Sabotage by Dale Wiley Read Free Book Online Page B

attention felt good, but he answered their questions grudgingly. They hadn’t wanted to talk to him much before this.
    They were all supposed to be manning the phones and Internet, looking for leads, fielding the mind-numbing amount of unsolicited information that came into the FBI on a day like this. But they all wanted to know what it was like to be Grant Miller, the superstar who shone on September 11 and saved lives as a young agent, only to move higher and become a notable laughingstock. The questions he answered prior to that day had been mainly about the laughingstock part, so, if the situation hadn’t been so tragic, he might not have minded this change in focus.
    At one time, he was impressive physically—tall and thin with a southern frat boy haircut. His sandy brown hair was cut shorter now, and he was still good-looking, but anyone could tell he quit trying, at least for the time being. He gained twenty-five pounds over his peak shape, mostly around his waist. He didn’t want to think of himself that way, but it got harder by the minute to ignore, and he finally faced reality and bought bigger pants. He found he didn’t get noticed as often by women when he was out, and that cut both ways; it meant fewer questions about his past, but it also meant he was not the All-Star level closer he once was. In the moments when he let himself consider these things fully, he knew his drop in luck was more about confidence than his weight; he had lost his swagger.
    That afternoon, when someone attacked Lake of the Ozarks—of all places—everyone assumed that St. Louis would be assigned to handle the investigation. It was, after all, the closest office geographically and generally considered better all-around than Kansas City. But KC drew the assignment, and Grant, now the king of all conspiracy theorists, thought it felt like one more shot at him. God, he hoped not, but he had reason to feel this way.
    St. Louis, of course, was a conspiracy theory unto itself, when he was moved there to look into organized crime in the seedy east side of St. Louis, just over the river in Illinois. All the jokes that could be made about such a thing were made, and Grant endured it, ever-so-lucky to still have a job.
    But those prying questions were gone now, replaced by the somewhat wistful questions of those who felt left out of the operation, desk jockeying while their rivals across the state were rushing to the lake to piece together what happened. Likely, many of the agents who weren’t called immediately to help would blame him, as if he controlled everything but the weather. He knew he would just have to deal with it. Even in the worst case, in a day or two, some of the agents would be called to help. It would probably be mop-up duty, but, at least, they could brag to other offices they had been involved. Unfortunately, with today’s well-lit map of tragedy, many offices were being called to duty.
    He was at his desk, a cubicle under fluorescent light and a far cry from the corner office in midtown Manhattan he inhabited before the fall. His assignment was to try and put together a map of all locations the terrorists hit, between fielding calls from know-it-alls and crackpots. The whole thing didn’t make sense. The attacks were all over the map, literally—east and west coast, north and south. More in cities, of course, but even a couple of attacks in the country. They did not have a fixed number of casualties, but they got the psyche right. Unlike past attacks, focusing as much on icons and people, these attacks happened anywhere. Hundreds were dead, and that number would surely rise.
    The crazy callers blamed everyone from Islamic jihadists, to the Tea Party, and even one theory involved PBS. It was quite boring and demeaning, but it was all he had at the moment to do.
    Grant heard a buzz in his earpiece. “Call for you. Line 7.”
    That was unusual. Line 7 was not one of the public lines. Almost all of his calls were routed