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  As he trotted back to the cover of the van, he let his eyes roam just in case he’d missed someone or something that could be a problem later. He wanted to hurry so he could be back for the kids when they got home from school. His wife was notably unreliable about being home in the afternoon.

  Crouching next to the van, he looked at the transmitter in his hand. His blood rushed as he thought about the imminent explosion. He had just calmed down from watching the spectacular Miami riots and knew he needed another dose of destruction. The devastation he created himself was always better than watching the work of others. Sometimes he’d help others by making something or giving advice on where to plant a bomb, but he liked his own projects more. Helping others was better than nothing. Whether it was Arabs, the Puerto Rican guy or some of the local Nazis, he loved to see confusion and know that he had something to do with it. It had started small when he was a kid. A smoke bomb in the cafeteria made everyone run around like a cat with its tail on fire. The emotional jolt he’d felt had lasted for weeks. The only problem was that he needed a bigger stunt every time to feel the same charge.

  He squeezed the transmitter’s small trigger. Instantly the pack of explosive detonated in a sharp crack and a near-blinding flash. He could see the five-foot metal pan fly into the air and crash back onto the hard lime ground.

  He drove the van back to the experiment. He planned to clear the area in case anyone had heard the explosion. Stopping twenty feet away, he approached it slowly. There in the center of the metal sheet was a six-inch hole. Perfect. That would do the trick nicely. He gazed at the scorched metal and wondered if this was how Oppenheimer had felt.

  Traffic had been rerouted, and Miami Beach patrol cars with their lights flashing were at each corner and along the road. This was a lot of excitement for a Thursday afternoon on South Beach.

  Tasker sat, holding an ice pack to his head where Gene had whacked him with the brick of pot. He watched the paramedics load what was left of Bud Wilson into the ambulance and then looked over to Gene sitting in the backseat of one of the FDLE Crown Vics.

  “You okay?” asked his supervisor, sitting his squat frame on the step next to him.

  Tasker nodded.

  “Hey, shit happens. You can’t keep a guy from jumping into traffic. This is a good arrest.” He slapped Tasker on the shoulder, jarring his already aching head. “Good to have you back,” the older man said, standing up to start pulling order from the chaos around them.

  Tasker said, “Thanks, boss. Guess I better have Gene booked.”

  He padded over to the car holding the surviving prisoner, each step pounding in his head, and opened the door.

  Gene’s face had a good-sized red splotch where Tasker had hit him with the plywood. “Where are we going?” asked Gene.

  Tasker said, “You’re headed to TGK.” The main holding facility in Miami-Dade County was the Turner Guilford Knight Center. No one seemed to know who Turner Guilford Knight was.

  Tasker’s supervisor came up next to him. “Make sure you throw in a felony murder charge for his friend gettin’ squished.”

  After what Tasker had seen, the phrase turned his stomach.

  Gene started talking fast, “I’ll cooperate, I’ll talk, just give me a break.”

  Tasker said calmly, “Gene, there’s nothing to cooperate on. You’re arrested and Bud is dead.” His supervisor came over to the car to hear what was going on.

  “I can give you someone else.”

  “I’m very satisfied with you. Now, I got a headache, Gene. Can you shut up?”

  “Please, I’m tellin’ you, I got something for you guys.”

  “There’s nothing you could say that would make me want to listen to you right now, Gene.”

  “I know a guy who’s looking to sell a Stinger missile.”

  Tasker and his supervisor froze and looked at Gene. Tasker said, “Okay, we’ll listen.”

  two

  Bill Tasker watched his supervisor lean back in his cheap, prison-made chair. The heavyset man defied physics every time he stretched his girth across it. Tasker always held his breath during this movement, but so far he’d never had to take any emergency medical action.

  “Billy,” started the fifty-five-year-old supervisor, “I just wanted to say you done good yesterday. Made a good arrest. Had one dumb-ass killed, but that was his own fault. Just wanted to say you done good.”

