I flushed. Who was Sophie Fields? A childhood sweetheart whose name had gotten knocked into the present? Maybe she was a partner in one of the clandestine services Joe had worked for. Or was she a current girlfriend? We were living separately, so a girlfriend wasn’t actually any of my business, right?
Joe had never explained about the mysterious spy, a femme fatale, who’d been part of his life and possibly the true root of our split-up. Those raw feelings of betrayal rushed in as I sat with my husband, holding his hand. I didn’t like the feelings. Joe didn’t owe me an explanation. But why had “Sophie Fields” been the first name out of his mouth?
“What happened?” he asked me again.
Oh, Joe.
Of course I told him … again.
CHAPTER 18
WHEN I WENT to bed on Friday night, my Saturday was well planned. I would sleep late, spend quality time with Julie, take a long nap after lunch, and go to the hospital to see Joe. Then my phone rang at 5:00 a.m., Jacobi saying, “Boxer. It’s me. A number of tips have come in regarding the GAR video, and you’re on deck with the task force.”
“The video?” I asked. My voice was gravelly and my eyes were glued shut with sleep.
“The GAR video, Boxer. The one taking credit for Sci-Tron. Overnight there was internet chatter of the ‘Yay, we freaking did it and posted it on Facebook’ variety. The Feds traced the video to an IP address with a physical address in Ingleside.”
“No kidding. This is for real?”
“Let’s hope so. There are four men living at the address I’ve just texted you. On the face of it, looks like a self-radicalized terror cell. They have no record, federal or otherwise, so for now they’re ours.”
Martha got up, circled a couple of times, dropped back to the bed with her tail over her nose. Lucky dog.
Jacobi was saying, “SWAT has federal warrants and orders to secure the premises. Niles is commander. He and the tac team will meet you and Conklin in Ingleside. Three of our teams in the task force unit are on the way. Boxer, you’re point man. Get up. Get dressed.”
I said, “Yes, boss.”
I blinked at the clock, with its second hand audibly clicking around the dial. I was thinking that being on this task force had exposed me to a high probability of bombs.
I had only just gotten over the car bomb brought to us by the letter J when Sci-Tron blew up exactly thirty-six hours ago. I had a new, heightened reaction to sharp, unexpected sounds; door slams, for instance, or a glass clattering in the sink doubled my pulse rate. I wanted to say to Jacobi, Look. My husband is in the ICU. I have a baby. I’ve done enough. But Joe’s famous punch line came into my mind: Country first.
Jacobi said, “Boxer? You there?”
I grunted and swung my legs over the bed.
He was still talking.
“I sent you some background on these men. Be careful.”
With gross misgivings, I phoned Mrs. Rose and begged her for the favor of helping me do my job for the USA. Part of me wanted her to say no.
Conklin arrived outside my door in his Bronco at 5:20. I had brought bottled water for two, as well as my charged phone and my Kevlar vest, which was zipped up and ready to go. If I’d had a lucky rabbit’s foot, I would have brought that, but Julie’s finger puppet of Hello Kitty would have to do. I had tucked the puppet into my shirt pocket under my vest, silently promising her I would bring it home by dinnertime.
There was a coffee container with my name on it in the beverage holder. I tasted it. It was hot, three sugars, just the way I like it.
“You’re a good pal,” I said to Conklin.
“None better,” he said, cracking his famously great grin.
I gave his arm a little shove, and then, as I strapped in, Rich set course for Ingleside, six miles away.
Our task force had a dedicated radio channel, and one after the other, the three squad cars in our team checked in with their current locations. One team was from Narcotics, another from Robbery, one from Vice. Conklin and I knew these cops and had worked with them all.
As my partner drove us south on Route 1, we talked over our assignment in shorthand snippets. We were facing something that might turn out to be as easy as calling your dog, or it could be a hellacious firefight. DHS said that shutting down this cell had to be done.
By the time we got to Ingleside, we had our firefight faces on and were ready to do whatever it took to end this clear and present danger.
