End Time

by G. A. Matiasz

  The operation had begun.

  Peregrine had practiced the heist with the others so often that he could visualize it without effort. He pictured the Security Pacific armored car approaching the Highway 24 on ramp west after the scheduled “side pickup” from UC Berkeley; a brief detour in its route up from Oakland International across the bay bridge into the city with the Piccoli. Traffic was minimal. An armed guard rode shotgun with an armed driver, and two armed guards lounged in the back security cab. A nondescript Toyota mini-van drove behind the car at a modest distance, the driver not obviously following. The armored car trundled slowly down College to Claremont, then down Claremont to the freeway entrance at Martin. As the car geared down to take the ramp’s incline, the mini-van hugged its tail, both easing past a massive, orange dressed highway worker with white-white teeth. Mako tossed several orange cones across the on ramp after the mini-van passed, then caught up to the van and jumped into its passenger seat. He then abruptly leaned out of his window upon a radioed signal, and fired a streamlined anti-tank rocket at the back of the armored car. Simultaneously, a high impact shell fired by Sidney, dressed as another highway worker further up the ramp, shattered through the car’s bullet proof windshield.

  Both glass-breaking shell and armor piercing rocket contained a selective neurological paralyzing agent, the organophosphorus based crowd control nerve gas known as PS gas. Both exploded as designed in the scenario he created in his mind. As the PS gas acted to strangle key nerves and muscles in the Security Pacific personnel, the car veered erratically off the road. The mini-van parked behind, and Austin and Mako, both now sporting gas masks, leaped out to run for the car. Sidney, similarly masked, ran down the on ramp. They rapidly molded pre-primed lumps of CTX plastic bonded explosive onto door lock and hinges, then efficiently detonated them to rip open the security compartment. With Sidney and Mako standing guard, Austin clambered into the car over the two sprawled security guards to scoop up everything in sight. All three jumped into the mini-van and sped off, or so Peregrine imagined it.

  He had obtained the rocket and launcher, the PS gas and the CTX plastique from Sulawesi Outlaw Zone, purchasing them plus the team’s contingency Ecureuil B-5 helicopter with Rossi’s money. He’d managed to skim enough off of Diamotti by then to purchase a personal stash also from the Celebes; satellite-link “blue box,” carton of four Timpo grenades, short barrel PS riot gun and gas shells, small CTX slab, and expertly forged, computer perfect driver’s license and social security card. All were now safely buried in the northern coastal range.

  Peregrine stood and crossed the rooftop to the trap door left open into the warehouse’s dark. He clambered down a metal ladder into the smell of grease and gasoline. His eyes adjusted to the gloom so that he placed the sixteen wheeler looming in the building’s emptiness. He reached into the semi’s cab, pulled out a portable radio/scanner, and set it on the engine hood. He dialed to DJ Elijah’s pirate Oakland FM radio signal for a sample of African soklo music before switching to the police band scanner function. As police calls echoed in the dark space, Peregrine opened the back of the truck, pulled down a broad ramp, and unlocked the warehouse’s alley entry door.

  The robbery had a witness. The Highway Patrol responded rapidly. The mini-van, described down to the first four digits of its faked license plate, was now an all-points, along with the meager description of the three armed men. And, there had been a shooting. The shotgun guard had taken at least three bullets. He lived, but just barely.

  9:47 a.m.

  “Damn,” Peregrine cursed aloud. His voice echoed back to him in recrimination.

  Peregrine imagined what had happened. Sidney’s shell shattered most of the windshield. The PC gas diffused, and so it only partially affected the guard. As the armored car careened off the road, the guard managed to open his door and stumble, or maybe to fall out, perhaps even to struggle with his gun. Mako then jumped from the parking mini-van and, with great pleasure, he shot the near helpless guard with a quick uzi burst. With great pleasure.

  Peregrine fumed by the time the mini-van screeched into the warehouse alley and honked outside the door. 10:24 a.m. He turned on the winch and ducked out under the door when it was high enough.

  “You fucking shot a guard!” Peregrine hissed at Austin.

