Chapter Two
Sandy Shield had landed behind a support column in the drive-through of the Rivage Hotel, then stepped out to briefly join a group of costumed conventioneers on their way up the walkway ramp.
As she neared the taxi at the front of the line, she spun the two-foot piece of pvc tubing she'd found behind the column like a baton. Letting it escape her grasp in the direction of the taxi gave her a pretext for going through the motions of pretending to look for it as she studied the car.
The paint was new, but the car wasn't. It was full of luggage and rode so low that it must have had a ton of extra weight aboard. No normal luggage would weigh that much.
Sandy pretended to search for her missing baton beneath the taxi's rear. She discovered that the inner side of the fender was solid, not hollow. A pinch of the clay-like plastique came away between her fingers and she let it fall under the car before retrieving the bit of pipe and standing up.
In the rearview mirror, the driver's eyes were focused on her legs. Sandy saw that he was none other than Ahmed Mussafi, a 'suspected' terrorist whose face had graced several of the wanted posters she'd studied before she'd left Las Vegas.
The anonymous tip to Gary's office about a suicide attack had been gospel, after all. Now; how to neutralize this situation? How to handle the driver, who likely had some kind of a detonator close at hand?
To a typical Middle-Eastern man, just about any visible female flesh would hold his eyes like a magnet. Pretending to adjust her uniform, Sandy tugged the seams of her uniform bottom back into place and brushed imaginary dirt from her breasts. Her motions guided his eyes over her body as she pretended to continue past the car on her way up the ramp.
As she came even with his window, Sandy took advantage of the fact that his eyes were firmly locked on her breasts, snapping a punch at the side of his head that knocked him cold as it sent him across the seat.
She let the punch become a grab for the gearshift, took the car out of 'drive' and into 'neutral', then she went to the rear of the car, grabbed the bumper, and began hauling the car down the ramp to the street.
The first order of business was to get the car a safe distance away from everything and everyone. In the heart of downtown Atlanta, that could only mean going up.
At the bottom of the ramp, traffic prevented her from dragging the car into the street, so Sandy pulled it onto the broad sidewalk. She jumped over the car to the front of it, lifted the front of the car, got a firm grip on the strongest part of the frame, and powered upward.
Remembering what Gary had said about possible watchers who might set off any explosives, Sandy nonetheless kept her speed barely subsonic to avoid damage to nearby buildings.
Almost exactly twelve seconds into Sandy's upward dash, Mohammed Jamal's dying efforts succeeded. In a split-second, nearly eighteen hundred pounds of plastique converted to energy, essentially vaporizing much of the Crown Victoria and shredding the rest of it.
Even for someone like Sandy, it was a bit much. While the blast couldn't destroy her, it hit her like a huge fist, knocking her spinning for several miles before she could clear her head enough to regain control of herself.
She had no idea where she was until she looked around and saw the cloud of smoke from the explosion hovering above downtown Atlanta. Distance made the smoke cloud appear no bigger than the head of a thumbtack, and Sandy began to realize just how powerful the explosion had been as she guesstimated that it had thrown her five or six miles.
Flying back toward downtown, Sandy realized with a mental sigh that there was no way that she'd be able to remain a mysterious semi-myth after today.
Someone might even have had the presence of mind to take her picture while she was in the hotel's drive-through. Damn. It would probably be a shot of her reaching under the car for the pvc tube. Wouldn't a close-up of her butt look great on the six o'clock news?
Glancing around as she landed in the stairwell alcove where she'd left her mundane clothes, she saw that some of the nearby buildings were missing some of their windows.
Any damage would have been from debris, thought Sandy. The blast had occurred almost two miles up, so the shockwave wouldn't have done it.
Retrieving a cell phone from her purse, Sandy tapped in an Atlanta number given to her for the mission.
A woman answered with, "Zero-eight-two-six."
"Angel here."
"Go, Angel."
"Do you have anything else for me?"
"Not a thing. John says 'good job' and you're on standby."
"Thank you."
The woman said, "You're welcome. Enjoy your stay in Atlanta," then she disconnected.
With water from a small puddle near the entrance, Sandy managed to clean most of the explosion's residue from her arms and legs. Using her makeup mirror, she cleaned her face and applied a bit of makeup, then she changed clothes and rechecked herself.
Judging her appearance normal enough, Sandy removed the flattened soft drink can that had kept the roof door from latching and headed down to the forty-second floor.
She cracked the stairwell door slightly and saw that a few people were waiting for the elevator across the hall. Two minutes later, they were gone and the hall was empty. Sandy stepped out, took the elevator to the fourth floor, and headed for the room that had been issued to her for the mission.
