The Kill Room

first, Moreno was enrolled in American schools down there, but after his mother’s suicide he changed to local schools, where he did well.
    “Suicide?” Sachs asked.
    “Apparently she’d had difficulty with the move…and her husband’s job kept him traveling to drilling and exploration sites throughout the area. He wasn’t home very much.”
    Laurel continued her portrait of the victim: Even at a young age Moreno had grown to hate the exploitation of the native Central and South Americans by U.S. government and corporate interests. After college, in Mexico City, he became a radio host and activist, writing and broadcasting vicious attacks on America and what he called its twenty-first-century imperialism.
    “He settled in Caracas and formed the Local Empowerment Movement as an alternative to workers to develop self-reliance and not have to look to American and European companies for jobs and U.S. aid for help. There are a half dozen branches throughout South and Central America and the Caribbean.”
    Rhyme was confused. “It’s hardly the bio of a terrorist.”
    Laurel said, “Exactly. But I have to tell you that Moreno spoke favorably about some terrorist groups: al-Qaeda, al-Shabaab, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement in Xinjiang, China. And he formed some alliances with several extremist groups in Latin America: the Colombian ELN—the National Liberation Army—and FARC, as well as the United Self-Defense Forces. He had strong sympathy for the Sendero Luminoso in Peru.”
    “Shining Path?” Sachs asked.
    “Yes.”
    The enemy of my enemy is my friend, Rhyme reflected. Even if they blow up children. “But still?” he asked. “A targeted killing? For that?”
    Laurel explained, “Recently Moreno’s blogs and broadcasts were growing more and more virulently anti-American. He called himself ‘the Messenger of Truth.’ And some of his messages were truly vicious. He really hated this country. Now, there were rumors that people had been inspired by him to shoot American tourists or servicemen or lob bombs at U.S. embassies or businesses overseas. But I couldn’t find one incident in which he actually said a single word ordering or even suggesting that a specific attack be carried out. Inspiring isn’t the same as plotting.”
    Though he’d known her only minutes Rhyme suspected that Ms. Nance Laurel had looked very, very hard for any such words.
    “But NIOS claimed there was intelligence that Moreno was planning an actual attack: a bombing of an oil company headquarters in Miami. They picked up a phone conversation, in Spanish, and the voiceprint was confirmed to be Moreno’s.”
    She now rifled through her battered briefcase and consulted notes. “This is Moreno: He said, ‘I want to go after American Petroleum Drilling and Refining, Florida. On Wednesday.’ The other party, unknown: ‘The tenth. May tenth?’ Moreno: ‘Yes, noon, when employees are leaving for lunch.’ Then the other party: ‘How’re you going to, you know, get them there?’ Moreno: ‘Trucks.’ Then there was some garbled conversation. And Moreno again: ‘And this’s just the start. I have a lot more messages like this one planned.’”
    She put the transcript back in her case. “Now, the company—APDR—has two facilities in or near Florida: its southeastern headquarters in Miami and an oil rig off the coast. It couldn’t be the rig since Moreno mentioned trucks. So NIOS was sure the headquarters, on Brickell Avenue, was going to be the target.
    “At the same time, intelligence analysts found that companies with a connection to Moreno had been shipping diesel fuel, fertilizer and nitromethane to the Bahamas in the last month.”
    Three popular ingredients in IEDs. Those substances were what had obliterated the federal building in Oklahoma City. Where they also had been delivered by truck.
    Laurel continued, “It’s clear that Metzger believed if Moreno was killed before the bomb was smuggled into the United States his underlings wouldn’t go through with the plan. He was shot the day before the incident in Miami. On May ninth.”
    So far it sounded like, whether you supported assassinations or not, Metzger’s solution had saved a number of lives.
    Rhyme was about to mention this but Laurel got there first. She said, “It wasn’t an attack Moreno was talking about, though. It was a peaceful protest. On the tenth of May, at noon, a half dozen trucks showed up in front of the APDR headquarters. They