Free White: A Novel by Christopher Whitcomb

plastic fork his government had given him to eat it with.
    LOS ANGELES SCOFFED at the inability of the nation’s capital to function in inclement weather. An unfair accusation of course: it barely rained in Southern California. But the entertainment industry held little respect for Washington’s censor-hungry bureaucrats. Washington was a city of narrow-minded politicians; the Left Coast had its own agenda. Which meetings had more impact on the world, after all, those held in stuffy Senate hallways or those in Beverly Hills over glasses of designer water?
    The man with the pistol in his hand was unlike most Californians, however. To him, Washington was an objective. A target. Though it may have been three thousand miles away, he felt intimately connected to its people and their immediate future.
    “There’s no point in calling out,” the man with the pistol said. A frightened-looking Saudi cleric named Ashar al Bayad sat beside him with his hands secured behind his back. Drool ran out of the Arab’s mouth at the corners, where the rubber ball stuck in it left gaps. “These walls are insulated. No one will hear you.”
    The man with the pistol double-checked the ligature—simple hemp cord at the wrists and ankles. It might not hold as well as the triple-bar police cuffs he carried in his day job, but it would burn completely in a fire. There would be no trace of bondage.
    “I apologize for this disrespect, Brother,” the man with the pistol said. “But it is all for the good of our cause. God is great. You will see.”
    The captor opened a four-by-four-foot wooden box filled with fifty pounds of Czech-made Semtex—a special batch designed for use in land mines. He adjusted the detonator to make certain it would fail to function as designed. Under normal circumstances, this massive I.E.D. would devastate everything within two hundred feet, but that was not the plan. This device would “squib,” or explode in a low-order detonation. There would be flames, but little boom.
    When he felt certain that all details had been checked and double-checked, the man with the pistol picked up a long red-and-white Snap-on toolbox, pulled a California Electric cap onto his head, and stepped out of his box truck.
    The work order in his pocket called for service on a transformer atop the LAX Radisson. The sun shone brightly in the late-afternoon sky. Santa Ana winds blew down from the mountains, ruffling his shirt and filling his nose with desert smells.
    “
Allah huakbar,
” he mumbled under his breath. A 767 wide-body inbound from some destination east roared over his head as Ibrahim hefted the thirty-pound toolbox.
    Heavy but effective,
he assured himself of the .50 caliber Barrett inside. No matter. It was just a short trip to the elevator and then an effortless pull of the trigger.
    “FASTEN YOUR SEAT belt, please,” Minge the flight attendant politely coaxed one of the other first class passengers.
    Always someone,
Jeremy thought.
Shouldn’t the wealthy, successful, and well traveled behave a little better up here in the good seats?
    He wouldn’t have known, of course. Only the unexpected generosity of a sympathetic ticket counter clerk in Bangkok had saved him from a 10,000-mile ride in coach.
    “Well, hello again, folks, this is your captain,” a voice announced over the intercom. He sounded Midwestern, to Jeremy’s surprise. Singapore Air with an American crew? “We’re about to start our final descent into the Washington DC area, and as I said before, they have a pretty significant storm down there.”
    Jeremy had seen nothing but darkness and streaks of snow in his window for the past fifteen minutes. Modern planes could land in anything, right? Surely they’d divert if it were too dangerous.
    “The tower has cleared us for landing, but it might be a little rough. Tighten up those belts, if you will, and we’ll have you on the ground in just a few minutes. And thanks for flying Singapore Air.”
    Tighten up