The Burning Men: A Nathaniel Cade Story by Christopher Farnsworth Page B

meaning a throb of fear that went down his spine all the way to his bowels.
    “So maybe it was a freak accident. Bad wiring under the seats. Ball lightning. We haven’t even had our pet scientist check it out yet.”
    Cade just kept looking at him. He never spoke unless it was absolutely necessary. Once again, the message Zach got was disappointment. This was so obvious that Cade believed even Zach should be able to see it.
    Zach was in no mood for guessing games. “All due respect, we don’t even know what this is yet. How do you know this is our job?”
    Cade pointed at the burned man, in the center of the circle.
    “Look,” he said.
    Zach looked. And saw it through Cade’s eyes.
    The burned man. Frozen on that face, burned down to its essence, was a smile.
    Whoever — whatever — he was, he had died happy.
    “This wasn’t an accident,” Cade said again. “This is just where it starts.”
    Just once, Zach would like to report back to the president that it wasn’t something that went bump in the night. Just once.
    Not this time, apparently.
    Cade turned and walked away. Zach followed.
    The burned man stood there, still smiling.
     
    
     
    Cade and Zach exited the theater. Across the street was a mall, quiet and deserted now. The FBI had men standing guard at the perimeter. They paid no attention to Zach and Cade, who carried credentials from high up the chain of command. The agents probably figured they were another pair of official gawkers, one of the many interested parties who wanted to get a good look at the carnage if only to say they’d seen it in person. The lab technicians and photographers waited, not exactly patiently despite earning overtime.
    Zach had a quiet word with them, told them to take the burned man to the local medical examiners’ office. Ramos would meet them there.
    This late at night, only a few reporters were still standing outside the crime-scene tape. Cade turned away just as one of the people in the crowd tried to snap a cell-phone picture. Cade never showed up very well on camera anyway, but he didn’t like having his image out in public.
    “Lock it down,” Cade told Zach.
    Zach was already on it, tapping commands into the one piece of super-spy tech he was allowed. It looked like a smartphone, but its insides were crafted by the maddest scientists at the NSA and CIA and Area 51, for all Zach knew. Zach pressed a button, and suddenly every camera, every phone, and every piece of recording equipment, in a 300-foot radius stopped working properly, fuzzed by low-level EMF interference.
    Then he sent encrypted texts that would issue orders to collect every picture of the crime scene, every second of digital video. Along with the preliminary police reports and 911 audio and transcripts, it would all vanish into a black box sealed with the label PATRIOT ACT. Nobody in the real world could be allowed to see this.
    At the same time, his spy phone was also scanning, sifting for the relevant data through all the bandwidth out there, piggybacking on the NSA’s giant computers, searching for keywords in the billions of Internet posts, phone calls, and instant messages talking about the bombing.
    Right now, they had basically nothing. The victims were identified by the survivors and witnesses. The man who caused it all was a cipher. He came in alone, paid cash for his ticket, and for obvious reasons, they couldn’t check his pockets for ID. They didn’t even know where he lived.
    But Zach’s typed messages would send a truly scary amount of artificial intelligence out into the electronic universe, hunting for leads. Eventually, they’d get a name. Everyone left a trail in the modern world.
    It was all in motion before they walked back to their car.
    Cade started the engine. Zach checked his watch. Not even 1:00 AM yet. Plenty of night left.
     
     
    
     
    “Okay, boys. The phrase of the day is ‘Spontaneous Human Combustion.’”
    Dr. Carolina Ramos stood over the