He entered the activation code on the keypad and the numerical display and warning lights came to life. The impression that heat was radiating from the device was even stronger now than it had been up on the Margo’s stern, and it was just as foolish. The bomb did not leak.
One last time Bahmad was struck with the notion that what he was doing could and should be stopped. Even now. There was no need to go through with this thing. No need for the killing and the suffering. No need for him to become the most hunted and the most reviled man in all of history. No need for revenge. Not his revenge for his parents and not bin Laden’s for his Sarah.
He closed his eyes. He could see Beirut as it had been when he was a child. It had been called the Paris of the Mediterranean. He could see beautiful gardens, laughing happy people, family meals. But then he could hear the Israeli jets, feel the earth-shattering pounding of their bombs, smell the burning flesh.
Bahmad opened his eyes, focused on the control pad and entered another series of codes that set the bomb’s moment of detonation fifty-five minutes from now. At that instant the bulk of the runners would be on the Golden Gate Bridge. For them there would be no pain, not like the pain his parents had suffered, not the pain that Sarah had endured. For the runners there would be a blinding flash of light and then nothing.
He entered another series of codes that activated the an-titampering circuits. If anyone tried to stop the bomb it would explode immediately.
Finally his finger poised over the start button. For one moment he questioned his sanity, but then he pushed the button, closed and relatched the inner cover and closed and relatched the outer cover.
The countdown had begun.
Golden Gate Bridge
McGarvey’s cell phone rang. The number on the display was Rencke’s private office line. He’d been on the computers continuously for four days and nights. But when he had the bit in his teeth nothing could stop him.
“Have you come up with something new?” McGarvey answered.
“It’s there, and I know how it got there,” Rencke rasped. It sounded as if he was on the verge of cracking up. “From Karachi, disguised as a life raft made in China. Oh, boy, it was right there in front of me all the time. Purple—”
McGarvey gripped the phone. “Where is it, Otto? Specifically!”
“San Francisco. The coast. Came by ship, Karachi, Red Sea, the Med. It was laid up for two months in Tampa. That’s what threw me off.”
McGarvey was on the center span of the bridge. He spun around and looked out toward Seal Point, but from this angle he could only see the bows of two container ships. There were four or five of them out there. He’d spotted them earlier when he was on the Marin side. “What ship? When did it come in?” he demanded.
“The Margo, Cyprus registry, home office PKS Shipping, Ltd., Paris. Ties to bin Laden, ya know. It all fits. It was right there.”
“Okay, calm down, Otto. When did the Margo get here? When?”
“It should be coming in right now. Went through the big ditch where it picked up a helicopter. The Coast Guard spotted her yesterday off Baja California, and I got satellite pictures this morning. It’s there, Mac. You’re probably looking right at it.”
McGarvey pushed his way through the spectators and raced across to the other side of the bridge. “How do you know that the bomb is aboard that ship?”
“It was delivered to the dock in Karachi. We got the delivery man last night. Traced it back to a flight from Peshwar. Chinese life rafts in Peshwar, Pakistan?”
The only ship moving on the bay side was the second Coast Guard cutter. No cargo vessel. At least none near enough so that if the nuclear device were to be lit off it would damage the bridge or kill anyone on it. They would have to deal with radioactive fallout, but that would come later.
“No chance that it could have come in late last night or early this morning?”
“I don’t think so, Mac. It’s gotta be right there.”
“Good work, Otto. We’ll find it.” McGarvey broke the connection. He was still missing something, goddammit. Bahmad would not have come this far to fail. He radioed Villiard at the FEMA Operations Center as he walked back across the bridge to the oceanside.
“Villiard,” the Secret Service agent came back.
“The bomb is aboard a Cypriot-registered cargo ship. Margo. Find out if its come into port yet, and where it is.”
Villiard was enough of a pro not to ask questions right now. “Stand by.”
Nothing was changed in the Golden Gate. The cargo ships were still parked just around the point, waiting to come into port. Delayed because of the shipping restriction.
He checked his watch. The first runners would be on the bridge in less than thirty minutes. There wasn’t enough time for one of those cargo ships to pull up anchor and get here. Villiard was back and he was excited.
“The Margo showed up about an hour ago. She’s anchored in a holding basin at Seal Point.”
“I’m on the bridge. There’re five ships out there, two that I can see right now. Neither one of them is moving. Anyway they’d never make it here in time to—” McGarvey stopped in midsentence as if a spike had been driven into his skull.
“You still there?”
“The bomb’s on the Margo, but she’s also carrying a helicopter.”
“Sonofabitch.”
“Scramble the jet and tell the pilot to splash that chopper the moment her rotors start to turn. Do it now while we still have time.”
“I’ll alert the President’s detail.”
“Scramble the jet first, Jay.” McGarvey pushed through the crowd at the curb and ran out into the middle of the roadway. “I’m right in the middle of the bridge. I want a chopper down here right now to take me out to the Margo.”
“I’m on it,” Villiard replied tersely, and he was gone.
McGarvey grabbed a passing cop and had him start clearing the road for the helicopter to land.
