by Kirk Russell
“He’s setting up and will have a good angle on the van cab. He sees a lone female with her hands on the wheel.”
“I’m going to try to get her to surrender,” I said.
“No, you’re not. We have operational command here, and I’m telling you no. Turn around.”
“I’m doing it. We need her alive, and she won’t be alive long sitting there.”
“Don’t do it. She’ll take you out with her, and if not I’ll make you answer for it later,” he said.
“I’m going to try. Tell the sniper to sit tight. Let me try to talk her out before we take her out. Here I go.”
45
The SWAT commander called and ordered me to turn around before telling me that the female terrorist had both hands on the wheel. They could see a plunger-type trigger in her right hand and tape around her wrist holding a detonator wire tight. A second sniper was in place, and the commander said, “You tell her to lay the trigger down or we’ll put a bullet through her forehead. I take it you don’t have any children or family, Grayly.”
“It’s Grale, not Grayly. Paul Grale. I’m an SABT.”
“You’re a bomb tech? Then you of all people should know better. That’s the Blond Bomber you’re approaching. We have confirmation.”
“Her name is Laura Balco.”
“She’s a bomber to us, Grale.”
“Do not shoot her. I want to talk her out then disarm the bomb. What do I tell her?”
“You tell her that if she lowers her hands below where we can see them, meaning the wheel or top of the dash, we shoot.” After waiting for my reaction he added, “You’re showboating here, Grale.”
I got closer and was aware she was watching me in her side mirror. I held my hands near my chest palms out and kept them there as I slowly approached the driver’s window, saying, “Laura, don’t do anything yet. Let’s talk. I want to talk.”
When I reached the window I saw her thumb covering the trigger. I kept reassuring her in a loud-enough clear voice. I pressed my palms against the window and talked through the few inches she had lowered it.
“If I press down, the bomb goes off,” she said.
“I get it.”
“So leave. There’s nothing to say.”
“I’m not leaving. That red dot on your chest is a sniper sighting on you. You’ve got another on your forehead. I don’t want you to die. Nothing has happened yet. You don’t need to die. No one died in the Hollywood bombing. You’ll do time, but you’ll get out. If you lower your trigger hand out of view, they’ll kill you,” I said. “They just told me that, and I’m telling you.”
“Leave while you can,” she said.
“I’m not a negotiator. I’m a bomb tech named Paul Grale. Let me arrest you, Laura. You can’t get the van close enough to damage the converter station. You don’t have to take yourself out.”
“So I surrender and the Blond Bomber gets a sensational trial, then gets shipped off to a supermax in Colorado where prisoners live in darkness. I’d be there the rest of my life. No, thanks. Let’s just say I screwed up and checked out. Let’s leave it that at least I tried to break the stranglehold the morally corrupt have on this country.”
“How did you get to this seat in this van? You’re twenty-eight with a PhD in philosophy. I’m guessing it was your dad who taught you how to run down a trail holding a rifle. Was he the one who taught you to fight?”
“How do you know all that?” she asked. “How do you know about running with a rifle or my dad? He died when I was nineteen.”
“I saw you run a trail in Butte County. What would your dad think of New America?”
“He was a Constitutionalist. He would get it.”
“Why help take down the power grid or ally with a foreign enemy?”
“We’re not allying with any foreign enemy,” she said. “It’s temporary, and we don’t even know who they are. I wasn’t part of that. I heard it happened something like five years ago and they don’t matter. This isn’t about them.”
“It’s Russia. What do you think they want?”
“Who cares what they want. It’s our country and it has to change. We never knew who bought the land or where the guy who wanted to teach us bomb making came from. People thought he was FBI, so we told him no.”
“Why take down the electrical grid?”
“The only way we see is to disrupt the ways they control our lives, the ways we’re dependent,” she said. “We want to live off grid and produce our own power. We don’t want our kids taught cell phones are critically important and be told they need to be chipped or the police won’t search for them if they disappear. We don’t want a military-industrial complex that tells Congress every six years the weapons are getting obsolete and we have to buy new ones. There has to be a rebirth of America.”
“I have a niece who says some of the same things.”
“You’re that Grale?”
“You know Julia?”
“Yeah, she’s legit. The pacifism is a fantasy, but Julia’s legit. She got an offer to join the next inner circle and rejected it. She was never told anything explicit. Did she go to you?”
“No.”
Laura said, “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“She says she’s at a farm in Tulare County. Ever been there, and do you know who bought it?”
“We had help buying it. Whoever they were, they thought they’d bought into us, but no way they were doing that. For us, it started along the fork of a river flowing with snowmelt in Wyoming just after the president opened up thousands more acres of wilderness to gas and oil exploration. There are three hundred years of gas reserves, but that doesn’t matter, right? Take care of the donors and politicians and screw the country. Screw ‘government of the people by the people for the people.’ Waste the land. Waste anything and everything if it helps you stay in power. It happened for us that morning. That’s when we said enough is enough.”
