Book II Chapter 1

Molly Wu finished typing her report on the Stanhope case, and hit the save button on her PC. Then she sent the report to the printer and made the required three copies, one for her, one for the Lieutenant, and one for the D.A.’s office. She gave a little sigh of satisfaction as the pixels jumped around and rearranged themselves on the monitor, telling her that the command was being carried out. She laced her fingers together and raised her arms over her head, soft popping sounds coming from her back as she stretched. She wore a contented smile when she rose from her desk and headed towards the printer.

The Violent Crimes squad room had its usual busy air, with its occupants divided almost evenly into three parts. One third were the cops, another were the victims and witnesses giving statements, and the final third were those wearing handcuffs. One of the later wore a familiar face, a sharp featured little thug that she had busted once before. He sat in a hard backed chair with his hands cuffed behind his back, glaring sullenly out at the word while his arresting officer typed in his report using two fingers. She stopped and looked down at the felon, shaking her head.

“My, my, Able Conroy. Are you back with us again? What’s wrong this time, Able, just couldn’t resist the urge to slap your wife around? Or maybe this time it was your kids, huh?”

The ferret-faced little man glared pure venom at her, then snapped, “Fuck you, you bitch! You’re nuthin’ but a whore, just like she is! You’re all whores, you all deserve to get—Owww, hey!” Conroy gasped, as the cop at the desk next to him hit him across the top of his head with a heavy file folder.

“Mind your mouth, maggot,” the big man growled, in a voice that rumbled like distant gunfire. “That’s a police officer you’re talking to. If I don’t chew you a new one, she will.”

Molly hid the pleased grin that tugged at the corners of her mouth. Lon McMasters was an old school cop, and once upon a time he wouldn’t have given a female rookie like her the time of day, much less admitted that she belonged here. But that had all changed two months ago, after the Galleria shootout.

And now nobody doubted her right to be here.

“Lon, last I heard Able was on probation, and judge Warner had issued a TRO against him going near his wife. If he violated that, maybe we can arrange for her to hear Mr. Conroy’s case. Would you like that, Able? Would you like to explain to judge Warner why you pissed all over one of her rulings?”

She and Lon shared a grin, as the scruffy wife beater began to sweat and squirm in his chair. They both knew that cases were heard by rotation, and that you couldn’t pick which judge would preside on any given docket. But nobody said they had to tell a dirtbag like Conroy that.

When Molly got back to her desk with the Stanhope copies, she found a yellow post-it note stuck to her phone, telling her that Lt. Burke wanted to see her. She raised an eyebrow and dropped the reports on her desk, then turned around and headed for the Lieutenants office.

She knocked on Burkes open door before entering. “You wanted to see me, L.T.? she asked. She saw that he was on the phone, but at his nod and gesture she entered, closing the door behind her and taking a seat. She waited patiently while he finished his call, but when he hung up instead of answering her silent question, he spent several long moments staring at her appraisingly. She was just beginning to feel uncomfortable under his scrutiny when finally he spoke.

“Wu, before we start, is there anything you want to tell me? Like maybe about what happened that night on Mt. Davidson.”

Molly stiffened at the tone of the lieutenant’s voice. It didn’t carry the usual sound of competent command that she had grown used to, instead it had taken on an edge. The same edge she had heard when the L.T. was conducting an interrogation.

“Sir, I… I don’t understand what you want to know. Are you asking if I’ve remembered something else?”

“Remembered, or maybe left out. What I’m asking, Inspector, is if there is anything you want to change about your statement. Like that nonsense about some mysterious Federal agent dressed like a ninja, coming out of nowhere to save your ass.”

Molly blinked, too surprised to answer at first. Now the L.T.’s voice was actively hostile. What… was her boss actually accusing her of something? She felt her face beginning to stiffen before she could answer.

“You’re still saying that some masked Federal agent, dressed like a commando and wearing a Batman utility belt, swooped out of the trees and rescued you like some character in a comic book. Then he asked you to keep his identity a secret, just before he disappeared into the night. So what, are we supposed to call you Lois Lane now?”

Molly tried to keep her voice steady and professional, but she couldn’t help it. The words came out strained and cold, flashing her resentment like a warning light. “Sir, I’ve already told you exactly what happened to me that night. I did not leave anything out, nor have I remembered anything else that was not covered in my report.

