Public Enemy Page 38

  She’d ask her questions later-if and only if, she thought, they could figure out, down one operative, how in the world to stop multiple terrorist sleepers from dispersing clouds of an airborne filovirus certain to kill thousands of Americans, even with massive quarantining measures put into place. Which would need to be done immediately.

  And we’re supposed to do all this, she thought, while keeping our own role in matters a state secret?

  Or a non-state secret.

  She decided to answer Ebbers’s question.

  “So far, yes,” she said, “I believe we’re taking the appropriate measures. But we’ll need to change the strategy immediately. We haven’t identified any other sleepers-so for all we know there could be ten, or twenty, or fifty more set to go.”

  “And you think you’ve lost your operative?”

  “I’m not so sure about that,” she said. “Not yet. But even if he succeeds, this morning’s activity from the Scarsdale sleeper means it’s likely the activation command has been sent to more than one of the bombers. How, by what means, in what form-as with the rest of this goddamn thing, we have no idea. Our private party is over, Lou. It’s out of our ‘cell’s’ hands, and that’s the understatement to top all understatements. We need to cause multiple agencies to immediately activate all the avian flu quarantine measures they’ve been rehearsing behind the scenes until now. We need to arrest and interrogate the six sleepers we have under surveillance. We need to bring the media up to speed-so that Mom and Pop in Tulsa can phone in a tip that somebody’s been stockpiling fertilizer in his garage in the house up the street. There’s no more time for this compartmentalized spy game you recruited me to play.”

  “All right, Miss Laramie,” Ebbers said, “I am hearing you, and we are not thinking differently from each other.” She heard the measured tone in his delivery, even with the electronic garble. “But we do, however, have a moment. We’re not sure of the progress of your operative yet, if any, and we’re also not yet positive any of the other sleepers are being activated. If more than just the Scarsdale sleeper stops by his local Home Depot this morning, then I agree. There won’t be any alternative. It’ll be time for FEMA, CDC, DHS, FBI, CIA, the media, everybody and their grandmother to board up the windows and hunker down for the storm.”

  Laramie felt the heat easing back down her neck.

  But I’m certainly not prepared to undertake the risk of waiting another day, or two, or more, when the quarantining efforts and the tried-and-true Soviet strategy of impelling your citizens to spy on their neighbors could very well prevent thousands of casualties from turning into hundreds of thousands, or more-

  “In the meantime,” Ebbers said, “pick up your Scarsdale sleeper, and get up there and interrogate him. See if you can deploy the same charm you did with Janine Achar while you’re at it.”

  It suddenly occurred to Laramie she’d been idiotic not to already have done what Ebbers was telling her to do. Because Achar set off his explosives before anyone was able to speak to him, Laramie had only been able to interview his widow-and now they had the chance to interrogate one of Achar’s comrades while the man remained alive and kicking.

  “Not sure why I didn’t already-”

  “The moment one more of them stops by his local nursery or hardware store, we go in and take all of them,” Ebbers said. “At which point I’ll pull the fire alarm-the leaders of the disbanded task force will be provided the new intel discovered by the ‘special investigator’ and will immediately, I suspect, activate all the measures you mentioned.”

  “Right,” Laramie said. “The fire alarm.”

  A moment of static clicked by.

  Then Ebbers’s electronically distorted voice said, “All right, then,” and the red indicator light on the spiderphone flickered out and the line went dead.

  49

  Cooper identified what he assumed were most but not all of the video cameras monitoring his side of the mansion. There was also a roving patrol, two guys walking together around the outside of the house, plus a few Secret Service equivalents camped out near a pair of black Chevy Suburbans toward the front of the residence.

  There were some weak points in the house’s design, mostly the sort related to the historical qualities of the home, including the lead casement windows they’d kept in order to maintain the authentic hacienda look. Still, having seen photographs of Márquez’s wine cellar-and working from the dread of his sixth sense on the certainty that a sequence of tunnels and rooms originally designed as a prison and torture chamber ran beneath his feet-Cooper decided now, as he had when he’d examined the images provided by Laramie’s guide, that the surest way in would be underground.

