by Kirk Russell
“This isn’t it, but from here we can look down on it and the bigger piece it was cut from.”
“Let’s get out and take a look,” I said.
I saw a two-story farmhouse and a deck out front, and then counted four outbuildings and a pond. Cattle fencing encircled the acreage running up, over, and around the hills. I saw rows of plants and a gravel road. The road fell maybe one hundred fifty feet in height to the flat valley and a large orchard of olive trees that looked blue-gray from here.
“This could be it,” I said. “I think it is, Larry. If it is, I owe you.”
“You don’t owe me. If I can help the FBI keep the lights on, that’s good enough for me.”
I drove him back to Three Rivers and dropped him off, then drove hard back to the valley floor. I passed the olive orchard and turned left. I drove up the hill to a locked gate but didn’t get any response on the intercom. I tried several times, then turned and drove back down, planning to call the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department for help. I drove past most of the orchard, then stopped when I saw a young woman running through the trees then out onto the road.
“Julia!” I yelled and got out as she ran toward me.
52
Her hand trembled, and she pulled a cell phone from her back pocket and handed it to me.
“His phone,” Julia said. “There’s a text on it you can read without unlocking it. He searched for me a lot of the night.”
I read the text then reread it, thinking about what it meant.
“I hit him on the head three times with a piece of metal pipe. It was how I got away. It’s how I got down to the olive orchard. I climbed up in a tree and hid.”
I put an arm around her again and held her close.
“He left an hour ago driving one of those white vans with doors on the side that slide open. It’s got a bomb in it. He had the license plate taped over. His name is Danny John.”
“Okay. Danny John.”
“It’s a Ford and it’s wider and taller than most vans. It was in the tractor barn. That’s the largest outbuilding. I’ll show you. He’s making bombs in there. No one except us is here. Sorry, UG. I’m really sorry for everything.”
“Let’s get you food and water.”
“No one is there now, but Nick might be coming today. He was here. He’s trying to get the money Mom and Dad left me. They forced me to call the broker and say I want to sell everything.”
“He and Danny?”
“Yes, and Nick is coming back today or tomorrow. There were two others here, but supposedly they’re gone.”
We drove up to the gate, and Julia climbed over and hit a button several hundred yards up outside near a door on the main house. I drove in and up to the farmhouse while talking to Mara on my cell. I took in the outbuildings and saw what had to be the tractor barn where Julia said she was held captive. I gave Mara the address, then called a dispatcher at the Tulare County Sheriff’s Department and asked for backup.
Julia came out on the deck drinking water. She pointed at a bloody length of pipe near the foot of the stairs. I saw a larger puddle of dark blood where this Danny John had lain unconscious and bled. I tried to picture Julia swinging the piece of pipe, then stepped away to talk quietly to Mara.
“Julia thinks he was unconscious when she ran. He recovered enough to hunt for her, but I’m looking at a pool of blood, all of it from his head injuries. He’s running on adrenaline. This guy is seriously hurt.”
I got out of the car, and Julia and I walked the fifty yards to the tractor barn.
“There’s a door in the back of the tractor barn that might be a better way to get in,” she said. “I heard Nick and Danny talking about a booby trap.”
“Show it to me.”
She showed me then said, “There’s stuff up against it from the inside.”
I left her sitting against an oak tree and went back to the car for a pry bar, then peeled off the exterior trim and worked the doorjamb loose. I ripped the door out of its opening and started pulling out the boxes that blocked the way in. Then I was looking into darkness and didn’t want to flip any light switches before looking for booby traps. I went back and got a flashlight thinking it was probably needless worry since this Danny was walking wounded.
But I was wrong. It turned out the main door was booby-trapped. He’d driven out through a tall, power-operated door. I saw the button to open it, but didn’t do that until I was certain it was safe. I saw the cot Julia had talked about and a steel eyebolt epoxied into the concrete slab floor.
I called Mara again, and he conferenced in Fuentes and Hofter.
“I’m in what they call the tractor barn looking at a bomb maker’s setup and large, twin sheet-metal bins half full of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. But all that’s being grown here are tomatoes, beans, and some herbs. Each of these bins can hold a couple of tons. On the workbench are scraps of wire and tape, what might be left over after building a detonator. There’s evidence here. Who’s sending ERT?”
“I will,” Fuentes said.
“Get them rolling, and I need a locksmith to get this thing off her ankle. After Tulare deputies get here I’m going to defuse a booby-trapped door. I’ll search for anything I can find on the van. You’ve got the address here. He’s out there on the move with a bomb, and we don’t know where he’s headed. He didn’t tell her, but Nick Knowles may know, and according to Julia he’s coming back here today or tomorrow. I gave the deputies here a photo of Nick. I hope he’s coming. I can’t wait to see him again.”
When I walked back outside, Julia had her eyes closed, with tears leaking out as she pressed the back of her head against the tree. I sat down near her and said, “You are one tough woman. How did you do it?”
“I knew I would never leave here alive if I didn’t do something. Do you remember the story you told Nick and me about the two girls that survived years of captivity?”