M/V Margo
Bahmad tossed his leather bag into the dinghy, then turned around and looked at the pilot boat not quite certain that he’d heard what he thought he’d heard. The radio was on, tuned to the San Francisco Harbor Control working channel. He jumped aboard and had to step over the bodies in the cabin to get to the radio, his eyes going instinctively to the bomb wedged between the driver’s seat and the bulkhead. The radio was silent for the moment. He turned down the squelch.
“Negative, she’s off Seal Point. The Coasties, are scrambling a jet.”
“Meeks is out there, but I’ve not been able to raise him.”
Bahmad stepped back, staggered by what he was hearing. They knew! Somehow they knew.
“I haven’t been able to reach him or Iglesias.”
Bahmad looked at his watch. The runners wouldn’t be on the bridge for another twenty-five minutes. The bomb was set to go off then. But if the authorities came out here they would discover the dead pilot and his driver. The bomb would go off here, killing a few people instead of thousands. He would have failed again. The thought threatened to send him over the edge.
“Maybe they have radio problems.”
As had happened many times before, the solution came to Bahmad all in one piece. He knew every step that he would have to take, including the diversion he would have to create if he was going to have the time to make his escape.
He went out to the starboard rail and yanked the six-foot whip antenna out of its mount. The radio went dead. Anyone looking when the pilot boat approached the bridge would see that the antenna was down which would explain their radio silence.
Back at the helm he started the inboard, activated the autopilot and put the transmission in forward, setting the throttle to a few hundred RPMs above idle. It would take the pilot boat at least twenty minutes, maybe a little longer to get to the bridge at that speed.
The boat strained at the line holding it to the Margo’s boarding ladder. Bahmad had some difficulty jumping across because the pilot boat was pitching
and hobbyhorsing, pulling at its leash like a puppy dog wishing to run free. He pulled out his stiletto and cut the line. The pilot boat immediately headed away.
He pulled the dinghy over, jumped aboard, lowered the outboard, connected the gas line and pushed the starter button. It roared into life instantly.
The pilot boat still hadn’t cleared the Margo’s bow by the time Bahmad climbed out of the dinghy and raced up the boarding ladder, but he didn’t bother looking. That part of the operation was now completely out of his control.
On deck he ducked through a hatch and took the stairs two at a time up to the bridge. He hurriedly set the main autopilot to steer the same course as the pilot boat, then hit the switch to bring up the anchor.
The pilot boat would take care of itself. And just maybe when the authorities saw the Margo heading for the bridge it would keep them busy long enough for Bahmad to get clear.
Once the bomb lit off no one would be coming for him, the survivors would be far too busy trying to stay alive.
He headed down to the engine room, a smile on his plain, round face. Even in disunity there can be unity. Even in disharmony there can be harmony. And even in the face of my enemies there can be victory.
Insha’Allah.
Over the Golden Gate
“What boat is that?” McGarvey shouted over the tremendous roar of the Coast Guard’s SH 3 Sea King helicopter’s two turboshaft engines.
The chief petty officer who was studying the container ships at anchor out ahead of them lowered his binoculars and looked where McGarvey was pointing.
“That’s the pilot boat,” he shouted back. He took a quick look through his binoculars. “Their antenna is down.” He handed his binoculars to McGarvey. “You’d better check out the Margo, sir.”
McGarvey picked out the big container ship. It was the only one with a helicopter on its crowded decks. But the chopper was still tied down, and there was no activity around it. “What is it?”
“Her anchor, sir. It’s up.”
McGarvey switched to the bow. The anchor was definitely dripping water. It had just been pulled up. But there was no possibility that the ship would get anywhere close to the bridge in time.
He was still missing something, goddammit. But his headaches were back and it was hard to think straight.
“Tell your pilot I have to get aboard on the double, chief,” McGarvey shouted. He set the glasses aside and took out his Walther to check the load and the action.
Bahmad had not planned it this way. There was something else.
The MetLife Blimp
“Lead One, this is Baker Seven, they’re coming up on Primary,” Gardner radioed. Primary was the code name for the bridge.
“Copy, Baker Seven. Do you have Thunder in sight?”
Gardner could hear the strain in the radio operator’s voice. Something was going on. “He’s on the approach.” Thunder was the President.
“Okay, we’re closing down the race. Tell your pilot to get you on the ground right now.”
“What’s going on, Lead One?” Gardner asked, but there was no reply.
The ESPN reporter and pilot turned and looked at him. They’d caught the urgency in his voice.
“Problems?” the pilot asked.
“We have to get on the ground right now,” Gardner said.
“What the hell are you talking about—?”
“Right fucking now,” Gardner shouted. “If you want to save your life, put it down!”
FEMA Operations Center
“Flagler, Lead One,” Villiard radioed to the Secret Service agent riding shotgun in the President’s limousine. The Ops center was in full swing, but stopping the race without getting anyone hurt was going to be next to impossible. These were handicapped runners, some of them mentally handicapped. And there were eighteen hundred of them. It would be a nightmare.
“Lead One, Flagler.”
