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(Seattle, Washington, Wednesday evening, Oct. 1, 2013)
Mac called the office. There was a pang when the person who answered wasn’t Janet.
“News desk.”
“It’s Mac,” he began.
“Goddamn it, why aren’t you in here! All hell is breaking loose. AND I AM NOT JANET!”
Mac snorted. No shit. “Hey, I’m at the command station for the police response to the bombings. I’ll have pics in five, a story in 10, and video—if I can get the fucking camera to work—in 30 minutes. OK? You ready for a short take over the phone?”
Silence. Then an audible exhalation. And another deep breath.
“Thank God. OK, give me the lead. We’ll get it up online ASAP. Pictures more important than words. First, where are you?”
Brett Waller was a good man, Mac thought fleetingly. But as he said, he was no Janet. Janet never lost it. The tenser the situation, the calmer she got. She would have made a good CO for any battalion.
“I’m at the Planned Parenthood Clinic in the Central District. The clinic was firebombed minutes ago. At least three other bombs have gone off at other clinics around the city. No one was injured here—the clinic was empty for the night. There were injuries among first responders at a couple of other clinics.
Mac paused to organize his thoughts. He was used to thinking at a keyboard, not out loud. “Police got a tip this afternoon that Army of God might have planned something. Brett, call Whitaker. He can give you a couple of graphs on them. He must have encountered them in the abortion story prep.”
“Right.”
“And FYI the MO was the same as Janet’s house.”
“What the fuck?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if anyone told you, but police no longer think she was in the house when it blew but is being held hostage somewhere.”
“OK, OK.”
Mac could picture Brett running his hand over his head. All the editors did it. He thought they’d unconsciously picked it up from Janet. She’d trained most of them.
“Give me some color?”
Mac obliged. “At Northgate Mall, the bombers had already laid down a diesel mix under windows and along the walls. Then a team of two men drove up, used a flare as IED—improvised explosive device. The fire line went up. But firefighters were there within minutes, and it was under control before any real damage was done.
“In the U district, the men were interrupted before they could set off the fire line. The police have one man in custody, but the other was able to flee the scene. Good thing he didn’t set it on fire, because it was one of those old wooden houses in the neighborhood off Sixteenth. Whole neighborhood would have gone up.”
“OK. Now I need pictures. I can send photogs out to other sites. Give me where.”
Mac obliged. He hung up, grabbed his camera, shot some additional footage although there wasn’t much to see here.
He stuck his head back in the RV, asked Rodriguez to step out, give a statement while he shot some usable video. He hoped. He was pretty good with still shots, but he never got the video settings quite right. But rocky would be fine. The photogs could get professional quality to follow up.
He sat on a curb, set up a hot spot, and made a link to the office. Seemed as if every time he did remote work, the technology had been updated. Still, it was nice to have all the tools fit in his backpack. He opened up his laptop, uploaded the pix, and sent the video. Pounded out the story as he knew it. Shut it down and looked up.
Stan Warren was standing there, watching him, with a half-smile. He was just far enough away not to trigger Mac’s proximity warnings.
“What?” Mac said as he scrambled to his feet.
“You’re good,” Warren said.
Mac grunted. “Any update?”
“Some,” Warren said. “You heard from Shorty? He’s been trying to reach you. Phoned in to the command center. Rodriguez didn’t find it funny that he had hacked their system.”
Mac shook his head. “Been on the phone with the news desk. What did he need?”
“Apparently, they got there, but as they were going in, they saw a flare from a scope.” Warren paused. “Shorty was nearest the house. He got the women to safety. And... Eli? Eli took care of the sniper.”
Mac grunted. If everyone was safe, he could get the details later.
“Mac, who the hell is Eli?” Warren sounded a bit freaked out, and Mac fought back a grin.
“He’s another Jehovah Valley kid. Went into the military. Was in Iraq, POW, came home, and couldn’t handle it. Drifted to the streets,” Mac summarized. “And he and Janet got married right out of high school.” The rest of that story he would have to get from Janet.
“And so he’s Tim’s father?”
Mac hesitated. “You need to get that story from Janet, not me,” he said at last.
