Abuse of Power

by Michael Savage

  Exchanging glances, they each reached into their pockets and worked at unscrewing the miniature flashlights attached to their key chains. These were really nothing more than hollowed-out tubes. Inside each tube was an earbud transmitter-receiver that Mike Abernathy had scored through his black market contacts. They connected wirelessly to plastic microphones in their ties—the kinds that wouldn’t upset metal detectors—and were activated by a depression switch inside a cuff link. They were military grade and set to a seldom-used frequency that the Secret Service wasn’t likely to detect.

  That was the theory anyway.

  Each man glanced around for prying eyes, but the other patrons were too rapt in their own small talk to pay attention to them. Pretending to scratch his head, each man nonchalantly popped the device into his right ear. It was small enough that it sat snugly inside the ear canal and was nearly invisible to the naked eye.

  When Jack had his in place he activated it and said softly, “Can you hear me?”

  Maxine Cole’s voice immediately came alive in his ear. “I hear you, Jack.”

  Max and Dave Karras were out in a far corner of the museum parking lot, sitting in a small Chevy van they’d rented for the occasion. Karras had brought along a laptop and was busy trying to hack into the museum’s network.

  “We’re also reading you loud and clear,” another voice said.

  It was Doc Matson, who was exiting a battered Jeep Roadster, along with Mike Abernathy and Jonah Goldman. They were parked in the roadside parking lot of the Cliff House restaurant down the hill, which overlooked the ruins of the Sutro bathhouse.

  Doc had paid a visit to one of his urban explorer friends, who drew him a map to the approximate location of the one known entrance to the Lincoln Park bunkers, which was located just beyond the cliffside. Their plan was to scope the area out to try to determine if anyone had made entry.

  “Excellent,” Jack said. “Tony, are you reading me?”

  “I’m standing right next to you, genius.”

  Jack shot him a frown. “Is your com unit working or not?”

  Tony smiled. “Loud and clear, brother.”

  Jack’s heart was thumping like crazy and he was sweating like mad. And while he knew what they were about to attempt might prevent a major catastrophe, he couldn’t stop thinking about Sara. Wondering what they had done to her.

  Wondering what they would do to her if she were still alive.

  You’ve got to stop thinking about her, he told himself. He needed to focus on the task at hand or untold millions would die. Sara would understand that. Hopefully, one day, so would he.

  “Okay,” he said to Tony. “Let’s split up and do our best to blend in. I figure we’ve got about fifteen, twenty minutes before the show starts. Dave, have you hacked into their security cameras yet?”

  “Still working on it.”

  “Come on, man, the clock is ticking.”

  “Take it easy, Jack. These custom jobs take a little extra time. I’ll let you know as soon as I’m in.”

  “All right,” Jack sighed, then turned to Tony. “Shall we join the party?”

  Tony nodded, and they moved to the nearest waiter. Each grabbed a glass of plain soda water, to stay sharp, before heading in opposite directions.

  As Jack walked, smiled, mingled, he let his mind work on something else that still bothered him, something he hadn’t been able to figure out. Something from the encrypted e-mail.

  The reference to “twins.”

  * * *

  The men had spent the night in the tunnels, coming in under cover of darkness when the park was deserted and no eyes were watching. They had slept and prayed on coarse mats they kept rolled up in their satchels, and ate crackers and drank bottled water for sustenance.

  They were all good soldiers of Allah, ready to give their lives in his honor, but only one of them would be chosen tonight and the hour was almost upon them. Their leader, Hassan Haddad, was one of the Hand of Allah’s great soldiers and they were privileged to be serving under his command.

  Haddad ordered them to stand at attention in a line against the wall, then slowly moved from man to man, carefully studying the eyes of each as he asked, “Are you ready to give your life for the eternal glory of Allah?”

  “Yes,” each man replied in turn.

  When Haddad made his choice—a slender twenty-year-old named Rashid—he pulled the young man out of line and they all prayed together, asking Allah to watch over his mission and his immortal soul.