“We’re closing down the race. Do not take Thunder onto the bridge. Get him out of there.”
“We’re on the approach road. There’s no way in hell we can turn around. It’s wall-to-wall runners behind us.”
Villiard made a snap decision. “Get him across the bridge then. I want him behind the hills ASAP.”
“He’s going to want his daughter with him—”
“Go now!”
Villiard switched channels to Chenna Serafini’s. She was on the golf cart with the CIA officer shadowing the President’s daughter: “Raindrop One, Lead One.”
“Raindrop One.”
Villiard recognized Chenna’s voice. “Do you have visual contact with Raindrop?”
“Not continuously. She’s in the middle of a bunch forty yards ahead of us.”
“Okay, listen up, Chenna. I want you to go to her right now and get her off the bridge. You don’t have much time.”
Villiard could hear Chenna say something away from her lapel mike, and then she was back. “What’re we facing?”
“They might hit the bridge. We’re closing down the race. Thunder’s already on the way out. I’m giving you a head start.”
“We’re on it.”
Villiard switched channels again and began issuing orders to the local and state cops to start shutting everything down and clearing the bridge, with almost no hope whatsoever that they would be in time.
Coast Guard Cutter WMEC 907 Escanaba
Lieutenant Gloria Sampson braced herself as the Escanaba came around hard to starboard. This was her first command and she was too excited to be nervous. Yesterday at the briefing on nuclear terrorism she’d been frightened, but there was no time for that today.
She spotted the small boat well out into the Gate heading directly toward them at the same time her XO looked up from the radar.
“It’s the pilot boat, their radio’s out,” Ensign DeLillo told her.
“Forget it, the Margo’s already got her anchor up.”
M/V Margo
So far as McGarvey could tell, the wheelhouse was empty and the decks were devoid of any life. It could have been a ghost ship, except that an army could have hidden in the containers stacked eight deep. But they had finally run out of time. It was only him at this point; a situation he neither liked nor disliked. It was just the way things had worked out.
“Put me down on the afterdeck as close to the helicopter as you can,” McGarvey shouted to the chief.
The chief said something into his helmet mike, and the Sea King, which was just off the container ship’s starboard quarter, slid to the right and dropped directly for the two stacks of containers on the portside.
“The skipper wants to know if we should stick around,” the chief shouted.
“You know the score, it’s up to you.”
The chief spoke into his mike, then grinned and gave McGarvey the thumbs-up. “We’ll hover just off your quarter. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” McGarvey said.
The Margo was moving around in the swell, so the helicopter did not attempt to touch down. It hovered a couple of feet above the stack of containers until McGarvey jumped out, then peeled off directly aft.
As soon as he was out of the rotor wash, McGarvey scrambled to the end of the container to look for a way down. There were no handholds except for the chains that held the stacks tightly to the deck. The helicopter was tied down and the rotors still secured. It would take at least twenty minutes to get it ready to fly. McGarvey stared at it. Goddammit, this wasn’t making any sense.
He holstered his pistol and started down the chain, the links greasy and dirty with rust, shackled at intervals with big jagged U-bolts. He was at his most vulnerable at this moment. If Bahmad or one of his crewmen took a potshot at him they wouldn’t have to actually hit him. A near miss might be enough to dislodge his tenuous grip and he would fall the fifty or sixty feet to the steel deck. If it didn’t kill him, he would certainly be out of action for the duration.
But it was useless to think about that possibility, or any of a hundred other things tha
t could go wrong. One step at a time. It was all he could do.
On deck finally, McGarvey pulled out his gun and ran around to the left side of the helicopter. It was definitely not ready to fly. The controls were still secured with their locks, and the engine exhaust and intake caps were still in place. It made no sense. Why had Bahmad carried the machine all this way if he didn’t intend on using it. And where the hell was the Margo’s crew?
McGarvey’s eyes strayed aft, to the stern rail, and his breath caught in his throat. Two fiberglass life raft canisters were secured to the deck on aluminum brackets. The brackets for a third canister were empty.
He took a step forward. The bomb had been right there, and now it was gone.
He felt a sudden, deep-throated rumble and vibration through the soles of his feet. He turned and looked up as a thick plume of black smoke rose from the Margo’s stack. The water at the stern began to roil, and the ship started to move forward.
McGarvey started around the chopper to find a hatch into the superstructure when a mind-numbing roar swooped down on him, blotting out all sounds, even those of the Sea King hovering just off their port quarter.
He turned back in time to see a Harrier jet slide into place not more than a couple of hundred feet aft of the stern. He could see the Coast Guard’s diagonal orange stripes on the fuselage, the Sparrow III and Sidewinder missiles on the wing racks and the determined look on the pilot’s face.
McGarvey slowly raised his hands in the air. Destroying the chopper while it was still on the Margo’s deck was one thing, but he did not want to be mistaken for one of the bad guys.
VS-31, McDonnell Douglas AV-8B Harrier II
“Base, Victor-sierra-three-one. I’m in position aft of the Margo. There’s a Cuban military chopper on deck, and one possible bad guy standing next to it with his hands up. Advise.”
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