Injured: Lane, Emma, Age 31.
“…survivor Emma Lane, front-seat passenger, re ported that her husband swerved to miss an oncoming car. However, investigation of the scene deter mined no evidence of a second vehicle…no indication of mechanical failure…
NOTE: Joseph Lane, driver, prone to sleeping in vehicle on job site possibly due to long hours of work as carpenter as reported by coworkers…
ON SCENE: Vehicle was traveling northbound on Junction Road 90. Discovered 40 feet east of highway on shoulder on its roof by…Herb Quiggly, Age 53, Mave Quiggly, Age, 52, and Rolly Quiggly, Age 17, of Ram River Ridge, traveling northbound. First Aid administered to Emma Lane by Mave Quiggly, part-time nurse…Emma Lane discovered traumatized, hysterical…Quiggly family was also northbound on Junction Road 90 prior to coming upon accident scene…could not corroborate Emma Lane’s reports of second vehicle…as no vehicles southbound on Junction Road 90 were seen by Quiggly family.
CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS: Cause unknown, contributing factors, driver error due to fatigue…”
Tears fell on the pages as Emma shook her head.
“You okay?”
Emma looked up to see Reed Cobb and Darnell Horn watching her. She had been so absorbed in the documents that she hadn’t noticed Horn arrive.
“This is wrong.”
“Wrong, how?” Cobb asked.
“There’s nothing here about the car. I saw a car.”
“Emma, you were hurt,” Cobb said.
“And there was that strange car down our street a little while ago.”
“Emma.”
“Like a stranger was watching us. Maybe it’s all connected?”
“Emma, you’re not making sense,” Cobb said.
“And some hang-up calls. I told Joe but he said not to worry.”
“Emma, you should take it easy,” Horn said.
“There was a car, dammit!”
“Emma, now, please-” Cobb murmured.
She thought for a moment before returning to the witness statements and copying the address and telephone number of the Quiggly family in Ram River Ridge on the back of her file from the funeral director.
“Why are you taking notes on the Quigglys, Emma?” Horn asked.
“So I can thank them for what they did. Can I do that?”
“I don’t see a problem,” Cobb said. “Are you finished with the file?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“It’s a damn shame what happened, Emma.” Cobb gathered the folder. “Sanders gave us a call, said you’d visited him, too, and that you’re having a hard time with this. We understand.”
“Thanks.”
“You’d best go home now,” Cobb said. “Let this thing run its course. I’ll have Darnell drive you and get someone to bring your car home later.”
“No. I got myself here, I’ll drive myself home.”
Emma knew what she had to do now, and as hard and painful as it would be, she had to do it alone.
18
Fairfax County, Virginia
It was late.
Robert Lancer downed the last of his tepid coffee then dragged his hands over his face.
The unconfirmed intel out of Dar es Salaam concerning an imminent attack weighed on him. He’d been searching for anything to connect this dot to the next one. Before this had surfaced he had been working on a letter from a troubled ex-CIA scientist living in Canada.
His line rang.
“Lancer.”
“Bob, it’s Atkins at Homeland. We’ve got zip so far on Salelee.”
“Nothing to substantiate?”
“Zilch. The Tanzanians are keeping him for a while. He could’ve been blowing smoke. You know how these guys make claims to leverage deals, or deflect attention.”
“Keep looking and keep me posted.”
Lancer reached for his mug, remembering it was empty.
Like my apartment. Like my life, he thought, glancing at the framed photographs of his wife and daughter next to his phone.
Take nothing for granted.
He sat up and went back to Salelee’s file.
He realized that this latest threat was at risk of being rolled into so many others that had arisen over the years. As of last fall, U.S. security agencies were tracking about five thousand people, two hundred suspicious networks and investigating at least seventy-five active plots.
Lancer reviewed a few in the database. There was a threat to destroy a U.S. airliner over the Pacific. Nothing came of it. Then there was the group in New York arrested in a plot to use fertilizer-based explosives in attacks on packed nightclubs. On the international side, in the Chechen Republic, a man tied to extremist groups, who possessed large amounts of the lethal poison ricin in a barn outside of Grozny, had tickets for a charter tour of Washington, D.C., which included a visit to the White House. And in Turkey, a plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Ankara was foiled.
Lancer exhaled. That was just a sampling.
He’d been deployed to the Anti-Threat Center from the FBI because he’d requested it. Besides, the people at the center wanted to take advantage of his counterterrorism experience. But Lancer knew he was afforded special consideration because of his “personal investment in U.S. national security,” according to the handwritten letter he’d received from the director.
He looked at the faces of his wife and daughter.
My personal investment in U.S. national security.
Lancer was given a special assignment, allowed to operate as a one-man flying squad, investigating where his skill and instinct took him. He was cleared to cut across jurisdictional and agency boundaries to help on hot files and cold cases. His primary concern was soft targets that could yield the highest number of civilian casualties on U.S. soil.
Salelee’s claim could involve a soft target, Lancer thought and reviewed possibilities, the bigger ones.
There was an upcoming spiritual gathering at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum that would draw one hundred thousand attendees. The Texas State Fair in Dallas would see over two million people pass through its gates. In Columbus, a music festival was expected to bring one hundred thousand people to Ohio Stadium.
Then Lancer looked at another big one: the Human World Conference coming up in New York City. It would be a family-friendly gathering of music and love, aimed at spreading harmony around the planet. There would be addresses by Nobel laureates, actors, authors, artists. Music groups would perform free concerts. It was set for Central Park and was expected to draw about one million people.
This one was on the radar of every local, state and federal security agency. There was a long list of potential attack methods to consider: suicide bombers, a truck or bus filled with explosives or a chemical, biological or radiological device-a dirty bomb.
Lancer considered recent history.
Some terrorist groups claimed to have chemical, biological or radiological weapons. While there had been few attacks on civilians employing such methods, those carried out were lethal.
