TOE POPPER

A Novel By

Jonny Tangerine

Copyright © 2009  All rights reserved.

Indirect tactics, efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as Heaven and Earth, unending as the flow of rivers and streams; like the sun and moon, they end but to begin anew; like the four seasons, they pass away to return once more.

-- Sun Tzu, The Art of War

In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people.

-- Theodore Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future

TOE POPPER. 1

ZUMA BEACH, MALIBU -- MONDAY -- 7:00 AM.. 5

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA -- 6:00 AM.. 7

ZUMA BEACH, MALIBU – 7:09 AM.. 9

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA -- 6:09 AM.. 11

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES -- 8:00 AM.. 13

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA -- 6:13 A.M. 15

COSTA MESA, CA – MONDAY – 9:55 A.M. 17

BEACH BOMBS KILL THREE IN MALIBU. 18

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA – 6:55 A.M. 20

PIER “F” -- LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA -- 2:00 A.M. 23

UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 8026. 24

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY, HOLLYWOOD – 1:01 A.M. 27

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY, MALIBU – 1:01 A.M. 28

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY, HOLLYWOOD – 1:31 A.M. 30

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY, MALIBU – 1:31 A.M. 31

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY, HOLLYWOOD – 2:31 A.M. 33

LE HOTEL SOFITEL, LOS ANGELES – 6:00 A.M. 36

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD – 11:05 A.M. 37

WESTWOOD BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES – 11:35 A.M. 39

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD – 12:05 P.M. 41

TASK FORCE CONFERENCE ROOM – 2:07 P.M. 42

TONLE SAP RESTAURANT – SANTA ANA, CA – 2:05 PM.. 46

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD – 4:30 P.M. 48

RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE. 51

YORBA LINDA, CA – 4:01 P.M. 51

HOTEL SOFITEL – 5:05 P.M. 53

RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE – 4:45 P.M. 56

THE BEVERLY CENTER – 5:30 P.M. 57

WOODLAND HILLS, CA – 6:05 P.M. 59

RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE – 6:45 P.M. 61

BEVERLY CENTER – 7:09 P.M. 63

RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE – 11:59 P.M. 64

FATBURGER – 1:01 A.M. 69

NEWPORT BEACH – 4:04 AM.. 73

WOODLAND HILLS – 6:00 A.M. 75

HOTEL SOFITEL – 7:18 A.M. 77

WILL ROGERS STATE BEACH – 6:17  A.M. 80

HIGHWAY 1 – 9:30 AM.. 85

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY – 10:01 AM.. 88

EL SEGUNDO – 10:01 AM.. 89

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY - 10:02 AM.. 90

ZUMA BEACH 10:15 AM.. 93

NIXON LIBRARY – 10:05 AM.. 94

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY -11:10 AM.. 95

NIXON LIBRARY - 12:35 PM.. 97

INTERSTATE HIGHWAY NUMBER 5 – 4:49 PM.. 103

TONLE SAP RESTAURANT – 5:19 P.M. 104

FORD EXPLORER – HAPPY HOUR. 105

COMMERCE CASINO – 9:07 P.M. 107

NEWPORT BEACH – 9:07 P.M. 110

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY – 9:07 PM.. 112

COMMERCE CASINO – 10:55 P.M. 114

11000 WILSHIRE BLVD. – 11:00 P.M. 117

ANAHEIM, CA - MIDNIGHT. 119

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD - 11:30 P.M. 121

COMMERCE CASINO PARKING LOT – 1:00 A.M. 123

FONTANA GREASE SERVICE TRUCK – 2:05 A.M. 124

HOTEL SOFITEL – 3:03 A.M. 126

FORD CROWN VICTORIA  - 3:29 A.M. 127

WILL ROGERS STATE BEACH – 5:05 am.. 131

WEST COVINA, CA – 5:27 AM.. 132

VENICE BEACH – 8:57 AM.. 134

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY 9:15 A.M. 135

USC MEDICAL CENTER – 6:00 P.M. 137

LEXUS COACH EDITION – 6:30 P.M. 139

THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY, WOODLAND HILLS – 7:44 PM.. 142

NORWALK – 7:54 P.M. 144

CHEESECAKE FACTORY –8:05 P.M. 146

MERCEDES – 10:05 P.M. 151

WOODLAND HILLS – 10:15 P.M. 152

WOODLAND HILLS – 11:15 P.M. 155

WOODLAND HILLS – 11:30 P.M. 156

WOODLAND HILLS – 11:30 P.M. 157

WOODLAND HILLS – 6:59 A.M. 159

NEWPORT BEACH – 9:35 A.M. 162

MERCEDES – 9:37 A.M. 163

LEXUS – 9:37 A.M. 165

WOODLAND HILLS – 10:05 A.M. 166

COSTA MESA – 10:00 A.M. 167

NEWPORT BEACH – 11:00 A.M. 170

LEXUS – 11:00 A.M. 171

CATHERINE’S BACKYARD – 11:55 A.M. 172

JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT – 12:15 P.M. 173

405 NORTH – 12:45 P.M. 174

DASSAULT FALCON  900EX. 175

HOTEL SOFITEL – 2:01 P.M. 176

WOODLAND HILLS – 3:00 P.M. 177

ELYSIAN PARK – JULY FOURTH – 10:22 AM.. 180

KANEOHE MARINE CORPS AIR STATION, OAHU, HAWAII 183

ZUMA BEACH, MALIBU -- MONDAY -- 7:00 AM

Sam the Beach Farmer was an urban legend in Southern California -- the beachcomber with a metal detector who made his living off of loose change, lost wedding bands, and forgotten watches.  He had once been a fifth generation hay and bean farmer in South Dakota who dreamed incessantly of early retirement in a warmer climate.  Droughts, cut worms, pesticide burn, floods, October ice storms and sandy soil had always conspired to keep the dream just out of reach.  But on February 27th, 1988, the night after his fifty-fifth birthday, things finally changed.  His wife left him and moved to Key West with the owner of the local Buick dealership.  Before the ground had a chance to thaw, Sam signed his frozen farm over to the bank and packed up his pick-up shell.  Thoughtfully, his wife had left behind the Hills Brothers Coffee can that contained their life savings.  Sam headed for retirement on the West Coast with a nest egg of $374 and a rusty half-ton truckload of faith.

After three long days on the road, Sam arrived in California and drove straight through Los Angeles to the beach at Santa Monica.  As soon as he leapt out of his truck and heard the percussion of Pacific waves, he knew he had finally found the place his soul had always thirsted for.  He ran out across the sand and stripped down to his shorts.  Without pausing, he stormed into the chilly surf and tasted salt water for the first time in his life.

When Sam returned to his truck, he realized that somewhere out on that vast stretch of coastal desert, he had lost his keys.   Being the self-reliant, practical man that he was, and never having heard of triple-A, Sam walked two miles to a sporting goods store and purchased the right tool for the job – his first metal detector.

On his very first day he found nine quarters, three dimes, seven nickels, a mechanical pencil, and six sets of car keys, including, of course, his own.  Sam had also stumbled upon…his destiny.  Conditioned as he was by a lifetime of farming, the beachcombing work provided the perfect outlet for some his strongest habits and interests: independent outdoor work, constant scrutiny of weather reports, walking in perfectly straight rows, yield forecasting, and making a living where others saw only impossibly hard work.  He had charts for the tides, a system for figuring out the movement of crowds, special event calendars, and even statistics on which beaches had the most careless patrons.

Today, Sam paced his measured steps across the furrows of Zuma.  A combination pro volleyball tournament and Bonita Beach Balm bikini pageant had drawn over four thousand spectators yesterday.   The event had been co-sponsored by Babylon Beer.  If absent-minded beach goers were the seeds, alcohol was the fertilizer.   This morning’s harvest had great potential.

Bridget snapped open the kryptonite padlock that secured the door of her lifeguard tower.  She had already biked twenty-six miles this morning.  For a tri-athlete training for the Iron Man, it was barely a warm-up.  If she felt any fatigue, it was mental.  She had rescued three swimmers during yesterday’s Bonita Girl madness.  Two drunk and panicked city college students in a rip current, and one seven year old girl who had been knocked unconscious by a reckless boogie boarder.  She could feel the blistering heat of yesterday still radiating up from the sand.  It promised another long and chaotic day.  She clicked on the Motorola two-way and stepped out onto the deck.  She spied Sam in front of her tower and waved.

“Morning, Sam!”

Sam smiled and waved back, the knock-off Rolex Submariner he had found two years ago sparkled in the sun.  When his route intersected the tower, he would stop and chat.  Bridget had been a lifeguard for over three years and they were old friends.  They liked to joke about who had the cushier job.

Sam turned back to the task at hand, stepping forward exactly thirty-six inches while simultaneously sweeping his detector paddle over the sand in a perfect 120-degree arc.  A tone sounded in his headphones.  Faint, indicating, perhaps, a dime.  Sam used a sifting scoop that he had designed and constructed himself.  It consisted of a stainless steel silverware holder from a commercial dishwasher, filed down sharp around the top lip, and a brass window handle that he had welded to the side.  He leaned over and thrust it into the spot that had generated the tone.  Approximately two cups of sand drained quickly out of the bottom like a broken hourglass; revealing…a Babylon Beer bottle cap.  Sam shook his head slightly and dropped the cap into the no-value pouch on his belt.  He kept the false positives so that he wouldn’t waste energy on them again.  He took a second step and immediately heard a new tone – louder, slightly urgent.  His face brightened.  Sam leaned over and thrust the sifter into – A BLINDING EXPLOSION.

“Sam!”

Bridget vaulted from her tower and sprinted toward the shrapneled horror.  Seven steps from her friend a second CRIPPLING BLAST tossed her into the air like a puppet.

She lay shredded, but still conscious.  She looked down and saw that most of her left leg was missing.  She recognized her posterior cruciate ligament dangling from the end of her femur.  The Motorola, a link to instant help, lay beside her, but she found she could not make her arms move.  As Bridget felt herself sliding quickly into a dark pool of frigid shock, her radio came to life with the cheerful voice of the morning dispatcher.

“Happy Memorial Day, campers!  Weatherman says we could see triple digits again today, so stay on your toes – we’re expecting record crowds…”

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA -- 6:00 AM

Major Joel Lane, U.S. Army Special Forces Advisor assigned to the U.N. Mine Education Project, coughed himself awake.  He felt the familiar lead-weighted headache that accompanied all of his mornings now that he was a regular user.  He had left his oil lamp burning all night, and the smoke from that, coupled with the sticky residue of burned opium, created a thick batch of phlegm in his throat.  He enjoyed the lamp though, it helped keep the bugs away, and the glow was a comforting beacon when he slipped out of his spectacular dreams.

This morning, in his last dream, Lane had been visited by the familiar image of his dead fiancée, Aimee.  In the dream, he and Aimee were swinging together in a small town park. The grass was a vivid carpet of technicolor green, and the swing set poles striped red and white like fairytale candy canes.  They were totally absorbed in a competition to see who could swing higher, laughing and pumping, thrilled by the intense lower tickle created by every pass.  Aimee leaned her head back, Joel copied her and the tickle traveled down his inverted body into his scalp.  It turned suddenly cold and their giggles were instantly transformed into puffs of white steam.  They kept swinging, higher and higher, chasing their happy clouds into the cerulean sky that raced by above.

Many who knew of Major Lane’s growing addiction assumed it was a response to haunting images of his lover’s death.  But it wasn’t that.  She did appear often in his dreams, but it was always soothing and pleasant.  She didn’t make him feel sad because he couldn’t tell anymore if he was seeing true memories of her or only dreams of dreams.

The real image that the drug protected him from was something he never talked about, but was always ready to spring onto his brainscreen: the elephant.  On the day after the transitional U.N. peacekeeping force pulled out, he was drinking with a group of fellow Advisors from New Zealand in a small outdoor bar on the outskirts of Paillin.  They were celebrating the culmination of what everyone knew was a fragile and probably self-deluding peace agreement.  They felt the shockwave of the explosion in the ground a split second after they heard it.  They all knew immediately that it hadn’t been an ordinary Type 72 or POMZ stake mine.  They jumped into their blue and white Rover and drove cautiously to the scene.  It had happened only a few hundred yards away on a narrow path that branched off the main dirt road – a logging trail that had been marked as mined by the U.N., but was bizarrely, and typically, still used.  A thirty-one year old working elephant had encountered an anti-tank mine.  When they arrived, the elephant was slumped forward in a vermilion pool of blood.  The mine had sheared off both front legs and severed three feet off his trunk.  Miraculously, his driver, his mahout, was barely nicked.  His lifelong companion had absorbed all of the blast.  The mahout crouched beside his giant friend, crying, trying to comfort him as he wheezed out his last breaths.  The elephant opened his eyes and stared at Major Joel Lane.  On this day, it was as if Joel could both hear and fully comprehend the low frequency language of the elephants.  He was sent a message, a question, a vibration that penetrated through every bone in his skeleton:  What have you done, human, with my world?

Joel Lane didn’t sleep for three days.  On the fourth day, one of the Kiwi’s brought him a pipe.  It had been intended as a temporary solution.  In Cambodia, he was certainly not the only victim of the unforeseen consequences of temporary solutions.

He heard shouting outside his bungalow.  Lieutenant Atiur Rahman, his Bangladeshi aide, knocked furiously on the flimsy door.

“Major Lane.  Major Lane!  There is bacca in E-4.  Bacca in E-4!”

The U.N. had attempted to create, via a grid system, a typical Western quadratic order for their environment.  It helped maintain the illusion of control.  “Bacca in E-4” meant simply that there was, for some reason, a baby in an uncleared minefield.

Major Lane grabbed his shoulder holster off the chair and blew out the oil lamp.  It was time to start the day.

ZUMA BEACH, MALIBU – 7:09 AM

The first emergency personnel to respond to the report of an explosion were California Highway Patrol Officers Matt Dolan and Mark Park.  A morning rollerblader had heard the first explosion and seen the second.  He had bladed down the Strand, the concrete sidewalk that ran the length of the beach, to a payphone and called 911.  The CHP officers were only a minute away on the Pacific Coast Highway, nearing the end of their twelve to eight shift.

Officer Park pulled their Mustang Interceptor into the parking lot behind Tower Five.  Officer Dolan, a ten-year veteran, still considered his Korean American partner a rookie even though he had two years of service in.  A large part of being a Highway Patrolman was developing your armor, a thick emotional skin built up by seeing horror after horror on the road.  In Officer Dolan’s mind, Park spent too much time on speed citation patrols.  His armor still seemed paper-thin.

They jogged across the sand in the direction of what were obviously twisted bodies.  Officer Dolan arrived first and knelt beside Bridget.  He suspected, even before he felt for a pulse.  She had the unmistakable color of a body that had, in police parlance,  “bled out.”

Officer Park peered down at Sam.

“Jesus.  What happened to this guy’s head?”

Officer Dolan was a Military Police reservist, and a veteran of Desert Storm.  In the first Gulf War, 30% of all allied casualties had been caused by landmines or, in Army slang, toe poppers.  There had been a training video.  Looking over at the condition of Sam the Beach Farmer, Officer Dolan felt a creeping recognition.

“I’m getting a weird feeling here, partner.”

The abandoned Motorola crackled.

“Tower Five.  Tower Five.  Bridget are you there?  Talk to me Tower Five.”

Officer Park turned his head away from the gruesome scene.  A shiny object caught his eye.  He was automatically attracted, and took a step towards it.

“Man, I think the guy’s watch is all the way over here.”

“Park, I don’t think you should be walking around too much…”

A blue flashing light was coming down the surf line.  The dispatcher had sent a lifeguard unit to investigate.  Officer Dolan reached for the Motorola.  He was going to call them off, just in case.

“Mark, seriously…”

Officer Park’s third step brought his weight down on the pressure plate of a four- layer cake of death.  Stacking mines was a tactic invented by the Chinese, the original creators of explosives.  It was a simple, but devastating extension of a basic idea.  Every minefield should have a finale.  There was a THUNDEROUS FLASH.  And Officer Park disappeared into a pink mist that slowly drifted inland.

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA -- 6:09 AM

Major Lane and Lieutenant Rahman arrived and found a small crowd gathered against the two-string barbwired fence that formed the border of E-4.  The fence enclosed a fallow field that had been long overgrown with four-foot savannah grass.  A crude, hand-lettered sign hanging from the top wire displayed a skull and cross-bones and read:  DANGER:  AREA HEAVENLY MINED.  Like the English menus in Phnom Penh that offered “Chow Man Noodle” and “Chicken Flied Stake”, it contained an element of subtle comic truth.

Two uniformed police officers conversed with a distraught woman who was obviously the missing child’s mother.  The crowd parted expectantly for Major Lane.  Joel took a moment to remind himself that he was treated as an authority only because he had access to the most resources.  It was easy to be seduced by such easily earned deference into doing incredibly stupid things.  The two young policemen, Lane guessed they were both barely nineteen, eyed him suspiciously.  Lieutenant Rahman, who had a far greater command of the Khmer language, began asking questions.

Major Lane immediately focused in on a man standing uneasily beside the mother, tensely staring at the ground.  He was the only person not looking over the fence into the field.  Lieutenant Rahman gave a report of facts of the situation as they were explained to him.  An eight-month old girl had been missing since last night.  Her father, the man looking at the ground, had, while searching for her, heard her crying out from behind the fence.  Someone in the village had summoned the police.  No one knew how the eight-month old baby had managed to crawl five hundred yards away from home in the middle of the night.  It was estimated, because she could not be seen, that she now lay hidden in the tall grass approximately twenty yards from the perimeter.

Major Lane quickly realized that what he was seeing was the result of a domestic dispute.  After twenty-six years of armed conflict, the estimate of uncleared landmines in Cambodia stood at eight million.  This meant that there was about one mine for every member of the country’s total population.  This massive availability combined with the Khmer cultural value of avoiding direct conflict made the mine the Saturday Night Special of Cambodia.  For example, disagreements in bars rarely ended in fights.  It was much more acceptable to withdraw and, later, sneak outside and place a two-dollar fragmentation disk under the tire of an antagonist’s moped.  Joel suspected that the husband was getting back at the mother for some petty grievance, most likely involving money for alcohol or opium.  In Khmer families, the women usually controlled the finances.  Judging from the fear and guilt washing over the father’s face, Lane was almost certain that the father had been denied a late-night request for entertainment funds and had retaliated by carrying the child into the minefield.

Now, in the clear-headed light of day, he obviously regretted his actions.  But there was nothing to be gained by either the mother or the father admitting the horrible truth in front of the police and neighbors.  After five years of trying to get things done in Asia, Lane knew that the most effective solution to this situation would most likely not involve exposing the truth.

Someone in the crowd suggested a helicopter.  Joel shook his head.  There were no helicopters, plus the pressure of rotor wash could actually increase the chance of detonating something.  A fire engine with a hook and ladder rig might help, but there were none of those in this province.  The crowd seemed to be getting restless, the policemen exchanged wary looks.

“Snakes,” someone said.

It was true, there was always that risk as well.  During U.N. orientations the pictures of indigenous spitting cobras and the equally deadly green Hanuman snake seemed to frighten people much more than his pictures of little plastic mines.

There was a palpable desire for someone to do something heroic, tempered somewhat, Joel felt, by the sight of several amputees in the crowd.  One in every two hundred and fifty Cambodians had lost a limb to the “eternal sentinels.”  In Battambang, the ratio was even worse.  And it was possible that this very field was responsible for the spectators’ wounds.

Major Lane liked to say that the only useful thing he ever learned at West Point was how to play poker.  Later, while working as an instructor at the School of Americas in Fort Benning, he had become an expert at the most sophisticated type of poker – Texas Hold ‘Em.  In this game, each player is dealt two cards face down and must make a hand using five community cards (used by all the players) which are turned over in three separate stages.  The first skill required for becoming a dominant Hold ‘Em player was knowing, at all times, the odds for every possible hand that could beat you, and balancing these against the odds of cards appearing that would help your own hand.  It took enormous concentration to remain focused on these calculations in the midst of all the peripheral banter and posturing that accompanied most poker tables.

Ignoring the increasing buzz of the restless crowd, Major Lane assessed the odds of the various options available to him and decided to fall back on the second skill possessed by all successful Hold ‘Em players – knowing when to bluff.

Major Lane drew his Beretta and chambered a nine-millimeter round.  He pointed the pistol into the face of the father and, using his best Khmer grammar, said, quietly, “Go get your daughter.”

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES -- 8:00 AM

Catherine Mills, Special Agent in Charge of the Southern California Field Office of the FBI, slept soundly on the carpeted floor of her executive suite. She was using the 818 edition of The Pacific Bell Smart Yellow Pages as a pillow, and a petite puddle of drool had gathered on the cover, distorting a full color picture of the Rose Bowl.  She had planned to stay late the previous night to read over deposition transcripts for an upcoming double-murder/kidnapping trial.  After glancing at her watch, and seeing that it had somehow become five in the morning, she had decided to skip the commute home.  The concept of enjoying three-day weekends was long absent from Catherine’s life.  But then so were a lot of other basic pleasures.

The console phone on her desk chirped her rudely awake.  Catherine opened her emerald eyes and immediately looked at her indiglo watch.  She’d left explicit instructions with Alan, the junior agent in charge of guarding her phone line (who was getting double time for working on a holiday), not to let a single call in before nine.  She couldn’t believe her phone was ringing.  She had set the bar for what constituted an emergency aggressively high.

The voice on the other end belonged to Assistant Los Angeles County Sheriff Avery Ataturk.  She listened carefully before responding.

“Avery,” she said, “I don’t want to hear you use the word landmine again.  Make it clear to your people down there.  This is not a landmine story.  Listen to these words: unknown explosive devices – possibly pipe bombs.  For now, this is a pipe bomb story.  Close the beach and keep everybody off, especially the bomb squad.  I’ll have a tactical team there in thirty-five minutes.  We have a procedure for this scenario.”

She knew about the procedure because she had helped create it for the Atlanta Olympics.  She also knew there was an updated version for airports. She cradled the phone and hit the intercom button.

“Alan, this is Catherine.  I need you to activate a full CIRG team, beep everybody, I don’t care where they are.  Then call Washington and scramble a Rapid Start Squad, we’re going to need a database set-up.  Then call LAX and see if they have any K-9 explosive units working today.  If they do, roll them towards Malibu.  After that I’m going to need you to find a scenario binder, it should be with the External Threat stuff.  And quick, LACSD is sending a helicopter for me in fifteen minutes.”

Alan’s voice was instantly charged with adrenaline.  “You got it.  One thing though, what’s the name of the scenario I’m looking for?”

“It’s a code name, hold on, I’m thinking…” Catherine closed her eyes to concentrate.  She could already feel that two and a half-hours of sleep was going to be a shaky foundation for the day ahead.  It came to her.  She opened her eyes.

“Toe Popper,” she said.

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA -- 6:13 A.M.

Keeping his gun trained steadily between the tortured eyes of the father, Major Lane lifted the top wire of the fence.  Lieutenant Rahman, philosophically a pacifist, stared at him in mute horror.

The callow policemen moved their right hands in tandem to rest on the butts of their forty-five’s.  As a “big nose”, Major Lane was usually allowed a certain amount of barbaric behavior.  He was counting on this fact to delay any deadly action by the police or other locals long enough for them to reflect on all the facets of his solution.  First, he felt he was offering the best chance of getting the baby girl back safely.  Hopefully the father remembered his original route in, which had proven, at least in the dark, to be safe.  Also, if the father had planted anything out there, only he would know how to avoid it.  Second, by brutally forcing him into action, Lane felt he was creating the opportunity for the father to be a hero while simultaneously protecting him from the face-losing truth.  Third, considering all the circumstances, Lane felt his solution was exceedingly expeditious and just.

Lane figured his biggest risks were either a violent reaction by the upstaged police, or something bad going down out in the minefield.  He felt the odds were pretty good that the police would feel relieved by him seizing the burden of responsibility for the crisis.  And he was also banking on the fact that most minefields were mapped precautiously wide, providing a chance that the child wasn’t even in danger.  Thinking back on it later, Major Lane realized that it had ultimately been the expression of the mother that had determined the initial outcome.  The police, the crowd and the father had all been watching her.  They accepted Lane’s action only after they had seen that she, however horrible, had approved of it.

Without a word of protest, the father ducked under the raised wire and stepped into the tall grass.  The crowd was completely still.  As if on cue, the baby, concealed, began to cry.

The tension grew as the crowd watched the father’s progress, his head barely visible above the tops of the grass blades.  Major Lane holstered his weapon and smiled at the policemen, but his kind gesture was left unreturned.  The crying continued in small bursts.

The father’s head disappeared and the crying stopped.  He had found her.  The hum of locusts filled the new silence.  The crowd took a collective breath, and then waited for each footfall as father and daughter began the trip back to the wire.  The father walked slowly, carefully placing one foot at a time.  Halfway, he paused.  Major Lane could just see the top of the father’s face as it contorted in a spasm of silent pain.  Lane felt a sudden twinge of panic: had he felt a tripwire?  A pressure plate?  After a second, the father, composure restored, continued on.

He emerged from the dense field and held the perfectly healthy baby before him.  He passed her over the wire to the urgent outstretched arms of his wife.  Lane lifted the wire for him again.  He ducked beneath it and immediately collapsed in the dirt.

Lieutenant Rahman knelt beside the man and quickly found the two dots of blood on his ankle.

“Cobra, King Cobra.” He said.

Major Lane was dismayed.  He had forgotten to figure in one of the most important factors of all – karma.   There was now a whole new set of odds that made up the overall chance of the man living another day.  Every minute that passed before he received treatment counted against him.  It would take about seven minutes to get him back to their compound, five minutes to prepare the anti-venom.  An acceptable amount of time, but even then there was no guarantee it would work.  And there was always a chance that they had misidentified the reptile involved.  Most snake bite procedures advised killing the snake or at least getting close enough to it to make a positive identification.  Injecting someone with the wrong side-effect laden anti-venom could produce fatal complications.  But Major Lane knew there was absolutely no chance, no matter whom he pointed his pistol at, that anyone was going to venture into a minefield in search of an angry cobra.

His thoughts were interrupted by the thumping cadence of a helicopter.  A late model camouflaged Jet Ranger with temporary U.N. markings flashed directly overhead, heading in the direction of their compound.  So he had been wrong about that too.  He looked down at Lieutenant Rahman.

“Well, let’s go see if we can get our friend a ride to a real hospital.”

COSTA MESA, CA – MONDAY – 9:55 A.M.

Ballet is difficult with a prosthesis, excruciating, but Dominique could still get en pointe.  In the mirror, her face betrayed nothing, but hiding pain was not a unique skill for those raised by the Khmer Rouge.

As he watched his thirteen-year-old daughter bring her hands up to form a near-perfect couronne, Huay planned his day.  Dominique had said she’d wanted to stop at South Coast Plaza on the way home, something about wool tights.  That was fine, it would give him a chance to pick up a couple pounds of Kenyan from Starbucks.  It wasn’t as good as the coffee in Paris (the European buyers still acquired the best of the harvest) but it was drinkable and he knew they were running low at the office.  After that they would stop at the BP on Newport Boulevard and vacuum the sand out of the Mercedes.  It was a silly precaution – what car in Southern California didn’t have beach sand in it?  But Huay was convinced that his habit of being insanely careful was one of the only things that explained his improbable survival and prosperity.

He’d been surprised on the way to the dance studio when he heard the first news report on the traffic-and-weather-together station. He had figured it would take longer for someone to discover his mines.  It ultimately didn’t matter, the law enforcement casualty had been the desired result.  The next step was to just sit back and wait for the funeral announcement to name his next target.

The teacher clapped her hands and the class was over.  The pixies relaxed and turned back into humans who reached out for towels and bottled water.  Dominique was the only one who stayed at the barre for a few last repetitions.

Huay smiled to himself, the ruthless discipline was inherited.  The patrolman’s funeral would be well attended by both police and press.  And certainly, with the help of Huay’s new mines, televised nationally.

BEACH BOMBS KILL THREE IN MALIBU

By Andrei Goodman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Three people, including a California Highway Patrol Officer, were killed Monday by a series of powerful early morning explosions at Zuma Beach, police said.

According to a senior Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department official, the CHP officer was aiding the victims of two previous explosions when a third device detonated.  The slain officer’s partner was also seriously injured in the blast.

Witnesses said one of the fatalities was a female lifeguard. The incident occurred approximately thirty yards away from a lifeguard tower that would have been manned at the time of the explosions. Authorities were not releasing information on any of the victims pending the notification of relatives.

One official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said preliminary reports indicated that pipe bombs might have been responsible for the victims’ deaths.

Responding to these reports, Assistant L. A. County Sheriff Avery Attaturk said, “I have heard that as well, but at this time the FBI is investigating and it would be premature to speculate on the cause of these explosions.”

A massive police presence sealed off access to the beach for approximately a mile in each direction as a FBI special tactics team searched the area with bomb-sniffing dogs.

“News helicopters were ordered away from the airspace to avoid distracting the K-9 units from their highly delicate and critical work,” said Special Agent Catherine Mills, an FBI spokesperson.

Witnesses reported that the bodies were not removed from the scene until after the FBI team searched the area with metal detectors and K-9 units.

“Our investigation of this tragedy is continuing.  It is too early to say what caused these explosions, or even if this was the result of a terrorist action,” the FBI spokesperson said, reading from a prepared statement.

There were no reports of any person or terrorist group issuing a prior warning or subsequently claiming responsibility for the bombing.

“We are right now in the process of setting up an investigative task force.  Anyone out there with any information about the perpetrators of this crime should contact us or their local FBI office immediately,” a law enforcement official told Reuters.

The explosions occurred only hours before the area would have been packed with Memorial Day beach goers seeking respite from the heat wave that brought a fifth consecutive day of hundred degree temperatures to the Southland.

“If this had happened a few hours later, the carnage would have been incredibly worse.” An unidentified lifeguard at the scene said.  “With this being a holiday and all, there could have been thousands of people laying out there.”

Due to the emergency operations, traffic on Pacific Coast Highway was stopped for several hours.  At times, back-ups stretched out over ten miles in each direction, area radio stations reported.

“You had a million people trying to get out to the beach today, and a million people trying to get into the city.  There were police everywhere, but none of them were doing anything to help or giving out any helpful information whatsoever.  Plus with the heat, it was just a real cluster funk out there,” said a Malibu resident who experienced the gridlock.

BATTAMBANG PROVINCE, CAMBODIA – 6:55 A.M.

The surprise visitor turned out to be Special Agent Moses Williamson of the Bangkok Field Office.  He was waiting for them by the helicopter, which despite the flimsy U.N. patches, obviously belonged to the Thai Military.  As Lieutenant Rahman dealt with their patient, Nuon (they’d finally found out his name), Joel met with the FBI.

Agent Williamson was the kind of expatriate that carried an impenetrable sphere of American confidence and culture with him wherever he went.  He instantly reminded Joel of the Oklahoma running back who had become a U.S. Congressman.  If there was a place to watch the NBA pre-season in Myanmar this guy would find it, effortlessly.  He crushed Lane's knuckles together and handed him a fax.

“You’re a hard guy to get a hold of.  I hope you can pack quick, we’re taking you back to Bangkok with us.  You’re on an eight-thirty United flight to L.A.  It’s faster than anything military, but they won’t delay it more than twenty minutes for us.”

“The power is pretty erratic around here so we only turn on the phone once a day unless we have to call out.”  Lane said.

Agent Williamson looked at him incredulously and pointed to a brickish cell phone attached to his belt.  “Iridium, man.  You can leave it on for a week and still have twenty hours of talk time anywhere in the world.”

Major Lane read over the fax.  “I guess I don’t usually have that much to say.”  The fax was an order signed by a Colonel at the Special Forces Command whom he recognized, but had never met.  Major Joel Lane had been reassigned to an FBI task force in Los Angeles, effective immediately.

“Is this all the information you have for me?”  Lane asked.

Agent Williamson handed him a large manila envelope.  “This is the rest of your fax, your boarding pass, and even an aircraft sidearm permit.”

“What about customs in Bangkok?”

“Forty says we don’t even have to deal with it.”

“Who’s Forty?”  Lane asked.

“You don’t know WD?  WD-40, Wayne Diamond, our Liaison Officer?  I thought everybody knew him.  We all call him WD-40 because he knows exactly where to apply the grease over here.  He’s got it all wired.  You can forget about customs.”

“I need to take the snake bite case with us, do you have a hospital connection?”

Williamson visibly winced.  “Oh come on, a Cambodian national?  That creates a lot of problems.”

Major Lane searched his brain for just the right motivational phrase.  “Agent, that man is a hero, while he was rescuing a baby from a minefield this morning a fucking cobra bit him and he didn’t even flinch.  We need him on our team, I can’t lose him now.  What are we doing over here if we can’t even extend a little effort to save the heroes?”

“Alright, shit.  We can probably put him in the Seventh Day Adventist Clinic.  Just make sure he’s ready to go like now.”  Williamson said and began pushing the buttons of his magical phone.

Major Lane went into his bungalow to pack.  The very first thing he thought of was his opium supply.  He tried to ignore it.  Perhaps, he thought, this was just the opportunity he needed to rid himself of his growing habit.  He put it out of his mind, but on his way out the last thing he grabbed was a NATO first aid field kit that he knew contained several hits of synthetic morphine.

Major Lane sat in the back of the Jet Ranger.  Nuon snored softly in the seat beside him, passed-out against the far window.  Lieutenant Rahman had shot him up with muscle relaxants to minimize the impact of the anti-venom.  Lane opened the large manila envelope and pulled out the second part of his fax.

The first page was a list of names, his was circled and appeared near the top.  Ever since he had trained agents at Fort Benning for the Atlanta games, the FBI had considered him their landmine expert.  He flipped to the next page and found a classified incident report.  It described, in flat clinical detail, the deaths and ordinance involved at Zuma Beach.  It also revealed that the FBI had de-fused three additional M16A2 anti-personnel mines found at the scene.  Joel thought they’d been lucky.  The M16A2’s were American-made old-school fragmentation mines.  They were deadlier than a lot of modern plastic mines, but their metal shrapnel made them much easier to detect.  They also weren’t equipped with any devious anti-tamper features, making them fairly simple to disarm.  Since the early sixties, millions of them had been produced, exported and re-exported.  In the world arms market they were an untraceable commodity.  There were also hundreds of thousands of them sitting in domestic stockpiles.  The mines didn’t provide many clues about who placed them.  But Lane found the map of their deployment interesting, particularly the possibility that someone had used a multi-mine stack.  It suggested a professional approach.

As they entered the greenish-brown haze of Bangkok, Lane turned over the facts of the report in his head.  The fragmentation mines couldn’t have cost more than ten dollars each.  If someone was committed enough to terrorize a public beach, why hadn’t they used more of them and really made a statement?  It didn’t make sense and gave Lane a bad feeling, one that he vaguely recognized.  It was the same feeling he got when someone smiled at their first two cards and then passed on the chance to bet.  It usually meant that player had already won and was simply trying to suck as many people as possible into a big hand.  It was a clear signal to fold, only in this deal, Lane realized he would be playing to the end no matter what cards he held.

They banked sharply over the International terminal and landed on the tarmac behind a giant blue and grey 747-400.  A small orange and white Toyota ambulance was waiting for them.  Lane was impressed.

Williamson’s voice came in strong over the intercom.  “This is your flight, buddy.  Ten minutes to spare.”

Lane gave him a thumbs up.  “Thanks for the ride.  Take good care of my hero.”

At the top of the aluminum stairs a fifty-year-old flight attendant greeted him without bothering to smile.  “Finally, ” she said, and impatiently ripped-off his perforated stub.

As Major Lane made his way down the cramped aisle of the sold-out plane, he looked down at his boarding pass for the first time.  57-F.  WD-40 had lubricated him into a middle seat in deep coach.

PIER “F” -- LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA -- 2:00 A.M.

Huay drove the Toyota forklift smoothly through the dark warehouse.  The electric motor hummed softly and the pneumatic tires whispered over the glossy concrete.  His halogen headlights illuminated row after row of international shipping containers.  Near the end of the forty-meter aisle he turned sharply, lighting up the door of the second-to-last container.  Huay pulled out the parking brake and stepped down.  He removed the industrial-strength Master lock from the handle and slid the bolt back.  The heavy steel hinges groaned as the doors were opened, sending spooky echoes up to the invisible rafters.  From behind, the brilliant lights of the forklift threw Huay’s shadow deep into the metal container.  Inside were two six-foot cubes made up of 216 standard sized boxes strapped onto wooden pallets.  Huay thumbed his utility knife and sliced off the nylon straps of the first cube.  He lifted aside the first six boxes off the first row to expose the inside stack.  He counted down three and slid out a single box.

The markings on the outside of the box indicated that it contained 35mm disposable cameras that had been manufactured in Singapore.  There was also a message that warned that the box should be stored in a very cool and dry place.  Huay placed his selection on top of a stack of three and slid his knife across the upper seam.  Beneath two layers of thick bubble wrap Huay found the real contents: twenty-four M-12 acoustically-activated blast mines made by Celsius AB, a Swedish firm with subsidiaries located throughout the world.

Each mine was wrapped in its own clear-plastic sleeve and contained instructions written in six languages, none of them Swedish.  Huay removed one for closer inspection.  The M-12 was a sophisticated, fiendish weapon.  Made almost entirely of plastic, it was virtually undetectable.  And once turned on, it only became armed when it was exposed to a sound above 130 decibels – the noise produced by a typical rifle shot.  They were designed to lure an enemy force into a deadly trap.  Troops could crossover or occupy an area filled with such mines and not know it until they were attacked.  They were marketed specifically for use in insurgent wars where guerilla groups often faced overwhelming occupying forces.

Huay was familiar with the mines, but reviewed the instructions again anyway, just to be safe.  He would be planting them soon.  Cemeteries were usually very quiet places, but Huay knew that funeral services for officers killed in the line of duty always included a seven-man honor guard.  The first volley of their twenty-one gun salute would be more than enough to activate the surprise guests.

Huay’s thoughts were interrupted by two loud POPS that sent his pulse sprinting.  He looked down, shook his head and took a relieved breath.  Huay had accidentally stepped on a corner of the bubble wrap.

UNITED AIRLINES FLIGHT 8026

When Lane got to the back of plane, he found himself in a sea of saffron, smiles and bald heads.  Buddhist monks occupied nearly every seat.  A very large monastery was taking an all-hands field trip to America.  After spending five years in Cambodia, Lane had become familiar with the basic tenets of Buddhism; i.e. he could quote the four noble truths.  Looking at his narrow purple and orange seat, Lane was instantly reminded of the first noble truth: Existence is suffering.  It was going to be an eighteen-hour flight.

