Drone

When Jacinto’s wife got sick a long time ago, he took her to one of Victor’s clinics. It was her appendix, and they took it out for free. Very nice people, he remembered. And he remembered how surprised he was when Victor came in to see him and his wife. Mr. Bravo, everyone said. But Jacinto called him Victor, because they were children together, and they were friends. It made Jacinto very happy to see his old friend.

But his friend was killed by the Americans. God damn them, he thought.

A man came to Jacinto yesterday. He said he was Victor’s friend. That made Jacinto happy. Jacinto told him he was Victor’s friend, too.

“Really? That’s an amazing coincidence. It’s almost like Victor wanted us to meet,” the man had said.

Jacinto thought about that. The man was right. It truly was amazing.

The man talked to Jacinto about Victor for a long time, about what a good man he was. Then he asked Jacinto to push his ice cream cart to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre tonight.

“Why?” Jacinto asked. He didn’t push his cart in that direction very often.

“Because Victor would want you to. Aren’t you his friend?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Then will you do this thing for Victor? He would want you to.”

Jacinto thought about it. “Yes. I will do this thing. For Victor.”

So Jacinto did it.

And when the man told Jacinto to push his cart into the crowd as far as he could go, he did. And when he told him to be there at seven o’clock, and not one minute later, he did that, too, didn’t he? Jacinto didn’t know why he was supposed to be there at seven. But he did it because Victor would want him to do these things.

Because Victor was his friend.

Jacinto checked his watch again. It read 7:03.

The sun exploded. At least that’s what it seemed like to Jacinto.

A blinding white light. And noise, like ice picks in his ears.

The explosion shredded Jacinto’s little ice cream cart. People were blown over in a big circle all around him, like cornstalks after the harvest.

Jacinto didn’t know that Victor’s friend had packed his cart with C4 embedded with hundreds of ball bearings that morning. When it exploded, it acted like a daisy cutter, mowing down everyone in its path, including Jacinto, who was cut in half at the waist.

The side of Jacinto’s face hurt where it was smashed against one of the cement squares with handprints. He couldn’t move, but he watched the blood filling up the handprint next to his face. The hand was much bigger than Jacinto’s. He wondered whose hand it was.

48

Washington, D.C.

Early Saturday morning, Bill Donovan briefed President Myers and her cabinet.

“At least a dozen attacks in as many states, with more reports coming in.”

“Sounds like they’re on the move,” Early said.

“Casualties?” Myers asked.

“So far, thirty dead, ten times that many wounded, mostly minor injuries. RPGs, drive-by shootings, grenade attacks. Bombs were detonated at a movie theater in Hollywood, a Walmart in Knoxville, and a rodeo in Oklahoma City.”

“And we think it’s Bravo people?” Myers asked.

“Printed flyers read ¡VIVA VICTOR! at several sites; Facebook posts and Twitter feeds say the same thing. Sure looks like these attacks were in retaliation for the death of Victor Bravo.”

“You can thank the damn Mexican television and radio stations in this country for that. They’re putting blood in the water,” one of Donovan’s assistant secretaries offered. “We can pull their FCC licenses right now, shut them down until they agree to stop running the Victor Bravo love letters.”

“Then they would just run them on the Internet,” West countered. The FBI director was clearly frustrated. “They’re already there anyway.”

“Then we shut those down, too, on the basis that they’re fostering terror attacks. The Patriot Act grants us that power.”

“I don’t think free speech is the enemy here,” Myers said. She turned to Donovan. “Question for you, Bill. The Hollywood and Oklahoma City bombings look like suicide attacks. Were they?”

“We’ve got security camera footage on both. Neither exhibited the classic signs—nervousness, eyes straight ahead, and the other telltale psychological markers. Locals ran fingerprints but no hits in our threat or crime databases. Probably illegals. We’ll know more about Knoxville in a couple of hours.”

“And we’re certain it’s the Bravos behind all of this?”

“Fans of Victor Bravo, for sure,” Donovan said.

“Or who want us to think they’re fans,” Early offered.

“What do you mean?” Myers asked.

“The voices on the Cruzalta tape. The Iranians are connected to this somehow.”

“If the Iranians were connected with anyone, it was Castillo, not Bravo,” Donovan said. “And there were only two voices on the tape. No way an operation this size could be carried out by just two assholes. I still think it’s the Bravos.”

“I do, too. But weapons, training—the Iranians have contributed something,” Early insisted. “The Iranians had uploaded the El Paso footage, too. Their finger’s in the pie somewhere.”

“What does that get us, Mike?” Myers asked.