An Encounter in Atlanta by Ed Howdershelt

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AN ENCOUNTER IN ATLANTA
A Mandi Steele Novel
Copyright (C) 2003 by Ed Howdershelt
ISBN 1-932693-04-1

Prologue:

Ahmed Musaffi combined three prayers on Friday afternoon; one for his
family, one for himself, and one for success in his holy mission. He then got
into the yellow Crown Victoria that had been provided for the occasion and drove
the few miles from Cascade Heights into downtown Atlanta through a drizzling
rain.
The Crown Vic had been 'heavily customized' -- a choice of words that had
been a source of great amusement among those who had labored for a week to pack
the trunk and every concealable cubic inch of the car with plastic explosive.
Every little bump in the road bottomed-out the shocks and springs, and
despite what he'd been told about his load being detonated only by radio, Ahmed
flinched hard at every jolt and swore viciously at the other cars around him.
A red, hard plastic suitcase shifted slightly on the seat next to him. Ahmed
reached to push it back in place and briefly cursed the fool who'd perched it
there, although no wires showed and there was no chance the case would fall.
At a red light one block from his goal, Ahmed wiped his face on his sleeves
and repeated part of his last prayer -- the part for himself -- one more time as
he twisted his grip on the steering wheel.
Clusters of people hurried across the street, some in various costumes he
recognized. Spiderman led Wonder Woman at a laughing dash to the shelter of an
awning, where they were joined by Lara Croft, a tall, furry creature, and a
couple of white-armored stormtroopers.
Ridiculous fantasies of the unfaithful, thought Ahmed. There was only one
true book under heaven and no man had ever been so foolish as to try to make a
movie of it.
Ahmed's little group had been instructed to strike on the second day of the
science fiction convention. No reasons had been given for choosing this
particular event as a target and -- as far as Ahmed was concerned -- none were
required. Their leader had spoken, and his words were the words of Allah in
matters of their holy cause.
When the light turned green, Ahmed's jangling nerves caused him to goose the
gas pedal. The back tires spun uselessly on the wet pavement until he rather
shakily let up on the gas a bit.
Continuing up the street, he turned left into the covered driveway of the
Rivage Hotel's reception area and joined a line of cars waiting their turns to
load or offload passengers and luggage at the big glass doors at the top of the
driveway.
Ahmed's was the fifth car in line when a family of five came through those
doors and walked past him, evidently on their way to some part of the science
fiction convention.
The three children all wore costumes; the two boys were waving their hollow
plastic lightsabers at each other and the blonde girl -- perhaps as old as
twelve -- was wearing a Batgirl costume and slinging her cape dramatically as
she walked.
A pang of pity lanced through Ahmed, but then he remembered his teachings,
hardened his heart, and severely chastised himself for his momentary weakness.
They were just infidels. Untaught, unholy, and therefore unfit to live. He
moved forward another carlength, and again watched the family in his rearview
mirror as they stood waiting to cross the street.
The blonde girl grinningly faced into the gusting wind to make her cape
billow behind her. Too bad, Ahmed thought appraisingly. The girl might possibly
have been found worthy of conversion to Islam.
Or not, he appended, remembering the dancers at the strip club the night
before. After all, even infidel females were good for purposes of pleasure and
labor. In the pure world that he and other holy martyrs would bring into being,
their children would be raised according to the teachings of the Prophet and the
women would be allowed to live only so long as they dutifully served the
righteous and faithful.
The car by the doors moved away as people got into the car behind it. It
then moved away, as well, and Ahmed was only one carlength away from where he
could aim his fake taxi up the ramp at the doors.
He eyed the walkway ramp -- easily five meters wide, with no posts or other
impediments -- and the doors above. In the center was a revolving door, flanked