Stan Warren nodded shortly. “Got it. But he wasn’t just a medic in Iraq.”
“Apparently not,” Mac agreed.
Warren paced a bit. “So,” he said at last. “Seattle has a white supremacy problem in its police department.”
Mac rolled his eyes. “No surprise there.”
Warren nodded. He summarized what Rebecca Nesbit had told him about white supremacists targeting police and military.
“Again, no surprise.”
“Well it is to Rodriguez,” Warren said. “He’s struggling to deal with it.
“Oh, don’t get me wrong, he’s a Latino cop who’s been with the force his entire career. He knows his fellow cops can be racist, sexist fucks. He hears the racist comments, the bad jokes. Probably knows which cops collect pictures of rape victims, and which have domestic violence charges in their past.”
Mac interrupted, “Whoa, collect what?”
Warren snorted. “Every department I’ve ever worked with has had cops who saw rape pictures as a form of pornography. Or maybe had a thing for young girls. Or had a domestic violence call hushed up by his fellow officers. Come on, that shouldn’t be a surprise to you. Cops aren’t that different from the military.”
Mac shrugged. Not much he could say about that.
Warren continued, “But it’s one thing to know that some of your fellow cops are sleazy fucks, and another to realize that they are connected to some kind of white supremacy network.”
“That might be a stretch,” Mac objected. “A call from their pastor asking for a favor isn’t evidence of a KKK chapter at the PD.”
Warren shrugged in agreement. “No, but a surveillance van leaving its job in time for a sniper to show up is a bit more damning. Communication falling apart between senior officers and people on the ground—at just the right minute—is alarming.
“And look at it this way. Rodriguez is homicide. This is out of his purview really. He came in as a favor to you and Janet. Kept coming back because the case bothered him. So, ask yourself why no-one else—say, the counter-terrorism unit or someone else—wasn’t already on top of it?”
Mac was silent. If Rodriguez hadn’t been willing to run with this, it would have been a much bigger disaster. As it was, it was bad enough.
“OK, so? I’ll back off a bit.”
Warren smiled briefly. “What happens when a disaster happens, and the cops fuck up?”
“They look for someone to blame,” Mac said automatically. “You think they’ll blame Rodriguez?”
“Don’t you?”
Mac thought about that. Who else was there to take the fall? He scowled.
“You can prevent that.”
Mac snorted. “Right. The brass are going to listen to me?”
“They’ll listen to the paper. You can write a piece—a true one that centers Rodriguez as the hero.”
“I’m not his PR agent,” Mac said, feeling insulted.
“His friend?”
“Not that either.”
“Fine. You’re a hard-ass reporter. You tell me. Is he worth a story?”
Mac took a deep breath, let it out slowly. Considered the question. Thought about what Warren had said about PD politics. Without saying anything more—the FBI agent was just likely to piss him off—Mac got up from his seat on the curb, gathered his tools into his bag, and headed toward the RV.
The men in the RV had been sweating in a small space too long. Mac started breathing shallowly. Rodriguez looked up, jerked his head toward him. Mac squeezed by the men at computers.
“We’ve got three men injured,” Rodriguez said. “One instigator dead, two others arrested—yours and one other—if we can keep them. They’ve already lawyered up. We were able to stop two clinics from going up at all, two with minimum damage, and three still burning. No civilians were hurt.”
Mac closed his eyes in relief. They’d accomplished that much at least.
“Got some questions for you,” Mac said, pulling out pen and paper. “On the record.”
Rodriguez said nothing, his eyes wary.
After nailing down Rodriguez’s bio details, Mac asked, “How did you get involved in this? Aren’t you a homicide cop?”
Rodriguez frowned. “You know how...,” he began. “Fine. I got involved because Janet Andrews’ house exploding didn’t seem right. We were quickly able to determine that no one was in the house when it exploded, but we still didn’t know where she was.”
“An informant...,” Mac prompted.
“Right. We got a tip from an inside informant about this. The turnaround was tight. I had the background, so I ran with it.”
“Had some setbacks,” Mac observed.