  Then the others followed as he led Rashid through the tunnel and into the small rectangular room that stood directly beneath the basement of the palace. They took the vest they had prepared during the night and quietly slipped it over Rashid’s head and arms and belted it around him.

  It held enough explosives to level the museum.

  The young man’s breathing increased visibly, audibly. Haddad held his cheeks and looked into his eyes and smiled. After a moment, the young man relaxed. Haddad then set the timer and an LED readout rapidly began counting off the seconds. It was set to go off in exactly thirty-five minutes.

  Right in the middle of the President’s speech.

  Haddad gestured toward the rebar ladder that led up through a narrow shaft in the corner of the room. “Your destiny awaits you up there, my son. When the time is right, Allah will show you the way. Are you ready?”

  “Yes,” Rashid said quietly.

  Haddad looked at the other men. “And if Rashid should suffer a failure of strength, or if others should prevent him from achieving his goal, who among you will step forward in his place?”

  “I will!” the others said in unison.

  Haddad smiled. His work here was done.

  Bidding them all assalamu alaikum, he went back into the tunnel and disappeared into the darkness.

  * * *

  “Okay, Jack, I’m finally in and I’ve got visuals,” Dave Karras said. “This place is massive.”

  No kidding, Jack thought. There was four thousand years’ worth of art stored inside the Legion of Honor and at least twenty-four huge rooms split between two floors dedicated to displaying it. A third floor below was the archive basement, where works that weren’t currently on display were stored. That left the subbasement, another elevator stop down.

  After parting company, Jack and Tony had circulated through the building, moving room to room, each looking for a way to get down to the subbasement. But every stairwell that Jack encountered was being guarded, and the public elevators had been locked off to restrict travel to only the main two floors. Tony reported that he’d discovered the same thing.

  The good news was the Secret Service seemed to be concentrating on the main courtyard, where the President would be making his appearance, leaving the museum security staff to handle the rest. Not that these men and women weren’t capable, but Jack felt more comfortable running up against a museum guard than he did a trained Secret Service agent.

  That said, the place was still sewn up tight and the clock was counting down. The President would be arriving at any moment.

  Jack needed to get down to that subbasement.

  He was standing in the main foyer now, looking out toward the courtyard. “Tell me you’ve got something for me,” he said to Karras.

  “The main concern of the video network is protection of the artwork,” Karras said. “Each exhibit room is equipped with a camera mounted high in the corner with a wide-angle lens. Unfortunately, it looks like nearly every corridor in the place has something on display, and even the stairwells themselves are equipped with video. You try to make a move, they’ll be on you like piranha.”

  “Maybe you should just walk up to one of these guys and tell them there’s a bomb in the building,” Max suggested.

  “You forget,” Jack told her, “we don’t know who we can and can’t trust. And how exactly am I supposed to convince them I’m not just some kind of wack-job?” He paused and said, “What about the basement, Dave? Any cameras in
there?”

  “Not a one, as far as I can tell. And—hold on. I think I may have a way to get you down there.”

  “Tell me.”

  “You have a problem with small spaces?”

  “I live on a boat, remember?”

  “I’m talking laundry-chute small.”

  “Spit it out, Dave, or I’ll have Maxine smack you around a little.”

  Karras paused, as if considering the benefits of hesitating, then said, “According to these blueprints, in the far right corner of the building on the terrace level there’s a small room near the café with a laundry chute. It’s probably where they dump all their soiled linen.”

  “I can confirm that,” Tony piped in. “I saw one of the white coats pushing a cart in there just five minutes ago.”

  “Right,” Karras said. “I’ve checked all the cameras and there’s none in the corridor that leads to that room. It’s a complete dead spot. Apparently wine-stained tablecloths aren’t a security priority.”

  “So the laundry chute is our way in,” Jack said.

  “That’s the long and short of it.”

