“Who are these guys? I’ve never heard of them.”
“Join the club. The truth is, they seemed like small potatoes until today, with little influence outside their native Syria. State tells me the TIC has historically been more a militia than a terror group; until today, their primary focus was on overthrowing the Assad regime. We’re still trying to determine how-or even if-they could’ve pulled this off.”
“Was their statement written or video?”
“Video. Grainy, indoors, a dirty sheet as a backdrop. In English, although it’s clear the man reading it-who we’re working to identify-is not a native speaker. They e-mailed it to all the major news outlets as well as the White House. I’m told they tried to put it up on YouTube shortly thereafter, but by then the administration had already been in contact with Google, who owns YouTube, and they blocked its upload.”
“I wonder what that little favor cost the president,” O’Brien mused aloud. “What did the statement say?”
“The bulk of it was pretty boilerplate-your basic ‘Death to America!’ type stuff. But they specifically referenced a tugboat striking the southern tower of the bridge. Since the time stamp on the e-mail indicates it was sent less than a minute after the explosion, we’re taking it seriously.”
“As well you should. How come it hasn’t hit the airwaves yet?”
Klingenberg hesitated. “The video…included threats of further violence. Said the attack on the Golden Gate is just the beginning. We’ve asked the press to sit on it until we can confirm their involvement so it doesn’t cause undue panic. It’s anybody’s guess how long the embargo’s going to hold.”
“Anything CID can do to help? We’re happy to pitch in wherever we’re needed.”
“Thank you. I’ll convey that to my AD and get back to you.” Then her mask slipped for a moment, and O’Brien caught a glimpse of the impossible strain she was under. “Between you and me, ma’am, San Francisco is a lawless mess right now. The city’s locked down. Its citizens are panicking. The police are overwhelmed. Several businesses that serve the Muslim community have been vandalized already. If the video leaks, it’s going to get a whole lot worse. Anything your people can do to keep the peace would be appreciated.”
“We’ll do what we can.”
O’Brien signed off and closed the window. Then she heaved a sigh and turned her attention to Thompson. “That went better than expected,” she said. “Do the talking heads have anything interesting to say?”
“Nah,” Thompson said. “Facts are thin on the ground, so they’re mostly in the bullshit scaremongering phase. I swear, it’s like they-”
Thompson’s expression changed. She put a finger to the earbud she was wearing. “Hang on,” she said. “CNN’s breaking in with something. They claim they’ve got video.”
“Of the TIC taking credit?”
“No, of the attack itself.”
Thompson unplugged her headphones, and the laptop’s tinny speakers cut in. “…if legitimate, this home movie-which was uploaded only minutes ago and has since gone viral-appears to show the moment of impact. We’re presenting it unedited in its entirety. Obviously, its content may be unsuitable for some viewers.”
The screen went black. Then there was the sound of wind and rustling followed by shaky cell-phone footage of a dirt footpath lined with low, dry scrub.
An old man’s face appeared-blurry, but oddly familiar, Thompson thought, although she couldn’t place him-and immediately filled the screen. He had one eye closed, like he was peering through the viewfinder of a camera. His open eye was icy blue.
“Are we all in the shot?” came the faint voice of a man from off camera.
“I dunno,” the old man replied-too loud, thanks to his proximity to the microphone. “I can’t see shit.”
A child giggled. “I think you’re holding it backward,” said the man off camera.
“What? Oh, hell.” The old man turned the phone around. A handsome family-mother, father, and three children ranging in age from baby to teenager-swung into view at the north edge of the trail. The Golden Gate Bridge was so close, it loomed impossibly tall behind them. A tugboat chugged across the bay toward the south tower. From this distance, its progress seemed unhurried, lackadaisical. With foreknowledge of what was to come, the cheery banality of the scene took on a perverse air. Thompson felt like she was watching a snuff film, or a car crash in slow motion. “There you are. Wait-does that mean I’m on your video now?”
“Don’t worry-we can cut that bit when we get home. Ready, guys?”
His wife and children muttered noncommittally.
“Three…two…one…”
The image jerked slightly as the tugboat hit, as if the old man had realized at the last second what was happening and recoiled. The screen went white, then tumbled end over end in a blur of sky and fire and dirt.
When the CNN anchor reappeared, Thompson rewound the feed and played it again. Then O’Brien called Nakamura back in and had him put it up on the big screen.
They watched it through a second time, people from the bullpen drifting through the open conference-room door to watch, their faces slack with horror. When it finished, O’Brien said, “Is it possible to watch it frame by frame?”
“Sure,” Nakamura replied. He dragged the video’s progress bar back to the beginning and began advancing manually. “This is gonna take forever,” he said. “You want me to skip ahead?”
“Yes,” said O’Brien, but at the same time, Thompson shouted, “No!”
Everybody in the room looked at her. Thompson felt her face go red. Her heart sped up like she’d just mainlined a double espresso. The physical reactions were due not to embarrassment but the thrill of discovery.
“Back it up a bit,” she said. “One frame at a time, just like you were doing before.”
Nakamura complied.
“Slower,” she instructed. “Slower. There!”
In the frame Nakamura’d stopped on, the old man’s face was plainly visible. He was rawboned and deeply lined. His pale blue eyes glinted in the sunlight. O’Brien looked at him, then at Thompson, who was clearly impatient for her to see what she had seen.
When O’Brien looked at the screen again, it clicked.
“Jesus Christ,” she said. “It can’t be.”
“It is,” Thompson insisted. “I’d know him anywhere.”
“Who is he?” asked SAIC Russell, who’d come in while the video was playing.
“That,” Thompson said, “is Frank Segreti.”
7.
FRANK SEGRETI WAS running blind. Damn near literally, thanks to that bomb blast. Fucking thing must’ve gone off at least a half an hour ago, and still the afterimage remained, an amorphous blob of green at the center of his vision, obscuring the world around him and forcing him to rely on his peripheral vision. It reminded him of that bank job back in ’82 when he’d tried to cut through the vault door without a welding mask. His crew got the cash out okay, but when the cops showed up and everybody scattered, he nearly got pinched because he couldn’t see a thing and tried to climb into the wrong fucking car.
At least he’d had a moment’s warning before the tugboat detonated. He knew something was hinky when he noticed it was picking up speed the closer it got to the bridge support. At the moment of impact, he flinched, so his forearms were protecting his face when the bomb went off-which was probably the only reason he could see anything at all. The shock wave knocked him off his feet and into the brush that bordered the trail. If those hadn’t cushioned his fall, he almost certainly would’ve broken something. When he came to, smoke tinted the sky the oily brown of an old sepia photograph. Ash rained down from above, gray-white and guttering red. Those poor young lovebirds who’d been perched at the far edge of the trail overlooking the bridge were shredded by debris, and the family who’d stopped him lay unconscious on the trail. Frank wanted to help them, but there was nothing he could do without risking capture, so he fled. He hoped they were okay.