Abuse of Power

2

“You feel it?” Drabinsky asked. “The rush?”

Freelance TV producer Jack Hatfield barely heard the man. As they blasted toward the crime scene, the former firebrand talk show host-defrocked by a fearful, powerful few-found himself thinking about those long-ago days in Baghdad, days that were little more than a distant wash of sounds and images. All he really had left of the place was the shrapnel in his right thigh and an instinctive reaction, a gut-tensing alertness, to any sign or image that had Arabic or Kurdish writing.

“I feel it,” Jack said in a dry monotone. It reeked of insincerity but Drabinsky didn’t seem to notice. He was in the moment, psyched and impatient. Jack understood; these were the times they’d trained for. For Drabinsky, it was a chance to test himself. For Jack it was part of a larger, frustrating picture of bailing water instead of being able to get to the source and stop the damn flood.

They were barreling along Mission Street in a white Chevy Tahoe, the siren blaring, Officer Tom Drabinsky at the wheel-a lean cowboy with a leathery, sunbaked face.

Drabinsky was commander of the SFPD bomb squad, part of the city’s Homeland Security Tactical Company, and Jack had been profiling the squad for nearly a week now. His time with them had been pretty uneventful so far-mostly interviews, each member of the team recounting past glories and talking him through the “what-if…” white papers they had studied.

“They’re kind of like role-playing games, y’know?” one man had told him about those scenarios. “They let you think about problems you might encounter and solve them before you have to.”

Sure, Jack thought. As long as you don’t factor in the stuff that hits you square in the face when you’re in the field: fear, pressure, the media watching you, and the fact that at the very least your job is on the line, at the most your life…

Then just before dinner, Jack was putting together footage for the local CBS affiliate, something to help make the public aware of its role in watching and informing, when he got the call telling him it was time to saddle up.

“We’re on,” Drabinsky had said. “Where are you?”

Jack’s heart had kicked up a notch. “At the marina, editing footage.”

“A little out of my way but I don’t want you to miss this. Be at the lot in twenty.”

After he hung up, Jack immediately contacted his photographer Maxine and told her to meet them at the accident scene.

As Drabinsky maneuvered impatiently through traffic, Jack’s mind went back to the first time he had been rushing somewhere, that morning in Baghdad when everything went wrong.

He was remembering Riley’s face.

He saw that face in his sleep sometimes. The slack jaw, the glazed eyes, the dust-caked laugh lines around them. A dust that could neither be tamed nor conquered and had permeated every facet of their lives back then-two hotshot network news monkeys riding shotgun with the Second Marine Division, Riley always complaining that the desert was wreaking havoc on his video equipment.

Not that it mattered much.

Richard Edward Riley had the tragic distinction of being the second journalist killed during the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Jack had been right there when it happened. He could just as easily have been the third. One minute they were bumping along a deserted road and the next they were on the ground bleeding, their Humvee in pieces around them, Jack staring into the open, lifeless eyes of his best friend.

The details remained hazy, defensively isolated and contained by his mind, leaving the event with as much clarity as a half-remembered dream. Only the emotional and psychological pain were clear. Maybe that’s why his mind occasionally returned to it for no apparent reason, with no apparent trigger. It was his subconscious trying to remember, trying to hide the hurt among some cold facts. Like putting ice on a swollen eye.

Of course, the company he was keeping could have something to do with it. Drabinsky’s go-get-’em attitude reminded him of the marines who died that day. Tough, dedicated, counterintuitively marching into hell. Only the uniform was different. The SFPD bomb squad was full of that kind of men and women, the ones willing to risk their lives to keep Americans safe. And the people of San Francisco needed to know just how courageous they truly were. Instead, the rabid left wing harassed him endlessly.

Maybe they’d find out tonight. It was just too bad that a journalist’s dream was often indistinguishable from the stuff that nightmares were made of.

“You alive over there?”

Jack smiled. “Sorry, Tom. I was off in the woods.”

“Hunter or stag?”

“Hah. Good question.”

“Well, come back home, Jack. We’ve gotta stay focused, top of our game. If something goes wrong, you need to know right away.”

“Why? You ever see anyone outrun an explosion?”

“Of course not,” Drabinsky said. “The survivors are the ones who smell things before they go bad. Any dope can run when it’s too late.”