  “Shut the fuck up!” Sidney yelled from the passenger’s seat, his dark, war wild eyes buried in his full beard.

  “Don’t want to hear it!” Austin growled.

  Mako merely grinned from the back of the van. When the door opened, Austin lunged the van into the warehouse, up the ramp, and into the back of the semi. Peregrine folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes. Austin scrambled from the van and leaped from the truck. He pulled up the ramp, pulled down the truck door, and then hopped into the cab, sweeping up the radio in the process. He started and gunned the semi’s engine, then expertly backed the rig out of the warehouse.

  “Shut the door and get in Peregrine,” Austin snapped from the cab. Peregrine did both, reluctantly.

  “You didn’t have to shoot anybody,” Peregrine snarled once inside the cab.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Austin engaged the forward gears, “You weren’t there.”

  The truck eased onto a Highway 24 choked tight with cops.

  11:16 a.m.

  After turning onto 880 North, the police band revealed that, aside from the Piccoli gems, they’d heisted an unpleasant surprise. Two pounds of enriched riemanium, shipped from UC Berkeley’s labs and experimental reactor, and destined for departure from Oakland Naval Base to San Diego under Department of Energy auspices. Enough bomb-grade riemanium to construct a high-intensity atomic weapon. It was the Security Pacific “side pick-up,” also missing from the armored car, which Rossi’s robbers now possessed.

  12:32 p.m.

  Peregrine heard of the guard’s death under emergency surgery, just short of the Richmond/San Rafael Bridge, on the way to Diamotti’s Marin safe house. Billboards taunted with messages of acceptance and easy sex in the purchase of liquor, tobacco or cars. Black, ugly power lines tangled up with wintering clouds. He gave Austin a venomous look, which the driver avoided by keeping his eyes to the road.

  “Now, we’re all accomplices to murder,” Peregrine spat.

  “Shut it,” Austin gulped, “Or I’ll shut it for you.”

  THREE

  “Thanks for coming Bill,” CHP Golden Gate Division Chief Darby Holbin welcomed SFPD Chief Williams Sliwa with a handshake, the last of his high powered guests to arrive for this emergency meeting.

  “Hope we can cut this short,” Sliwa said, “Darb, I’ve got a couple thousand anarchists and so called peace protesters turning an antiwar demonstration into riot on Market at this moment.”

  “I understand,” Darby nodded, then glanced at his watch. 12:12 p.m. He turned to the roomful of individuals abuzz with personal conversation. “Everybody, deli is on the way. Maybe we should begin.”

  People slowly took seats around the table in the Patrol’s north Oakland office conference room. Several metropolitan and freeway maps had been hastily pinned to walls and blackboards. The man actually responsible for calling this meeting, Edward Sumner, sat at Darby’s left.

  Edward was the FBI’s West Coast Field Office Director, headquartered in San Jose. He was the national Director’s on site oversight for all west coast FBI operations, at 38 the youngest of a council of eight brand new regional directors which the Director intended to use to rebridle the Bureau after the Heidelburg fiasco. They were defining their positions as they went along. Two days before, Edward had held his first regional meeting for all of his field office directors. It had not gone smoothly, beginning with the resignation of Paul Chrisman as head of the San Francisco field office. The Oakland office director, Truman Marable, sat among the roomful of law enforcement agency heads. Sumner adjusted his tie and glanced around the table with faded blue eyes.

  “Sergeant Copley, would you start?” Darby focused the meeting
.

  Allen Copley was a sergeant in the Oakland office which had first responded to the Security Pacific robbery call. He was squat, broad-shouldered, and ill-at-ease with all the brass in the conference room. He stood and cleared his throat.

  “Well, I’m sure everyone is aware that a Security Pacific Service armored car was held up around 9:15 this morning, on the Claremont on ramp to Highway 24. One security guard has been shot and is presently in critical condition at Highland General. Two items of value were taken. The Piccoli gems are conservatively valued at 470 million dollars. The enriched riemanium is enough to produce an atomic bomb four to five times more powerful than the one detonated over Nagasaki. At present the criminals responsible seem to have, um, vanished.”