During the first leg of the journey, five hours up to Osaka, Lane read an article in the complimentary Horizons magazine about the place kicker for the Denver Broncos and another on how to buy chiles in Santa Fe.  There was no movie, only a giant video map that displayed their slow progress across the East China Sea and the below-zero temperature outside the plane.  There was also no smoking.  There was a pleasant announcement of this rule at the beginning of the flight.  And, three hours later, after someone set-off a lavatory smoke alarm, a stern prosecutorial warning.  Smoking was not a big problem for Lane, yet.  He had gotten himself down to only four cigarettes per day, but he knew it would be only a matter of time before it began to bother him.

Lane began to think about the people up in first class.  There was a lot less suffering up there.  The world landmine problem was similar.  What was considered an intractable and horrific tragedy in Cambodia was merely an expensive public health campaign in Kuwait.  After the Gulf War there were two million landmines buried and scattered across nearly every acre of the country.  To get rid of them, Kuwait had immediately signed removal contracts worth over seven hundred million dollars.  The mercenaries had worked hard and now nearly all the mines were gone.   The world had become an economic rather than ideological battlefield.  And no one was about to give Cambodia a free upgrade.

After a forty-five minute stopover in Osaka, where they were allowed to loiter and chain-smoke briefly in a polyester transit lounge, the plane seemed to be even more full.  A preview for the first movie was shown.  It was something called “D5 – The Mighty Ducks on Thin Ice.”  The trailer showed Emilio Estevez and Whoopi Goldberg playing chicken with zamboni’s.  Lane wasn’t very familiar with the Ducks’ movies.  Like many people in Southeast Asia, he only watched bootlegged videos, a market where winter-themed movies were rare.  He decided it would be a good time to break out the opiates and get some sleep.

He ripped open the velcro on the field kit and checked the pocket that contained the little envelopes of pharmaceutical gems.  He didn’t realize how loud his moan was.  His seatmate, bald except for the blue headphones, looked over with deep concern, then smiled.  Lane was reminded of the second noble truth of Buddhism: All suffering is caused by desire.  Some bastard had already pilfered the Dilaudid.

Major Lane looked at his watch.  Eleven and a half-hours to go.  The opium monkey began to scratch at the inside of his head, seemingly using all four hands and his tail.  Lane took a deep breath.  He knew it was, at this point, only psychological anxiety.  But he also knew if he was going to come up with a rational solution to this problem it would have to be soon.  The NATO kit gave him an idea.  International flights were medically very well equipped.  Lane knew that some had even begun to carry automated defibrillators for heart attacks.  It was time to go for a walk.

The first aid kit was amazingly easy to find, even with the lights dimmed for the movie.  Green and white labels on the outside of the first coach overhead bin (row 46) announced the emergency contents.  But there was a problem.  The bin was located immediately outside the door of the galley, where flight attendants seemed to congregate and hover.   Major Lane had nearly twenty years of Special Forces training, it was obvious what had to be done.  He grabbed a USA Today-Asia from the bulkhead rack and headed for the aft bathroom.

Lane quickly abandoned the first bathroom he entered -- someone had clogged the tiny sink either trying to rinse-out or throw-up a cup-o-noodles.  He found his second choice both functional and vacant.  Once inside Lane re-opened the velcro on his field kit and removed a surgical glove.  From his front pocket he took out a disposable lighter and his last Chinese Marlboro.  He knelt down before the toilet and unfolded the “Life & Style” section of the USA Today – Asia and balanced it on his head, forming a small tent.  Lane flashed the lighter and moved the cigarette clenched in his teeth into the flame.  He filled his lungs with the smoke and simultaneously flushed, drawing the uninhaled smoke down the blue vacuum hole.  He kept the handle down on the 200,000 flushes while he inflated the surgical glove with the smoke from his lungs.  He took another long draw from the Marlboro and repeated the process, this time also flushing the cigarette.  He shrugged off the newspaper, tied off the end of the glove and stood up.  He had created a white smoke turkey.  He carefully pushed the latex bladder down into the compartment for discarded paper towels and then went back to his field kit.  Using strongly-adhesive bandage tape, he taped a straight razor blade to the inside edge of the towel door, taking care to keep the edge of the blade away from the stretched skin of the glove.  If his little trap worked correctly, the next person to push the door in would slice open the glove and send a four-lung billow of smoke up to the hair-trigger detector.  Lane re-folded his paper and headed for row 46.

He only had to pretend to stretch his legs near the galley for about three minutes before the medium volume whoop began.  Two zealous flight attendants rushed out and down both aisles.  Lane opened the emergency overhead bin and slid the bright yellow dictionary-sized first aid kit into his USA Today.  No one had noticed -- passengers not turned around watching the flight attendants were staring at the screen, mesmerized by the first zamboni scene.

Back at his seat, Major Lane had to snap open an FAA seal on the first aid kit that informed him he was breaking a federal law.  His seatmate looked over curiously.  Lane smiled.  Eliminate the cause of suffering and suffering will cease to arise.  Lane quickly located the morphine.  He dry swallowed two caplets and felt relaxed for the first time since he’d stepped on the plane.  He reclined his seat seven centimeters, found his headphones, and dialed-in channel one.  Lane looked forward to laughing at the Ducks with the monks.

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY, HOLLYWOOD – 1:01 A.M.

Huay’s feet hit the spongy grass on the other side of the fence, and he immediately felt the old familiar tingle.  It was good to be back in it, on a covert night operation.  He could feel his pulse rate begin to rev-up, cleansing his senses and opening them wide.  Huay held his breath and listened for danger.  But he heard only the deafening stillness of the dead.

Huay exhaled and began looking for landmarks.  He moved silently, low to the ground.  He was out of practice and his lower back ached and the straps of his backpack strained his shoulder blades.  He had to stop twice to adjust the position of the .45 caliber Colt Defender under his shirt.  Huay wished he had had time to find a sound and flash suppression cylinder for it.  Now, due to its loud noise, it was a weapon of last resort.

Huay passed hundreds of American flags left over from Memorial Day, the white stars reflecting in the few lumens of light that made it into the cemetery from the surrounding boulevards.  When he felt the asphalt of the interior road, he risked his flashlight for a second to find the sign indicating Sections N thru S.  The address of Mark Park’s funeral was N1086.  Forest Lawn had been happy to tell him when he’d phoned.

Huay’s heart jumped when he saw the light from the security golf cart appear on the road.  It had just come around a turn, forty yards away.  Huay leapt off the road and quickly flattened himself against the ground behind the nearest vertical headstone.  He couldn’t be sure if the approaching guard had seen his flashlight.

In his new position, his face pressed into the grass, Huay detected a faint smell of skunk.  He drew his gun and gently thumbed off the safety.

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY, MALIBU – 1:01 A.M.

Grover couldn’t believe his awesome luck.  He’d almost decided not to attend the “Fuck Finals” party.  His brutal Econometrics exam was scheduled for ten a.m. the next day, but so far his decision to blow-off studying was looking like it would result in a very positive risk-reward outcome.  Juniper (“like the berry bush”, she’d said) was giving him the kind of looks that made a guy feel billy club bold.  She was a visitor, a very fresh face from UC Santa Barbara, a friend of Connie’s, one of his Econometrics classmates who lived in the girl’s quad below his.  Connie had asked him to take Juniper to the party while she crammed and tooled at the library.  Maybe not the brightest move, but Grover figured Connie (a consummate 90 percenter) wouldn’t be affecting his part of the curve anyway.

Juniper and Grover were smushed intimately together in a single room packed-full with screaming reverb and inebriated procrastinators in scholastic-denial.  They were all drinking Ice Picks (iced tea and Smirnoff) brewed by the party’s informal host, a kid from Albuquerque who told everyone the drink was an ancient New Mexican invention.  Wherever it came from, it was the kind of beverage that snuck up and jumped you all at once.

It was shortly after finishing the second pitcher that Grover began to notice how incredibly tan and taut Juniper’s legs were, and how distinctly rubbery his were becoming.  She caught him staring.

“You have legs like an infomercial model,” he said before he could stop himself.

She giggled and told him it was because of all the tennis she played.  She explained to him that she was a red-shirt freshman on the Gaucho’s tennis team, she’d broken her ankle, her tibia, at the start of the season, so she had dropped off the team to insure herself a full year of eligibility.

“I’ve never met a female red-shirt before,” he said.

“I’ve never met anyone named after a muppet,” she replied.

He laughed, his real name was Joey Grove, but everyone called him Grover.  She slugged back her drink until the ice tinkled.  Grover could see it was about time to set the hook.

“It’s a little crowded in here, you want to go somewhere else?” he asked.

“Like, where?”

Grover was ready.  “How about a billionaire’s beach house?”

“Right.”

“I’m serious.  We can go swing in Michael Milken’s hammock.  He’s got a house down on the beach, but he never uses it.  The hammock’s right on the deck. We can walk there, consider it part of the official Pepperdine tour.”  Michael Milken’s hammock was legendary at Pepperdine, at least in the Economics department.  For an Econ major, it was hard to match the thrill of secretly scoring in the hammock of the man who dreamed up (perhaps in that very spot) a way to manipulate the financial markets to clear five hundred and twenty-six million dollars in one year.  Grover hadn’t had a chance to try it yet, but in his mind he was already there.  Juniper shrugged noncommittally, but Grover moved quickly.  And after a smooth, slippery French kiss and a covert caress, the deal was sealed.

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY, HOLLYWOOD – 1:31 A.M.

Huay listened to the approaching whir of the golf cart.  A dozen ambush scenarios flashed through his mind.  He had killed hundreds of men waiting in the dark, but it had been a long time, and to do so now would dramatically complicate his plans.

The golf cart stopped in front of the “Section N-S” sign.  From his vantage point behind the marble headstone, Huay could see the extension of the headlights, but not the cart itself.  He could feel the driver listening.  Huay began to count.

After seven long seconds, the electric motor came to life again, and the cart continued down the road.  Huay decided that the guard might have seen his light, but then figured he’d been mistaken.  How sharp could the night security guard of a cemetery be?  Huay got to his feet and made his way quickly down row N.

There was plywood sheeting over the freshly dug grave at N1086. Huay knelt beside it and removed the golf green hole-bore from his backpack.  He had stolen the hole-bore (exactly the right tool he needed to place the mines) from the greenskeeper’s shed at the Newport Public Golf Course the previous night.  He’d also brought along a clear plastic bag from Safeway to remove the displaced dirt.

Huay figured he had a radius of about fifty feet from the edge of the grave.  He knew he had to keep them fairly close so that the concussion from the 21-gun salute would activate all of them.  Huay planted the mines in the earth with the meticulous care of a bonsai gardener.  There were flags and flowers on many of the surrounding site markers as well as buried sprinkler heads placed at regular intervals; Huay was careful to make sure none of them were disturbed.  The hole-bore preserved the top layer of grass and Huay made sure each divot was perfectly replaced, flush and level.  It was intense work, Huay soon found he had sweat completely through his black turtleneck and that his head had been begun to ache from the tension.

He was on all fours, smoothing the grass over the nineteenth M-12 when he heard the voice behind him.

“What do you think you’re doing, boy?”  Huay turned and the mag-light beam flashed blindingly into his eyes…dilating his pupils.

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY, MALIBU – 1:31 A.M.

Grover led Juniper through the maze of anxiously quiet white buildings back to his quad.  While she went downstairs to get a jacket, he entered his room.  He quickly emptied the Econometrics books out of his backpack, stole three Babylon beers from his roommate’s mini-fridge, and dug out his 28-degree sleeping bag from under a pile of dirty laundry in the closet.  He stopped by the bathroom and rifled through the communal toiletry lockers until he found a box of Trojans.  It was empty, so he had to go back to his room and steal the last two quarters from his roommate’s laundry jar and use the condom machine back in the bathroom.  He put the beers and condom into his backpack, draped the sleeping bag over his shoulders, and went down to find his date.

He found Juniper alone in the lower quad watching ESPN.  She’d put on a polar-fleece vest and looked better than ever, shimmery.  They kissed again to reassure each other that everything was still on track.  She was all lip gloss and cocoa butter.

“Goddamn you taste good,” he said.

“Bonita Beach Balm,” she said.

The hike down to the beach refreshed their foggy heads.  Traffic was light, but they still had to sprint across PCH to avoid a blitzing Camaro.  Once across the highway, the white noise and gentle mist of the waves enveloped them.  They could barely make out the surf line, it was dark, liquid dark, no moon and the clouds were low.  Juniper kicked off her tennies and Grover his sandals.  The sand was damp, slightly chilling between the toes.  Juniper took the sleeping bag shawl.  They walked north for a hundred yards to where PCH curved away from the coast and Malibu Road began.  The private beach started here and the homes became more exclusive, double the price of the ones that abutted the highway.

“Wait,” Juniper said, “I have to pee.”  And she disappeared into a shadow or over a dune, Grover couldn’t tell.  While he waited, he looked out at the Pacific void and the soles of his feet felt the gentle concussions of the bigger breakers hitting the beach.  A tongue of water made it up the slope to tickle him.  The water was cold, but not numbing, just slightly stabbing.  And then he heard a splash.  He peered into the dark waters, looking for telltale ripples.  A seal?  A sea lion?  A cold hand on the back of his neck startled him, and cleared the thought out of his mind.

“Yikes!”

“Boo!  Did you miss me?” asked Juniper.  They kissed again, sucking at the warmth of each other.  They pressed together until Juniper looked up and said, “Did you say you brought beer?”

Grover fished out a Babylon from the backpack, popped the twist-off and they continued on.

“Is it very much farther?”

“It’s the twelfth house down.  Help me count, I think this one is number three.”  The houses were difficult to see from the surf line, but Grover had been warned not to get too close.  Many of the homes had motion-detector floodlights or, worse, very mean dogs on very long chains.  Juniper counted in his ear.

“Eight…Nine…”

Grover killed the Babylon and hurled the bottle into the ocean.  He strained his eyes ahead, looking for the green light.  Milken’s house had a dim green light on the deck – like a banker’s lamp someone had said, or like Gatsby and good old West Egg.

“Do you see a green ligh-”

He was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a jangling dog chain followed by ferocious barking.  And then the floodlights hit them and Juniper screamed the scream of a thousand nightmares.  They were not alone on the beach.

Grover was too startled to be scared at first.  Three black figures wearing ski masks and holding machine guns just seemed to appear on the beach thirty feet behind them, like they’d been beamed down.  They all seemed to be shielding their eyes and clawing at the goggles on their faces.  Grover didn’t know that much about dogs, but it looked like an Akita was attacking the figure closest to house number nine.

It was all Grover saw before his face hit the ground.  He didn’t remember falling, he was just down, like he’d been run over.  Sand and grit filled the space between his upper lip and his front teeth, snuck down his throat.  He tried not to swallow, but he couldn’t seem to lift his head, and his arms were immobilized -- twisted behind him, and searing with pain.  He managed to open one eye and look over at Juniper.  She was still screaming.  A man in a black neoprene wetsuit and flippers was on top of her, trying to pin her down, but she was struggling and the frogman couldn’t find her arms under the sleeping bag.  But then Juniper stopped screaming and at the same instant Grover heard the growling dog change his tone to a frightened squeal.

The next sound he heard, as his face was pressed deeper into the sand, belonged to a low voice behind his right ear.

“FBI, asshole.  What’s in the backpack?”

If Grover had thought about it, he would have realized that being the target of a jumpy FBI Special Tactics stakeout was probably closer to an authentic Michael Milken experience than swinging in the man’s hammock.  But his mind was elsewhere.

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY, HOLLYWOOD – 2:31 A.M.

Huay waited for his eyes to adjust.  He could feel the stainless steel Colt Defender stuck to his skin inside his waistband, but he had been trained to always find out the nature of the enemy before committing to attack.

“Let’s get those hands on your head,” the slightly southern voice commanded.

Huay complied.  The figure behind the flashlight beam began to take shape.  Big, at least two-fifty and well over six-feet.  Huay would have trouble taking him hand-to-hand.  But even if he could get to the Colt and shoot the man he might activate the mines, which were now impossible to turn-off.

The large figure approached, “What are you up to here, robbing graves?  Or are you one of them nec-ro-philiacs?”

Huay heard a handcuff unsnap.  He twitched.

“Didn’t think I saw you the first time, huh?  I almost wasn’t sure myself.”

Huay lowered his right hand.  “Hey!  Keep those hands where I can see ‘em, or I’ll pepper-spray you like a son-of-a-bitch.”

That was all Huay needed to hear, the guard didn’t have a gun, and now both his hands were occupied.  Huay had his pistol out in a split second.

The guard froze.  “Shee-it.”

Huay was in control, if the guard hadn’t called for back-up he knew he still had a chance.  The only thing that bothered him was that he couldn’t see his adversary’s eyes.

“Please put the flashlight down, and raise your han-,”  Huay didn’t get the whole sentence out before the light charged him.

Huay was still on his knees, and he ducked even lower to get leverage on the linebacker-sized man.  He undercut him, flipping the guard over his head.  Huay quickly spun around and swept the steel Defender down hard on the back of the man’s crew cut.  But it wasn’t enough.

The guard’s counter-elbow struck Huay in the teeth just below his nostrils, knocking him backward to the ground.   The larger man was instantly on top of him, one powerful hand on the barrel of the Colt, the other pushed into Huay’s throat.  Huay’s finger was still inside the trigger guard, and he knew he had the angle to shoot the heavy rent-a-cop in the chest, but he quickly realized it wasn’t an option – his body was pinned on top of the nineteenth mine.  If the gun went off, the M-12 was likely to blow him in half.  Huay kept his chin pressed to his chest, trying to deny access to his windpipe.  He began to feel smothered beneath the larger man’s girth and heavy bourbon-tinged breath.  His gun was being pried loose from his weakening grip.  Huay reached back frantically with his left hand and his fingers closed around the only solution.

He thumbed-on the firing pin safety with his right hand and then let the Colt go, giving the guard the momentary illusion of gaining the upper hand.  As the guard’s fingers searched for the trigger, Huay’s right hand joined his left, and they both pulled the two-foot American flag out of the ground behind his head.  The point of Old Glory was sharpened and painted gold.  Huay swung it up over his head and plunged it four inches into the guard’s trachea, simultaneously creating and stifling a ghastly scream.  Huay wrenched the flag stick to the side and a pressurized stream of jugular blood hit him in the chin.  The security guard spent the last ounce of his strength squeezing the locked trigger in Huay’s face.  He slumped forward dead before his brain figured out that the safety was on.  As he fell, the flag stick broke-off in his throat, just below the thirteenth stripe.

Huay had to wait for his wind to come back before he could gather enough strength to push the heavy body off.   His mind raced.  He figured it was a good sign the guard had attacked him, and had been drinking.  It probably meant that he worked alone.  If he’d been expecting help, he would have tried to stall when Huay pulled the gun.

Huay was furious with himself.  He had been too focused on the mines.  In the old days he would never have allowed this clumsy giant to sneak-up on him. Now the first priority was to make sure the guard was truly solo, then he would deal with the body and the blood.  There was a lot of blood.  Huay was covered with it, and there was a dark, rectangular pool forming on top of the nearest recessed headstone.

Huay searched the body; there was no radio.  He backtracked to the road and found the golf cart parked in the shadows with the lights off.  A walkie-talkie was on the seat.  Huay turned-up the volume and listened.  Nothing.  On his way back to the body the sprinklers started – blooming like a thousand liquid flowers.  Huay allowed himself to smile as he knelt into the spray of the nearest nozzle.   The blood problem had solved itself.  When he got back to the body, he risked his flashlight again.  He was delighted to see the blood had already been washed down into the roots of the well-tended graveyard grass.  Things were looking up.

Huay pushed the plywood aside and stared into the empty grave.  He decided to bury his last mines under the guard’s body.  He was getting tired, and he still had a lot of landscaping work ahead of him.  It took an hour to properly bury and hide the guard in the bottom of Officer Park’s space.  Huay had begun to get nervous that another guard would show up, but none had, and the radio had remained silent.

He went back to the golf cart and shifted it into drive.  Huay wanted to make sure the guard disappeared far from the site of his surprise party.  He abandoned it just inside the Glendale Boulevard gate, near the Court of Remembrance, where all the famous people were interned.  The only celebrity grave that held any interest for Huay belonged to Telly Savalas.  Kojak had been the number one show when Huay was the Khmer Rouge’s secret ambassador in France and he’d seen most of the episodes.  Huay thought about stopping for a quick look, but then decided he couldn’t risk it, he had already been in the cemetery for almost three hours.  “Who loves you, baby?”  Huay had loved saying that.  Except in Paris it had always been “Qui aimez vous, bébé?  Qui aimez vous….”

LE HOTEL SOFITEL, LOS ANGELES – 6:00 A.M.

Lane wished the phone would stop ringing.  He counted eleven rings before he lifted his head and remembered that he’d scheduled a wake-up call before he went to bed.  He stretched over for the sleek Euro-style-phone.  When he picked up, it chimed, and a slightly computerized voice said: “Bienvenue, le heure est six, à, m.”  And then, in English: “Good morning, the time is now six a.m.”

Lane felt his familiar morning headache coming on, but something else was troubling him.  It took another moment for him to figure out what was wrong, then it hit him -- he had stopped dreaming.  He had awakened with nothing to reflect on, nor any seductively serene place to slip back into.  The synthetic morphine somehow couldn’t tap into the deep subconscious the same way the organic stuff could.

Lane looked around his room.  Eider down comforter, impressionist prints, a small terrace -- comfortable, but everything was in peach.  Alan, the FBI green-pea who had picked him up at the airport had recommended the place.  It had a good government rate, $88 a night, and was close to the FBI field office on Wilshire where the Task Force was headquartered.  Lane had also liked the idea of staying somewhere with a little French influence.  He was used to it from living in Cambodia.  Even Pol Pot hadn’t been able to exorcise the colonial influence out of the culture.  Today nearly every city in Cambodia still had at least one excellent French-style bakery run by locals.

Lane took the little room service menu out to the terrace.  He had a nice view of the Beverly Center.  Alan had told him that some people stayed at the Sofitel just to shop at the world famous mall.  The sun was coming up, highlighting a thin layer of smog above Hollywood.  Lane felt compelled by the pollution to join the party and spark up a cigarette, but he was out of Marlboros.  And he had a non-smoking room, but he figured he could smoke out on his terrace. Alan had explained (after Lane had noticed the no-smoking sign in his government car) that in California people weren’t allowed to smoke in restaurants or even bars, unless there was outside seating.  The only legal indoor smoking was in casinos, which in California meant card rooms.  That had gotten Lane’s attention.  But when he’d asked Alan if they had Hold ‘Em tables Alan had looked slightly alarmed, so he’d just let it go.

The basic croissant, orange juice, coffee, and omelet breakfast was $14.95.  Lane had a per diem meal expense allowance of $35.00.  He was reluctant to blow half of it on breakfast, until he saw that cigarettes were also available, French ones, Gauloises and Gitanes.  He couldn’t think of a better way to start the morning.  Lane went back inside and dialed-up number eight.  He hoped they didn’t have any kind of policy against bringing cigarettes to non-smoking rooms, because then he would have to get pissed-off on the phone, and he knew he was too hungry to do it right.

But for the moment, it didn’t matter.  No one was answering down at the room service number.  And for the second time this morning, Lane wished the phone would stop ringing…

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD – 11:05 A.M.

Catherine Mills sat tensely at her blonde-wood desk.  The Director in Washington had just called, and then put her on hold.  And now she was being watched, studied.  Major Joel Lane sat across her desk, his eyes not really looking at the latest psycho profile she’d given him.  Those eyes, deep creased pockets of worn navy blue, seemed to be absorbing every last detail of her office.  And they locked onto her whenever she looked away from him…she could feel it.

Catherine realized she had been out of the field too long. She was too used to office culture -- meetings, reports, depositions, presentations and strategy sessions in dim windowless conference rooms.  She wasn’t used to having characters like this man in her office -- weathered and rugged, like a scout just in from the wilderness, reporting back to the fort.  He wore a deep green field uniform, boots, and an unconcealed shoulder holster.    If he didn’t look so authentic, people might think he’d wandered off a set from one of the nearby studios.

The phone dance with the Director had started at five a.m., before she was even at the office.  Their Special Tactics stakeout team had broken the leg of the wrong dog.  The beach home the dog was defending belonged to the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates.  There had been immediate calls back to Washington, threats, diplomatic hostilities.  Anyway she looked at it she came to the conclusion that it had been a stupid incident.  Maybe she had too much presence out there, Super Agent Blake, a reject form the elite Hostage Team just couldn’t seem to do anything without maximum force.  But she didn’t dare complain -- if she ever really needed to unleash him, there was no deadlier weapon in her arsenal.

“Catherine are you there?” the Director, distracted.

“Still here.”

“Looks like we got this protocol polyp contained.  Try to keep Blake reigned in.  He’s reporting to you on this deal, but if you’d like, I can talk to him.”

“No, I can handle it, sir.”

“Good.  Let’s get this guy.  Call me tomorrow with a status.”

“Absolutely first-thing, sir.”  She hung up and Lane was staring right at her.  She felt the need to explain.  “Little special tactics incident last night.”

“I heard all about it while I was waiting for our meeting.  Bad luck.”

“Worse luck is that so far it’s the only arrest we’ve made.  We have absolutely nothing on this.  Maybe we won’t even be needing your services.  What do you think?”

Lane shifted in his seat.  “I sincerely hope you won’t.  But I must say that in my experience, mines are kind of like roaches.  When you find one, your problems are just starting.”

“Were you in Iraq?”

“First one.  Did a lot of work in Kuwait.”

The rest of the meeting didn’t go well.  Lane wanted to bring in a team from South Africa.  Contractors.  The best in the world, he said.  But Catherine was adamant -- the FBI was not about to use mercenaries on U.S. soil.  Lane had tried to explain that they weren’t ordinary mercenaries.  He had worked with them in Angola, when he’d been an adviser there.  It was where he’d met Aimee.  She was one of the trainers.  Her dad had been an insurgent specialist in the South African military.  After he’d retired and become a merc-advisor, she’d joined him, made it a family business.  It was a hazardous job that had ended up costing her her life -- although her death hadn’t been an accident.  One of their trainees had been a guerilla plant, a fourteen year old on Savimbi’s UNITA payroll.  He’d re-mined the training field in the middle of the night.  Lane stopped himself before he remembered what he’d done to him.

“There’s an executive task force meeting this afternoon,” Catherine told him.  “Do you have a safety presentation you could do?  I’m sure we could all use a technology refresher.”

Lane looked at her.  “I could probably put something together.”

“If you need PowerPoint or something just ask Alan to set you up with a computer.”

“PowerPoint?”

“Yeah, you know, slides.  Cut and paste, point and click.”

Lane smiled at her.  “I don’t think I’ll be needing a computer.”  He got up and left her office.  She felt vaguely unsettled about what he might have planned, but her phone rang as soon as he was gone, and she quickly put it out of her head.

WESTWOOD BOULEVARD, LOS ANGELES – 11:35 A.M.

Major Lane made Alan drive him out to lunch in his non-smoking government car.  The FBI was short on motor-pool vehicles due to the task force.  Catherine had made it clear that Lane would have to rent one on his own and then get reimbursed.  Lane made a note to himself to investigate the Avis desk in the lobby when he got back to his hotel.  It was impossible to spend any time in L.A without a vehicle.  He’d had to wait twenty minutes for a cab just to get to the office this morning.

“Were you in Iraq?”  Alan asked.

“The first one.”

It was an obvious question.  Mines and traps of all kinds were the leading killers there. Lane didn’t want to explain why he wasn’t invited for the second conflict.

Alan pulled into a strip mall on Westwood Boulevard.  “Togo’s or Subway?” he said.

Lane looked up and saw that the restaurants were located right next to each other.  “Where do you usually go?”  Lane believed in the adage of trusting local recommendations.

“Subway’s cheaper, but I usually go to Togo’s.”

Lane thought about his per diem.  The room service bill had been twenty-one dollars after tax and service charges.  “Is there anything wrong with Subway?”

“It smells funny.” Alan said, “Like burps.”

“Burps?”

“Yeah, you know you’d expect a submarine sandwich place to smell like pastrami and smoked ham and summer sausage, but Subway smells like burps of pastrami and smoked ham and summer sausage.  I think the teenagers they have working in there must sneak food from the line all day and then belch on each other when there aren’t any customers around.  I mean it really smells funky.”

Lane noticed that a large Save-On drugstore anchored the strip mall.

“Listen Alan, I have to go over to that drugstore and buy fifty pounds of kitty litter for my safety presentation this afternoon.  How about you go to Togo’s and get me one of whatever you usually get, and I’ll meet you back here.”

“That would be the number six combo.”  Alan said, not even questioning the kitty litter.

“What’s in the number six combo?”

“Turkey-avo with chips and a large coke.  The Coke is only ninety-five cents when you order the combo.”

“That sounds good, Alan.”

After what he’d heard about the smells, Lane was happy he was buying kitty litter instead of going into a restaurant.

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD – 12:05 P.M.

Alan drove into the parking structure of the Federal building.   On the third level he slammed on the brakes as they were cut-off buy a racing green Corvette convertible -- it roared through their right-of-way at about thirty-five.

“Goddamn Blake!  He’s going to kill somebody in here.”  Alan whined.

The Corvette screeched to a halt in front of the elevators.  It’s blond, athletic driver jumped out and flashed them the peace sign just before he kicked in the door to the stairs.

“That’s the TAC team leader?”  Lane asked

“Yeah, he’s kind of an asshole.”

They parked beside the Corvette.  Lane looked at it for a second.  “I’m going to stay down here and smoke a cigarette.  I’ll be up to join you in a minute.”  Lane said.

“Don’t take too long.  I can easily eat two turkey-avo’s.”

Lane smiled politely, but inside he was slightly irked.  It just wasn’t funny to joke about eating another man’s lunch.

TASK FORCE CONFERENCE ROOM – 2:07 P.M.

Lane’s fifty pounds of cat litter were spilled into the corner in a level pile about three feet square and six inches deep.  As the various task force members trickled in for the meeting, few could resist commenting on it.

“It’s about time they put a can in here,” the Captain representing the Border Patrol said.

“I see the sand trap, but where’s the green?” said the Detective from the Palos Verdes Police Department..

“I thought ashtrays were illegal in this building,” the senior ATF agent said.

“Surf’s up,” the Lifeguard supervisor joked.

“Must be a pretty big pussy around to need all that,” Special Agent Blake added.

Catherine Mills was the last to arrive.  The testosterone in the room was clearly overpowering the Fresh Step.  “What the fuck is that pile of kitty litter doing in my conference room?”  she asked.

Lane finally responded.  “It’s for my technology refresher, my safety demonstration.”

She nodded.   “We’ll save that for the end.”  And then she launched into the meeting.  There were the above-mentioned representatives plus people from the Santa Monica Police Department, the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department, the Coast Guard, the Airport Police; cops from Manhattan Beach, Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach, Newport, and Hermosa, plus another dozen FBI Special Agents responsible for various Task Force components – Database, Lab, Special Tactics, Bomb Squad, etc.

Catherine ran an efficient meeting, she didn’t give any member of the task force more than thirty-seconds to report about his area. There was a massive surveillance operation going on up and down the coast.  The Border Patrol had moved their night scopes and helicopters up from San Ysidro, the Coast Guard was searching for suspicious small craft along the shore, the Strand was covered with plainclothes units day and night, black and whites swept the parking lots, PCH was blanketed with Highway Patrol Interceptors, the lifeguards were watching the people on the sand instead of in the water, and the ATF was shaking down every known arms dealer and informant in their files.  After she mercilessly cut the first couple people off in mid-sentence, most of the attendees simply shook their head when it was their turn.  It only took twelve minutes to go through everyone in the room.  No one had anything of substance.  Zero leads.

For all the resources involved, Lane could see it wasn’t quite a dragnet.  There were a lot of holes.  The coast was too big, impossible to defend completely, but if the perpetrator was careless, they might get lucky.  Yet still Lane couldn’t shake the feeling that they were over-reaching somehow.

The last item on Catherine’s agenda was the funeral announcement for Officer Mark Park – it was scheduled for tomorrow morning.  Lane thought that if there were a perfect time for someone to plant more mines it would be then, when a couple thousand cops looked the other way.  Lane suddenly realized all eyes were on him.  He had daydreamed through whatever introduction Catherine had given him.  Lane stood up in front of his pile of cat litter and cleared his throat.

“I don’t want to be flip, or take anything away from the fine work done on the beach this past week, but as far dealing with landmines goes, I believe we were very lucky.  I think it’s a good idea to remind ourselves about how sinister these weapons can be.  For purposes of demonstration, we’ll say this pile of sand here is a potentially mined beach.”  Major Lane looked over the sea of skeptical faces.  “Do I have any volunteers?”

Special Agent Blake’s hand shot up first.

Lane looked at Blake.  “Agent, do you have any mine clearance experience?”

“Sure do, I was an Army Ranger for six years.  We were all taught the basic probe-technique.” Blake said, eager to quote his credentials.

Lane reached into his pocket and took out his buck knife.  He unfolded the four-inch blade and held it out to Agent Blake.  “Good, let’s see you demonstrate it.”

Blake ignored Lane’s knife and instead reached into his own pocket.  In one motion he brought out and clicked-open a twelve-inch switchblade.  “We always used bayonets.”

Lane’s expression was inscrutable, but everyone could sense the posturing.  Catherine rolled her eyes at the sight of the illegal weapon.  Lane closed his knife.  “Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Blake smirked, and then got down on the carpet and began inserting his blade at a thirty-degree angle into the Fresh Step.  “Doesn’t feel like there’s been any kitty’s in here…”  He slipped the blade in again, pushed it up to the hilt.  Tried another spot.    “Wait here we go.  Fire in the hole!”

“Alright, obviously at this point everyone clears the immediate area and you call for the bomb squad.  But if for some reason you can’t do that, the next step would be to try to carefully identify what you’ve found.”  Lane said.

Blake continued to probe around the concealed object, scraping away the top granules.  “It seems to be about two to three inches in diameter…Plastic…And also partly metal.”

Lane nodded.  “OK, what’s the next step?”

“Well, if I was out in the field I’d probably back-up and shoot it.”  There were chuckles around the room.

“Before you do that, it’s probably a good idea to know if you’re going to set off a forty meter killzone claymore or a simple blast mine.  Any idea what specific ordinance it might be?”

“I’m not up on every landmine made, but judging from the material, and small diameter, I’m going to guess it’s a Type 72.”

“That’s what you’re going with?”  Lane’s face was blank.

Blake eyed him, smug.  “Yup.”

“What would you say if I told you it was the gas cap from your Corvette?”

Laughter started in the back of the room and quickly spread.  Blake flushed red, and then got up slowly from the floor.  His knife was at his side.  He stepped up close so he was nose-to-nose with Lane.

“I don’t like people touching my car.  Never.  Ever.  Do that again.  Comprende?”

“Agent Blake, put that stupid knife away.”  Catherine Mills couldn’t believe she had to intervene, she felt like a teacher in a roomful of junior high school kids.  Blake looked at her for a long second, and then retracted the switchblade.

Major Lane smiled.  “I’m sorry, Agent Blake.  I was just demonstrating the signature of one of the most notorious booby-trap artists in Angola.”  He stepped back and addressed the room.  “To a metal detector, a fuel cap acts just like a mine.  It can paralyze a whole unit.  Believe it or not this was the invention of a very devious ten year old.”

Blake, still glaring at Lane, reached down to pluck his gas cap out of the sand.  His action triggered a loud WHAP! that sent kitty litter stones flying like birdshot to all corners of the conference room.

“Goddamn it!  What the hell was that!”  Blake’s eyes were wide and his hand was raised in frozen recoil.

Lane had purchased one other item at the Save-On.

“Rat trap mine.  Hiding under the gas cap.  You’re dead, Ranger.”  Blake had dropped the gas cap when the trap went off and it had rolled to a stop at Lane’s feet.  He picked it up and tossed it to the seething Blake.  Major Lane looked out at his audience.  There was a chilled silence.  No one was laughing.  “Like I said, he had devious mind.  This is what you could be up against folks.  Try not to forget it.”

TONLE SAP RESTAURANT – SANTA ANA, CA – 2:05 PM

As Huay listened to the earnest young man enthusiastically explain his intricate business plan to open a fruit smoothie business, his mind began to wander.  He had heard a thousand such proposals.  And this one was the fifth consecutive business plan he’d heard today.  As an active venture capitalist he already owned interests in a wide collection of donut/noodle shops, nail salons, 99-cent stores, dry cleaners and small restaurants.  In fact, he had helped launch the restaurant they were in now – not one of his best investments, but it had taught him an important lesson: never finance someone who hasn’t proven that they know how to run a business. There had been a reasonably steady stream of customers for lunch, but now the restaurant was nearly empty.  And Huay knew why, the place wasn’t very clean.  A fact that people usually overlooked if the food was good, but the food wasn’t very good either, and the owners just didn’t seem to have the passion to make it better.  From his position in the back booth he could see the wife of the owner sitting in the kitchen watching television instead of finishing the lunch dishes.  Infuriating.  All his investments after this one had been with people who were either expanding on already successful enterprises or had unique talent, expertise.  He continued to have his meetings in the often unappetizing restaurant to remind himself that a business, of any size, was difficult, and that there was no glamour in failure.

Added together, these relatively small investments produced as much income as the warehouse and freight handling business he owned in Long Beach.  Huay enjoyed being the bank to his fellow immigrant entrepreneurs, it was a way for him to give back to the community.   Lending at this level was a very personal and sometimes tedious business, but there was no other way to do it right.  Since most immigrants didn’t qualify for traditional American credit, he had tremendous leverage, but to be profitable you still had to look into the eyes of the people you were in business with.  Face Time the magazines called it -- Huay believed in it and had been incredibly successful.  But it had all been merely an education, a warm-up for the path he was now, after years of planning, finally starting down - the path that would restore Cambodia to the peaceful, prosperous place he remembered from his childhood.  A place he desperately wanted Dominique to see.  But he quickly reminded himself that he couldn’t look too far ahead.  One step at a time.

