Two from the Heart(56)

Rich and I were leading a group of cars heading to the airport when I saw cruisers heading away from the terminal right toward us.

It was a high-speed pincer movement.

J. saw what was happening and had only two choices: keep going or stop. He wrenched his wheel hard to the right and the van skidded across to the far right lane, where there was one last exit to the garage, which a hundred yards farther on had its own exit to South Link Road. The exit was open and unguarded.

I screamed to Conklin, “Hang on!”

I passed the white van on my right, gave the Chevy more gas, and turned the wheel hard, blocking the exit. At the last possible moment, as I was bracing for a crash, J. jerked his wheel hard left and pulled around us.

By then the airport roadway was filled with law enforcement cruisers, their lights flashing, sirens blowing.

The van screeched to a halt.

Adrenaline had sent my heart rate into the red zone, and sweat sheeted down my body.

Both my partner and I asked if the other was okay as cop cars lined up behind us and ahead of us, forming an impenetrable vehicular wall.

A security cop with a megaphone addressed J.

“Get out of the vehicle. Hands up. Get out now, buddy. No one wants to hurt you.”

Would J. go ballistic?

I pictured the van going up in a fiery explosion forty feet from where I sat in an old sedan. I flashed on the image of my little girl when I saw her this morning, wearing baby-duck yellow, beating her spoon on the table. Would I ever see her again?

Just then the white van’s passenger door opened and J. jumped out. A voice amplified through a bullhorn boomed, “Don’t move. Hands in the air.”

J. ignored the warning.

He ran across the four lanes and reached the concrete guardrail. He looked out over the edge. He paused.

There was nothing between him and the road below but forty feet of air.

Shots were fired.

I saw J. jump.

Rich shouted at me, “Get down!”

We both ducked below the dash and linked our fingers over the backs of our necks as an explosion boomed, rocking our car, setting off the car alarm, blinding us with white light.

That sick bastard had detonated his bomb.





RICH AND I sat parked in the no-parking zone outside the terminal, still reeling from what had happened an eighth of a mile from the airport terminals.

We had seen J. jump from the departures lane to a service road and knew that he had detonated his vest before he hit the pavement.

We had tried to guess what he had been thinking. Our current theory was that he hadn’t wanted to be captured. He didn’t want to talk.

Conklin said, “Maybe he figured jumping off the ramp, he’d land safely on a passing vehicle, like he was in a Jackie Chan movie.”

I jumped when someone leaned through the car window. It was Tom Generosa, counterterrorism chief, keeping us in the loop.

He said, “Here’s what we know so far. The guy you call J. had a plan to kill a lot of people inside a crowd, that’s not in doubt. His vest was of the antipersonnel variety. Packed with nails and ball bearings and rat poison. That’s an anticoagulant. The explosion was meant to propel the shrapnel, and it did. But the van contained the blast. The only casualty was the jumper.”

I nodded and Generosa continued.

“The nails and shit shredded his body and any information he may have been carrying on his person. He left a crater and a roadway full of human tissue and shrapnel.”

“And the van?” I said.

“Bomb squad cleared it. The FBI is loading it onto a flatbed, taking it to the crime lab. For starters, J. stole the van from the market on Turk. Maybe his prints will be on the steering wheel, but I won’t be surprised if he can’t be positively ID’d.”

Generosa told us that federal agents as well as SFPD’s Crime Scene Investigation Unit were at the site of the explosion now, that the CSI was processing it, and that after it was measured and photographed, the remains of the man known as J. would be transported by refrigerated van, along with explosive samples, to the FBI’s and the SFPD’s forensics labs.

Of course we knew that J.’s bomb had shut down SFO.

All airline passengers had been bused to other locations. Outbound flights had been grounded, and incoming flights had been rerouted to other airfields. We could see for ourselves that the terminal buildings were crawling with a multitude of law enforcement agents from CIA, FBI, DHS, and airport security, as well as their bomb-sniffing dogs.

Generosa couldn’t estimate with any certainty how long SFO would be out of commission, but as bad as that was for the airlines, their passengers, and traffic, GAR hadn’t scored a hit in San Francisco today.

We thanked Generosa for the report.

He told us, “Take good care,” and walked over to the next car in the line behind us. We were about to call in for further instructions when our radio sputtered and Jacobi’s voice filled our car. Both Conklin and I had partnered with Jacobi before his promotion to chief. It was so good to hear his voice.

He said, “You two are something else, you know? You cut J. off from his target. Thank God for that.”

I said, “Man, oh, man. I can’t stand to imagine it.”

But I did imagine it. I pictured an airport in Paris. I pictured another in Turkey. I could easily see what might have gone down at SFO if J. had gotten into or even near a terminal. When I first started in Homicide, an airport bombing had been inconceivable. Now? These horrifying bombings were almost becoming commonplace.