The Enemy Within

CHAPTER 16 OVERLOAD

Newly refurbished as part of an ongoing corporate effort to maintain the glamour and profitability of Disney’s oldest theme park, the Disneyland Hotel stood as a tribute to the power of “imagineering” and the American love of glitter and fun. The “guests” mostly parents with small children and teenagers heading for the monorail ride to the park itself were brought to a fever pitch of excitement by their surroundings. They moved through a maze of enticing sights, smells, and sounds emanating from an array of restaurants and souvenir shops. Live entertainers musicians, magicians, and actors inside larger-than-life character costumes mingled with the crowds.

With an effort, Hassan Qalib concealed both his disgust and his amazement at the sight of so much godless luxury and so much waste. Everywhere the young Somali looked he saw excess and idolatry. Idolatry in the way these Americans taught their young to love and worship these mythical beasts, these cartoon characters. Excess in the half-eaten food they so casually discarded. The trash cans were full of hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, and other foodstuffs that could have fed a family in Mogadishu for nearly a week.

Qalib caught sight of himself reflected in a storefront and scowled inwardly. He, too, appeared contaminated by this evil land and way of life. Three months on a typical American diet had added kilos of muscle and fat to a normally bony frame. The extra weight made him less conspicuous, but it also made him look bloated and alien when compared to the older self of memory.

To complete the masquerade as a park-goer, he wore typically American casual clothes: khaki slacks, brown loafers, and a light grey windbreaker over a more colorful Mickey Mouse-emblazoned sweatshirt. In his right hand he carried a large plastic bag full of gift-wrapped packages purchased several days ago from one of the hotel souvenir shops by another member of his special action cell.

Ahead of him the jostling crowds began forming lines as they approached a row of turnstiles and uniformed employees at the entrance to the Disneyland Hotel monorail station. He joined one of the lines.

With an effort, Qalib forced himself to smile politely as he showed a young white woman his Magic Kingdom passport. The ticket guaranteed him all-day admittance to the park and all its attractions. It also cost more than most people in his starving homeland earned in a month. The Somali was careful to smile with his mouth closed. Anyone who saw his stained and broken teeth would not have mistaken him for a college-age, middle-class American black man. She glanced at the passport and nodded him through the turnstile with a chirpy, impersonal “Have a nice day!”

Still smiling faintly, he took the stairs up to the platform and blended in with the other eager tourists waiting for the futuristic transport that would take them to the “happiest place on Earth.”

He did not have to wait long.

The sleek bullet shape of the train came into sight almost immediately, gliding noiselessly along a gleaming monorail that ran above the vast Disneyland parking lot and crossed the street to the hotel station. Doors slid open as soon as it braked to a complete stop. People leaving the theme park disembarked in a chattering rush. Only a smattering of them, Qalib noted. The arriving train had been almost empty. That was good.

Once those leaving were clear of the platform, he and his fellow passengers were allowed to board. Each car held up to sixteen passengers, and the Somali chose one near the middle. A man and woman holding hands with a bright-eyed toddler took the seat facing him. The door hissed shut behind them.

Qalib ignored them, and concentrated instead on double checking the routine the train attendants followed before departure. What he saw was reassuring. A single uniformed employee hurried down the row of compartments, hastily making sure the doors were properly secured. The young man paid little attention to anything or anyone else.

The Somali nodded to himself. Corporate cost-cutting had been shrinking Disneyland’s total work force for years. And now, with the start of the flu season, the park was said to be particularly shorthanded. That would make his task easier.

With a barely perceptible jerk, the monorail slid out of the station and accelerated toward Tomorrowland Station.

Several minutes later, after a rapid run around the back half of the park, the train braked as gently as it had accelerated, gliding to a stop at a platform overlooking a large artificial lagoon. The grey and white bulk of the Matterhorn loomed in the middle distance. The ride was somewhat shorter than he’d expected, Qalib realised, but still well within the time parameters laid down by his controller.

The Somali stayed behind when everybody else got off. Nobody paid much attention to him. Anyone with a valid ticket to the park could ride the monorail as many times as they wanted.

As he had hoped, there were only a handful of people waiting to board for the return trip. It was still early enough in the day so that tourists were pouring into Disneyland, not out of it. This time, as the train pulled out, he had the compartment all to himself.