  Outside in the courtyard the string quartet suddenly stopped playing, then launched into a rousing rendition of “Hail to the Chief,” as a caravan of limousines pulled up to the palace entrance. The crowd of gawkers outside grew visibly excited and started migrating toward the cars as Secret Service men gestured them back.

  “All right,” Jack said, checking his watch. “We don’t have much time. Tony, meet me in that corridor in three minutes.”

  “Will do,” Tony acknowledged.

  Jack turned to head back toward the rotunda. As he did, a voice sang out behind him.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the illustrious Mr. Hatfield.”

  Jack turned to find Special Agent Carl Forsyth approaching him from the courtyard—the agent who had tried very hard to humiliate him at that FBI press conference several days ago.

  Forsyth gestured to the courtyard behind him. “The President’s this way, Jack. Aren’t you headed in the wrong direction?”

  Jack hesitated. “Bathroom break.”

  Forsyth smiled. “Come on now, hotshot, we both know that isn’t true. You know what I think? I think you’re here to stir up trouble.”

  Forsyth’s smile faded as two more special agents stepped up behind him, reaching into their jackets.

  They didn’t look like they were there for the wine.

  38

  Even with the map it took Doc Matson a while to find the entry point.

  Doc’s friend had only been able to give them a vague location and a couple of signposts. He’d told Doc that the real expert on the bunker was a woman named Tally Griffin, but she’d been out with a new boyfriend the last couple days and no one had seen or heard from her.

  That didn’t sound good to Doc. A hunch told him the bad guys had found out about Tally, used her to get in, and didn’t want anyone to know.

  So Doc did his best, using what little information he had, to lead Abernathy and Goldman down the cliff toward the water, and around an outcropping of rocks. The full moon helped, but finding the precise tree with the precise grouping of stones had not been easy, and Doc cursed the thought that this entire half-baked enterprise might be derailed by a tree that some piss-sniffing dog could find.

  Now that he had time to think, he was probably crazy doing this in the first place. They all were. But Doc and Tony Antiniori went back a long way, and if you couldn’t count on your friends when your back was against the wall, who could you rely on? Besides, it had been a while since Doc had gotten an adrenaline shot like the last twenty-four hours, and a guy his age needed as much excitement as he could find.

  They were a ragtag crew, the three of them, no question about it, and Doc kinda felt as if he were a refugee from some Sylvester Stallone movie. Only this was real life, and if they were right about what was going on in those tunnels they wouldn’t be facing Hollywood special effects but real, honest-to-God Muslim fanatics, with real, honest-to-God firepower.

  But Doc had lived a long, fruitful life and had fought many wars in the defense of his country. If today was the day he finally gave his life for that cause, so be it. His only real family was Tony and these two guys, so he couldn’t think of better company to do it in.

  After further exploration they found the tree with the three stones in front of it. The largest stone had already been moved, and there, under the beam of Doc’s Mini Maglite, was a crevice in the ground that left no doubt that they’d found what they were looking for.

  Time to get to it.

  They had decided to travel light for easy maneuverability, so they each carried only handguns—Abernathy with his SIG 9 mil, Goldman sporting a Smith & Wesson .45, and Doc carrying his usual Beretta 92FS Semi-Auto 9mm.

  Doc shimmied in through the crevice first, taking a short drop into the darkness and landing on a cement floor. He stood there for a moment, listening for any sounds, but the place was as silent as a tomb. Flashing his light toward the opening, he waited as Abernathy and Goldman shimmied through and dropped, then shone his beam toward the rebar ladder that led down a shaft to their right.

  Goldman took the lead this time, hopping onto the ladder and working his way down, and a moment later they were all standing in one of the massive corridors that Doc had called home as a naïve, eager eighteen-year-old, for the first six months of his military career. Except for a smattering of graffiti the place hadn’t changed much. He could remember the personnel moving through here as carrier cars moved along on the overhead rails carrying equipment barged to the shore. All these years later he still knew exactly where he was.

  “This way,” he said to the others.

