Alpha

Chapter Twenty-five

Ruiz is still in the conference room, staring out the window. Directly below, the media circus is at a full three rings. There are clown cars with satellite antennae and competing ringmasters strutting and gesticulating in front of camera crews. It’s blown wide, global news, and the political repercussions are already beginning to be felt. Multiple pundits all singing variations on a theme. Is this a state-sponsored act of terrorism, and if so, will the Global War on Terror be opening yet another front in another country? More boots on the ground in Yemen, perhaps? If this is Pakistani in origin, will this be the last straw? Or perhaps somewhere even more problematic-one of the CIS, perhaps, or Southeast Asia?

Speculation only, but not one of the options makes Ruiz happy, and if it’s giving him dark thoughts, he can only imagine what’s being said in the White House Situation Room or the Pentagon. The same White House Situation Room he just finished speaking with, listening as orders have been relayed, from Washington back across the country to California, to the FBI HRT, now staged at the southernmost of WilsonVille’s parking lots and holding, down to the SWAT commander standing with his men less than a mile away. Everyone ready to move on WilsonVille; everyone all dressed up for a party nobody really wants to attend.

My people are in motion, Ruiz told the president. My people are moving to rescue the hostages, they will give the all clear to breach once they are secure.

Your people, can they do this? Your four operators and this fifth, this woman from the CIA?

They are the best in the world, Mr. President, Ruiz said, and he did not add that he believes this despite the fact that his team leader has been compromised. He has not said anything about Master Sergeant Bell’s ex-wife or his daughter. He feels this is a fair exclusion, as no one has said anything about CIA operating domestically, or the military doing the same, for that matter. Everything has been authorized, but should the shit hit the fan, those authorizations won’t matter for spit.

Ruiz hopes he will not regret this silence.

All stations will hold until your all clear, the Commander in Chief said. You have command, Colonel. We are holding on your word.

Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.

Out the window, there’s local law enforcement and federal and there’s a rumor that the governor is coming down from Sacramento, though Ruiz is sincerely hoping that someone back in D.C. has put a stop to that plan. The last thing this circus needs, he thinks, is one more elephant.

Some of those people in D.C., Ruiz suspects, are more than happy to give Ruiz this amount of rope. After all, if this goes wrong, lives will be lost. If lives will be lost, prospects will vanish and futures evaporate. If this goes wrong, far better to let four soldiers nobody has ever heard of and one CIA agent who shouldn’t be operating domestically anyway take the hit. Let them, and their immediate superiors, fall on their swords in failure.

Ruiz raises his gaze, sees WilsonVille two miles away and still for the first time in more than thirty years, minus the one dark day when everything fell silent. The sun is beginning its descent toward the Pacific, but it’s still high enough for the world to be blue and hot, not gold and graceful.

He thinks about the update he just got from Warlock. He thinks about the lies Bell told, and how every one of them was the right and proper one. He’s thinking that, by his watch, things are twenty-five minutes, give or take, from getting bloody.

He thinks about the man Bell spoke to, the man who had been in Bell’s office, who knew Jonathan Bell’s name. The inside man, who he is, and what he is doing right now. No plan is static, and this man would be an extraordinary fool to believe that Warlock would simply sit tight for the half hour he requested. This inside man, who knows the park as well as Warlock or even better. Where that inside man might plant a bomb.

Who are you? Ruiz wonders.

The door opens, and Ruiz turns, hoping for Marcelin but instead finding Eric Porter. The man is no longer perspiring, but he seems no less agitated, and a moment later, Wallford is coming into the room after him.

“Listen,” Porter says, and he’s making the effort, Ruiz can tell, struggling to keep his voice reasonable, his tone calm. “Listen, you cannot let these people go, Colonel. They clear the park, there is nothing to stop them from detonating that bomb. Nothing at all. And they will do it. They fucking well will do it.”

Ruiz exchanges looks with Wallford, or tries to, but Wallford isn’t having any. The man has shut the door, turning his back to Ruiz to do it, and now makes his way down the opposite side of the conference table, apparently more interested in the PowerPoint maps still displayed on the far wall than in what’s being said.

Not for the first time, Ruiz wonders what Wallford’s true agenda is. Angel is his agent, this much is clear, and certainly Wallford wants the park freed, wants the hostages released, the bomb discovered and disarmed. But there’s more, and now Ruiz thinks more equals Eric Porter. That Angel’s placement was one matter, but that Wallford’s himself was another.

“I understand your concern,” Ruiz says. “But rescuing the hostages is my team’s first priority.”