Qalib swung into action, moving rapidly through an often rehearsed series of actions. First he dipped into his windbreaker pocket and pulled out a tube of fast-drying epoxy. Then he reached under the top layer of gift-wrapped packages in his bag, took out a metal case painted to match the compartment interior, and set it on his lap. It was six inches long, six inches wide, and three inches high. “Property of Disneyland” had been stenciled across the case’s outer face. There were adhesive strips attached to its underside.

He flipped the top open and pressed a button on a small digital watch attached to the inside front. Instantly, the display shifted from the current time to a preset number and began counting down. A quick scan of the wires leading out from the improvised timer showed no loose connections. Satisfied, he shut the case and sealed the top with a blob of epoxy. That should stop any prying hands for the short time needed, he thought.

The young Somali glanced up from his work. The monorail was just beginning its long arc over the crowded Disneyland parking lot. Careful to keep his hands away from the adhesive, he leaned over, set the metal case against the compartment wall at his feet, and tamped it into place.

He slid across the monorail compartment, closer to the door, and surveyed his handiwork for a brief moment. Placed below eye level, the case blended fairly well with its surroundings. It should escape immediate notice.

The train began slowing. They were almost back to the hotel.

Qalib recapped the epoxy, dropped it into his bag, and stripped off his windbreaker. That was the easiest form of disguise. Whites could rarely tell blacks apart by their facial features. The station attendants should see no immediate connection between the gray jacketed black man who’d gotten on the monorail only minutes before and the young man in a bright Mickey Mouse sweatshirt who was coming back.

When the doors slid open, the Somali walked unhurriedly toward the stairs, completely ignoring the milling crowds waiting to board. They were no longer his concern.

Ten-year-old Brian Tate mumbled a favorite swear word under his breath as his freely swinging ankles jarred painfully against that dorky raised bump that stuck out from the side of the compartment. He sneaked a fearful look toward his parents to see if they’d heard him. Nope. He relaxed. Both of them were way too busy pointing out the sights to his bratty younger brother and sister. They were crossing over that stupid submarine ride he’d taken two years ago. He sneered. You didn’t see anything cool, he thought. Just swimming pool water and some stuffed fish. Even the submarines were on tracks.

Curious now, Brian bent over to inspect the wall. His hands brushed against the bump and came away sticky. This was definitely very weird. Whatever it was, it wasn’t part of the train. It was a metal box.

The ten-year-old looked up. “Hey, Dad! Check this out…”

Inside Qalib’s metal case, the timer blinked from 00:00:01 to 00:00:00.

Thirty feet over Tomorrowland, the Disneyland monorail exploded, torn from end to end by a powerful blast. A ball of fire pushing razor-edged shards of steel and aluminum roared outward in a searing, deadly tide that surged over the tightly packed people waiting in lines below and left them charred or broken and bleeding on the ground.

Most of the warped, burning remnants of the monorail were blown off the track and plunged hissing into the lagoon.

The deep, joy-filled voices of the New Hope Baptist Church choir were loud enough to be heard in the parking lot outside the whitewashed, wood-frame church. A special night service full of prayers for civic and racial peace was in full swing. Other gatherings were planned later in the week in churches of other denominations. Louisville’s religious and political leaders wanted to calm emotions that were boiling dangerously near the surface as racial attack after racial attack rocked the country.

To help keep the peace and make sure there were no ugly incidents, two officers from the Louisville police department sat in a parked patrol car outside the church.

Officer Joe Bailey listened to the music for a few moments before rolling his window shut. He grinned over at his rookie partner. “Fine singing, Hank. Mighty fine singing. Just kind of reaches down and picks your spirit right up, don’t it?”

Hank Smith nodded politely without saying anything. Music was one of the things he and the older policeman would never agree on. His own tastes ran more to U2 than to country or gospel.

The younger man turned back to the pile of routine reports on his lap. Paperwork was always the bane of any cop’s working life, especially when you had a sly old fox like Joe Bailey for a partner. Fifteen years with the Louisville police department had taught the older man every trick there was to avoiding work he didn’t enjoy. Work like filling out arrest reports in the triplicate and quadruplicate so loved by bureaucrats.

Smith sighed under his breath. At least pulling guard duty outside a church on a quiet night offered him a chance to cut into the backlog a little. For several minutes, his pen scratched steadily onward through page after page, accompanied by the faint, off-key sound of Bailey humming and by the occasional crackle of voices over their car radio.

