Ted Bell - Spy

Now the guy braked and hung a right on Beach Drive, going wide, and headed toward the Riley Spring Bridge.

“Hit the lights, Tommy,” Pastore said, “I’ve had enough of this dick-head.”

“Yeah, let’s pull him,” Darius said, firing up the light bar and red flashers. “Then we’ll go get some supper.”

This driver of this rig, who was apparently hauling frozen seafood from Louisiana, was either lost or smoked up or both. “Crawdaddy & Co.,” that’s what it said on the truck. Big pink crawfish or something painted on the back and sides. Didn’t look all that tasty. Looked more like big bugs.

The guy was crawling through the park, ten miles an hour, pausing to stop at every intersection and then proceeding through it, moving along as if he owned the road. The truck being from way down south in Louisiana, Darius and Pastore assumed nobody’d told this ragin’ Cajun that this was a National park, run by the Department of the Interior, and trucks weren’t welcome.

“He’s not stopping, Joey. What do you want me to do?”

“I’ll pull along side this asshole. Roll your window down and flag him over to the shoulder.”

“It’s fuckin freezing out there, Joe.”

“Just do it.”

“He won’t stop. Look at those tints. Thinks he’s a movie star. We ought to bust him for those limo windows, too.”

“He stops at stop signs but he won’t stop for us. Jesus.”

“Hey! Watch it! You trying to kill me?”

Joey had pulled one car length ahead of the truck’s cab, then put the wheel hard over, jumping in front of the truck and then getting on the brakes, slowing to five miles an hour.

“Is he slowing down?” Joey asked, looking in the rearview. You could hardly see because of the snow and fog.

“Yeah. I think.”

“All right, that’s it, I’m stopping.”

“He ain’t,” Darius said, turning around in the seat and peering through the frosted rear window. The red and blue flashers lit up the snow-covered cab. “Jesus, he’s pushing us off the road.”

“He skidded. That’s all. He’s stopped now. Okay. Let’s go introduce ourselves, make this cracker feel at home here in our nation’s capitol.”

They both got out of the car and went back to the truck cab. Big Peterbilt, bright red. The windshield so dark you couldn’t see a thing inside. Tommy stepped up onto the running board and rapped on the driver’s window with his flashlight.

“What’s this guy, playing possum or something?”

“Bang harder. Break the fuckin’ thing.”

“Police!” Tommy said, rapping harder. “Open your window!”

“This guy’s unbelievable. I’m going to get the ram out of the trunk. We’ll bust his window for him he doesn’t open up.”

Joey jumped down from the truck and came back with the lightweight metal ram they used for taking doors down in a hurry. Tommy looked at him, then jumped down from the running board, shaking his head.

“Still nothing?”

“Maybe he’s dead.”

“Fuck it. I’m freezing my nuts off out here.”

Joey climbed up and used the ram on the driver’s side window. The glass was unbelievably thick. It took three tries. On the third, the window imploded inward in a shower of Saf-T-Glass. A weird smell came from the cab. Not sour sweat stink and tobacco like Joey and Tommy were accustomed to, stopping these rigs. Nothing like that. More like machinery and hydraulic fluid.

Tommy aimed his Mag-Lite inside.

“Holy shit.”

“What?”

“Nobody in here. Get up and take a look. Fucking Buck Rogers.”

Joey climbed up and peered through the window. “What the hell is all that stuff?”

“Some kind of remote control driving thing. I don’t know. Weird shit, huh? Listen, it’s beeping.”

“I don’t like beeping.” Joey said.

Tommy played his light across the polished stainless steel steering mechanism; saw that there was more elaborate machinery mounted on the floorboard where the pedals and transmission normally were. A split-screen monitor on the console showed four live views: front and rear, and on both sides. The two police officers stared at the screen for a moment, transfixed.

“Is that TV snow? Or, real snow?” Tommy said.

“Can’t tell. Should we call it in?” Joey said, staring at the little red light that was blinking rapidly.

“You see any cameras? You think we’re on Candid Camera?”

“Off the air. Reruns only. We gotta call this in. I don’t like it.”

“Let’s go see what’s in the back first. Must be some freaking hi-tech seafood, man.” Tommy jumped down into the snowbank and ran toward the rear. He was pumped about the robot truck. It was bad. But it was cool, too.

“I’m calling it in first,” Joey said, running back to his squad car.

It was a Rol-R-Door, which meant it rolled up from the bottom like a garage door. Slid up into the roof. There was a big steel padlock securing the door to the truck frame. Tommy used the ram on the lock, basically just took out the bottom third of the door. Joey was back.

“Call this thing in?”

“They think I’m crazy, but, yeah, I did.”

“They sending back up anyway?”

“Beats me.”

Patrolman Darius nodded and stuck his flashlight inside the opening. He leaned forward and peered into the dark body of the trailer.

“What’s in there? Baby robot Jobsters?”

“I dunno, but it ain’t seafood. Something big. Black and shiny. Two of them. Heavy plastic sheeting covering them up, whatever the hell it is.”

“Rip it off. The plastic. You want my knife? Here.”

“Thanks…hard to get my arm far enough inside to—”

The horrific explosion killed the two young police officers instantly, vaporizing them. It blew down every tree within a radius of a hundred yards and created a black hole in the frozen ground fifteen feet across. The blast completely destroyed the truck from Louisiana and its contents, as well as the Crown Victoria cruiser parked in front of it on the shoulder. Automobile alarms a quarter of a mile away were activated. Windows rattled at Walter Reed Hospital.

No one seeing the black hole gouged in the earth could quite believe it. A lot of neighborhood kids came out to see it. It looked like a flaming meteor had hit. Debris was scattered in the snow as far as you could see.

It was January 17.

The Day of Reckoning was near.

74

THE BLACK JUNGLE

D eep below ground. In La Selva Negra’s heavily fortified underground communications bunker, Muhammad Top and Dr. Khan were silent eyewitnesses to history. Neither said a word. It was cold in the Tomb, but it was the safest place in the jungle. The walls were steel reinforced concrete, six feet thick. Hardened steel blast doors could be found on both the dormitory level and the one above it, where the electronic heart of Top’s world buzzed day and night. A massive antenna tower, disguised down to the rough bark and air roots as a tree, rose directly above the compound. It was, Top thought, a brilliant work of sculptural art.

The two men, bathed in soft blue light, stared with greedy eyes. They embraced the vision displayed on the monitors: a humbled America, blown apart at the heart. There, on multiple flat-screens mounted on a curving, twenty-foot wall, were images of violence, hatred, and destruction. A hot wind was blowing through America. Few realized yet that it was coming up from the south.

The bunker building had been designed by Khan. Men manning the five rows of ten monitor stations were facing northeast toward Mecca. Before dawn, each man in the room had washed himself according to ritual, then knelt and bent his head to the floor, praying for martydom. An attack could come at any time. They were ready.