  There were no electrical wires, television cables, or other utility connections visible on the exterior of the home. He looked for and found the mansion’s air-conditioner units, which they’d planted in a bed of bark chips alongside some tropical greenery. As he suspected, in a kind of garden of technology, it was in this bed of A/C units that the various utility meters were planted too. Another, larger utility box of some kind stood among the other measuring devices; initially at a loss, he was finally able to identify it as the head end of a cable connection, probably capable of distributing television service across a small city. He learned this by cracking open the lock and peering inside the panel door, where he found labels, printed in Spanish, for the various feeds and splits to forty-three televisions.

  Salvadorans’ tax dollars, he thought, hard at work.

  His theory hit paydirt upon his discovery of a rectangular equivalent of a manhole cover. It was nestled in the bark behind the various meter stands and boxes. With the aid of the knife he’d brought for any hand-to-hand encounters with the security staff, he got the heavy metal lid pried from its roost, exposing beneath a broad band of wires and pipes, held together by an oversize plastic strip of the sort used to secure extension cords and hoses.

  The batch of utility connections stretched toward the house in its semi-organized, snaking fashion-running along the side of what looked more or less like a mining tunnel.

  Cooper recognized the tunnel for what it was, those old ghosts whispering to him from its walls-there wouldn’t be any stains left, not anymore, but he figured it was a good bet that a great deal of blood had been spilled on the floors of these tunnels. If he went long enough without blinking, Cooper knew he’d start seeing the blooms of red, even if he was only imagining it.

  He whipped out his Maglite and examined the edge of the access opening for sensors or any other sort of alarm. There was nothing on the rim of the opening itself, but he caught a glimpse of what looked like a motion detector built into the base of the tunnel near where he’d need to jump inside it.

  He was deciding whether he ought to just plow a bullet into the motion detector when a bleating, two-tone alarm suddenly tore through the atmosphere, the pealing scream coming at him from all angles, so loud it seemed to be part of the air itself.

  Lights as bright as those illuminating the emerald lawn chunked to life along the exterior of the house, bathing Cooper in sudden bright white. A second, piercingly high-pitched alarm began sounding out over the two-tone blare, all of it so loud it nearly peeled the surface from Cooper’s eardrums.

  He didn’t think he’d set it off with his examination of the utility panel, but it didn’t matter-there wasn’t much choice on what to do now. He fired a pair of shells into the motion sensor at the base of the tunnel, grabbed the access panel, leaped into the hole, and pulled the heavy panel tight against its stops above as he dropped inside.

  No doubt, he thought, the darkness of the subterranean tunnel overtaking him, they found one of the dead guards-good fucking plan you put together here.

  He clicked on the flashlight and was greeted rudely by the illuminated image of an ancient door about five feet in front of him. The serpentine batch of utility cords disappeared through the doorway by way of a small, square brick of wood that had been cut from the door. The d
oor was made of old wood and iron. It had a round, draping handle that looked like a knocker, along with a modern chain-and-padlock deal holding the door closed. The chain looped snugly around a pole built into the wall.

  “Probably gonna hurt,” he said, brought his MP5 around, took aim at the older, rusted hinges on the side of the door opposite the padlock, and held the trigger down for ten or fifteen rounds’ worth of automatic weapons fire. He tried to do it in circles around the two hinges, but the muzzle flash blinded him and a couple of ricocheting shells nipped one shoulder and a thigh, so before he completed his intended lines of fire he was ducking, dropping the gun, and covering his head with his arms. When the sound of ricocheting bullets stopped echoing through his skull, he surveyed the door with his flashlight, flipped the rifle strap around to push the weapon to his back, lowered his head, and plowed his full bulk into the door.

  The old door broke off its hinges with little resistance and Cooper went flying into the void beyond. Too late, he reconsidered what he’d just done and got quickly to replacing the door, standing it up to approximate its position before he’d mauled the thing. They’ll know I came in here now-at least as long as they’re good enough to open the panel and clock the busted-up door.