  “Thanks, boss.” Tasker knew where this was headed, because he had been waiting for a talk like this the last few weeks.

  “I know you got roughed up by the FBI pretty good over this Alpha National Bank shit. But no one here ever believed anything the Bureau was saying.”

  Tasker nodded. At night, when things were quiet, all he thought about was his recent brush with the FBI. He knew he’d been the victim of a frame-up, pure and simple. Even though frame-ups are largely a Hollywood invention, Tasker had had an FBI agent named Tom Dooley plant evidence that pointed to him stealing a satchel of cash from an Overtown bank during the recent riots. The real story was still confused, but it looked like Dooley himself had taken the money, though nobody seemed to know where it was, and now Dooley was in jail waiting for trial and the FBI was embarrassed by the whole situation.

  The supervisor said, “I know people wonder where the cash ended up, but no one I ever talked to thinks you had anything to do with it.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  The supervisor went on. “That’s why I’m glad you got a good long-term case going now. I’m just sorry you’re tied in with the Feds on it.”

  “No, you were right, we need the ATF in on this. They know Stingers. And they’re a good outfit. Hard workers, regular guys. I like working with them.”

  “I know you’ll do us proud.”

  “Thanks, boss.”

  Later that afternoon, Bill Tasker sat on an intracoastal seawall near the Bay Front area, talking with a lean City of Miami cop named Derrick Sutter. Sutter had been on the original robbery task force with Dooley and Tasker that had started it all. The two of them caught up on news as they spilt a bag of plantain chips. Sutter had saved his ass during the ordeal over the stolen money, even caught a bullet from Dooley. Tasker wouldn’t forget that.

  Sutter stretched his long thin arms as he took a deep breath of salty air. He cocked his head, giving Tasker a look. “You want me to work on another task-force investigation?”

  Tasker nodded. “Technically, this is a joint investigation, not a task force.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Task force is a long-term, multiple-case commitment. A joint investigation means we don’t have to get friendly with the Feds because it’s a one-shot deal.”

  Sutter was still on edge. “You remember the last one we was on?”

  “I recall a little of it.”

  “I remember ’cause I got shot.”

  “Yeah, I know. But this could be a good case. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to have someone I trust in with me.”

  “I don’t understand why the Feds are involved at all. FDLE has all the jurisdiction we need, unless you set the deal up in Texas or something.”

  “We called ATF because they have the expertise on Stingers. Hell, they made a great case on the IRA with a Stinger in West Palm. Then ATF had to call the FBI because there must have been a terror-related angle.”

  “How’d the Bureau link terrorists to a redneck selling a Stinger?”

  “What else is a Stinger for? Doesn’t matter, anyway. They’re in the case, and I want you, too.”

  Sutter ran his dark hand over his darker face. “You know I’m still pissed off the damn FBI rejected my application. I think it was a racial thing.”

  “I thought it was because you were nine hours short of a bachelor’s degree.”

  “That’s what I mean. It was a racial thing.”

  “I thought you got booted out of Florida International for missing class your last semester.”

  “It was a racial thing.”r />
  Tasker just looked at him.

  “Yeah, little white French-Canadian girl from Hallandale. She never let me go.”

  “That’s how you were oppressed?”

  “Let me have a little racial anger, my brother. I’ll help you on the damn case as long as the Feds leave us alone and no FBI guys shoot me again.”

  Tasker had to crack a smile at that one. “I can almost guarantee no one in the FBI will shoot you during this case.”

  At the Miami field division’s main office of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, known simply as ATF, Bill Tasker sat at a desk, shaking a Magic 8-Ball.

  “Will I see a naked woman in the next twelve months?” he asked the ball quietly.

  NOT LIKELY, showed on the octagonal globe inside the ball.

  “Figures,” muttered Tasker, placing the ball back on the desk.

  “What figures?” asked Camy Parks, the ATF agent working on the Stinger case with him.

