Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

Under the center section of the truck’s rear trailer, its crumpled nose embedded and flaming, almost unrecognizable, is what is left of the black sports car. Herman was right. Its hard convertible top has been opened and peeled back either by the force of the collision or the blast that followed. The searing heat generates its own wind. In the dancing flames, two figures still strapped in their seats, little more than bobbing skeletons, seem to dance in the heat waves that rise up from the blistering asphalt pavement under the car.

Without warning, the blast hits us, a gust of searing heat so intense that I don’t even hear the sound of the explosion as the shock wave passes through us. I shield my face with one hand and turn away as Herman and I try to huddle, taking what cover we can below the dashboard of the Jeep. The concussion rocks the car and leaves us momentarily stunned. I can hear nothing but the pounding of my own heart, as if I have been immersed in a sea of instant silence.

As I raise my head above the dash I see that most of the truck is gone. Only the frame of the tractor with its engine block and dual rear axle remain, the melted rubber from its tires still flaming as black smoke rises from the wreck. There is no sign of the car or its two occupants, only a massive molten hole in the ground where moments before I had seen it.

Ana Agirre methodically tracked the location of the signal as she drove south down I-5. She continually glanced across to the passenger seat of her rental car as she watched the beeping signal on the map overlay from her open laptop. The signal was being fed by a small satellite antenna on the car’s dash that was wired into the computer.

Just as she passed under Interstate 8, less than four miles from the city center, she looked back up at the road and saw a massive ball of fire as it erupted in the distance somewhere off to the right of I-5. Whatever it was, she guessed that it was no more than two, maybe three miles ahead. The ball of flame continued to roll high into the sky as if in slow motion, brilliant yellow turning to orange until it was enveloped in a thick veil of black smoke. Both hands on the wheel, she glanced back over at the computer and its beeping signal. The location of the explosion and the signal on the map caused the muscles in her stomach to tighten.

She veered to the right onto the shoulder of the freeway and gunned the small car, passing a line of slower vehicles. Traffic on the highway began to pile up as she got closer to the column of smoke. The roiling black cloud, like an evil genie out of its bottle, reached several hundred feet into the air as it drifted across the elevated freeway ahead. She could see cars, their front ends dipping in a parade of red lights, as drivers stomped on their brakes.

Agirre took an exit and found herself emerging down a long ramp from the freeway onto a broad surface street. It was three lanes in each direction divided by a raised curb and the cylindrical concrete pillars supporting the overhead freeway. There were signs to the airport ahead. She followed them and within minutes found herself driving through a dense fog of black soot. She turned the fan of the air con to the off position on the little car’s dash to keep the acrid smoke from filling the passenger compartment.

Ana began to wonder if they had used her equipment to bring down an airplane. If so, she would be running for cover for the rest of her life. The US authorities would turn over every rock to find out who was responsible. If they found any trace of the equipment it would lead back to her. She navigated blindly for three blocks until the breeze off the ocean began to clear the air, pushing the smoke to the east, toward downtown.

As she eased into an intersection behind traffic, Ana saw the burning wreckage off to her right, the smoldering remains of a truck. Next to it was a cavernous hole in the ground belching smoke and flame, the odor of gasoline wafting in the air. The electronic baying of emergency vehicles in the distance could be heard as they approached the scene, first responders. She looked for burned bodies on the ground. She couldn’t tell how many might have been killed.

Ana hesitated for only a second. She knew it was now or never. She had to recover the equipment. She was furious, seething with anger. They had used her equipment in a garish display of pyrotechnics that was certain to result in dramatic news coverage. She could see cameras on some of the light poles along the street. This meant that authorities would have videotape of the seconds leading up to the crash and its resulting explosion. These pictures would make international news. Depending on the body count, the images would spur authorities to dig deep looking for the answers as to the cause.

Cars were stopped on the road ahead of her. Ana didn’t care. She drove up onto the sidewalk to get around them. She kept going, one eye on the bleeping signal still emitting from her laptop as she approached the location. It was now less than two hundred meters ahead. Ana knew that if they turned off the equipment she would lose the signal and, with it, any hope of recovering her equipment.

Bright graffiti covered part of the exterior of what had once been a spit-polished building owned by the military. A man in his early thirties wearing a blue hardhat and white coveralls climbed down the shaky steel ladder fixed to the structure’s rear wall, a kind of fire escape. The place was an old warehouse once used by the navy to mothball supplies. It had been turned over to the city during one of a series of base closures designed to bring down government costs. Instead, costs skyrocketed and the building lay largely abandoned, used mostly by vagrants who lit fires inside its crumbling walls on chilly nights.

As soon as the man reached the bottom rung he jumped the four-foot gap to the ground, then looked back up to his colleague. “Send it on down!”

The man on the roof was similarly attired. He passed a sealed case the size of your average rolling luggage over the parapet on the roof and lowered it quickly on a rope to the man on the ground. Anyone seeing them would think they were doing maintenance, except that it was getting late, already well past dusk.

The man down below unfastened the rope from the handle on the case and lugged the heavy ribbed, stainless-steel box toward a car. The case contained a laptop, an external power pack, and two large batteries, enough energy to operate the computer and the small antenna for three hours.

The man’s car was parked a few feet away next to a white utility van they had rented to carry the larger part of the load. It took maybe thirty seconds to open the trunk of the car and load the box inside. When he was finished, he headed back toward the ladder. By then the rope had disappeared once more up onto the roof of the building.

Blaring horns and the sound of sirens could be heard in the distance. The man at the bottom of the ladder looked nervously in the direction of all the commotion, about three blocks away. He cupped his hands to direct a restrained shout up to the man on the roof. “Hurry up!” It was getting dark. With all the squad cars descending on the area, headlights coming from an abandoned building might draw attention.

Up top, the other man stuck his head over the edge of the roof and looked down. “Gimme a second. I don’t want to drop it.” He disappeared back to his task. A few seconds later, a large heavy tubular tripod was eased over the edge of the roof and lowered to the ground.

The man down below undid the rope and carried the tripod toward the van. By the time he returned there was no sign of the rope or his compatriot up top. “Get a move on. We’ve got to get out of here.”