Beyond Recognition

72

In the hours between 2 A.M. and 5 A.M., sixty-seven on-call patrol officers from seven policing districts, and twenty-four regular-duty firemen, along with four Marshal Fives, organized into an instant task force whose sole mission was to burn an abandoned machine shop to the ground and divert morning traffic south of the International District so that it was required to pass within a city block of the fire. This involved a staged vehicular accident, a road construction crew, and six dozen pink Day-Glo traffic cones.

The building was one of seventeen on various lists for demolition, some of which had been offered to the city-in lieu of tax breaks-for fire training.

For Lieutenant Phil Shoswitz, it was a bout of heartburn and temper tantrums. From the moment Boldt proposed the operation, the lieutenant objected, claiming Boldt had yet to confirm the identity of the individual inside the storage unit. This hurdle was overcome at 2:20 A.M. when Boldt, under advisement of the facility’s manager, entered the U-Stor-It offices, disabled the security device, and confirmed not only that Jonny Babcock-aka Garman-was a paying customer but that he rented unit 311, the very same unit from which the light had come and the voice had been heard. That same unit, 311, went dark at 1:15 A.M., but the door never opened and no one ever left the property. At that point in time, seven different sets of eyes and a video camera using infrared night-sight technology had all aspects of unit 3, as the row was called, under surveillance.

Boldt never experienced a moment of feeling tired. To the contrary, he had to slow himself down on several different occasions, simply to be understood. The nearly one hundred participants engaged in Operation Inferno were his orchestra; Lou Boldt was the conductor. Neil Bahan and Sidney Fidler were his first chairs, for only Bahan and Fidler understood both the fire and the police sides of the planned incident. Shoswitz, Bahan, Fidler, two Marshal Fives, an ATF man named Byrant, and three FBI special agents, along with two dispatchers, worked out of the conference room in the Seattle Field Office of the FBI, whose communications capabilities dwarfed any resources owned or operated by the city. Dozens of radios and cellular phones were all tied into a central dispatch, coordinated by the team assembled there.

The Santori house was under full surveillance. A part of ERT was in position to move on Garman if the ruse failed. With that considered a last resort, the emphasis of the police side of the operation was on field coverage. By 6 A.M., there were police officers and federal agents in place posing as telephone linemen, street people, construction workers, garbage collectors, electric company meter readers, a variety of delivery men, and assorted other occupations. Every major intersection between Airport Way and the Santori house had some degree of representation by armed law enforcement. It was a virtual gauntlet-with Jonny Garman its sole target.

At 8 A.M. the U-Stor-It office was opened by an FBI special agent, who took his place behind the desk inside and went about his work as if it had been part of his daily routine for years. At 8:12 A.M., the first report of activity at storage unit 311 was verified by three separate scouts and delivered to Boldt over a radio earpiece. At 8:15 A.M. a light rain began to fall. Lou Boldt felt it a bad omen.

To have driven Airport Way on that morning would have seemed no different than any other, except for a few detours that required different routes. But in Seattle, as in any major city, construction was a daily part of urban life and traffic accidents were a regular part of morning delays. Heading north into the city was not discernibly different from any other day: hurry up and wait.

A white pickup truck bearing Nevada plates pulled out of unit 311 and stopped. A man with a disfigured face, wearing a sweatshirt hood drawn tightly around his head and a pair of sunglasses, was seen climbing out of the truck and returning to shut and lock the unit’s door. For approximately fifteen seconds, Jonny Garman was nearby but out of his truck. This possibility-which some viewed as an opportunity-had been discussed in great depth among various factions of the operation’s coordinators. In the end it was decided that he would be too close to both his lab and his truck to attempt any kind of pick at that location. A suggestion had been made to use a sharpshooter on Garman, but with the boy’s life at stake it had been quickly dismissed. The suspect climbed back behind the wheel of his truck and drove out through the facility’s automatic gate, joining the slow-moving traffic, hindered by detours more than a mile ahead.

“This is Birdman,” reported a voice in Boldt’s ear. The helicopter was owned by KING radio and used for traffic reports. On that day, it was being used for surveillance. “Looking down through the windshield, I’m not showing a hostage. Contents in the back of the truck don’t look as promising. There appear to be two fifty-five-gallon drums, a variety of boxes, and assorted other items. No tarp in place.”

Fifty-five-gallon drums, Boldt thought. Enough to burn a hotel or a shopping mall to the ground. Either Garman had packed up shop or was planning an enormous hit. A flurry of radio traffic passed along the Birdman’s observations. Traffic moved slowly, Garman’s position reported every fifteen to thirty seconds.

At the Santori house, Marianne Martinelli prepared to make herself seen leaving the home, if it came to that.

At the abandoned machine shop, three ladder trucks and two pumpers stood by, lights flashing, hoses ready. Inside, last-minute preparations were made as the incendiary charges and detonator wire were checked and double-checked.

Dressed in coveralls, Lou Boldt threw a pickax into a dirt hole in a vacant lot across from the machine shop. The three men around him, including Detective John LaMoia, also wore coveralls but were working shovels. Boldt didn’t understand why he always got the pickax.

“Dig,” Boldt said. “He’s a half mile and closing.”

LaMoia jumped on the shovel and dug into the wet earth. Boldt’s hands were wet on the pickax’s handle, but it had little to do with the rain. His weapon weighed down the coverall’s right pocket, within easy reach.

“Hey,” LaMoia said, sensing everyone’s sudden tension. “This is a damn good-looking hole. Listen, if we fuck this up, Sarge, maybe we’ve found ourselves a second occupation.”

“Gravediggers?” one of the shovelers asked.

The three other workers stared this man down.

“Sorry,” he said.