  “Just testing my luck.” He said it staring at the ball so his eyes didn’t try to involuntarily dart toward the gigantic opening on Camy’s low-cut white blouse.

  “Guys worry about luck. Women worry about skill.”

  Tasker quickly moved his gaze up to Camy’s delicate face.

  She smiled and said, “Guys worry about those more than women, too.”

  Tasker blushed at being busted.

  “Things still not on track with your ex-wife?” she asked.

  “Not yet. What am I saying? Not at all.”

  “What’s her beef?”

  “She isn’t ready. That’s her best answer. Her worst is that she still has feelings for some lawyer she was dating.”

  “A lawyer-yuck. Why?”

  “Don’t know. I don’t think she even knows.”

  Camy sighed. “Women, what a pain in the ass.” Her delicate Tennessee accent made every word sound like a compliment.

  Tasker nodded, keeping his eye on her for any hint of a joke. Maybe the rumors he’d heard about her were true. He watched her compact, incredible frame move as she cleared some of the folders off her desk.

  “It’ll be a relief to take a break from this stuff.”

  “That all the cruise-ship case file?” asked Tasker.

  “These are just the reports. I have a file cabinet full of photos and a whole aisle in the evidence room.”

  Tasker looked at the photographs taped on separate sheets of paper. The first was of the Krans-Festival flagship, the Sea Maiden. One porthole was burned black around the edges. The second photograph was of a red suitcase.

  “This couldn’t have held the bomb?”

  “No, that’s the same model and color. All we had left was a handle and some of the top of the bag.”

  Tasker read the label: Samsonite.

  “You worked this all by yourself the past two years? What about the Bureau?”

  “They had a guy on it for the first month, then something happened and they pulled him off. I got a Department of Transportation agent on it with me, and we’re in good shape with the leads.”

  “You close to an arrest?”

  “Not at all. Just caught up on leads and lab work. Nothing new in eighteen months.”

  “Any other hard evidence?” asked Tasker, trying to remember the details of the two-year-old case.

  “Just the handle to the suitcase that contained the explosive, a photo of a car we believe was involved and the explosive fingerprint. And about three hundred bogus leads.” She pulled out a black-and-white security-camera photograph of a light-colored Toyota Corolla with a big dent in the roof where the windshield met it.

  “What kind of explosive did they use?”

  “It’s called TATP. God help me, I can never say the full name. It’s homemade and really unstable and nasty.”

  “You think the bomber killed himself since this attack?”

  “I doubt it. We checked all the unattended death records for the tri-counties. There are just too many missing persons. For all I know, he’s rotting out in the Everglades after standing too close to one of his own bombs.”

  “One can only hope.”

  She smiled at him. “People were real interested in the case, but then interest just dried up.”

  “I remember the news coverage-for a week. The people at Krans-Festival fell all over themselves saying it was an isolated incident.”

  “Yeah, they thought it would hurt the cruise industry, but it really didn’t. The one baggage handler was killed. The city is holding it as an open murder case, and the survivors didn’t see anything unusual.”

  “Why wouldn’t the FBI be all over that?”

  “Maybe because the casualty was an Italian laborer on the ship. Maybe ’cause there wasn’t much damage and it didn’t look too sophisticated?”

  “That wasn’t big enough, but they want a piece of my Stinger deal?”

  “It’s crazy, I know. At least I know the agent they assigned to us.”

  “Lail?”

  “Jimmy Lail.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Different.”

  The test was perfect. He felt more and more comfortable with the TATP. The liquid explosive was a little unstable, but that only added to the fun. For a homemade explosive that couldn’t be traced, he’d take the risk. Even though it had been made in a wash basin in an old dilapidated garage, he had to admit that in the couple of years he’d had the explosive it had held up well. He didn’t take any chances with it, either. That was the saving grace of the tiny detached garage. He kept his Corolla, his tools, three hidden guns and the explosives in it, away from everything and everybody else.