The young man droned on.  Huay could see his lips moving, but he couldn’t make his mind concentrate on what he was saying, “…spirulina…bee pollen…wheat grass flats.  Commercially wheat grass flats cost twenty dollars a flat, but I can grow it at home, with ultra violet grow lamps and hydrophonics, thus cutting eighty-percent of wheat grass overhead…”

A large hairy fly landed on the rim of Huay’s iced tea.  He made the smallest annoyed flick of his wrist, and the fly took off slowly, re-alighting on the picture of King Norodom Siranouk that hung above the booth, right on the upper lip of his ever-present smile.  The owners were still, even after all of the King’s evil alliances and desperate impotent years in exile, royalists.  This had not stopped them from going into business with him – a known Khmer Rouge veteran.  And it pointed out an important fact that was often overlooked by outsiders.  Political distinctions in Cambodia were subtle.  Pol Pot was created from the fears and aspirations of nationalists, imperialists and communists.  But he had been the lucky recipient of opportunity more than a charismatic political leader or master coalitionist.  Learning how to use the most basic weapon of manipulation – fear -- was not a rare skill.  Jones, Guzman, Koresh, Surkuyu, Manson, it wasn’t hard to find egomaniacal cult leaders who understood how to create enemies and manipulate fear into anger.  What created real madmen was opportunity.

Huay had met Pol Pot in Paris when he was a first year student and Pol had visited his campus as a guest lecturer.  At the time, Pol Pot was just an angry intellectual named Saloth Sar who held delusions of being the next Ho Chi Mihn and a reputation of being someone who never paid for his coffee.  But he had proved he understood how to be patient.  Pol Pot struggled and organized in the jungle for ten years, waiting for the all wheels to line up.  And when he finally saw his opportunity, he didn’t hesitate.  When Kissinger sent the B-52’s and their raining death, he created a gigantic fear that accelerated through the countryside like a plague, and Saloth had shaped it, mastered it. And then ruthlessly turned it loose on corrupt General Lon Nol, at the precise moment that the U.S. Congress decided that it had finally lost its stomach for military aid anywhere in Southeast Asia.  For most Cambodians, like everyone in history who had looked to the wrong person when they got scared and desperate, by the time they realized they had embraced the devil, it was too late.

No, Huay decided, there would not be any power sharing with the royals – King or Prince.  The future was not in benevolent graft, it was in market capitalism.  Rapid economic development.  His partners were in place.  Not bandits, capitalists, people who would show the world what Cambodians were truly capable of.  All they needed was him, his catalyst.

Huay looked down from the fly to his watch – a genuine Swiss chronograph with a sweeping second hand.  Even though his next appointment was only twenty minutes away on 91 in Yorba Linda, he didn’t want to be rushed.  The Richard Nixon Birthplace and Presidential Library, his next target, closed at five.  Huay stood up and cleared his throat, cutting off the dreaming pitchman just as he said   “Protein powder profit --”

“I don’t think people genuinely crave smoothies.” Huay said.  “I think they just drink them because they’re afraid to die.”  Keeping his eyes on the man across from him, Huay snapped his wrist and backhanded the slothful fly against the cheek of King Siranouk.  It stuck to the glass for a moment and then fell, lifeless, into the iced tea of the speechless, would-be smoothie tycoon.  The meeting was over.

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD – 4:30 P.M.

Major Lane waited for his taxi outside the doors of the Federal building.  There was no shade, and he was getting hot and irritable.  He had been waiting nearly twenty-five minutes.  He had decided to go home early, although technically he didn’t have specific hours.  There just wasn’t a lot for him to do.  They had no new evidence, no tips, and apparently zero new leads.  Also he sensed that he had become something of a task force pariah after his demonstration.  Even Alan had been trying to avoid him.  But he felt he was doing his job.  He wasn’t a cop, he didn’t enforce rules or arrest people, he was the landmine guy.  If his tactics made them scared, well, that was probably a good thing.  Most of them had no idea what mines could do.

There was another reason Lane wanted to go back to the hotel.  He didn’t want to admit it to himself, but he was already looking forward to his next one gram hit of synthetic morphine.  He was trying his best to ration his supply by only taking one to get to sleep, but last night he had taken two.  The first one at about six o’clock.

A horn honking interrupted his thoughts.  A silver Lexus had pulled into the circular drive.  The window hummed down revealing Catherine Mills in the driver's seat. She dipped her chin slightly and looked over her sunglasses at him. She looked good in her car.

“Need a ride?” she asked.

Lane blinked twice in the sun and then opened the door.  It was clearly a superior option to the taxi.

“Thanks.  I’m at the Sofitel.”  He was grateful to be out of the flaming heat.

“I don’t know where that is,” she said, accelerating aggressively onto Wilshire.

“It’s right across from the Beverly Center.”

“Oh, I know where that is.”

“I thought you might.” Lane said.  “Everyone seems to.”  He looked around the car.  He had never seen so much leather in a vehicle before.  It covered every surface, even the ceiling.  It was like he was inside a giant air-conditioned catcher’s mitt -- only with a hint of perfume.  He couldn’t help commenting.

“It’s pretty leathery in here.”

“Yeah, it’s the Coach Edition.  I kind of had to get used to it at first.  But I got a great deal on it.”

“What do you mean Coach Edition?”

“You know, the famous leather goods store.  They designed the interior.  You’ve never heard of Coach leather?  It’s terrific stuff.”   Lane had never heard of cars designed by stores before.  He figured it was a L.A. phenomenon.

“It’s nice.  Very luxurious.”  Lane said.  Catherine nodded, not sure if he was being sarcastic.

“Thanks.”

They drove in silence.  Catherine hadn’t commented on his rat trap demonstration.  Lane could feel the topic hanging above them like a thought bubble.

“So,” he said “I guess you’re headed home early too.”

Catherine smiled.  “There’s not a whole lot going on.  I’ve barely gotten four hours of sleep the past two nights, I figured it was best to use this time to recharge.   I decided I’m actually going to make my spa appointment tonight.”

Lane turned the second air-conditioning vent on himself.  “Where’s your spa?”

“In my backyard.  Spa is a fancy name for a hot tub, you know, a Jacuzzi.  Mine has a timer; it heats up for an hour every day starting at five o’clock.  It hits the perfect temperature at six.  I bought the timer to give myself an incentive to leave the office on time.”

“Has it worked?”

“No.  I’ve only used it once in the last year.  It’s always cold by the time I get home.  And I pay sixty dollars a month to keep it cleaned and serviced.  That includes the pool, but I don’t use that either.”

“How can you get in a hot tub when it’s this hot?”

“It cools down pretty fast around here at night.  You’ll see.  Plus the heat relaxes your muscles no matter what the temperature is outside.”

Lane wondered if he was about to be invited to his first hot tub party.  But she didn’t say anything more.  They turned on La Cienega and cruised ten blocks in deep silence.  The Lexus was a quiet car. Lane felt the streets were deserted without the cyclos and bicycles of Southeast Asia.  When they got to the Fat Burger, two blocks from the hotel, Lane decided he had to ask.

“So what did you think of my safety demonstration?”

Catherine took a second before responding.  “It was entertaining.  But I think you came off as kind of a smart ass.  Cops don’t like to be patronized.”

“Nobody does.  But over-confidence is the first thing mines take advantage of.  I was just attempting to point that out in a way people would remember.”  They were pulling into the driveway of the Sofitel.  A young Latino valet in a purple vest was waiting for them near the front doors.

“Well, it was definitely memorable,” Catherine said.  “But I don’t know if I’ll make your demonstrations a regular thing.  I think it might give me personnel problems I don’t need.”  She stopped the car, but kept the transmission in D.

Lane smiled and put out his hand.  It was an unnecessary gesture, but he felt a sudden compulsion to be closer to her.  “Thanks for the ride.”

She took his hand.

“Anytime.”  She squeezed his knuckles together and their eyes locked.  “I’ll see you at the funeral tomorrow.”

“Right.  Enjoy your jacuzzi.”

“Count on it.”  She said, and let his fingers slowly slip away.

Lane exited and turned to watch Catherine and her Lexus pull away.  He noticed the valet in the purple vest intently watching her as well.  After she peeled out onto Beverly (clearly flooring it), the suave valet looked over at Lane, raised his eyebrows and nodded.

Major Joel Lane laughed.  He was thinking the same thing.

RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE

YORBA LINDA, CA – 4:01 P.M.

Huay crossed Yorba Linda Boulevard and entered the parking lot on foot.  Not too many people walked to the Nixon Library, but then most people didn’t mind having their automobiles videotaped by security cameras.  Huay had parked his Mercedes six blocks away near a movie theater.  He was dressed as a tourist: dark windbreaker, Calloway golf hat, sensible walking shoes and he carried a Sony 8mm video camera with a flip out LCD viewing screen.  He also carried a large camera bag with a wide nylon strap that dug deeply into his shoulder.  Inside the bag were a pair of cotton gardening gloves, a black knit ski mask, and three OZM 4 electronically-fused bounding mines.  A bounding mine explodes in two parts, the first smaller explosion elevates the mine to a height of about one meter, where the second, larger explosion distributes the shrapnel.  The OZM’s were manufactured in the former Soviet Union and possessed a kill radius of approximately 15 meters each.

Huay had spent an entire day at the museum two months earlier doing reconnaissance.  He had carefully noted the placement of each surveillance camera, the movements of the security guards, the layout of the nine acre grounds, the hours of operation, and possible hiding places.  In spite of his secret mission, Huay had been absolutely fascinated by the scope and detail of the facility.  The large museum chronicled nearly every aspect of Richard Milhous Nixon’s extraordinary fifty-year career in American politics.  It included everything: his exposure of Alger Hiss, his Vice Presidential terms, the Kennedy debates, the Viet Nam War, his diplomatic breakthrough with China, the Watergate tapes and his post presidential statesmanship.  There were also displays of incredibly ornate Presidential gifts from the Moroccans and Saudi’s, election memorabilia, love letters he wrote to Pat during the time he served in the navy, and even an exact replica of his New Jersey office on the day he had his fatal stroke.  The lush grounds were beautifully landscaped and included a reflecting pool, a 500 bush rose garden, and most amazingly, the original house where President Nixon was born.  The site was so spectacular that it was often rented out for corporate events, visiting speakers, political lunches, and even weddings (the actual gazebo from Julie Nixon’s White House Rose Garden wedding to Eisenhower’s grandson was part of the attraction).

Huay held his Sony up to his face as he passed the first surveillance camera in the parking lot.  He pretended to film all the way up the front walk and into the smoked glass doors of the entrance.  Inside he had to lower his camera to approach the ticket window, but he kept his large sunglasses and golf hat on.  A woman in her mid-fifties wearing red white and blue took his six dollars.  As she handed back a nickel she reminded him that the Museum was only open for another forty-five minutes.   Huay nodded and said “Thank you.”

Huay quickly strolled out of the museum building, down the western colonnade that ran alongside the reflecting pool, and across the grassy knoll that formed the top of the Pat Nixon amphitheater -- the construction of which was funded (the sign said) by a generous grant from Bob and Dolores Hope.  As Huay passed several tourists who had paused to admire the wedding gazebo, he checked his watch.  He knew the last guided tour of Nixon’s boyhood home was scheduled for 4:30.

The small one and a half story white house, built from a kit by Nixon’s father, was at the end of the property.  During the time Nixon lived there, the surrounding acreage had been a struggling orange and nut grove.  A rare confluence of lucky events had spared the little house from the bulldozers of creeping Orange County development.  An elementary school had been built on the site of the orchard and the house had been preserved as a residence for the caretaker of the school.  After Nixon became President, and the site selected for the library, the school was torn down and the house restored back to its original condition.  Huay had been particularly interested in this piece of history during his original visit.  His own boyhood home had not been so fortunate.  In fact, the entire village he had grown up in had disappeared in a firestorm of one thousand-pound American bombs in 1973 sent by Nixon on the advice of Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger.  Huay had tired to go home only once.  It had taken a long time to even find where it had been.  Water from nearby rice fields had filled the craters, creating a series of small ponds where people now farmed fish.  Not a trace of his village remained, it had been scorched black and then swallowed by the earth.  Later Huay learned that the military action that had been responsible for the bombing had been called Operation MENU.  The target zones were divided into various quadrants and referenced as Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Supper, Dinner and Dessert.  Huay’s family home and birthplace had been in the Snack quadrant.

A tour was exiting out the backdoor of the house as Huay approached.  He quickly went around to the entrance on the other side.  A volunteer senior citizen guide, or Docent as they were called here in California, watched over a small line of tourists waiting for the four-thirty tour.  Huay was glad to see there were several Asians in the line, it would help him blend.  But for now he avoided joining the group, he still had five minutes, and he wanted to be near the tail end of the line. To kill time, he pretended to film the gravesites of the President and First Lady, both of these were conveniently located in a small flower-ringed memorial garden only ten yards from the house.

Huay had to admit that the historical symmetry was remarkable. A man is born in a simple hand-made white house, goes to war, becomes a congressman, becomes President, lives in the big White House, travels all over the world and then, 81 years later, ends up buried a few steps from the room he was born in.  It was like a modern Monticello.  Mount Vernon West.

Huay looked back over his shoulder at the line.  The Docent was opening the door and clicking her people counter.  Huay closed his eyes and exhaled, collecting himself, steeling his nerves.   When he opened his eyes he found that he was looking down at the 37th American President’s black marble headstone.  It’s engraved epitaph read: "The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker."  It was exactly the inspiration Huay needed.

HOTEL SOFITEL – 5:05 P.M.

Lane was dismayed to find the Avis desk closed.  The rental agent had left early as well.  The concierge told him to try again in the morning.  Lane went up to his peach room and decided to call the only friend he knew in Los Angeles.  He found the number in his address book and dialed the Euro phone.

The area code had changed, and that, coupled with the complex code one had to dial to make a credit-card call out of the hotel, made Lane redial several times, but he eventually got the right number.  A woman answered in Khmer.  It took second for Lane to make that part of his mind work again, “Bok Khieu?”  he said.  There was a long pause.  Lane could hear a television set singing in the background, a hushed conversation he couldn’t understand, and then:

“Major Lane?”

Khieu’s voice sounded refreshingly familiar and instantly brightened Lane’s mood.  Lane would never have survived his first year in Cambodia without Khieu’s friendship.  He had worked with the U.N. as one of their translators and trainers.  He and Lane had worked side by side in the field, clearing mines and booby traps in the Western provinces.  Khieu’s knowledge of local tactics had saved Lane’s life numerous times.  Partially to repay him, and partially because he was a true friend, Lane had expedited Khieu and his family’s immigration to the United States.  They had been in Los Angeles for three years.  Lane knew the adjustment had been difficult.  Except for five years spent in exile in Thailand (where he had perfected his English), Khieu had lived his whole life in Cambodia.  When they’d first arrived in Los Angeles they had exchanged letters often, but their correspondence had since tapered off.  Lane hadn’t heard from him in almost two years.  He was overjoyed to find him on the end of the phone.

They both wanted to meet as soon as possible.  Lane suggested that Khieu and his wife come to his hotel for dinner.  Khieu explained that his business required him to work all night, but that he could schedule a break in Lane’s neighborhood.

“Do you know the Fat Burger on La Cienega?” Khieu asked him.

“Actually I do.” Lane said.

“Good.  It’s close to you, so you can walk there.  It’s out of our territory, but it has pretty good parking where we can watch the truck.”

“Well all right.”  Lane didn’t see how meeting at Fat Burger was better than his hotel, but he wanted Khieu to be comfortable.

“OK, one a.m. Fat Burger.  See you tonight, Major Lane.  Bye-Bye.”

“Bye.” Lane said, and hung up.

He would have insisted on waiting to meet Khieu until he had his own car and could make it more convenient, but the first thing he’d done when he got back to his room was inventory his morphine supply.  He only had two little pills left.  He was hoping Khieu would have a connection that could re-supply his unfortunate habit – ideally with the natural grade he was used to.  The sooner he got that part of his life straightened out the better.

Lane stepped out on his terrace and set fire to a Gitane.  It would be good to see Khieu again.  They had had a lot of fun together in Cambodia.  He had taught him how to play poker, Khieu was an old hand at gambling, but he didn’t know how to play poker.  He had gotten good, a lot of gambling was the same -- knowing your opponent, figuring the odds.  The rest was nuts and bolts.  Lane looked out over the shimmering afternoon smog of Hollywood and wondered again about the person who had put the landmines on the beach.  What were they doing now?  The stack still nagged at him.  What target would be next?  If he was up against a real Mao-ist trained terrorist, the next target would be something that attempted to show the incompetence and weakness of the local authority.  Like a police station, or a government building.  It could be anything really.

The latest official profile (that Lane read at the office) said the FBI believed they were looking for a homegrown suspect or suspects, another domestic terrorist threat.  Lane didn’t agree.  He felt the FBI’s reasoning was prejudiced by their recent experiences: militant pro-lifers, mail bombers, internet explosive nuts.  None of these types had ever used real anti-personnel mines before.  And the stack…three dead…Jesus.  He watched the cars below stream in and out of the Beverly Center and tried to imagine what kind of car his adversary might drive.  He decided that as soon as he had wheels he would drive out to Zuma Beach and see the crime scene for himself.  He didn’t see how hanging around the office was going to give him any insight.

Lane was fighting it, but he could feel his mind returning to thoughts of the little blue pills.  He tossed his half-finished Gitane over the stucco railing and quickly lit another.  The pills were hidden in the English language version of The King James Bible in the drawer next to the bed.  He had purposely placed them in a specific section to ease his guilt about his habit.  Now he couldn’t stop thinking about it.  Against his better judgment, Lane went back inside and leaned across the bed to the drawer that contained the Gideon’s gift.  He opened the text to the pills.  Lane stared at them for a second and then re-read the verse they marked:

1 Corinthians 10:13

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.

Lane sighed.  He wasn’t particularly religious.  He had spent hundreds of hours in military school chapels, but he hadn’t retained much.  He’d only memorized the Corinthians scripture because an Irish chaplain had taped it to the condom machine at their U.N. base in Angola.

Lane snapped the Bible closed, jumped up from the bed and went back to the terrace.  A car alarm was shrieking SWHOOP SWHOOP SWHOOOP below his window.  He sparked his third Gitane in five minutes.

Lane told himself he had to wait at least until after six.  But there was no way he was going to make it staying in his room.  With nothing to do until one a.m. and no car to go anywhere, Lane decided he had only one option.  He would walk across the street and go shopping at the Beverly Center.  He’d heard people could be addicted to that, perhaps it would help him.

RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE – 4:45 P.M.

“This is the room where President Nixon was born…the actual bed…1913…Mrs. Nixon…Grandmother Milhous…brothers Harold, Don and Arthur…” the tri-focaled Docent rambled on.  The house was small, and with the addition of the tour group, especially cramped.  But the tourists, a true multi-cultural collection of folks, were still absolutely fascinated.  “This is the actual Crown piano President Nixon learned on…beginning his studies at the age of seven…he also played the clarinet and saxophone…”

Huay was sure to stay out of the photos the other tourists were taking.  Flashes and camera motors popped and whirred continually.  “This is where the family would eat their dinners, discuss the issues of the day…where Mrs. Nixon canned and baked”  Huay was staying at the back of the group; was the last one to squeeze into the small kitchen and look at the stove.   He kept the Sony up to his face.  “All of the boys slept in the small bedroom upstairs…but because there’s only one set of stairs…fire regulations don’t allow us to take the public up there…the bedroom is accurately restored, however, with the original beds and bedding…occasionally viewed by private tours…”

Huay edged out of the kitchen and stood at the foot of the staircase.  A velvet rope was the only thing preventing entry. He looked over his shoulder.  The Docent was staying in the middle of the room.  “If there aren’t any more questions…”  The house was too small.  The tour was quickly winding down.  People were already beginning to exit the backdoor.  But the Docent woman wasn’t moving.  On his first trip, the Docent had been the first person to open the backdoor.  Shit.  Huay could feel his careful plans eroding.  He waited a few seconds more, watching the Docent in his peripheral vision.   And then, finally, a sweet Georgian voice bailed him out, “Exc-uuse me, is this lamp a Tiffany o-riginal?”  The referenced lamp was near the exit door, and the guide moved towards it, out of his sight.  Huay quickly stepped over the rope and pressed his back against the wall of the stairwell.

“It is a nice lamp, but I’m sure it’s not anything special…as you know the Nixons were Quakers…quite frugal people…” Huay stayed put.  If he was caught here he could confess to sneaking up to have a look at the upstairs, pretend he was a real Nixophile.  He would have to abandon his plan, but he was sure his punishment would be no more than a scolding.

The voices began to fade away, and then he heard the door close, and the deadbolt slide into the frame.  There was once again silence in the Nixon home.

Huay took a deep breath and started up the steps.  Each one creaking ominously.

THE BEVERLY CENTER – 5:30 P.M.

Lane surveyed the back-lit mall directory and map and decided he was hungry.  Finding the food court on the fourth floor, he headed for the interior escalators.

The Beverly Center was an impressive mall, a true model of the modern American bazaar.  Lane noticed that everyone looked trim and groomed, optimistic.  He also noticed that, unlike other malls he had been in, everyone seemed to be buying something – he didn’t see a single person without a shopping bag of some kind.

At the food court, Lane found he was in the midst of the dinner rush.  Long lines furbled out in front of each restaurant space.  Lane passed up Sbarro and La Salsa and The Chocolate Chip Cookie Factory in favor of Panda Express, which unlike its competition, had its own dining area – separated from the hoi polloi of the rest of the food park by a low black and white tiled wall.  The especially long line here gave him plenty of time to study the menu.  He decided he was already really missing Asian food.  Lane determined that for $5.29 he could have any three items from the steam line.  He tried to choose carefully; selecting Szechuan broccoli, Mandarin orange fried chicken, and vegetarian chow mein.  He was surprised when the server piled on a large helping of fried rice and two cellophane-wrapped fortune cookies onto his cardboard panda plate -- he hadn’t asked for either.  At the last minute Lane snatched a Budweiser longneck from out of the packed ice tub by the self-service soft drink machine.  It looked too cold and refreshing to pass up.  At the register Lane was shocked to find his total, with tax, was $10.33.  The beer cost a staggering $4.25.  The woman who rang-up his dinner also popped the top off his longneck and informed him he had to consume his beer in the Panda Express area only.  Clearly, Lane thought, heavy drinking was not encouraged at the Beverly Center.

Lane visited the napkin stand and found a pair of wooden chopsticks and a plastic envelope of Hunan hot sauce.  He was incredibly hungry, but when he looked up, he found there were no empty tables in the Panda Express area.  Feeling like an idiot standing there with his heavy tray of food, Lane decided his best bet was a four-person table occupied by only one woman and a fat blue-eyed baby in a stroller.

Lane walked over and said, with his most disarming smile, “Mind if I join you?  There aren’t any small tables left.”  The baby, Lane guessed it was about six months, was sucking down an off-white substance from a bottle while the mother picked at her fried rice and read a thick, glossy romance novel with a rugged looking man in a flannel shirt on the cover.  She looked up, clearly annoyed, inspected him head to toe, said,

“Whatever.” And returned to her book.

Lane sat down across from the baby.  He deftly separated his chopsticks, rubbed them together twice to remove any slivers, and got down to it.  The broccoli was good and spicy, and the orange chicken exceptional.  The chow mein and fried rice were tasteless however.  Lane noticed the baby in the stroller was watching him eat.  He looked down at it – Lane couldn’t decide if the baby was a boy or girl.  It was wearing blue overalls with white sailboats.  Were sailboats strictly masculine?  He knew that trains were definitely only for boys, but he wasn’t sure about sailboats.  The bottle had fallen out of the baby’s mouth, but mom hadn’t noticed.  Lane winked, but the baby just continued staring.  Lane left most of the rice and chow mein untouched.  He filled-up quickly.  The turkey avo had stuck with him more than he realized.  As Lane held the last fried morsel of orange chicken between his chopsticks, the fat unisex baby belched up a nice gooey dollop of Similac onto its blue and white sailboat overalls.  Lane put his chopsticks down.  Mom wiped-up the baby barf with a spit rag and immediately returned to her novel.  Lane took a hit of his exorbitant beer and cracked open one of his fortune cookies.  The little strip of paper unfurled and read:

Someone is thinking of you.

He glanced down at the fat face in the overalls again.  Same blank stare.  Lane reached back to his tray and cracked open the second cookie.  The little strip of paper unfurled and read:

Selfish tendencies have a way of coming back at you.

Lane pondered his fortunes for a moment.  Then he shrugged, drained his beer and belched: hearty and loud, clearly topping the tyke in the stroller in volume, if not mass.  The mother looked over crossly.  Lane winked at her, stood up and bused his own tray; selfishly throwing away the broken bits and pieces of his uneaten fortune cookies.

WOODLAND HILLS, CA – 6:05 P.M.

Catherine Mills looked at her naked body in the full-length mirror of her bedroom.  She, like most women of her age and income level who resided in the San Fernando Valley, was getting weekly direct mail advertisements from plastic surgeons.  She had encountered another elegantly designed brochure in her mailbox today.  It offered incredibly low financing rates.  She felt like she was being laser targeted by laser surgeons, specialists in waging a kind of relentless low-intensity psychological war. The insidious suggestions were endless: eyelift, tummy tuck, collagen and botox injections, introductory endermologie.  Every week little reminders of the losing battle and pleas for tiny morsels of spare flesh, like circling jackals on the savanna.   Last week’s offers included a free waxing just for touring their “liposculpture gallery.” She dismissed them as desperate cannibals.

Still, she found herself putting her fingers behind her neck and pulling back and up to see if it made a difference.  Then arching her back, lifting her breasts.  She wasn’t as toned as when she was captain of her gymnastics team, but there were no out of control areas.  She turned, stood on tip-toes and examined the kerf of her backside; she could certainly be a little tanner, but she was proud to say she had avoided the horrible stakeout butt that plagued so many of the females in her profession.  She counted calories in the office, but…oh stop it, she thought.  She stepped into her white mesh bikini and tied on the crocheted top.

In the kitchen, a room she seldom used, Catherine poured a can of Diet Coke and two airplane-sized bottles of Bacardi into a tall plastic patio glass filled with slivered ice.  She carried her cocktail, a fluffy white beach towel and her firearm through the sliding glass door and out onto her redwood deck.  It was time to relax.

A privacy fence, three lemon trees, a lime tree, two large date palms, and a kumquat bush gave her backyard a lush Eden-like feel.  Her large percolating hot tub was recessed into the deck, steam swirling alluringly around the edges of the cover.  The spa was three concrete steps above the most notable aspect of her backyard: a pink, seven-foot deep heart-shaped swimming pool.  The pool was lined with tinted cement and its edge trimmed with light blue and black mosaic tiles.  It was garish, but just campy and useless enough that Catherine hadn’t found the resolve to do anything about it except keep it maintained.  And she held no illusions about its romantic possibilities.  She had gotten a good price on the house because it was sold as part of a divorce settlement.

Catherine pushed the foam rubber spa cover to the side and fished out the floating thermometer.  A perfect one hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit.  Her hot tub spa, a four hundred gallon genuine Jacuzzi Quantum 2100, was a marvel of modern plumbing: at her disposal were 9 ProPower jets, 11 body jets with ratchet style rim activated pulse controls, a 6-jet wave seat, two 230 Volt, 50 AMP 4.0 horsepower high volume pumps with built-in dry run protection, a one horsepower super quiet air blower injector, a 50 square foot filter system with 24 hour filtration pump, and an adjustable floating Brominator.   It was state of the art, but mostly Catherine Mills just used it to get off.

She eased into the bracing hot liquid and found her favorite seat by the foot jets.  She leaned back into the shoulder jets and took a sip of her Diet Cuba Libre, enjoying for once, the fruits of California living.  The sun was slipping behind the hills that stretched above her backyard, and a last finger of sun reached out and gently touched her face.  She relaxed in the quiet warmth for several lazy moments and then turned her body and faced the back jets.  Self conscious for a moment, she looked over her shoulder.  The palm fronds and high fence had all been installed with the heart-shaped pool – they were designed to impede any neighborly sightlines and give near perfect privacy.  She was quite alone.

Catherine adjusted the pulse rate, and turned the dual nozzles so they flowed together, then leaned over and turned a dial on the outside controls.  The air pump kicked in and began pouring magically tingling bubbles into the jet streams.  She moved her hips rhythmically, eyes closed, searching for just the right imagery.  Her thoughts converged on the Special Forces Major -- his crinkly twinkly blue eyes, his strong hands pressed against her smooth leather dashboard, his shoulders, his profile.

She brought her hand down and moved the macrame mesh out of the way.  And the air bubbles really began to tingle.  Catherine arched her spine and licked her lips.  She could already tell it was going to be a good one.

RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE – 6:45 P.M.

Huay sat on the President’s boyhood bed and dangled his feet over the side.  It was an incredibly high old-fashioned model, the kind that might break your collarbone if you fell out of it in the middle of the night.  Killing time, he counted the squares on its magnificently detailed patchwork quilt -- hand-sewn, he surmised, by some long defunct Quaker bee.

Originally, Huay had planned to burn the house down to its foundations, but he’d since decided that it would be over-kill.  He wanted his opponent to feel vulnerable, but not violated to the point of intractable rage.  There were negotiations ahead.  The cemetery was risky enough, right on the edge.

He tensed when he heard a key in the downstairs door.  Routine.  Just a closing-up sweep around the grounds, he thought.  But adrenalin flushed into his heart when he heard the first stair creak.  Whoever it was, was coming his way.

There was only one place to hide.  As quietly as he could, Huay slid to the far side of the bed, dropped to the floor, and slid underneath, his head squeezing painfully under the wooden frame. It was dusty under the bed, a fine lint tickled his nose and scratched his eyes.

The quilt ended three inches from the floor on each side, allowing Huay to watch a pair of plain black tennis shoes walk into the room.  They were logoless, like those worn by basketball referees and security guards the world over.

The shoes paused near the foot of the bed.  The edge of the quilt started to move.  And Huay began to silently panic.  But he was quickly relieved when he realized that the visitor was only smoothing out the wrinkles Huay had made sitting on the top.  He hoped whoever it was wouldn’t get the urge to dust.

Huay watched the black soles leave the room and listened carefully as they descended the steps.  He didn’t hear the door as he expected.  Instead he heard mysterious clunking and the sound of furniture moving across the floor.  The human was still downstairs.  What the hell were they doing?

And then Huay heard it.  A sound he’d never expected.  He’d planned for months, imagining every careful step he’d take.  But he’d never imagined this.

From down below, timidly at first…and then loud and clear…the familiar notes of, of…what was it called?…C-C-C…C-B-C-D-E-F…E-E-E…Huay finally remembered: “Heart and Soul”…the person…(he didn’t want to think ghost)…was playing both hands perfectly together now…tooling carelessly away on little Richard’s piano.

Huay listened and a tear snuck out of the corner of his eye and ran down his cheek.  He’d heard Dominique play the song a hundred times.  Huay told himself the tears were only from the dust.  He was lying of course, but he knew that if he looked inside too deeply…well, he just might lose his mind.

BEVERLY CENTER – 7:09 P.M.

Lane amused himself at Brookstone for the better part of an hour.  He enjoyed gadgets.  And there were many items that he had read about in the SkyMall catalog on the plane that he now got to examine first-hand.  An ultrasonic stoplight system for the back wall of the garage, a heated ice-scraper, a wireless car key locator, a 12 function programmable lawn sprinkler, a salt-water resistant neoprene football, swimming pool toypedoes, an integrated LED flashlight/screwdriver, a light-activated travel alarm, freezable eye pillows, nightvision scopes, a dozen kinds of electronic masseurs and microscopic personal stereos…he found it all endlessly fascinating.

Finally, after the fifth time a clerk offered to assist him, and after thoroughly testing six different models, Lane purchased a pair of German-made 7 X 21  binoculars with electronic zoom, justifying the purchase as an expensable item.  Then, having been bitten by the shopping bug, Lane walked around to the Eddie Bauer store. It was located directly across the atrium from Brookstone and had served as the background for his binocular focus-testing.  Lane didn’t normally enjoy shopping for clothes, having lived in the military for most of his life, but if he had to, Eddie Bauer offered the kind of clean no-nonsense look he preferred. The only casual clothes he had brought from Cambodia consisted of deteriorating beach shorts, flip-flop thongs and faded tank-tops.  He’d noticed very few of the FBI folks wore suits, but he knew his casual attire was still a little too casual for the office set.

At Eddie Bauer, Lane purchased two pairs of Classic-fit jeans from the wall rack, two pairs of heavy cotton twill khakis, a pair of walking shorts, three piqued cotton polo shirts, and seven pairs of plain white boxer shorts that he’d found displayed in a small polished wood canoe.  His last purchase, an impulse buy, was a pair of navy blue swim trunks covered with tiny pink lobsters.

On the first floor, just as he was heading toward the exit, Lane was stopped in his tracks – struck immobile, by a familiar arresting aroma.  He looked up.  Of course.  He was in front of the Coach store.  It smelled exactly like Catherine’s car, only without her subtle perfume.  Lane looked down at his watch.  He still had nothing but time.

Still thinking of Catherine, Lane went into the Coach store and bought the first thing that caught his eye, paying one hundred and twenty nine dollars (before tax) for a stiff hand-tooled belt to hold his new pants up.

RICHARD NIXON LIBRARY AND BIRTHPLACE – 11:59 P.M.

Huay slid out from under the bed, stood up, and brushed off the dust.  The impromptu piano recital had lasted only a half-hour, but he had stayed under the bed as a precaution against other unexpected visits. Huay took a moment to shake out the kinks and do a few stretching exercises.  Except for two brief bathroom breaks, he had spent nearly six hours in the confined space.  He had even dozed off for short periods of time. Huay had been sleeping fitfully lately, and the extra sleep was welcome.

Huay moved to the small dormer window and looked out.  All was dark and quiet.  From his earlier reconnaissance he had made a list of the important security features of the facility; it consisted of the following entries:

1) Two guards on duty

2) Entire perimeter of the grounds rigged day and night with motion detectors (during the day to stop people from sneaking onto the grounds for free and during the night to stop intruders)

3) Video surveillance cameras can be adjusted to see all entrances and any point on the perimeter

4) Doors and windows on the first floor of homestead locked and alarmed

5) One of the guards takes a leisurely stroll around the grounds every hour from seven at night until seven in the morning.

6) Security control room located deep in the back of the museum, with a direct phone line to the Yorba Linda city police dispatcher (assumed).

Huay kept his head down, but still watched the path that led from the museum to the house.  At 12:05, a blazered figure made an appearance.  The shadow circled the house, and then walked back down the same path.  Huay watched as it crossed the amphitheater, and disappeared down the colonnade, which ran along side the reflecting pool and led into the museum.  It was now or never.

Huay pushed open the window (not alarmed on the second story as he had figured) and stepped through.  Out on the roof, Huay gently moved the window back down, grabbed the edge of the shingles with his right gloved hand and slowly eased his body down.  Cradling his camera bag in his left hand, he let go and dropped six feet, rolling as soon as he hit the ground.  Silence.  Darkness.  No problems on the landing, the ground moist and soft.

Huay crept down the path the guard had just used, keeping his hat low and sunglasses on.  If anyone was watching the video cameras intently they would see his shadow, but the risks were minimal.  It was impossible for anyone to watch such boring imagery when there was so much better personal entertainment available – television, walkmans, food, computer games, the telephone.  Huay was confident.

Flowerbeds ran down the space between the colonnade (a wide trellis covered walkway) and the long reflecting pool.  Here, among the rose bushes, was where Huay would plant the OZM’s.  He knelt down and brought out the garden trowel.  Then, digging carefully, he hollowed out a three-inch deep hole and removed the first OZM from its hiding place in the bottom of the camera bag.  The electronic fuses on these particular models allowed the user to trigger the mines at a precise moment, like classic time bombs.  Unlike most mine fuses, these were designed purely for terrorist purposes (set in crowded places or where you knew a certain person would be at a certain time) and did not require contact to detonate.

The Western colonnade space was one of the areas available for small event rental.  The committee to re-elect Congressman T. Daniel Boone had, in fact, scheduled a fundraising luncheon for this very area.  And it was the reason Huay had finally decided to face the multiple risks this target presented.  Congressman Boone, (Thomas Daniel Boone, who had dropped the Thomas when he’d entered politics) was perhaps the biggest weapons systems supporter in the history of Congress.  Orange County had been built, largely, by aerospace defense contracting money, and Congressmen Boone was an advocate, champion and mouthpiece for these interests --commonly referred to by the nicknames Billion Dollar Boone (for his support of billion dollar bombers) and Boone-doggle by his detractors.  To Huay he was a deliciously fat, iconic target.

Huay had pre-set the timers and needed only to pull the activation pins from the mines.  He pulled the pin on the first one, always a tense moment, and placed it carefully in the shallow hole.  Two inches of loosely packed earth went on top.  At his low level he brushed against the blossom of the nearest rose bush.  It was an intoxicatingly fragrant Gertrude Jekyll tea rose.  He found the scent calming and breathed deeply.  He decided  he must bring one of the marvelous stems home to Dominique.  Huay moved over to the next bush to plant the second mine and sampled the scent of a flowering Ingrid Bergman.  The petals were not nearly as sweet as the first one he’d smelled.  He placed the next two mines quickly, smoothing the covering dirt expertly with his trowel and then returned to his original spot and broke off a flowering stem from the Gertrude Jekyll.  A barbed thorn pierced his cotton glove in the dark and he could feel its sting puncture the tender skin between his fingers inside.  Swearing softly, he put the stolen rose into his camera bag.  He smoothed the dirt over one last time.  If everything went according to plan, in approximately 13 hours Daniel Boone’s rubber omelet fundraiser would turn out to be more costly than anyone ever imagined.  And Congressman Boone would be shocked to discover that the most dire threat to his security came from a weapon system that Huay had purchased for only three easy payments of $29.95.

As Huay had drawn up this operation he had divided it into three distinct parts.  The first; hiding in the house.  The second; getting out of the house and setting the mines. And the third; getting away without being discovered or photographed clearly.  He figured the third step was probably the most difficult due to the perimeter motion detection.  The cameras and the rapid response capabilities of the police were difficult obstacles.  It had taken Huay a week of thinking to come up with the proper plan.

Now Huay moved over to a stand of trees near the parking lot. Two mini-sized pick-up trucks, one of them lowered, were the only vehicles left, and they obviously belonged to the graveyard shift security workers inside. The driveway of the parking lot was closed by a chain and padlocked.  Huay leaned against the Eucalyptus trunk and flipped open his pirated cellular phone.  He dialed carefully:  1-323-655-9880

On the sixth ring a voice finally picked up and said:  “Domino’s Pizza, may I please take your order?”