  “Be a little more specific, Sergeant,” Darby hurumphed as low conversation started again around the table.

  “Yes sir,” Allen said, and passed around a prepared, xeroxed set of papers, “We have every available officer on the roads. Every law enforcement agency around the bay has been alerted. The car involved in the robbery has not yet been sighted. Nor have we found it abandoned anywhere. The plates are no doubt stolen, or forged. The robbery site is remarkably clean. What we do know is that whoever pulled this off was well-trained, well organized, possibly with access to inside Security Pacific information, and backed by considerable resources. Their armament is formidable...”

  “Neural agents, plastic explosives, automatic weapons,” Alameda County Sheriff Steven McCaffrey read from Allen’s reports, “I’ll say they’re formidable. Real big money behind this.”

  “Exactly,” Edward started to say. He was interrupted by the food’s arrival, which necessitated a brief pause for the participants to prepare lunch. The Piccoli/riemanium theft was happening at an inopportune time. Edward was still in the throws of reviewing and reordering the priorities and operations of the field offices in the six states under his command. Matters of national security always took precedence, however, and it was a chance for him to meet and work with some of the locals in one of his larger jurisdictions. He had many long nights ahead of him putting matters together on top of this crisis. When things settled down once again around the table, Edward stood to command the floor.

  “Perhaps I should introduce myself,” Sumner glanced about the room, “I’m Edward Sumner, FBI West Coast Field Office Director. I’m partly responsible for why this meeting was called. As you’re all aware, my position is new for the FBI. I am going to be dependent on the cooperation of your agencies and the good graces of your offices to aid the Bureau in investigating this theft.”

  “Italian government must be leaning hard on the State Department over the Piccoli,” Chief Sliwa commented between bites of a meaty sandwich.

  The Italian government is the least of our worries at the moment.” Edward said, glad for the lead-in. The Director, the Attorney General, the NSC and the President are much more concerned with the riemanium theft.”

  He waited for the words to sink in.

  “Gentlemen, we are once again at war in a not-so-distant country. American boys, and girls, are once more dying for freedom on a foreign soil. Needless to say, those who oppose our nation’s involvement in southern Mexico would stop at little to sabotage our government’s war effort, and endanger our national security. My superiors would like everyone here to take the idea quite seriously that what the thieves were after was not the Piccoli Collection, but the riemanium. We may be dealing with a case of domestic, anti-war terrorism.”

  His brief speech electrified those in attendance. Sliwa’s jaw remained open, his sandwich unbitten. Rumsted Marsh, Marin County Sheriff, leaned on Sumner’s words with obvious expectation, a posture mimicked by Darby Holbin, Edward’s obvious yes-man at this meeting. Marable kept a serene poker face, while McCaffrey, clearly more skeptical than the rest, nevertheless frowned with the implications of Sumner’s words.

  “The organizational profile of Hardcore Autonomy, or Black Dada Nihilismus, or any of the other fringe anti-war groups hardly fits the MO for this robbery.” This from Sliwa, once more enjoying his food.

  “And what if one of these groups suddenly had access to money and training, say from an outside power?” Edward boldly laid out an assumption.

  “What outside power?” Williams finished his sandwich with relish and set about building another. “The Russians are hip-deep in civil war, and when not fighting the Russians the Chinese are too busy with the Koreans, the Mongolians, the IndoChinese, and the Tibetans, not to mention their own students. Southern Mexico’s insurgent Zapatistas are anarchists if they’re anything. Cuba and Peru both appear to be steering clear of any support for these guerrillas.”

  “Appear to be...” Edward emphasized Sliwa’s words. “And, in any case, it does not necessarily have to be an outside national power. There is evidence that a wealthy individual, perhaps a consortium of individuals might be involved in backing Mexican terrorists.”

  “Drug kingpins and cartels?” Rumsted asked. Edward flashed him a knowing look.