  Maybe they won’t be that good.

  On the other hand, maybe they will-he is their president.

  That was when the claustrophobia hit.

  One instant he was thinking rationally, contemplating his plan-and in the next he could no longer breathe, stand, or think. He fell first to one knee, then the next. He felt as though the weight of the ceiling had fallen on his chest, his lungs collapsing slowly, so that with each successive breath he was capable of bringing in less and less oxygen-until, like an asthmatic, he couldn’t find a single cubic inch of air to feed his failing chest. He pushed his hands out against the walls, trying to convince his brain there was plenty of room-plenty of air-but he only felt the walls shrinking in on him. Sweat burst suddenly from his pores, a lukewarm, salty sprinkler sprung to life in a flash of heat.

  He wanted to scream, Fuck! but he couldn’t. He wanted to hear himself say, It’s not real! You’re losing your fucking mind! But he couldn’t.

  Get up and go now, he heard from some lesser-traumatized corner of his brain, while you still have the chance. You have to find a place to hide-your past, or the ghosts of these tunnels, or both, are taking away your mind. You’d better get yourself someplace where nobody can find the intruder curled up against the wall in a fetal position, and you’d better do it now.

  He started out on his knees, then rose to one foot, then both, moving deeper into the shrinking tunnel one slow-motion step at a time, unable to breathe-his vision blurry from the sweat dripping into his eyes. He felt as though he had dived into molasses, but he kept on, and in twenty paces came to another door. This door was closed, but not padlocked. He struggled, arms beginning to weaken, but he got it open and a junction of tunnels presented itself to him. He attempted to determine the direction that would take him farthest from the house, and took it.

  He lost all focus and impression for the remainder of his meandering journey, Cooper’s return to the hell of his past blunted by his accelerating phobias and post-traumatic-stress attack. He didn’t know how long it took him, only that he got himself somewhere deep in the labyrinth before deciding almost by default on a hiding place. Unable to fend off the leaking pores, failing lungs, and ringing headache, his weakened mind turned in on itself and he fell to the floor, a sweating, heaving potato sack. He pulled his legs under his arms and lay there, trying to keep warm but caught in a cold-shiver loop of the sort he regularly endured in the course of his recurring nightmares.

  He slipped from consciousness, unable even to find a sense of relief.

  50

  The Three Wise Men-as Laramie preferred to call her team following Cooper’s more insulting nickname-decided to recruit a bounty hunter to capture the sleeper and deliver him to Detective Cole’s childhood home, a dilapidated ranch in Yonkers the cop said he’d inherited when his mother died eight years back. The peeling old house was a forty-minute drive from the sleeper’s home, a drive Laramie understood the bounty hunter, his posse, and bounty to have made in a rented Freightliner Sprinter without incident.

  Cole assured them that nobody besides the mailman ever visited the old house. He also claimed to be remodeling it, but Laramie saw no evidence of such as she paid her cab fare in cash and came up the stoop. They had the sleeper, whose current name was Anthony Dalessandro, in the basement. Laramie was greeted in the foyer by a thick-necked member of the bounty hunter’s posse; it seemed the seizure team still wore their gear, this guy coming at her with his heavy handshake and a blue flap-down windbreaker of the sort FBI agents wore for public raids. The only difference being the words on the coat-this guy’s jacket saying BAIL ENFORCEMENT AGENT in favor of a more legitimate declaration of authority.

  The “bail enforcement agent” escorted Laramie down a set of creaky wooden stairs to the basement. The cellar’s floor was made of gravel, which looked wet in places, and its walls appeared to be nothing more than sagging piles of stone laden with leak stains.

  Dalessandro was zip-tied to a chair on the far side of the space, hands bound behind the rear of the chair, ankles secured separately to the chair’s two front legs. A rectangle of black tape covered his mouth and twin loops of yellow rope secured him around the chest. He was out cold.