Frank Stearns of the NIA stepped out of room 423 and a big grin formed on his face when he saw Sandy. Sandy, on the other hand, sighed and thought, 'Oh, damn.'
Stearns wasn't as bad as some men. He genuinely didn't seem have any reservations about working with women, for instance. He did, however, have an overbearing personality and seemed to view himself as every woman's dream come true.
He also seemed to have an unyielding curiosity about Sandy, which was actually quite understandable. When Gary had added her to the operation roster, he'd waited until the last possible minute to do so, dropping her in as a standalone with little or no explanation to anyone.
Sandy didn't 'liaison' with the teams or team leaders. She hadn't attended even one of the briefings and her introduction had been so brief and uninformative that some of the team honchos -- leery of working with unknowns -- had been more than a little pissed at the time.
While she was pleasant enough when someone happened to encounter her, she didn't work or socialize with people from any of the teams. For the most part -- even if they weren't exactly accepting of the terms -- everybody seemed to get used to the arrangement, but not Frank Stearns.
His inability to find out anything at all about Sandy through channels seemed to bug the hell out of him. When official queries failed, he'd resorted to overt friendliness, inviting her to lunches, dinners, and even a party, and he seemed to take her continuous refusals as some sort of personal challenge.
"Well, hi, there, gorgeous!" said Stearns. "I'm about to go get a late lunch. Care to join me?"
Returning his grin with a small, polite smile, Sandy said, "Thanks anyway."
"It's just a lunch, Sandy. I don't like to eat alone."
"Sorry, Frank. Get somebody else."
Turning to watch her walk past, Stearns asked, "Well, how about dinner later?"
Without turning around, she said, "You're a coworker, Frank. It won't happen."
He sighed, "Hey, I don't agree with that policy, y'know?"
With a slight nod, Sandy said, "Yeah, I know. Bye."
He must really have been hungry; for once, he didn't persist. Even if she were interested in playing, it wouldn't happen with Frank Stearns. The guy was a good team leader, but Sandy had overheard him talking to John Hartmann about one of his dates.
He'd made it sound as if he'd conquered Mount Everest and had given a blow-by-blow description of events -- as he remembered them, of course -- including their bedroom activities, some of which had sounded greatly embellished.
No, there'd be no playing with Frank. Never with Frank.
Sandy let herself into room 426 and tossed her purse on the bed, then she began taking off her clothes as she ran hot water in the bathtub and added some bubblebath.
She wasn't tired and didn't have any aches or pains or frustrations to soak away. Sandy just liked bubblebaths and the private, quiet time they provided.
It was also an opportunity to see what all had been issued with her DragonCon badge, which was clipped to a plastic bag someone had delivered and placed on the bed.
Sandy picked the goodie-bag up and peeked inside, then took it into the bathroom. After getting comfortable in the tub, she spent the next half hour reviewing convention literature.
The big, glossy-covered guide said there'd be several stars from TV shows and movies signing autographs, as well as a host of artists and authors.
It also listed a costume contest, three dances, discussion panels, and several movies to be shown in the ballrooms. The dealer's room vendor list made it seem likely that she'd find some unique jewelry or clothing.
A smaller, pocket-sized booklet contained a simpler scheduling chart of all events, panels, appearances, and other doings of interest during the four days of the convention.
Sandy used a yellow highlighter on some of the chart's info blocks, then rooted through the rest of the stuff in the bag; buttons, pins, party notices, and ads and brochures for upcoming science fiction movies and books.
By the time the bath water had cooled Sandy had less than an hour to find and get to a writer's panel titled 'Women of Science Fiction'. She got out of the tub and chose a fresh outfit from her limited travel wardrobe.
Everyone else at the convention seemed to either be dressed for a camping trip -- backpack included, in many cases -- or wearing some kind of costume, so Sandy decided to make a fashion statement of sorts.
She chose an electric blue, mid-thigh, sleeveless sheath dress that had a white stripe down each side-seam and fit her rather closely. The blue shoes in her shoe bag were a shade off, but in the crowd she was likely to encounter, a shade -- or even a few shades -- probably wouldn't matter much.
Choosing a small silver necklace from her travel kit, she put it on and thought about wearing earrings, then passed on them as being unnecessary.
Not for the first time, the thought occurred to her that if her ears could be pierced, she wouldn't have to wear those damned clip-ons that never seemed to stay clipped on.
Stockings? No, she decided. Bare legs also make a kind of statement and they usually got more looks. After adding a touch of lip gloss, she scooped up her purse and key card and headed for the elevators.
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