Halfway through one report, Smith stopped, his pen poised over a blank line. He sat chewing his lower lip absentmindedly while mentally running through the rules, regulations, and legal information he’d crammed in at the academy. Finally, he gave up. He turned toward the older man. “Say, Joe, what’s the code for felonious ”

Bailey’s head exploded. Blood and bits of brain matter blew across the rookie policeman’s horrified face. The older man shuddered once and slumped sideways across the seat with his bulging eyes fixed and staring at nothing. Bright red arterial blood spilled across the papers in Smith’s lap.

The young policeman pulled his terrified gaze from the dead man at his side and turned slowly toward the shattered side window. A dark figure stood there just outside the patrol car, still, calm, and poised a faceless man dressed in black from head to toe. Smith’s eyes widened as he saw the pistol aimed at his forehead.

His mouth opened in a frantic, whispered plea. “No…”

The last thing Hank Smith saw on earth was a blinding burst of bright light.

Salah Madani lowered his silenced 9mm automatic and stared into the car’s blood-spattered front seat for a moment. Neither of the two policemen showed any signs of life.

Sure now that they were dead, the Egyptian turned away and signaled the rest of his team into action. Four men wearing the same kind of black overalls and black ski masks to hide their features darted out of an alley and loped across the parking lot toward the New Hope Church. Two of them held shotguns at the ready, guarding another pair lugging heavy, bulging backpacks.

Madani stayed by the police car ready to abort this mission at the first sign of trouble. Not that he expected any. Not now. America’s cities averaged only two full-time law enforcement officers for every thousand or so of their citizens. Spread so thinly across such a vast population, the police simply could not be everywhere and protect everyone all the time. This would be even simpler and safer than his cell’s earlier work in Dallas.

A soft whistle from the alley caught the Egyptian’s attention, and he saw another figure in black there giving him a thumbs-up signal. Antonovic had finished setting his charges ahead of schedule.

Men and women and children dressed in their Sunday best packed every pew and aisle of the New Hope Baptist Church, swaying in time with the music as they sang. Sweat beaded up on shining faces and foreheads. With so many people crowded so close together, the temperature inside was climbing rapidly, but nobody wanted to break the spell the overwhelming sense of fellowship and community by opening the church doors or windows. Perhaps later, perhaps when the minister began his oration, they would seek comfort in the cool night air. For now, though, the congregation was content to stand and shout out its joy to the Lord in hymns of praise and celebration.

None of them heard the faint, muffled thump as an explosive charge knocked out an electrical switching station two blocks away.

The power went off in a five-block radius around the New Hope Baptist Church. Streetlights and homes went dark instantly. But the loss of electricity knocked out more than lights. It also disabled fire alarms and sprinkler systems.

Inside the church itself, the hymn stumbled to a stop in the sudden darkness. Voices rose in consternation as people called out for lights or for their husbands, wives, parents, and children. Other voices urged calm and asked everyone to stand still until the electricity came back on. Two of the ushers standing in the back tried to open the main doors to let the congregation filter outside.

They were chained shut.

Seconds later, the incendiary charges Madani’s men had planted around the outside of the church began going off.

Although it was close to midnight, most of the lights in the massive FBI headquarters building were on. More bright lights shone on the streets surrounding the imposing structure. Television crews from around the world were camped out there, relaying a constant stream of reports to their viewers about the progress, or lack of progress, of the FBI’s special counterterrorist force. Normally, D.C.-area investigations were run out of the Washington Metropolitan Field Office at Buzzard Point on the Anacostia River. In a bid to present the public with a confidence-inducing backdrop, the FBI’s powers that he had insisted that Special Agent Mike Flynn run his task force from the more imposing and accessible Hoover Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. As the weeks slid by without results, many of them were beginning to think that had been a mistake.

Just through the building’s main doors, Colonel Peter Thorn finished signing in at the security desk and clipped a visitor’s badge to his uniform jacket. “Where do I go now?” he asked.

A grim-faced guard slid his briefcase back across the desk and pointed toward a small open area near a bank of elevators. “Just wait there, sir. Agent Gray will be right down.”

Thorn spent the next few minutes watching a sporadic stream of other visitors run through the maze of security precautions. Like every other important government building and military base, the Hoover Building was locked up tight shielded from terrorist attacks by concrete barriers outside and metal detectors and armed guards inside. So far none of the right-wing or left-wing terrorist groups they were hunting had tried to target a secure installation, but no one was taking any chances.

Helen Gray stepped out of an arriving elevator into the waiting area. She smiled as soon as she saw him, but even the smile couldn’t hide the fact that she was dead tired and deeply troubled. There were faint worry lines developing around her eyes.

