Beyond Recognition

now.”

74

“We’re thirty seconds to ignition,” Boldt heard in his earpiece. “Suspect is a quarter mile off and closing.” With each detour, each intersection, Garman’s position had been carefully reported, and it was deeper and deeper in Inferno’s hastily crafted web.

“Thirty seconds,” Boldt told the others.

“We been here before, Sarge,” LaMoia reminded. “It’s a grounder.”

Boldt glared at his detective. It was no grounder.

The four cars in front of Garman’s truck were all being driven by members of the operation, exactly as planned. The same had been intended for the traffic following the suspect’s vehicle, but the first glitch in the operation occurred when a Chevrolet four door, driven by a white male in his late thirties, ran a red light and cut into the line immediately behind the pickup.

The ensuing radio traffic was heated.

CAR 1: Dispatch, we have a visitor. Some asshole just cut into our line.

SHOSWITZ: We need him out of there. Now.

DISPATCH: All vehicles maintain position.

Let us jaw on this a moment.

Less than twenty seconds later, the dispatcher came back on line.

DISPATCH: Okay. It’s a bump-and-run by you, One. Copy that?

CAR 1: Bump-and-run.

DISPATCH: Make it a good collision, one he has to stop for. Williamson, we want you to assist at the moment of impact. Get the civilian to safe cover. Copy?

All parties copied correctly.

This man’s safety was now the joint assignment of the driver immediately behind him and the detective in the work crew to Boldt’s right. His existence was a sticking point of the operation. They could not knowingly place a civilian at such close risk. The decision was for a synchronized, coordinated effort. The plainclothes undercover officer driving behind the Chevy was to ram the car at the moment of the fire’s ignition. He would then rush this driver, apologizing over the accident, as one of the workmen went over as a “witness” to the fender bender. Exactly how it would play out was anybody’s guess. Shoswitz had clearly made the decision not to abort the operation over this one civilian. They would do their best.

“Twenty seconds,” the dispatcher announced.

Boldt relayed the timing. He glanced up. The white pickup was advancing slowly in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. Into his radio, Boldt announced visual contact.

LaMoia, not turning around to look, not stopping his shoveling, repeated, “It’s a grounder, Sarge. If he moves back toward the truck, we’re gonna drop him. And as far as him getting out of that truck? My money’s on Matthews any day. Ain’t a head she can’t shrink.”

“Ten seconds,” Boldt echoed. He set down the pickax. “Five …”

Three miles south of Garman’s pickup truck, a bolt cutter on the end of a remote-controlled robot that looked like a lawnmower severed the padlock under the direction of the bomb squad experts. The remote claw removed the lock, dropped it to the side, and exerted an upward pressure on the garage door.

Despite the reassurances that the unit was not wired, a collective breath was held as the robot lifted the door.

It came open without an explosion.

A fully padded man rolled under the door’s opening and inside the storage unit. Against all rules, Daphne Matthews broke under the restraining tape and ran at full sprint toward the unit, a chorus of protest arising behind her. She rolled under the partially open door right behind the bomb man.

At the first sound of a series of dull explosions to the north, she pulled Ben into her arms and cradled him. She tasted his tears on her lips and spilled her own into his hair as the rope came off and the two were forcibly encouraged toward the opening of daylight by the man in the padded suit.

“Paramedics!” Daphne shouted, knowing an ambulance was waiting to the south.

The boy’s lips were glued shut, and in all the excitement he seemed on the verge of passing out.

The charges went off in a string of five, sounding to Boldt like a burial salute. Six, counting the crunch of metal and glass as the Chevy was struck from behind.

The flames were instantaneous: huge blue and orange and black tongues licking up toward the sky. Whoever had set it knew his stuff, reminding Boldt how close a fireman was to an arsonist. If Jonny Garman had not been behind the wheel of that pickup truck, Boldt wouldn’t have been able to take his eyes off the inferno. Everyone’s attention was glued to the spectacle. It was as if, for a moment, the world blinked. The traffic braked and came to a stop in unison, any and all conversation ceased, and a giant plume of heat rose dramatically into the sky, a pillar of subterfuge.

The bright flash and subsequent roar was seen and heard over twenty-five miles away as the core fire reached over four hundred feet into the air and the resulting column of smoke over ten times that.

Boldt leaned on his pickax, his head angled toward the fire, his eyes on the driver of that pickup truck. Stay and watch it, Boldt encouraged the man silently. Get out of the truck and watch. The burning building was a block and a half away from traffic, but firemen were deliberately allowing pedestrians a closer look, having roped off a spot only half a block away from the event. Of the seven people standing there watching, all were from law enforcement.

Get out of the truck, Boldt encouraged for a second time, the dispatcher’s voice listing Garman’s location in that inhuman monotone. Daphne had been convinced that a spectacular fire would lure him out of his vehicle. “He can’t resist a fire,” she had said. Boldt was taking that to the bank, right or wrong.

As part of the ruse, one of the four cars preceding Garman pulled over and the driver climbed out and hurried toward the fire for a better look. Lead by example, Boldt thought. But to the sergeant’s horror, Garman did not get out, electing to watch from the front seat of the truck. Worse, some cars farther behind launched into a protest chorus of honking. The driver of the Chevy was nursed back, away from the truck, but wasn’t liking the manhandling.

The truck’s wheels crept forward, as if Garman was to drive on.

Out of the truck! Boldt begged. He could feel the man drawn to the fire, but- concerned over his cargo and the job at hand, Martinelli-he seemed reluctant to stay and watch. Boldt pleaded silently for him to stay. The fire roared loudly as the first hose was trained onto it. Firemen, bearing hose, charged the structure.

Jonny Garman pulled his truck over to the shoulder. Traffic moved around the minor accident in the road and drivers rubbernecked as they passed the blaze. Boldt reached into the pocket of the coveralls and felt the grip of the gun’s stock. He locked eyes with LaMoia and then across the street with the officer closest to Garman, a woman dressed as a street person.

As the truck’s cab door came open, Boldt’s world crawled into slow motion. His elation surfaced as a clarity of thought, vision, and hearing. Garman appeared to be as much interested in the firemen as the fire itself. Perhaps it had to do with memories of his father; perhaps it would never be explained.

One leg dangled out of the cab, followed by the other-he was getting out! Garman slipped down onto the pavement and, still holding the door, spun his head forward and back, assessing his situation. Worried about the parking? Boldt wondered. Feeling the presence of something wrong, something misplaced, something staged? The suspect pushed the cab door shut and walked toward the front of his truck, toward a better view of the burn and the action.

The street woman, near the back of the truck, took several long strides to close the distance, her hand slipping into her torn shopping bag. LaMoia, carrying his shovel-a worker fascinated by the fire-ran past Boldt, as if