“Yes,” Huay said softly, “I’d like to order a large pizza with pepperoni and pineapple.”

“Is that regular or thin?”

“Excuse me?”

“Regular crust or thin crust?”

“Regular.”

“Large regular crust with pepperoni and pineapple….Would you like extra cheese with that?  We have a special tonight – two free cokes or free garlic bread sticks if you get extra cheese.  Do you want extra cheese?”

Huay tried to imagine what he would do if he were an all night security guard and drove a lowered pick-up truck.

“O.K.  extra cheese” he said.

“Do you want the Cokes or the garlic bread?”

“Um, I guess I’ll take the Cokes.”

“Cokes. Name?”

“Colson…Chuck Colson”

“Phone number?”

“714-993-5075”

“That’s not the number you’re calling from Mr. Colson.”

“I know, I’m calling from my cell phone, but I’m working at The Nixon Library.  They don’t like us to use the phone for personal calls.  Do you know where the Nixon Library is or do you need the address?”

“I have to have the address, Mr. Colson.”

“OK, it’s 18001 Yorba Linda Boulevard.  The cross-street is Del Mar.  And listen, tell the driver he can’t pull into the parking lot because it’s locked.  But he can park in the driveway and then come up to the front door.  Be sure to tell him to knock real loud so we can hear him.”

“Got it. Driveway.  Knock loud.  Do you have any coupons Mr. Colson?”

“No.  No coupons.”

“Alright.  Be there twenty to thirty minutes.”

“Thank you.”

Huay pushed the end button on his phone and shook his head.  Nothing was easy, nothing.

The perfect execution of the plan now depended on the speed of the Dominoes organization and the guards not making their next round before one a.m.  Huay was confident - he had ordered from Dominoes numerous times and they’d never been late.  Not once.

Huay waited patiently for fifteen minutes.  And then began to look alternately at his watch, and the museum for signs of stirring.

A battered Honda Civic with a lighted sign strapped to the roof, roared past the driveway, slammed on the brakes and then backed up.  Huay, hidden in the shadows of the trees, watched as the driver leapt out with a red vinyl pizza warmer, kicked the car door closed and leapt deftly over the parking lot chain.

The idea was for the pizza guy to set off the perimeter alarm and draw the attention of the surveillance cameras.  Huay would wait for the pizza guy to go by him and then walk out the same way he came in, figuring that the alarm wouldn’t be reset quickly enough to register a second intrusion, or in his case, extrusion.

The pizza guy, in his red white and blue cap, hustled by.  Huay was poised to go, but at the last second his subconscious stopped him, instinct kept him frozen in the shadows.  He sensed something was wrong.  A second later the pizza guy ran back, still carrying the pizza.  He stepped back over the chain, put the vinyl pizza container on the roof of the Honda and opened the passenger door.  Huay studied him intently and then realized….yes, of course.  He had forgotten the Cokes.  This time the pizza guy was barely around the corner when Huay took off, head down, hat low. Huay walked through the broken beam, past the idling Honda, and out onto Yorba Linda Boulevard.  He didn’t remove his sunglasses for a block.  Two blocks from his car he pretended to lean down and tie his shoe, and dropped the cellular phone and the baggy of his urine into the curbside sewer grate.  He hadn’t encountered a soul.

He got back to his car just as the last showing of the movie was getting out.  It was “Coriolanus”, set in the twenty-fifth century, and nearly three hours long.  The exiting movie patrons walked to their cars in a collective stupor.

On the short drive home Huay sucked at the irritating puncture wound between his fingers, but also enjoyed the heavenly fragrance of the Gertrude Jekyll wafting around in the interior air currents of the Mercedes.  It was very pleasant, yet Huay was anxious to get home to his bed.  He would be getting up in three hours to pretend to go fishing on the beach.

FATBURGER – 1:01 A.M.

Lane sat at the round concrete table and watched the flies in the lights.  At 1:00 A.M. Fatburger was surprisingly active.

He’d given in back at the Sofitel, popping the second 1 mg. Dilaudid – his last – at around 10:30.  After he’d watched the second half of “D4-The Mighty Ducks Quack the Case”, he’d been seized up on the carpet with what could only be described as a full-body Cramp. It had started in his lower intestine and radiated outward, slowly infecting more and more muscle groups with paralyzing tetany.  He’d had to literally crawl to the Bible.

Lane had been scared to death that he would throw it up, but the Dilaudid had soothed away every symptom in seven minutes. He felt fine now, better than ever, except for a creeping fear about where his next hit was coming from.  Back in Cambodia it had been so natural, so available, so part of the rhythm of things.  Now he was shocked to find out he’d become a cliché addict.  It hadn’t affected anything important yet, but he needed desperately to be re-supplied.

A towering red pick-up truck with plywood sides rising eight feet in the air above the bed and a wooden box jutting out over the cab pulled into the Fatburger lot.  The truck was half-filled with corrugated cardboard, lashed down with long bungee cords and a web of frayed climbing rope.  Khieu was driving, his wife beside him in the small cab.  He creaked the behemoth to a shuttering stop and opened the door.

Khieu looked exactly the same.  His face beaming when he saw Joel Lane.  His wife’s greeting was not so warm – more of a chilled civility.  She stood holding a spray bottle and returned Lane’s short polite bow.  Lane noticed that they wore matching baseball caps – Hollywood Park—and down vests with silver reflective stripes hand sewn all the way around to the back.

“Good to see you man!” Khieu said.  “Let’s get a burger.”

They went into the flourescently brittle and vivid Fatburger.  Khieu’s wife stayed with the truck.

“Isn’t she coming?”

Khieu shook his head.  “She wants to repack the truck.  Spray.  She’s OK.”

Lane watched her disappear around the back of the sagging truck with her spray bottle.

“I thought you’d like this place.” Khieu said.  “Very American.”

Lane watched the burgers (they really were fat, at least 30 cm raw) sputter away as a horseshoe of hungry faces sat around the grill and stared impatiently.  It was a tense scene.

“I think I’ll just get fries.”  Lane said

“You don’t want a burger?”

“A little greasy.”

Back outside, they sat with their fries, sharing a paper dish of ketchup.  Lane watched his friend’s fingers.  He had the telltale discoloration of opium use – the rolling of partially burned opium gave your fingers a distinct stain.  Lane was happy to see it looked fresh.

From their concrete table they could see Khieu’s wife organize the back of the truck – he was right, she could really pack it in there.  Khieu explained the recycling business.  The current price for corrugated cardboard was 1.95 cents per pound.  Following a tested route they could collect about two thousand five hundred pounds of cardboard – the maximum payload the truck could carry and still drive, in about five hours.  The spray bottle was a trick to make it heavier.

“We spend about fifteen dollars a night on gas, and go through about two quarts of oil because the truck is old.  We’re running 10W40 – we get it at Costco by the case, but it’s still two dollars a quart.”

“It takes an hour to check-out at the recycling center and we do two runs – so five hours plus five hours plus two hours – we work twelve hours every night, but we take Fridays off.”

Lane did some quick math and realized that they were working twelve hours per day and making $97.50 minus $19 in expenses, not counting other automotive maintenance, so they were clearing $78.50 a night, times 24 days a week, $1884 per month, $22608 per year.  Jesus.  How could they both live on that?

“Do you recycle aluminum cans too?”  Lane asked.

“No.”  Khieu grimaced.  “Cans are for amateurs.”

Lane nodded.  “What are your boys up to, Khieu?”

“They’re both in college.  University of Minnesota.  They’re pretty smart.  Full scholarship there, they have special programs for Asian immigrants.  My oldest wants to be an engineer.”

“Minnesota?”

“It’s a good place for school,” Khieu smiled, “No frisbee in the snow.”

Lane was amazed.  He surmised that Khieu must never eat at the Beverly Center.

“What do you do on Fridays?”

“Play poker.  I go on Fridays because that’s when all the amateurs are there with their paychecks.  I always go to Commerce Casino on the 5.  It’s the best.  If I don’t go on the weekends I lose.  Too many sharks.  Like you.”

Lane laughed.

“Tomorrow’s Friday.  You should come with me.”

Lane was amazed that he could lift two and a half tons of cardboard every night.  The opium must help him recover.  Even though Khieu was an old friend, Lane was reluctant to ask.  He didn’t quite know how to bring it up.

“You’re working pretty hard Khieu, what do you do to relax these days?”

“A little television, you know, watch the Dodgers maybe when the Asians pitch.”

“You smoking at all?”

“Nah, smoking’s bad for you.”

Lane looked at him.  “I’m talking about the kind of smoking that’s good for you.”

Khieu stared back at him carefully.  Lane knew he wasn’t hiding his urgency very well.

“My wife makes me keep it at home.  If we get pulled over, m-mm...we could lose the truck.”

“I could be in trouble, I think, if I…you know.”

Khieu smiled, a twinkle in his eye.

“OK, come with me tomorrow night.  I can set you up.  You’ll need cash though.”

Lane nodded.

Khieu gave him the address of where to meet him.

“I have a business meeting at this restaurant, but I’ll be done by five.  If you have your car then you can pick me up.  My wife can use the truck, go shopping.  She doesn’t really like the casino anyway.”

Lane saw that Khieu’s wife was back in the truck.  She was waiting patiently but you could tell it was an act.  Lane waved and she waved back without smiling.

Lane watched them creep slowly out of the driveway, they’re heavy-duty leaf springs swaying and squeaking the whole way.

“How fucking long does it take to make a single fucking BURGER!  Jesus Shit Christ!”  Someone was screaming, ranting inside – losing it over how long the burgers took.  Lane decided to have another cigarette and walk back to the Sofitel.  He’d spent about enough time at the Fatburger.

NEWPORT BEACH – 4:04 AM

Huay peeked into Dominique’s room.  It was so quiet and peaceful.  Her walls were lined with flowered fabric that absorbed and cushioned every sound.  Huay watched her sleeping silently beneath her canopy bed.  He could still see the baby features that reminded him of the first time he ever saw her in the maternity ward at the University of California Irvine.

He knew she’d been up late.  When he’d returned from the library a few hours ago, he’d heard her speaking German behind her closed door.  Huay knew it was to be expected, she liked to keep in touch with her friends from school during the summer, but still the German had sounded disturbingly alien. She attended the Buzek Academy in Switzerland, the sole Cambodian in an exclusive and wealthy international student body.  Huay was constantly shocked by her maturity and worldliness.  One of her best friend’s mothers was one the most famous movie stars in India.  Last summer Dominique had visited them in Bombay and returned with crazy stories of solid gold furniture, bejeweled bedroom slippers and sword carrying palace eunuchs.  “Life in Bollywood,” she’d said.

Huay was concerned about his daughter now that his plan was in motion.   He hadn’t figured her into his preparations, almost forgetting she would be home for the summer.  He started to think that it might be safer to send her away again.  There was a chance things could go badly, or that he might have to flee quickly.  Huay decided he would have a better idea about what to do after today.

Huay tiptoed into the perfectly still room and placed the Gertrude Jekyll stem in the half empty Pellegrino bottle on her night stand.  He took one last proud look at her just before he gently closed the door.

In the kitchen, Huay helped himself to the orange juice carton.  Their live-in housekeeper, Nean, was still asleep.  And Hok, their gardener/driver wouldn’t be in until seven.  He could take Dominique to ballet if Huay was late from his trip to the beach.  He left a quick note for Nean saying he was out and to wake Dominique in time for her class.

Out in the garage, Huay inspected his fishing gear.  He’d never actually fished from the piers or beach, but he employed many Cambodians who did regularly and he’d asked them a lot of questions and also studied the look of the fishermen on the piers.  His tennis shoes were all too new-looking, so he’d bought a run-down pair at the Goodwill.  He had an old beat-up bucket from the warehouse for bait, a pair of cheap sunglasses to replace his Vaurnets, and a large backpack for his tackle box and (theoretically) fish.  He’d purchased the large retractable ocean pole from a flea market several months ago.  The reel looked tangled, but it didn’t matter, he wasn’t going to take time to actually put a line in the water.  He had a lot of sand to cover.

He put the backpack and bucket into the trunk of the Mercedes and then listened to make sure Nean hadn’t gotten up and was milling around in the kitchen.  Satisfied, Huay unlocked the storage locker at the back of the garage and pulled out two heavy cardboard boxes.  The Chinese characters for “Executive Umbrellas” ran down one side of each box.  For this mission, Huay had decided to use another variation on the delay mine.  He had 96 VS-Mk-2-EL’s.  These were Italian-made and, like many things manufactured in Italy, elegantly designed.  Completely water-proof and ninety-nine percent plastic, they were undetectable by metal detectors or bomb sniffers.  They also had an anti-shock feature that made them impervious to the overhead pressure of fuel air explosions, a more recent counter-mining technology.  Huay had already set half of them with a twenty-eight hour delay and the remainder with a thirty-two hour deferral.  Pushing and turning the pin on the side would start the clocks.  Once activated, the triggers detonated with thirty pounds of pressure.  Counting the weight of the sand, the actual threshold was about twenty pounds.  Each mine would be buried eight to ten inches below the surface. With a kill radius of approximately one meter and an injury radius of three and half meters, Huay was sure they would make his point.

Huay stacked the first twenty VS-Mk’s in the bucket and snapped on the plastic lid.  He put the two boxes in the trunk beside the backpack and bucket and then slid the fishing pole into the Mercedes through the passenger side door.  Huay carefully closed the trunk and walked around to the driver’s side.  His pulse was pounding and his head was unused to so much sleepless adrenalin.  He needed coffee.  And bait.  He would definitely need bait.

Huay checked the safety on his Colt Defender and slid it under the seat - just a precaution.  He exhaled…and turned the key.

WOODLAND HILLS – 6:00 A.M.

Catherine’s world was suddenly upside down.  She counted to three and then dropped down out of her handstand and attempted to do the splits, her pelvis stopping two inches above the white carpet.  Floor exercise had never been her strongest event.  She preferred the pressure of the balance beam.  She used to joke that she’d inherited the level-headedness of her parents.  Her father was a corporate tax attorney and her mom a part-time court reporter and real-life 200 wpm typist.  In her prime on the beam Catherine could do a back walk-over, followed by a back handspring and a two-rotation dismount.  Her legs had been like shock absorbers, strong as tungsten.

Staring into the closet mirror, Catherine again wondered who she was trying to stay in shape for - she was in a profound state of singleness.  It had been two months since her last date. For a while she’d had regular outings with Harlan the Federal Prosecutor – stilted things like concerts, symphonies, literary events at the Getty, mediocre plays with television stars.  Usually followed by cold white wine and protected sex…all by the numbers.  Then, in the morning, tandem teeth brushing and more missionary position, almost like an obligatory work-out before brunch.

What she really wanted was someone who enjoyed getting up early on a Saturday morning, driving to the Los Angeles Police Academy range, firing a couple hundred rounds and then catching a Dodger game down the hill in Chavez Ravine.

Blake was an option.  She knew she’d never pursue it, but he’d made it known he was there if she wanted it.  Of course he was there for virtually anybody, but he did have a swagger that was hard not to notice and occasionally think about.

A successful female career in the FBI rarely included fairytale romance.  The recruiter who approached her in her third year of law school had warned her about that fact.  But after spending the summer at a firm in Santa Barbara where nearly every single partner on the letterhead had asked her out, the FBI seemed to offer something more interesting.  In the beginning her specialty was interrogations of mafia women and incarcerated felons.  In these types of encounters women were always better at collecting information.  The subjects were more relaxed and the female agents naturally gathered facts rather than instantly sorting and eliminating them.

Catherine was too senior now to do many one-on-one’s and she secretly missed the interviews.  The mob girlfriends were incredibly entertaining, bitching tirelessly about the men in their lives like thrice divorced hair-dressers from Elizabeth.  And the men behind bars always had a refreshing lack of pretense.  Some were too spaced-out to care, but most were not shy about blatantly staring at her various parts while they told their meandering tales of crime and punishment.  Office politics didn’t carry nearly the dramatic charge of her old life.

Still, she couldn’t imagine herself in a life like Mindy – her old best friend from Truman Capote High School in Ventura.  After completing the MBA program at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Mindy married the valedictorian and never worked another day.  Now she lived in a three-year-old gated community mansion with five thousand square feet of wall-to-wall, three refrigerators, three children, an absent father and a sleep-over house-keeper. Her tivo was stuffed with kids programs and she had a whole room devoted to ribbons and wrapping paper – all arranged in labeled bins she’d acquired from Pottery Barn.  The last time Catherine visited her for lunch, Mindy took her out in their golf cart to visit her friends in the adjoining cul-de-sac community.

Still in her underwear, Catherine stepped through the sliding glass door and did a quick round-off on the redwood deck, stopping just short of the covered spa.  She knew she could still do a back-bend, and get back up, but she wasn’t sure if she could manage a handspring.  She also knew she should stop procrastinating with the gymnastics and call the Assistant Director on the East Coast, but she was not looking forward to it.  Despite round the clock surveillance, historical analysis, and lab work, there was precious little progress to report. As she cart-wheeled back towards the door, Catherine thought about what shoes she should wear to the funeral.

HOTEL SOFITEL – 7:18 A.M.

Lane opened his eyes and was instantly alert.  His ears told him he was not alone.  There was a motherfucking mosquito in his room.

He’d had malaria three different times.  African quinine-immune malaria.  The fever and dehydrating cramps were bad, but the worst thing had been his great toe swelling up big as a pear from the fansidar treatment.  The nail had almost disappeared.  It was like a Barnum and Bailey Grotesque -- if anyone had seen a picture they never would have believed it was a real toe.

Lane’s retinas reset and he spotted the intruder perched on the ceiling, just above the impressionist seascape that was screwed to the wall above the bed.  From the size and rosy color of the abdomen he knew she’d already sunk her proboscis into him.  He wondered for a moment if mosquitoes could get addicted to biting addicts.

Lane could feel the familiar itch now on the middle knuckle of his ring finger.  It had been exposed outside the comforter.

According to the Boy Scout Manual, the best treatment for a mosquito bite was calamine lotion, and if that was not available, mud.  Lane knew from real-world experience that calamine lotion was not a good idea, particularly in the tropics where manufactured fragrances often had strange interactions with the environment.  And mud, while initially soothing, didn’t eliminate the itch and subsequently increased the risk of infection when you finally got around to scratching the bite.  The best treatment was to control your impulse to scratch.  There were many things in the Scout Manual that didn’t make sense under close examination.  Learning to tie the perfect knot to throw to a drowning man was a good example.  Generally you wouldn’t want to take that much time when somebody was drowning and the person in the water didn’t seem to appreciate the extra care that went into such a knot.

Scouts was always strong on the bases where Major Lane grew up.  Quitters never win.  If it is to be, it is up to me.  When the going gets tough….Lane had earned all the merit badges.  And then he’d grown up and murdered a child.  There were no merit badges for that, not really.

The mosquito was bringing it all back again.  Two months before she was killed, Aimee had nursed Lane through his third bout of malaria.  Love in Africa, where one was constantly surrounded by death, had an intensity nothing could match.  The emotions had been carved into him, the scars permanent.

Aimee had been a victim of a combination of twentieth-century inventions – death by high-impact plastic and semtex explosives.  Lane had found the perpetrator quite easily. Another child had turned him in.  After Lane had rewarded the snitch with a five dollar bill, he dragged the young killer out of a dusty bar and interrogated him in the street.  He had been celebrating with his pay-off and, drunk with defiance, admitted his crime right away.  Lane shot him in the stomach, his Colt ripping into the boy’s intestines.  Lane let him beg and sob on the ground before delivering the final shot between his eyes.

Was it justice?  Lane wasn’t sure, but he knew that in that environment it had been the right thing to do.  In Angola, the long civil war had been fought with children.  Orphans were easy to recruit and with the life-expectancy hovering around 27 really the only option.  And if the children weren’t orphans, they were hungry anyway.  In his work in Angola he’d often felt like a scout leader, surrounded by webelos with AK47’s who preferred tarot root and Nigerian brewed Guinness to graham crackers and Kool-Aid.   In his first week in Luanda, Lane met a U.N. doctor from Pakistan who told him Angola was infected with war.  “You can go into a peaceful land and find peace or go into an insane place and find insanity.  The population has fallen in love with the homicidal state of mind and can’t stop.” He’d said.   Lane quickly discovered that land mines were a perfect fit with that kind of desperate insanity.  But he’d also come to realize how close all human societies were to anarchy, it didn’t take that much of a push.

After performing the public execution, Major Lane was quickly transferred by the Army. Technically the kid was a combatant, but there was a psychological notation placed on Lane’s record that kept him out of future combat zones.

Lane had kept Aimee’s engagement ring on his dog tag chain for a year.  Then he’d thrown it in the Indian Ocean, it had gotten too heavy to carry around with him.  Every time he looked at it, he would remember removing it from her lifeless finger

He often wondered what his father would think about what’d he’d done.  Lane’s father had entered the Army as an All-American class full back on the division team.  People outside the Army didn’t realize how serious inter-division sports were.   The generals competed hard and starters were kept well out of harm’s way on various special assignments.  Lane had been recruited by his division’s baseball team, but he hadn’t gone into the officer corps to play baseball.

Now, according to The Stars and Stripes, the Boy Scouts seemed to be obsessed with sex and politics.  There was precious little of either when Lane was scouting, although he occasionally had adolescent fantasies about his Republican den mother.

Lane grabbed the Los Angeles Magazine off the nightstand and stood up on the bed.  A quick fake got the bloated mosquito into the air.  He pancaked it just above the painting.  He felt mild satisfaction, but the vivacity of his own blood against the peach wall looked like a bad omen.

Lane stepped out on the terrace and lit a Gitane.  The death of his fiancée was a terrible memory, but many more had replaced it.  So when his mind reached back to it now, it did not affect him as much as it used to.  Lane hoped nothing would destroy the work he’d done in Cambodia while he was gone.  And he was concerned for Lieutenant Rahman.  The man had the kind of military discipline that stood up in all situations, but he didn’t seem to have much common street sense.

An urgent knocking interrupted his thoughts.

Lane opened the door and found a human of indeterminate gender wearing a beige smock.  He/She resembled Nang Toon – the champion Thai kickboxer who had a sex change operation.

Lane stared.  He was baffled, not even the hands gave him a clue.

“Sorry.”  The housekeeper said.

Lane nodded.  That’s what housekeepers always said, but they all knocked anyway.

WILL ROGERS STATE BEACH – 6:17  A.M.

Huay sat in his car looking at the sign for the Will Rogers State Beach and contemplated what it meant to be a cowboy in America.  A man of the land.  A rugged individualist.  A lone ranger.  Huay knew this was one of the biggest myths about the United States. Doing things by yourself was not a good way to get ahead in a capitalist society.  It wasn’t even a good way to herd cows.  As a kid Will Rogers had been a real cowboy, but as an adult he’d fallen in love with wearing bathing suits and playing polo. Huay learned this when he had toured the man’s house on Sunset (a preserved historical landmark, but less than a hundred years old.)  He’d sat on his leather couch.  Twirled one of his lassoes.  Ultimately Huay decided the Will Rogers Estate wasn’t iconic enough to be a target.  And also that, like many rural American heroes, the man probably hadn’t been capable of raising even a carrot.

Huay thought that many of the homeless men he saw up on the bluff in Santa Monica still believed in the lone ranger myth.  The free individual.  The power of solitude.  But humans were never meant to live alone.  Like elephants and chimpanzees and dolphins humans needed a strong social structure to survive. Huay always knew he needed to surround himself with people who shared his interests.  Not just a sidekick either.  Huay was alone on this part of the plan, but only because it made the most sense from a security point of view.  He had his mine suppliers, a network of entrepreneurs ready to invest heavily in the homeland, and safe houses set up in Cambodia.  He was not operating alone.

Countries were the same.  That had been Cambodia’s mistake.  Pol Pot had everything he ever wanted, but for some reason he thought their tiny country didn’t need help or friendly neighbors.  The Comrade Secretary had been raised in quiet comfort by a ballet teacher, distantly related to the royal family, but something had clearly gone wrong.  Paranoid violence and corruption began almost immediately - quickly followed by war against North Vietnam and betrayal of China, its only ally and trading partner.  None of the policies made sense, like a petulant teenager hating his parents for providing food, clothing and shelter.  It was truly a case of the inmates taking over the asylum.

Sitting in Paris, Huay had heard rumors, but didn’t know how bad it was getting until it was too late.  The atrocities, the insanity of the forced agrarian movement. Starting the calendar over.  Destroying clocks and watches.  Abolishing money.  Not surprisingly, the beast quickly began to feed on itself.  When people begin to starve, clear thinking is the first thing to go.

The first attempt to purge Huay was made in Paris.  He was followed home on the Metro.  The knife-wielding assailant rushing up behind him on the dark stairwell of his Right Bank pension.   A fortunate instinctive mule kick the only thing that saved his life.

Huay left immediately for the telephone exchange.  He discovered his connected relatives in the Universities, initially embraced, were all disappeared.  His boss was already dead – executed at Tuol Seng Prison.

Huay had flown to Bangkok.  Joined the resistance.  Then served time as a spy with a Khmer Rouge scout unit, where he really learned how to kill.

So many diabolical tactics.  Trap after trap -- the rice soup made with poison frogs, a mere taste could kill.  Bamboo bicycles with the frames packed with explosives – triggered by fifty pounds of pressure placed on the seat.  It could incapacitate a whole squad if they were standing close enough together.  He awoke every morning convinced that the day ahead would bring his death.

And then he had escaped the nightmare.  After assassinating a Khmer Rouge comrade-officer he’d found a pack rat’s cache of gold and silver -- teeth, pens, glasses, rings, fillings, and watches.  And at the same time, the price of precious metals soaring – Nixon had removed the U.S. dollar from the gold standard and the price was going up every day.

The blood money allowed Huay to return to Bangkok, buy a Vietnamese passport and an expedited political asylum visa.  And after purchasing a coach-class ticket on Pan Am, Huay still had a small stake for when he got to America.

At the Camp Pendleton processing center Huay’s immigration counselor (after discovering that he had cash)  hooked him up with a partner, another recent immigrant who wanted to buy a taxi in Orange County.  It was a perfect match.

They rented a single garage, but the taxi was rarely in it.  They each drove twelve hours a day.  Slept in a loft in the rafters of the garage, showered with a cold hose behind it.  Used the floor drain, public parks and gas stations for bathrooms.  They did all their own maintenance (usually between three and five am) and used a hand crank siphon to fill their car with tax-free black market gas purchased from other immigrants.  The rest of the time was spent driving and hustling.  Always driving - businessmen to meetings at Disneyland hotels and Newport office parks.  Always hustling - kickbacks to doormen and desk clerks for airport fares and charters to the Mexican border.  They knew all the motels on Anaheim Boulevard, knew where the New Yorkers stayed – who knew how to tip cab drivers – and how to avoid the non-tipping Europeans.  Huay never considered himself a loner like a lot of cabbies.  He was more like a hub, slowly creating a network of contacts, some of them the kind of people who often needed an anonymous, but trusted courier.

And they got kickbacks themselves for delivering tourists and servicemen to massage parlors and topless clip joints.  Whenever Huay started to feel guilty about this practice a fare would inevitably say something like “Are there a lot of Orientals out here?”  Or “Are you a Chinese or a Japanese?”  Even though it was the number one attraction at the time, the boat ride through the Small World ride at Disneyland seemed to have little effect on the larger world spinning around it.

Not including people that ran away without paying their fares, Huay had only been robbed once.  He’d given the drunk, foul-breathed man thirty-three dollars in ones and then backed-over him as soon as he exited, crushing his legs with the taxi’s steel-belted radials.  He had to rock the vehicle back and forth over him four times before the man stopped screaming.  After that he vowed never to pick up another black man.

The taxi partners worked three years without a break, a day off, or a vacation.  All the time Huay’s safe-deposit box filling with untaxed cash.

And then he made the deal that changed everything.  Huay bought a driveway.  A critical easement.  A small piece of property that a corporation needed to complete a block-long hotel.  The desk clerk owner giving him the tip before he retired to Kauai, a final “fuck you” to the developers who had squeezed him out.  He knew what trouble it could cause, but had no fight left himself.  The wool suits laughing when the cab drivers had looked at them and said, “One million dollars.”  And then they had stopped laughing, called their headquarters and had Bank of America wire the funds.

Huay’s new life began the moment the money arrived.

It had made Huay see the world differently.  With capital, he had power and leverage.  He bought his first warehouse in Long Beach.  He began sponsoring other cab drivers -  invested in a Chinese restaurant, part of a Burger King franchise, a Dunkin Donuts.  And he kept the taxi license, leasing it out for almost as much as he used to make driving.

To complete his American dream, Huay married a beautiful princess in exile (or at least that’s what his wife’s parents had told her she was.)  Distantly related to the Siranouks, Leath was working as a hostess at Bob’s Big Boy in Glendora (it was open twenty-four hours) when Huay met her.  Just before the wedding, Huay received a second windfall when his taxi partner was killed in an accident.  After two million miles on the road, his luck had run out.  He became the very first fatality on the 605.

And then after Dominique was born, Huay’s life fell into place like dominoes: a home, an office building, a cabin in the mountains, property in Nevada, vacations to Cannes, and all the time the warehouse space multiplying.

And then seemingly just as fast, senseless violence came back into his life.

A thirty-year old dishwasher with a bad attitude and impatient visions of grandeur was fired from one of the steam-table Chow Mein take-out places in which Huay was a partner.  Fresh from the jungle, the man demanded compensation, calling and threatening the Mercedes-driving owners for his lost wages.  Huay had simply refused to pay.  He was used to resentment among immigrants and he always carried a gun in his car, but after the kind of killing he’d been involved in, he didn’t take threats in America that seriously.

And then his wife had activated the claymore in the car meant for him. She was killed instantly.  Shrapnel disintegrating his daughter’s foot -- Dominique only seven years old and already a sugar plum in the Orange County Ballet Theater’s version of the Nutcracker.

After Dominique was stabilized, and Leath properly honored, Huay used his network to track the dishwasher.  Initial rumors said that he had escaped back to Cambodia or was living in Burma, but a few hundred dollars in lubrication to the man’s boarding house roommates revealed that he had actually fled to St. Paul, Minnesota.

Fortunately, Huay had local help in the land of 10,000 lakes.  An old comrade who was making a mint in the frozen egg roll business picked him up at the airport, telling him that, officially, there were actually 14,601 Lakes.  The immigration counselors suggested all the Southeast Asians memorize this factoid in order to show their Scandinavian hosts they were interested in Minnesota Culture.  With the exception of Southern California, Minnesota had absorbed the most SE Asian immigrants from the Vietnam conflict, including thirty-percent of the Hmong tribesman who had fought alongside the U.S. Army on the Laotian border.  Seeing a map, many of the immigrants were excited to learn they would be living so close to America’s biggest river.  But the Mississippi was worthless and barren compared to the Tonle Sap or Mekong - particularly when it passed between the Twin Cities.  Frozen for six months out of the year, deceptively dangerous and swift below the ice, then polluted and filled with barges and carp in the summer.  The only abundant food resource the river supplied was deer, which could be found along the banks anytime one wanted, although the official hunting season was only two weeks long.

It had been winter when Huay cornered the man in an unfinished basement in the neighborhood they called Frog Town. With his teeth chattering as hard as the condemned man’s at the end of his gun, Huay (with the help of two old friends), gave the arrogant dishwasher what the Khmer Rouge called the Dragon Treatment -- pouring gasoline down his throat and setting him on fire.  As a group intimidation method it was highly effective, the victim died a spectacularly ghastly death, gasping for air from lungs that were no longer there.  The unheated basement had filled with steam so thick that the executioners lost sight of each other, almost as if a real dragon had been slain.

They wrapped the body in Glad bags and drove it in a covered pick-up truck out onto the ice of Lake Minnetonka.  Many SE Asians had embraced ice-fishing because the daily limits were rarely checked by game wardens.  They even clustered together in their own neighborhood on the frozen lake.  Inside the privacy of the egg roll baron’s warming hut, they cut a fresh hole in the ice with a power auger and wrapped fishing anchors around the dead man’s neck and torso.  They then stuffed the corpse headfirst into the slippery orifice, the egg-roll man assuring him that hungry snapping turtles would take care of the body in the spring.  Huay could still picture the dishwasher’s Ostrich-skin boots disappearing down the ice-hole.  He believed he could be a cowboy too.

Huay’s own body had never been exposed to such temperatures.  After the experience, he couldn’t understand how Europeans imagined Hell as a hot place.  The cold was much, much worse.

It was on the flight back, after a two-hour layover in Denver, that Huay realized how the claymore tactic could be improved on.  And the first lines of his plan began to be drawn.

Being alone in the car at such an early hour had taken Huay back to his early history in the Southland.  But now he snapped himself back to the present.  The past was still dead and could not help him.

Huay sighed, the sun was coming up on a new day.  He opened the door, turned ninety degrees, and emptied the sand out of his sneakers.

HIGHWAY 1 – 9:30 AM

After the mosquito incident, Lane couldn’t go back to sleep.  Restless, he had declined Alan’s invitation to the funeral and had instead decided to head out to Zuma Beach to examine the crime scene.  He thought it might help him to imagine how the mines were planted.  He wore his new polo shirt and jeans as well as the clip-on FBI visitor badge that Alan had given him, just in case anyone wondered about the gun in his shoulder holster.

Driving his rented Ford Explorer on the 101 (and then west on Topanga) Lane couldn’t believe the obsession with traffic reports on AM radio.  Every six minutes, another report of misfortune: over-turned vehicle, injury-accident, spilled car batteries, tires in the number two lane.  A red-tailed hawk, electrocuted by a power line in the hills above Santa Clarita, had started a ten-thousand acre fire, still only sixty-percent contained.

Lane wondered if he should look into renting a motorcycle.  He’d owned a British Indian in Africa, where, like running water, it was always faster to circumvent the obstacles.

He switched to a college station, KPEP, Pepperdine University.  It was music he’d never heard before, and for that reason, acceptable.

Even at this early hour the beach parking lot was filling up.  Lane looked out on the Malibu sand with his new binoculars.  Pelicans flew in tight formation over the surf line.    Life Guard Station #5 was closed.  A few ribbons were stuck to it.  The rest of the towers flew their American flags at half-mast.

Lane stepped out onto the sand.  Gray gulls and needle-nosed sand pipers scurried over the fresh tire tracks of the lifeguard’s Nissan truck.  Lane walked past the garbage receptacles painted to look like gigantic Mountain Dew and Sunkist cans and then stopped to read the posted beach rules:

No alcohol

No pets

No littering

No glass

No smoking

No motorized vehicles

No fireworks

No kite flying

No parking after 10 p.m.

No parking before 7 am.

Lane was thinking that with the weight of the mines, it must have taken multiple trips from a vehicle.  But then he saw a woman nimbly dragging a cooler with training wheels across the sand.  He’d never seen a cooler with wheels before, but he figured you could weigh one down pretty heavy.   Lane imagined the perpetrator must have planted them the night before.  Either parking on the shoulder of PCH and sneaking in after 10 p.m., or burying them in the evening, when the crowd was mostly gone.  It was dark after 9:00 p.m. and he was sure the lifeguards went home much earlier than that.

Lane felt on edge, despite the presence of thousands of footprints in the sand.  He knew that the beach had been cleared by the FBI’s bomb squad, but there was always a chance.  And he realized now that a determined perpetrator could easily plant a mine a day on U.S. beaches without much fear of ever being caught.

In front of tower five, Lane saw a sun-burned middle-aged man in a lawn chair reading a paperback.  The man appeared oblivious to the grim death that had consumed three lives in that spot only days ago.  But it was a beautiful day, and any trace of blood had already been absorbed by the shifting sand.

Lane looked out at the Pacific and reflected on the short history of landmines.  Discounting caltrops (basically four-inch sharpened jacks used to protect infantry from cavalry charges) used by fifteenth century Europeans, landmines were a true-blue American invention.  Early in the War Between the States (as the Pentagon officially called it), a Confederate officer, General Gabriel Rains, decided to implement an idea he had been contemplating since the 1840’s when he’d successfully fought a guerilla war against Florida’s indigenous Indians.  In 1862 General Rains was in charge of the defense of Yorktown, Virginia.  The gathering Union forces, both land and sea, were deemed to be too great, and he was ordered to pull his forces back to Richmond.  General Rains retreated, but had his troops hide dozens of “land torpedoes” (buried artillery shells topped with mercury fulminate friction fuses) on the roads leading into Yorktown.  On May 4, 1862, a Union cavalry scout (and his horse), were the first modern land-mine victims.  There was much outrage over this new type of weapon and General Rains was condemned in many newspapers for inventing a device improper to the conduct of war.  However it was the time of industrial revolution and technology of all kinds was rapidly the expanding the limits of a number of human endeavors.

And, as in almost all subsequent engagements, the land mines had little impact on the course of the battle.  The Union troops were only momentarily slowed and quickly adapted.  The first de-miners in history were Confederate prisoners pushed into duty by Union bayonets.

General Rain’s inventions proved to be much more effective in water.  After the siege of Yorktown he was put in charge of the Confederate “torpedo division” and quickly moved into mass production of water-based marine mines, which were ten times as powerful and fused with silver fulminate.  His devices outperformed the entire Confederate Navy, sinking 29 Union ships and damaging 14 others.  The mines were also credited with keeping the ports of Mobile, Savannah, and Charleston open during most of the war.

During WWI, the technology advanced again when Germany developed anti-tank mines to counter Britain’s trench-breaching tanks.  Personnel mines soon followed to protect the bulky anti-tank mines from being uncovered and defused.  There were also mines created, on both sides, that dispensed poison gas, but these were tricky to manufacture and not many were made.  Mine development reached its pinnacle during the Cold War when Great Britain developed a nuclear-armed mine.  The project, code-named Blue Peacock, called for a series of doomsday deterrent mines laid along the Rhine River to counter a Warsaw Pact blitzkrieg.  There was even the idea of an eight-day count-down timer that, once triggered, could not be stopped.  Madness.  A prototype was built, but (as far as anyone knew) never put into service.

Lane took a deep breath of sea air.

It was too beautiful a day for such thoughts.  Still, being on the sand made him uneasy.  He walked back towards his Explorer, instinctively retracing his exact path and stepping carefully in his own footprints.