“These men are terrorists, they have committed a terrorist act,” Porter counters. “You let them go and they’ll be free to do it again.”

“No one responsible is going to leave the park.”

Porter studies him. “You just said-”

“You’re concerned that Master Sergeant Bell guaranteed them free passage. I understand that. Master Sergeant Bell lied to them, Mr. Porter. He’d have told them he would give oral to a bulldog and let them film him while he did it if that was what they wanted and he thought saying so would give him an advantage.”

“And what advantage has he gained?”

Wallford, from the far end of the room, head tilted back to look up at the park map being displayed, speaks.

“C’mon, Eric, you know the game. Whoever they are, they’re cracking. Their plan is falling apart. So maybe the bomb is real, maybe it isn’t, but now the shooters know these guys want out. And they’ve given them a route, maybe even a route they’ll take.”

Wallford turns, shoots a toothy grin at Porter.

“Maybe even get a live one. They do that, we can find out what this was all about. Who was pulling the strings. This isn’t the kind of incident we’ve seen before, after all.”

“We know what this is all about. This isn’t a mystery!” Porter waves his hand, indicating everything around them. “It’s about this! It’s about hitting this, making a statement! Corrupt America! Evil Empire! Destroying the Satanist Culture we export and all that bullshit!”

“Looks that way, maybe.” Wallford is still grinning. “Though I’ve never heard of a true believer willing to negotiate like this before. Have you?”

“Because they don’t want to negotiate. Because as soon as they’re clear, that bomb is going to go off.”

“My men will not allow that to happen,” Ruiz says.

Porter nods in approval at Ruiz. “I’m pleased to hear you say that. These men have to be stopped. Your shooters, they have to understand that. These men can’t leave the park alive.”

“My men will do what is required.”

“This isn’t about intelligence, Jerry,” Porter says to Wallford. “That’s past. This is about ending the crisis now. When it’s over, when it’s done, that’s when we can worry about who was responsible.”

Wallford shrugs, returns to studying the map projected on the wall. Porter stares at his back for a second, then nods to Ruiz once more and slips out of the room. The door closes softly after him.

Ruiz waits the better part of a minute before speaking. “How is he involved?”

“No idea.”

“But he is?”

“Sure as hell looks that way, doesn’t it?”

Ruiz considers, then moves down the length of the room, to stand beside Wallford. Wallford is still studying the map.

“If I was a dirty bomb, where would I be?” Wallford asks.

“Come clean, now.”

“That’s against Company policy, you know that.”

Ruiz moves closer, forcing Wallford to turn and face him.

“CIA knew?”

“Same answer you gave Marcelin, Colonel. If we knew, we’d have shut it down. We’re all one big happy intelligence community, remember?”

“Then what is this bullshit?”

“The device, if it’s real, it’s not a baby bomb, Colonel.” Wallford’s game face drops, the cheerful mask fading. “It’s not something some clever grad student managed to put together with cesium 137 or strontium 90 or whatever they could scrounge. We’re talking about a weapons-grade plutonium device. We’re talking the real shit.”

“You know this.”

“What we know is that somebody paid somebody who paid somebody who paid somebody else a metric fuckton of money to get a couple of ounces of weapons-grade plutonium out of Iran. So maybe, yeah, maybe it’s ended up in WilsonVille. If we can recover that device, we might be able to take a signature off the plutonium, determine its source.”

“Iran isn’t behind this.”

“Maybe not, maybe so. They sponsor terror attacks globally, you know that. Could be they sponsored this.”

“I’m slow on the science, but a plutonium dirty bomb, that’s signing the letter. Cesium, strontium, those are more effective agents, more dangerous, more lethal. You pick plutonium for headlines.”

“Maybe. Yes.”

Ruiz shakes his head. “Doesn’t wash. If this is a terror attack.”

“You don’t think it is?” Wallford’s grin returns. “You’re a suspicious bastard.”

Ruiz looks pointedly toward the closed door, then back to Wallford.

“Yeah. I don’t buy him being in bed with the Revolutionary Guard, either. Twenty-seven years with the Company, out with the change in administrations, he takes up with WilsonVille. Unless there’s a bank account we haven’t found, it doesn’t track to me, either.”

“So something else.”

“So someone else, yes.”

“Who?”

Wallford brightens. “That’s the question. That’s been the question all along.”

“We’re looking for an inside man,” Ruiz says.

“We’re looking for more than one.”

“Know the man,” Ruiz says. “Win the war.”

“That so?” Wallford shakes his head, stares at the map once more, searching for the one place in a million where someone has hidden a dirty bomb. “Then, as of this moment, we’re losing, Colonel.”