In the men’s room was a boy with a compound fracture of the right arm so severe I was afraid moving him would do more harm than good. The bone had torn through his shirt. He was trapped by debris and, with whatever other wounds he had, was slipping into shock. We freed him as the air filled with sirens. Outside the restrooms were two more children. The first was a young girl with a broken neck who was dead. The other was my fifteen-year-old niece, Julia, alive and injured. I talked to Julia and reassured her, but she didn’t recognize me. I took her hand.
“Julia, it’s Uncle Paul. Hold on. Fight with everything you have. Hold on, Julia! Ambulances are here. We’re getting you to a hospital. Fight, Julia, fight, I’m right here with you. You can do this. Can you hear me?”
I thought for a moment she realized it was me, but I wasn’t sure.
“Julia?”
A first responder yelled, “Agent Grale!”
“Back here!”
A fire captain in fluorescent suit and helmet and carrying a bright light came toward me.
“We’ve got it in here. You need to call in. Your office is looking for you. What happened here?”
“A bombing.”
I waited until Julia and the boy in the men’s restroom were on backboards and had paramedics over them. First responders worked the bar area looking for survivors, but there weren’t any. Among the dead was my nephew, Nate, a gangling teenager who’d been closing in on his dad in height. I knelt and touched his face.
Outside was chaotic with sirens and lights. I called my supervisor, Dan Venuti, who heads the Las Vegas Field Office Domestic Terrorism Squad. It was very hard to hear, so I got in my car where it was quieter. Moments later, Venuti patched me into a conference call with the counterterrorism desk in Washington.
Someone there asked, “How confident are you that it was a bomb, Agent Grale? Gas explosion, fireworks, can you rule those out?”
“They’re out. It was a bomb and a large one.”
“Air force drone pilots are among the dead?”
“Yes.”
“Are you certain of that?”
This was difficult to answer. I hesitated, and the question was repeated: “Are you certain?”
“My sister and brother-in-law throw the party every year. He’s air force. He was a drone pilot. He manages drone pilots now, or did. I recognized several other dead pilots. My sister, brother-in-law, and nephew are dead. I was on my way here to the party. I was late or would have been inside.”
I tried to be clear and accurate, though it felt as if I were speaking from somewhere very distant. I felt separated and torn inside, yet was trying to focus. I felt both terrible grief and something bordering on hate. I would find who had done this.
Venuti broke in saying, “Creech has officers inbound. They’re twenty minutes away.”
The voice from Washington came back with another question. “What about secondary explosives?”
“There’s a line of For Sale vehicles along the front of the lot, so yes, there’s a real risk,” I said.
Four minutes later, the conference call ended. Venuti called me within seconds and said, “Las Vegas Metro has a bomb squad on the way. Ours is just leaving. Domestic Terrorism and two evidence-recovery squads leave the field office in the next fifteen minutes. ATF says they have a team en route. Tell me where this should go, Grale.”
“To a focus on secondary explosives,” I said.
“Las Vegas PD is talking fireworks explosion. You’re certain it was a bomb.”
I paused, wondering why I wasn’t getting through. “Are you asking if I’m thinking clearly?”
“Your family—”
“Dan, we’re not looking at Fourth of July fireworks. This was a bomb placed under the bar. It was in something, possibly an appliance. There are metal shards. The explosive may have been C-4.” I took a steadying breath. “A dozen or more drone pilots were in there. These are guys flying in the Mideast. Get everything up, fusion center, everyone. Everybody. Every agency in Washington.”
I looked through the windshield at the destroyed face of the building as I remembered Jim many years ago, smiling when he said Melissa was pregnant. I continued with Venuti.