by Fritz Galt
“Sure,” she said, grabbing his hand. “I think I’m good for one more round.”
Chapter 27
Dark-haired, boyishly handsome and stylishly foreign-looking, Milos Guerve had established himself, in his own eyes, as the Bay Area’s preeminent investigative tele-journalist.
As his two cameramen took up positions around him, he worked to keep his hair from blowing into his face. One establishing shot would capture the looming Golden Gate Bridge over one shoulder. Below that lay the long golden strand of Baker Beach.
But the close-up from another angle was the killer shot. It would capture his face bathed in early morning rays of sunlight. Slightly out of focus yet menacing would be a line of American naval vessels advancing on the city.
The timing was perfect. Morning news hour, stand back. This story would eclipse 9/11.
He nodded to his producer, focused on his cue cards and took one last swipe at his long black hair.
He lifted the microphone with its puffy wind muffler to his lips and waited for the signal.
The producer pointed to him.
“Good morning, Andrea. I’m standing in north San Francisco near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. Behind me, you might be able to make out preparations underway by the military to secure the city. It’s an operation the likes of which San Francisco has not seen since the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906.”
The producer cued the second camera.
He shifted his stance so that the close-up could catch the approaching vessels.
“San Francisco city government has received word from relevant military authorities that there might be a massive terrorist strike against the city’s physical infrastructure. That might include airports, roadways, bridges, tunnels, power plants and various other high profile targets.”
He paused while his assistant unveiled the next card.
“From the looks of it, Andrea, nearly every agency on the West Coast has converged on the city. We’ve heard reports that fifty military airplanes, helicopters and unmanned drones will soon be circling the sky above me. As you can see, a Navy battleship, four Navy destroyers and twenty-five patrol boats have moved in to protect the waters around the bay. But they aren’t the only folks interested in these unfolding events.”
He pointed to the hillside behind him.
“An estimated half million bystanders have lined the hills overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, perhaps expecting this great national symbol to be the next al-Qaeda target.”
Just then another camera crew, jockeying for a better position, bumped into him from behind. He lowered his microphone. “Hey, watch it, buddy.”
He took a moment to resume his pose and collect his thoughts.
“As you can see, this has become a media feeding frenzy and people are jostling each other to get a better view. Andrea.”
Andrea’s voice came over his earpiece. “Can you tell us anything about the origins of this threat?”
“Well,” he continued to read. “Word filtered in to the city’s news bureaus in the early hours of this morning that federal agencies had identified a credible threat today to unspecified Bay Area infrastructure. FBI, military, and state, county and local law enforcement are working together to ascertain the nature of this threat, and with hope foil any terrorist strike. Needless to say, the specter of 9/11 is foremost on everyone’s mind today.”
As Milos spoke, the whine of fighter jets began to drown out his words.
“As you can hear, military aircraft are beginning to patrol the airspace above the city. Andrea.”
Andrea was trying to ask him another question.
“I can’t exactly make out the question you are asking, but I will attempt to answer it anyway,” he said, waiting for his next cue card. “I can report that units of the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard are all on red alert…and in fact carrying out combat missions with live ammunition as we speak…searching for just who might be behind this latest threat.”
The cacophony rose to such a volume, that he had to cover his ears. In his entire eight years of covering the news, he had never seen any story so terrifying.
Tray Bolton pulled up to the Coast Guard station in his shiny new Testarossa, lifted the car door and stepped out, briefcase in hand.
In addition to feeling confident, he felt a mischievous smile creep across his face. Planting Ferrar’s identification cards on a television news crew at the Presidio as a diversion was a touch of genius, a crowning achievement on what he knew would be the last day of his life.
Before him stood a small, square building made out of white-painted iron. It might survive a conventional war, but it would never withstand a nuclear blast.
To his satisfaction, he noticed a truck several hundred feet down the wharf. On the trailer rested a shipping container wrapped like a gift in red ribbon.
He would deliver the present.
Stepping inside the station, he found a complete communications center with phones, radios and nautical maps.
A female officer jumped to her feet when she saw his insignia. “Commander,” she said, saluting.
He pulled a Glock with a silencer from his gun belt and drilled a bullet through her head. She fell back without a cry, smashing into a row of maps that rolled one by one on top of her.
The building had one large, open room much like a small bus terminal, and several smaller rooms, such as an armory, sleeping quarters, weight room and a small mess hall. He caught a whiff of coffee brewing behind the dead communications officer’s desk, and just outside the window he could see and hear Bonnie’s cutter undergoing make-ready.
The USS Vigilant was a beautiful Reliance Class cutter, its prow sharp and proud, its thirty-four-foot beam solid even in the roughest seas.
Two hundred and ten feet long with a displacement of one thousand tons, it would serve his purposes well.
Two petty officers had finished inspecting her and were approaching the office. Tray waited just inside the door as it swung open.
“There’s a security lockdown on the entire port,” the first was saying as he stepped into the room. “We should be the only ship out there.”
“I’ve got her topped off and ready.”