“The man who saved me was dressed all in black, including gloves and some sort of mask. He did have an equipment belt, but he wore it looped from one shoulder like a bandoleer. He told me he was a Federal agent working undercover, and that he and his team had been planting electronic surveillance on a suspect when they heard the call for backup at the Galleria.”

“Uh huh. And at what point, Inspector, did this mysterious rescuer show you his Federal ID?”

“Sir, he didn’t. He said he wasn’t carrying any because of what he was doing that night. But he said he was in radio contact with his team, and then he started reading information about me from my personnel file. Under those circumstances, I took that to be sufficient proof of his identity.”

“So you then decide to follow his orders and lie to your fellow officers about what really happened that night. Since when did the SFPD start taking orders from any Federal agency, Wu, especially an un-named one?”

“On this agent’s recommendation,” she said, stretching out the last word, “I only told you about his involvement. And it was on your orders that I continued to leave him out of it. Sir.”

The Lieutenant only snorted even more disdainfully at her logic. “So, that’s your story, and you’re sticking with it, huh?”

Damn it, this was enough! Molly knew damned well that she had followed the rules on this one, as much as you could with such a bizarre set of circumstances. She had kept her mouth shut, sure, but only until she could get the lieutenant alone, and then it had been his call. Maybe she had to use her own judgment a couple of times, but she sure as hell didn’t deserve this kind of shit.

Molly rose stiffly from her seat, giving her boss a stony look as she did, her fingernails leaving red indentations in her palm from where she clenched her hands into fists. With her voice carefully reigned, she asked, “Sir, should I have my union rep present for the rest of this conversation?”

Burke stared at her for a while, saying nothing, until suddenly he shook his head and snorted. When he once again met her eyes his expression had changed, the hostility and contempt now replaced with amusement.

“No, never mind, Molly. I believe you. I always did. Look, sit down, will you?”

She gave him a hard stare for several heartbeats, before stiffly taking back her seat. “You say that you believe me? Then what the hell was that all about, L.T.?”

The big man across from her had the grace to look embarrassed.

“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to do things that way, but it was the Captain’s idea. I asked him to let me brief you on something, and he insisted I ask you some hard questions about Mt. Davidson before I do. I don’t think he really distrusts you, either, it’s just that this is so sensitive, he wanted to make sure.”

“Make sure of what? That I wasn’t lying? That I didn’t falsify an official police report? That I didn’t perjure myself? Is that what the Captain wanted to make sure of, L.T.?”

“Yeah, Wu, pretty much,” he answered her coolly, his dark eyes glinting. Her scathing sarcasm had brought Burke’s own hackles to rise, and it was obvious that he didn’t like the position he was in. She gritted her teeth and damped down her own anger and resentment, and forced her body to relax. She knew that getting into a pissing contest with your own Lieutenant was a losing proposition, but dammit, how many times did she have to prove herself around here?

“So. Is this about the Galleria shootout, or about the guy who saved me out on Mt. Davidson?” she finally asked.

“Both. For one thing, we tried finding out who your rescuer was that night. During the past two months I’ve personally called every Federal law enforcement agency in the country who might have agents working undercover. Christ, I even called Fish and Game! And every single one of them gave me the same answer; none of their people were operating a team like you described in our jurisdiction that night.”

Molly shrugged. “Well, so how much does that count for? It’s not as if the Federals have never left us out of the loop.”

“Not informing us in a timely fashion and deliberately lying are two different things. Besides, there are a lot of other inconsistencies about that night.”

Burke opened a desk drawer and pulled out several objects, which he set one by one on top of his blotter. Two file folders, several evidence bags containing objects Molly could only half see, and a mini tape recorder. He held up the last and showed it to Molly.

“This is a copy of the radio log taken from the tac frequency your team was using that night. I want you to listen to this section that happened a few minutes after you were kidnapped.” He flicked a switch on the recorder and then set the machine down on his desk. The tinny sounds coming from its miniature speaker caused Molly’s stomach to clench, as the memories abruptly rose like a tide. Traces of old terror, that still had her occasionally waking up in the middle of the night, drenched with a sour smelling sweat. She took a breath and ordered her heart to still, and focused her attention on the words coming from the little recording.

*Blue One, suspects are backing towards the building, they are trying to gain entrance back into the mall. I repeat, they are trying to retreat back into the mall!*

*Negative, Blue Two, negative! Do not let them back in! There are still crowds of civilians there, if they get inside they’ll have dozens of potential hostages. Hold them their until Blue Three gets there, they’ll flank them from behind.*

*And how the hell are we supposed to do that?! They already have a hostage, if we try to rush them they’ll kill him.*

*Try talking to them, Two. Stall. It doesn’t matter what you say, just give Blue Three and us a chance to get there.*

*I don’t think that’ll work, One. The suspects are too agitated, they’re shooting at anything that moves. If we---*

*Flashbang! Flashbang!*

Wump! Wump-wump!

