers said. "The streets are empty."

  "I don't need excuses, I need results," Chandler

  said irritably. "Find out where your CI's have gone

  and go talk to them. Bump up the cash offers, but

  get some solid info from your informants. And update

  me on the status of your surveillance operations

  . Obviously the Brotherhood surveillance ops

  went bye-bye, but find out which surveillance jobs

  are still standing, and why. If a Brotherhood lab site

  or hangout or a lab site in a Brotherhood area of

  town didn't blow up, I want a surveillance set up

  there.

  "Don't forget to call up BNE and any of the surrounding

  agencies and get the flow of informat on

  going again. I know there's been no exchange of information

  while the crime-scene investigations

  were being conducted, but now that agencies are

  wrapping up the crime scenes and starting the investigations

  , I want that information now. Everyone

  got that?" Nods all around. "Anything for me?"

  "Yeah," said one of the sergeants. "There's a rumor

  going around that overtime is being cut. What's

  the story, Captain?"

  Chandler took a deep breath, then looked directly

  at his troops. "Rumor looks like it'll be true this

  time. We blew through the first two quarters' overtime

  budget like it was nobody's business, and

  emergency procedures went into effect. Starting tomorrow

  , mandatory flex time up to forty hours,

  then mandatory comp time. No overtime will be

  authorized beyond that, so don't ask and don't put it

  on your time cards. All personnel may have to go on

  staggered twelve-hour shifts if this keeps up much

  longer. Until further notice."

  "No overtime!" the cops wailed, almost in unison

  . "The sheriff's department gets feds to help

  them with their investigation, and we get sixteenhour

  shifts with no overtime? That sucks, Captain

  !"

  "Listen, everybody has to sacrifice until we get a

  handle on whoever planned these meth-lab booby

  traps," Chandler said wearily. "This is an emergency

  situation. Update your surveillances, beat the

  bushes for your CI's, gather some tight info ' and

  make some arrests. Pronto." He knew it was not

  much of a pep talk, but right now Thomas Chandler

  wasn't feeling too peppy himself. "Anything else for

  me?" There were no replies this time, just exasperated

  expressions. Chandler turned and left, feeling

  the icy pinpricks of his troops' anger jabbing at his

  back.

  Deanna Wyler rubbed her eyes as she waited for

  the muttering to die down. "Okay, listen up," she

  said, opening up her notes. "I looked through all

  your recent surveillance reports and cross-checked

  them with the locations of those lab explosions.

  Two glaring holes: the new Rosalee suspected lab,

  and the Bobby John Club. Intelligence has filled in a

  couple of holes for us and I think it's time to revisit

  those two locations. if someone was going to target

  Brotherhood labs or hangouts, I'd have thought it

  would've been those two places. Both are still standing

  , right?" The sergeants nodded.

  "I know we had a surveillance set up on the

  Rosalee location before, but we terminated it before

  the explosions because we needed the manpower

  elsewhere and because we were starting to see more

  normal activity there-kids, yard work, pet dogs

  that weren't guard dogs, et cetera. Intelligence says

  there's a pit bull in the yard again, and they haven't

  seen the kids that were playing there. They may be

  cooking and dealing again. Restart that surveillance

  again tonight.

  "Let's restart surveillance on the Bobby John

  Club too," Wyler went on. "We stopped it after that

  weird bar-fight incident where someone set off a gas

>   grenade, because the place has been nearly deserted.

  But informants tell us it's open for business again.

  I'd think that any surviving Brotherhood members

  would steer way clear of it in case whoever set up

  the booby-trapped portable labs goes hunting for

  survivors, but no one ever gave the Brotherhood a

  lot of credit for brains. I want to know who goes in

  and out of there; I want to know which Brotherhood

  members are still breathing, and I want them

  brought in for questioning.

  "I don't think we'll have any trouble getting

  wiretap warrants, so write 'em up and I'll help you

  get them signed," Wyler said. "I've got some retired

  folks and some volunteers who are going to come in

  and help us write up warrants and help around the

  office too, and we've even got retired judges resworn

  in and volunteering to sign warrants. So at least a

  little help is on the way."

  Wyler then stepped closer to the table and laid

  her best warning glare on them all. "One more

  thing, guys and gals: Stop the hangdog pooroverworked-me

  bullshit. I'm sure the captain will

  be happy to compare duty hours with yours any day,

  and he doesn't get flex time, CTO, or overtime, and

  he doesn't have a union to go cry to if he works too

  hard. We're all tired. The whole city, the whole

  fucking county is tired. Think about the innocent

  victims killed or hurt in those explosions the next

  time you start bellyaching about getting time and a

  half, CTO, or flex time, while those poor folks are

  out burying their children and sleeping in a shelter

  or on the street because their apartment complex

  was destroyed.

  "If you still feel like you're being abused and mis-

  treated, just let me know and I'll be happy to reassign

  you to Patrol, where I'm sure you'll feel more

  appreciated. Manning a checkpoint in Oak Park or

  guarding an explosion site in Alkali Flats on foot at

  three in the morning might appeal to you. Does everyone

  get my drift?" There was no response-nor

  would one have been tolerated. "Sergeants, I want

  to see your surveillance operations plans on my

  desk by two. Everyone: Remember why you chose

  to put on a badge, and remember your -city is in

  trouble. Now get the hell out of here."

  BOBBY JOHN CLUB

  DEL PASO BOULEVARD,