on either side by doors that swung open. They would prove no barrier. All he had
to do was ram through and get the car into the lobby, then press the button on
the transmitter in his raincoat pocket.
Motion in his side-rearview mirror and the sound of something hollow
clattering on the ground caused him to look away from the doors.
A truly beautiful blonde woman in what appeared to be little more than a
bathing suit and boots stood just behind his car. She seemed to be looking for
something, probably some sort of accessory to her scandalously inadequate
costume.
Thinking that she must also be a visitor to the science fiction convention,
Ahmed's eyes locked on her marvelous bare legs and ample bosom for some moments
as she crouched and knelt to try to reach whatever had fallen beneath the taxi.
Her eyes met his in the mirror and she smiled coyly as she walked up the
driveway. Allah be praised for letting such a magnificent woman be his last
sight on Earth! And her glorious breasts were nearly leaping out of her costume!
Concentrating on her approaching breasts, Ahmed never saw -- and was
conscious only long enough to barely feel -- her fist slam into the side of his
head. The blow sent him sprawling against the luggage on the seat and into
oblivion.
The woman quickly shifted the car into neutral, went behind it to grab the
bumper, and began pulling the Crown Vic backward down the ramp to the street,
where she jumped to the front of the car, lifted it by the bumper and reached
under it to grip the frame, and launched upward with the Crown Vic dangling from
her grasp.
From the indoor cafe across the street, Mohammed Jamal took his eyes off the
policeman and another man who were having a light lunch at a nearby table and
stared with incredulous awe as a half-naked blonde woman lifted the Crown
Victoria and seemed to leap into the sky with it.
He'd frozen in mid-sip of his coffee with as much complete, mind-boggling
shock as anyone else witnessing the event, but he recovered fairly quickly as he
realized that there was still a slim chance to set off the bomb in or near the
canyon-like confines of the streets.
Hurriedly putting down his coffee cup, he reached for the transmitter in his
left coat pocket, but the chair arm got in his way. He stood up, wasting
precious seconds and knocking his chair over as he continued to stare upward
through the window at the Crown Vic. He'd finally managed to get his left hand
into his pocket as the two men he'd been watching also stood up and began coming
at him.
The one in a police uniform pointed at Jamal and said, "Freeze!" as he
reached for his sidearm. Jamal -- his radio transmitter momentarily forgotten --
made a grab for his Beretta 9mm pistol in his right coat pocket.
Jamal had thought the cop was the greater danger. He was wrong; before Jamal
could even finish bringing his own gun into line with the two men, the other man
yanked a pistol from a shoulder holster, leveled it at Jamal, and fired twice.
Mohammed Jamal felt the hot slugs plunge completely through his chest as
their impact slammed him back against the window facing the street. He was
barely aware that he fired his Beretta as he toppled; for a moment he actually
wondered why the light fixture by the coffee bar exploded.
The bullets that had passed through Jamal hit the window behind him a
split-second before Jamal did, turning it into a ten-foot-tall spiderweb of
shattered safety glass that collapsed around Jamal's body in a glittering cloud
as he fell to the sidewalk below.
The bushes below the window snagged Jamal's coat and violently twisted him
in mid-air, then he fell to the sidewalk on his left side, hearing and feeling
the bones of his arm snap as his head slammed against the concrete. Momentarily
stunned, Mohammed Jamal fought to remain conscious and stared upward, trying to
locate the Crown Victoria.
There! Almost directly overhead, an odd-shaped dark dot against the sky!
Jamal waveringly aimed his pistol at the men who leaned out of the window frame
above him and prayed to Allah that his transmitter hadn't been broken.
Forcing the unfeeling thumb and fingers of his shattered left arm to squeeze
the small transmitter took a supreme effort. Jamal cast the pistol aside in
frustration and dropped his right hand over his left to help it close on the
transmitter even as more bullets tore through his chest and skull.

