Dominating center stage was a huge mock up of a Silver Screen Award, modeled after an old-fashioned box camera mounted on a tripod. This stage prop was massive, soaring thirty feet into the air. The box camera itself was the size of a minibus and fabricated from sheets of metal insulated with some type of synthetic construction material. The structure was mounted on a motorized dolly wrapped with burnished aluminum to reflect the footlights. It loomed over the stage, its shadow stretching beyond the orchestra pit to the front row seats.
As the men approached the prop, the ion spectrometer chirped urgently. The operator froze in his tracks, tapped the keypad to recalibrate the detector, but the chirping just became more insistent.
“What have you got?” the older man asked.
“Traces of nitrates, tetryl.”
The older man shook his head. “I have nothing, and your ion sniffer has a lousy false reading rate.”
Auburn studied the stage decoration and realized the huge Silver Screen Award prop was the final, assembled version of the parts the union men had brought in earlier — the team led by the Middle Eastern man.
“Are you sure it’s a false reading?” Craig Auburn pressed, ready to tear the prop apart if either man gave him reason.
The older specialist touched the base of a tripod leg. His hand came up stained with paint. “They just put this stuff together. There’s wet paint, traces of acetylene, fruit in somebody’s lunchbox. Anything like that can set this equipment off.”
“These traces are pretty weak,” the younger men said in agreement.
“Sure they’re weak,” the older man said. “If there was a bomb anywhere around here, this spectrometer would be ringing its head off. My bet. The culprit is wet paint.”
The specialists wandered off to scan another part of the stage. Auburn took one last look at the prop. Something about the prop still bothered him, but he knew very well that a hunch in the face of hard forensic proof was pretty much regarded as a crock of shit by anyone who had a career or cared about keeping it.
“Whatever you say. You guys are the experts.”
“Whatever you say. You guys are the experts.”
The words of the Americans were faint. Softer still were the footsteps moving away. But Bastian Grost had heard enough to feel great relief. He removed the stethoscope from the wall of the container, exchanged a glance and a nod with his brothers in arms.
Hasan was right.
The part of the stage prop they occupied was airtight. Above their heads, an air scrubber silently refreshed the atmosphere inside the chamber. Hasan had provided the materials, of course. Everyone had been pleased with the look of the large sculpture on the outside, the roominess within. But there was some skepticism among his men about the lining. Lead had always been the best shield against explosive detectors. But a lead-lined stage prop, combined with the weight of the men, would have been far too heavy.
None of them knew whether the specially treated polymer lining would do the job. Clearly, it had. Seven of his men sat around him now in the large box with twenty-five guns and sixty pounds of plastique — and the stupid Americans had failed to detect a thing.
Grost was confident they would also fail to detect the additional weapons inside a much smaller version of the Silver Screen prop he and his men now occupied. That smaller prop was positioned as a decoration at the back of the auditorium. When the time was right, their accomplices would shed their disguises among the audience, grab those hidden weapons, and guard the theater’s exits.
Grost checked the illuminated dial of his watch. Everything had been planned to the smallest detail. In less than two hours it would all come together. In less than two hours, he and his men would begin their journey to Paradise.
Ray Dobyns was holed up in an unexpected place — a modest split-level brick and wood-framed house in a quiet upper-middle-class suburb. To Tony, the streets, the houses seemed no different than the sitcom neighborhoods where Beaver Cleaver or the Brady Bunch grew up. The house was nestled in a shallow dip in the landscape, isolated from the other houses on the block by an expansive yard. The building itself was surrounded by shrubbery, now thin and brown and not worth much as cover. There was a large bay window and a garage in the front of the house and plenty of lawn around it, though little grass was green due to the prolonged drought that scorched both sides of the Cal/Mex border.
Tony noticed a large satellite dish on the roof, a microwave transmitter in the back and another dish mounted in a tall tree farther from the house. With all that state-of-the-art communications technology, Tony knew that more than chocolate chip cookies were being baked inside this particular house.
When Tony first arrived and saw the residence, he did a double-take, figuring that hooker Brandy had played him for a fool. But after he drove around the neighborhood a few times, and past the house once or twice, Tony finally spied Dobyns waddling into the backyard like some suburban fat cat. The man was wearing shorts, his bulk settling into a lounge chair next to a small built-in pool while he sipped tequila and puffed on a thick cigar. Now that he knew he’d found the right place Tony parked the van across the street and watched the house.
After twenty minutes Tony determined that the Chechens were probably somewhere else, and Dobyns was alone. Tony’s fists crushed the steering wheel. That just won’t do, he mused. I want everyone to be here for the party I have planned.
The data mining team had arrived and Nawaf Sanjore’s office was a high-traffic area. The noise was so thick Jack could not hear his cell phone when it rang, only felt its tremble.
“Bauer.”
“Jack? Jack. Is that you?” The voice was Frank Castalano’s. “You’re going to have to speak up, my ears still aren’t so good.”
Jack remembered the RPG hitting Castalano’s vehicle, knew the man had been lucky to walk away with only diminished hearing. “It’s me, Frank,” Jack loudly replied, eliciting stares. “How’s your partner?”
“What?”
“How’s Jerry Alder?”
“Still in surgery. His wife’s at the hospital now… What a mess.”
“How are you?”
“Cuts and bruises. The docs say my hearing will improve in a couple of days. Meanwhile, I’ve got the bells of Notre Dame Cathedral ringing in my head.” A pause. “Jack, about an hour ago we found a cell phone Hugh Vetri hid under some papers in his desk. Turns out he bought it with a fake ID just eight days ago—”
“Vetri must have thought he was being watched.
Wiretaps, maybe. Any sign of unauthorized surveillance?”
“Not yet. But we did find out that Vetri made three calls with that phone. All of them on the night of his murder, all to the same number — the office of Valerie Dodge, CEO of the Dodge Modeling Agency.”
The helicopter swooped low over the San Gabriels, skimming a section of thick forest until it located a particular stretch of deserted roadway that had once been part of Highway 39. The aircraft descended to the road’s cracked pavement in a cloud of dust, fallen leaves, and parched pine needles. The wheels had hardly touched down when a door opened and Nawaf Sanjore jumped out. Crouching to avoid the whirling blades, the architect hurried across the concrete to the narrow shoulder of the road.
Shielding his face from the aircraft’s hot blast, Nawaf watched the helicopter lift off and soar away, the sound of its beating blades quickly fading. With mounting trepidation, Nawaf Sanjore scanned the empty road and the thick curtain of foliage on either side. Wind rustled the trees. A raptor cried out in the distance. Surrounded by wilderness, he felt quite vulnerable. He nearly cried out when he heard the sound of rock scraping against rock. He turned toward the sound and saw what appeared to be a section of ground opening up. Revealed in the gap was a narrow set of concrete stairs leading underground.