  A man Laramie knew to be the head bounty hunter-a scrawny, longer-haired version of her escort, standing no taller than Laramie’s five-four-came over and shook her hand without introducing himself or asking her name. She noticed that once he’d let go-as compared to the shake of the guard dog who’d brought her down-her fingers seemed less likely to crumble and break off.

  “Afternoon,” the bounty hunter said. She found his voice almost gentle. “Based on the assignment particulars, we’re assuming you’ll prefer total privacy during your ‘conversation’ with the subject. My recommendation, ma’am, is we remove the tape from his mouth so he can speak with you, but otherwise leave him as is. Strapped in. We’ll be standing by upstairs for the duration.”

  “That sounds fine,” Laramie said. She thought a little about how unwilling to talk the sleeper might turn out to be while strapped to the chair, but she wasn’t figuring on getting much out of him anyway and wasn’t about to risk her life for zero intel. Better, she decided, to stay on the safe side, particularly if she wouldn’t have one of the guard dogs with her. Which she wouldn’t regardless-the bounty hunter was right. Neither he nor the members of his squad would be permitted to listen to the interrogation.

  “If you prefer, we can hang tight in the van,” he said. “But I’m always more comfortable sticking to what I like to call ‘bumrush range.’”

  Laramie nodded, needing no explanation.

  “Agreed,” she said.

  The bounty hunter came around behind her, lifted the folding plastic-top table he’d been keeping there, and placed it in front of the sleeper. He repeated the circuit and brought a second chair over to where Laramie could sit and face Dalessandro from across the table.

  Then he nodded and smiled.

  “Use the word ‘help’ or just make a lot of noise,” he said. “We’ll be right down.”

  “From bumrush range,” Laramie said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh,” the bounty hunter said. “Almost forgot.”

  He headed to the storage post against the wall one last time, carried a heavy bucket over to Dalessandro’s side, reared back, then doused the comatose sleeper with a full bucket of what Laramie assumed from the reaction to be very cold water.

  Dalessandro came suddenly awake, wide-eyed, sucking frantically for air through his nostrils, searching in a panic around the dim basement for some clue as to his whereabouts and circumstances. The bounty hunter assisted Dalessandro in his effort to breathe, ripping off the rectangle of tape i
n a quick swipe that looked to Laramie as though it hurt like hell.

  Dalessandro heaved in a few breaths of air.

  “There you go,” the bounty hunter said to Laramie. He walked upstairs and shut the basement door behind himself.

  Laramie waited, standing, until the sleeper got his bearings and settled down. Once she could see he’d realized that a fairly unthreatening woman was all who stood before him, she approached the table, flipped the file she’d brought onto it, took a seat, and pulled her chair nice and close to the table.

  “Hi, Tony,” she said.

  Dalessandro blew some dripping water off the edge of his nose. He took the opportunity to peer around the basement again. After a while his dark eyes settled on Laramie, where they stayed for a confused couple of minutes.

  “Who the hell are you?” he said.

  She noticed there wasn’t any particular accent to his speech-maybe a slight East Coast edge as was appropriate to his assumed identity, but otherwise pretty much neutral, like a news anchor.

  “More to the point,” Laramie said, “who are you?”

  “What are you talking about? What’s going on here? One minute I’m having a beer on my couch, the next thing I know these goons bust in and throw me on the floor and I wake up in this fucking basement.”

  “I can answer part of my question for you,” Laramie said. “One person we know for certain you’re not is Anthony Dalessandro. Unless, that is, you died from leukemia at age six and were subsequently resurrected in full health.”

  Laramie might have seen the first spark of something besides confusion or anger in his eyes-but if so, the spark lasted about as long as a spark normally does.

  “My name is Tony Dalessandro,” he said, “and I still have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re pretty good at this,” Laramie said. “You know the first thing they teach at CIA? ‘Never go belly-up.’ Even when caught red-handed, there’s always the chance they’ll have some doubt you’re good for whatever they’re accusing you of, as long as you never actually admit your guilt. You’re familiar with the Central Intelligence Agency-I’m sure they taught you all about them in your classes under the hill in San Cristóbal.”