  Using their Mini Maglites sparingly, they worked their way up the tunnel and turned right, moving into another tunnel, which opened out into a space on the left that Doc remembered had once been a bunkhouse. It was one of several that had been integrated into the place. His own assigned bunk had been closer to the Golden Gate Bridge side of the tunnel, which was where he spent most of his duty hours as well.

  Doc was about to continue on when he caught a glimpse of something in his flashlight beam. Swinging it back into the bunkhouse again, he froze as dread chilled his spine.

  “Holy crap,” Abernathy murmured directly behind him.

  They moved quickly to a figure lying prone on the cement floor, a blond, life-sized Raggedy Ann, a flannel shirt tossed carelessly over her naked body, looking as if she’d been discarded like a used tissue.

  Her face was mottled with bruises. There were black-and-blue marks under her ears.

  Doc felt for a pulse and got exactly what he was expecting—nothing. He also had a pretty good idea who this was. He told the others it was probably Tally Griffin, the bunker expert.

  This thing was suddenly more real than it had ever been. He activated his ear com and said, “Tony, Jack, do you read me?”

  All he got was static.

  “Tony?”

  More static.

  “Damn,” he said to the others. “Coms aren’t working down here. The walls must be interfering with the frequency.”

  “Screw it,” Abernathy said, his voice tight with anger. “Let’s find the bastards who did this.”

  * * *

  Tony Antiniori heard the last strains of “Hail to the Chief” being played as he worked his way down the corridor to the room where he’d seen the white-coated server with the laundry cart disappear earlier.

  He’d waited several minutes for Jack. Obviously something was holding him up, and with the music signaling the arrival of the President, Tony didn’t have time to wait anymore.

  Just as he reached the room he heard voices and several of the white coats came around the corner. He held his hand to his ear, as if he had a cell phone, and pretended to talk into it. The men walked by chattering to one another, eyeing Tony indifferently as they passed. He waited until they were gone then moved to the door and checked the
knob.

  Unlocked.

  Taking one last glance around he slipped inside, closed the door behind him, and flicked on the light. It was a large square room with several canvas laundry carts inside, and shelves along one wall stacked with napkins, tablecloths, towels, and other linens. On the far wall, behind one of the laundry carts, was the chute Karras had told them about. It was nothing more than a square hole in the wall with plastic flaps in front of it.

  He studied it warily and activated his com line. “Hey, Karras, I’m in the linen room. You sure I won’t break my neck going down this thing?”

  “No guarantees,” Karras said. “Hell, my grandpa broke his neck stepping into the bathtub.”

  “You callin’ me ‘grandpa’?” The kid didn’t know him well enough to be talking to him like this.

  “No offense,” Karras said, “but those older bones of yours might be fragile.”

  “Yeah?” Tony fumed. “Remind me to kick your fat behind next time I see you. Then we’ll talk about bones.”

  That shut the kid up, but he thought he heard Max laughing under her breath.

  Pushing back the flaps, he checked the chute more closely. The angle wasn’t too severe, so he figured the speed of his trajectory would be manageable. Hell, he couldn’t count the number of free falls he’d done at twenty-five thousand feet, so this should be a piece of cake—assuming there was something down there to buffer his landing.

  Removing his tuxedo jacket and cummerbund, he tossed them into a nearby bin then grabbed the lip of the chute and climbed inside, positioning his legs in front of him.

  He said a quiet prayer and let go.

  The ride was short but exhilarating, a ten-second rush of adrenaline that ended with Tony flat on his back in an industrial-sized laundry bin that was already half full of dirty linen. Sitting up, he peeked over the top and scanned the area.

  Typical commercial building subbasement, from what he could see, all cement, with ducts and pipes and fluorescent light fixtures, a couple of big industrial-sized sinks; quite a contrast to the beauty of the museum above. But this was only one room in a massive floor plan, with doors leading to other rooms, and Tony had no idea which way to go. Fortunately, the place seemed deserted, no white-coated servers or maintenance workers moving about.