Thorn knew that expression. It was the same look he saw on every face inside both the Pentagon and the Hoover Building. It was the same look he saw every morning in his mirror. It had been sixteen days since the first bomb blasts rocked the National Press Club. Sixteen days. And yet, despite the application of massive investigative manpower and every piece of advanced forensic technology at the FBI’s disposal, they seemed no closer to solving any of the dizzying parade of terrorist attacks that were coming with increasing frequency. They were losing ground, not gaining it.

Helen stopped a few feet from him. “Hello, Peter,” she said softly.

“Hi.” Thorn struggled against the temptation to take her in his arms. They were on public ground and near the inner sanctum of her professional life. Flaunting their personal relationship inside the Hoover Building would only damage her hard-won credibility with her superiors. “I’ve got those patrol overlays you asked for.”

“Great.” She nodded toward the elevators. “We can go over them in my office, if you’d like.”

“I’d like that a lot.”

On paper, Thorn was here to help coordinate Delta Force’s operations in and around Washington with the FBI’s counterpart counterterrorist unit, the HRT. In reality, he hoped to obtain more hard data than he could glean from the Pit-flack news briefings the Department of Justice held at irregular times. Virtually the only good thing about the administration’s ill-conceived Operation SAFE SKIES was that it gave him a better excuse to prowl around inside the Bureau’s hallowed halls. He was still looking for some way to make himself useful to his country in this snowballing crisis.

Helen led him into an elevator and punched the number for the floor set aside to hold Flynn’s special counterterrorist task force. They rode up in a companionable silence. The security cameras and microphones visible on the car ceiling precluded any meaningful conversation.

They emerged into a bustling hallway. Plush carpeting, soft lighting, and freshly painted pastel walls testified to the administrative clout of those who ordinarily worked in this part of the headquarters building. Now the administrators and bureaucrats were gone, crowded onto other floors by Flynn’s task force.

Everywhere Thorn looked he saw agents and technicians hard at work hunched over computer terminals or blownup crime-scene photos, standing over humming fax and copier machines, or hurrying from room to room carrying hard-copy files or disks. But there were also more untenanted offices and empty desks than he’d expected.

Helen saw his quizzical look and nodded wearily. “We’re running short of warm bodies and good brains. Between Chicago, Dallas, and Seattle, we’d already lost a lot of manpower. Two more teams left for Disneyland and Louisville tonight. I’m afraid we’re getting close to the breaking point.”

Thorn knew exactly what she meant. For all its influence in American law enforcement, the FBI was a comparatively small organisation. Just over eight thousand agents worked out of the Bureau’s fifty-five field offices, and only a small percentage had the training and experience needed for topnotch counterterrorist work. In 1995, the investigation of the Oklahoma City bombing had tied up most of the FBI’s available forensics specialists and terrorism experts for weeks. Now the Bureau was being forced to cope with the terrible equivalent of a new Oklahoma City attack one or two times a week. Flynn’s task force was the only place to find the people needed to staff additional investigative units. Caught in a constant reshuffling as new teams were formed and dispatched to the field, the strain was clearly beginning to tell on the agents assigned to each case. There were only so many investigators, so many hours of computer and lab time, and so many hours in the day. It was no wonder that all of them were beginning to feel like they were floundering around in the dark, waiting helplessly for the next blow to fall, the next bomb to go off.

Helen opened the door to a large office suite and led him through a crowded central area. Panel partitions broke the room up into smaller cubicles, each one just big enough for a single desk, two chairs, two phones, and a network-linked personal computer. None of the people closeted in the cubicles looked up as they passed through.

Helen had her own tiny office off to one side. It wasn’t much just four walls, a door, and a desk but it offered her some much-valued privacy. She used it to catch up on paperwork whenever her HRT section was out of the duty rotation.

She shut the door behind them and kissed him passionately, almost fiercely. Then she stepped back and smiled again, a shade more happily this time, at the surprised expression on his face. “I’ve been waiting to do that since I last saw you, Peter.”

For the first time in days, Thorn felt his spirits lift a bit. He moved closer. “It has been a while. I guess I’ll just have to prove my good intentions all over again.”

Helen’s eyebrows went up. She backed up to her desk and held up a warning hand. “Sorry! No fooling around on federal property, mister.” She shook her head in regret. “We’ll have to save that for later. After we’re both off duty.”

Thorn nodded slowly, briefly reluctant to come back to the grim reality they faced. “Fair enough.” He set his briefcase down on the floor and took the chair she indicated. “So. Fill me in. From what I hear, nothing’s working.”