  “Hell, anybody with the money can buy a Sulawesi package this advanced,” Steven took the bull by the horns. “If we’re going to make this meeting productive, we need to be systematic. We have three possibilities before us. The Security Pacific robbery was motivated by the Piccoli Collection, or by the riemanium, or by both. Whatever the case, I believe we need to involve the public in hunting down these thieves. The media are already broadcasting the gem theft. We need to keep a lid on the riemanium for as long as possible. But we also need to get the public’s cooperation in tracing down the robbers.”

  As McCaffrey spoke, a CHP officer entered to briefly confer with Allen Copley.

  “It’s murder, as well,” Allen interrupted, “The security guard just died.”

  FOUR

  “Look,” Burt Desmond ran after the attractive woman rapidly exiting the Cafe Vandee. Fleeing him. “I’m a reporter, not a rapist. All I need is a little bit of a story here. Something of human interest. This Security Pacific thing is hot, and you DO work for them.”

  “Sorry. No comment.” Rosanne Casey avoided his eyes and flicked her purse at him as if trying to swat some pesky insect.

  Burt jumped in front of her on the sidewalk and Rosanne jostled around him. She glanced around for a cop among the upscale boutiques, bistros and coffee shops, but could not find one in the heart of San Francisco’s downtown business district.

  All about them shoals of suits—execs and junior execs, businessmen and lawyers from around the Pacific Rim as well as from India, Africa and Europe—thronged the luncheon waters among corporate towers with Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean, Australian, European and American logos. Secretarial schools in bright colors also swam among the corporate reefs and kelp beds. This arm of the international corporate sea invariably found its cultures diluted with California casual-ness and eccentricity, yet squint up the eyes and it could be any major city in the developed world. A scraggly, long-haired and bearded man in greasy, tattered clothes mumbled to himself incoherently and wrapped himself in old newspapers in a nearby doorway. Creature from the black lagoon.

  South somewhere, above the noise of cars, buses, pedestrians and street stand hawkers, but out of sight, she could hear something in progress, as if through shallow water. Massed voices shouted together, chanted slogans too distorted to understand, yet powerful enough to travel distance. Other sounds—loud bangs and pops, breaking glass, police sirens—accompanied the chanting. A plume of dark smoke rose from the direction of the tumult.

  “Anti-war demo,” Burt spoke up next to her, and she became aware of him again. Rosanne grimaced and headed off walking full tilt toward the Security Pacific offices. Security Pacific Services was a Pacific Rim operation. The media now besieged her downtown office building, which housed the Security Pacific corporate headquarters as well as its Bay Area offices.

  “Come on, you at least have an opinion,” Burt matched her pace and craned his head into her space, What’s your
take on the robbery? Corporate negligence? Inside job?”

  “It’s almost 1 o’clock.” Rosanne growled and kept walking. “You’re making me late for work.”

  “This will only take a minute,” Burt pleaded, “I need an angle, something different on this story for my station. Come on, give me a break.”

  “I can’t tell you anything,” Rosanne was firm, “I’ve been forbidden by my boss to talk about the robbery. The Piccoli gems. The riemanium. Anything.”

  “There was riemanium in that armored car?” Burt blurted. “Bomb-grade riemanium was stolen?”

  They stood now, stock-still, on a sidewalk fluid with pedestrians. Smoke from a burning downtown laced the early afternoon. Rosanne was pale. Fear in her eyes, she bolted from the reporter on a run. Burt knew he had a scoop. Once back at her desk, Rosanne tried calling her boyfriend, Mike, but his phone did not answer.

  ***

  DL hammered another nail into the 2x4 with strong, sure blows. The wooden frame, intended eventually to be a room divider, was taking shape. Jack’o’Hearts, DL’s co-worker on this project, carried in eight more lengths of board and dumped them onto the concrete first floor of their New Afrika Center in Oakland.

  That’s the last of ‘em,” Jack’o’Hearts checked his callused hands for splinters. “Looks like we’ll need to do another buy at the lumber yard to finish up.”

  “Gettin’ low on cash,” DL shook his head, “And we still ain’t bought no dry wall.”

  “Maybe I can get my uncle to ‘donate’ some,” Jack’o’Hearts picked up another hammer and scooped up a handful of nails, “He’s a general contractor, down San Leandro.”