Tray stepped forward and shot the first officer in the side of his head. The second had little time to react.
Tray dropped to one knee and plugged him with a silenced bullet to the heart. The man twisted away, struggling to make it back out the door. But he was dead before he hit the ground.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Tray asked, and pulled the body back into the building. A trail of blood smeared the pavement just beyond the door and across the threshold.
Looking out through the large window, he couldn’t see anyone still onboard. There had to be several servicemen below deck.
After stepping over the bodies, he opened the bayside door and signaled the truck to approach. Within a minute, his four men surrounded him, each dressed in civilian clothes appropriate for the cool weather.
He motioned them inside the room. There, one man peeled off the white uniform of the first dead officer and quickly donned it. The other man’s uniform was far too soiled with blood to be of any use.
Then the four waited for his next instruction.
“Now we take the ship,” he said, steeling himself and holding the Glock upright by his shoulder.
The others drew guns and, with well-timed precision, rushed out the door and stormed the Vigilant. They started by working their way upward into the bridge, scaling the steps up from the ship’s large quarterdeck. It was empty.
Then they methodically made their way forward on the upper deck along both rails, their bodies crouched low. On the large foredeck, they found only a mound of neatly coiled ropes and a covered winch.
“And look at this,” Tray said, running a hand along the full length of a mounted twenty-five-millimeter gun. “The Coast Guard plays with toy guns.”
Then he motioned for his men to head insid
e.
In the main cabin, they made their way from room to room. There was an office with a radio and maps, but no Coast Guard servicemen. In the galley, they found pots and pans and food carefully stowed away. The tiny mess and bunkrooms were similarly empty.
In the furthest forward compartment, they found a small arsenal stocked with rifles, flares, even a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
It was hardly a warship.
Among the equipment in the room opposite, he found several cold-water diving suits and SCUBA gear.
“No soldiers in here,” his main man reported in clipped English.
The only area remaining was a set of steps leading below.
Tray approached the opening, from which a twisting and wrenching metallic sound could be heard.
He put a finger to his lips and signaled for his men to climb down. He followed them, looking back to make sure that nobody approached the ship.
Assured that they were alone, he hustled down the companionway and discovered a dark set of compartments used for storage, rescue equipment, bilges and furthest aft two beautiful diesel engines.
There he spotted a couple of enginemen in their working blues laboring over the ship’s power plant. Oblivious to their unwanted company, they dutifully greased the valves.
“Hold it right there, boys,” Tray said, cautiously entering the engine room.
The two men froze at the sound of his voice and then snapped about to face him. Their eyes widened upon sight of the gun.
One gripped his lug wrench hard. The other held a can of oil.
Tray’s men poked their heads out from between the various machines and stepped into the dim light.
“Are you authorized to—” the engineman with the wrench began.
“No permission required,” Tray said, and shot the man, the wrench clattering on the metal deck as he fell.
The other man dodged behind an engine, the oil can dropping out of his hand.
Chasing him, Tray slid across the oil slick. The engineman made it halfway up a ladder. His head was poking out of a trapdoor on the quarterdeck when the Glock caught up with him. How could Tray find a lethal target when all he saw was the seat of the man’s pants? He lodged a bullet in the lower part of the guy’s spine.
The man hauled himself by hand onto the deck and slammed the trapdoor behind him. A moment later, the lock scraped shut.
“Damn it,” Tray cried. He turned to his men standing at the base of the ladder and ordered in Arabic, “Start the engines. We’re leaving at once.”
He dropped down off the ladder and swept past them, running the full length of the ship back to the foredeck stairs.
By the time Tray reached the back of the boat, the engineman had hauled himself halfway over the side of the ship and onto the wharf.
Tray glanced around to check if anybody was in the vicinity, then sent two silenced rounds into the man’s heart, stopping him cold.
He jumped over the man and reached the tailgate of the truck. There, he unlocked the padlock to the container and swung it open on two rusty hinges.
“Help me,” he called, and three men appeared by his side. Together, they pulled out a wooden pallet. Strapped on top was a rectangular metal box, the size and shape of a large coffee table.
“Careful now,” Tray said as the men lowered the pallet to the ground.
They removed the straps around the metal box and lifted it by its four handles.
Kicking the body off the wharf and back onto the cutter, Tray helped his men lift the bomb down onto the quarterdeck.
“Prepare to cast off,” he ordered.
Setting his leather briefcase next to the box, he worked the box’s two latches open. Behind him, the al-Qaeda crew untied the cutter.
Up above, another member had scaled the steps to the bridge and started the twin engines.
As the cutter churned out of its slip and onto the bay, the body rolled toward him, and Tray had to kick it back out of the way.
“Take the bomb into the cabin,” he ordered in Arabic, and stood up to take a breath.
Ahead, under lifting clouds, lay the Bay Bridge, its long spans bearing twin levels of traffic between Oakland and San Francisco.
That would not be enough.
He wanted something bigger. More costly than Pearl Harbor and more memorable than the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York City.