Her smile slipped. “Worse.” She sat down in the only other chair. “We keep running into dead ends at every turn. We’ve got fingerprints from the press club bomb, but they don’t match anyone in our files. Even the C4 used was bought by an untraceable dummy corporation. It’s the same story everywhere.”

“I thought you had a picture of the bomber.”

Helen nodded. “One of our guys spotted him on the videotapes shot by the Metro surveillance cameras. Wearing that damned fake ECNS jacket and carrying all his gear. Flynn’s releasing it to all the news services tomorrow morning.”

Then she shrugged. “Not that it’ll do much good. Here.” She rummaged around in the papers stacked on her desk, pulled one out, and slid it across to him. It was a blowup of a photo taken by one of the Metro cameras.

Thorn studied it and saw right away what she meant. The man framed in the picture was dark-haired, thin, of average height, and wore dark glasses and a mustache. Even if he still looked anything like the photo, and that was doubtful, there were millions of men all across America who might fit that description.

He handed it back to her without saying anything.

“We have even less to work with in Chicago,” Helen said tiredly.

“Shell casings from the scene would help us ID the weapons used… if we could only find the weapons. And that rental van we found was useless wiped clean.”

“What about the rental agency?” he asked. “Anything from them?”

“Zip. They think the guy who rented it had blond hair and blue eyes… but they’re not sure. What we are sure of is that he used a fake credit card and a fake driver’s license.”

Thorn nodded. Again, that wasn’t surprising. Credit card fraud and forged identification were a multibillion-dollar business in the United States. “And there’s nothing new from any other site?”

“Not a thing. The explosions and fires in both Seattle and Dallas/Fort Worth took care of most of the evidence. We know now they were both deliberately set not accidents. We don’t know much more than that.”

Thorn set his jaw, fighting memories that were still painful. “What about Flight 352?”

Helen’s gaze softened. She had her own nightmare visions of that terrible day and night by the Potomac. “The lab says the solid-rocket exhaust residues we picked up on the shore near Georgetown probably came from Russian-designed missiles either SA-7s or the newer SA-16s. Our divers and the Park Police are still dragging the river for any bits and pieces we could use to confirm that.”

“Wonderful,” Thorn said softly. There were so many SA7s and SA-16s piled up in military and terrorist arsenals around the world that tracing the weapons used for this particular attack would be almost impossible.

“What about on your end, Peter? Have you and the Maestro zeroed in on any of our guys who might have gone bad?” Helen asked.

“Only a handful.” Thorn spread his hands in a gesture of negation.

“And none I’d lay any money on. One’s in prison, so he’s out. Another’s overseas working as a bodyguard for a Saudi prince. I understand most of the others had airtight alibis when your people checked them out. Anyway, none of them showed any signs of having the kind of connections or money they’d have to have to jump all over the country without getting caught.”

Suddenly, he shook his head. “I just don’t buy this, Helen. I could swallow the Bureau not spotting one or two small, sophisticated domestic terrorist groups… but three or four or five? Where the hell are all these bastards coming from?”

“Believe me, Peter, we’ve all been asking the same question,” Helen said quietly. She lowered her eyes to the pile of reports and photos on her desk. “Our intelligence people honestly thought they had a handle on every group likely to cause trouble. But it’s a big country out there and the evidence is pretty clear that we screwed it up somehow. Maybe we counted too much on these people slotting neatly into our psychological profiles. Or we relied too heavily on informants who weren’t tracking the right organisations.”

She looked up again. “All I know is that we’re getting hammered by terrorists of all stripes using different techniques and weapons to hit different types of targets in different parts of the country. And the only thing I can see that they’ve got in common is that they’re damned good at what they do.”

Thorn grimaced. “True.” Every separate attack showed clear signs of careful advance planning and attention to detail. That was one of the factors that had first led him to believe someone with military training might be involved. Something else about the terrorist strikes tugged at his memory. Something about the communiques claiming responsibility…

Helens phone buzzed, breaking his train of thought. “Special Agent Gray here.”

Thorn sat still while she listened to someone on the other end.

“Right. I’ll be there.” Helen hung up. She looked sadly at him. “I have to go, Peter. Flynn’s called a meeting in five minutes to go over the preliminary reports on the monorail bombing.”

“Is he still giving you grief about sharing information with me?” Thorn asked seriously.

“Not much.” One side of Helen’s mouth twitched upward for an instant.