(the sounds of screaming and shouting) v *They’re down! Suspects are down! Go! Go! Go!*

*Grab the kid! Get him out of here, now!*

*Don’t move! Don’t you fucking MOVE!*

Molly took a deep breath as Burke switched the recorder off, willed the tension to leave her chest. She looked across the desk at her superior, who raised an eyebrow in query.

“Well, Inspector? What do you think about the way that our people handled that situation.”

“Um, well, for something that basically started out as a cluster-fuck, I think we did pretty damned good.”

Burke grunted, then bit out, “Explain.”

“Well, sir, we did everything by the book when we set up the decoy sting. No one can fault us for that part of the operation. If it wasn’t for the Blue Devils showing up and panicking, the whole operation would have gone down like clockwork. And no one can blame us for not anticipating them, can they?”

“You obviously aren’t familiar with civilian review boards. But after the Devils showed up?”

“Well, even after that I think our people reacted appropriately. We contained the situation, even after a hostage was taken, and we didn’t let it escalate. We maybe endangered the boy by tossing those flash grenades and rushing them, but we had no choice. If we let the Devil’s get back inside the Galleria, it would have been a bloodbath.

“We were thrown a curve, but we handled it well and there were no casualties, and minimal property damage. Plus we made eleven arrests that night, instead of three. All in all, sir, I don’t see how it could have gone down better than the way it did.”

“It might surprise you to know that the shooting review board agrees with you. In fact, yours isn’t the only commendation being handed out for that night. The problem with that is, one person they want to acknowledge is the officer that threw those flashbangs. Unfortunately, we don’t know who the hell that was.”

Lt. Burke leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desk, giving Molly a penetrating look. He tapped one finger on the cassette player before him and said, “No one on that detail has admitted to tossing those grenades, or to broadcasting that warning. And we ran a voice print analysis on the radio log and compared it to every male member of your team, but we couldn’t find zip. No matches.

“Hell, no one was even issued any flashbangs that night, they’re usually only used indoors, or in enclosed spaces. The S.W.A.T. team has some in their van, but those have all been accounted for. But three of these were recovered from the parking lot that night.”

Burke passed one of the plastic evidence bags across to Molly, and when she took it she saw through the transparent sides what looked like a short piece of metal pipe with caps on each end, and a pattern of drilled holes around the center. Their were scorch marks fanning out from around the holes, and as Molly studied it she found herself frowning. This didn’t make any sense…

“Do you notice anything strange about that grenade, Wu?” Burke asked, his words echoing her own thoughts.

“No labels. No manufacturers marks… no serial numbers, either. It looks homemade.”

“That’s because it is,” Burke answered, nodding in approval. “Very well made, the lab says it was probably done by a professional machinist, or at least somebody with that skill level. Made out of common materials that could have been bought at almost any hardware store in the country. And before you ask, there’s nothing particularly significant about the design, either. In fact, plans for just this sort of device can be found on over a dozen places on the Internet. So what does this tell us, Wu? Could your mysterious rescuer have anything to do with this?”

Molly looked at the object in the evidence bag thoughtfully, then set it down on the Lieutenant’s desk and reached for the cassette player. “May I?” she asked. Burke nodded, and Molly took the player and rewound the tape, then played back the last few seconds. She did it several times, listening over and over to the unknown voice as it called out “Flashbang! Flashbang!” Finally she returned the player to the Lieutenant and nodded.

“Yessir, I think that’s him. The man who rescued me. I’m not positive, I never heard him shout, but I’m about 90% sure that that’s the same guy.”

“Okay, so what do we have?” Burke asked, as he reached for one of the file folders. “Freddy the Fed and his team are in the area, and happen to be monitoring us while we’re staking out the Galleria. Not the normal traffic you can get off of any police scanner from Radio Shack, but one of our highly secret tac frequencies. When everything goes south, they step in and save out butts by not only throwing those grenades, but also by broadcasting a warning to our people just before they did. Then they somehow followed the perps that had kidnapped you, and got there just in time for the same guy to pull off your rescue. Which leaves us with some interesting questions, doesn’t it?”