Jack nodded. The commander wasn’t talking out of his ass. In his nearly forty years, he had known soldiers, cops, pilots who had the Spidey sense he was talking about, an instinct for things that were slightly off center. During a visit to southern China, Jack had seen a demonstration in which a blindfolded Shaolin kung fu master defeated two much younger men because he felt what they were about to do. When Jack asked the sensei, through an interpreter, how he did that, the man replied with a smile, “The gray hair.”

Experience. There was nothing like it.

As Drabinsky pulled up to the nearest barricade, Jack raised the Steiner Marine Binoculars he’d brought. It was an ugly, surreal, yet strangely tranquil sight.

Big flatbed-mounted spotlights towered twenty feet on either end of the street and illuminated the scene. The bread truck lay angled toward the sidewalk. It rested against a streetlight, half of one of its panels caved in. Bisecting it was an overturned Land Rover, its roof crumpled under its weight.

The street was empty, the cops maintaining a by-the-book two-block radius from the site. All the buildings and stores in a one-block radius had been evacuated, though most were empty already due to the hour.

Twenty-seven-year-old Maxine Cole showed up while her boss was still studying the scene. Her press pass was swung onto her back-where the camera wouldn’t hide it-and her video camera was already hoisted onto a shoulder, floodlight on. Of Somali descent, she was a tall, city-born triathlete and one of the best hose-n-go shooters Jack had ever known. She wet-kissed everything with her camera, missed nothing, and made editing a breeze.

“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Cops at the outside barrier didn’t want to let me through. I tried calling you but couldn’t get a signal.”

Jack lowered the field glasses. “They’ve activated a cell phone jammer. Standard precaution.”

“Oh. Right. Duh,” she said as she shot.

Jack gestured toward the overturned vehicles nearly a block away. “The money shot is at the rear of that Land Rover. Can you manage it?”

“Not from this angle.”

He turned to Drabinsky. “Can we go closer?”

“Only if you’re suicidal. We’re sending in the BDR.”

As if on cue, the rear doors of a newly arrived van flew open and one of Drabinsky’s men climbed out, put down a ramp, and started playing with the joystick in his hands. Jack saw a bright white light, heard a soft electronic whir as the bomb disposal robot glided out of the van and down the ramp toward the blacktop, looking like a RoboCop prototype on steroids.

Max got some footage of it making its descent. “So what’s the story here? Somebody said something about a carjacking.”

“Carjacking that went a little south,” Jack told her.

“The perp?”

“Some fool EMTs went in and got him,” Drabinsky said. He had been pacing back and forth, eyeballing the crash. “They’ve got him at General. I don’t know anything else. One of the medics also tried to pull the tag number off the Rover, but it was buried in the bread truck.”

“They get anything at all from the car?” Max asked. Her questions weren’t just for her own information; she was running sound and the bites were often invaluable.

“You mean about the owner?” Drabinsky asked.

“That-or anything else.”

He shrugged. “If they have, no one’s told me. We’re just the garbage collectors. Last to know unless it blows, as we say.”

“Charming,” Max said.

Drabinsky gestured to a portable computer stand where a laptop had been set up. They walked over, Max following everything through the eye of her camera. The screen showed the view from a small video camera mounted on the robot.

“We use the robot to tell us what we’re up against. If it’s the real deal, we either blow it or I go in with the suit to disarm the thing.”

“What’s the deciding factor?”

“Size. We’d just as soon not take out half a city block if we can help it. If that thing is too big to blow, I have to break out my suit and get all Hurt Locker on it.”

Jack watched the bot-the remote-controlled robot-as it arced around and headed down the street, Max videotaping its progress. It moved at a leisurely pace, traveling about a block and a half before it came to a stop two feet away from the rear of the Land Rover. Jack glanced at the computer screen as the joystick operator adjusted the angle and focus, zeroing in on the two-liter bottles-which, it was quickly determined, were only the detonator. Under the upended dashboard were several bricks of plastic explosives, neatly bound together by det cord and at least half a dozen detonators.

Jack’s heart started to thump. This wasn’t one of the rusted-out IEDs the Explosive Ordnance Disposal units back in Iraq were tasked to deal with-the kind that had derailed Jack’s Humvee. This was military-grade C4 that looked as if it had come fresh out of the box.