Back in Bonnie’s car, George Ferrar took the wheel and tuned in to the local radio station. Within a minute, he had a complete summary of the scale of the authorities’ response to the perceived threat.
They closed schools across Northern California. Stores and companies were on skeleton crew shifts, or shut down entirely. Hospitals pleaded for blood donations. Major highways, bridges and other commuter conduits were closed to traffic with highway patrolmen standing guard. BART trains had stopped running as of six that morning. Even if people wanted to, they couldn’t leave the city due to the closures and massive traffic jams.
Ferrar steered into the city with Bonnie beside him. They drove past a grocery store. Its front windows were bashed in and people passed food out to friends on the street.
Two F-15 Eagles shot by overhead, and people ran for cover.
Bonnie directed him to drive to her Coast Guard station along the bay in southeastern San Francisco. But all main traffic arteries were clogged. A ramp up to the highway was blocked off and a traffic cop directed him away.
“Great,” he said. “Now what?”
They were near the waterfront, an industrial area with piers jutting out from warehouses that sat side-by-side for as far as he could see.
He began to edge southward along the waterfront road in the bumper-to-bumper traffic. “We’re getting nowhere.”
“Look out there,” Bonnie shouted. “That’s my ship.”
He glanced out at the bay. A gleaming white cutter with the distinctive slanting orange Coast Guard stripe on its hull was steaming northward into what looked like a battle zone.
“That’s the Vigilant,” she cried. “Tray must have taken it.”
Ferrar grabbed his cell phone and tossed it in her lap. “Here. Call someone.”
“Who?” she asked. She composed herself for a moment, then dialed a number. “My communications officer isn’t answering.”
“Line dead?”
“It’s ringing. Someone should be on duty.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” Ferrar said, and clenched his teeth. “Hold on.”
Their Toyota was mere inches from the car in front of them. Ferrar leaned on the horn and began to blare away. The car blocking their path didn’t budge an inch.
Ferrar turned the front wheels hard left and hit the accelerator. The Toyota munched the left rear bumper of the car, nudging it out of the way.
Traffic cones crumpled under his wheels as he blazed a hole through the thin stream of oncoming cars. Crossing the three lanes safely, he rammed into a hurricane fence. The metal links didn’t break, but the poles uprooted and the car broke free into a warehouse parking lot.
He found a narrow road that led between two buildings, and took it. Soon he was passing under huge cranes built for loading ships.
On the pier, containers and other wrapped goods were piled up in neat stacks. Sunlight glanced off the bay, nearly blinding him. Dockworkers leapt aside as he swerved through the obstacle course toward the water.
“You can’t stop the Vigilant,” Bonnie shouted. “We’ve got a crew of five armed soldiers onboard.”
“Not if Tray’s in command.”
She held her head and watched as Ferrar maneuvered out to the end of the pier.
There, thankfully, he found a small pilot boat.
“You wait here,” he shouted, and jumped out of the car.
“Hey,” she cried, grabbing his sleeve and hauling him back into the car. “I know my ship better than you do. I should go.”
“You have to alert the authorities.”
“With what, your c
ell phone?”
“If that’s all you’ve got. And remember, you have one thing that I don’t have—credibility. Mine isn’t worth beans these days.”
She hesitated, their eyes locked. “No hero stuff, you hear?” she said, her voice firm.
“Just doing my job, ma’am.”
At last she let go of his sleeve, and whispered, “Be safe.”
“I’ll be back for supper,” he said, and gave her a wink.
Then the next moment he was out in the bracing breeze, unwinding the pilot boat’s mooring lines. He jumped up to unwrap the last line, but Bonnie was already there, heaving the rope onto the boat.
“Honey, you got the keys?” he shouted.
She whirled about and collared a dockworker. “I’m with the Coast Guard,” she said. “We need the keys.”
The man took a moment to size her up—a tall blonde in a gray sweat suit. What he saw didn’t register as Coast Guard.
Ferrar jogged over and hoisted the dockworker off his feet by his collar. “Do we look like terrorists to you? Now give us the keys.”
“They’re already on the boat,” the man finally said.
Ferrar set him down and patted him on the cheek. The pilot boat was his. Now all he had to do was catch up with Bonnie’s cutter, board it, and stop Tray Bolton from doing whatever nefarious plan he had in mind.
Chapter 28
FBI Special Agent in Charge Perry O’Donnell didn’t know exactly what he was looking for at Baker Beach in north San Francisco. All his men were deployed around the city, so he made himself the “rover,” moving wherever his instincts took him.
Eddie Lucas’ lead had seemed particularly promising. But Eddie had lost the suspect on Twin Peaks. Fortunately, a quick check with Motor Vehicles netted another lead. Bonnie Taylor owned a brown 1999 Toyota sedan.
And word was that the vehicle was sighted here.
Armed with a photo of Ferrar and a description of the vehicle, he floated among the crowd that had gathered on the road above Baker Beach. A patrolman was trying to keep a hang-glider from launching himself off the dune toward the fleet of warships steaming between them and the Marin County Headlands.
