Free Black Friday by James Patterson

their constitutions hadn’t had time to quite catch up. Several business people had early edition newspapers with stark Wall Street bombing headlines.
    Inside the bathroom, he cupped water in his hands and splashed it over his eyes. He took a tiny red plastic case out of his pants pocket.
    When Nora had been sick, she’d used this container to hold her day’s supply of Valium and Dilantin, and a few other prescriptions to help control seizures. Carroll slugged down a small yellow pill, a light upper to keep him alive.
    He would have preferred a drink. An eye-opener Irish whiskey. Double Bloody Mary. But he’d promised Walter Trentkamp.
    Carroll continued to stare at himself in the clouded airplane mirror. He thought about Green Band, as he examined the puffed, purplish bruises sagging under each eye. When it came to terrorists and their various specialties, Carroll had a long, reliable memory. During his first year with the DIA, all he’d done was to catalogue terrorist activities. He’d learned his early lessons well.
    The hard evidence so far suggested … what? Maybe Soviet-inspired GRU activity?
Why,
though? Qadaffi? A very long shot there. The Wall Street plan showed too much patience for the usual Third World types.
    Cubans? No. Provos? Not likely. Crazed American revolutionaries? Doubtful.
    Who then? Most of all—
why ?
    And how did the latest sketchy report from the Palm Beach Police Department fit? … A
South Florida drug dealer had been talking about the Wall Street attack the day before it happened?
The local hood had even dropped the unannounced code name—
Green Band!
    How would a South Florida drug dealer know anything about Green Band? What possible connection could there be?
    Like everything so far, it didn’t make much sense yet. It didn’t seem to lead anywhere Arch Carroll particularly wanted to go. Certainly, he didn’t want to be in southern Florida at this hour of the morning.
    He rubbed his eyes, splashed more cold water on his face and looked back at his reflection.
Death warmed over,
he thought. It was like one of the photographs on wanted posters inside Post’ Office buildings, the kind that seem always to have been taken in dim lighting.
    Carroll turned away from the mirror. It would soon be time to come down in the fantasy land of orange juice, Disney World, multimillionaire dope dealers, and hopefully Green Band.

Chapter 18
    THE LOCAL FBI CHIEF , Clark Sommers, accompanied by an assistant, was there to meet Carroll at the arrival gate. As usual, Miami International Airport was experiencing an electrical brownout.
    “Mr. Carroll, I’m Clark Sommers of the Bureau. This is my associate, Mr. Lewis Sitts.”
    Carroll nodded. His head ached from the flight and the effects of the upper he’d swallowed, which was just kicking in now, buzzing through his bloodstream.
    “Walk and talk?” Sommers suggested. “We’ve got an awful lot of ground to cover this morning.”
    “Yeah, sure. Tell me something, though. Every time I come through this airport the lights are half out Am I just imagining that?”
    “I know what you mean. It can seem that way. Dope dealers claim the bright lights hurt their eyes.” Clark Sommers flashed a very low key, cynical smile. He was
definitely
FBI all the way.
    Sommers’ assistant, Mr. Sitts, was wearing a lightweight blue sweater, tan golfing slacks and a matching Banlon shirt. The only thing missing were some espadrilles. Probably getting a promotional fee from Jantzen, Carroll thought. He tried to picture himself as a successful Florida police officer, but he couldn’t make the right visual or emotional connection.
    As they walked down the corridor, Carroll glanced at the cheery posters depicting surf and sun. They seemed to assault him personally. The sea was a shade too blue, the sun a touch too garish, the people having fun in the photographs a little too all-American beautiful for Carroll’s taste. He yearned for New York, where at least there was a