16th Seduction (Women's Murder Club 16)
Oh, Joe.
Of course I told him … again.
CHAPTER 18
WHEN I WENT to bed on Friday night, my Saturday was well planned. I would sleep late, spend quality time with Julie, take a long nap after lunch, and go to the hospital to see Joe. Then my phone rang at 5:00 a.m., Jacobi saying, “Boxer. It’s me. A number of tips have come in regarding the GAR video, and you’re on deck with the task force.”
“The video?” I asked. My voice was gravelly and my eyes were glued shut with sleep.
“The GAR video, Boxer. The one taking credit for Sci-Tron. Overnight there was internet chatter of the ‘Yay, we freaking did it and posted it on Facebook’ variety. The Feds traced the video to an IP address with a physical address in Ingleside.”
“No kidding. This is for real?”
“Let’s hope so. There are four men living at the address I’ve just texted you. On the face of it, looks like a self-radicalized terror cell. They have no record, federal or otherwise, so for now they’re ours.”
Martha got up, circled a couple of times, dropped back to the bed with her tail over her nose. Lucky dog.
Jacobi was saying, “SWAT has federal warrants and orders to secure the premises. Niles is commander. He and the tac team will meet you and Conklin in Ingleside. Three of our teams in the task force unit are on the way. Boxer, you’re point man. Get up. Get dressed.”
I said, “Yes, boss.”
I blinked at the clock, with its second hand audibly clicking around the dial. I was thinking that being on this task force had exposed me to a high probability of bombs.
I had only just gotten over the car bomb brought to us by the letter J when Sci-Tron blew up exactly thirty-six hours ago. I had a new, heightened reaction to sharp, unexpected sounds; door slams, for instance, or a glass clattering in the sink doubled my pulse rate. I wanted to say to Jacobi, Look. My husband is in the ICU. I have a baby. I’ve done enough. But Joe’s famous punch line came into my mind: Country first.
Jacobi said, “Boxer? You there?”
I grunted and swung my legs over the bed.
He was still talking.
“I sent you some background on these men. Be careful.”
With gross misgivings, I phoned Mrs. Rose and begged her for the favor of helping me do my job for the USA. Part of me wanted her to say no.
Conklin arrived outside my door in his Bronco at 5:20. I had brought bottled water for two, as well as my charged phone and my Kevlar vest, which was zipped up and ready to go. If I’d had a lucky rabbit’s foot, I would have brought that, but Julie’s finger puppet of Hello Kitty would have to do. I had tucked the puppet into my shirt pocket under my vest, silently promising her I would bring it home by dinnertime.
There was a coffee container with my name on it in the beverage holder. I tasted it. It was hot, three sugars, just the way I like it.
“You’re a good pal,” I said to Conklin.
“None better,” he said, cracking his famously great grin.
I gave his arm a little shove, and then, as I strapped in, Rich set course for Ingleside, six miles away.
Our task force had a dedicated radio channel, and one after the other, the three squad cars in our team checked in with their current locations. One team was from Narcotics, another from Robbery, one from Vice. Conklin and I knew these cops and had worked with them all.
As my partner drove us south on Route 1, we talked over our assignment in shorthand snippets. We were facing something that might turn out to be as easy as calling your dog, or it could be a hellacious firefight. DHS said that shutting down this cell had to be done.
By the time we got to Ingleside, we had our firefight faces on and were ready to do whatever it took to end this clear and present danger.
CHAPTER 19
FOR MOST OF my life Ingleside had been a drivethrough working- and middle-class community on the way to the beach. Now, like the rest of San Francisco, it was gentrifying above the middle-class ability to buy.
At five thirty a.m., streetlights lit Ocean Avenue, the main artery of the business district, which had light-rail tracks down the center of the road. There was very little traffic, and no cars at all in the parking lot behind Bank of America.
We pulled in, and the SFPD squad cars arrived right behind us. Car doors opened and thunked closed, and we greeted one another, gathered around the hood of Conklin’s Bronco, where we discussed our briefing. Namely, that the video purportedly produced and disseminated by GAR had been tracked to a group or cell of four young men living here in Ingleside, not far from the SFSU campus.