I stopped moving, and the two men commanding me to the door stumbled into me. "Can you please show me a badge?" I said, though I pretty much figured.
Wydell's lips pinched. His hand darted behind his lapel, withdrew his commission book with its recessed badge. Hunched eagle and flag, rendered in gold. U.S. SECRET SERVICE. His commission was behind plastic inside the leather book. JOSEPH WYDELL, SPECIAL AGENT IN CHARGE. He was from the Los Angeles Regional Office, which meant he wasn't on the protection detail of a particular politician but oversaw general intelligence in Southern California. Why was the head of the Secret Service L.A. office on site at a raid instead of waiting back in his air-conditioned office?
"What do you think I did?" I asked.
Someone handed him my sneakers, and he thumped them against my chest. I took them. He hustled me out into the hall, Sever in front of us, another agent behind, one at each side. They held the diamond formation as we barreled toward the stairs.
Mrs. Plotkin stood in her doorway in a white spa bathrobe, her copper hair heaped high, showing off white roots. She looked worried-one of her favorite expressions.
"Get back in your apartment, ma'am," Sever said, the accent more pronounced now.
We were approaching fast, but she held her ground. "Where are you taking him?"
"I'm okay, Evelyn," I said, wiping blood from my chin.
"What did he do?"
"Out of the way, now."
We reached her, and Sever straight-armed her back into her apartment. Her head snapped forward, and the glasses she wore around her neck on a beaded chain flew up, trailing her fall like the tail of a kite. As we whisked past, I caught a flash of her lying shocked on her fuzzy rug, glasses tangled in her hair, the door pressing against her side. It was just a shove, nothing drastic, but even a portion of a man's strength applied brusquely to a woman in her sixties had a certain grotesqueness to it.
I tried to stop, but the agents propelled me forward.
"Hey, " I said to Sever's broad back, "let me at least make sure she's okay."
The agents kept moving me along. No time for retorts or even threats. That scared me even more.
I stumbled down the stairs, trying to keep pace, nearly dropping my sneakers. The lobby was empty save the vinyl couches and smoky mirrors, and beyond, the street was lit up like day. Police cars, spotlights, men in dark suits talking into their wrists. A few spectators, hastily dressed, stood on the opposite sidewalk, straining on tiptoes, waiting to see who would emerge.
We burst through the doors and stopped. I hopped on one foot, then the other, pulling on my Pumas.
"Cut the goddamned spotlights," Wydell said. "This isn't a fashion shoot." The spotlights clicked off with a bass echo, and suddenly the night was darker than it should have been. Wydell grabbed the arm of another agent. "Where is it?"
"Almost here."
"It needs to be here now."
I said, loudly, "Are you gonna tell me what the hell is going on?"
All of a sudden, a bass thrumming filled the night, as much a vibration as a sound, and then a Steven Spielberg glow came over the rooftops, turning the palms a fiery yellow. On the sidewalk a little girl white-knuckled her father's hand, her mouth open in sleepy disbelief.
A Black Hawk loomed into view, massive and somehow futuristic in this context, on my street. The wind from the rotors buffeted the crowd, snapped at the bushes, pasted my clothes to me. Wydell's tie pulled clear of his jacket and stood on end. The helicopter banked and set down magisterially on the asphalt. The spectators stared at me in expectation.
Wydell grabbed my arm in a vise grip and started moving me toward the helicopter. The sight of that waiting Black Hawk finally broke me out of shock, or at least helped me catch up to myself, to what was happening. I jerked free. "Wait a minute. You can't just take me. What's happening here?"
I had to follow him closely to hear his words over the noise of the rotors.
He was shouting. "A terrorist has penetrated the nuclear power plant at San Onofre and is threatening to blow it up."
I felt a sudden hollowness at my core, that rushing emptiness I'd felt only twice before: clutching stupidly at Frank while he died and watching live footage as that second plane hit the tower.
"Okay," I said. "Jesus. But what's that got to do with me?"
Wydell stopped, poised, one leg up on the skid of the chopper. "He says he'll only talk to you."
Chapter 2
The Black Hawk pitched, and I felt my stomach go through my throat. I bounced on a seat opposite Wydell and Sever, one hand wound in the cargo netting to keep me from tumbling onto the deck. I'd blown out the heel air pocket of my left sneaker, and the plastic window on the outsole clicked every time I leaned hard on that foot to keep my balance. As well as the pilot, copilot, and two flight-suited crewmen, there were three other agents, all talking into radio headsets. Pelican cases were strapped to the floor, a few lids laid open to reveal all order of weaponry nestled in the black foam-sniper rifles, machine guns, grenades, even a torn Silly Putty block of what I assumed was C-4.
The night air was crisp in my lungs, and the smell inside the helicopter was oiled steel and canvas. The bleeding from my lower lip continued, the taste lingering at the back of my throat. We bounced again, the wind fighting back, and a wave of nausea rolled through me. With scant comfort I recalled hearing that a helicopter was the only machine that tried to tear itself apart every time it powered on.
Even in the midst of an emergency, Wydell had the assurance of a veteran agent. Square posture. An elongated face, the forehead made prominent by a sharp widow's peak. No emotion in the dark brown eyes. The kind of man with a built-in confidence I resented and grudgingly admired, who could torpedo a stock price or send men to war and still doze off the instant his head hit the pillow. His lank gray hair, battered by the wind, had settled back into place except for a few wayward locks that looked incongruous. His radio headset dangled around his neck.
I waited until he looked over at me. Then I said, "We're facing a nightmare, and you need me. I get that. But you couldn't just knock?"
"Listen carefully." Wydell talked loudly to be heard over the constant rush of noise, his voice hoarse. "This isn't about propriety. We've been scrambling since this guy started beelining down the 405."
I asked, "Why is the Secret Service even involved with a terrorist threat?"
"When the terrorist asked for you, LAPD ran your name," Sever said. "They found out your stepfather worked Caruthers's detail when Caruthers was vice president, and they pulled us in. They figured we keep tabs on agents' families."
"Have you? Been keeping tabs on me?"
Wydell said, "Let me make this clear: Until we're one hundred percent certain that you're not this terrorist's confederate, you are."
"And there's no way to make you certain," I said. "At least not right now."
"That's right. We don't have time to question you more thoroughly. In fact, we don't have any time at all." He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, bringing those impassive brown eyes within a few feet of my face. "He wants you, Nick. We need to know why."
We swooped back over the freeway, rocketing forward on a tilt. Sever put out his foot to stop a sliding Pelican case. Stress and adrenaline had left me light-headed, and the lurching helicopter wasn't helping settle me down.
"I'm completely in the dark," I said. "I have no idea who he is."
Wydell shot a glance over at Sever, who looked skeptical. "Then we're gonna act like we believe you so we can move forward."
Wydell pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, fluffed it with a sharp snap, and offered it to me. I pressed it to my lip to stanch the bleeding.