Marcus Sakey - Brilliance

Of the six massive columns that fronted the building, only one was still in place. The others had cracked and sheared; one of them had fallen outright, the huge stone smashing into the street. The glass wall behind must have blown out as well, four stories of lethal shards surfing the roar of air and fire. Through the open space that had been a wall, he could see the building, naked and raw. Offices exposed, bathrooms torn open, a stairwell lost and sad.

And everywhere, the dead. Bodies.

Bodies in the street, bodies in the building. Bodies beneath fallen columns, bodies dangling in a spiderweb of cabling.

Torn and broken, the colors of their clothes a mockery in this bleak new world.

Hundreds of them. Thousands.

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

You were supposed to stop it.

It was a nonsense thought. He couldn’t hold himself responsible for everything that went wrong in the world. But he’d been so close. It had been he who ran down Alex Vasquez, who used her brother as bait, who implemented the phone taps that led them to Dusty Evans. It had been he playing against John Smith, again, and he’d lost, again, and all of these people had died.

Cooper spun on his heel and walked away. He walked without direction or purpose, without thought or plan. His companions were Frustration and Rage, and together the three of them stalked Manhattan.

A pair of strappy heels on a pair of shapely legs flung akimbo inside a stylish black pencil skirt that ended, along with the body, at the waist.

A sidewalk peddler of cheap purses and flimsy umbrellas shoving all of his wares off the folding table that comprised his livelihood to make a cot for a screaming man carried between two firefighters.

Gray air moving like fabric, like lint, over swirling gray ash. Gray-faced people in gray-smudged clothes. The world gone monochrome.

And then the pink shock of a child’s stuffed animal in the middle of Broadway.

A bank of payphones surrounded by a mob of people waiting in line. A true New York mix, a skinhead next to a broker, two men in blue jumpsuits, a fashion model, a hotdog vendor, a boy and girl holding hands. Everyone patient. No one pushing.

A woman in a business suit walking down the middle of the sidewalk. An expensive leather briefcase slung over one shoulder. Blood trickling down the side of her face. Her arms cradling a potted plant three feet tall.

At the corner of two minor streets, a taxi with open doors, the radio playing at maximum volume. New Yorkers standing near, listening to a stammering news reporter.

“…again, an explosion at the Leon Walras Stock Exchange. I…I’ve never seen anything like it. The entire east side of the building has been destroyed. There are bodies everywhere. The death toll will be in the hundreds, maybe thousands. No one is saying what caused this, but it had to be a bomb, or bombs. I can’t…it’s something I never thought I would see…”

On the bright expanse of Columbus Park, a mile from the explosion, three large buses parked on the green of the soccer field. Red Cross mobile donation units. A mob of volunteers, hundreds of people rolling up their sleeves.

Just north of Houston, the building was exploding again.

The tri-d billboard was mounted on the second story of an office tower. Instead of the usual advertisements and spinning corporate logos, an image of the Exchange hovered in the air, the Exchange as it had been hours before, a massive American flag dangling above the stage. The image shuddering and bouncing, the camera swerving vertiginously, and not just the camera, the building, suddenly consumed in thick smoke. There were blurry objects flying through the air, growing chunky and pixelated as they reached the edge of the projection field.

“My God,” whispered the woman standing beside Cooper.

The image changed, the smoke suddenly lessening, the angle different. The building was shown ripped open. Firemen sprayed water. Paper and insulation drifted on the eddies. Police guarded the scene as emergency workers looked for survivors. A ribbon at the bottom of the screen declared, LIVE FROM STOCK EXCHANGE EXPLOSION.

“Hadda be the twists,” said a rough voice behind him. Cooper fought the urge to deck the bigot. After all, he was right.

“Maybe,” said another voice.

“Who else would it be?”

“Who knows? All I’m saying, I don’t think they’ll know for a while.”

“Why not?”

“Look at it, man. Mess like that, how you gonna tell the good guys from the bad guys?”

The video had flashed back to the explosion. They’d probably run that loop for three straight months. But as the eyes of everyone in the crowd watched the building blow up, again, Cooper turned and stared at the men behind him. They looked like guys who bet on sports. As he stared at them, first one and then the other turned their attention to look at him. “What?” The bigger one. “Help you with something, buddy?”

How you gonna tell the good guys from the bad guys?

“Thank you.”

“Huh?”

But by then Cooper was already gone, sprinting at full speed.

Located west of DC’s Naval Observatory, Massachusetts Avenue Heights was a charming neighborhood of redbrick row houses whose proximity and small yards belied the affluence within. While not quite equaling the mansions and political swing of Sheridan-Kalorama, it was a wealthy neighborhood, the kind of place people said was great to raise kids, and home to numerous politicians, doctors, and lawyers.

The house on 39th Street NW was quaint and carefully maintained, with a pretty porch, manicured hedges, and an American flag. What wasn’t quite as evident were the security cameras mounted not only on the house but along the walk-way and in the tree, the steel-reinforced doorframe, and the discreet gray sedan that passed the house at random intervals twice an hour.

Cooper had been here many times. He’d sat on the picture-perfect back patio and sipped beer while the kids played. He’d helped design the security, and for several months, even served as a driver. During a mousetrap operation in which they’d leaked supposed weaknesses to terrorist elements, he’d run a team out of the place, sleeping in the spare room and hoping that John Smith might take the bait. He wasn’t a stranger to the house on 39th Street.

Still, showing up unannounced after dark, wearing torn clothes and smelling of sweat and diesel, well, it wasn’t something he’d normally do.