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY – 10:01 AM

The signs on Forest Lawn Drive telling visitors to lock their cars and remove their valuables were never more unnecessary.  Law Enforcement personnel from a fifty-mile radius created a sea of blue and green against the brown hills.  Row after row of dress uniforms - black ribbons taped across sparkling badges.  Freshly washed police cars double and triple parked across the wide boulevard, blue lights circling silently.  CHP motorcycles lined up together in perfect formation.  Local television trucks recorded the proceedings as a squadron of helicopters flew in missing-man formation over the high-voltage towers that bisected the cemetery.

The Park family huddled under black umbrellas to shield themselves from the relentless valley sun, although it was diffused and pixelated by the smog.  They stood silently on the Astroturf, the polished white casket of their loved-one poised above the grave.

Catherine Mills, wearing a black Nordstrom’s suit, stoically absorbed the ultra-violet assault.  She felt a drop of perspiration run down her back beneath her silk chemise.  She glanced down the length of her short skirt and saw that her low, Nine West heels rested on the recessed bronze headstone of the “Kim Family.”   A dry sprinkler head was a foot away.  She felt the turnout was impressive.  The CHP was well respected.  She noticed several of the LAPD’s top brass as well as many lifeguards in sweaters, looking like grade school kids who should have worn suits.

The Chaplain was concluding his remarks.  He had been vague with the details, merely saying that Officer Park was killed in the line of duty, rushing to the aid of a fallen citizen and lifeguard.

Catherine was familiar with the procedures at a military honors funeral.  She covered her ears as the CHP honor guard stepped back, pointed their rifles at a perfect sixty degrees, and fired…

EL SEGUNDO – 10:01 AM

Huay ate huevos rancheros with homemade tortillas at the Emperor Café just south of LAX.  He usually had the deep-fried taquitos with habanero guacamole, but it was too early for that kind of meal.

His morning work had gone well.  His route had been Huntington…Newport…San Pedro…Hermosa…Dockweiler…Venice…Santa Monica…and Will Rogers.  He had eight mines for each beach, but had split the mines up 10, 10, 3, 20, 15, 8, 17, and 13 respectively.  He’d been taught to always vary the number mines in any field so that an enemy could never be sure if they’d encountered them all.  The parking meters were all free before nine and he was confident his Mercedes was a common enough status symbol in Southern California that he would not attract second looks.  He encountered few people on the beaches.  Early morning joggers, a few homeless men.  One set of college lovers in a damp sleeping bag.  He’d also been passed by two Lifeguard pick-up trucks, a Santa Monica Police jeep, and flown over by an orange coast guard helicopter.  He’d waved at the police jeep, but the officer hadn’t seen him or just didn’t feel like returning an acknowledgement.  His biggest concern was a Chinese fisherman at Dockweiler who had glanced at his tangled reel.

The whole mission had taken him four hours.  He was exhausted.  Each time he pushed and turned a pin there was risk. And there was always the possibility of a manufacturing defect, one going off in his hands.  He didn’t want to think about the probabilities.  He knew it was probably a bigger risk to have the delay switch, the mines could be found before he had planned, but he had been careful to bury them beyond the tide lines, and fairly deep.  If one or two were discovered, it might have the same effect on the authorities as mines going off.  But it was not what he wanted.  He planned for today to be all about the cemetery and the Nixon library.

Huay was grateful for the incredibly strong coffee they served at the Emperor.  He had three business meetings scheduled for the afternoon and he’d promised to drive Dominique to ballet class.  Huay mopped up the last of the salsa with the edge of his tortilla and signaled the portly waiter for the check.

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY - 10:02 AM

The first six mines went off simultaneously – shredding the tightly packed ranks of officers, one of the Parks.

The movement of the crowd set off another fusillade.  The blasts threw three of the Parks forward onto the supported casket.  Screams pierced the cemetery.  Five hundred cops drew their guns.  The front end of the casket thumped down into the grave and set off the mines hidden in the bottom  - spattering parts of the decomposing guard up and out and throwing polished wood slivers out into the crowd.

Catherine saw Blake grab a hysterical old woman trying to run down the aisle.  Agent Blake yelled into her face.  “Don’t Move!”

Catherine could see people bleeding on the ground all around her.  One of the wounded officers, she recognized him as the Captain of the Hallenbeck station, got to his feet, staggering in shock, holding his bleeding groin together with his left hand.

“Stay down!”

The Captain ignored her.

Agent Blake let go of the old woman and took three reckless steps toward the injured officer.

“Blake, don’t!”

Blake took the Captain in his arms and sat him in the nearest folding chair.

Where the fuck is Lane, Catherine thought as she holstered her gun and climbed onto her chair.

Catherine cupped her hands, “Everybody freeze!  Don’t move, the area is mined!”  Her voice carried strongly over the crowd – amplified with adrenalin.

Smoke hung low in the warm air, the chemical taste of the plastic explosives suddenly on the backs of everyone’s tongue.

On the tops of the television trucks, the cameras rolled.  Inside the first remote van, a producer was already on the phone back to the station, begging for a live-feed.

The coffin slipped again and triggered another explosion, flinging more red flesh out of the grave - the Park women used their umbrellas to fend off the shower of putrid remains - an image that would be imprinted on the brainscreen of the entire city of Los Angeles.

Catherine continued to give instructions.

“If you can reach a wounded person without taking a step, try to stop any bleeding.  Everyone in a chair, stay seated and don’t move.”  This instinct was what made her a leader.  She knew what to do, what to say, a half second before anyone else had even begun to think.

The LAPD commanders, hats and crests full of silver plate were useless, struck dumb in front of the rank and file.

The honor guard was frozen.  Their fingers poised to fire twice more, horrified that they had somehow set the mines off.

There were more screams from the victims.  One of the CHP officers couldn’t watch his partner bleed, he stepped…one step…lightly…on tip-toe.  BAM!

This set off another small panic -  the crowd surged toward the road, quickly resulting in two more BANGS!  - adding new members to the haunting chorus of screams and moans. The cemetery transformed into battlefield.

Catherine continued to command, “If you’re on the road stay on it!  If you’re on a headstone, stay on it! If you’re injured, try to stay still.”  Trained to respond to every type of victim, the cops were being tortured with inaction.

Catherine scanned the crowd for Lane.  In her peripheral vision, the newly wounded CHP officer vomited blood.  All around her people were crouched down, weapons pointed at one another, still sure they were under attack from an unseen force.

Catherine shouted to the officers on the asphalt.  “Get the cruisers and motorcycles cleared.  We’re going to need hook and ladders to get people off the grass, and then room for ambulances.  No sirens, and stay on the path.” Catherine saw Alan kneeling on a blood-freckled chair in the row behind her.  His phone in his hand.

“Alan, call the ‘SC trauma center, tell them what to expect.  We’re going to need air evacuations,” she looked at the perimeter for possible landing zones.  “But tell them no closer than…two hundred yards.”

“Okay.”  Alan was dialing.  “Then do you want me to call Washington?”

“No,” Catherine said.  She touched her face, brushed human tissue from her cheek.  She felt a shaft of fear in her stomach, not from the physical danger, but from something else.  She looked down and saw Blake holding the now dead Hallenbeck Captain in his arms.  And she knew then what the feeling was.  She was humiliated.  Powerless and humiliated.

“No.”  Catherine repeated.  “I’m sure they’ll be calling us.”

Behind her, the cameras rolled on – digitized video ricocheting off the satellites in the sky.

ZUMA BEACH 10:15 AM

Lane sat on his hood and trained his binoculars on a fisherman in the surf.  The thin Asian man was wearing rubber boots, a baseball hat and good God, he was leaning down and burying something in the sand!

Lane sprinted.  As he got closer he pulled out his gun.

“Police!  What did you just bury?”

The man’s eyes showed complete shock.  He motioned for Lane to see for himself.  “You.” He said.

Lane was furious.

“No!  You.  You!  Show me.”

The frightened man leaned down and brushed away the sand.  And Lane saw a tail flip up, and then spots - it was a foot and a half long leopard shark.  The man lifted in up by the tail and offered it to Lane.

Lane put his gun away.

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry.  Never mind.”  Lane turned to walk back to his Explorer, numbed by his own fury and stupidity.  The man was only keeping his catch fresh.  Lane looked around once and saw the man was still watching him.

Back at the Explorer, Lane flipped on the radio.  A twangy voice was singing a country song about tires “No flat, No flat, I ain’t scared a sharps, I ain’t scared a flats – run flat…”

Lane hit the search key and the dial zipped to AM1070. And the words came.  He pushed up the volume.  “A series of explosions at the highway patrolman’s funeral…reportedly caused by hidden land mines…”

Lane started the truck and pressed the accelerator to the floor.

NIXON LIBRARY – 10:05 AM

At the Richard M. Nixon Library and Research Center, Amit Agarwal, a Sikh immigrant, was the head gardener.  He took personal and tender care of the nearly four hundred rose bushes on the grounds. The Sikh loved gardening.  So much that he often thought that if he had a choice he would like to be reincarnated as a bee - not a common honey bee, but a fat solitary bumble bee - lumbering slowly from flower to flower, and climbing inside the perfectly structured blossoms.  Children were often frightened of bumble bees because of their size, but the Sikh knew there was little to fear.  He knew that bumble bees cannot be raised commercially because they do not produce excess honey – only a few grams at a time to feed their young.  He also knew that they live in small nests and never swarm – plus they were much less aggressive than honey bees, despite the fact that they did not have suicidal stingers.  They only died after mating – in the true tradition of the French petite morte.

But now Amit was not thinking of bumble bees.  He was sensing a disturbance in his garden.  His eyes scanned the perfectly dusted roses along the colonnade, undistracted by the catering staff smoothing the starched tablecloths over the banquet tables. And then he saw it - someone had pilfered a bloom from his Gertrude Jekyll.  And below it, around the base, he noticed freshly disturbed earth.  Someone or something had been digging.  Amit squatted down and poked around with his trowel.  It struck something metal.  He used his fingers to brush away the remaining dirt and exposed the white Cyrillic lettering.

The tumblers of his mind lined-up and clicked together.  His heart fluttered.  When he was nine years old, he’d come face to face with a death adder under his family’s woodpile in Jaipur.  Today he felt the same way.

Amit jumped back out of his squat – and then looked down at the grass between his feet.  He jumped again – up and over the roses and onto one of the draped tables.  His feet knocked over the centerpiece – crossed American and California flags surrounded by orange blossoms.

Around the library, the Sikh was famous for his silent rectitude.  When the man with the top knot turban and beard began dancing on the table and screaming like a Punjabi teeny-bopper, the staff knew something was very, very wrong.

FOREST LAWN CEMETERY -11:10 AM

Lane drove like a madman – flat out, nearly rolling the Explorer at one point swerving around a Wonderbread truck.

At the cemetery, several SWAT teams had responded and were still clutching their heavy weapons - as if there were a physical enemy and a show of force indicated control.  But the only enemy was in the ground, and it had already won the first two rounds.

Lane stood in the chaos of law enforcement and knew he had been right.  And sensed that the next trap was just around the corner.

Lane had fifteen seconds with Catherine Mills.  He’d said one thing to her.

“Close the beaches.”

She had nodded wistfully.  And then her phone had rung and she walked away.

The area around the Park grave was taped off.  The cameras and news vans had been pushed back – they at first refused, until a cop had thrown one of the producers up against his van and handcuffed him.

People were still being lifted off the grass with hook and ladder trucks, the ladders extended flat, four feet off the ground.  From the details Lane extracted from various bomb squad officers, he was fairly certain they were dealing with acoustic activated mines.  It was a brilliant use of the weapon, especially in a cemetery where no one was eager to investigate lumpy grass.  With the amount of people present, they’d probably all been triggered, and the concussions setting off anything else, but you could never be a hundred percent certain.  And it was possible a couple had been deliberately disabled and then booby trapped somehow.  Lane also figured there weren’t any large anti-tank type mines, it would be too difficult to transport and hide something that large here.  Lane approached one of the FBI agents who was wearing a bomb disposal suit and recommended setting off a couple dozen stun grenade blasts to trigger any leftovers, but the FBI wanted to wait until there were fewer traumatized bystanders.  It was impossible to use dogs for detection, there was too much explosive residue scattered, which was also why it was hard to use them in combat situations.  The K-9’s were left panting in their cars, bottled water brought to them periodically.

The last live cops had been taken out by the ladder and firemen were beginning to collect the dead bodies when Alan came up to Lane holding a blue police light.

“They need you in Yorba Linda”

“What?”

“Orange County.  They found a mine at the Nixon Library.  Catherine wants you to assist the O.C. Sheriff’s bomb squad.  They’re already on scene.  Grab one of the motorcycle cops, they’ll escort you down there.”  He handed him the blue light.  “This is for your dash.  Just plug it into the cigarette lighter.”

Lane looked at the light and nodded.  Behind him, a fireman, reaching down from the horizontal ladder, palmed the security guard’s head and dumped it into an opaque plastic bag.

NIXON LIBRARY - 12:35 PM

With the CHP motorcycle siren in front of him, his flashing blue light and extensive use of the median shoulder, Lane made extraordinary time on the Five South and the Ninety-one East freeways.

The Orange County sheriff’s bomb squad had been staking out the rose garden for over an hour.  The usual procedure, as dictated by the FBI’s HDS (Hazardous Devices School) training center at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, called for one man to be the point, or kill-zone contact, on each call.  This dangerous position rotated daily.  But advances in robotic technology, largely driven by British bomb deaths in Northern Ireland, made the point man system obsolete.  And most city budgets provided a healthy line item to have the latest robots. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s tethered robot (an $85,000 Pedsco RMI 10) was currently poised over the exposed top of the mine, its three closed circuit video cameras sending steady color images back to the cramped operations van in the preferred parking lot.

Inside the sweaty van, introductions were quickly made.  Lane did not retain the officer’s names, but categorized them by their pungent deodorant choices.  Sergeant Old Spice, Sergeant Mennen, and Lieutenant Canoe were all huddled around the closed-circuit monitor.  The youngest member present, Officer Hugo Boss, sat in front of the monitor with his hand on the joystick that controlled the various functions of the robot.  He would occasionally flip between the three different cameras that offered wide, long and close-up frames of the mine.

“What do you think, Major?”  the Lieutenant asked Lane.

“It’s an OZM 4.  Soviet.  A bounding time-bomb.  Doesn’t need contact to go off.”

“Can we move it?”  One of the Sergeants asked.

Lane shook his head.  “Risky.  There’s no way to reverse the fuse.  And there might be another mine underneath it.”

The Lieutenant took a sip of Dr. Pepper.  “How about blowing it apart?  Rufus can fire an interrupter point blank.”  Lane could tell the squad was anxious to take some type of action.  And he assumed “Rufus” was the name they’d given the robot.

“You’d probably set it off.  It’s got about a fifty-foot kill zone, seventy-five or eighty injury zone once it bounds up in the air, so it wouldn’t be dangerous here.  But it might be more valuable from an evidentiary stand-point to see just exactly when it was intended to go off.  Have you located anymore of them?”

“Nah, but I’d be surprised if there weren’t more.  And I’m sure it was meant to go off during the Congressman’s luncheon.”  He jerked his head back in the direction of the outer parking lot.

Lane squinted out across the heat waves floating up from the asphalt - Congressman Boone was combing his hair, surrounded by several local news camera crews.

Hugo Boss made a slight adjustment to the joystick.  “We can x-ray it for you.”

“That’s alright, I already know what’s inside.  Excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

Lane stepped out of the van.  On his way to the Congressman’s news conference he thought about the mine.  The former Soviet Union designed and manufactured some intricate land mines.  And in this scenario the OZM was a devious choice.  Meant to explode about crotch high, with seated guests it would go off at head level and kill many more people.  Lane began to think that the sophistication, boldness and deadliness of the tactics almost certainly suggested they were up against a disciplined terrorist organization or even a foreign government.  But at the same time, there seemed to be an intensely personal motivation behind it all, especially in the target selection.

The Congressman’s press secretary, a woman who looked like a middle-aged Miss America, handed Lane a copy of the luncheon program.  Boone stepped forward and whispered something in her ear that prompted her to give the high sign to the television crews.  The cameramen shouldered their cameras and flipped on the halogens.  As T. Daniel Boone cleared his throat and stepped up to the fagot of microphones on top of the pressed wood podium, Lane scanned the program:

Coffee Social hour -  begins promptly at 12:00

Ecumenical blessing, followed by lunch  - please be seated by 1:00

Introduction by CA State Representative Carmen Gonsalves - approximately 1:30

“Leveraging Technological Supremacy” - U.S. Congressman  T. Daniel Boone

Post lunch reception line to follow.

Lane looked up and noticed the Congressman was wearing pancake tv make-up thick as an opera clown.  His unamplified voice boomed across the parking lot:  “We are moving, folks.  Moving the lunch to the Newport Hyatt.  They’ve graciously agreed to accommodate us.  It’s right down the 91 on Newport Blvd.  Turn left at the Taco Bell.  So if you were planning on coming to the lunch, we would like you to join us at the Hyatt.  Your presence will help us show these people that we will not be intimidated by this kind of cowardly attempt to silence democracy.  We will have much to discuss.  Important issues.  So I invite you to show your bravery and join me.  And I’d like to thank everyone here for their support.  We’ll get out of the way now and let the experts work.  Let these brave men and women do their job here and restore this national landmark, this birthplace of a truly great American, this symbol of American strength and patriotism, uh, back into to something we can all enjoy.  Thank you.”

Lane walked back to the bomb squad van with an idea.  “Lieutenant, can your robot dust for finger prints?”

“Not really.  The manipulator hand can apply the powder, but it’s not dexterous enough to lift tape.  And the resolution on the camera isn’t tight enough to see prints.  We could try to dust it ourselves, but I won’t risk a man for a finger-print.  Especially when they didn’t find prints in Zuma.”  Lane realized the FBI must have distributed reports to all of the area bomb squads.

Lane stared at the second hand as it circled his watch face.  There was no question, the monkey was back.  His belly felt squirrelly.  He needed a distraction.  Lane decided it was time to visit the gift shop.

The temperature dropped twenty degrees as Major Lane pushed through the tinted glass doors of the library.  Despite the crisis, the white-haired docents in their red white and blue were vigilantly manning their posts.  Lane wondered if they were paid a salary or just worked for love of Nixon.

He avoided the woman at the admissions desk and ducked into the gift shop.  Lane browsed the book section – there seemed to be a definite theme to the merchandising.  Signed Kissingers.  Signed Powells.  Signed Nancy Reagans.  Signed George Schultz’s.  A book by General Butler that he’d read.  A book on General Lee that he’d read.  As Lane picked-up a signed copy of a book by George Bush’s dog, the woman behind the register spoke to him.

“Are you with the FBI?”

“I’m in the Army.  I’m working with the FBI.”

She nodded gravely.

“If you’re looking for the Special Agents they’re in the security room – watching the surveillance tapes.”

“Okay.  Good.”  Lane held up Millie’s book.  “I’m going to borrow this for a second.  Can you point me in the direction of the restroom?”

*          *         *

Lane sat on the toilet in the handicapped stall reading Millie’s book.  The dog wrote with a dense literary style that Lane didn’t care for, but he liked the pictures.  Millie and Schwarzenegger, Millie and McGruff the crime dog, Millie and Carol Channing, Millie and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Millie and the Beach Boys.

Lane put the book on top of the toilet paper dispenser and began to disassemble his handgun. This was a trick he used often in the tropics to distract himself from intestinal distress or inaction. The opium was stopping him up like an Angolan sewer.  Lane realized he was shitting once a week.  Maybe twice.  He checked the safety and then pulled back the slide and ejected the chambered round into his hand.  He pushed the magazine release and set the 9mm bullet and fifteen round magazine on top of the book.  Pressing the takedown latch released the slide and barrel.  Lane looked down the muzzle and gave it a quick puff of air to blow out any lint.  He put these parts down on the book as well and picked up the magazine.  He methodically pushed out the fourteen bullets (he didn’t top-off his Beretta by chamber-loading an extra round) and examined each one for scratches or flaws.  He then reloaded the magazine with fifteen rounds, reattached the slide and barrel, checked the safety and slapped the laser-welded magazine back into the butt, where the three-arrowed Beretta logo reminded the owner of the gun to Aim Well, Shoot Straight, and Hit the Mark.  A quick slide inserted a fresh round into the chamber and he used his thumb to decock the hammer.  Lane was now locked and loaded again, but he realized he was still unable to fire himself.

As Lane exited the bathroom he found another docent watching him.  Was she keeping track of the book?  Lane walked down the corridor to the gift shop and put the book back on the display shelf.  The docent there eyed him suspiciously as well.  Did she not understand that she worked in a library?  He was about to wink at her when he felt the ground shake.  Three small thumps followed by three sharp bangs.  The bounders had bounded.

Lane found the bomb squad standing around their van looking at the colonnade area with field glasses.  There was a thin layer of white smoke in the air.  And beneath it the robot lay helpless on the grass.  Its life-line severed.  Blue smoke drifting out of its third eye - Rufus had absorbed shrapnel from three sides.

Lane could see two of the three smoldering holes in the ground.  Rose petals were scattered along the colonnade like an elaborately planned wedding.  He walked over to the van and Sergeant Mennen gave Lane the obvious update.

“The screen went blank at 13:35.”

Lane nodded.  “Sorry about your robot.”

Lieutenant Canoe gave him a look.  Hugo Boss said, “I think it’s totaled.”  Most of the tablecloths were casualties as well -  two of them were still on fire.  And no one was making a move to put them out.  If the news cameras could see them, it was solid footage.

“I got lunch, Lieutenant.”  They all turned.  A motorcycle officer with a white mustache and high polished riding boots held a shopping bag of foot-long hoagies from Subway.  Lane noticed he was even more fragrant than the others.

“Thanks, Ben.”  The Lieutenant said.

“Was that Rufus?” the motorcycle cop asked.

Sergeant Mennen nodded.  “Yeah.”  The motorcycle cop shook his head sadly and departed.

Lane wondered what they were going to do next.  It was a nasty situation.  With OZM’s you could never be sure when another one might go.  There could easily be something else waiting for them out there.  You could make a nice point with something like that, but it might be more fun for their adversary to watch them look for nothing and yet still never be sure.  Lane didn’t have much faith in bomb sniffing robots or dogs, but there weren’t many other options.  They could use high pressure hoses or a mind-clearing bulldozer, but these would tear up the landscaping.  Technology was moving fast, but even ground penetrating radar could miss plastic mines.  Unless they managed find the perpetrator and extract a confession, the only other possibility was hand clearing - which is how he assumed they’d ultimately proceed.    So far it was the only way to get true 99% clearance.  Hopefully, Lane thought, the guy just wanted to kill people at the fundraiser.

Lane fidgeted and thought more about the person who was planting the mines.  Lane’s theory of an Asian connection was strengthened by the library.  Nixon didn’t do much in Afghanistan.  Unless the library wasn’t symbolic and just happened to be an easy target…but no, it was too much of a challenge compared to the beaches.  The perpetrator definitely liked the venue. He’d had them jumping through hoops starting on Memorial Day.  Lane wondered what was planned for  July 4th.

*          *          *

After lunch, Lieutenant Canoe consulted with the FBI in the security room and told them his plan.  They would collect evidence and debris with another robot, hose down the area and then send dogs in to check the rest of the grounds.  Once the dogs had cleared the area they would wait twenty four hours and then do human inspection.  Lane thought the plan was reasonably safe and voiced his endorsement to the FBI.  You never wanted to rush land mine clearance.  And as it turned out they had to wait over two hours for the back-up robot to even arrive on site and begin the tedious collection work.  The cemetery footage had sparked a rash of calls reporting suspicious devices and sprinkler heads all over the county.  The other robot was in the middle of a call to a judge’s garden in San Clemente when it was summoned.

After another unsuccessful trip to the gift shop’s lending library, Lane couldn’t stand waiting any longer.  It was his duty to be there and help these men, but he knew he couldn’t function properly until he met Khieu.

He approached Lieutenant Canoe.  “I’m going to go check on patients at the hospital.  See what details I can get from them.”  The Lieutenant nodded.  “Do you need an escort?  Ben’s not doing anything.”

“No, that’s alright.  If I hit traffic I’ll use my blue light.”  Lane suspected that where he was going, the police would not be welcome.

INTERSTATE HIGHWAY NUMBER 5 – 4:49 PM

Major Lane had the Explorer pointed north, averaging a steady sixty miles per hour and fifteen miles per gallon.  And then he hit it, a wall of brake lights  - California had 15 million licensed drivers, and 300,000 of them passed by this portion of the Five on any given day.  Lane was idling in the #3 Lane when he felt the cramp coming on.

He pulled to the shoulder.  Got out and bent over.  Dry heaves.  Retch after retch, as if someone was stomping on his stomach like a foot pump.  He was happy he’d passed on the Subway.

While Lane gripped his knees, he noticed that the shoulder was, despite the threat of fines, heavily littered.  In his immediate field of vision he could see a Starbucks java jacket, a scratched off lottery ticket with a Santa Claus theme, and soiled nylon panties from the Jaclyn Smith collection.

His dog heaves over, Lane looked up the freeway.  He could see the source of the traffic jam.  A car fire.  The maroon vehicle billowing black smoke from every crevice, the dry grass beside it on fire as well.  There was no sign of firemen or the driver of the burning auto.  Cars crawled slowly by.  Lane climbed back into the Explorer and signaled to get back into the stream.  A Hyundai honked.

TONLE SAP RESTAURANT – 5:19 P.M.

Khieu was happy.  He’d just closed a major capital transaction for his business.  His wife had left with the truck and the check.  She was happy too.  And Lane was right on time, parking the Explorer across the street and marching toward him with his boots on.

Huay came out of the restaurant wearing his sunglasses and found a large American soldier standing with the man he’d just loaned 10,000 dollars.  The man wore army-issue boots with jeans and a brand new golf shirt, but the bearing was unmistakable. And the shoulder holster was not a civilian accessory. Highly unusual.  Huay was instantly on guard, but perhaps he was only a Marine from Pendleton.

Khieu motioned him over for an introduction.  The soldier greeted him in Cambodian.  Like it was no big deal. He had horrible puke-tobacco breath.  Perhaps he’d been hasty lending the recycling man money.  Oh, it was fine, his mind reassured himself, the wife would keep him in line.

“This is my friend, Joel.”  Khieu said.

“Nice to meet you.”   Huay said.

“The pleasure is mine…”  The two men shook hands.

“He’s stationed in Cambodia.”  Khieu said.

“I’m just visiting for a short time.  Good doing business with you.”

Huay wondered what the soldier was talking about.  Was he a partner with the recycler?

“This is someone else,” Khieu said to the soldier in English.

“Oh.” The man said.

Huay nodded and departed, annoyed with the awkwardness.  As he walked to his Mercedes, he glanced back and thought he saw the soldier watching him.  Damn.  He was unsettled by this stupid distraction.  He needed to go home, watch TV, and find out how the world was reacting.  He’d been taping channel 9 all day on super long play.

FORD EXPLORER – HAPPY HOUR

Khieu set him straight.  “No, that wasn’t the dealer.  He’s the man lending me money for a new truck.”

Lane was confused.  “Where do we meet the other guy?”

“Just up the Five.”

Lane felt the ring tighten around his head.

Khieu said, “I thought I told you.  We don’t meet the dealer until midnight.  Poker first.”

Lane blanched.  “Khieu, I don’t know how to say this, but I can’t wait that long…”

Khieu pursed his lips, nodded.  “Pull over there.”  Khieu had Lane pull over behind a Smart and Final.  A nosey parking lot security guard seemed to be watching them from the loading dock, so they were forced to drive around to the back of Bed, Bath and Beyond.

Khieu took off his shoe and produced a thin tin foil square from beneath the inner sole.  “Do you have a pipe?”  Lane shook his head, he felt like such a pathetic addict.

Khieu got out of the truck, walked over to the trash can and bent over.  He brought back a discarded can of Sprite. He then pinched a dent in the middle to form a shallow bowl, and used a Bic finepoint pen to poke holes in it.  A puncture on the side of the can served as a carburetor.  Things were getting low down.

Lane held the pipe as Khieu rolled the little pebble of opiate in his fingers and set it gently in the aluminum bowl.  He flicked his Fuji lighter.  Lane leaned in to toke and noticed the can entitled him to $8 off admission to Magic Mountain.

Lane sat back and reclined his seat.  He offered Khieu a Gitane.

“Remember Whistler?”

Khieu whistled and they both laughed.  Whistler was a man they cleared mines with back in Cambodia.  He had a hole in his cheek from a booby-trapped cigarette.  The ball bearing had blown sideways instead of up.  Whistler could have kept a band-aid over the hole, but he had a flamboyant personality and learned to use the hole to create amazingly mellifluous bird calls.  The exploding cigarette, left in an abandoned camp by the Khmer Rouge (they also commonly left behind poisoned soup) had been the tenth one in the pack.  But the crafty deception had not made Whistler stop smoking.  Instead he loved to show-off by turning his head sideways and blowing delicate cheerio-sized smoke rings out of his cheek.

It was a good feeling to be laughing and smoking with an old friend.  Lane had had a rough day.  “You hear about the mines?”

Khieu nodded.

“That’s the reason I’m here.”

“I figured.” Khieu said.

“So maybe stay away from the beach for awhile.”  Khieu nodded again.

“If I go fishing I usually go up to Lake Elsinore.  I’m used to freshwater.”  He held up the Sprite pipe and Lane nodded.  Khieu scanned the parking lot for spectators.  Finding none, he again touched the flame to the precious opiate.  And Lane sucked in the smoke through a stranger’s can.

COMMERCE CASINO – 9:07 P.M.

Lane couldn’t believe what he was doing.   He didn’t suspect he would be missed in the chaos at the Federal Building, but the whole point of him being in Los Angeles and his work on the Task Force was being corrupted.  He was failing, but he realized he’d been fighting a losing battle for so long it barely registered as failure.

Commerce Casino, nestled on the shoulder of the 5 Freeway, was one giant sunken ballroom, surrounded by a carpeted hallway.  “Almost an acre of action” is how the brochures described it.  A hundred chandeliers hanging above a hundred green felt tables - seating for twelve hundred and not a single smile.

Khieu showed Lane the sign-up board, explained the table limits and buy-ins and then disappeared into the throng in search of his available Pai-Gow seat.  He waved at a friend as he went.

Lane took a moment to survey the incredibly diverse crowed.  It was like a living model of the entire Los Angeles basin.  A representative from every race and nationality crowded around man-made isles of green; completely consumed in tense little battles for small stakes and deluded status.  Meanwhile the house took a steady, unseen toll.

The only games Lane considered were seven stud, five draw, hold ‘em, and five stud.   There were open seats at many of the Asian games, but Lane didn’t play any of them regularly and knew he would be at a disadvantage.  The waiting lists to get a seat at traditional poker tables were incredibly long and Lane placed his initials, JL, on a five card draw table with a higher buy-in than he wanted.

Khieu was right about which night to go.  Friday was hopping with amateurs, straining for action.   The professionals lurked like alligators, patient and deadly, nothing escaping their gaze as they slowly turned men’s hard-earned minimum wage paychecks into useless stubs.

Lane felt good; Khieu’s opium seemed to have reset all of his internal systems.  He had just a touch of the fogged-in feeling - low sounds muffled, high sounds coming into his head extra piercing.  Lane’s wallet held three hundred and twenty-two dollars.  His Army credit union ATM card would only allow him to withdraw $200 in any twenty-four hour period.  It was lower than civilian credit unions because soldiers tended to go on benders.  The two hundred dollar limit helped limit the damage to their accounts.

Lane folded two of his hundreds away.  Khieu had told him two hundred would be enough for a two weeks supply.  Lane decided that if he could win a few hands he might invest in four hundred dollars worth.

Lane tried to remind himself he was only killing time.  Unfortunately he had been misinformed about the smoking policy.  There was no smoking allowed at the tables or in the surrounding area.  There were 16 sets of initials in the column before Lane’s, so he decided to reconnoiter the sports bar.

Lane was immediately pleased to see the sports bar allowed nicotine addicts a small break.  Behind strips of plastic (like a butcher’s freezer at a supermarket) there was an outdoor patio that accommodated smokers, although they were still trapped behind an eight-foot fence and watched over by a security guard like convicts in the yard.  Occasionally initials would come over the intercom and men would stub out their butt and leave, as though they were being drafted or simply returning to the front after a furlough.

Inside the bar, Lane was surprised to see only one television played footage of the funeral attack.  And even that had the volume off.  The terrorist attack on the police seemed to have little impact on the recreational habits of poker players.  The rest of the sets showed sports.  The world hadn’t stopped.  And again Lane wondered what the hell he was doing there.  On the silent television Lane saw Catherine Mills standing on her chair.  Skirt hiked up.  Underneath, the body count scrolled – 9 Policemen killed, 3 civilians, the poor security guard, thirty-five injured, six critically, more landmines recovered.  There was a clip of the dead robot at the library being loaded into the back of the bomb squad van.  Lane was surprised, he didn’t think the media were close enough for a shot like that.  This was followed by the Chief of Police in a press conference and then a silent sound-bite from Congressman Boone.   Lane wondered how they would handle the cover-up of the first incident.

From the next images, Lane could see that the men from Washington were taking over now.  Today’s events met their conditions for an official terrorist attack, the first one, limited in scope, apparently did not.  Although no organization was taking official credit, Lane knew they weren’t dealing with an amateur.  Acoustic mines, placed with that kind of planning were too sophisticated for a domestic nut.  And Lane thought he recognized the tactics.  They were too mine specific to be the work of a fundamentalist middle-eastern or European terrorist.  There were millions of mines in Afghanistan, but because of the wide open terrain and all the other easily available weapons, there wasn’t a mine culture.  It all pointed to Southeast Asia.  On the television the body parts flew out of the grave.  The people in the bar barely noticed.  In Boston an over-the-hill pitcher tossed a lazy knuckle-ball – a young steroid case up from the minors crushed it out to left, bouncing it off the green monster.  Lane saw the middle-aged hurler pulled out of the game.

“What can I get you, soldier?”

Lane looked at the sixty-year-old woman behind the bar – an Armenian grandmother with a unibrow.  He laughed.  Was it that obvious?  He ordered a beer he didn’t really want.  As a rule, he never drank in casinos, but in his casual games he didn’t limit himself.  He tipped the grandmother a dollar and then stepped back out on the patio where he watched cars creep by on the 5 - and quickly discovered his beer was barely cold.

NEWPORT BEACH – 9:07 P.M.

Huay cracked open the icy beer.   He liked beer from Mexico.  It tasted fresher than U.S. beer.  Maybe it was made with more joy, or by people who appreciated it more.  Huay watched the images captured on his vcr.  He was getting excellent coverage.  The local networks were working in crisis mode, mostly because the footage was so juicy.

The Chief of Police’s press conference was replayed over and over – even though it was all about covering his ass (the only thing he ever did in press conferences at Parker Center.)  And this was usually followed by a Federal official in a suit and tie, making threats.  Threatening him and anyone like him.

Huay went over his letter in his head one more time:

To: The Citizens of the United States of America

From: People for a Landmine Free Cambodia

Now you have a small taste of the horror of landmines.

In Cambodia, this horror is a daily occurrence.

Your government continues to manufacture and stockpile landmines.  These weapons do not discriminate between soldiers, civilians or children.

It is time for the United States to pay its debt to the people of Cambodia.

The loss of innocent life is deeply regretted.  But the people of the United States must understand what it is like to have beautiful areas of your country rendered indefinitely unsafe.  Ten peaceful Cambodians die or are maimed every day by mines.  We are a country slightly smaller than Oklahoma.  We have approximately twelve million people and ten million landmines in our soil.  The U.S. is responsible for the conditions that brought these mines.

The mining of the U.S. will stop when three simple demands are met:

The U.S. signs the international treaty banning the landmines that has been ratified by 127 nations and was championed by Princess Diana.

The U.S. funds a U.N. managed project to eradicate landmines in the ground in Cambodia to a 99.9% clearance rate.

The U.S. contributes a ten billion dollar infrastructure grant to rebuild the economy of Cambodia.

We may pause, but we will not stop planting until these conditions are met.  This is a promise.

*          *          *

Huay had sent his letter to The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times.  He’d also sent one in French to the local office of Le Monde.

He imagined his letter passing through channels in the vast LA Times building downtown.  He’d written it on his computer and printed it out on Great White paper, a common brand.  He never saved the file, deleted each key stroke, and then swapped out the hard-drive.  It wasn’t perfect, but most experts couldn’t really trace it.  He would be disposing of the laptop as well - straight into the compactor at the warehouse.  Dust in the wind.  Huay was proud of his letter.  It had taken him a long time to write it and he’d even looked up a couple words in the dictionary.

Huay was dismayed to see that his sleeping mines had been discovered in the library’s rose beds.  He’d put in a lot of time and energy planning that mission.  He’d also put himself at considerable risk, although he had to admit he’d kind of enjoyed it.  He figured they must have done an extra security sweep after the Domino’s breech, or else had a dog he didn’t know about.  But ultimately it might be better to see the Congressman outraged and scared rather than honored as some kind of hero in a state funeral.  The media had helped him out as well.  The smoking robot was disturbing and the shot of the burning table cloths incinerating the patriotic center-pieces was world-class propaganda.

The pasty man was on the screen again – outlining federal assistance.  And then reiterating how it had been prudent not to jump to conclusions and alarm the public after the Zuma incident.  Huay knew it was only the beginning.  And he felt the local news anchors were really on his side, they were hoping it was only the beginning too.  The next couple of days would really get their choppers in the air.

Huay rewound the tape until he got to the woman on the chair again.  He felt intuitively that Catherine Mills was the heroine in the media’s story.  Like the Reagan assassination scene and the man with the Uzi – only she had a commanding speaking part.  Huay froze the image with his remote.  Her name was on the screen -   Special Agent in Charge, Catherine Mills.  Huay carefully wrote her name on a post-it.  When she died, people would know no one was safe.

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY – 9:07 PM

Grover sucked on the bong, depleting the bowl, filling the long plastic tube.  He held it in as long as he could and then burped and coughed up smoke.  His esophagus and stomach felt scorched, as if he’d inhaled the smoke all the way into his small intestine.  And then the rush hit him like a shovel to the forehead.

It was just what he needed.  He was still recovering from his freaky arrest by the frogmen in front of Milken’s beach pad.  He didn’t want to go back to the beach for a long time.  And now the cops blowing up in the cemetery – Jesus Christ.  Like a goddamn monster movie, those guts popping out of the grave…  He’d had to stop watching television at five o’clock, well, actually he had switched over to MTV2, but there was no news on that channel, not even music news.