“Mike Flynn’s got a few too many other things to worry about right now. So I think he’s pretty well decided to turn a blind eye on us at least as long as he doesn’t trip over you every time he turns around.”

Thorn forced some humor into his own voice. “Got it. I’ll practice tiptoeing on eggshells.” He stood up. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow?” he asked.

She nodded and came around the desk to kiss him goodbye. “Tomorrow.”

Thorn was on the Metro before he remembered what it was that had been bothering him about the terrorist communiques. Every one of them had been written or spoken in precise, textbook-perfect English. At first he’d thought that was because the terrorists wanted to avoid giving the FBI’s language analysts any regional accents or speech patterns that could be used to identify them later. But what if there was another reason? A simpler reason? Did all the statements sound like textbook English precisely because they were taken out of a textbook?

He thought hard about that all the way back to the Pentagon.

NBC had built a special set in its New York broadcast studios as a backdrop for its daily reports on the terrorist campaigns convulsing the nation. A giant electronic map of the United States framed the news desk and NBC’s top anchorman. Pulsing red lights scattered across the map marked areas officially confirmed by the FBI as terror attacks. A large monitor showed the grim, determined face of Senator Stephen Reiser, the Senate majority leader. He was being interviewed by satellite linkup with the Capitol Hill television studio.

“If I understand you correctly, Senator, you believe that the administration’s response to this wave of terrorism has been too weak and too hesitant. Is that right?”

Reiser nodded flatly. “That’s right, Tony.” He frowned. “For God’s sake, we know the kinds of people responsible for these atrocities. I see no reason on earth to keep tiptoeing around the way we’ve been doing. A little police or FBI raid here or there isn’t going to stop this thing.”

“What exactly are you proposing?” the interviewer asked curiously. Reiser was a rare politician one noted for his blunt talk and acid wit.

The senator did not disappoint him.

“A knockout blow. Something that would stop these terrorists in their tracks. I think the President should get up off his duff and declare a nationwide state of emergency. We should slap every known member of these extremist groups into preventive detention until we can sort out the guilty from the innocent. And if the police and FBI are too damned shorthanded, I think we should deploy the Army and Marines to do the job!”

“Wouldn’t the ACLU and other civil rights organisations object to ” the interviewer began.

“The hell with the ACLU!” Reiser interrupted sharply. “We’re at war, whether those idiots know it or not.”

Officer Carlos Esparo swore softly as the scene in his binoculars swam into sharper focus. He and his partner were stationed seven blocks from the improvised roadblock thrown up across a major street leading into one of L.A.‘s poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods. The roadblock wasn’t much not yet. Just a few old clunkers parked sideways across the street. But it was manned by punks. By gang members wearing their colors. By armed gang members. Most wore pistols tucked into their pants, and he could see at least one shotgun. The LAPD officer was willing to bet they had automatic weapons too. He’d had too many run-ins with the local street gangs not to respect their firepower.

They were stopping every car and truck headed into South Central. Only those driven by blacks were allowed through the roadblock. The others, those driven by whites, Hispanics, or Asians, were waved back with menacing gestures and shouted insults.

Esparo clicked the button on his radio mike. “No, sir. There’s been no violence. Not yet anyway. But I still think...”

The voice of his watch commander cut him off. “Don’t think, Carlos. The orders come right from the top. You just stay put and observe the situation. Got it? Don’t intervene unless they start getting out of hand. And even then, you check with me first. Is that clear?”

Esparo gritted his teeth. “Clear, sir.” He understood the reasoning behind his orders even if he didn’t like them very much. With racial tensions climbing every day, the LAPD could not risk sparking another disastrous riot. Even his request for a SWAT sniper team on standby had been refused. They were too busy guarding vulnerable installations and city officials.

The coils of razor wire strung across the quiet, suburban street west of Chicago seemed utterly out of place. So did the hunting rifles slung over the shoulders of the well-dressed, mostly middle-aged men clustered around a tiny portable heater. Their breath steamed in the freezing late autumn air and they seemed acutely uncomfortable. But they also looked angry and utterly fixed in purpose.

Against police advice, Oak Brook’s various Neighborhood Watch groups had decided to arm themselves against what they saw as a rising tide of terrorism and civil strife. Their members, mostly wealthy lawyers, doctors, and stockbrokers, were taking turns away from work to patrol the streets and to man checkpoints at key locations. All of them were determined to make sure that no “undesirables” bent on murder, rape, or pillage menaced their homes or families.

America’s social fabric was starting to come apart at the seams.