He flashed his badge at her, letting it dangle in the air. “Tony Tomer, FBI. Large and in charge. Could you point me to Commander Stark? Before she could answer, he added, “And maybe a candlelight dinner and drinks at my place?”
The nurse rolled her eyes at his tacky come-on. She pointed to a hallway bustling with troopers.
“Last I saw, he was over there, with all those other troopers.” Sarcasm lay heavy on her voice. “And by the way, I don’t think he’s gay, so you’ll have to find a different dinner partner.”
The younger nurse, still looking down at her paperwork, lost control and snorted a laugh that made her whole body convulse.
Tomer’s face reddened as he registered the nurse’s insult. He turned to the hall Nurse Tanana had indicated and saw Commander Stark talking with several troopers and police officers.
Agent Tomer made eye contact with Commander Stark and immediately started into a long stride to the clustered group of troopers and their commander.
“Oh, geez,” Stark muttered under his breath. “Why did they have to send that idiot? Is everyone else on leave or something?”
“What the hell, Stark?” Tomer said in a bowling alley braggart tone as he approached. “Why wasn’t the FBI called on this thing sooner? Terrorism is our turf, not AST’s. When are you cowboys going to learn? No matter—the FBI is on scene, large and in charge.”
The other officers let out groans and shook their heads as they turned and left.
“Tomer,” Stark responded in a deep, even tone, “Mind your manners. We called once we knew for sure it was terrorism and not just gang activity. I didn’t want to waste my time having the report stuck at the bottom of your ‘suspected terrorism’ list. Waiting until we had bodies was the only way we could ensure your quick response.”
“Bodies? I thought it was one body,” Tomer said.
“Things have changed.” Stark replied. “Follow me. I’ll give you the full scoop.”
Stark led the FBI agent into a conference room the hospital had set aside as his temporary command center.
Commander Stark had never liked Tomer. The FBI agent, although he was considerably younger than Stark, treated him like a subordinate instead of a peer. He reminded the trooper commander of a pushy used-car salesman, or a loud-mouthed pimp.
Tomer was a federal jerk-off who gave a bad name to the employees of the US government. He had been stationed in Alaska as punishment for pissing off too many people with his attempts at butt-kissing around their headquarters in Virginia. Stark had been warned of his coming by a FBI friend, Steven Michaels, assistant director of anti-terrorism training at the National Police Academy.
“Bob, we’re sending you a live one. He’s a good investigator, but has a loud mouth and an attitude that seems to piss off everyone he makes eye contact with. He had been selected for the Tampa anti-drug unit, but ran into the Tampa SAC at a bar up here and made a pretty bad impression when he hit on the chief’s much-younger wife. His assignment came from the top, so there’s nothing I can do about it. Just wanted to let you know so you could be prepared.”
When Tomer first arrived, Stark tried to give him the benefit of a doubt. At their first meeting a little over a year ago, Tomer seemed intelligent and not at all like Michaels had said. Stark thought perhaps it was just a case of bad timing or that maybe the youngster had learned something and wouldn’t be so bad as his friend had said.
That impression was quickly dispelled on their second meeting, when Agent Tomer joined him and several other emergency services chiefs for the Alaska Homeland Security Conference. Within twenty minutes of arrival, Tomer had managed to insult nearly everyone in the room with a combination of his attitude and several poorly selected phrases demonstrating that he felt himself to be the final word on law enforcement.
“After all,” he said, “I am the only federal agent here. Therefore, I am the senior ranking officer. I expect full cooperation in all law enforcement and Homeland Security matters from each of the subordinate state and local agencies.”
He had said this despite the fact that the closest person in the room to his age was five years older and had been in law enforcement ten years longer.
Things such as this did little to endear him to rest of the emergency services or law enforcement community. In a little less than a year, Tomer had effectively alienated himself from everyone who could have made his job easier. And he still didn’t get it.
“Tony. Here’s the situation.” Stark laid out the details of the raid, bringing him to the current point in time. “Kim, it seems, is not who we originally thought. The suspect who killed himself called him Colonel Kim, and said that he himself was a lieutenant in the North Korean Army. He also mentioned that they work for a general.”
“Military men?”
“Seems that way. Just about half an hour ago, one of the janitors here, a South Korean immigrant named Joseph Chun, claimed he recognized Kim as a North Korean agent who had massacred his family back in the sixties. We’re checking on the name now, but this guy is starting to appear to be a possible mastermind or second-in-command behind some sort of plot, possibly involving weapons of mass destruction.”
“Man. This is potentially very big, then.” Tomer rubbed his fingers thoughtfully across his chin. “What about those things you thought were bombs?”
“Our guys at the crime lab are looking at them, but can’t really figure it out. There’s a guy at Tanana Valley Electric, one of their new dispatchers who grew up here, named Franklin Eckert. He was an electronic warfare special weapons expert in the Navy until about a year ago. His
