James Patterson - Gone

“I saw this video on the Internet recently,” Emily said, “where these kids, these nice, normal-looking suburban kids, film themselves slowly, methodically, and mercilessly abusing a sixty-eight-year-old bus monitor. They call her fat, ugly, say that she should hang herself. And as she sits there, crying, these kids are laughing themselves silly. I mean, her tears are turning these kids on. It’s like debasing this poor old woman is the greatest and funniest thing they’ve ever done in their life.”

“I saw it, too,” I said. “I wish I hadn’t. It was like something out of A Clockwork Orange , only for real.”

She lifted her wine and stared at it.

“You ever wonder if maybe Perrine is a symptom of a larger disease? As if things are … changing. As if people are changing. Their attitudes. The way we treat each other. Look at all this bath-salt stuff. People biting each other’s faces off. The flash mobs where hundreds of punks go wilding in some store.

“Seems to me, the center is having some serious trouble holding these days, Mike. It’s like Perrine is picking up on that and just going to town, trying to egg on complete collapse. Maybe it’s time to head for the hills. Any room up in Northern Cali for one more in the Bennett militia?”

“Nah,” I said, marking circles on the napkin with the bottom of my drink. “That’s not the move, Emily. Trust me. The hills are a nice place to visit, but you don’t want to live there. I know things are looking pretty bleak, but right here, right now, is the place to be. This latest crap from Perrine only proves it. He’s trying to break our will, but he’s out of his league. Bigger assholes than he have tried and failed. I told him before, when he was in custody, he has no idea who the hell he’s messing with.”

“How can you be so sure?”

I rattled the cubes in my glass.

“Think about Nine-Eleven, Emily. Three hundred Spartans stood up against a million invaders at Thermopylae, right? Well, down in the valley of Lower Manhattan on Nine-Eleven, four hundred and three fire-fighters, cops, paramedics, and service members stared up into the face of six hundred million cubic pounds of unmoored steel and glass and concrete that hovered, burning and groaning and swaying, above them. Six hundred million cubic pounds!

“And they didn’t blink! They held the line, held their post. With burning debris and the bodies of the victims exploding around them, they stood there and stood there and stood there, saving life after life, pulling out person after person from the burning, bloody, hungry jaws of what can only be properly described as hell on earth. The victims in the towers and the Pentagon and on the planes didn’t have a choice about being vaporized.

“Those four hundred and three on the ground had a choice, and they chose that others could live.”

After a long moment, Emily nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “King Leonidas would have tipped his horsehair helmet.”

“Of course, I’m right. That’s our legacy, Emily. The terrorists think they won that day? Keep dreaming. The terrorists only proved what they feared the most about Americans. That among us live everyday superheroes, free men and women who at the drop of a hat, or in this case a skyline, will stand up and sacrifice their lives to save someone else. Who the hell on this earth is still ballsy and crazy enough to go down with the ship? Us! That’s who!”

I clinked my glass to Emily’s.

“Chin up, Agent Parker. Perrine thinks he’s crazy? We’ll show his ass the meaning of crazy before this thing is through.”

The waitress had just brought dessert when our phones went crazy. On the tabletop beside my untouched cheesecake, my iPhone started its almost subliminal hum a split second before Parker’s mobile joined in.

“Oh, wait. Are you following Bieber on Twitter, too?” I joked as we both looked at the incoming texts.

“The task force is calling a meeting now? It’s coming on two a.m.,” Parker said, shaking her head at her BlackBerry.

“No rest for the semiconscious,” I said, fishing out my wallet.

About half the task force was present and accounted for when Emily and I arrived upstairs at Olympic Station twenty minutes later. Instead of sitting at their workstations, the cops and agents were gathered together, standing in the very middle of the command center, in front of an overhead projector screen.

It was eerily quiet in the crowded room. Under the garish fluorescent lighting, pretty much everyone looked physically and mentally exhausted, not to mention frantic. Of course they were. The killing at Dodger Stadium was obviously an act of terrorism. Who knew what would happen next?

The lights dimmed after a moment, and the swirling circle of a loading digital video appeared on the white, sail-like screen.

“What’s this?” I whispered as we stepped over beside Agent Rothkopf.

Rothkopf shook his head grimly.

“LAPD Detective Division just received an e-mail with an attached video. They think it’s from Perrine.”

The screen focused, and then Perrine was there. Sitting in a Dodger-blue leather chair, he was wearing disposable white Tyvek coveralls. From chest to knees, the coveralls were splattered in blood.

He must have been in one of the stadium’s luxury suites. There were video game consoles behind him, video monitors, bar stools. Behind him on the wall were the framed Dodger jerseys of Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax, Tommy Lasorda.

The camera zoomed back a little, and beyond the window of the suite, the packed stands could be seen. There was a sudden loud, swelling, sizzling sound as fans stood in succession, doing the wave. Perrine waited and then did it as well, rising out of his club chair with his hands raised before swiveling back for the camera.

“Hey, LAPD, FBI, and all my other fans out there tonight in La-La Land. How are you doing this fine evening? As you can see, I myself am having a blast here in your city.”

Perrine smiled as he did a little drumroll on the arm of the chair. He seemed pumped, really enjoying himself.

From off screen, someone suddenly offered him something. It was a hot pretzel with mustard on it. He looked it over and then carefully took it by the napkin before he took a bite.

“I wanted to take this opportunity,” Perrine said, chewing, “to communicate with this task force that has been set up to find me. Ask yourselves honestly, are you truly up for the job? You people have families, people who depend on you. How will you be able to look out for them? What if you come home from work tonight and they have some-what is the term- assembly required?”

He took another bite, thumbing mustard off the corner of his mouth.

“I always give people a chance to get out of my way,” he said after licking his thumb. “That is why I am strongly advising you to relieve yourselves of your present duty. You should take this opportunity to transfer, retire, or, better yet, quit. In fact, if I were you, I would leave Southern California with your families as soon as possible.”

The two dozen of us standing there looked from the screen to each other with the same question etched in every face. Say what?

“See, ladies and gentlemen, you think this is about drugs, but it isn’t. Why do you think my men are so highly trained, so highly motivated to do whatever needs to be done? I am doing what the cowardly Mexican government will not. Piece by piece, inch by inch, gringo by gringo, I am taking and returning California back to its rightful owners, the Mexican people.

“What you took by force in 1848, I will now wrest back by force. The revolution has begun. I am formally declaring war on the United States of America.”