“Sure.”
“That story really helped me,” she said. “And I was lucky. I was very scared, but I tried to think.”
“There’s luck, and then there’s what you do with it. You made it happen.”
Tears flowed and she shook, but I heard her say, “Instead of letting it happen to me.”
Julia got up from the tree as the first deputies arrived, and I got her on my phone talking to a sketch artist. I showed the deputies the booby-trapped door I needed to disarm and sketched out the possible situation with Nick Knowles. I told them FBI teams were en route, then got my gear and disabled the bomb, which was designed to blow off your hand and maybe your lower arm as you opened the door.
With the lights on inside and sunlight flooding through the open door, I looked over the bomb maker’s workshop. Like all I’d ever seen, it had a personal feel. A surprising number of bomb makers take pride in their work. Some even carry the fantasy they’re doing God’s work. I saw enough in that barn to believe this was likely the builder of the LA substation bombs.
Later, from my car I pulled out two pairs of booties and gloves and handed one set to Julia. We put them on and went into the house. We wouldn’t touch much of anything, but I wanted her account while we were here. She described Paula and talked about a man named Tom. She showed me where she slept, and I couldn’t say why, but I knew it was important for her to do this. We touched nothing except the few belongings she had, then left it for the evidence-recovery team.
When we walked back outside, a Tulare County sheriff’s car was coming up the gravel road fast.
The officer said, “We’ve apprehended an individual who might be Nick Knowles. He spun his car around and tried to make a run for it but lost control and hit a tree. His nose is broken. He lost teeth and a fair amount of blood from a gash on his face. We need to run him to a hospital. Do you want to talk to him first?”
“I do.”
After looking through the window, I got in the back seat with Nick. His nose was broken and swollen and off to one side. A slash from high on his right cheek reach
ed down to his upper lip but had stopped bleeding and looked stable. His pupils were fine. I doubted there were any concussion issues.
“How’s it going today, Nick?”
“Fuck you. I demand a doctor. I’ll sue all of you, and I’ll have your job as well as that shitty little house that got trashed.”
“Not many people know about the vandalizing of my house.”
“How’s that crap painting of the sunrise looking? Julia told me how much you like it. Excuse me, liked it.”
I took a longer look at him as a few other things clicked into place.
“I wish you hadn’t slit it,” I said. “I really did like it. I liked it a lot.”
“Go to any flea market and someone will sell you another one.”
“I’ve got to say the shooting impressed me. Julia tells me you have a box of medals for competitive target shooting.”
“I never showed her any medals.”
Nick waited. Even with all his injuries, I could feel him waiting. It was almost eerie.
“She said the same thing. She wanted to see them, and you didn’t even tell her what they were for. You said, ‘Another time.’ When we got the search warrant and went through your apartment and didn’t find any medals, I started thinking about you and that one photo I had of my mom, dad, and me.”
“Aw, too bad their little heads are gone.”
“We didn’t find a box of medals in your apartment. You got rid of it.”
“You never found any because I never had any. I lied to Julia.”
“You lied to her about a lot of things, so why not that too?”
“It’s what happened.”
“I don’t think so, Nick.” I gave him a minute to think about that, then said, “Other things have happened in the last twenty-four hours. Some negotiating with prosecutors is underway. That includes some cooperative horse trading between suspects and prosecutors.”
“I need a doctor.”
“You may want to hear the rest of this first. You’ll have to tell me what you were thinking. Only you really know, but I think you bragged about the medals to Julia, then later decided that wasn’t smart. But either way it was good to get them out of your apartment, so you threw a few books that Clark had left behind on top of them. You waved a couple in front of Julia, taped the box shut, then asked Julia to meet Clark in Needles.”
“I’ve got to breathe through my mouth,” he said. “My nose is broken, and there’s blood running down my throat, so I can’t do this shit. Why don’t you ask Sam if she ever met Julia in Needles?”
“We’ve been talking to her but not about whether she was in Needles. The undercover FBI agent who followed her there videotaped the handoff from Julia to Clark. We’ve showed Clark the video, and when her place in Long Beach was searched, there were the medals. Can you see where this is going?”
He knew where it was going.
“With all the other charges, Clark wants to do some trading. Or Clark’s lawyer does. One of the confounding things about the Signal Hill officer slayings is how good the shooter was. Clark has answered that. She’ll testify at your trial.”
I saw I’d hit home.
“It was her idea,” he said. “Have them take me to an FBI office after the hospital and I’ll make a statement today.”
“All right, I’ll set it up, and if that’s true it’ll matter. There’s another way you could help yourself. Danny John dropped his phone and Julia found it, so she got to read your message.”
I pulled the bagged phone out, and he could see through the plastic that it was Dan’s.
“Tell us where he’s headed with the bomb. What’s the target?”
“I really don’t know.”
He leaned over and spit blood and mucus on the floor mat. I pushed my door open and said, “I would testify that you helped when it mattered. Anything you have will help. It could save a lot of lives. He told Julia it’s his most powerful bomb yet.”