Rodriguez said through clenched teeth, “I hope you know where you’re going with this, Mac.”
“I hope so too,” he said. “Setbacks?”
“Yeah, we lost a suspect we’d taken into custody. We’ve lost contact with a surveillance team and that could have been tragic. But overall, we’ve done pretty good to minimize this terrorist attack on Seattle health clinics.”
“Thanks.” Mac closed his notebook, put it away. “I’m going to head out. Meet up with Shorty, and then I’m headed to Jehovah’s Valley.”
“We’ll get these guys, Mac,” Rodriguez said. “Don’t go cowboy on me and try to take them down.”
Mac grinned. “Me, Lieutenant? I’m just going to get Janet back.”
Rodriguez snorted. “Take that FBI agent with you, will you? At least both of you will be out of my hair that way.”
Mac took one last look at the clinic. Firefighters were mopping up. He looked at his watch—9 p.m. Not much damage here. But Army of God had an hour head start at least heading to Jehovah’s Valley. And they weren’t out of town yet.
He hit the speed dial on his phone for Shorty. “I hear you’re the hero,” he said. “Did you get the girl?”
“God damn it, Mac,” Shorty began, then covered the phone. Mac could hear him apologize for his language and tried not to laugh.
“Who the hell is that guy Eli? He’s got mad skills. Might be as good as you.”
Mac sighed. “Good, because we’re going to need them. You want to gather up those two and meet me at the Bellevue Planned Parenthood? I want to take a look around there before heading after Janet.”
Mac paused. “You are coming with me, aren’t you?”
Shorty sighed. “Yeah. I’m coming along. Gotta be someone sane on this road trip.”
Mac looked at Stan Warren. “Rodriguez wanted to make sure I took you along,” he said. “You been looking over his shoulder?”
“Maybe.”
“You’re driving. Bellevue Planned Parenthood. Apparently, I’ve got another story to write,” Mac said, as he slid into the passenger seat of his truck. He opened his laptop back up, started writing.
After a hesitation, Stan Warren slid into the driver’s seat, started the car, and headed down the street.
Mac didn’t really like writing feature pieces or profiles. He preferred hard news. But Warren was right, this was part of the story, so he did the best he could with a minimum of swearing under his breath.
“How would you characterize Rodriguez’s performance?” he asked Warren.
Warren glanced at him warily. “Not for attribution,” he warned. “I’m not here officially, and if I were, I couldn’t say anything.”
Mac nodded. “A law official close to the investigation? Although that implies local PD.”
“A federal law official monitoring the operation,” Warren said. “That’s usually acceptable to the higher-ups in the bureau.”
“So, about his performance?”
“Lieutenant Rodriguez is one of the finest homicide officers I’ve had the pleasure of working with,” Warren said. “His persistence and investigation today saved lives. I saw problems within the PD that might have caused a less-knowledgeable officer to stumble, but Rodriguez knows how to run an operation. Seattle is lucky to have him.”
Mac typed it in. He hit the keyboard hard, the keys clattering. He backspaced a bit, then rewrote something.
“You think this was Army of God?”
“I do,” Warren said. “Has all the signs of it. Organized. Disciplined. Attack abortion clinics. Not many come off as well against an Army of God operation as Seattle did today. And that was thanks to Lt. Rodriguez.”
Mac grunted. “Maybe you should go into public relations,” he said sourly.
“Not me,” Warren said in mock horror. “Nor you either.”
Mac wrote and swore for a bit longer.
“OK,” he said. “Usually I’d read it to Janet at this point, but you’ll have to channel What Would Janet Do for her.”
“Go for it,” Warren said, keeping his eyes on the road.
“At the center of the Seattle Police Department’s response to the bombings at six Planned Parenthood clinics is Lt. Carlos Rodriguez, 42, who has been with the department his entire career.
“Rodriguez was called to a similar bombing at the home of Janet Andrews, news editor of the Examiner, because she was presumed to be inside the house when it exploded. By the time it was determined that Andrews was not in the house, Rodriguez had received a tip that the fire was a prelude to a larger operation—one that would target all the Planned Parenthood clinics in the Seattle area.”
