"Hey, I'm little, but I'm tough." She bent her arm, flexing her biceps. "In this case, however, the ball bounced to you first, and these jerks contacted you personally. I'll give way here." As if to symbolize it, she gestured Eve onto the glide ahead of her, then winked at Feeney and hopped on.
"I've got some of my top people on site," she continued. "I juggled the budget to work them round the clock, but it won't shake loose for that kind of OT in the lab. IDing and tracing these parts and pieces after a major explosion takes time. It takes manpower. It takes some hot fucking luck."
"We coordinate what you find with what my team comes up with at Fixer's, we might find some of that luck," Feeney said. "We could get even luckier, and I'll find names, dates, and addresses on his hard drive."
"I'll take luck, but I'm not going to count on it." Eve tucked her hands in her pockets. "If this is a well-funded, organized group, Fixer wouldn't have joined, but he wouldn't have run, either. Not as long as they were paying. He ran because he was scared. I'm going to tag Ratso again, see if he left anything out. What does Arlington mean to you, Feeney?"
He started to shrug, but Anne shot her hand between them, grabbed Eve's arm. "Arlington? Where does that play?"
"Fixer told my weasel he was afraid of another Arlington." She stared into Anne's troubled eyes. "Mean something to you?"
"Yeah, Christ, yeah. And to any E and B man. September 25, 2023. The Urban Wars were basically over. There was a radical group, terrorists—assassinations, sabotage, explosives. They'd kill anyone for a price and justified it as revolution. They called themselves Apollo."
"Oh shit," Feeney breathed when the name hit home. "Holy Mother of God."
"What?" Frustrated, Eve gave Anne a quick shake. "History's not my strong suit. Give me a lesson here."
"They're the ones who took responsibility for blowing up the Pentagon. Arlington, Virginia. They used what was then a new material known as plaston. They used it in such amounts and in such areas that the building was essentially vaporized.
"Eight thousand people, military and civilian personnel, including children in the care center. There were no survivors."
*** CHAPTER SEVEN ***
In Peabody's apartment, Zeke cleaned and repaired the recycler and replayed the 'link conversation with Clarissa Branson on the kitchen unit.
The first time he played it back, he told himself he was just making sure of the details, of what time he was to report to work, the address.
The second time he played it, he convinced himself he'd missed something vital in the instructions.
By the third time, the parts of the recycler lay neglected while he stared at the screen and let her soft voice wash over him.
I'm sure we have everything you need in the way of tools. She smiled a little as she spoke and made his heart beat just a little faster. But you've only to ask if there's anything else you want.
It shamed him that what he wanted was her.
Before he could give in and replay the transmission one more time, he ordered the 'link off. Color rose into his cheeks as he thought of his own foolishness, his own dishonor in coveting another man's wife.
She'd hired him to do a job, he reminded himself. That was all there was between them. All there ever could be. She was a married woman, as removed from him as the moon, and had never done anything to encourage these yearnings in him.
But as he rebuilt the recycler with the energy of the guilty, he thought of her.
• • •
"How much more can you tell me?" Eve asked.
Rather than squeeze into her office, she'd set them up in a conference room. Already, she had Peabody setting up crime scene photos and available data on a board. Right now, the board was very thin.
"Arlington's something anyone who wants into E and B studies." Anne sipped the stale black coffee the room's AutoChef offered. "The group had to have recruited inside people, probably both military and civilian. An instillation like the Pentagon just isn't easily infiltrated, and during that period, security was very tight. The operation was very slick," she continued. "The investigation indicated that a trio of explosive devices loaded with plaston were placed in all five sides, more in the underground facilities."
Restless, she rose, glancing at the board as she paced. "At least one of the terrorists must have had high clearance in order to set the bombs underground. There was no warning, no contact demanding terms. The entire facility went up at eleven hundred hours, detonated by timers. Thousands of people were lost. It wasn't possible to identify all the victims. There wasn't enough left of them."
"What do we know about Apollo?" Eve asked her.
"They took credit for the bombing. Boasted that they could do the same again, anywhere, at any time. And would unless the president resigned and their chosen representative was established as leader of what they called their new order."
"James Rowan," Feeney put in. "There's a dossier on him, but I don't think there's much data. Paramilitary type, right, Malloy? Former CIA operative with ambitions toward politics and lots of bucks. They figured him for the head guy, and likely the inside man at the Pentagon. But somebody took him out before it was verified."
"That's right. It's assumed he was head of the group; that he was pushing the buttons. After Arlington, he went public with video transmissions and on-air speeches. He was charismat