Chapter One

Looking down from the cafe window at the man he'd just shot, Ed Cade saw the
brilliant overhead flash reflected in the windows of the hotel across the street
and realized that something -- likely the car -- had exploded above the city.
Some guy dressed as a knight was standing smack in the middle of the street,
aiming a camera of some sort straight up at the sky. The light turned green at
the intersection and the guy almost tripped over his sword trying to scramble
out of the street.
Cade stepped back from the window and looked to his left and right. There
was only the Atlanta cop -- Avery -- standing next to him on the right. On his
left, one person still sat by the windows, apparently frozen in stark, staring
terror.
"Get away from the windows," said Cade.
Avery stepped back as Cade grabbed the frozen guy's coat to pull him to his
feet and insistently repeated, "Get away from the window, dammit!"
The man's eyes fixed on Cade's Glock and he said nothing, but as bits of
debris pelted down on the street outside the window, he stood quickly on shaky
legs and tried to comply.
His knees failed and he wound up kneeling, then sitting on the floor. Avery
came over to get a grip on the guy's other shoulder and they dragged him away
from the windows.
The rain of unidentifiable debris slackened quickly and seemed to end, and
Avery started back toward the window to look up between the buildings.
"Avery!" said Cade. "Not yet. Count to thirty before you go near that
window."
Cade put his Glock back in its shoulder holster under his field jacket and
looked around again. Nine people. Five men, four women. Two had apparently left
the cafe.
He heard more debris-rain hit the street and buildings outside and saw Avery
cast a wondering glance at him.
"Some of it had farther to fall," said Cade.
As if to punctuate his words, a car bumper slammed into the street, narrowly
missing a black Lexus, and spinningly bounced out of view toward the
intersection.
Glancing past the group clustered by the cafe entrance, Cade saw the two
missing women hurrying past the reception desk and he took off after them at a
trot.
He caught up with them by the elevators and didn't bother with
introductions; they'd likely remember him.
Stepping in front of them, he said, "Ladies, get back to the cafe. You're
witnesses to a shooting."
"I'm not going back in there!" the one on the right said in a
near-hysterical tone. "I'm not! You can't make me!"
Snatching her purse off her shoulder, Cade said, "I won't have to. The
cops'll find you with whatever's in this."
Turning to the other woman, he asked, "Are you going to give me a hard time,
too?"
Shaking her head slightly, she said, "No. I didn't think we should leave,
but Judy..."
Interrupting her, Cade said, "Cool. Let's go, then."
Putting his arm through hers, he led the way back to the restaurant. After a
moment, Judy followed. Cade turned the ladies and Judy's purse over to Avery,
then stepped away from the group to have a look at the street below the window.
The street was empty of people. Between the blonde hauling the car upstairs,
the gunshots, and the blast in the sky, most of them had at least had sense
enough to get off the sidewalks and under the cover of the Rivage's
drive-through.
The rent-a-cop who'd been directing foot traffic across the street between
the hotels was one of those under cover. Cade whistled to get his attention and
pointed to the body on the sidewalk, then yelled that he should keep people away
from it. The guy nodded and headed toward the body. Cade went back to Avery, who
was talking to someone on his radio.
Avery finished his immediate conversation, then turned to Cade and said,
"Teams five and nine got lucky, too. Two dead and one in custody. The guys on
the roof are coming down, so we'll have some help here in a few minutes."
Nodding, Cade said, "I'll go out and keep the tourists away from the one on
the sidewalk."
Extending a hand, Avery said, "Okay. Hey, if I don't see you again, it's
been good working with you. Why won't they tell us where you extra guys came
from?"
Shaking Avery's hand, Cade said, "Damned if I know. I'm from Florida, if it
helps any."
"Oh, yeah," laughed Avery. "That helps a bunch."
"Great. Later, then."
Moving past the coffee bar, Cade stopped and looked around for the
attendant, then knocked on the counter. A man in a suit separated himself from
the crowd by the door and came to say that the coffee bar was closed.
"You're management?" asked Cade.
"Yes, sir. Look, we're rather busy at the moment..."
"I'm the guy who shot out your window and I have to go guard a body on the
sidewalk. How much is a coffee to go?"
The man seemed to have to find a way to attach the two concepts in his mind
before he said, "Uh, just take one, sir."
"Thanks. Why not offer all those spooked people a cup, too? It'll look great
on your record if you take charge and keep them quiet and happy until all the
note-taking is finished."
The guy glanced at the group and seemed to realize that this was his
middle-management chance to achieve some favorable and potentially useful
self-publicity. He nodded and stepped behind the counter to draw Cade a coffee
as he called the attendant over.
"Yes, Mr. D'Angelo?" asked the attendant.
Handing the coffee to Cade, D'Angelo said, "Go ahead and open back up,
Manuel. Free coffee for anybody who's supposed to be in here until the cops are
gone."
"Yes, sir," said Manuel.
"Could I have an extra coffee?" asked Cade.
Manuel drew another coffee and handed it to him. Cade thanked him and headed
for the stairs to the street. The rent-a-cop was standing by the body, as
requested.
He said, "You're the guy who told me to watch the body."
Cade handed him the extra coffee and said, "Yup, sure am. Here, I brought
you a coffee."
Someone aimed a camera toward them and Cade turned to face the cop --
Davies, by his nametag -- as the camera flashed. He kicked the gun that had
fallen into the bushes over by the body and toed it under a fold in the coat.
"Should you be moving the evidence around like that?" asked Davies.
"So tell 'em I kicked it. I just came down here to get your name and badge
number for the record and secure the scene."
Shrugging as he looked around, Cade said, "Now the scene is secure, I have
my info, and you have your coffee. Just stay put until the cops get here."
Davies almost choked on his first sip of coffee.
He glanced down at the body, then stared at Cade as he asked, "But... You
mean you aren't a cop?!"
"Never said I was," said Cade. "I've just been working with them today. See
you later."
As Cade turned to go, the guard said, "Hey, wait. Is there any word about
the blonde? The woman who, uh... who flew off... with the car?"
"I haven't heard anything."
Glancing up at the sky, Davies said, "God, I hope she wasn't still hanging
onto that car when it blew. I was looking right at it, but it was too far up...
Do you think she...?"
"No idea," said Cade. "Later."
With that, he headed back up the steps and into the hotel, where he gave
Davies' info to Avery and refilled his coffee cup, then sat down in a corner of
the cafe with an incident report form to wait for Lieutenant Bain.

Chapter Two

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.

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