Drabinsky said to his crew, “We got an eight-hundred-pound gorilla, boys. No avoiding it. Time to break out the demon.”

“You’re going in?” Max asked.

“No choice. Whoever was driving that car meant business.”

Jack’s heart kicked up another notch, but for an entirely different reason this time. It occurred to him that what had started out as a routine profile for a single night’s airing and then online archiving had blossomed into something much bigger. He was working freelance on this, paying Max out of his own pocket, and what he had here was a story that might be important enough to put him back on the national map. A potential terrorist attack in a major American city. And he and Max were the only news personnel who had been allowed inside the circle because Tom Drabinsky and he had hit it off, and that was the way the boss man wanted it.

But there was a downside. Because they’d hit it off, it was a friend who was walking into the hair-trigger kill zone, not some anonymous hero.

Jack watched as Drabinsky crossed to the Tahoe and threw the rear gate open. Two of his crew members joined him there and brought out a helmet and what Drabinsky had referred to as the “demon”-a personal armor suit made of thick padding, designed to withstand the force of an explosion. “In theory, at least,” Drabinsky had told him. They called it the demon because of the number of men who had died wearing one.

As Drabinsky suited up, Jack glanced to his right, toward a cluster of squad cars in the distance.

They had a person of interest in back of one of those cars. Not the bomber but someone who apparently knew the carjacker, had been trying to get to him immediately after the accident.

Jack turned to Max. He didn’t have to tell her to keep the camera on Drabinsky. “Be back in ten,” he said.

Max was surprised. “Where you going?”

“I want to try and find out who they’ve got in the car back there.”

“You sure you don’t want me there with you?”

Jack shook his head. “I want Tom to know he’s got a lady in the lists.”

“Sorry?”

“Jousts. Knights. Helped them focus. You didn’t want to be unhorsed if a pretty eye was on you.”

“Ah. Hey, do I get hazard pay for this?”

Jack smiled. “You’re a newsperson covering news. Be grateful for the privilege.”

Jack got lucky. There was a rookie uniform watching the SFPD’s guest, as they called him. There’s a myth that rookies tend to follow regulations. What they follow is experience and authority. They don’t just give it up, though; most have to be wooed by guys who have been-there, seen-that.

Jack walked up, read the rookie’s name tag, showed his credentials.

“Sorry, Mr. Hatfield, but we’re not supposed to allow press near-”

“I’m not press, Officer Beckman, I’m a friend of Tom’s,” he said. Then he added pointedly, “Tom Drabinsky. The guy in the demon.”

“Yes, sir. I know who that is.”

Jack waved a hand toward the kid in the patrol car. “He give you any trouble when you took him into custody?”

“Nah. There were already a couple citizens keeping him in check.”

“You find the owner?”

Beckman started to speak, then hesitated.

“Don’t worry,” Jack said. “We’re off the record. I just want to know what’s going on.”

Beckman thought about it a moment then said, “Nothing on the owner.”

“Who’s this guy?” He indicated the kid in the car.

“Name’s Leon Thomas. His younger brother Jamal was the jacker. He told us this was just an initiation, no one was supposed to get hurt, and his brother was going to abandon the car after a joyride.”

“You believe him?”

“He’s got a Big Block tat on the back of his neck,” Beckman said. “Either he’s a member of the gang or a serious wannabe. Their initiation is blood, not a carjacking.”

“What did he say about the vic?”

“Only that he was an ‘Arab-lookin’ dude,’” Beckman said.

“Age? Clothing?”

“Twenties, well dressed.”

The kind of guy who would probably slip through spot-check profiling, which the SFPD said they didn’t do. The truth was, every metropolitan police department in the nation did it. Chances were pretty good that granny wouldn’t be blowing up a street car unless she was wearing a head scarf, and Josh or Tyler was less likely to take out a federal building than Muhammad or Omar.

Jack was about to ask if he could talk to the kid when three black SUVs pulled up to the perimeter. A moment later the area was flooded with men in suits, one of whom-a hefty six-footer with the clean, resolute look of a Mercury astronaut-approached Beckman. “Where’s the officer in charge?”

“Who are you?” Jack asked.

The suit reached into his jacket and brought out a set of credentials. Field Director Carl Forsyth, FBI. The agent in charge, by his manner. The man’s eyes were still on Beckman. “Are you gonna point me in the right direction or does this loser do all your talking?”

