Embassies nowadays—especially
these two, which have just been recently rebuilt—are constructed to withstand
bomb blasts. Consequently, the majority of those injured are people passing by
on the street or workers in the adjacent buildings. So what we’re seeing here
seems, as you said, like an entirely new plan of attack. An initial bomb to
create as much destruction and confusion as possible before terrorists pour in
to take hostages.”
“A one-two
punch.”
“You got it. And
you also have to remember there are literally hundreds of terrorist attacks
around the globe every year. The media only covers the biggest ones intensively,
and even those get old after a day or two. I mean, does anyone remember much
about the attack on the American Embassy in Islamabad back in July? On the
other hand, when there are hostages involved, the story is often covered until
the situation is resolved, like we saw in Mumbai in September. So I think that,
yes, it is definitely a new strategy we’re seeing here. And whoever turns out
to be responsible seems to have hit the jackpot. You couldn’t have asked for
two more high-profile Americans short of the president and the first lady
themselves.”
“Unfortunately, I
would have to agree. Thanks, Sasha. Coming up next, we’ll go live to our
freelance correspondent, Kim Berkoff, who has information on what exactly
Scarlett Cox and Salvador Brazza were doing in the Dar es Salaam embassy in the
first place—”
The assassin snapped off the TV and remained sitting on the
bed for a long while, thinking. His job, it seemed, had just become a hell of a
lot more difficult.
CHAPTER 1
Sunday, December 22, 1:44 p.m.
Los Angeles, California
Four Days Earlier
If Scarlett Cox knew she would be careening down a
forty-foot ravine in the next sixty seconds or so, she probably would have put
on her seatbelt. As it was, she wasn’t clairvoyant, and she pushed the white
Aston Martin Vantage up to fifty, fifteen over the limit. She knew she
shouldn’t be speeding. She’d just passed the intersection with Mulholland
Drive, and there were a lot of hairpin turns and potholes coming up. But she
felt comfortable behind the wheel of the Vantage. The salesman had told her it
was a front-mid-engine sports car, which meant the engine was positioned low
behind the front axle, just before the cabin, dropping the car’s center of
gravity and boosting the handling and traction. Besides, she’d just finished
production on her latest film. She was feeling good, liberated. She eked the
needle up to fifty-five.
Keeping one hand
on the wheel, she used the other to turn down “Magic Carpet Ride” by
Steppenwolf, which was playing on the radio, loud. Was there any other way to
listen to music when the top was down? She scrounged around for her cell phone
inside her handbag on the passenger seat. The salesman had also told her the
Vantage had a Bluetooth thing that could sync her phone’s signal with the car’s
voice recognition technology and speakers. That was all too Knight Rider for
her, so she checked her voicemail the old-fashioned and illegal way: punching
numbers in to the phone’s keypad. Three new messages. The first was from her
hairstylist, confirming her appointment at two thirty. Goodbye blonde, hello
red, she thought. The other two were from Gloria, her publicist, wanting to
clarify details about the birthday party this evening. Number thirty. Christ. It
seemed as though she’d just celebrated twenty-nine. She pressed End and tossed
the phone back in the bag.
Scarlett swooped
around a sharp bend and found herself closing quickly on a black pickup truck.
She’d known her luck wasn’t going to last forever. Traffic on the stretch of
Laurel Canyon Boulevard between San Fernando Valley and West Hollywood was
sparse in the middle of the afternoon, but going fifty-five in a thirty-five
zone, you were bound to run up someone’s tail sooner or later. She thought
about passing the pickup, but
these two, which have just been recently rebuilt—are constructed to withstand
bomb blasts. Consequently, the majority of those injured are people passing by
on the street or workers in the adjacent buildings. So what we’re seeing here
seems, as you said, like an entirely new plan of attack. An initial bomb to
create as much destruction and confusion as possible before terrorists pour in
to take hostages.”
“A one-two
punch.”
“You got it. And
you also have to remember there are literally hundreds of terrorist attacks
around the globe every year. The media only covers the biggest ones intensively,
and even those get old after a day or two. I mean, does anyone remember much
about the attack on the American Embassy in Islamabad back in July? On the
other hand, when there are hostages involved, the story is often covered until
the situation is resolved, like we saw in Mumbai in September. So I think that,
yes, it is definitely a new strategy we’re seeing here. And whoever turns out
to be responsible seems to have hit the jackpot. You couldn’t have asked for
two more high-profile Americans short of the president and the first lady
themselves.”
“Unfortunately, I
would have to agree. Thanks, Sasha. Coming up next, we’ll go live to our
freelance correspondent, Kim Berkoff, who has information on what exactly
Scarlett Cox and Salvador Brazza were doing in the Dar es Salaam embassy in the
first place—”
The assassin snapped off the TV and remained sitting on the
bed for a long while, thinking. His job, it seemed, had just become a hell of a
lot more difficult.
CHAPTER 1
Sunday, December 22, 1:44 p.m.
Los Angeles, California
Four Days Earlier
If Scarlett Cox knew she would be careening down a
forty-foot ravine in the next sixty seconds or so, she probably would have put
on her seatbelt. As it was, she wasn’t clairvoyant, and she pushed the white
Aston Martin Vantage up to fifty, fifteen over the limit. She knew she
shouldn’t be speeding. She’d just passed the intersection with Mulholland
Drive, and there were a lot of hairpin turns and potholes coming up. But she
felt comfortable behind the wheel of the Vantage. The salesman had told her it
was a front-mid-engine sports car, which meant the engine was positioned low
behind the front axle, just before the cabin, dropping the car’s center of
gravity and boosting the handling and traction. Besides, she’d just finished
production on her latest film. She was feeling good, liberated. She eked the
needle up to fifty-five.
Keeping one hand
on the wheel, she used the other to turn down “Magic Carpet Ride” by
Steppenwolf, which was playing on the radio, loud. Was there any other way to
listen to music when the top was down? She scrounged around for her cell phone
inside her handbag on the passenger seat. The salesman had also told her the
Vantage had a Bluetooth thing that could sync her phone’s signal with the car’s
voice recognition technology and speakers. That was all too Knight Rider for
her, so she checked her voicemail the old-fashioned and illegal way: punching
numbers in to the phone’s keypad. Three new messages. The first was from her
hairstylist, confirming her appointment at two thirty. Goodbye blonde, hello
red, she thought. The other two were from Gloria, her publicist, wanting to
clarify details about the birthday party this evening. Number thirty. Christ. It
seemed as though she’d just celebrated twenty-nine. She pressed End and tossed
the phone back in the bag.
Scarlett swooped
around a sharp bend and found herself closing quickly on a black pickup truck.
She’d known her luck wasn’t going to last forever. Traffic on the stretch of
Laurel Canyon Boulevard between San Fernando Valley and West Hollywood was
sparse in the middle of the afternoon, but going fifty-five in a thirty-five
zone, you were bound to run up someone’s tail sooner or later. She thought
about passing the pickup, but
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