PART THREE
A TIME FOR TRAUMA
Chapter 45
AT TEN O’CLOCK that evening, forty minutes after I’d pulled one of the kiteboarders from the sea, county lifeguards and fire-fighters began to hoist the backboard and litter bearing Rick Del Rio up over the south railing of the Huntington Beach Pier, twenty yards east of where the bomb had detonated.
The smoke was gone, doused by the rain and fire hoses, but a harsh, charred chemical stench hung in the air as investigators worked to cordon off the area and document the carnage the explosion had wrought. Media helicopters circled the pier, filming the aftermath for the eleven o’clock news.
Six people were dead, including my surveillance specialist Bud Rankin, who’d been nearly decapitated by flying chunks of cement. The other five were an entire young family from Oxnard, the Deloits, husband, wife, and three kids under the age of ten. They’d been inside the diner at a table by the window having ice cream sundaes.
Another ten were injured, including Chief Mickey Fescoe, who’d been briefly knocked unconscious and had suffered cheek and arm lacerations. But he’d refused to be taken to the hospital and had just started toward me with a stone-faced Sheriff Lou Cammarata when Del Rio’s litter appeared at the railing.
“Morgan,” Cammarata growled at me.
I held up a finger and went to Del Rio’s side.
His face was burned, contused. He was in a lot of pain but alert. He focused on me immediately.
“You good?” I asked, feeling the enormity of the moment now. Del Rio was more a brother to me than my own brother. We’d been through hell together many times and had always survived and recovered. But he’d had a feeling about this gig. He’d tried to stop me from taking it on. The idea that now he might be paralyzed was almost more than I could take.
He shook his head stoically. “Nothing from the waist down, Jack.”
I felt my stomach drop forty stories. “Nothing yet,” I said. “Stay positive.”
“Kind of hard when you’ve been on the wrong end of a yo-yo,” he replied. “You get them?”
“Yes and no. I’ll explain later. I’ll see you at the hospital. Semper Fi.”
He nodded, said with little conviction, “Hoorah, Jack.”
Two EMTs lifted Del Rio onto a gurney and slid him into the rear of the latest ambulance to back down the pier. The doors closed and he was gone.
“Morgan, you’ve ruined us,” Sheriff Cammarata said in my ear.
I pivoted to find him glaring at me. “And how have I done that?”
He gestured angrily back toward shore. “The other end of this pier is lousy with media. They’re everywhere overhead. They’re going to find out what happened and …” He looked like he wanted to throttle me. I understood why.
Cammarata was up for reelection in less than week. And Fescoe worked at the whim of the mayor. The chief was studying me as if trying to decide whether I was somebody to be saved or tossed to the wolves.
Struggling to keep my own anger under control, I said, “I don’t have immunity from the fact that I lost a man and may have seen the crippling of another. But no one, including you, Sheriff, or you, Chief, anticipated a bomb. Why would we have? This was supposed to be an extortion pickup, and No Prisoners turned it into an attack. Up front, he decided that the money was not going to be in those bags. Up front, he planned to kill as many as he could.”
“How the hell do you know that, Jack?” Fescoe demanded.