CHAPTER 19
FOR MOST OF my life Ingleside had been a drivethrough working- and middle-class community on the way to the beach. Now, like the rest of San Francisco, it was gentrifying above the middle-class ability to buy.
At five thirty a.m., streetlights lit Ocean Avenue, the main artery of the business district, which had light-rail tracks down the center of the road. There was very little traffic, and no cars at all in the parking lot behind Bank of America.
We pulled in, and the SFPD squad cars arrived right behind us. Car doors opened and thunked closed, and we greeted one another, gathered around the hood of Conklin’s Bronco, where we discussed our briefing. Namely, that the video purportedly produced and disseminated by GAR had been tracked to a group or cell of four young men living here in Ingleside, not far from the SFSU campus.
These young men, who ranged in age from twenty to twenty-four, were renting a house that had once been their frat house, now banned from the school because of an alcohol-related death not attributed to these four.
Jacobi had sent photos of the men in alphabetical order to our phones. We checked out the suspects: Neil Elverson, who had been three-quarters of the way through a degree in chemistry before flunking out his senior year; Bruce McConnell, a theater major; Mac Travers, who had a bachelor’s in political science; and Andrew Yang, who was a computer science whiz.
They looked like kids. Regular, cute kids who, when combined, happened to have a powerful skill set that could be used to disrupt and terrorize and kill. Individually, they had a history of posting angry screeds and radical comments on antigovernment message boards.
Until a few hours ago, nothing any of the four had said or done was illegal. They hadn’t threatened attacks. They were on no watch lists. However, when one or more of them posted a video as GAR and took credit for an explosion that had killed twenty-five people, they crossed the line.
The GAR video had gone supernova overnight, accruing millions of hits on all social media. It was not a stretch to say that the “kids” we were going after this morning fit the profile of self-radicalized, homegrown terrorists to a tee.
Had this group of angry former frat boys been instrumental in blowing up Sci-Tron? Were they affiliated with Connor Grant? If so, had they been the planners and Grant the doer? Or were these four young men, exactly the type GAR recruited, angry, disaffected young men, depressed or disappointed or both, armed and looking for glory in this life and the next?
My attention was drawn to two camouflage-green assault vehicles, as sturdy as tanks, that entered the parking lot and stopped. A man got out of one of the vehicles. He was tall, wearing tac gear from head to toe, and had the bearing of a man who’d been in the military for most of his life.
He came toward me, calling my name. We shook hands and I introduced SWAT commander William Niles, a.k.a. Billy Bob Niles, to my seven task force cops, several of whom had worked with him before.
We pulled maps up on our phones, and Niles assigned the task force to points around the target as our perimeter.
I checked in with Jacobi, and then our caravan pulled out.
The sun hadn’t yet come up.
Conklin asked, “What are you thinking?”
I shook my head. I didn’t want to say I’d been asking myself and God if I would see Julie and Joe again.
CHAPTER 20
NILES’S ASSAULT VEHICLE was leading our caravan as we sped up Ocean Avenue at sunup.
The military-style vehicles, the train of police cars, couldn’t be more inappropriate
in this very sweet-looking, all-American neighborhood.
Niles pulled to a stop at the intersection of Ocean and Plymouth. I saw the craftsman-style house we were targeting, two doors down from the intersection. It was white stucco with a green roof, sitting on an unmown lawn. An expensive SUV, a couple of years old, was in the driveway. Plates registered to MacCord Travers, one of the presumed terrorists.
The house was dark. No lights and no sign of activity.
I called Jacobi.
“Thanks for doing this. Come home safe,” he said.
Copy that.
Per the plan, three cars in our team blocked off the streets around the subject house, forming our perimeter. SWAT poured out of their vehicles and broke into their well-practiced maneuvers, four men covering the back and side doors, four getting into position on either side of the front entrance.
Niles pointed to me and then to the Honda SUV in the driveway. Conklin and I left the Bronco and used the Honda as a barrier twenty yards from the front door.