He powered up his laptop.  He was looking forward to an evening of Montezuma’s Revenge – the first person shooter.  You played Cortez, mowing down platoons of feathered Aztec warriors stampeding out of their flat-topped pyramids.  He was in the middle of a saved game, just past the point where you rescued the first sacrificial virgin.  His horse was dead, but his armor was at full strength and his gunpowder dry.  Ultimately he would face the Sun King and make off with his golden treasure.

Grover was rudely interrupted by his roommate Todd and Todd’s skinny girlfriend.  They were an annoying couple, constantly giving each other herpes.  But right now Grover saw that his roommate’s girlfriend had a very cute visitor.  He paused the game and was introduced to a Lithuanian exchange student.   She was staying with the girlfriend’s family in Ventura, at Pepperdine for the weekend.  Total fresh meat.

“I’m really 19, but here they make me go to high school.  Because of the Rotary,”  she said.

Todd explained that they were all headed to the Werewolf party.  Werewolves consisted of equal parts Bacardi 151 and Jack Daniels.  Mix, pour, shave.  Grover had seen the magazine where the guy got the recipe.  An intriguing distraction but--

“Nah, man.  I can’t.  I got a make-up tomorrow.  I got my econometrics final rescheduled.”

Todd said, “Sonia, tell Grover what you want to do tonight.”

“I want to see Shirley MacLaine’s house,” said the exchange student, with a coy lilt.  “On the beach.”

Grover was shocked.  “You been watching the news, man?”

“Fuck it.  You’re so paranoid.”

“I have a right to be paranoid.  The cops came out of the fucking surf.”

“Just another reason to party and forget about it, dude.”    Grover frowned as Todd picked at a fever blister in the corner of his mouth, big as a dime.

“Just come with us to the party, we probably won’t even go down there.”

Grover wasn’t sure if he was more scared of the FBI or the mines.  Imagine what the cops are like out there now.  Shit.

No.  Grover wasn’t going for the bait.  Besides Montezuma’s Revenge, he had another ace in the hole - a bottle of Goldschlager schnapps under his bed, at least an inch full.

And he didn’t feel too bad for the Lithuanian Rotarian.  Surely someone would patriotically show her something.

COMMERCE CASINO – 10:55 P.M.

Lane was finishing his second Babylon beer in the sports bar because the granny bartender had told him a joke:  “What did the salmon say when he hit his head?

“Damn.”

It was an old bartender trick, get them chuckling and then hit them up for another round.

Lane was watching the silent television again.  He noticed there were no shots of the beaches being closed.  He could feel it, like a second shoe poised in the air – someone else was going to die.  Mercifully he finally heard his initials over the intercom.

Lane sat down at the five card draw table, unfolded his fat-headed Franklin and received his stake.  At the table were the usual casino mix of people who didn’t go to church very often:  A nervous college student in a Dartmouth sweatshirt; a grey-haired black man chewing on a mushy, unlit cigar; a woman dripping with bangles who looked like she watched a lot of daytime television; a silent Asian guy in a fishing hat and half moon reading glasses; and a mechanic with 10W30 under his nails and his name, “Ron”, sewn into the badge on his shirt.

After only two hands, Lane knew a lot about the players.  He knew the college kid was going to lose, that the daytime tv watcher was sharp, and that the Asian guy was good.  And after the dealer reminded “Ron” not to put his cards in his mouth, he was pretty sure he didn’t have to worry about him.  Despite this analysis, Lane lost steadily.  He was a mathematical player, but he was having trouble keeping a clear head.  He usually calculated the expected value of a hand by figuring the pot odds and only playing when the expected value was in his favor.  It took Lane three additional hands to discover they were playing with a joker in the deck.  The presence of the wild card changed all the usual calculations he did in his head.  It was like there were suddenly thirteen inches in a foot.  He was folding, losing, even when the odds favored him.  Often opium would make you think you had telepathic powers, when really it was just your mind creating a pleasant reality.  It was dangerous to mix with gambling when no one else was high on it.

Lane was soon on his second one hundred dollar buy-in.  And the silent, stone-faced Asian man in the fishing hat took most of it when his full house took Lane’s queen high club flush.

Lane got out his last hundred.  He couldn’t stand it.  Couldn’t stand to lose to this collection of amateurs and pissant professionals.  Lane folded the next six hands in a row.  Then crushed the college boy with three jacks and caught soap woman bluffing on the very next hand.  He was up over $400.  And then the showdown happened.

Lane looked at the cards in his hand: three three’s, a jack, and a king.  Thirty cards had been dealt.  He had five of them.  Leaving (if you counted the joker) 2 cards in 48 that would give him four of a kind.  Four of a kind was a bullet-proof hand.  The pot currently contained thirty dollars in ante.  The silent Asian man opened with $20.

The Dartmouth guy, a rank amateur, raised.

The dealer waited.  “Ron” seemed to be counting the symbols on his cards.

“Your move, Ron.” The dealer said.

“My name’s not Ron.  I borrowed this shirt.”

Bangles sipped her Rob Roy.  “Don’t get so upset, Ronald.”

The mechanic looked at her like she was from Mars.  And then quickly made up his mind.  “I’m in, I’m in.”

The grey-haired black man sucked his soggy cigar like a pacifier.  “Gentlemen, I fold.”

Holding three of a kind, with three other people in the pot, there was no need for Lane to figure the expected value.

Without looking at his cards, Stone Face called the thirty dollars.

Lane drew two cards, everyone would know now that he had three of a kind, but it was worth it to get the two chances to quad the three three’s.  Ron took three.  Dartmouth three.  Silent fishing hat took one card.

Lane felt the fourth three sink into his hand.  It was like the whole solar system had become perfectly aligned.  This feeling was why you played poker.  With his four of a kind, Lane had a 1 in 4165 chances hand.  Stone Face pushed another $20 in.  Dartmouth, who may have been drunk, foolishly stayed in and the mechanic folded.  Lane, raised $20, and Stone Face re-raised fifty.  Lane realized his opponent must have hit a straight or flush.  Or better yet, drew a full house from two pair.  He raised him back, and then went all in to call on the third and final raise.

The black man’s wet cigar twirled as he watched the cards.

Lane looked up and saw Khieu was watching, a look of deep concern on his face.  Lane wanted to reassure him with a wink or something, but that would betray his hand.  Khieu shook his head, one curt movement.  Lane ignored him.  You should never try to communicate with a friend when he’s in a hand.

Stone Face laid down four deuces.

Lane was impressed, he realized that the man had held four of a kind all along and had taken one card as a ruse.

There was a palpable jolt as Lane put his cards on the felt.  Khieu covered his eyes.  Lane’s lips were parched.  He allowed himself a dry smile.

Ron who was not Ron belched.  “What bullshit.”

Stone Face merely squinted, as if a waiter had gotten his order wrong.

The black man nodded his head, “God laughs, God laughs.”

And Lane realized that the odds of two players having four of a kind in the same hand were 1 in 17,347,225 -  without the joker, which was still lurking in the deck.

11000 WILSHIRE BLVD. – 11:00 P.M.

“There are people celebrating in huts and caves and tents all over the world.”

Bob Zimmerman said as he sat in the chair behind Catherine’s desk.  He was the Deputy Director of the Federal Emergency Response and Strategy Team, or FERST.  They were funded by the National Security budget and their orders and appointments came from the executive branch.  Zimmerman looked young for his job, a baby-smooth face above a gray suit and maroon tie with a double-Windsor knot and an overall aura of lubricated ambition.

Catherine did not welcome the meeting.  She was consumed with distractions.  Agents from other offices were arriving hourly.  They were immediately dispatched to interview suspects and leads.  The databases were cranking out lists.  She had no idea where Lane was, which was infuriating.  The only number they had was for his hotel.

Catherine cleared her throat.  “Our expert from the Special Forces is advising that we close the beaches.”

“Concede sovereign territory?  No way. We are not making the U.S. smaller, goddammit.”  Zimmerman glanced at the files on her computer’s desktop.

“I don’t want to concede any more casualties.”

“You’ve already been staking out the beaches at night.  There are undercover cops surfing on the taxpayer’s dime from here to San Diego during the day.  Helicopters.  Every lifeguard on alert – doubled patrols.  Carnivore set on all you can eat.  I hope they try the beach again.”

Catherine looked down at the blood on her shoe.

“I still think it’s a wise precaution until we can make absolutely sure there aren’t more mines waiting out there.”

Zimmerman said, “Look, right now the public believes the only targets are cops and presidents.  And I have no reason not to believe that as well.  Moreover, the beaches are a critical economic asset.  It would be wrong to impact that if it wasn’t necessary.  And if civilians do become targets, it automatically works against their cause, whatever that might be.  We’re not going to overreact.  The beaches stay open.”

Catherine’s cell phone buzzed in her hand.  She took the call.  Nodded and closed the phone.  “That was one of the agents working on the library’s surveillance tapes.  They have some blow-ups…possible suspects.  They just e-mailed them.”

“Outstanding.”  His quick smile was a second late.

He tapped her keyboard.  “How do I log onto this thing?”

As she leaned over behind him to maneuver the mouse she was sure she could feel him sniffing her.  Catherine sighed.  She would definitely not be thinking about this man in the Jacuzzi.

“And you know, I wouldn’t invest too much capital in the opinion of the landmine guy.”  He said into her left ear.

“Is that right?”

“Check his dossier.  A bit of a head case.  He’s been out in the wilderness for awhile. “

Catherine opened the encrypted e-mail attachment sent from the library.  Black and white thumbnails of surveillance screen-captures filled the display.  “Then why is he here?”

“The Army probably just filled-in a line on a form.  Whoever put together the scenario plan probably asked for a landmine expert and some computer spit out his name.  Who knows how the Pentagon makes decisions.  If I were you, I’d make sure my ass is well-covered with him.”

Catherine could see Zimmerman’s face reflected in her Compaq monitor.  She was quite familiar with his type, actually a combination of two types:  A quant the B-school grads called them.  A religious believer of numbers.  Combined with a reflexively aggressive lawyer’s face - a foundation of infinitely smug cynicism covered with the thinnest layer of humanity and skin.     He reminded her of a story she once heard in an organized crime class.  In one of the early matches between a human chess master and a computer there were no time limits set.  After just three moves the logic server had refused to make another, realizing that if it didn’t move its opponent would eventually die.  The computer had no sense of its own mortality, no passion for the game and it had no where else to go.  It would have sat there until someone unplugged it.

Zimmerman squinted at the little photos on her screen.

“Let’s blow these babies up.”

ANAHEIM, CA - MIDNIGHT

Ever since Napolion Lockhart had started working at Fontana Grease Services he couldn’t eat fast food.  In fact he was nearly a vegetarian.  His job entailed sucking the fat out some of the foulest grease traps in all of Southern California.  He and a partner drove a two ton diesel vacuum truck and alternated between two duties: sticking the hose in the trap and operating the controls at the truck.

It was night work.  Understandably, the restaurants preferred to have their traps serviced after closing. A shift was nine to five in the morning.  Ballbusting work.  The truck, the hoses, everything covered in rancid grease.  It ate into the vibram soles of Napolion’s boots making them slick as monkey shit.  And they invariably had to park the truck in the back next to the stanky dumpsters.  Both jobs were bad.  You had to deal with obese rats outside and clicking cockroaches inside.  Napolion had seen every size, shape, species and phylum of roach.

Napolion looked at his position at Fontana Grease as temporary, biding his time until his friends in the city of Inglewood could get him a ride on a garbage truck – which was eighteen fifty an hour, plus salvage privileges.  And people threw out some nice shit in Baldwin Hills.

And he had plans.  The first item was to move out of his one-bedroom behind the barbeque place.  Then upgrade his car.  Upgrade his computer.  Buy a big screen television, get the whole NFL package from Direct TV and Tivo.

He knew his present job was stupid.  Stupid how far apart the account restaurants were, stupid how every night they had to hump the truck all the way back to Fontana on the 10.  But what made it truly unbearable was the presence of his co-worker - an irritating trailer-birthed-Okie-klan-cracker named Trevor Jenkins.  Trevor fancied himself to be some kind of hard ex-con motherfucker.  Constantly telling bullshit stories about being in the joint.  Or else bragging about what he was going to do to who.  But               after a week of being in the truck with the man, Napolion knew the truth.  And the truth was Trevor Jenkins was a pink-necked petty-thief who lived with his mama.

Trevor was constantly stealing things from the restaurants they serviced.  Stupid things that weren’t worth the risk of getting caught - pork chops, light beer, orange soda, a box of straws.  And he always had something to say about the Mexicans who worked in the kitchens.  Napolion knew those fuckers worked hard.  Most of them sent half their minimum wage back home, lived without cars and phones.  Rode their mountain bikes home every night without lights.

Napolion sighed and looked at the night’s clipboarded schedule:

Burger King #2694.

Tommy Burger #3.

Pete’s Blue Chip burger (french fry machine)

Fatburger number twenty two.

Taco Bell 3419.

Koo Koo Roo #29.

Carl’s Junior Norco, (Carl’s Junior didn’t have numbers.)

Trevor was behind the wheel.  His green FGS uniform speckled with dark specks of grease, like camouflage.  He blabbed on.

“I ain’t kidding.  You can kill somebody with toenail clippings.  When I was in Men’s Central a guy made a shiv out of his nails.  Melted them altogether with stolen sugar and toothpaste resin.  The blade was hard as a bone.  Scary-ass weapon.  Took him like three months.”

Napolion was barely listening.  It was just more bullshit.  This guy was minimum security all the way.

11000 WILSHIRE BOULEVARD - 11:30 P.M.

Catherine looked at the vibrantly printed box in front of her.  It contained an authentic Nokia cellphone, normal in every regard except for two additional functions: a GPS transponder and a microphone that was always on - recording and transmitting conversations from as far away as ten feet and audio levels as low as thirty-five decibels.

The form that authorized using the phone as a covert surveillance tool to monitor Major Joel Lane, U.S. Army, OF-3, sat on her desk beside the box.   Alan had just typed and printed it out and all it needed now was her signature.  Because Lane was a government employee under her supervision, the covert monitoring was allowed under the 1986 Federal Wire Tap law and did not require a judge’s okay.

Catherine opened the box and removed the phone from its plastic wrapping, releasing the smell of fresh electronics.  She thumbed open the back and inserted the heavy-duty lithium-tanzanite battery.  The device was now operational and would record even if the user turned the power off.  She checked the screen – the battery bar showed full.  The signal strong.

Because they were using the NSA’s ECHELON system (and their Intelsat satellite access and bandwidth) all transmissions and intercepts would be automatically classified.  The recordings would be files on a server in Yakima, Washington, accessed to the desktop by the latest Rosetta encryption software.  The microphone and GPS location information were real-time.  And if Catherine thought it was necessary, they could also ask for near-time transcription service.  This was a nice idea, but in Catherine’s experience a waste of time, particularly if there was foreign language translation involved.  Transcriptions of translations left a lot of gaps, particularly when dealing with criminals who favored colloquial expressions and profanity.  And it was difficult to find people skilled in both languages and accurate typing.  Her mother once told her that the NSA had recruited many of its translators from the ranks of night-shift bank draft encoders -- basically hard-working, background-checked immigrants who spoke English as a second language and could input ten-key in their sleep.  But simultaneously translating and typing in English, under extreme time pressure, was a challenge few humans could master.  And anyone who could master it would be foolish to work for the NSA when being a contracted bi-lingual court-reporter paid twice as much.

Catherine had used such a phone in the past to crack an Armenian mafia family in Glendale.  She had one of her agents get his haircut in a barber shop on Brand Boulevard that was used as an after-hours meeting place.  After “accidentally” leaving his phone behind in the chair, it had sat on the counter gathering evidence for a few days before one of the younger members stole it.  He then took it to more meetings and family gatherings providing the FBI with a treasure trove of intelligence.  But the transcripts of the Armenian translations had been almost unreadable and they’d had to have them re-translated and re-typed internally before they could act on any of the information.

The second part of the form detailed who was to be given access to the active tap.  As per standard office procedure, this meant Catherine and (with her permission) Alan.  After sending the electronic order to Virginia, it would take about an hour to activate, perhaps less if she coded it as a FERST request.

Catherine felt slightly guilty about snooping, but she also wanted to know what Lane was doing.   It had been a bad day and she needed his expertise.  And after looking at his dossier, on-line, she had to agree that Zimmerman was correct about his record being troubling.  But then she knew that it was never easy in war zones and that what he was doing now in Cambodia was certainly risky and noble.  She also knew that part of what she was doing was based on institutional resentment.  An agent in the FBI is technically never off-duty.  They must, at all times, be armed and on call.   Down-time is for retirement.  The long-standing rule was that an agent must never be more than thirty minutes from a phone.  Now that cellphone coverage was nearly universal this wasn’t such a burden, but in the old days every agent had to have a whole schedule of can-be-reached numbers.    And recently she had seen a memo reminding everyone that cell phones were frequently jammed now at hospitals and theaters and that it remained the agent’s responsibility to leave such a venue and check his messages every thirty minutes.

Catherine picked up her pen.  By thinking about Major Lane she couldn’t help being reminded of the time she had gone through the locker of a boy she had a crush on in high school.  His lock had accidentally been left unlatched and she and Mindy couldn’t resist the opportunity to look at his stuff.  She could still remember what she found -- and how little it revealed about him: a stick of Old Spice deodorant, a bottle of Excedrin, a number three pencil with the eraser chewed-off and a pair of fingerless driving gloves.  She didn’t like him any less after that, but it didn’t matter because he seemed to have absolutely no interest in her.

Catherine picked up the phone and quickly scrolled through the menu, expertly selecting what she thought were the most appropriate screen-saver image and ring tone.  She then slipped the phone into its plastic sheath and inserted it back into the styrofoam slot in the box.

Catherine Mills reviewed the authorization form one more time, signed her name at the bottom and carefully dotted both of her “i’s.”

COMMERCE CASINO PARKING LOT – 1:00 A.M.

Lane was feeling pretty good about himself and his fattened wallet.  He’d won back his two hundred dollar stake plus a hundred and twenty percent profit.  He was eager to meet the opium dealer.

The dealer worked out of a twenty-four foot RV with blacked out windows.  Khieu explained that the man who sold the opium had an arrangement with the parking lot security staff.  The guard in the fifteen foot tower that watched over all the cars would call the dealer’s cell phone if there were any signs of imminent rip-off or approach of real law enforcement.  As every addict knows, it’s difficult to beat the dealer.

Lane had left his sidearm holster and firearm locked in the Explorer, knowing it wouldn’t be welcome in the casino.  As he approached the RV he wished he had it with him.  Lane was surprised Khieu would deal with such an overtly criminal situation.

A young Asian man in jeans and a sport coat was waiting by the aluminum steps that led to the side door.  He nodded at Khieu and opened the door.  Lane ducked into the RV, turned left and found himself in the kitchen.  A layer of fresh cigarette smoke hung in the air in the little space.  An even younger, jumpy-looking guy with a shaved head sat on a padded bench at the back of the room.  He was wearing pin-striped dress pants and a Los Angeles Cobras football jersey – an arena league team Lane had never heard of.  The young man was also holding a stainless-steel combat shotgun with a folding stock.

Lane looked at Khieu.  His friend seemed calm.

“He’s not here yet.”  Khieu said.

The three men watched each other in the smoky kitchen.

A low staccato noise began coming from the shotgun man.  He was farting through his pin-striped pants.  It was an insanely long release – at least fifteen seconds.  When he was finally finished the man erupted in high pitched laughter.  He laughed alone.  Lane smelled the foul, manner-less emission, reached for his Gitanes and realized he was all out.

A small man entered the dining area from the back bedroom of the camper and seated himself behind the digital scale on the formica table.  It took Lane a second to recognize him without the fishing hat.  Stone Face smiled and said his first words of the night.

“Welcome.”

Lane patted his wallet and wondered if he would be visiting the ATM after all.

FONTANA GREASE SERVICE TRUCK – 2:05 A.M.

They were outside the El Pollo Loco #135 when Trevor Jenkins said it:

“I’m glad those cops are dead.  Nine fewer to mess with me.  And there’s gonna be more.  Know why?  Cause mines ain’t hard to make.”

Napolion rolled down the window and steeled himself for more bullshit.  “Right.”  He couldn’t believe he had to listen to this night after night.  Life was too short.

“I’m serious.  I’ve made mines.  It ain’t hard.  Or you can just buy ‘em.  I know a guy who has a brother at Pendleton, he can get you all you want.  They’re so cheap the army doesn’t even inventory them.”  They were sharing a joint, and as per usual, Trevor was sucking down more than his share.  The pink-necked cracker wasn’t even raised to respect drug manners.

Trevor blabbed on, “Shit, I might even start planting some myself now that I got cover.  Just lay ‘em on the backseats of convertibles in Beverly Hills.  Rich bitch gets in, steps on the gas, and boom!”

Napolion knew Trevor was always saying he was going to kill this guy or that guy.  All talk.  Fantasy.  Yet Napolion often fantasized about stabbing his partner in the neck.  Tell the Super they were robbed or something.  No one would give a shit.  But Napolion didn’t need the aggravation.   Maybe there was another way.

Trevor disappeared into the backdoor of the El Pollo Loco, the grease hose coiled around his shoulder.  Napolion inserted the other end of the hose into the truck’s intake valve and spun the locking nut.   He sparked a swisher sweet, leaned against the truck and observed the gnats swarming around the streetlight.

Those cops blowing up.  Maybe it gave him an opportunity too.  It had started as a little spark of an idea this afternoon…

A try at a reward would be too complicated, but a little phone call might make his life a whole lot better.  He’d at least get a new partner.  The feds were jumpy as hell.  He knew if they busted into Trevor’s place they would get him for something -  an assault weapon charge, violated probation at the minimum.

Yeah, he’s so smart, let him deal with the real FBI.  It would be so easy to drop an anonymous dime on him, give up his address.  It was on his pay-stub sitting on the dash.  Which was also the last insult.  The stupid cracker made seventy-cents an hour more than he did.

Napolion walked around to the graffiti’ed payphone in front of the El Pollo Loco.  He looked up FBI in the white pages, swelled to twice its original size in the elements.  He didn’t want to call 911 because he knew the 911 operator could trace it immediately.  He put in three dimes and a nickel and dialed.

When he heard the friendly human voice after the first ring, Napolion realized that the nice thing about calling the FBI is that they always answer their phone.

HOTEL SOFITEL – 3:03 A.M.

The dreams, the dreams that transposed the senses had returned.  Vivid, megawatted visions.  The smell of laughter.  The sound of aroma.  Poker chips, white, pink, and black – spread across a field of deep green felt.  An ashtray, smoldering, a pencil thin plume of nicotinged smoke.  And across the table, eyes hiding behind the cards.  The blue-checked cards of the Commerce Casino shielded the lower half of a man’s face.  The eyes watched him unceasingly, alternately fierce and amused.  Murderous, laughing, hysterical eyes.  And then he was looking down at his own cards, exposed, flat on the green felt.  A pair of sixes – with the flop and the river holding three fives – then looking at the chips, feeling the dread of an unsure hand.  And then Lane was on the table, in miniature, hiding behind a stack of chips, looking up.  The eyes, like a cat teasing prey, and the cards were lowered.  And Lanes saw his adversary’s face clearly, but only for an instant – the cat winked and flipped a chip at Lane, sailing toward him, a deadly flying saucer…

Lane awoke exhausted.  The drive up the 405 had been a surreal journey, like driving up the trunk of an illuminated Christmas tree, or through a narrow disco that never ended.

After the scene in the RV, Lane and Khieu had indulged in another can pipe load.  Lane had one question for his friend.  “Why didn’t you tell me?”  There were a couple signs Khieu could have made that would have made Lane fold the last hand.

Khieu said “I thought there was an equal chance you would lose and we’d get a discount.”

Lane rolled over in the bed and closed his eyes.  And he was on his motorcycle.  Driving across a frozen lake…stark white-blue.  In total control on the ice.  Almost as if he were flying inches above it, a cool breeze in his face, but not the biting cold of a real frozen lake.  Vacation cabins specks in the distance. A fuzzy moose standing in the middle of the lake watching him go by…

And then he awoke again.  And someone was knocking, knocking steadily on the door of his room.

FORD CROWN VICTORIA  - 3:29 A.M.

A good indication of how good a driver someone is, is how far ahead of the vehicle they keep their gaze.  Lane could tell Alan didn’t keep his eyes looking far enough ahead.  He was maybe a fifty-footer.  Evidently driving wasn’t one of the pass/fail tests for the FBI.

Lane felt the stubble on his face.  He knew he smelled.    Even though he’d slapped some L’aiselle cologne under his arms while Alan waited in his hotel room - whistling.  First quietly and then loudly, getting into it.  He was a mediocre whistler as well.

Alan handed Lane a cellular telephone.  “Catherine wanted to be sure you were issued one of these.  We couldn’t contact you yesterday.”

Lane examined the pint-sized Nokia phone.  Israelis once killed leading Palestinians with explosive-filled cellphones, but now that they were getting so small the tactic was going away.

“Know how to use it?  All the office numbers are already programmed in.”

“Do I dial ‘9’ first?” Alan smiled at Lane’s sarcasm.  “I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

Lane rolled down his window and lit up a Gitane.  Alan didn’t say anything.  It was emergency procedures now. As they turned onto La Cienega, Alan hit the lights and siren. They swerved around a Sparkletts truck and change dropped out of Alan’s pants pocket as he accelerated - disappearing audibly into the car seat hardware.

*          *          *

Lane sat in Catherine’s office and sipped FBI coffee.  There were several types of bad coffee in America: Church basement coffee – thin and frugal, but friendly.  Imitation European cafe coffee - self-consciously strong rather than rich and interesting.  Seven-Eleven coffee, which had the undertaste of candy, cigarettes and hot dogs.  And Office Coffee, which was usually prepared by the lowest paid and lowest ranking office worker and often ended up tasting like burned hot water.  What Lane sampled now was Federal Office Coffee.  And it set a new standard.  This was institutionally bad.  Disgruntled and pessimistic.  Punishing.  It tasted like someone had brewed up a pot of bad breath.

Catherine entered.

She was wearing jeans and a man’s dress shirt with the cuffs rolled up.  Lane hadn’t seen her with her hair up before.  He noticed the half-carat Russian diamonds in her ear lobes and recognized her perfume from the car.   Her brow was slightly pinched with an expression of sleepless intensity, but Lane thought she looked more attractive than ever, except for the fact that she didn’t look particularly happy to see him.

Lane didn’t have much of a story prepared.  He figured she wouldn’t really ask, too much on her plate to wonder about him.

Catherine sat down behind her desk and said “Where were you last night?”

“I was at the library until the second robot arrived. And then I had a hunch and went out to Zuma to check on the first site.  A popular tactic in SE Asia is to re-mine an area after it’s been declared clear.  I staked out the beach until twenty-two hundred and then drove back to the hotel.  I turned off the phone to grab a couple hours sleep and then Alan came and picked me up.”

Catherine stared at him, the stress and fatigue around her eyes the color of storm clouds.  The door opened and a small man in a gray suit entered and stuck out his hand in front of Lane like a karate chop.  “Bob Zimmerman.  No relation.”

Lane shook the hand and said “To who?”

“You’re the mine expert?”

“Yes.  Who are you?”

“I’m with National Security.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I have the president’s phone number.”  Zimmerman smiled when he said this, but the smile was half a second late.  “Catherine tells me you have some recommendations for us.”

“Yes.  I think you should close the beaches.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the easiest place to put them and the hardest place to find them.  It’s almost impossible to find plastic mines in sand.  And even if they’re not plastic, a beach provides thousands of false positives.”  Land noticed Zimmerman’s incredibly smooth face.

“Well that’s not gonna happen.  We’re not conceding sovereign U.S. territory to the enemy.  Particularly not some of the most valuable real estate in the world.  Think how it would inspire other groups.  They would all start planting landmines in America.  Anyway, this guy is clearly all about cops and leaders.”

“The metal detector guy wasn’t a cop.”

“No, but he was used as bait, to get to cops”

“I’m just saying, with delayed-fusing, there could be anything out there.”

“We haven’t found any evidence of anything like that.  Moreover, we have the beaches under surveillance.”

Lane glanced at Catherine.

“But this is probably all academic.  We just identified the guy.”  Zimmerman handed Lane a sheet of paper.

“Trevor Jenkins.  First adult arrest was for shooting a possum with an AK47 he’d converted to full auto.  He used the whole clip at one in the morning.  The neighbors called.  Subsequent to this incident, Mr. Jenkins was stung by a bee, on his thumb.  His neighbor was keeping bees, and Trevor was convinced those particular bees were responsible for his misfortune, although the initial bee of course died in the stinging.  Anyway, to protect himself from future encounters, he tried to blow up the hives with pipe bombs.  The only problem was that while he was planting the third one, the first one went off.”

Lane looked at the arrest record.

“I don’t think he’s the guy.”

“We got a tip.  Apparently he’s been less than circumspect.  Like the kid who put pipe bombs in the mailboxes.  We found him in 72 hours.  His dad turned him in.  The Unabomber, his brother.  Dead cops on television apparently inspired someone to do the right thing here.”

“Pipe bombs aren’t land mines.”

“These were sophisticated, they had timers.  And if he’s gotten his hands on military ordinance, it would be easy to step up.” Lane noticed that in addition to the delayed smile, Zimmerman had an artificial twinkle in his eye from radial keratotomy.

“He fits the profile perfectly.  And he’s been informed on.  It’s credible human intelligence.  Moreover, RAND has done some Monte Carlo sims on this.  There’s a high probability this is a homegrown nut.” Lane wondered what kind of intelligence they considered that to be.  “We’re picking him up, with all necessary prejudice.  Briefing starts in two minutes.  You’re invited.”

*         *         *

Lane entered the FBI’s bathroom and ducked into the handicapped stall.  On the stainless steel stall wall someone had written  Agent Mills gives me a big bertha.  And someone else had written below it: Dude, she swings her own big bertha.

Lane put a pinch of opium between his cheek and gum.  Not the best way to transfer it into his system, but it helped him to stop thinking about it.  He replaced his stash inside his tin of Altoids mints, thoughtfully provided by the Sofitel, and slipped it into the side pocket of his fatigues.

Lane exited the stall and found Bob Zimmerman combing water into his hair.  Side-by-side in the mirror, the two men were a study in contrasts, the suit next to the soldier, the kempt beside the un.  Lane looked at his own bloodshot reflection and rubbed the stubble on his chin.  To break the tension he said, “Gee Bob, how do you keep your skin so smooth?”

“Electrolysis.  Painful initially.  And I’ve had to have some touch-ups.  But overall I’ve saved hundreds of shaving hours.”

Lane looked at him.  He wasn’t kidding.  “Brilliant.”

A half-second later, the Fed gave him his electronic smile.  He had no dimples.

*          *          *

At the pre-raid briefing, Lane immediately saw that the hostage extraction team was different than the FBI agents he had met so far.  Still and quiet, yet coiled.  He was used to men like this in the Special Forces.  Men who could run a marathon and kill somebody every mile without it affecting their pulse rates.

Lane strapped on a Kevlar flak jacket with a steel insert over the heart.  The jacket alone couldn’t stop an AK47 round, and if you got shot in the face or the knee cap it didn’t do much for you either, but it was still a good precaution.

Alan handed out mug shots of the suspect.  Lane looked at the photo, Trevor Jenkin’s finicky pipe bomb had burned off one of his eyebrows and his face was covered with swollen bee sting welts.  Lane tried to picture this man planting the acoustical mines at Forest Lawn.  It would have been something to take out the cemetery guard and not abort the mission.  It showed real will, as well as careful, meticulous planning, and an ability to improvise.  There was no way Trevor Jenkins was capable of that.

Catherine entered the conference room and everyone fell silent.  Lane sat down on a metal folding chair and had another sip of coffee.

WILL ROGERS STATE BEACH – 5:05 am

The wet nose of the golden retriever snuffled across the top of the sand.  Dogs were prohibited, but in the early morning you could get away with it.  The dog loved the beach.  Loved to run off his Eukanuba brown rice and kale breakfast.  And his owner, the bald man with the menacing voice, didn’t mind when he marked his territory here.  At their home beach he would yell “Bad dog, Karl!” and then kick sand over his steaming monuments.

But the dog wasn’t thinking of that now.  His mind was busy cataloging smells.  And he’d found one he couldn’t place - something strange, just under the surface.  He began to dig.

“Karl!” the voice, as always, urging him along.

The dog glanced back.  The bald man was chewing on a carrot stick, like it was one of his old beloved stogies.

“Karl!”  The dog ignored the man, he wanted to find this strange smelling thing.  His paws unearthed the top.  He licked it.  Plastic.  Not so interesting, but the strong smell inside…definitely something.  Maybe sweet, maybe dangerous.   “Karl!”  Karl was tempted to bring the sweet plastic thing to the bald man, but then he remembered that the man usually yelled at him when he brought him gifts, the most recent being the delicious dead sea gull.

Karl left the plastic thing in its hole, ran back to his master, the motion of his hind legs casting a thin cover of sand back on the device.  He didn’t like the bald man that much, but he was a generous owner and never seemed to mind getting up early.  The bald man loved his golden retriever, although he would often exploit him for the amusement of his friends.  Saying

“Yeah, Karl Marx isn’t my bitch, but he sure is neutered.”

WEST COVINA, CA – 5:27 AM

Lane crouched in the back of the FBI assault van.  Agent Blake, in full gear, was beside him.  Chewing gum.  One of the hostage extraction members was absent due to a broken tibia suffered during off-duty motocross and Blake had volunteered to fill his spot.  Lane was going in behind the front door team - six hostage rescue trained FBI special agents.  He was supposed to look for booby traps.  His cell phone was turned off inside the cargo pocket of his fatigues.  He had a walkie-talkie with headset earpiece and microphone.  Two men were assigned to take care of the mother and the other four were to secure Jenkins.  The six man team coming in the backdoor were redundant - in case something went wrong with the front door team, or if they happened to encounter the targets first.  Thirteen heavily armed men would soon be inside the small two story house.  They would be watched over by four sharp-shooters using .380 caliber sniper rifles with bipods, covering the unscreened windows on the front and back.  In addition, they were backed-up by ten regular special agents and eight sheriff units that would block traffic and provide a closed perimeter if necessary.  Lane wondered if they would encounter dogs, and if so, what the plan for dealing with them was, no one had mentioned it in the briefing.

Catherine and Zimmerman were in the unmarked Suburban behind Lane’s van.  Catherine surveyed the silent street.  They had beaten even the paperboy.  With his radio earpiece, Lane heard Catherine tell the team. “Ladies and gentlemen.  Greenlight.  Greenlight.”

The team was in the house in under three seconds.  A blur going up the stairs.  Lane glanced around the living room.  There was a fifty-pound bag of Ozimandias cat litter leaning against the wall near the door.  The coffee table in front of the couch held seven dishes of cat food - a name professionally stenciled on each one:  Millionaire, Jeopardy, Wheel, Password, Feud, Greed, and Whammy.  Trevor’s mom named her cats after game shows.  Matchgame’s empty bowl was in the dish drainer in the kitchen, he’d recently passed-away.

*          *          *

Trevor sat on the toilet; constipated from the stolen light beer.  To help himself along he thumbed a healthy dip of Copenhagen into the swollen well below his bottom teeth.

The bathroom door was securely locked.  He couldn’t trust his mom for a second.

He’d forgotten to bring his own reading material so he was forced to page through a two month old Guideposts.  He flipped past the article about a Christian family photographer in Appleton, Wisconsin, and the one about a Christian scientist who worked on the human genome project.  He settled on the story about the Christian place kicker who played for the Miami Dolphins.

Trevor moved his testicles aside and spit Cope down through his legs.  And then he heard a crash downstairs and his mom scream.  What the hell was it now?

*          *          *

When Lane reached the upstairs, he saw that four of the team members had Trevor Jenkins pinned face down on the floor of the hallway.  He was wriggling like a gaft fish on the deck.  “Get out of my room!  Get out of my room!” Screaming like a tantruming child, his pants around his ankles.

There was a deadbolt lock on his bedroom door, and a stolen “no trespassing sign”, but due to his trip to the bathroom, the door was wide open when the FBI arrived.  Lane could hear a woman screaming curses from a bedroom at the end of the hall.  He walked into Trevor’s room.  A poster of a Budweiser swimming suit model, the tag-line in Spanish, hung above the bed – Christmas lights strung haphazardly around the edge.  Beside this was a smaller poster of J. Edgar Hoover wearing a dress and a tattered pornographic centerfold that Trevor had brought home from prison.  A small bookcase beside the bed contained several true crime novels, and a collection of Loompanics books -  Manstopper, Kitchen Sink Explosives, Full Auto, and SS Interrogation Methods.  A chrome .44 Magnum with laser scope was on the edge of the bed next to Trevor’s pillow.    Directly across from the bed was a door full of knives.  Trevor had purchased a 128 piece knife set on QVC and used the closet door to practice his knife throwing.  It was an astonishing array – bowies, butterflies, Ka Bars, lockbacks, Ghurkas, skinners…

Blake strode in from the hallway.

“Anything?”

Lane shook his head.  He leaned down and lifted the edge of the bedspread.

A calico cat sprang out from under the bed, ran past Lane’s boots and into the closet door Blake had just opened.  Inside the closet Blake saw the rack of Chinese assault rifles and said.  “Jackpot!”  He pulled the cord for the light switch.

Several months ago, for extra security, Trevor had removed the light bulb from the closet and carefully drilled a small hole in the glass.  Through this hole he had poured several inches of black powder.  He had then filled the remaining space with buckshot and closed the hole with model glue.  As a precaution, he had gone to the basement and removed the fuse to his room before re-inserting the bulb in the closet socket.  When the cord was pulled, the activated filament ignited the mix and blew off the northern hemisphere of Agent Blake’s skull.

Lane turned and saw Blake pull the cord.  There was a flash – the blast wave snapped Lane’s head back and turned off his brain before he even hit the floor.

VENICE BEACH – 8:57 AM

Napolion was running on Vivarin.  Vivarin was a little more expensive, but the No Doz made him too jittery, he’d experimented.  He hadn’t gotten home until 6:30 and he still hadn’t slept.  But getting to the beach before 9:00 was the only way to get a parking spot in the summer.  And with his kids, Troy and Helen, a good spot was more important than anything.  The engine of his 78 Accord was burning oil, but for $600 he wasn’t complaining.  Not having a car payment weighing down his nut made him able to afford the nine dollar beach parking.