When he didn’t say anything, I got out of the car.
Then Nick spoke. “He’s not Danny John. He’s John Daniels. He flipped his name around for whatever the reason. He’s from Phoenix, so if his name didn’t come up, that’s why. I have no idea where he’s going.”
“Keep thinking about the target while I pass on the name change.”
I called Fuentes. I left it to him to resolve and relay the name difference. Then I leaned back into the car and was quiet and serious with Nick.
“Your friends aren’t your friends anymore. None of them, but I’m sure you know that. They view themselves as idealistic and you as a criminal they needed temporarily. They’re going to put it all on you. They already know you’re going down on credit-card fraud, so the stolen bullets and anything else they can dump on you they will. Their attorneys will huddle without your attorney present and guess who’ll get the full life term without parole?”
I gave him a couple of seconds. He didn’t need many. He was quick.
“Or you give them up first,” I said. “You think about it. Do you want to sit in prison and fifteen years from now watch Sam get released and write a tell-all book? I’d cut your losses if I were you. Preventing a bombing could be very big. Mull that while I talk to the deputy.”
The deputy asked me, “What do you think? Pretty soon? It’s going to take an hour to get to a clinic. He is hurt.”
“I want another minute with him,” I said. “Then take him.”
I leaned into the car and looked at Nick. “What do you know?”
“Just that he’s going to Northern California. He’ll have someone there he’s supposed to contact.”
“What’s he driving?”
“A white Ford commercial van. It’s new and was leased in Vegas. I don’t know what name it was leased under, and I have nothing to do with the bombs.” Just before I shut the door he added, “I’m pretty sure it’s San Francisco.”
53
Later, as Julia and I drove toward Las Vegas, I brought up Jacob Corti.
“We haven’t caught up to this sniper yet,” I said. “Have you ever heard anybody talk about a sniper shooting at cell towers?”
“In my circles of anarchists and saboteurs?”
“Yes. Corti was a US Army sniper who, after his discharge, joined a local militia in Idaho. Something may have happened there that he participated in and caused him to rethink and question violence. Or maybe it was a combination of everything.”
“But he’s still shooting,” Julia said.
“He is, but not killing. He’s shot up cell towers. If our source is correct, Corti wants to overthrow the government through disassembly. Have you ever used that word to talk about changing our society?”
“Sure, it gets tossed around. That’s fire-pit talk in Long Beach. They talked about the grid getting taken apart as disassembly.”
“Nothing disassembles better or faster than a big bomb.”
“UG, I wasn’t ever in on any of that. I would never be. I might be the crazy pacifist, but that seems even stupider.”
“What comes after the grid?” I asked.
“Living off grid and self-sufficiency. People got caught up.”
“What do you mean when you say that?”
“They did stuff they wouldn’t otherwise do. They talked themselves into believing it was the only way change would happen. Is it okay if I sleep? All of a sudden I need to. I’ll sleep a little and then talk more.”
Julia slept, and I drove. In the Bureau there was a debate about how the cell towers tied in. What Julia threw out was part of that mix. The foreign nation-state that attacked us may have cultivated for years a whole range of disenfranchised and disgruntled groups. Corti and the Northern Brigade could fit right into that. The Brigade believes the government is moving in progressive steps to track and control us from birth to death. Life expectancy will become a function of usefulness. Your job will be chosen for you. You’ll be tracked and monitored by AI robots your entire life. Your choice of spouse will require the ap
proval of a government clerk. It goes on and on.
Julia slept for an hour and a half. When she woke, we were back in desert country. I returned to Corti and the nagging unanswered question.
“According to our source—someone who knows Jacob Corti—there’s a young female pacifist he met in a chat room called the War Room who he really likes talking to. Apparently she calms him down.”
“It could be an old man pretending to be a young woman. You have to be careful. Like I was saying earlier, there are people who come to the chat room just to fight. What’s he go by?” Julia asked.
“L-Z-9-9-O&O is how he signs. Have you ever come across that? I couldn’t tell you what it stands for other than L-Z to mean landing zone, but that’s just guessing.”
Julia was quiet. It could be she was telling me she didn’t want to betray someone, or perhaps she was shocked. It felt to me as if my asking had violated something private, and she was adjusting before answering. What was clear was she did recognize L-Z-9-9-O&O.
“It stands for Landing Zone 99 Over and Out,” she said. “A helicopter picked him up there on his final tour. The answer to your next question is yes, I’ve talked to him, many times.”
“Really?”
“Totally true. When did you learn this?” she asked. “I mean about keeping him stable.”
“In the last few days, from the individual who knows him, although this is not someone we know well enough to trust.”
“In the War Room we talk philosophy. We both agree that if a philosophy doesn’t work in real life, it’s not really a philosophy, so that’s a big debate about pacifism.”
“Have you ever given him your name?” I asked.
“I don’t do that in any chat room.”
“You’ve never given your name?”
“Never.”
“What about where you live?”