On Niles’s signal the tac team stove in the green door and flashbangs were tossed. Conklin and I took cover behind the Honda as the blinding, deafening grenades went off.
I looked up, saw the tac team storming the house, leaving Rich and me to wait while they cleared the scene. I knew well that the grenades had no shrapnel, were meant only to blind and stun the occupants of the house, but tell that to my startle reflex.
I held on to the side of the Honda, shaking like a baby mouse in a cat’s paws. This would not do. This would not do at all.
I looked over the hood, and beside me, Rich did the same. I heard the word “Clear” shouted repeatedly from inside the house as the teams went from room to room and up to the second floor. Only five minutes Niles came out to the porch and shouted, “Boxer, we’re all clear. You’re up.”
I said to Rich, “Ready or not, here we go.”
CHAPTER 21
RICH AND I and the rest of the SFPD counterterrorism task force thundered into the bomb-cleared house.
It actually looked as though a bomb had gone off; clothing and garbage and bedding were strewn everywhere. After a second look I realized this was not explosive fallout. This was frat-house living.
Niles called me into a ground-floor bedroom where two of the suspects and a naked woman were rolling around on the bed and floor, crying and moaning. Sergeant Mal Reigner, Vice, cuffed the two males to the bed and, after covering her with a blanket, Flex-Cuffed the young female by the wrists and took her out to his cage car.
The two other boys were in the living room, both on the floor, sobbing and cursing. The flashbang had disabled their equilibrium and scared the hell out of them. Making this a good time to separate and question them.
Conklin took the one who appeared to be Elverson, the former chem major, and I grabbed Yang, the computer guy, and set him down in a tattered chair. His nose was running. His eyes were red. He looked pitiful.
I said, “Mr. Yang, you’re under arrest—”
“What did I do?”
I said, “You’re under arrest for threatening communications.”
“What? What is that?”
“For putting out a terror message. It’s a federal offense.”
“I didn’t do anything like that. You’re crazy.”
“Mr. Yang. Listen to me before you start claiming your innocence. I’m Sergeant Boxer. I am with the SFPD, working with Homeland Security. I’m arresting you for blowing up Sci-Tron—”
“What?”
“Or for saying you did. That’s threatening communications, specifically disseminating the video claiming credit for the GAR attack on Sci-Tron.”
“I didn’t—”
“That video has been traced to a computer inside this house. That’s why I’m reading you your rights.”
This twenty-two-year-old was watching and listening, but from the look in his eyes I couldn’t be sure that he was following me.
I called out to Inspector Ronnie Burke, a good guy in Robbery I’d known for a couple of years, and asked him to witness my conversation with Andrew Yang while I recorded it on my phone. I wasn’t repeating the Connor Grant confession/no-confession error twice.
Burke leaned against the wall and I showed Yang my phone. I pressed Record.
I said my name, and the date, time, and address, and then said, “Andrew Yang, you have the right to remain silent. Do you understand?”
He said, “Say it again.”
I complied. And then, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?”
After I took him through his rights and he answered that he understood them, I asked him to tell me what part he’d had in the bombing of Sci-Tron.
He shook his head no, while casting his eyes toward Neil Elverson, who was being half dragged out of the house in cuffs.
“Please take me seriously, Andrew. One of your friends, or maybe that young lady, is going to cut a deal with the police and confess to this crime in exchange for lighter time.
“If I were your mother, I’d tell you that the one who talks first wins. You should listen to me. I’m telling you the truth.”
CHAPTER 22
DILLON MITCHELL WAS a fit, fifty-two-year-old internet cult figure, operating as a member of GAR, who went by the name Haight. He lived in and podcast from a former bicycle factory in Dogpatch, a neighborhood on the eastern shore of San Francisco.
The open-space building had a tin ceiling and twenty-foot-high walls, with a catwalk halfway up the walls that wrapped around three sides. At one end was a computer studio, which was where he was sitting now.
