3rd Degree

Chapter 97

Inside 722 Seventh street, everyone and everything was going crazy.

Robert, the vet, had grabbed an automatic rifle and was crouched below one of the front windows, sizing up the scene outside. “There’s an army out there! Cops everywhere I look!”

Julia was screaming and acting like a crazy woman. “I told you to get out of my house! I told you to get out!” She looked toward Mal. “What are we going to do now? What are we going to do?”

Mal seemed calm. He went over to the window, peeked through the curtains. Then he headed into the other room and came back wheeling a black case. “Probably die,” he answered.

Michelle’s heart seemed to be beating a thousand beats per second. Any moment, armed, uniformed men could burst in. Part of her was gripped with fear, part was ashamed. She knew she had let down her friends. Ended everything they had fought for. But she had helped murder women and children, and now maybe she could stop the killing.

Suddenly the phone rang. For a second everyone turned, eyes fixed on the phone. The rings were like alarm bells going off.

“Pick it up,” Robert said to Mal. “You want to be the leader. Pick it up.”

Mal walked over. Four, five rings. Finally he lifted the phone.

He listened for a second. His face didn’t register fear or surprise. He even told them his name. “Stephen Hardaway,” he said proudly.

Then he listened for a long time. “I hear you,” he answered. He put down the receiver, swallowed, and looked around. “They say we have this one chance. Anyone who wants to leave, you’d better go now.”

The room was deathly quiet. Robert at the window. Julia, her back pressed up against the wall. Mal, finally seeming shocked and out of answers. Michelle wanted to cry that she had brought this upon them.

“Well, they ain’t putting their hands on me,” Robert said. He picked up his automatic rifle, his back to the kitchen door, eyeing the van parked in the driveway.

He winked, a sort of silent farewell. Then he yanked open the door and ran out of the house.

About four feet from the van he raised the gun, squeezing off a long burst in the direction of the police. There were two loud cracks. Just two. Robert stopped in his tracks. He spun around, a surprised look on his face, crimson stains widening on his chest.

“Robert!” Julia screamed. She smashed the barrel of her gun through the front window and started shooting wildly. Then she was hurled backward and didn’t move again.

Suddenly a black canister sailed through the front window. Gas started to leak out. Then another black canister. A stinging, bitter cloud began to envelop the room, clawing at Michelle’s lungs.

“Oh, Mal,” she cried. She looked toward him. He was standing there, no fear on his face now.

In his hands he held a portable phone.

“I’m not going out there,” he said.

“I’m not, either.” She shook her head.

“You really are a brave little girl.” Mal smiled.

She watched him punch in a four-digit number. A second later she heard a ring. It came from the suitcase.

Then a second ring.

A third …

“Remember”—Mal took a breath—“no juice, no boost. Right, Michelle?”

Chapter 98

When the house blew we were crouched behind the cover of a black-and-white, barely a hundred feet away.

There were bold orange flashes as the windows exploded. Then the house seemed to lift off its foundation, a fiery cloud ripping the whole thing apart through the roof.

“Get down!” Molinari yelled. “Everybody down!”

The blast hurled us backward. I took Cindy, who’d been standing next to me, down to the ground, shielding her from the force of the blast and the shower of debris.

We lay there as the searing gust lifted over us. A few cries of “Holy shit” and “Are you all right?”

Slowly, we got back up. “Oh, God … ,” Cindy groaned.

Where a second ago a white clapboard house had been standing, now there was only smoke, fire, and a crater of blown-out walls.

“Michelle,” Cindy muttered. “Come on, Michelle.”

We watched the fire rise as the wind whipped the flames. No one came out. No one could have lived through such a blast.

Sirens started up. Frantic radio transmissions filled the air. I heard cops shouting into walkie-talkies: “We have a major explosion at seven twenty-two Seventh Street.…”

“Maybe she wasn’t in there.” Cindy shook her head, still staring at the devastated house.

I put my arm around her. “They killed Jill, Cindy.”

Later, after the fire crews had doused the blaze to smoking cinders and the EMS teams were going around tagging the charred remains, I sifted through the debris myself.

Was it over now? Was the threat gone? How many were in there? I didn’t know. It looked like four or five. Hardaway was probably dead. Was Charles Danko in there, too? August Spies?

Claire had arrived. She was kneeling over the covered bodies, but the parts were burned almost beyond recognition.

“I’m looking for a white male,” I told her, “about fifty.”

“Best I can tell, there seem to be four of them,” she said. “The black male who was shot in the driveway. Three others inside. Two of them female, Lindsay.”

Joe Molinari came over to me. He’d been giving Washington an update on what had just happened. “You okay?” he asked.

“It’s not over,” I said, nodding at the tagged mounds.

“Danko?” He shrugged. “The medical people will have to tell us that. In any case, his network is gone, his cell. The device, too. What can he do now?”

Amid the wreckage, I spotted something—a barrette. There was something almost fu

“Voice of the people be heard,” I said to Molinari, holding out the barrette.

There was a peace symbol on it.

Chapter 99

Charles Danko was wandering the streets of San Francisco aimlessly and thinking about what had just happened in Berkeley, where his friends had died for the cause, died as martyrs just like William had a long time ago.

I could kill a lot of people right now. Right here.

He knew he could go on a rampage and they wouldn’t catch him for several hours, maybe longer if he got his head screwed on straight, if he thought this through—if he was a careful killer.

You’re dead, slick young business creep in your expensive-looking black-on-black ensemble.

You’re dead, too, blond fashionista.

You. And you. You! You! You four frolicking asshole buddies!

God, it would be so easy to let his rage out now.

The police, the FBI, they were pathetic at their job of “protecting” the people.

They had everything wrong, didn’t they?

They didn’t understand that this could be about justice and revenge. The two concepts were perfectly compatible; they could go hand in hand. He was following in his brother William’s footsteps, honoring his fallen brother’s inspired dream, and at the same time he was avenging William. Two causes were better than one. Twice the motivation; twice the anger.

The faces he was passing, the expensive clothes, the absurd shops, were all starting to blur before his eyes—all of them were guilty. The whole country was.

They didn’t get it, though. Not yet.

The war was right here in their streets of gold—the war was here to stay.

No one could stop it anymore.

There would always be more soldiers.

After all, that’s what he was, just a soldier.

He stopped at a pay phone and made two calls.

The first, to another soldier.

The second, to his mentor, the person who had thought of everything, including how to use him.

Charles Danko had made his decision: tomorrow was a go for terror.

Nothing had changed.