Molly was nodding in agreement, pinching her lip in a nervous habit she had when she was lost in heavy thought.

“Timing. It must have been three, almost four minutes between the when I was grabbed, to the time whoever it was threw those flashbangs. By then we were miles away. If it was the same guy that saved me, how did he find us?”

“Probably two vehicles, which goes a long ways to proving that he was part of a team, and not just by himself. He throws the grenades, while his partner follows your van, and then he catches up later. But that still doesn’t prove that he’s a Federal Agent.”

Molly looked at the other cop speculatively, an idea suddenly forming in her mind. “You think he might be some sort of vigilante, don’t you?”

Burke cocked his head to one side. “The thought had occurred to us.”

“But what about the information he had? My name, my rank, the fact that I worked Violent Crimes. He even had your name, L.T.”

“Which is the one thing that’s kept us from going after this guy before now. The possibility that some civilian with an agenda of his own might have hacked our computer network. A lot of people upstairs aren’t comfortable with that thought.”

“I can see why. So what’s changed?”

Burke opened one of the files on his desk and drew out a single sheet of paper. He gazed at it for awhile, then turned it around and passed it to Molly. She took it and then caught her breath sharply. On the sheet was an artists rendering of a man dressed all in black, from hooded head to booted toe. His hands were likewise covered in gloves, and his face was hidden by a featureless black mask. Across his chest from left shoulder to right hip was a bandoleer belt with many pouches, and gripped in his right hand was a cane with a crooked handle.

“Oh, shit,” she muttered.

“Two nights ago a couple of tourists wandered into the wrong part of the Tenderloin. Three local punks with knives pulled them into an alley, beat the man and commenced to have a little fun with the woman. But before they could even get unzipped, this guy rushes out from the back of the alley and starts laying into the perps with that cane of his. He was still whaling away when the two vics got the hell out of there and flagged down a cruiser a couple of blocks away. By the time the uniforms called for backup and got back to the alley, the three guys with knives were lying on the ground and spitting up blood. Our mysterious man in black was nowhere to be seen.”

Molly could only shake her head as she looked at the hand drawn portrait of the man who had saved her life, and had apparently gone on to save two other people, also. The figure seemed thinner than she remembered, leaner, and the mask it wore now had an almost skeletal look that she didn’t remember. But then, her eyes had been pretty blurry from the tear gas. Still…

“Same guy, Wu?” Burke asked.

“Yeah, probably. He was wearing goggles when I saw him, but other than that it’s the same outfit, at least. Have there been any other sightings, sir?”

“No, not really. At least not by anybody credible. But there’s been street talk. Rumors about somebody dressed all in black who appears out of nowhere when something nasty is going down. Muggings, gay bashings, pimps beating up on whores. A couple of drug deals. He appears, does his thing, than disappears, usually without saying a word. On the street, they’re calling him ‘the Spook’. There have also been… other incidences, things that may or may not be part of this.

“So can you see our problem here, Wu? If these people are Federal agents, then they’ve got some sort of major operation going on in our jurisdiction. Something so big or so sensitive, that they’ve actively kept us out of the loop. If that’s the case, the last thing we want to do is stumble in and blow their operation. If nothing else, they could use that to justify their keeping us in the dark in the first place.

“But if it isn’t Feds, then we really do have a major problem. A group of vigilantes who use violence and can hack into police databases, and we don’t have clue one as to their agenda. If that’s the case, then we have to contain this shit, and do it fast.”

Molly sat there in silence, stunned, trying to take in all the implications of the bombshell Burke had just laid on her. Yeah, it was staggering alright. She could now truly appreciate why the Lieutenant had grilled her so hard before. It was political dynamite no matter which way you looked at it.

She looked up, realizing that she had been silent for a long time, but saw Burke was still patiently waiting on her. She cleared her throat, and then asked the one question that was foremost in her mind.

“Uh, sir? I take it you’re telling me all this for a reason?”

For the first time since she walked through the office door, she saw the Lieutenant actually smile.

“Congratulations, Molly. You’ve just been given command of your first task force. Unfortunately, you’re going to be the only one in it.”

*****

The day had been more than warm for San Francisco, it had actually been hot, and the breeze that usually brought relief from offshore had only managed to make conditions deteriorate to mugginess. The night had brought only a scarce respite, as the bowl shape of the surrounding hills seemed to trap both the heat and humidity in an unrelenting grip, one that promised more of the same for tomorrow.