“Whoa,” Jack said. “What the hell is that supposed to-”

“You mean ‘loser’? I know who you are. You used to have that show on TV, Truth Tellers.”

Jack stiffened. “That’s right.”

“And you’re still working? I figured we’d seen the last of you.”

It was the kind of derision that Jack had gotten used to over the last couple years, but it had been a while since he’d encountered it. After losing his job at the network in a very public way-thanks to an orchestrated smear campaign that had pretty much destroyed his reputation and wrongfully painted him as a bigot-he had removed himself from the national stage, content to work in relative obscurity as a freelance news producer. He’d known he’d have to rebuild his reputation, brick by brick, and had spent the last few minutes feeling like he was back in the major leagues. But then a guy like Agent Forsyth came along and he sometimes wondered if it was worth it.

Beckman had caved, was pointing him in the direction of the MCC-the mobile command center-when someone near the bomb site shouted.

“Down! Everybody down!”

Without thinking, Jack grabbed the rookie and dove toward the blacktop as a massive explosion shook the ground, sending several tons of debris and human body parts rocketing in all directions.

The shock wave blew over Jack, shattering car windows and taking down anyone who had been too slow to react. He heard a low grunt nearby and, through the haze of powdered debris, saw Beckman lying facedown a few feet ahead, bleeding from the base of his neck, a long gash having been ripped by a chunk of cement. Muffled by the thick dust, the roar of the explosion faded, leaving behind a low, steady buzz in Jack’s ears.

The whole world seemed to pause for a long moment, as if to take a deep breath, and he was once again assaulted by that morning in Baghdad, his best friend’s blank stare vivid in his mind’s eye. A vague sense of panic welled in his chest, brought on by the memory, his senses, and the unexpected chaos. But he himself seemed unhurt and he forced himself to remain calm and assess the damage around him.

One of the FBI agents was sprawled on the blacktop, out cold, his suit jacket askew, as the agent in charge and the two uniforms slowly staggered to their feet.

“My God,” one of them muttered.

And that about summed it up.

Beckman stirred, groaned.

Jack got to his feet, simultaneously pulling a handkerchief from his pants and slapping it over his mouth and nose. He checked the rookie’s wound. It didn’t seem life threatening. He turned the man over, placed his head on the block that had hit him. He wanted to keep the flow of blood down, away from the wound.

“You okay?” Jack asked.

The rookie blinked several times, looking dazed. “I think so.” He touched the side of his head, then the back. “I’m bleeding, aren’t I? Feels like I blew out an ear-”

“That’s just the concussion. You got clocked in the neck.”

Jack gave him a pat on the arm. As he was turning to look back to where he had left Max he saw the door of the cruiser fly open and Leon Thomas stumble out. He was covered with a thousand tiny pieces of shattered glass but that didn’t stop him from running into the man-made mist, his hands cuffed behind him.

“Hey!” somebody shouted — and Leon picked up speed.

He didn’t get far. Twenty yards away a uniform broadsided him, taking him down like a defensive tackle, two more piling on for good measure. A moment later they had him on his feet, roughly shoving him toward another cruiser. One of them swatted him across the back of the head as they threw the door open and pushed him inside.

Even before the show was over, Jack turned away, shifting his attention to the center of the blast. The dust was starting to settle and through the haze he saw a crater. Half the building behind it was in shreds, a hotel that had been abandoned and was ironically scheduled for demolition. Though the spotlights had been taken out in the blast patches of fire were rising from the building and the shop beside it, lighting the night. A water main had ruptured in the center of the street and was spitting an ineffectual fountain toward the crater. Rivulets followed cracks in the asphalt, creating an odd, shimmering effect.

There was no sign of Drabinsky, his suit, or the robot.

Feeling dread, Jack scanned the perimeter, searching for Maxine. With relief that brought tears to his eyes, he saw her climbing to her feet, staring down at her battered video camera in limp shock.

As if suddenly remembering she had a coworker, she froze halfway to her feet, turned suddenly, and peered along the street. She made eye contact with Jack and, as though she had completed a minichecklist-camera, partner-she collapsed.

Dodging flaming pieces of fabric and paper that were floating carelessly from above, Jack made his way toward ground zero.