Powerful industrial ceiling fans blew a benign breeze over the platform bed on wheels and the wide-plank floors below.
Haight was frugal. He dressed simply, in loose clothing, and kept his possessions to a minimum. But when it came to electronics, he had the best. He accepted donations to keep himself alive, which freed him to put his energy into producing his podcasts and posting the videos and protest speeches that he’d archived from the sixties and seventies, beginning with those his mother had given before he was born.
Haight, a.k.a. the redheaded stepchild of the sixties revolution, was the son of Erin Mitchell, the famously brave extremist who had founded Youth for a Democratic Society, a group of radicals that had forever shifted the consciousness of a complacent America.
Haight had never discovered the identity of his “father unknown.”
Momma had told him at various times that his father might be Jerry Rubin or Jerry Garcia, or even Bob Dylan. She never swore to the truth of his paternity, but it was probably because she didn’t know. By the time she died of ovarian cancer, Haight no longer cared who his father was. He had formed his own ideology and his manifesto was online worldwide.
Haight drafted alongside the GAR movement. He believed what they believed, but his methods were hands-off. He didn’t recruit. He wasn’t a technical adviser. He was a spokesman for the overturn of corrupt governments, and he spoke of revolution. He believed that all politics should be local and fully participatory. This left him both anti-state and anti-corporate. His major demons were the US government, the West in general, the IMF, Big Oil, Wall Street, central banks, and the various US bloodsucking cartels: defense, Big Pharma, agribusiness, and higher education.
Along with GAR, he was inspiring the lone wolves and stray-dog rebels, the angry underclass around the world yearning to break free. His podcasts were reports from the new front of terror without borders that was breaking out all over the world.
Violence was a way of cleansing humanity of its statist and corporatist sins and ushering in a new world in much the same way the Russian Bolsheviks did. It boiled down to an old slogan, simple and moving: POWER TO THE PEOPLE.
He was also Machiavellian and he knew it.
Any means to the correct end.
Haight was active in many twisting corridors on the dark web. He gathered and disseminated news from the undergrou
nd and produced his own commentary. People wrote to Haight. He didn’t write back, but through an encrypted app he could pop into friendly computer stations at will, and so his friends could talk to him anytime. And they did. J. had chatted with him before he set off for his sadly failed mission at SFO.
Still, J. had made his mark and, in so doing, had fueled the revolution.
This morning Haight was sipping his homemade peppermint-leaf tea while browsing the open transmissions from web friends, donors, and acolytes when his monitor went sharp white, accompanied by two consecutive booms that shocked the high right out of him.
What had to have been an explosion had come from the house rented by the four in Ingleside. When the picture cleared, he was looking at Andy Yang’s face as a woman cop with a ponytail shouted, “Mr. Yang. Wake up. This is the police.”
Haight watched what he could see of an emergency response team sweep through the house in Ingleside. Then he disconnected from the net.
He thought about those kids for a few minutes. They knew nothing about him that wasn’t common knowledge. He had a law degree from Columbia. He exercised his free speech rights, knowing how to keep himself safe from complicity in acts of treason.
Haight selected a favorite album from his playlist, L.A. Woman, the Doors, 1971, and turned on the speakers. He stepped into a pair of sandals and took the spiral staircase to the roof deck. There he turned on the hose, and as he watered the tomatoes, he sang “Riders on the Storm” along with Jim Morrison. And he pictured those brave kids in Ingleside. He looked forward to a time when all people would be free.
CHAPTER 23
THAT MORNING YUKI went to the third floor of the Hall and checked in with Darlene Fanucci, DA Len Parisi’s personal gatekeeper.
She took one of the chairs in a row along the wall and waited to be called. As she sat there, ADAs came one after the other into Len’s area. Some paced like soon-to-be fathers with wives in the delivery room. Others stood, pensive, avoiding eye contact with everyone until the previous ADA left and Marie told the next in line to go right in. Five minutes later the ADA would leave Len’s office at a smart pace, eyes straight ahead, mind clearly on the case at hand.