But at just over two thousand feet above the city, none of that seemed real. Up here above the thin cloud cover, a true ocean breeze was able to circulate, bringing with it the faint smell of brine and the coolness denied those sweltering below. The impression was only heightened by the icy clarity and sharpness of the stars that shone down from the smog-free sky above.

Tom Blackmore sighed, luxuriating in the utter peace and quiet that in all the world he knew only he could enjoy. He swung to his left and did a couple of barrel rolls, followed by a lazy back loop, letting himself more or less just drift eastward with the wind.

Sometimes, it was the quiet moments like these that he enjoyed the most. The peaceful times when he could stop wondering at the miracle of flight, and be content to simply accept it. The solitude of being truly alone. Damn, but he was going to miss this!

“Hey Flyboy, are you going to keep tripping through the ozone, or are we going to actually get somewhere tonight?”

Tom sighed, brought back to reality by Pablo Murray’s grating voice in his ear. With hardly a conscious thought he pulled himself to a halt, automatically compensating for the drift of the wind as he hovered motionless above the city.

“So what are you bitching about now, Pablo? I’m on my way to patrol the club scene at the Haight, just like we planned.”

“Bull, you were daydreaming again. Your pulse was sixty-eight, and your respiration was only about four or five breaths a minute. Look, Tom, I know that this kind of thing is your equivalent of meditating, but we’ve got work to do, buddy. You know this is our last night.”

“Only for a month, Murray. Then Benny goes back to school in L.A., and we can resume business as usual.”

It was the first week in August, a little over four weeks before school started, and as promised Tom’s ex-wife Miko had transferred from Japan back to the United States. She and Tom’s seven-year-old son had arrived in Los Angeles a few days earlier, and Benny was going to spend the rest of the summer with his father. It had been decided that for that thirty day period Tom would suspend all operations with the Planning Committee, a decision that Murray had only agreed to reluctantly.

“All the more reason to do as much as we can tonight. Listen, Tom, I know you want to spend as much time with your kid as possible and I respect that. But taking a whole month off is going to put a serious crimp in our timetable. Remember the plan Dieter came up with.”

“I do. And you should remember that he said a cooling off period might be good about now. Pablo, it’s a dead issue, okay? Just drop it.”

There was silence over the airwaves for awhile, as Tom flew silently through the night. The city below was partially hidden by clouds, but the GPS readout displayed on his goggles led him unerringly to his destination. He stopped, hovering, then slowly began to drop downwards. Three hundred feet above the ground he came to a halt, taking up a position above the teaming crowd below.

The lower Haight area was the place to go if you liked the club scene, doubly so if you were a Raver. In forty years the hippie culture that had once made the neighborhood world famous had slowly changed, until now it was almost completely unrecognizable as the cultural home of the Peace generation. Tie-dyed shirts and love beads had given way to the Neo-punks and the club kids, and on Friday nights the streets were always packed, from Divisidero all the way to Webster. Techno music and the face paced talk of DJs drifted out of crowded rooms like smoke, filling the streets with their pulse pounding hum. People from all over the city now came to enjoy bars like Mad Dog in the Fog and Noc Noc, or dance clubs like The Top and Nickie’s BBQ.

Tom drifted over the crowds, scanning the flocking groups of punkers with their day-glo haircuts and piercings, milling comfortably beside the clean cut office workers and the wide-eyed tourists from Iowa. He knew that most of the people below were just out to have a good time, and he wished them well. But there were also predators here, come to hunt like jackals staking out a watering hole, and tonight Tom was searching for a few of those.

“Hey Flyboy, see anything interesting tonight?”

“I just got here, Murray, give me a break.”

“If you haven’t got something going down right now, smartass, rise up a little and take a look towards Nob Hill. Police band says they’ve got a fire there, a big one.”

Tom obeyed his friend’s instructions, allowing himself to rise up another hundred feet. He looked towards the northeast, and sure enough he could just make out a flickering glow that couldn’t be anything else but fire light. The flying man shifted, and before he even answered he was already moving in that direction.

“Yeah, I see it. Looks like it’s a couple of blocks off Huntington Park. What are we looking at, Pablo?”

“A place called the Copely House. There’s a website… okay, this used to be one of those ritzy old hotels that converted to apartments in the fifties, and then to condos about ten years ago. People who live there are probably rich, but not exactly blue bloods. Uh, nine stories, and according to the Fire Department dispatcher, the seventh floor is a freaking inferno. You might want to hurry on this one, Tom.”