set yourself on fire, instead of whatever it was you planned to burn.
With gasoline and most other accelerants, it was the fumes that burn and not the raw liquid. Light up a sloppy Molotov cocktail too soon and it was fifty-fifty that the contents of the bottle, under mounting pressure, would ignite before you made your pitch, exploding in the thrower’s hand or near enough to douse him with an unexpected wave of searing flame. The burns might not be fatal but they almost certainly would be debilitating, leaving the potential arsonist to be arrested at the scene and carted off to some burn ward where he or she would writhe in agony while cops and fire inspectors questioned him in relays, lining up a trip to prison for the clumsy firebug.
Bolan’s plan eliminated chance, assuming he found the proper vantage point from which to hurl his fiery wakeup call.
And he already had a spot in mind.
Behind the house on Delmar Street there was a spacious fenced-in yard with trees, a swimming pool and hot tub for the faithful who had paid their rent, plus something that resembled a sauna. The fence was redwood, nothing tricky about scaling it, and Bolan was inside with cocktails clanking lightly in a shopping bag before anyone saw him from the house.
The good news: there were no lookouts or dogs patrolling the grounds. He was alone inside the yard, with access to the back door of the cult house free and clear.
Crouching behind a stately oak tree, Bolan struck one of his leftover matches and lit those attached to his first Molotov. He’d left a clear place for his gloved hand to grip the wine bottle and pitched it overhand, lofting it high atop Lee’s roof, where it exploded with a whoosh and set the shingles blazing over a dark dormer window. Runnels of liquid fire streaked down the shingles to the gutter, where they ran along the length of the third floor.
He primed the second cocktail, let it fly off to the right of his first pitch, then clutched his M-4 carbine close and jogged toward the back door.
* * *
AFTER INVESTING JUST over a million dollars of the Congregation’s money—meaning Shin Bon-jae’s—to buy his home and headquarters in San Francisco, Lee Jay-hyun had lobbied for an extra outlay on security. Aside from sensitive alarms on doors and windows, with the pass codes changed erratically, he’d modernized the building’s smoke alarms and sprinkler system to protect the house from random accidents as well as home invasions.
Thus it was that his first warning of attack came from the attic, where alarms began to beep and blare above his study, driving spikes of pain into his ears. Lee could not smell the smoke yet, but they’d never had a false alarm since moving in, so he jabbed a finger at the intercom that occupied a corner of his huge desk, barking out, “Security! The attic! Smoke alarm! Right now!”
He got a “Roger that” in return and pictured two of his disciples sprinting for the attic stairs with fire extinguishers in hand, prepared to save the day if there were any flames to douse. And if the situation was beyond them, God forbid, they would alert him to immediately summon help.
Not that Lee cared for the prospect of dialing 9-1-1 just now.
He and the Congregation were trapped in a law-enforcement spotlight since the gassings in Los Angeles, and while the various authorities had come up empty-handed in their first search of the cult’s headquarters, why should he invite them back with sledgehammers and axes to defile the place?
Lee awaited word from his men in the attic when, downstairs, he heard a different alarm start chiming from the ground floor. Glancing at a monitor beside his desktop intercom, he saw the floor plan of the building with the patio’s sliding-glass door blinking red.
Lee jabbed the intercom again, shouting, “Security! The TV room is open! Go at once! Report on how and why!”
His mind’s eye saw more men racing to carry out his order. All members of the cult’s in-house security detachment had been duly trained and licensed to meet California standards for a team of private officers carrying licensed guns. They were as legal as the rent-a-cops employed at shopping malls, concerts and any other public venue that could be named, schooled over several weekends in the Justice Department at City College of San Francisco.
And, if required, they’d shoot to kill without an instant’s hesitation.
Lee supposed some resident of headquarters had heard the smoke alarms and rushed in from the yard, forgetting in his or her haste to cancel the back-door alarm. Thus, he was startled by the sound of gunfire from below—not the pop of pistols his guards habitually carried, but short, ripping bursts of automatic fire.
One more jab at the intercom, the red button this time, which would broadcast Lee’s voice throughout the house. “Intruders!” he called out to everyone inside the building. “Armed intruders on the premises! If you cannot evacuate, defend yourselves!”
Thinking, Good luck with that, you sheep, as he opened his right-hand desk drawer and retrieved the Heckler & Koch USP he kept hidden there. Chambered for powerful .40-caliber Smith & Wesson ammo, the piece, like all firearms within the house, was duly registered and licensed. Lee had practiced with it at a firing range until he had no doubt of his ability to score bull’s-eyes.
Of course, that was on paper, not a living man who came in shooting back at him.
Time for police, he thought, but still resisted picking up the telephone. He trusted his security detachment, to a point, but if they failed him, there was still his secret stairway leading to a strip of grass beside the house, where he could exit from the yard unseen by anyone inside.
Forcing himself to breathe and to seek a place of steely calm inside, deep down, Lee checked his pistol, making sure there was a live round in the chamber and another thirteen in its magazine, then sat at his desk and waited to find out what would happen next.
Should he call Park Hae-sung?
The notion died at birth. And if Lee summoned the authorities, their next search would include retrieval of his phone records, already captured once, though there had been no calls to Park listed on those. They’d been particularly careful to use burner cells and the ever-dwindling public telephones still found at random sites around the city. Discovery of contact through the bills would cinch the FBI’s suspicion of Park’s operations as an agent of the SSD and likely result in his arrest. What would happen to Lee then?
Better to exercise his right to self-defense under the US Constitution like a true American and take his chances—though, if Lee were honest with himself, he had to grant that he was frightened by the prospect.
Terrified, in fact.
Clutching his USP, he listened as the battle sounds drew closer, rising through his home’s floor toward the third, while he began to smell the tang of smoke.
* * *
TWO MEN RAN out through open sliding doors onto the patio, took one look at the man in black approaching with his guns and flung themselves into the swimming pool, perhaps with the misguided thought that chlorinated water would stop bullets.
Bolan left them paddling for their lives and mewling strangely like a pair of unhappy kittens, detouring from his first target—likely the kitchen door—and through the sliding portal they’d left open for him so fortuitously. He met no other members of the Congregation as he barged into a kind of sitting room, its furniture arranged to face what looked to be a fifty-two-inch Samsung LED TV mounted on the wall.
Whatever else