  He walked in through the rear kitchen door, wiping his feet carefully to avoid his wife’s wrath. She was peeling carrots for a salad at the cheap, uneven kitchen table, and as he came inside, he leaned down to kiss her.

  “How was work?” asked his wife.

  “Good, no problems.”

  “Carlos called for you about an hour ago.”

  He nodded silently as he tramped through the cluttered house out to the garage. He always parked the Corolla behind it so no one could see it from the street. Sometimes he even pulled an old parachute over it because the crease in the car’s roof caused it to leak a little and the old silk parachute deflected light rain. It also hid the car completely. Just in case.

  three

  Bill Tasker sweated as he cranked the pedals of his Trek mountain bike. He rode on the grass swale while his eight-year-old, Emily, steered her smaller Mongoose on the road next to him. Her long blond hair, in a ponytail, bounced behind her with each stroke of the pedal. Her muscular little body propelled the bike smoothly over the paved road. Another year or two and he wouldn’t have to ride in the grass so that she could keep up.

  Tasker’s ten-year-old, Kelly, was in her weekend art class at the Kendall Community Center. He used the two-hour class time to take Emily on little adventures she liked, generally something athletic, in keeping with her attributes. Only having them every other weekend made each visit special. He took any minute he could to spend with the girls. Even if he couldn’t live with them, he wanted them to remember all the fun they had when they did see him. Things like this would keep their mother from saying he was too focused on his job, that work was always his first priority. Real type-A personalities didn’t find time to ride bikes with their daughters. Did they?

  They tracked west on Coconut Palm Drive in the Redlands, having to deal with only the occasional car. Emily told him about school and gymnastics and her friends near his old house in West Palm Beach, about an hour and a half north of southern Dade County. Her permanent good mood was infectious, but Tasker was still troubled. He had tried to ask his youngest daughter about her mom’s dating status. His ex-wife had come on strong while he was in the soup with the FBI but had cooled things off when he was cleared. She’d been vague about the reasons, but he knew one of them was a defense attorney named Nicky Goldman. Tasker knew him a little from h
is days working in West Palm, and he did seem like a nice enough guy, but that didn’t lessen the pain of knowing his ex-wife was dating a lawyer. A defense lawyer at that. At least personal-injury attorneys didn’t risk public safety to win a case. Tasker’s uncle had been a lawyer until he’d become a judge in the mid-eighties. He was a man of integrity and had real disdain for most of the modern attorneys. Tasker respected his uncle’s views and attitudes. Now, with televised trials and million-dollar jury awards, it seemed lawyers had mortgaged their souls for some success. All that was fine until he thought of one of them interacting with his daughters or, worse, interacting closely with Donna.

  He pulled his bike onto the road for a minute, coasting next to Emily. Catching his breath, he asked, “How’s your mom doing?”

  “Fine.”

  That was a hard answer to follow up on. No useful information, but indicating that there was no real problem. Damn. He hit it another way.

  “What’s she doing this weekend, since you and Kelly are gone?”

  “She said she was going to stay in bed all weekend.”

  “She sick?”

  “No.”

  Damn. He pedaled back onto the grass.

  “Daddy?”

  “Yes, sweetheart.”

  “I’m tired. How far are we going?”

  He smiled. “One more block and we’ll turn around after a quick break. How’s that?”

  “Thanks, Daddy.”

  They turned north on the next block, but Tasker kept them pedaling for a few more houses. Then he saw it. The small, lime-green one-story with a carport and rotting shed next to it. The guy he’d arrested on South Beach, Gene, had given him the name of the man with the Stinger for sale. A little research had turned up this address.

  “Let’s take a quick break,” he said, stopping the bike with Emily in front of him so he could see the house but make it look like he was talking to her. He memorized a few details: the location of the house numbers, the shape of the front bay window, the white chipped paint on the latticework by the front door. A pickup truck with a toolbox on the rear and side of the bed was parked on the grass. The door had a faded magnetic sign that had something about large pests written on it.