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it?” Cobb asked Nickerson as he steeled a knife with a short, wicked-looking obsidian blade. “They’ll go for it because big-city hot shots or not, deep down they’re just like some limp-dick chieftain in the Old Country: small-minded, predictable, and therefore susceptible to fear. Ignorance breeds it, fear, which is useful, as you know.”
    “Damn straight, Mr. Cobb,” Nickerson replied, turning the blade. “Justifiable in a state of war.”
    They were in the garage in the City of Commerce. Johnson was sacked out on the cots. Kelleher and Watson worked at computers. Hernandez watched coffee drip and worked more salve into his new tattoos.
    Cobb made a pistol with his fingers, aimed it at Nickerson, and said, “Perfectly justifiable in dire times such as these. People who get power have to be worms in order to get power. What we’re doing is just electrifying the soil they live in, getting it so hot and shocking they’ll be forced to surface and squirm in the light of day. Then we’ll have them.”
    Hernandez came over, set a mug in front of Cobb, said, “With all due respect: the pharmacy? Is that the place to maximize our efforts?”
    Cobb ran two fingers over the spiderweb of scars on the left side of his face and considered Hernandez with cold intent. Hernandez was brave to the point of being impetuous, which made him one of Cobb’s best men and also his worst man. Hernandez had amazing physical skills and would fight to the death if provoked, but he tended to ad lib on plans when it was unnecessary. And he couldn’t see the big picture, a general weakness of character and intellect, at least as far as Cobb was concerned.
    “For this to work, Mr. Hernandez, we don’t want anything that could be construed as political,” Cobb said at last. “Nothing symbolic, if you will. No statements. Nothing to suggest this is anything other than a single maniac at work. So why the pharmacy? It’s mundane. It’s everyday, and because of that more people will relate to it, and the fear and the panic and the pressure will grow. We want every citizen of L.A. to feel like their daily lives are jeopardized.”
    End of discussion. He turned from Hernandez, glanced at the atomic clock on the wall—fourteen hundred hours—and said, “Okay, Mr. Watson, upload it.”
    “Straightaway, Mr. Cobb,” Watson said, and began giving orders to his iPad. “I’m taking it through scrubbing sites in India, Pakistan, and Hong Kong. Zero chance they’ll pull an IPN on us.”
    Cobb understood. “Make sure you mix up the paths you take online. It’s just like being on the job. No routine routes. Change it up, all the time.”
    “Got the Facebook page up,” Kelleher said, pivoted in his chair, stroked his red beard. “You like?”
    Cobb glanced at the iPad in front of the big man. A Facebook page filled the screen, topped with the headline NO PRISONERS: FACES OF WAR L.A.
    “Outstanding,” Cobb said. “Show them their ignorance, sow fear through them virtually. I’m going to catch a nap before things really ramp up.”
    “Sixteen hundred?” Hernandez asked.
    “Yes,” Cobb said before going to a cot and lying on it with one arm flung over his eyes. As a matter of survival, he had long ago taught his mind and body to shut down on command. When they did so this time, he plunged into a deep, dark void that after an hour gave way to dreams.
    It was night. The chill wind smelled of wood smoke, tobacco smoke, coffee brewing, horse sweat, and the high desert. Boots crunched on sand and rock. Dogs began to bark before gunfire threw jagged flares through the night.
    Women and children began to scream. In his dreams, Cobb heard men begging for mercy. He felt nothing but satisfaction at the screaming, at their pleas, and with that grew a sense of righteousness that surged when the first explosion hyperlit his mind, shook his body so hard he thought for a moment he’d been hit by the rocket-propelled grenade.
    Then Cobb bolted