I knew it was strange to her for me to be talking about Julia, but I saw something of Julia in her. I felt the moment passing, the seconds ticking down. She almost turned and looked at me. Then she did.
“You want life to work out for her,” she said. “You want her to be happy.”
“I do.”
We looked at each other, and she gave me a nod I would think about for a long time.
“Laura, let me call the SWAT commander and tell him you’re getting out of the truck and walking back with me.”
“You know how that’ll go down. You’ve seen it before. We were picturing sun, water, sustainable energy, and some farming. We saw new tech but not like the companies we have now. Have you ever driven Billionaires’ Row in Palo Alto?”
“No.”
She said, “Do it sometime. Same old, same old. Enormous houses, new money, nothing changed.”
“You’ll do time, but you haven’t killed anyone. You’ll get out.”
“In a country afraid of closing Guantanamo? You’ve got to be kidding. The land of the brave is bottoms up. The Congress of cowards only looks out for themselves. You need to really hustle, Agent Grale. I don’t want to push this button with you anywhere close.”
“Lay the trigger on the dash and walk out with me. You’re not going to blow up a converter station, but you’ll have your life.”
“I know you understand why I can’t do that. The countdown starts now.”
After forty seconds I was still standing there. She looked again and said, “You’re a stand-up dude. Meet you in another life, Grale. Remember the river in Wyoming. I walked there with Sam Clark and a couple of others. I’m not saying Sam’s involved in anything, but she’s tough. Tell her that and she’ll believe you.”
She dropped her trigger hand below the dash, and before I could move or yell, the windshield spider-webbed and her head burst. That’s the only way I can describe it. What came next were sirens and the SWAT team. Their commander held them back from the bomb, and I was alone as I disarmed it.
46
May 7th
Breaking News
FBI Marksman Kills Blond Bomber
The media knew Laura Balco’s name, yet that’s how they ran their banner. I saw that after being debriefed at the LA FBI office. The headline was one more reminder that news is a business, first and always. Challenge them on it and they’ll tell you the public knows Balco as the Blond Bomber. Of course, they had given her the name.
It was still early morning when a bomb threat was called in for the Los Banos substation north of LA. A fence was cut. Two vehicles moved onsite. I headed there as soon as the debrief was over. From my car I talked to Mara, who was adamant I shouldn’t have approached Balco last night.
“It was the one chance to talk her out of the van,” I said.
“Get over yourself, Grale. You make her sound like a victim. She made choices just like the rest of us do. Her choices put her in the driver’s seat of a bomb vehicle. You ignored a SWAT team leader and should get written up. Neither Fuentes or I are going to do that, but do not tell me she was a noble patriot resurrecting America and the SWAT sniper is a killer. If you want to do that then switch squads.”
“I’ll talk to you later.”
“Don’t go yet. You had a conversation with your niece that got recorded. Fuentes called me. They’re looking for clarification.”
“Tell Fuentes to call me.”
“He thinks it should go through me. I can play it so you hear it over the phone. It’s about days of darkness.”
“I remember it. It’s a waste of time to play it.”
“Maybe you don’t remember it. Give me ten seconds.”
I didn’t say anything to that. I remembered Julia saying she was calling from a roommate’s phone. The recording started.
“Some of the guys here are into what happens after the days of darkness,” Julia said.
“The power outages?” I’d asked, and she’d laughed.
“UG, it’s much more than that. It’s about when the spirit portals merge and days of free will and higher consciousness begin. Do you know about the Age of Aquarius?”
“I know an old song.”
“Read about how the Age of Aquarius starts.”
“Okay, but it won’t be this morning.”
“Do you believe in history cycles and the Fifth World?” she asked.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means the start of the new history cycle.”
“Okay.”
“UG, tell Jo I love her. We have to get ready for the days of darkness. Peace in your heart, UG.”
“Julia?”
Mara came back on and asked, “How do you explain her saying ‘Get ready for the days of darkness’?”
“Google ‘days of darkness.’ You’ve forgotten what it’s like to be young. She’s experimenting with ideas, and they’re different than what you think. Check it out. Let’s talk about the Long Beach cell. I’m aware there aren’t arrest warrants yet, and charges aren’t resolved, but I also know an example will get made of these young women. I’ve heard arrests are coming in the next few days. Is that true?”
“I can’t comment.”
“You can’t tell me?”
“I can’t comment yet.”
I gave a half laugh tinged with bitterness. “I have a problem with that,” I said.
“You’re worried about your niece, but you need to get a grip. What you did with Balco was a bad idea,” Mara said.
“Let me finish on ‘days of darkness’ and Long Beach, and then I’ll say more about Laura Balco. In Long Beach, they’ll all get charged. Some long-faced prosecutor will insist that, although there’ll be no clear evidence, it’s likely Julia is guilty of aiding them, and let’s not forget she’s related to an active FBI agent. The prosecutor will argue there cannot be any hint of any preferential treatment or the whole case could be compromised. Therefore, charge her either way.”