Mac paused, edited something, continued reading. The story incorporated quotes from Rodriguez and from Warren.
“Rodriguez was able to organize a task force response within hours because of his connections within the Police Department and within the community. Although the Department has a terrorism taskforce it would have been unlikely to respond quickly enough to an Army of God operation.”
He closed with Warren’s quote about finest officer doing better than most against Army of God.
“OK?” Mac asked.
Warren nodded as he pulled up in front of the clinic. Two fire trucks still battled the blaze, but it didn’t appear to have spread to neighboring buildings.
“Needs something about Army of God,” he said, pulling out his FBI badge and rolling down the window. He showed the badge to a uniformed officer before opening the door.
Mac nodded, scrolled up, and added a paragraph.
“Do you think your expert would talk to me for a longer piece later this week?” he asked as he set up his hotspot to send the story in.
“Probably. Especially if Janet would agree to an anonymous interview. Agent Nesbit is fascinated by Jehovah’s Valley.”
Mac punched the number for the news desk. “Hi Brett, I just sent through a sidebar on Lieutenant Rodriguez, who’s running the police department team. I attached a picture of him at the command center.”
Mac listened for a minute. “Good. I’m at the Bellevue clinic. The fire really had a chance to catch here. Do you have anyone here?”
Brett assured him he had a real photographer there. And he’d been able to talk to the spox (spokesperson) for the Ballard Fire Department so they had that. But he could use some color....
Mac interrupted him. “No can do. I’m going to be off-line for a while.”
Brett protested loudly.
“You’ve got plenty of people who can cover it from here,” Mac said, trying not to lose his patience. “I’ve got a lead on Janet, and I’m going after her.”
He hung up while Brett was still talking, wrapped up his computer and stuffed it into the bottom of his bag. He pulled out his weapon, checked it, and shoved it in his jacket pocket. Then he found more Tylenol.
Shorty pulled up alongside of his rig. He got out, started toward the driver’s side. Realizing Mac was in the passenger’s seat, he veered toward him. Mac rolled down the window. Even though they were probably three blocks away, the noise and the humidity were almost unbearable.
“So where is this place,” Shorty asked.
“At the end of the road,” Mac said ironically. “Six hours. We’re going down I-90, drop down through Tri Cities to I-84. We’ll find a motel for a few hours in Pendleton. Then it’s about two hours beyond that. Come in at them at dawn.”
“They’ll be expecting us,” Warren said. “We could get a bit more sleep, hit them around noon.”
Mac shook his head. “We’ll lose the Army of God men if we wait. They’re not going to hang around long, even if John Welch wants them to. Too dangerous for them. And...,” he hesitated.
“And?” Warren prompted.
“And I’m a bit worried that Janet will provoke Welch into killing her if we wait too long,” Mac admitted.
Shorty snorted. Warren grinned. “There is that,” he said. “On the other hand, if we wait, she might have it all mopped up by the time we get there, and all we’ll need to do is give her a ride home.”
Mac laughed. “Possible.”
Shorty tapped the frame of the car. “See you in Pendleton.”
“Wait,” Mac said. “You doing OK with those two?”
“They’re growing on me,” Shorty said as he walked away.
Stan Warren looked at him sideways as he pulled away from the parking lot and maneuvered through the police directing traffic. “How bad is it?”
“Is what?”
“You’re hurting. You get shot?”
Mac hesitated. He took a deep drink from a bottle of water. “Yeah, the first clinic at Northgate,” he said at last. “It left a gouge in my left arm. Eli did a good job patching me up. I’m fine.”
“Will you be fine in six hours when we have to battle our way in—and probably our way out—of a fortified, isolated community well defended by Army of God?” Stan asked lightly.
Mac snorted. “Won’t even be my first time,” he said and sighed. “That about sums up Afghanistan,” he added. “The terrain isn’t even all that different.”
“Afghanistan doesn’t look anything like this!” He gestured to the lush green the Pacific Northwest was known for.
“Neither does where we’re going,” Mac said, closing his eyes, and leaning back. “Wake me when we get to Pendleton.”