Mandi Steele 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.
Mandi 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. Mandi
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, Mandi tugged her
skirt 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, Mandi 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 Mandi 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, Mandi nonetheless kept her speed barely subsonic to avoid damage to
nearby buildings.
Almost exactly twelve seconds into Mandi'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 Mandi, 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 Mandi 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, Mandi 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 Mandi. The blast had
occurred almost two miles up, so the shockwave wouldn't have done it.
Retrieving a cell phone from her purse, Mandi 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, Mandi 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, Mandi 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. Mandi 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 Mandi. Mandi, 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 Mandi, 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.
Mandi 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 Mandi 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, Mandi said, "Thanks anyway."
"It's just a lunch, Mandi. 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, Mandi 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 Mandi 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.
Mandi 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. Mandi 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.
Mandi 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.
Mandi 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 Mandi 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
Mandi 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.