The kids were already amped .  All their sand toys out.  Swimming trunks on.  Up and ready to go an hour after he got home.  They’d been going bonkers in the car the whole way.  He sparked a Parliament.  With the kids he wouldn’t be able to sleep on the beach, but at least he could lie down.  Stretch out on his Barney beach towel, his Shuggie Otis tape in the portable to keep his mood up.

As he unloaded the hatchback he watched a Philippino family of four troop by – heavily loaded down with umbrella, cooler with wheels, six towels, two toy buckets, a rake, a castle shaped bucket, sifter, three shovels, rock crusher with spinning wheel, food bags, back packs, sun hats, wiffle ball and bat, and a hibachi.  Napolion had strict rules about beach paraphernalia: one towel, one bucket, one shovel each.  And sun screen for the kids in a bottle shaped like a tortoise.  And the portable, and his Lakers visor, but that was it.

Helen started to cry.  She’d already stubbed one of her toes dancing in place.

Napolion bent down to inspect the damage and heard a deep muffled thump, like a fireworks mortar.  And then a scream that drained his adrenal gland.

He looked over the Accord and saw the whole Philippino family down in the sand.  Bleeding.  Scattered potato chips, sand toys and hot dog buns.  The dad gasping, his hand on his spouting chest. The mother holding what used to be her knee.  The children lying still in the sun, not moving.

Napolion said, “Kids, back in the car.  Now.”  But it was an unnecessary command.  They were already there.

PEPPERDINE UNIVERSITY 9:15 A.M.

Grover looked over the make-up exam again and felt a squirrelly fear in his stomach that seemed to flutter all the way down to his tightening scrotum.  Homoscedasticity?  His HP calculator (which was the only outside aid allowed) definitely did not have a function button for that.

At the front of the room the Professor sat behind the desk, savagely grading the original exams - audibly sighing as his squeaky felt pen went to work.  With an acute hangover thumping in his temples, Grover could actually smell the red ink.  Why didn’t he study with Connie?    He had three hours, no, less than that now.  Fuck.  The clock ticked on the wall.   The room felt close, nervous sweat appeared in the small of his back.  Fuck.  Why did they even teach this class?   Fuck.

Regression analysis on his headache was much simpler; it all came down to two words – “if only.”  If only he hadn’t looked under his bed.  No, that wasn’t it, if only he hadn’t started playing Montezuma’s Revenge again.  After accidentally retreating into the moat of Teotihuacan his powder had gotten wet.  And the Aztec Demon had mercilessly beheaded him with an obsidian axe.  Grover had invested over five and a half hours in that game and it was all for nothing.  After his ignominious defeat, he’d looked under the bed for his Goldschlager, telling himself he’d just have a quick shot to clear his head and then really get studying.  But instead of the Goldschlager (Todd had most likely pilfered it days earlier) he found a horrible biology experiment – i.e. his favorite Birkenstocks had been engulfed by furry, blue-green mildew.  For the past two weeks, while he’d been wearing his Tevas non-stop, something had come alive in the dank darkness beneath his bed and reproduced itself endlessly in his cork sole.  Horrified, Grover had picked the fuzzy sandals up with his fingertips and thrown them out the window.

Then, too freaked out and distracted to study the old problem sets, Grover decided to stop by the Werewolf party.  On his way there he began to fantasize about the Lithuanian exchange student, but when he arrived he discovered she’d already left for the beach with somebody else.  Remorseful, he drank a little more than he was planning.  Four Werewolves in twenty minutes made him a slightly unsteady, so he’d switched to beer.  And then somehow, around 1 AM, he found himself banging on Connie’s door, simultaneously yelling and begging for hints to the final.  But there was no answer….and he’d ultimately staggered back to his room and passed out in his bed.  Fortunately he awoke with vomit in his mouth at 8, or he would never have made it to the make-up.

Grover read over the assumptions again.  And the hint.  Maybe he could figure it out…maybe he should change majors again.  Could nuclear physics be any harder than this?

In his very first semester, Grover had taken an introductory psychology class.  The professor had made them watch a movie that showed how pigeons (using conditioning) could be taught to differentiate between Monets and Picassos and then, with just a little more stimulation, between generic impressionists and cubists.  Grover was pretty sure a pigeon could pass an Art History class, but he doubted they could get through econometrics.  And now he felt like an albino rat trapped in a Skinner experiment.  Pain.  Everywhere he looked.  And all he could think about was escape.

USC MEDICAL CENTER – 6:00 P.M.

Lane knew he was awake, but he couldn’t see.  He was in total darkness.  As his senses came back to him he moved his head slightly.  A ripple of nausea.  He felt with his hands, found steel rails on each side.  A hospital bed.  Moved his hands up to his face, bandaged, but no tubes in his arms, a good sign.  He was no longer in his own clothes, and his boots were missing.  He flexed his toes.  He began to sense light seeping through the edge of whatever covered his eyes.  Another good sign.

He moved is head off the pillow and the ripple of nausea turned into a wave.  His face was hot under the bandages.  A voice said, “How are you feeling, Major?”

It came back to him – Blake in the closet…reaching for the light switch…

He didn’t answer.  He felt hands on his hands.  And then, farther away, “He’s awake.”

Anti-septic smelling fingers unwrapped the bandages around his head.  “This might feel a little bright at first.  Open your eyes slowly…”

Joel opened his eyes.  His eyeballs felt gritty – scraping against the inside lids.  The light was painful.  Blurry.  His vision cleared and came to focus on Catherine Mills, framed in the doorway.

An obviously smart woman with a Ukrainian accent leaned over him and inspected his eyeballs.  She looked about twenty.  “Hello, Mr. Lane.  I’m Doctor Irina.”  She placed a fresh band-aid over his eyebrow.  “Your corneas have first degree burns from the explosion.  And you’ve suffered a grade 3 concussion.”

Lane squinted at Catherine.  She looked exhausted, purple circles under her eyes.  Her face expressionless.  “Blake?”  She shook her head.  “What was it?”

Catherine glanced at Dr. Irina.  “We’ll talk.”

“Did you find any mines?”

“No, but he’s got enough state weapons violations to go away for 100 years, even before the murder of a Federal officer.”

Lane winced.  “Where am I?”  He touched his cheek and discovered another butterfly band-aid.

Dr. Irina picked up a clipboard from the end of the bed.  “USC Trauma Center.  You’ve been out a long time.  I think your body needed sleep.”

Lane sat up and rubbed his neck.  He wondered what kind of tests they’d run on his blood.  “Do I have to stay here?”

Dr. Irina wrote something on the clipboard. “As long as you’re not alone, it’s okay to be discharged.”

Catherine spoke up.  “I’ll look after him.”

The three of them exchanged looks. A strange energy in the room.  With a slightly crooked smile Irina said.  “OK then, I’ll have the nurse sign you out.”

“Are you Ukrainian?” Lane asked, guessing at her accent.

“Israeli.”

“Of course,” Lane said.  And then in Hebrew, “Torah.”  Thank you.

LEXUS COACH EDITION – 6:30 P.M.

Lane looked at the dash clock.  He was having trouble computing hours in his mind.  As Catherine peeled away from the USC parking circle he felt like he could feel his brain sloshing backwards in his skull.  The hospital gave Lane a pair of goggle-ish wrap around sunglasses, but he continued to keep his eyes closed as Catherine talked.  It seemed to help his dizziness.  When he peeked, the streets were tinted green.  The smell of Eucalyptus coming through the vents.  And after he put his hands on the dash after a hard stop, Catherine seemed to ease her Formula One driving back a little for him.

Major Joel Lane was wearing scrubs.  The pants were too long, so he had stuffed them into the tops of his combat boots.  Before he was discharged someone had given him a plastic bag filled with his fatigues, but he discovered the hospital staff had cut them off with scissors when he was admitted to the trauma center, so they were only good for rags now.  He didn’t know what happened to his Eddie Bauer underwear, they were missing in action.  Lane had checked the pants pockets and was happy to discover his Altoids tin and wallet were still there.  He wondered again if his opiate abuse had been detected at the hospital.  He had a puncture wound in his arm, and another one, twice as painful, on the back of his hand, but he figured they must have been for hydration iv’s.  And Doctor Irina hadn’t hesitated sending him home with an envelope of Dilaudid and a prescription for fifteen more.

Catherine took a hard left and said, “So you were right.  They mined the beaches.  Twenty-two dead.  Fifty-three serious injuries – all civilian except two lifeguards. There’s a dozen at USC, thirty at UCLA, the rest down south.”

Lane absorbed the news.  It had finally happened.  The mines had returned home.  Like pollution coming back through the jet stream.

Catherine continued, “They were spread over forty miles of beach.  Huntington to Malibu.  Seemed to activate simultaneously.  Limbs lost.  It’s a nightmare.  The governor has closed every beach in the state and mobilized the National Guard.”

“Shouldn’t you be doing something besides driving me around?”  Lane asked.

“Actually I have a lot of time.  I’ve been relieved of duty.  Temporarily.”

“Because of Blake?”

“Because of Blake.  Do you remember what happened?”

“He pulled the light switch.”

“It was filled with gunpowder.”

“Not just gunpowder.  Buckshot maybe.”

“Something like that.”  She handed him his cellphone.  It was undamaged.  “I recharged your phone.  And you might need this.”  She pulled his holstered firearm out from under the seat.  “The vest is in the trunk if you want it.”

“Thanks.”  He tucked the phone in his waistband and then checked the safety on the Beretta and placed the holster on the floor.  Scrubs didn’t give a man a lot of cargo options.  He wondered briefly what doctors did with their loose change.

“And there’s one other disturbing development.  A mine on a horse trail in Griffith Park - the rider was a thirteen-year-old girl…she actually wasn’t hurt, but the horse died.  Had to be moved off the trail with a forklift.  Press has that image playing constantly and now everyone knows Valentino, the Arabian gelding.  I don’t know if you’re familiar with the area, but it’s not far from Forest Lawn.”

Lane wondered about that one.  It seemed crude in comparison, without a message.  Perhaps there was an inland operative working at the same time, just getting started.  Lane closed his burned eyes as a Lincoln Navigator passed them- thumping with reverberating beat.

“And we received this, sent to the L.A. Times:”

She handed him a piece of paper.  Lane opened his eyes and quickly scanned Huay’s proclamation.

“This is in the paper?”

“No, the Times came to us first.”

“They didn’t publish it?”

“We asked them not to.  But it’s irrelevant, because it was also sent to Le Monde and they did publish it.  Almost instantly.  On-line.  The original is in the lab.  Hopefully we’ll get something from it.  But I thought you’d be interested in the content.”

Lane reread the demands and said. “Jesus.”  And then he read them again.  Joel Lane couldn’t believe it.  It took a moment for it to sink in.  It all made sense now.  His instincts had been right.  This wasn’t just terrorism with landmines, it was terrorism about landmines.

“So, in your expert opinion, what do you think we should do?”

As they merged onto the ten, Lane saw that there were National Guard Humvees on the freeway.  All headed west.

Lane leaned his head back against the supple leather headrest and said,

“I don’t know.  Pray for an earthquake.”

THE CHEESECAKE FACTORY, WOODLAND HILLS – 7:44 PM

Catherine exited the freeway, turned right and cut a quick left into the Warner Center Trillium complex.  She drove over a speed bump and past the Woodland Hills Hilton.  For a moment Lane wondered if she was dropping him off at the hotel.  But she stopped the car outside the restaurant’s valet space.

“We have to eat.”  She said, slamming the transmission into P.

After Lane watched Catherine hand over her key-ring to the eighteen-year-old valet, he asked, “Aren’t you worried about giving your car keys to a complete stranger?”

“Life’s too short.”

Lane nodded, but it was hard to understand the logic of that.  Who would be more desperate to change their position in life than a valet?  Mystifying.

“I’ve never had a problem,” she said.  Lane decided that the valets in Los Angeles were thought of as the modern equivalent of stable boys.  Humans so far down the ladder, so down-trodden, that they would never consider stealing.  But he knew if he had their job he’d at least think about it.

Inside the bustling restaurant they stood near the glass refrigerator case that held the cheesecakes, waiting in a short line to see the hostess.  Who was spectacular, breathtakingly beautiful.  Lane found it difficult not to stare.  Shimmering and supple with breasts like a naughty cartoon.  She made every woman in the restaurant look plain by comparison.  She was also the distributor of the beepers that the Cheesecake Factory used to signal people when their table was ready.  With perfectly manicured French nails she handed the long-handled device to Catherine and said, “Five minutes.”

*           *           *

They stood on the edge of the bar.  It didn’t feel private enough to discuss the events of the day, and Lane’s head hurt too much to make small talk.  He also felt as though people were covertly watching him.  Lane was familiar with the feeling from often being the only white face in small villages around the world, but he was used to people just staring, not caring if they were caught looking.  He kept his medical sunglasses on.

Catherine could feel the eyes too.  The peripheral surveillance.  The celebrity-look-away, a practiced art in Los Angeles.   But she couldn’t decide if she was truly being recognized or if people were checking out her strange-looking date.  She’d broken her nose in a car accident once (rear-ending someone on San Vicente) and later attended a gallery opening with the exotic purple thunder-bolts in her eyes that were caused by broken blood vessels.  She’d never been more popular at a party.  She didn’t think she could be so easily identified now, but she also knew not to under-estimate the amount of television people watched.  She’d once gone to a development meeting at ABC in Burbank to discuss creating a show about the FBI’s most wanted list.  She had been authorized to explore it due to the success of “America’s Most Wanted” on Fox.  “America’s Most Wanted” had captured literally hundreds of fugitives (some of the worst ones too), and it wasn’t even very highly rated.  Between cell phones and television it was amazing anyone could get away with anything.  The problem was volume, there were just too many criminals.

What Catherine really wanted to do, after eating (she was famished) was to go to the shooting range.  She could picture herself cycling through pistol – from the hip, from the shoulder, right-hand, left-hand, quick-draw from three positions, then sub-machine gun, assault rifle and shotgun, although the twelve gauge usually left her feeling slightly sore.  She smiled to herself, she was having a common reaction.  Whenever an officer went down the law enforcement shooting ranges were filled to capacity.  It was unwritten standard procedure that they would stay open late.  Gunshots as therapy.

She thought Lane might someday enjoy a shooting range and ballgame date.   She looked up at him.  “Do you like baseball?” she asked.

He shrugged.

“Do you play golf?”

“No.” she said.

And their beeper began to vibrate and flash red.

Lane followed Catherine through a small forest of unlit propane heaters.  The inside of the restaurant was an open-air courtyard.  There seemed to be no plan at all for rain.  People enjoyed eating outside in Cambodia too, but there was always the threat of tropical precipitation.

As the hostess led them to a fountain-side table, Lane decided that he might not be the only one in the Cheesecake Factory who wasn’t wearing underwear.

NORWALK – 7:54 P.M.

Napolion sat unreclined in his recliner and listened to the jet rattle his windows.  Only the older ones did that, usually a Mexicana 727 or a Colombian DC-9.  The newer planes, even the biggest ones, were quieter.  He lived beneath the final approach to LAX’s right-hand runway, 21R, the one that serviced the Bradley International terminal.

Jets flying into Los Angeles airspace flew an intricate path along the mountains and freeways to avoid flying over the wealthier residential areas before turning and lowering their landing gear directly over his apartment.  It would be quietest if they approached over the Ocean, but the wind always blew in, providing lift for take-offs.  And take-offs were louder than landings anyway.  Napolion didn’t care that much about the noise, he was just happy that his rent was less than what some people paid to keep their pools cleaned.

He’d moved into the tiny 1BR after separating from the kids’ mother.  That hadn’t worked out, but they still occasionally slept together, neither of them ever finding anybody as familiar or as convenient.   And not living together had seemed to vent a lot of the hostility and pressure that had been an everyday ordeal when they lived under the same roof.  There was no pressure on him to improve now, even though he kept the pressure on himself.

Napolion’s heart was racing, and it wasn’t from the jets or the seven Vivarin in his system.  The vision of the dead family was on a continuous loop in his brain.  And always accompanied by one thought – if it hadn’t been them, it would have been his kids.

And somehow his tip to the FBI had gotten a cop killed.  A federal cop. What if the FBI wanted to talk to him?  Record his voice?  He was sure the FBI taped all their calls.  Now he was scared to even answer his phone.  Shit.   It wouldn’t be too difficult to figure out who called in the tip - Trevor probably didn’t know very many black folks.  He’d just deny it.  Why did he feel guilty? He had only been reporting a criminal.  He wasn’t asking for a reward.  Maybe he needed an attorney.  What the hell blew up in Trevor’s house?  Napolion didn’t even allow himself to have a gun in his apartment, not with the kids, it was just too risky.  A Louisville Slugger was his only home defense.  Which was just as well, since maybe the FBI would be coming through his windows next.

He should have turned him in a different way, the phone call had been a big mistake.  He should have used a fake voice.  Or sent an anonymous letter.  Like the real landmine character.  Christ, the whole city was going crazy. Helen freaking out every-time they showed the picture of that stupid horse.  Or half a horse really.  His favorite Shuggie Otis song ruined forever.

The only good thing had been when his supervisor had called to tell him his shift was cancelled.  The supervisor was an asshole too.  “Looks like Trevor’s gonna be out for awhile.  We’ll try to get you back on the schedule as soon as we can…”

Napolion was most worried about his kids.  After leaving a half-dozen messages for their mom, he’d set them up in the bedroom with his laptop, watching a dvd.  They had gone out to Dr. Video’s and gotten a new movie, “D4 – The Mighty Ducks Quake the Case.”  The kids seemed mesmerized by it.  Napolion generally didn’t go to Dr. Video’s, he could never remember when they were due back and was always getting hit with late fees.  He had a friend who got all his movies for free from the library, but that seemed complicated, and Napolion never knew when the library was open.  He had pirated basic cable and the kids were usually happy to watch Spongebob Squarepants and Squigman.

Napolion knew he would have to have a serious talk with them about what they had seen at the beach.  Only he wasn’t sure what to say.  He’d seen his first dead body in the street when he was about their age, could still remember the swollen face and open staring eyes.  It was nothing like going to a funeral.  But no one had ever talked to him about it, and he’d never told his Mama he’d seen it.  Napolion didn’t know what he was going to say to anybody.  For now, he thought, he would continue to exercise his right to remain silent.

CHEESECAKE FACTORY –8:05 P.M.

“What are you going to have?”  Catherine was flipping the pages of the substantial menu.  A book really, a laminated catalog of food.  It actually took Lane a minute to realize it was a menu.  There were tabs on the side that separated each section and opposite the descriptions of the food were full-color photos.  Only they weren’t pictures of the food (something Lane had seen many times) these pictures were advertisements.  And Lane noticed many of the ads featured photographs of brides.  An ad for the Woodland Hilton Wedding Coordination Team said “Trust Us with the Most Important Day of Your Life.”  Did eating cheesecake make you want to get married?

“You should think about what kind of cheesecake you want now.  I’m always too full to actually order it.  I think just the idea of it is what keeps me coming back.”  Catherine said.

Lane flipped to the dessert tab and found thirty-three different kinds of cheesecake listed.  Non-alphabetically.  The ad across from the cheesecake was for a local scuba shop.  It offered "honey-moon training.”  He flipped back, it was too overwhelming to contemplate.

Catherine, still perusing the list, said, “Chocolate chip cookie dough, definitely.”

“Sure.”  Lane said.

It only took Lane two more minutes to settle on

BANG-BANG CHICKEN AND SHRIMP
A Spicy Thai Dish with the Flavors of Curry, Peanut, Chile and Coconut. Sauteed with Vegetables and Served over Rice

Their WAITER, who had an annoying triangular soul patch under his bottom lip, showed up to take their order.  Catherine ordered a

MOJITO
Bacardi Limón Rum, Fresh Mint and Lime On the Rocks
- A Cuban Favorite!

And then the

PETITE FILET
A Smaller Version of Our Most Tender Steak
Served with French Fries and Onion Rings

Lane thought about beer, there were sixteen different choices, but decided on iced tea instead, “a refreshing herbal blend.”  The waiter, who wrote nothing down, thanked them and left.

A young-looking man in green scrubs (almost identical to Lane’s) walked by the table.  His pants fit much better, and he wore the clogs that prevented the cuffs from dragging on the ground.  The man didn’t meet Lane’s gaze, but glanced down dismissively at Lane’s combat boots.

Lane tugged at his admissions bracelet.   He didn’t like being labeled.  He automatically reached for his buck knife and realized he didn’t have it.  He’d lost it somewhere on his journey to the hospital.  Maybe somebody thought it was one of Trevor’s knives from the closet door and seized it as evidence.

The waiter with the soul patch returned and put a serrated steak knife next to Catherine’s plate.  Lane thought about asking to borrow it so that he could cut off the bracelet, but decided it might be a faux pas, he didn’t know her well enough.  And apparently there was no special cutlery provided for the Bang Bang Chicken.

The Mojito and iced tea arrived and Catherine and Lane both began drinking without a toast.

“This tastes kind of like whiskey,” Lane said.

Catherine nodded.  “It’s probably the apricot.”

Tugging at the admissions bracelet again, Lane wondered if the hospital had found his health insurance card in his wallet.  There had been no paperwork.  Did Catherine take care of it?  Maybe they had just gotten the information off his dog tag.  He couldn’t imagine where they would send his bill – perhaps to the DOD.  He was definitely in the line of duty.

The hostess sauntered by and Lane made a conscious effort not to stare.  But he saw Catherine scrutinize her with a cop-like thoroughness.

Lane said, “You know cosmetic surgery is free in the army.”

Catherine looked at him.  “I’ve heard that.”

“But you  have to supply your own implants.”

“Huh.”

“In the Israeli Defense Force you can’t get plastic surgery, but you get free education.  Every citizen has to serve and if you can’t read when you go in you don’t get any other training until you master that.”

“What do they do in our army if you can’t read?”

“I don’t know.  Whatever it is, it’s probably not very fun.  But I know that if you can’t do math they send you to the Pentagon.”  Catherine smiled politely at his joke.

“Anyway, I’ve been seriously considering doing something about my webbed toes.”

Catherine stared.

“I’m just kidding.”

Lane felt a stray drop from the fountain land on his cheek.  He scratched the gun in his boot.  “Does it ever rain?”

“In the winter, for about two weeks.”

“You know that land mine treaty has affected our policy.  An example is how we pulled all our mines out of Guantanamo.  It might seem like an empty gesture since the only people who ever stepped on the mines were Cuban defectors, but it was still a start.  And we didn’t suffer a single casualty removing them either, the maps were very accurate.  We didn’t sign the treaty mostly because of the situation on the 38th Parallel.  And the army also had an issue with getting rid of claymores.  It’s hard to get much sleep in a foxhole without a claymore pointed toward the enemy.  Which isn’t really a mine, because you detonate it yourself, usually.”

“Hm.”

A heavy-set young woman they hadn’t seen before brought their food.  She wasn’t wearing make-up.  The staff seemed to be getting progressively less attractive.  Lane scratched one of the band-aids on his face and wondered where they hid the dishwashers.

Major Joel Lane took one bite from the massive platter of Bang Bang Chicken and Shrimp and felt instantly full.  Almost nauseas.  He remembered a Buddhist telling him the first bite of anything is the best.  He put his fork down and watched Catherine.  She hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she needed to eat.  She tore into the Petite Filet like a wolverine with table manners.  Although Lane noted that she avoided the onion rings.

A strawberry daiquiri interrupted her feast.

The soul-patched waiter set the drink down and cleared Catherine’s empty Mojito glass.

“What’s this?”

“From an admirer.”  The Waiter motioned with his head at a middle-aged woman standing two tables away.  She waved and approached.  She had a nine-year-old girl with her who wore a pink tank top that said “Princess in Training” in a bubble-lettered font.

“You’re her, aren’t you?”  The woman said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the FBI woman.  From the news,”

“That’s right.”

“Wow.”

Catherine tried to smile.

“I once saw Marcia Clark at the Vons in Van Nuys.”

Catherine felt instantly depressed.  And ever since she’d spent a night puking them into the shower drain in college, she couldn’t stand strawberry daiquiris.

“I just want to say, how proud we all are of you…”  The woman had red hair with dark roots and wore it in a fanned pony-tail on top of her head.  Lane thought of the electrocuted hawk that had started the fire in the hills.  Her eyes looked like she’d already had a few strawberry daiquiris herself.

“It’s so awful what happened to that horse.  Cee-cee cries every time she sees it.”

The nine-year-old girl nodded bravely.

The woman’s attention turned to Lane.  “Were you there too?  Were you hurt at the cemetery?”

“No.”

She turned back to Catherine.  “Do you mind if I take a picture of you with my daughter?”  She held up her cell-phone camera.

Catherine seemed stunned.

“Cee-cee, stand behind her.”

Lane said, “Maybe we should get this to go.”

Catherine said, “I’m sorry, but I’d prefer you--”   The phone flashed anyway.

It seemed to break the ice, the other diners began to stare at them openly, unabashed.  Catherine sighed.

Once again, it looked like the cheesecake would have to wait.

MERCEDES – 10:05 P.M.

Huay listened to the radio as he drove west on the 101.  CBS News was already questioning his letter’s legitimacy… “The Cambodian government had no immediate comment.”  BBC on NPR was a little more focused on his stated demands, but they did not give it extensive play, merely noting that Great Britain was a signateur to the treaty.

He’d tried to be so simple, succinct.  But he feared his message was being lost, his actions attributed to “a deranged lunatic or lunatics.”

And who was this American truck driver they’d arrested?  It was all muddled together.  The FBI spokesman: “We are pursuing several leads in addition to the suspects already in custody for the murder of a federal officer.”

In addition there was an endless parade of “experts” and commentators calling him either a nut or a new breed of terrorist.  “With very cheap weapons and the most cruel of intentions.  And with the easy availability on the international arms market, it’s actually surprising this hasn’t happened here sooner…”  The next guest analyst stating, “Clearly the work of a disturbed individual, perhaps a paranoid schizophrenic.  A Hinkley or Sirhan.”  Before he left he’d turned off the television with disgust.  In addition to the irritating speculation, the images of dead children on the beaches seemed to be playing on endless loops.  And then there was the dead horse and the little girl in Griffith Park, sobbing in her riding helmet.  Who set that one?  The fat-sucking truck driver?

Huay forced himself to take a deep breath.  He punched the source button on the stereo and his cd of early 70’s Cambodian rock momentarily lifted his mood.

Huay rolled into Woodlawn Hills in the dark.  There was no overnight street parking allowed in Catherine’s neighborhood, so he parked in the driveway of a house that was for sale and appeared to be dark and vacant.  He’d hoped to see (according to the credit report) a Coach Edition Lexus parked in the driveway of 12357 Quail Cabeza court.  But the absence meant either the woman wasn’t home or she parked in the garage.  Either way it made his mission more difficult.  But his frustration with the media inspired him.   Perhaps with this specific, focused target the world would see the message in his madness.

WOODLAND HILLS – 10:15 P.M.

Catherine led Joel Lane down the hall to her bathroom.  She gave him a pink towel and a white terry cloth bathrobe that was sealed inside plastic packaging.  After he shut the door, she knocked lightly, opened the door and handed him a brand new toothbrush.  “I stole this from your hospital room,” she said.

Lane closed the door again and looked at himself in the mirror.  Her bathroom smelled clean.  A suburban female clean he could never attain, no matter where he lived.  He used a pastel pink Kleenex to blow his nose, then removed a band aid from the buckshot wound in his cheek.  The wound wasn’t deep, but a plum-colored bruise encircled it, making it look worse.  He puffed out his cheeks, but no air escaped.  Which was just as well, he could never be as entertaining as Whistler had been with his hole. Lane scratched at his wrist, he still had his hospital admissions bracelet on.  He found nail clippers in the drawer beneath the sink and cut it free.  It made him feel instantly better.  He then turned on the shower and let it get good and steamy before he untied the drawstring on his scrubs and stepped out of his pants.

The shower was hot and Lane stayed in it long after he was done with the shampoo, soap, and conditioner cycle.  He actually stayed too long and was overheated, near sweating when he stepped out onto the bathmat.  He cracked the door and brushed his teeth with Aim, but was still too hot to put on the robe.  He walked out into the living room wearing just the pink bath sheet.

Lane sunk into the pony skinned chair.  It smelled different than the car.  Better, richer, butterier.  Catherine had modern, but eclectic taste.  Lane noted a Pakistani prayer rug hung on the wall and a halogen lamp made from a roof vent on the end table.  He picked up the universal remote control from beside the lamp and turned on cable news:

Trevor Jenkins, wearing an orange jumpsuit, was being led into the back of Parker Center.  “The authorities are not saying if they have found mines, only explosives and a cache of weapons.  Mr. Jenkin’s mother is also in custody, charged with resisting arrest and conspiracy.”  They cut to a wide shot of the Jenkins’ house.  “Earlier today animal control officers removed eight cats from the home.”  A cat carrier was loaded into a white van.  The door was slammed and the van pulled away.  “The cats were taken to an undisclosed location.”

Lane changed the channel.  A Blackhawk helicopter was patrolling the coast with night vision.  How long could they afford to do that?  A live news copter shot showed a convoy of National Guard deuce and a half’s filled with orange barricades, headed for PCH.

“Can we ever be sure we’ve found them all?”  Catherine had entered.  She stood watching the television, a manila envelope in her hand.

Lane said, “Maybe, but when we open them up again what are we going to do?  Search everyone at check points?  Turn beaches into airports?  What about soccer fields and playgrounds?  It will never work.”

Catherine nodded grimly.

Lane eyed the little white envelope sitting on the coffee table that contained his USC meds.  He’d peaked inside in the car, but he still wasn’t sure how many were in there.  Seven?  Eight?  He started doing some calendar math in his head, but couldn’t remember exactly what day it was.

“We’re due to report to Zimmerman in the morning.”  Catherine handed him the manila envelope.  “This is my version of what happened on the Jenkins arrests.  I need you to write your statement about what went wrong with Blake.  I want to make sure they’re relatively consistent.”

Lane handed her envelope back.  “I’ll look at it first thing in the morning, I don’t feel too much like squinting right now.”

She said, “I’ll be right back.”

Lanes eyes itched – like he was blinking solvent.  His back was beginning to stick to the pony skin, so he moved over to the cotton slip-covered couch.  He rubbed his eyes with his palms.

Catherine returned with the bottle of saline solution the hospital had given him.  “Let me help you.  Lean your head back.”  She kneeled beside him on the couch, her hand felt cool and smooth on his forehead.  And she was an expert with the dropper.  Bull’s eye.  It was like a drop of cool darkness.

A drop of saline rolled down his cheek.

She wiped away the artificial tear.  “Don’t be sad,” she said.  “If you feel like going in the spa, it’s probably still warm.”

“I’m okay.”

She got up and disappeared again.

Lane watched a commercial for Pine Sol.  And then one for mufflers that featured chicken puppets driving a car.

He heard the ice machine in the kitchen.

Catherine returned wearing just her blouse and underwear.  Lane also noticed she was carrying two plastic tumblers filled with ice, two cans of Diet Coke, a handful of airplane-sized Bacardi bottles, and a tri-colored Mexican blanket tucked under her arm.  A liquid picnic.

She sat down beside him on the couch and poured two bottles of rum into his tumbler and three into hers, topping them off with the fizzing Diet Coke.  She handed him the drink and said, “I hope you don’t mind sleeping on the couch.”

Lane wasn’t sure if she was telling a joke.  But he was pretty sure she was.  He didn’t remember taking it out of the envelope, but somehow he had a Dilaudid ready in his palm.  He popped it into his mouth and washed it down with a splash of the Diet Libre.

Catherine took the remote from Lane’s hand and clicked off the screen.  A faint field of electricity seemed to linger in the air.

She sat so her knees touched him.

Lane smiled.

Her eyes were moist.  He felt momentarily jealous.  Then he put his arm around her.  Natural, like they’d been together forever.

Lane kissed her.  Thankful for the booze.  It was like they did this all the time, so comfy on the couch.  He drew her into him.  She smelled like roses, and then like the whole rose parade.

She bit his ear, her cheek pressing against his wound.  He closed his eyes as her fingers played with his hair, brushing, making waves.  Lane’s head buzzed with excitement.  It had been a long time since he’d been to heaven.

“Your hair’s so short, military man.”  Lane didn’t reply and they sank into the slip-covered couch.  While there had been a panicked moment when Lane feared all the opiates in his system would prevent blood flow to key parts, the thought quickly faded and the blood rushed in like the Red Sea.  Lane chuckled as a phrase from his childhood flashed into his mind.  He and his classmates had repeated it endlessly and it never failed to generate a laugh:  The wily and smelly hedgehog burrowed down below the bush.

WOODLAND HILLS – 11:15 P.M.

Huay approached the house from the rear, using a concrete-lined drainage ditch that abutted the homes on the cul-de-sac.  He surprised a possum, the rodent hissed at him and ran across the fence tops.  Huay lifted himself up and over the six-foot weather-proofed cedar slats.  His mind was rushing ahead, filled with plans. He had partners.  With the fear gone and the injection of capital they could all move back in to business in the Cambodian countryside.  It was a small country, but there were valuable resources and opportunities: Tonle-sap fish and hydroelectricity, exported rice and prawns, the restoration of an agrarian paradise.  And they would rebuild the universities.  Create a Singapore-like investment environment and staff it with the educated and ambitious.

Huay cleared his head and surveyed Catherine’s backyard.  He’d brought several different options in his backpack.  The first thing he noticed was the ridiculous pool.  It was completely impractical for swimming.  He wondered if this was a single-woman’s dream - from her credit report, he knew she wasn’t married.  The rest of the landscaping was overdone for Huay’s taste, a lot of concrete and too many potted plants.  He momentarily considered using a motion-detection mine, but his encounter with the possum made him hesitant.  Huay smiled when he saw the hot tub.

Besides the static bathroom and kitchen lights, the woman’s house appeared unoccupied.  A television flickered inside the neighbor’s, but there was no outdoor lightning and the pool was dark.  Huay decided there was enough cover and advanced.  He stepped across the wooden deck and slipped the padded lid off the spa.   He stuck two fingers inside to test the water.  Warm, at least eighty-degrees.  Good.  It meant she used it.  Huay gently slipped the blue-gator mine below the surface.  He pulled the pin underwater.  He couldn’t quite reach the bottom and there was a tense moment when he had to let it go -  it sank five inches and settled silently on the bottom.  The BLU Gator was a reliable device, about as a big as a smoke detector and painted blue-gray to hide underwater.  Huay was sure it would do the trick.

He tensed again as he heard a faint splash from behind the neighbors’ fence.  Relax, he told himself.  Probably just a raccoon washing stolen dog food in the pool.  They did that in his neighborhood all the time.

WOODLAND HILLS – 11:30 P.M.

Lane carried Catherine to her room – laid her down naked on the Cal-King sized bed and pulled the duvet over her sleeping breasts.  He then went into the bathroom, tore open the plastic and shrugged on the terry cloth robe.  The embroidered badge on the pocket said Wackenhut.  The robe was a souvenir from a law enforcement convention.  Wackenhut was a private prison contractor and the bathrobe was a clever promotional item.  But they didn’t make any in women’s sizes so Catherine had never used it.

Lane stepped out of the sliding glass door and into the backyard – his eyes felt instantly better in the darkness.  He’d brought the empty Diet Coke can and took to assembling a replica of Khieu’s pipe.  He hadn’t meant to.  Somehow his hands were just doing it.

He’d also brought his Altoids tin and a book of matches he’d found in the kitchen from Bob Burns restaurant in Santa Monica.  Lane leaned against the spa cover and set fire to the opium.  As he slowly let the smoke drift out of his throat he looked up into the night.  Compared to rural Cambodia, the LA sky seemed empty.  Edison had killed the stars.  Besides the Big Dipper, the only other constellation Lane could make out was Orion – his belt shining bright despite the lucent pollution of Los Angeles.  And Lane was struck by a jolting thought.  How many light years did he have left in his warrior belt?  The light bulb had been a close call.  How many more before something just as stupid, crude, or unlucky took him out of the game?

Lane froze as his foot touched something he wasn’t expecting.  His toes wrapped around the foreign object, his foot an inch above the ground.    He peered down, barely tilting his head.  Lane exhaled.  He’d stepped on a kumquat.

Lane located the nearby source and pinched off one of the compact orange fruits.  He returned to the spa, laid back on the cover and nibbled the tart kumquat skin with his front teeth, the starlight easy on his eyes.

WOODLAND HILLS – 11:30 P.M.

Huay had been about to scramble back over the six-foot fence when he’d heard the patio door slide open behind him.

He’d immediately crouched down behind a dense shrub and didn’t even breathe for close to a minute.  As the man in the white bathrobe had busied himself crushing a soda can, Huay had been able to silently pivot and draw the Colt defender up from under his shirt.  He had good shadow cover behind the shrub (that smelled vaguely of semen), but he didn’t know what kind of outdoor lighting might suddenly reveal his position.

Huay thought about shooting the man.  But if he missed and the bullet went into the house, he might have to deal with the FBI woman.  He did not want to get into a firefight with the FBI.  He’d once seen the demonstration of their prowess at the shooting range in the Hoover building in Washington, D.C.  They practiced marksmanship endlessly and Huay didn’t have that much confidence in his own handgun skills. Plus it could ruin the statement he was trying to make.  And evasion and escape would be difficult.  His car could be easily cut off in the cul-de-sacs of the suburban neighborhood.  No, the target was the woman.  And he wanted her dead when he was far, far away.  He remembered his training:  when in doubt, always focus on the original mission.  This time, plant the mine and get away safely.  Don’t turn a simple thing into a complex assassination on the fly.

But who was this man in the bathrobe?  A boyfriend?  Body guard?  The leaves and shadows made it difficult to see clearly, but there was something familiar about him, perhaps he was in the footage from the patrolman’s funeral.  Huay hoped the spa would get them both.  It might add a touch of humiliation.

The man was still fussing with the soda can.  And then there was a flash of flame.  What was he doing?  Huay stayed in his crouch, puzzled.

And then Huay smelled it.  Unmistakable.  Opium.  Who had the audacity to smoke opium in the backyard of an FBI agent?  It had to be a relative, a brother maybe.

Huay watched the man absently scratch his crotch.  He then got up and picked a kumquat from the dwarf tree and laid down on the padded cover, his bathrobe falling open.

