R. Ellory - A Quiet Vendetta

The memory of her voice and the image of her face were broken up then, and at first it seemed that he was imagining something. They had just taken a left turn towards Iberville and Treme, and the sound that came up behind them was like a tidal wave. There was no way to describe it, but it took Hartmann’s attention by surprise, and he turned suddenly and involuntarily to look out of the rear window.

Woodroffe was looking too. They saw it together, and though there might have been words to describe what they saw those words were never voiced.

Smoke seemed to rush upwards from the ground like a tornado in reverse. And then there was another sound, like a hundred thousand cannons going off at once, and Schaeffer slammed on the brakes and hit the curb with force.

‘What the living fu-’ he started, and then there was something like a slow-motion dawning realization, and after that came a sense of recognition, and close on the heels of everything came an awareness that none of them could even begin to comprehend.

‘Ross,’ Schaeffer said, but it was more like a sound than someone’s name, and he slowed the car, pulled it into reverse, skidded one hundred and eighty degrees in the middle of the street and started back the way they had come. He hit sixty or seventy by the time he reached the junction at the end, Hartmann leaning forward to see through the windscreen. Woodroffe was behind him, his hands gripping the rear of the passenger seat, and the nearer they got to Arsenault Street the more they realized that whatever was waiting there for them was not something they wished to see.

A hundred yards from the Field Office the smoke obscured everything. Schaeffer pulled to the side of the road, opened the door and started running immediately his feet hit the ground. Hartmann came up behind him, Woodroffe following, but within fifteen yards the pall of black and acrid smoke prevented them making any further progress. The heat was unbearable, like an inferno, and all Hartmann could think of was that they would have been within it had they left no more than ten minutes later.

Schaeffer was at the side of the road doubled up. He was gasping for air. Woodroffe dragged him back, shouting something unintelligible over the roar of flames, and when he turned Hartmann realized that he needed help bringing Schaeffer back to the car.

‘Radio!’ he was screaming at the top of his voice. ‘Gotta get back to the fucking radio!’

Hartmann could barely co-ordinate himself. He felt sick, not only with the smoke and the heat but with the import of what was happening around him. Then he remembered Ross and the other men, the men they’d left behind to take messages while they drove out to the restaurant. Impulse and instinct drove him towards the source of the heat, but survival inhibited him. He knew there was no way he would make it five yards closer to the Field Office.

Suddenly another sound, like something being wrenched wholesale from the ground, and Hartmann heard shattering glass, echoing all around him, and when he felt another rush of heat he threw himself to the ground and covered his head. It was like a hurricane passing over; he felt sure the hair on the back of his head was scorched. He lay there for a moment, and then he heard Woodroffe’s voice again, screaming for him to get up, to get back to the car and call for help.

Hartmann rolled over. The sky was black above him. He lay on his side for a second, and then with every ounce of strength he possessed he forced himself up onto his feet and ran back towards the sedan.

The three of them made it back within seconds, and even as Woodroffe snatched the radio handset from the dash, even as he started shouting into the mouthpiece, Hartmann heard sirens. They were coming from his left, and he turned and saw flashing cherry-blue bars through the smoke. He could hear the thunder of flames behind him, relentless and deafening, and he sat down on the road, his back against the side of the car, and held his hands over his ears. His eyes were streaming with tears, a sharp burning sensation in his chest, and when he started to breathe deeply he felt the acidic smoke scorching the inside of his throat and nostrils.

Later, from evidence, from Crime Scene Investigation reports, from everything they could gather without any eyewitnesses, it seemed that a suitcase had been hurled through the door of the FBI Office on Arsenault Street. Forensics and Bomb Squad estimated there must have been eight or ten pounds of C4 plastic explosive packed inside that case. It was a simple detonation. The impact of the case landing in the foyer would have been enough to trigger it, and the force of the explosion took out the majority of the building’s lower floor and much of the first. It also resulted in the deaths of Sheldon Ross, Michael Kanelli, Ron Sawyer and James Landreth. Every shred of evidence, every report, every document, every tape and transcript, every piece of recording equipment was destroyed too, but in that moment – as Hartmann, Schaeffer and Woodroffe watched flames bursting out from the back of the building – their only thought was for the men who had stayed behind.

None of them spoke. Dinner was forgotten. Medics came down from New Orleans City Hospital and checked each of them over. Hartmann suffered no burns or abrasions, but Woodroffe had skidded sideways into the car and bruised much of the left side of his body. Schaeffer was merely stunned into silence, and when the medics attempted to direct him away from the scene he told them to leave him alone. He was the assigned Duty Section Chief for the New Orleans FBI Field Office. This had been his territory, these had been his people, and something had torn his small world apart. The sole purpose of their being there – the investigation, the disappearance of Catherine Ducane, the details of Ernesto Perez’s illustrious history – was wiped clean in the face of the horror that had been perpetrated.

It would be more than an hour before the flames were finally extinguished, before Crime Scene and federal Criminalistics teams could enter the site, before anyone even began to ask questions about what had happened and why.

‘Feraud’ was Hartmann’s first word. By that time they had made their way from the scene and were close to the Sonesta. Woodroffe concurred, Schaeffer also, but they knew that such an investigation took weeks, and evidence would have to be collected for days before anyone could even begin to understand how this had been done, let alone by whom.

Hartmann was incensed, angered beyond words, and yet he watched as Stanley Schaeffer’s training kicked in. Hartmann’s immediate response would have been to hit back at Feraud, hit back hard and fast, but Schaeffer kept telling him how such a thing could not be considered until they possessed direct and unquestionable authority to act. It was the same world of rules and regulations, the same command channels and disciplined rigidity that prevented them taking any steps towards investigating Ducane himself. The degree of corroboration they had already obtained regarding so much of what Perez had told them, the fact that everything pointed to a clear and undisputed motive for Perez’s actions, nevertheless counted for nothing in the face of federal protocol.

Hartmann was beyond the point of questioning it any further and said nothing.

None of them spoke again until they reached the Sonesta. The second floor of the hotel was opened up and every agent was called back from the field. The atmosphere was one of disbelief and shock; men asking questions that could not be answered, men standing stunned and silent, their faces white, their eyes wide. Schaeffer stood before them, and to Hartmann’s surprise he said some words for the four men who had been killed, and then he led the attendant crew in the Lord’s Prayer. Some of them were not ashamed to show their emotions. Some of them could not stand, and so they sat with their faces in their hands, and all tried to reconcile themselves to the fact that such things could almost be expected, for this was their chosen life, this was the world into which they had walked, and some… well, some never walked out again.