“I don’t agree with that.”
“That’s how it’ll go down,” I said. “From what I hear, we’re close to shutting down the Long Beach cell. Then we’ll find the bomb factory and make more arrests, but not everyone who goes to prison will be guilty. To wrap in Julia, they’ll offer lighter sentences to those who testify against her. Maybe Julia was around for discussions that could be interpreted a certain way. One or two will have said something stupid while sitting around the backyard fire pit drinking wine, smoking dope, and talking and questioning life, the way young people have probably done forever. But they’ll be charged too.”
“You’re forgetting what your job is.”
I continued. “She—and it will be a she in Long Beach who, in the energy of the moment, will have said something stupid yet was never part of any planning or action, or ever really aware of the core terror group—will get a long prison sentence. When she’s released, she’ll be beyond childbearing and career-building years. So will all the others who were swept up in this secret fringe they weren’t part of. They’ll never get jobs with any meaning. They’ll forever be terrorists. I asked Balco about Julia. She said what Clark has said, that with her pacifism, Julia was unreachable. They figured reality would bring her around eventually.”
“You’re an FBI agent first, Grale. Do not forget it. You talk like you need to understand where they’re coming from. You don’t. That’s not your job. Your job is investigating.”
“For a while, when I was talking to Balco, she wouldn’t look at me. I don’t think she wanted to acknowledge me as a human being, knowing I was an FBI agent. She might have detonated the bomb if she hadn’t turned and looked at me. Most of what she told me came after that. She made it very clear this idea has roots that go back years.”
Mara didn’t respond. He wanted this conversation over with. Working as a bomb tech I often think of the young men recruited by ISIS who give up their lives once converted. We have a great capacity to absorb and embrace ideas, but is that gift also our vulnerability?
I can easily picture Balco’s lithe, quick movements as she ran down the trail. This told me a lot about her, told me good things, and yet Mara was right: she chose her path. She brought herself to that moment. She brought it on herself.
But her blown-out skull will always haunt me. What I’d thought at first was one bullet was in fact two, one through her right eye and the other striking just below the hairline on her forehead. The bullets crossed paths as they tore apart her brain. You can shrug and say that’s the choice she made, or it’s just the way it is, but I don’t believe that.
“Grale, where are you?” Mara asked.
“I’m two hours from the substation in Los Banos. A fence was cut and two vehicles driven across a field to transmission towers. I don’t know what it means for LA if a bombing shuts down the substation, but already gas station lines go for blocks. Traffic-light outages have created gridlock. Except for gun stores, nothing is open. LAPD is still working twelve hours on, twelve off, A shift, B shift, everyone is in uniform. It’s getting rough.”
“That’s what I hear,” Mara said.
“So where are we at, you, me, and Fuentes? Does he want me out of LA? Is this too complicated with Julia in the mix?”
“It’s headed that way,” Mara said. “We’ll resolve it in the next few days. I don’t know how I’d handle it if I was in your shoes, but you’ve got to stand back and let the investigation take its course in Long Beach.”
Less than an hour later, the two bomb trucks outside the Los Banos substation exploded. The bombs didn’t just shear the tower legs. They blew the towers apart. Two people were killed. I got a call from Hofter minutes after I heard the bombs had detonated.
Hofter said, “A CHP officer, a local cop here, and the guard in the Tehachapis. That’s it for me. The line has been crossed. I think we turn all the firepower we have on these terrorists. Last night I got home at 11:15 and my neighbor was in his backyard using a lantern for light with his wife yelling at him as he target shot with a gun he’d just bought. I asked him i
f he’d ever owned a gun before. He said no. Did you get that, Grale? He’s never owned a gun and he’s in his backyard at night shooting. He said all the shooting ranges are booked solid for months. Things are unraveling here. Where are you going from Los Banos?”
“To the Bay Area. Jace has something on Corti.”
47
In Los Banos there was visible sadness in the officers manning a roadblock. One of them wore a bloodstained uniform shirt. He said he was standing next to the CHP officer killed. He reached out and touched my shoulder.
“I was no farther from him than I am from you. We thought we were safely back, but this piece of steel about eighteen inches long and this wide”—he spread his hands to show me how wide—“fell out of the sky. I heard his collarbone snap and the air go out of him. It sliced down through the right side of his neck. Blood was everywhere, just pumping out of his neck. I just couldn’t stop it. I tried everything. I’ve known him since we were kids . . .”
He was quite shaken, and we talked a while longer. The bombs had detonated and they crouched down. They’d stood again and the piece of steel struck. The blast scene looked a lot like Captain Jack in Klamath Falls except the bombs were closer to each other and brought down more towers.
Either the San Francisco field office or Sacramento would investigate this bombing. If it had been San Francisco, Jace would have come here along with an evidence-recovery team, but that’s not how it worked out, so I didn’t collect any evidence. Sacramento wanted everything left as is and were on their way here. I called Hofter after looking again at the dark patch of earth where the CHP officer bled out.
