The Famous and the Dead

42



Yorth began to process him out and Hood could tell the man was embarrassed and angry. He seemed to be taking more time than he had to. In his few short months here in Buenavista, Yorth had lost weight and his hair was thinning. The death of one agent and the firing of two more agents under his command would not play well in his file or his soul. Yorth checked his watch. “Hour and a half until Wampler is supposed to show at the Greyhound station.”

“That’s the last place you’ll find him. He knows we’ll be there and he’s not foolish.”

“You think he shot Castro last night?”

“I do. My guess is Castro wanted in on the missiles.”

“He must have wanted in on something. How’s Mary Kate Boyle?”

“She’s staying real low.”

“She won’t talk to me. She only talks to Velasquez and Morris now. And you.”

“She’s got a real stubborn streak.”

“Reminds me of my sister.” Yorth shook his head and sighed when Hood emptied his ATF-issue Glock and set it on the desk, focusing on the gun but not looking at Hood. Hood began signing the stack of forms and a few minutes later he walked out.

Down in the parking structure he had just aimed his key fob at the car when a sharp blast shook the ceiling and shivered the walls and rocked the Charger on its shocks. Chunks of concrete exploded through the glass walls of the elevator bank and skidded across the floor. Then alarms and human screams. Seconds later Hood ran through the blown door of the ATF offices. Inside, the screaming was more and louder, and water from the fire sprinklers rained down. He smelled smoke and explosives and he fell in behind Yorth, who was bleeding from his forehead but charging for the emergency exit with his gun drawn. Smoke had already drifted into the exit hallway. They burst outside to a narrow alley and ran through broken glass around to the front of the building, toward the screams of sirens and people.

The lobby plate glass was blown out and the far lobby wall was demolished and the reception desk was blown to splinters. Oscar lay twenty feet from his station, on his back near the elevators, and Hood saw that the middle of him was mostly gone, just a huge ragged hole below his chest. Hood followed the screams to the café. A woman with a bloody face knelt over what looked like an elderly man, and beyond them, through the glassless storefront, Hood saw two more women, one screaming and one staring ashen-faced back at the destroyed lobby while her leashed terrier barked furiously at a loose Chihuahua. A big shard of window glass detached from above and whistled down and burst on the sidewalk in front of Hood. A man crouched through the shattered front door of the accounting firm, holding his laptop over his head with both hands. Some fled the building and others ran in to help. The traffic on the boulevard had slowed and there were already gawkers pulled over to record the calamity on their cell phones. Hood watched a red Honda rear-end a black Denali and both drivers spill out with their phones already raised. His attention went to two small boys on the other side of the street who were touching what appeared to be a burning storefront wall. Distant sirens sounded as he ran across the boulevard and waved away the boys, who scattered in opposite directions, laughing. Hood saw that the backblast of the missile had blackened the storefront and the scorched bricks still smoked. He looked up and down the street, trying to spot a new blue Explorer or any young man who resembled Clint Wampler. Anything. He ran to the parked cars and the gathered spectators, yelling questions. One young man said he saw someone standing beside a white car with a “funny-looking bazooka-kind of thing over his shoulder, and the next thing I know there’s a blast of white smoke going backwards out the tube, then the lobby blows up!” The witness could not describe the shooter or the car near which he was standing. When the smoke cleared, both were gone. The other answers Hood got were all no’s and the looks he drew were dubious and fearful.

He sprinted back across the street to the Imperial Bank building and helped the bleeding woman walk the elderly man outside. He seemed stunned and possibly unhurt. The girl who worked in the coffee shop hugged herself, trembling as she ran through the shattered glass. The first cop car skidded to a stop out front, lights flashing, then a fire department engine screamed up behind it. Hood walked back inside the demolished lobby. The hole in the rear wall looked big enough to drive a car through. Yorth stood over Oscar in the sprinkler rain. He looked at up Hood, a trickle of watery blood still coming down his forehead and a coldly furious expression on his face. “Clint,” he said. “Goddamned Clint.”

A moment later the Charger screeched from the parking structure, leaving a billow of white smoke in the clean desert air. Hood circled the bank building in a series of right turns, expanding each time, hoping to spot Wampler. Fruitless, he worked his way nearly to the interstate, then back again toward downtown Buenavista and the Imperial Bank building. Two more fire companies roared around him, lights flashing and sirens wailing. Hood pulled over to let them pass, then gunned the Charger onto the on-ramp of I-8 west, toward El Centro and San Diego. He called Mary Kate and told her Clint had just blown up the ATF field office in Buenavista.

And not to open the door for anyone. Anyone.