The smell of the opium was initiating deep and unsettling flashbacks in Huay’s mind.  He began to feel like a giddy child hiding from his playmates, just seconds from exposure.  Huay’s thumb twitched from tension and he accidentally flicked off the safety of the Colt.

The man sat up.  Instantly alert.  He got to his feet and took two steps towards the back fence.  And then was still, listening like an animal.  He stood beside the pink heart-shaped pool, his head cocked.  And then took another step.

Huay exhaled slowly.  With the sight of his Colt he drew a bead on the crest of the bathrobe.  The whorls of Huay’s fingertip, which had shot twenty men, felt the grooves of the trigger.  Three more steps and he would have to kill this man.

Lane relaxed.  Then reached up and picked one of the green fruits from the fig tree.  Rubbed it on his robe and took a bite.  He returned to the deck, palmed the Diet Coke pipe and slipped back inside the sliding glass door.

Huay rolled back off his haunches and leaned against the fence.  He needed a day off.  Tomorrow he would drive his daughter to dance class, enjoy a regular day.

WOODLAND HILLS – 6:59 A.M.

Major Joel Lane slept hard.  The Dilaudid and opium a combination left hook and overhand right.  He returned to his favorite dream - driving the motorcycle across the frozen lake.  This one featured Aimee squeezing him from behind, flashes of her face in the rear-view mirror…and then things began to change, he could feel the cold, the sky turned ominously dark and he saw a new face in the rear-view mirror.

He woke on the couch beneath the Mexican blanket, his heart beating like a rabbit.  The dreams were almost never so unpleasant.  He wondered if it was the synthetic pharmaceutical influence.  The face had been familiar…but who?

Lane sat up and looked at the clock on Catherine’s vcr - seven a.m.  He clicked on the television, lowered the volume to one bar. The news channel seemed uninterrupted.  The death and injury count continued to scroll across the bottom.  Lane watched fresh video of the Guard assembling in the coastal parking lots, stringing slinkies of barbed wire and unfolding endless rows of orange striped saw horses.  Soon they would be sweltering in their full gear, flak vests and helmets – next to the lifeguards in their board shorts, flip-flops and tank tops.  It was another good day to be a soldier.   The grunts always got the short end of the comfort stick – even when they’d moved to the cul de sac suburbs and only grunted one weekend a month.  The lifeguards were only armed with walkie-talkies and sunglasses versus M16’s, but they were all staying off the sand.

Lane walked into the dining room and unwound the string on the case file envelope.  He read over the demand letter again, and then took a look at the screen capture of it printed from Le Monde’s website.  He shuffled through the file and found the grainy surveillance photos from the Nixon library.  There was one Asian man, suspicious because of the sunglasses and hat.  The agents had blown up the images of all visitors wearing both.

Lane closed his eyes and brought back the image from his motorcycle dream.  It was an Asian man, but not the opium dealer.  Someone else.  In humans, the left brain processes and sorts random images, sounds, smells, etc.  Opiates give the user enhanced control of this region, allowing the sensations to sift a little more slowly, to make the dream story better.  In his mind’s eye, Lane put the covered face in the photo beside the face from his dream…and then saw the two images slide together.  Lane’s eyes snapped open.  He knew, he knew who the face was.

His heart raced.  Was he deluding himself?  It was difficult for people to recognize faces of races different than their own.  No.  He was almost sure.  And certain that he had to find out.

Lane tip-toed down the hallway and cracked the bedroom door.  Catherine still slept.  A petite puddle of moisture below her open mouth.

Lane went into the pink bathroom and put the scrubs back on.  He looked in the mirror, “USC Med” was stenciled in black on the front and back of his shirt.  He looked a little deranged.  Definitely not like a doctor.  With the wound on his face and the burns on his forehead, he resembled an escaped mental patient.  And he was still without underwear.

Lane spent several minutes looking for his phone.  He found it plugged into a charger in the kitchen beneath a dish towel. He called information to get Khieu’s phone number.  Lane feared that it would be difficult getting the number since he knew information operators always had trouble with foreign names, but the woman he spoke with seemed amazingly competent.  She got it on the first try and even read the number to him instead of transferring him to a recording.

Khieu was up and answered promptly.  He’d just gotten home.  Lane was relieved he didn’t have to talk to his wife.  Lane needed only two things from his friend, a first and a last name.

“How do you spell it?”

Khieu spoke carefully.  Lane wrote down the name with a leather-covered pen that was also from Coach.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.  I know his name a long time and also it was on the check.”  In the background Lane heard Khieu’s wife ask him who he was talking to.

“Thanks my friend,” Lane said and hung up.

Lane called information again, but found no listing for Huay in Los Angeles or Orange County.

Reluctantly, Lane scrolled through the programmed numbers in his phone and buzzed Alan.

He answered on the first ring.   Lane didn’t wait.  “Are you at the office?”

“Yes, where are you?”

“I need you to do me a favor.  I need the address for someone.  Unlisted.”

“Is this a suspect?”

“It’s a wild lead.  Somebody I know from Cambodia.  Might be able to tell me if there are any rumors in the community, that kind of thing.”

“Do you want us to talk to him?”

“No, I’m just going to give him a call, informal, maybe have coffee together.”

Lane gave him the name and waited while Alan clicked it into his keyboard.

“Wow,” Alan said, “he owns a lot of stuff.  There’s a bunch of business addresses.  Three residences.  A house in Big Bear, a condo in Las Vegas, and a home in Newport Beach.”

“Give me the address in Newport Beach.”  Lane scribbled the address on the back of an envelope, double-checking the spelling of the street name.

“Thanks, Alan.”

“Don’t you want the phone number?  I thought you were going to call him?”

“Right.  Give me that.”

Lane wrote down the number, but he had no intention of calling.

Alan asked, “How’s the noggin?”

“Yeah.”  Lane said and disconnected.

Lane found the Lexus key in Catherine’s purse.  The electric controls to adjust the seat were overly complex, but once on the road the Lexus was definitely a superior automobile.  Lane knew he had to drive downhill, but he was momentarily lost until he saw a sign at the corner stoplight directing him to the 101 freeway.

Before he hit the ramp, Lane pulled over and checked the glove box for a map.  Finding only a leather-bound owner’s manual he flipped to the chapter explaining the in-dash navigation system.  It was amazingly simple.  He punched the address in and a map appeared instantly, 101 right in the center.  Lane was impressed.

As he merged, Lane sparked a Gitane and courteously lowered the window.   The screen refreshed and he cruised in total comfort -  the hidden satellites above tracking and triangulating the small efforts of the humans in Los Angeles County.

NEWPORT BEACH – 9:35 A.M.

Lane sipped the 7-11 extra large coffee and put it in the cup-holder of the Lexus.

There were no cars parked on the street in Huay’s neighborhood, so Lane picked an empty-looking house and parked in the driveway.

He wasn’t a real stakeout artist, but he did have some experience setting up ambushes.  He decided that if anyone asked him he would lie and say he was waiting for a realtor to show him the house.  A lot of homes that were for sale didn’t post lawn signs.  But he wasn’t worried, the Lexus gave him a certain amount of cover.  It was not the car of a burglar.

Lane watched as Huay’s garage door opened and a Mercedes backed down the driveway.  As Huay went by, Lane saw a young woman in the passenger seat wearing a scarf in her hair.  He backed out and trailed a half block behind the Mercedes, speeding cautiously through the endless Spanish-named streets.

MERCEDES – 9:37 A.M.

Dominique said, “Father, I want to talk to you about something.”

Huay was instantly wary.  What could she possibly know, had she seen his news tape?  Somehow seen the mines in the car?

“Okay.”

“I’ve thought about it and researched it thoroughly and I really want to get blepharoplasty.”  Huay was dumbstruck.

Dominique continued.  “I know two girls who’ve had it done at Dr. Park’s clinic in Laguna.  It looks really good and it’s only fifteen hundred dollars per eye.  Plus there’s a summer special that provides an additional ten percent discount.”

Huay couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  “You look perfect now.”  He hated the operation, (50-75% of all Asians are born with a single eyelid; that is, they lack the crease in the upper eyelid that is common to most other ethnicities.  And, in Asians who are born with this crease, it often differs in shape and size from that of other ethnic groups. The creation of a double upper eyelid, sometimes called Asian eye procedure, has been one of the most popular procedures among Asian women in both Asia and America. The addition of a crease to the eyelid can make the eye appear larger and the face more welcoming. This procedure can also make it easier to apply eye makeup. Most Asians who opt for blepharoplasty choose the procedure for these reasons, not in order to appear more “Western” or “American.” Full blepharoplasty, which entails removing the excess fat and tissue surrounding both the upper and lower eye, is often performed to achieve a larger, more prominent eye opening.)  although he had financed it for two exotic dancers, they had excellent cash flow and Huay could see the direct benefit for them.  But he didn’t appreciate the cultural implications or anyone taking a scalpel to his daughter’s eyelids.

Dominique looked out the window.  “A perfect girl with one leg.”

“Yes.  That’s right.  You’re beautiful.  And you don’t need it.  End of discussion.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence.  When they arrived at the ballet studio she got out without a word.  Huay said, “I’ll pick you up in an hour.”  And Dominique slammed the door.

Ten percent off summer special?  Was she starting to become bitter after all these years?  Huay tried to let it go.  It was something that couldn’t be helped, cultural influence was everywhere.  She’d had more than her share of operations on her leg and perhaps that’s why she didn’t think it was a big deal.  The strippers’ operations had gone well, but there was significant risk of an eye looking crooked.  It was not a good idea to mess with human design.

Huay drove across the parking lot and parked in front of the Starbucks.

LEXUS – 9:37 A.M.

Lane only had to run one red light and swerve around a furious Mustang driver to stay with the Mercedes.

He followed Huay into an upscale strip mall, the navigator informing him they were in Costa Mesa.  The young woman got out of the car and entered a dance school.  Huay then drove across the parking lot and parked near the Starbucks.  Lane backed into a spot so that he could keep an eye on the Mercedes, but he also wanted a closer look at the passenger.

Lane got out of the car and walked across the fire lane to the sidewalk that ran in front of the dance studio.  It was already uncomfortably warm in the sun.  Using his forearm to block the sunlight he peered into the window.  Young women were perched along a horizontal pole, like awkward birds, stretching and reaching in warm-up routines.  And then he saw her.  The passenger.  The woman with the scarf in her hair pulled off her foot and exchanged it for a stainless steel one she kept in her equipment bag.  As soon as Lane saw it, he knew he had the right man.

WOODLAND HILLS – 10:05 A.M.

Catherine couldn’t believe he’d taken her car.  And left without doing the incident report.  She called Alan at the office.  He relayed the phone number request Lane had made and told her about Lane’s prior call, in untranslated Khmer, to his friend.  He also briefed her on the details of the current investigation.  No mines had been found in Trevor Jenkin’s house.  They were going to keep the mother in custody for another day.  They were hoping to threaten her into full cooperation and statements that could be used against her son, although actually prosecuting her would be troublesome.  Alan gave her the rest of his update:

Blake’s funeral was still not scheduled.

National Guard mine sweepers at Venice Beach had so far found a Frisbee, a metal canister containing an unoriginal USC thesis film, and a pie tin from The House of Pies in Los Feliz.

“Where’s Lane now?”

“Just a second…”  Catherine heard the familiar click of Alan’s keyboard.  “Costa Mesa.”

“Do you think ECHELON has a Cambodian speaker available?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure they’re in high demand right now, but I’ll give them a call.”

“Thanks.”  She said and hung up the phone.

She didn’t like the feeling of not being in charge.  Catherine looked at the blank incident report on the dining room table and frowned.  She poured herself a Diet Coke and stepped out onto the patio.  She was wearing only a t-shirt and underwear as she put her toe into the heart-shaped pool.  The crawling octopus cleaner (a Cyclops Alpha 3) made its rounds along the bottom.  There was something disturbing about having one of those things in a heart-shaped pool.  Like it was an alien or giant aortic germ.  The water was cold.  She kicked a squashed kumquat off the patio.  She thought about the spa, it got chilled overnight, but if she wanted she could heat it up to a hundred and five in less than a half hour.  Her ringing phone interrupted her thoughts.

COSTA MESA – 10:00 A.M.

Starbucks didn’t have the best croissants…a little dry…as though the person making them was constantly running out of butter.  Huay reflected on this as he sipped his grande soy latte and read the paper.  The woman behind the counter had misspelled his name on the cup, but he tried to ignore it.  Simultaneously he was listening to the news on 980 am and it was difficult to listen to news radio and read the paper at the same time, but a little easier with the USA Today.

A man opened the backdoor.

Huay felt the gun barrel at the base of his skull.  Immediately he flashed back to a joke his Khmer Rouge commander used to play.  He would wake people up in the morning by dry-firing a Colt .45 between a comrade’s eyes.  It really got the blood pumping.  And the commander had only made a mistake once.  And no one in the unit was ever sure he didn’t do it on purpose.

Huay looked in the mirror.  His assailant had vividly bloodshot corneas, scabs for eyebrows and what looked like a point-blank bee-bee gun wound on his cheek.  He was being carjacked by a desperate drug-addict.

And then his mind clicked.   No.  It was the recycler’s friend.  The man who spoke Cambodian.

“Good morning.”  Lane said in Khmer, cocking the hammer of the Beretta.

Huay assessed his situation.  The Colt Defender was under the seat. A ten minute old latte wasn’t much of a weapon, plus it was wedged deep in the cupholder.    He glanced down at the USA Today.  The high in El Paso, TX was predicted to be 112 degrees.

The voice in the back seat said.  “In case you’ve forgotten my name.  I’m Major Joel Lane.  U.S. Special Forces, formerly assigned to the U.N. Mine Education Project in Battambang Province, Cambodia and presently on special loan to the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a terrorist advisor. “

Huay remembered the breath.

“I make my living taking land mines out of the ground.  You’re putting them on the beaches.”

How did he know?  The stock report on the radio reported the Dow down nineteen points.

“Turn that off.”  Lane said.

Huay complied and said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  Huay couldn’t fathom where his meticulous planning had failed.  But why was this man alone?

“I know you planted the Nixon Library mines.  And I can tell by your age and your tactics what your background is.  So before you try anything desperate, I should tell you that your name’s in the task force database.  If I don’t come back, they’re going to get to you eventually.  You can’t operate like that.  And I saw your daughter back there.  Before we discuss anything further, I want you to know that my fiancée was killed by a mine.  I had to have her remains cremated in Angola.”

Of course.  Task force.  He was the man in Catherine Mills’ backyard.  Why didn’t he kill him then?

Huay wondered if this was a tactic to make him confess and then the FBI would swoop in, he had been extremely careful about physical evidence.  “I’m afraid, Mr. Lane, you are mistaken.”

The barrel of the gun dug deeper into his skull.  “Listen to me asshole.  I don’t want to fire a bullet through your head, but if you don’t cooperate, that’s how this is going to go down.  Do you understand?  You’re not going to make it.  Now I don’t know if you’re working with others, but if you placed the mines at the library yourself, I would doubt it.”

Huay was now reasonably convinced this was not a law enforcement ruse.  Was he trying for a reward?  An extortion payment?   Huay knew he had to stall.  Stall and he could think.

“Yes.  Generally I prefer to work alone.”

“I assume you have a contingency for leaving the country?”

“I can’t tell you where the mines are.  I didn’t keep track.  On purpose.”

“I’m not asking you where they are.  I’m asking you how long it would take you to leave the country.”

The wounds on his face must have been from the Forest Lawn funeral mines. Huay decided to be honest - mostly because he couldn’t come up with a lie and figure the angles of a lie at the same time.

“I have a jet-share account.  I’ve been promised that I can have a plane with international range at the Orange County Airport in a few hours.”  Huay had opened a private charter account with Jet Set – a $125,000 deposit, the Silver Cloud Plan.

“Good.”  Lane said.  A truck of porta potties drove across the parking lot.  “Now I’m going to get out and go back to my car.  You’re going to pick up your daughter, drive home, pack, and then I’m going to watch you get on the plane. If you go anywhere but home, I’m going to call 911 on this phone and it will end poorly for you.”

He was compromised.  But this man was doing him a huge favor.  And he was being given a way out.  Ridiculous luck, both good and bad.

Huay said, “Why are you doing this?  Why isn’t the FBI here?”

“Because I understand your position.  But I can’t support your tactics.”

Huay saw an opening, maybe. He had to press, test him.  “If you understand my position then maybe you’ve thought of other ways you could help me.  From the inside.”

“I’m not negotiating.  And I forgot to mention, if anything happens to my friend Khieu, I’ll not only give up your name, I’ll hunt you down myself.”

Huay nodded once.  He was not in a powerful bargaining position.

“And just so you’re not confused, yes, I understand your frustration.  But what you’re doing is wrong.  The only reason I’m giving you a second chance at your life is because I think your daughter needs her father.”

Huay looked in the mirror.  The Major’s face twitched.  “Okay Mr. Lane.” He said.

NEWPORT BEACH – 11:00 A.M.

Huay sat in his kitchen nook and watched ESPN News on the television.  He had packed a bag weeks ago and only needed to add toiletries.  He’d phoned the Jet Set rep and his plane was already waiting for him.  Now he was trying to figure out if he should proceed with the evacuation or go outside and shoot the soldier in the face.

But the man was ultimately right.  They would come for him eventually.  He needed to stay a step ahead.  And leaving today, perhaps he would be two steps.

Dominique was upstairs packing.  He could feel her anger through the floorboards.  She probably thought this was about the blepharoplasty.

Nean was at the stove preparing food for the flight, huffing and puffing over the pots and pans, she didn’t like surprises either.  But he knew she and Hok, the driver, would enjoy having the house to themselves for awhile.  Maybe permanently.

Huay stood up and pressed the intercom.  He needed Dominique to run an errand.

LEXUS – 11:00 A.M.

Lane sat in Catherine’s car across from Huay’s house on Del Mar Circle.  He kept the Beretta in his lap as a precaution.  After ten minutes of air conditioned idling he realized the gas gauge showed less than a quarter tank so he powered down the windows and turned off the motor.  There wasn’t much shade and the temperature inside the car rose quickly under the fierce summer sun.

Lane was contemplating using the unlisted number Alan had given him when he saw Huay’s daughter walking down the front walk toward him.   Instantly wary, he picked up the Beretta and muted the stereo.

Dominique crossed the street and said, “Would you like to come in for coffee?  My father’s finishing up some details.”

“No thanks, I’ll wait here.”

She handed him two keys on an orange and white Public Storage key chain.

“My father wanted you to have these.  He said to tell you that everything you need is in this space.  And the address is on the key chain.”

Lane took the keys.  “Thanks.  Are you almost ready?”

“I don’t know,” she said and walked back toward the house.

CATHERINE’S BACKYARD – 11:55 A.M.

The most creative act of Vadim Marks’ life was thinking up the name for his penis. The second was when he would pull Groucho out and micturate into the pools he was allegedly cleaning, and then check the box for “adjusted ph level” on the card that he placed around the front door knobs after each service call.

His penis used to be named Yuri, after Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut to orbit the earth.  He would introduce him and tell girls not to worry; Yuri would take them around the world and then bring them home safely.   No one laughed at this joke in America because the girls here had never heard of Yuri Gagarin.  So he changed it, and now he only had to say the name Groucho and American girls would laugh.  American girls liked jokes.  Even schlong jokes.

When he was a schoolboy in Moskva, marching in his scarlet scarf, convinced that U.S. atomic bombs could rain down from the sky at any second, he never dreamed he could ever live in California.  And at first things had gone well, an engineering scholarship at a prestigious university, an apartment with a dishwasher, but he’d flunked out.  And then he’d lost all his savings day-trading - left a position in a company that made RAM chips for digital cameras sit open overnight.  He woke up broke.   After-hours trading had killed him.

Things were going increasingly bad.  He was upside down in his Suzuki Samurai, i.e. he owed more than the car was worth, and he had twenty-one payments left.  He’d recently lost the Hustler Channel.  And now he was cleaning pools for people who were never home to use them. And this one, heart-shaped.

Although ever since he’d found out the lady was an FBI agent, he got extra pleasure peeing into it (she was never home and he always checked the side garage window for her car just in case.)  But it was dehydratingly hot today and after cleaning the pool, he didn’t have to go.  He had a long drink from the hose (after draining the first solar heated burst off into the kumquat tree) and then decided to expand the marking of his territory.

Now, as Vadim pulled Groucho out above the Jacuzzi Quantum 2100, he noticed something sitting on the bottom.  He reached for the leaf skimmer.

JOHN WAYNE AIRPORT – 12:15 P.M.

Lane sat in the Lexus and watched Huay’s driver carry their suitcases into the private jet.  Dominique emerged from the back of the Mercedes balancing a covered pan on top of a small lunch cooler.  Huay conferred with a woman in a pilot’s uniform at the base of the steps and then walked toward Lane’s car.

Lane got out and immediately felt the wind blowing through his scrubs.  He kept the gun in his right hand.

Huay stopped three feet in front of him.  Lane let him speak first.

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

Lane nodded.

“I didn’t put the one on the horse trail.  I don’t know anything about it.”

“Interesting.”  Lane said.

“And if you change your mind…you have the keys to my storage locker.”

Lane shook his head.  “That’s over.”

Huay glanced over his shoulder.  Dominique waited for her father on the steps of the Dassault Falcon.

Huay smiled.  “See you, Major.”  He stuck out his hand.

Lane ignored the hand, kept the Beretta at his side, muzzle pointed at the ground.

“Have a nice flight.”

*          *          *

Hok the driver backed-up the Mercedes and pulled away.  Lane stood beside the Lexus and watched as the plane taxied toward the run-up area.  He stayed until the aircraft was wheels-up, and then watched until it was a white cross receding into the clear sky above the Pacific Ocean.  Lane checked the safety and stuck his gun in his boot.

405 NORTH – 12:45 P.M.

Lane took Macarthur Boulevard to the 405 North and kept it at 85 in the fast lane. Traffic had evaporated.  As he passed the Ikea in Carson his phone began to play Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night.”  It took him a moment to realize that meant it was ringing.

It was Catherine Mills.  She said, “I can’t believe you stole my car.”

“I thought you might sleep the whole day.  Don’t worry, I’m going to fill the tank.”

“Get your ass back here.” She said.  “Now.”

The phone went dead and for a brief moment Lane wondered why she didn’t ask him where he was.

DASSAULT FALCON  900EX

Huay sipped naturally carbonated water from the French Alps, the tri-jet cruising at 45,000 feet, five hundred miles per hour.  They’d be over Hawaii soon.  Refuel in Guam.

Dominique was sullen.  Huay promised her that as soon as they got to Cambodia, she could make arrangements to see her Bollywood friend again.  But this seemed to do little to improve her mood.

As for the Special Forces Major…if the motion detector mine in the storage space didn’t get him…well, he would have to be eliminated later.  He could not be trusted.  And the recycler and his wife killed also.  It would be expensive, but it had to be done.  Overall it was a mild set-back.  His campaign would regroup, there were contingencies in place.  Huay took a deep cleansing breath.  So many details.

HOTEL SOFITEL – 2:01 P.M.

Lane could tell Catherine was serious, but he desperately needed to clean-up before he hit the “home” button on the in-dash navigator.  In the bathroom he tossed the scrubs in the trash, quickly field-stripped his Beretta, used a French facemit to buff his boots and took a two-minute shower.  He put on a new pair of white boxers from Eddie Bauer and a fresh uniform.  There was an iron in the closet that he could use to touch up the wrinkles, but he decided they weren’t that bad.

Huay’s storage space keys were on the bed and Lane wondered what he should do with them.  A real case could be made for the U.S.’s bumbling in Cambodia.  A simple rural community with plenty of food had been turned into an inferno, and then the devils and demons had ruled, killing the near-sighted, the educated, the retarded, turning the clock of human evolution back centuries.  And the evil had stayed, planted in the ground, harvested randomly in little tragic blasts.  Perhaps it was time to rip out these roots and truly dismantle the apparatus of the people making the seeds.  Would it make a difference?  Violence had the power to change things, America was created from violence – by men labeled terrorists - brave men who unchivalrously hid behind trees and picked off lines of redcoats.  Was it really the only way to make people understand?  No, he couldn’t kill innocent people.  But of course he had in the past, inadvertently, as part of his job.  Was it now Major Lane’s duty as a warrior to reform his society?

Another of the Irish chaplain’s favorite verses came from Ecclesiastes 4:5 -

The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.  Better is a handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.

The old codger had taped that one to the beer cooler.  Lane read the verse and then inserted his opium supply into the folds of the book.  He put the keys in his pocket.  No, Lane decided.  He could never be a terrorist.

Right before he left, Lane phoned down to the valet to bring his car up.  Then he removed a Dilaudid caplet from the hospital envelope and washed it down with a glass of tepid tap from the LA Municipal water system.

WOODLAND HILLS – 3:00 P.M.

Lane walked out into the sunny patio of Catherine’s backyard.  From the amount of police vehicles parked in the cul-de-sac he was not surprised to see the crime scene tape threaded through her landscaping.  FBI technicians in their sleeve-less nylon vests and bush jackets busied themselves with fistfuls of plastic evidence bags.

Catherine stood on the deck holding an MP5 submachine gun, almost like a casual accessory.  Lane noted that the safety was off.

She saw him and said, “Hello Major. Your friend put a mine in my spa.”

Friend?  Lane looked into her Jacuzzi Quantum 2100.  It contained a grisly gazpacho.

“And I found this in my kitchen trash.”

He looked at the crumpled can of Diet Coke – the blackened holes poked in the crevice.  It had somehow materialized in her hand.

She smiled.  “I wouldn’t have noticed except that I usually recycle.”

Lane’s mind raced.

“What are you trying to say?”

“I had some gigs devoted to you in ECHELON.  It took a little while to translate the Khmer language, but after you put in the name with Alan, I made sure the translations were done live.  Our probability projections for this case included a possibility of someone with your experience showing sympathy for the perpetrator.  There were similar problems with the Unabomber investigation.  Frankly, sympathetic libertarians are always a concern in law enforcement.”

Lane felt the sun beating down on his back.  Like a wounded ant under a magnifying glass.

“So then you know he’s gone.”

“No.  We got him.  I just got the call.  His plane has been intercepted by F-15’s.  They’re going to make it land in Hawaii.  Pearl Harbor.  Very dramatic, it will make us look really good.  And we have an interrogation team flying in from Diego Garcia.”

Lane stared at her.

“Your cellphone is bugged.  It’s on, even when you think it’s not.”

Lane glanced down at the side pocket where he carried the Nokia.

“Deactivated now of course.”

“They’ll never get anything from him.”  Lane said.

“I think they will.  Or we’ll charge his daughter as an accomplice.  Send her to a locked down youth authority, maybe a state hospital.  I understand she’s a boarding school ballerina, I’m sure he’ll tell us everything we need to know.  Anyway, it’s a prosecutor’s dream case - a guy in custody continues to kill people.  Every time a mine goes off you get to charge him with another crime.”

A scene-tech fished a sliver of pink flesh out of the spa.  Earlier, Groucho had departed in his own zip-loc’ed baggie.

“I guess I thought he might be making a valid point.”

“Major, I have to assume that’s your drug addiction talking.  Blake’s dead.  Ten cops are dead.  Tourists from the Midwest who came to see Mickey Mouse and get a tan are turning into amputees.  And I guess maybe I’d have a lot more sympathy if he didn’t try to kill me twice.”

Alan the whistler approached carrying a bag of Togo’s.  He held it out.

“I got you the #6 combo, turkey-avo.”  Lane gave him a blank look.  “I’m going to need those keys.”  Lane handed him the keys to the Lexus and took the Togo’s bag.

“I mean the other keys.”  For a moment Lane thought about ripping the submachine gun out of Catherine’s hand and emptying it into Alan.  He wondered how many shots he could get off.  Lane handed him the Public Storage keys.

Alan nodded to some FBI personnel wearing windbreakers and walked quickly away.

“Did you have a warrant? “

“Technically I was only monitoring the performance of an employee.  There’s ample legal precedent.  I didn’t realize it at first, but I’ve depo’ed a lot of addicts and your eyes were textbook.  Mostly I wanted to make sure you didn’t do anything to screw up our case.”

Lane began to feel like an untethered astronaut spinning off into space.

“But don’t worry, I told Zimmerman you were deep cover, that we wanted to make sure we had all the evidence we needed.  He doesn’t really care at this point.”

Lane could sense his Togo’s bag getting damp in his hand.  Alan had put the drink inside the bag.

“So, I guess I’ll be going back to Cambodia now.”

“Oh no, we need you to find Valentino’s killer. Did you know that poor little girl’s dad is head of business affairs at one of the studios?  We can’t have something like that happen again.  And I’m sure there are still mines to be recovered on the beach.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I don’t lack for leverage, Major.  I’ve got the recordings.  And I could make life extremely uncomfortable for your friend Khieu.  On the other hand I owe you.  Without your predilection for dereliction of duty, those would likely be my guts in the spa.  And I’ve been very impressed by the way you accomplished, in just a few days, what might have taken us months.”  She smiled.  “Plus I like you.  A lot.”

Lane watched the robot tirelessly suction the bottom of the heart-shaped pool, heard a distant siren drift up from the valley.  He nodded, took off his sunglasses and looked up into the sky, focusing his scorched retinas on the sun.

ELYSIAN PARK – JULY FOURTH – 10:22 AM

Lane’s pistol jumped in his hand.  His bullet tearing into the jaw bone of the menacing shadow at the end of the range.  Beside him, Catherine popped five quick slugs into the center of her silhouette target, grouping them like a Texas Ranger’s star.

Lane sighed.  He knew better, she always won these little shooting matches, but he could never refuse her challenge.   The only time he ever came close to beating her was when they used the scatterguns.  Now he would have to pay for their beer down at the Dodger’s game, an expensive proposition, each plastic cup costing more than a box of 9mm shells (with law enforcement discount) at the nearby Los Angeles Police Revolver and Athletic Club gift shop.  Still, he had to admit these hyper-competitive weekend outings were improving his marksmanship.

Lane welcomed the holiday.  He had been working sixteen hour days through June.  The most popular beaches were technically open now, although there was only a small cleared area surrounded by razor wire where the public was allowed to go.  And to prevent re-mining, the government had set up checkpoints at the entrances.  The entry points, which included metal detectors, bomb sniffing equipment, dogs and secondary inspection areas, were modeled on the most successful and efficient TSA systems.  Lane had witnessed the operation and was surprised to see that people didn’t seem to mind standing in a long line to go to the beach (although the coastal cities were temporarily offering free parking.)  And so far they had been lucky, no new mines had turned up in the cleared areas.  At night the beaches were kept under constant surveillance by rent-a-cops in sunglasses who sat in lawn chairs beneath portable arc lights.

In the meantime, a second task force was now in charge of enlarging the safe space, with the ultimate goal of finding every last mine.  Their mission was complicated by the fact that they had no idea how many mines they were looking for.  And even if they did, there was debate among the forensics people over how many had originally gone off.    In addition to being a consultant to the clearance task force, Lane supervised a special rapid response team that consisted of himself and five members of a San Diego-based National Guard explosive ordinance disposal unit who had all served time in Afghanistan.  They had a lot of work.  The public was still very much on edge.    Lane had spent the previous day stuck behind an armored personnel carrier with the Manhattan Beach SWAT team.  After an initial hysterical report to 911, the SWAT team’s dog had positively identified an explosive scent on an object in a sandbox at a popular public playground that overlooked the ocean.    Lane’s team had the latest Talon robot, but someone had forgotten to recharge its battery overnight and it ran out of juice five feet from the lip of the sandbox, too close to safely retrieve it.  After lengthy debate, they’d ended up shooting the unidentified object with twelve gauge slugs from about thirty yards away.  Fortunately for everyone involved they were able to add one more line to their long list of false positives -- the suspicious object turned out to be a very old pork chop encased in circular Tupperware.   Despite the waste of time, Lane felt the incident was a good reminder that dogs, robots and Tupperware all had their limits.

Catherine was working hard as well.  The dragnet-like sweep of Huay’s business partners and contacts was unrelenting.  When he wasn’t at the beach, Lane often sat in as a second (and unofficial) interpreter when she interviewed them.  The pressure to find an associate with information that they could leverage was mounting daily.  Huay had not said a single word in his initial interrogation and his lawyer was refusing to even discuss any plea bargain/confession scenarios.   Huay’s daughter had so far remained silent as well.  She was being held in the female wing of the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility while Huay remained in solitary confinement on the windward side of Oahu.

The Justice Department was still preparing the indictment on Federal murder charges, but evidence was frustratingly thin.  They had the Nixon surveillance photo, but it wasn’t a crime to visit the library.  They had found no fingerprints or DNA on any on the mines, nor could they find verification of Huay having written the demand letters to the newspapers.  Everyone was sure they had the right man, but the recordings of his conversations with Lane were not something the prosecutors were very excited about playing in court.  In fact, Catherine had recently informed Lane that they had reclassified the audio files as top secret to prevent Huay’s attorneys from gaining access to them, or even knowing of their existence.  The storage space hadn’t been in Huay’s name and technically the keys had come from Dominique.  Moreover the mines found there were different from the ones that had been used previously and most of the evidence was heavily damaged by the explosions and fire.

For now, Huay was being held for the crime of having too much money.  When he was arrested, authorities found $53,000 in cash in his suitcase -- which meant he had violated federal law by failing to report the export of currency in excess of $10,000, as required by 31 U.S.C. Sections 5613(a)(1)(A) and 5311(c).  They also found his Colt Defender, but it’s perfectly legal to carry a firearm on a private airplane.

Lane was surprised to learn that in all of Huay’s residences and warehouses only one other mine was found.  He suspected that the driver might have disposed of any excess supply after leaving the Orange County airport.  In a punitive gesture, the FBI was now searching Huay’s many backyards with backhoes.  And in Washington, the lab was still analyzing the microscopic diatom content of the sand found in his impounded car.  The one landmine that was found, a BLU Gator, matched the one left in Catherine’s spa -- making the murder of the poor Russian pool cleaner the strongest case so far.

More disturbingly, there had been another casualty in Griffith Park.  A Caltech Botany professor was killed on the walking path while leading a field trip to the Garden of the Gods.   The mine used was the same type that had killed the horse, suggesting to Lane that there truly was another suspect.

Lane kept his room at the Sofitel, although he’d moved to the tenth floor.  The room was mostly to keep up appearances - he spent the majority of nights at Catherine’s.  She had a new pool and spa cleaner (a retired middle-school teacher from Simi Valley) but Catherine had disabled the thermostat timer and they never used either of them. But twice, at Catherine’s urging, they had snuck up to the roof of the nearby Woodland Hills Hilton and used the Jacuzzi there.

Lane was back to smoking opium once a day.  Usually at night while lying on Catherine’s couch watching Sportscenter or Turner Classic Movies.  Khieu had changed dealers and now used a sixty-year old neighborhood woman who had the opium sent via DHL from Laos.  It was much fresher and Khieu said he felt safer giving his money to her rather than the thugs in the poker palace parking lot.  Lane had also renewed his Dilaudid prescription at the Save-On, but he tried to reserve it for special occasions or situations where smoking was impractical.  Catherine basically had a don’t ask don’t tell policy about his drug use and this arrangement seemed to be working out fine, though she insisted on driving when they went out after dark.

After this afternoon’s Dodger game, which promised a seventh-inning Harrier Jump Jet fly-over, they planned to drive the Lexus over to Eagle Rock to have the best pizza in Los Angeles at Casa Bianca.    From there they would take a quick trip up Colorado Boulevard to visit Alan, still recovering at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena.  He had just been given clearance to begin eating solid food and Catherine had promised to save him a slice.  After that they would be heading to the Hollywood Bowl for an evening of fireworks and John Philip Sousa.

Lane lowered his handgun and slipped off the ear-protectors.  He then reached down to his side-pocket and double-checked that he still had his bottle of pain medication with him.  He and was planning on using it after dinner to enhance the entertainment value of the bowl.

Catherine looked over at him and winked.  Lane nodded.  He was looking forward to holding Catherine’s hand, breathing the eucalyptus-scented night air and watching the vivid choreographed explosions in the Hollywood sky.

KANEOHE MARINE CORPS AIR STATION, OAHU, HAWAII

It felt good to walk.  Each step a two-note tap.  Huay only wore rubber flip flops now.  Government issue, made in China.  Above these, a white poplin jumpsuit and Marine Corps boxer shorts, which were still union-label made in Ohio.  He was allowed to exercise one hour per day, but the exercise area was a ten by ten foot cage and it was hard to force yourself to walk when there was no where to go.  He was doing a hundred sit-ups and fifty push-ups a day, but the Aloha state is not a great place for calisthenics.  And except for washing in the sink, he only got to shower every third day.

It was a lonely routine.  Huay was kept far away from any other prisoners, and had attorney-only phone privileges.  In addition, the Marines who staffed the brig only talked to him in the strictest military language and used marionettic hand gestures.  The occupants of the base seemed to be on constant alert, completely devoid of informal energy.  Huay thought it might make him feel better if the young buzz cuts threatened him or dropped a casual ‘motherfucker’ under their breaths, but they never did.

In the meeting room, Huay sat on the hard plastic chair, his hands shackled to the chain in his lap.  A pleasant breeze came through one small, barred cinderblock window, which, like most portals in Hawaii was unscreened.  Outside, his armed guard stood in tense at-rest, his back to the door.

Huay’s lawyer was reading from a small stack of papers that had numbers on the left side of each paragraph.  The lawyer charged him for travel and waiting time and never seemed to be in a hurry.  Huay liked him, but couldn’t escape the feeling that every meeting was like getting into a cab that already had seven hundred and fifty dollars on the meter.  And after each meeting the Marines insisted on strip searching him, the aftertaste of the latex glove swirling in his mouth lasting for hours.

“How are you feeling?” his lawyer said.

Huay shrugged.  And then watched as his lawyer wrote a short phrase across the top of the legal pad in front of him.

Huay had to read it upside down:  FAIRE DAY, LORD

Huay had always believed in contingency plans.  And this meant that one of his silent partners in Naples had come through.

It was a simple anagram:

“Florida, Ready.”

The lawyer quickly scribbled over the message.  “We have a lot to talk about…”

Below the table, a fly landed on Huay’s naked instep.  He snapped the flip-flop against his heel.  And the fly alighted…circling up into the current of fresh air until it escaped effortlessly through the bars of the window.

Huay felt a creeping tightness in his face.  And it took him a moment to realize the cause.  It had been so long since Huay had smiled.