Abuse of Power

by Michael Savage

  He stopped as he reached the hatch door. Sucking in a breath, he pushed a hand against it and lifted it only a crack, peering out at the catwalk that stretched across the bridge.

  It was several feet long and slightly over three feet wide, guarded by a rail on either side. Sara and Haddad stood at the far end, against a rail, Sara’s hands bound in front of her. Haddad had her by the arm and was looking down toward the road with a pair of field glasses, probably waiting for the tanker to arrive. And if it was already on the bridge, Jack knew he had only minutes to spare before Haddad set off the bomb that was strapped to Sara’s back.

  Except for the wind, it was so quiet up here it felt surreal.

  Jack knew he might be able to use the Glock and take Haddad down from this distance but decided against it. He was no sharpshooter, like the guy who took the kid down near the podium. Besides, the bastard had Sara as a shield. And if he happened to hit the backpack, God knows what would happen to the bomb.

  He couldn’t take those risks, any of them.

  He had to assume that Haddad’s mind would be in a thousand different places right now, concentrating on the tanker, thinking about his fate. So Jack made a choice. The tower was lit but, hoping there was enough darkness for cover, he carefully raised the hatch door and pulled himself through.

  He tried not to look at the view below, at the moonlit waters of the bay, the lights of the city—they were a haunting, dizzying distraction. Instead, he took the Glock from his waistband and concentrated on his target, slowly inching down a short set of stairs. He stepped onto the catwalk and moved toward Haddad and Sara.

  Haddad was looking toward the north, through his field glasses, and it was Sara who saw him first. Her eyes widened slightly as she realized who it was. She seemed to be warning him off with her gaze but he shook his head once, slowly, and kept creeping forward, trying to close the gap between them.

  Then suddenly Haddad lowered the binoculars and turned, following Sara’s gaze and looking at Jack without surprise.

  “Please stop where you are,” he said with the calmness of a man who had accepted his fate. Dropping the field glasses against his chest, he reached into his pocket and held up a small cell phone, his thumb hovering over the keypad.

  A remote detonator.

  “Another step and I’ll hit speed dial. I’m sure you can imagine what will happen then.”

  Eerily, the winds died just then. Jack stopped where he was and looked past Haddad.

  “Are you all right, Sara?”

  “My hands are tied and I have a nuke strapped to my back. Other than that—”

  “I should never have left you on that island,” he said mournfully.

  Smart girl, letting him know she was tied up. The way she was standing, he couldn’t be sure.

  Haddad frowned, studying Jack carefully. “You must be the man Swain told me about. The Jew. It’s very resourceful of you to show up here. I was expecting the FBI.”

  “They’re waiting on the negotiators. They have this crazy idea that they can reason with you.”

  Haddad smiled, gesturing to the Glock. “I see you don’t share that belief.”

  “Not for a minute,” Jack said.

  “Still, I’d advise you to put the weapon down or I’ll be forced to make my call prematurely.”

  “Or I could just shoot you.”

  Haddad’s smile widened. “You’d have to be a very precise shot to keep me from pressing this key.”

  “Worth a try,” Jack said, starting to raise it.

  Haddad’s smile vanished and he raised his arm menacingly.

  “Moments are like a lifetime as death nears. You still have a little time to spend with each other as long as you put the weapon down and kick it to me.”

  Jack hesitated, looked at that long, cruel thumb poised over the keypad, then slowly crouched. He laid the Glock on the catwalk floor and kicked it toward Haddad.

  “Thank you,” Haddad said.

  At least he was a polite lunatic.

  Jack shot a glance at Sara and noticed at once that she had her game face on. She obviously had a plan of some kind, something that had occurred to her while he and Haddad were talking.

  That meant, keep Haddad talking.

  “So what’s the plan?” Jack asked. “You do realize they’re closing the bridge. So if you’re waiting on that tanker—”

  “It’s already here, and right on schedule,” Haddad said. “They won’t turn any cars back. They’ll have to wait until they’ve cleared the bridge before they can seal it off.”

  “Oh?” Jack said, looking over the rail toward the road below. “Because it looks to me like they’re already escorting the tanker back the way it came.”

  Haddad frowned and swiveled his head, looking at the road. It took him a moment to realize his mistake, but by then it was too late. Sara made her move, swinging her bound hands at his face, knocking him sideways.

  He fumbled the cell phone and it landed at his feet. But Jack was already in motion, leaping across the catwalk, grabbing for it. He felt it brush his fingers as his momentum knocked it spinning toward the rail.

  Haddad lunged for it, but Sara threw her hands over his head and, with a grunt, yanked him toward her using her bonds as a garrote. His expression ferocious, Haddad snapped his head back, butting her face. Sara stumbled back, dazed, and he slipped from her grasp. He reached for the cell phone again but Jack was on his feet. He kicked it, sent it spinning to the opposite side of the catwalk. Haddad raced forward as it clattered against the steps.

  Roaring, Haddad set out after it. Jack looked frantically for the Glock, couldn’t see it in the dark, and lunged after Haddad. He hit shoulder first. Jack had forgotten about his wound; the impact was a forceful reminder as his nerve endings exploded, sending pain down his arm and torso.

  Jack couldn’t let that stop him. He dug in and continued to press the man forward, slamming Haddad into the rail. But Haddad was not an amateur. He turned as he went back, facing Jack, and brought a knee into his groin. Jack stumbled backward toward the opposite rail. The tower was slick with mist and he lost his footing. Sara screamed as Jack fell against the rail, hitting his head. Her cry kept him from losing consciousness.

  Sara needed him.

  But his body had had enough. It didn’t want to move.

  Now Haddad was on his feet and moving toward him with feral eyes. Before he could reach Jack, Sara blindsided him, shoving him to the floor. The backpack and her bonds made it difficult for her to move and Haddad threw her off effortlessly. Then he was on his feet again, kicking her mercilessly in the head and stomach.

  “Jack…”

  Sara needs me.

  Marshaling every scrap of his strength, Jack used the rail to pull himself up and he ran at Haddad.

  Blinded by fury, by pain, Jack hit the man like a linebacker. They both went down. Climbing to his knees, Jack punched down, blow after blow, driving the man’s head against the metal of the bridge. Haddad’s hands came up defensively but Jack yelled and swatted them aside, continuing to slam his fists at that evil face, fueled by hatred for everything the man had done, everything he stood for. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Jack thought only about Sara and Copeland and Drabinsky and Jamal, thought about the havoc people like this brought to the world, used his fists to turn thought into action.

  And then Haddad stopped struggling, his breath coming in bloody gurgles, his face raw and torn. But if he somehow expected Jack to be merciful, he’d picked the wrong night. Without a second thought, Jack grabbed hold of the man’s shirt and dragged him back against the rail, flopped him against it, stared at the pulped flesh and bloody wisp of a beard.

  “Enjoy the virgins, asshole.”

  Jack slammed his open hands hard against Haddad’s chest, the terrorist’s battered eyelids going wide with horror as he sailed over the side of the tower to the pavement five hundred feet below, his terrified screams rising into the night sky.

  The fall took just
three seconds. It ended with ugly abruptness.

  A moment later, the wind kicked up again.

  Once more, the city could breathe.

  Jack staggered, dropping to one knee, and grabbed the rail for support. He heard Sara moan, and crawled over to her. Using what little energy he had left, he ripped the bonds from her wrists and unstrapped the backpack, laid it aside. He noted the location of the cell phone.

  He’d get it later. Or someone would.

  Right now, all he wanted to do was pull Sara into his arms and hold her as if he’d never let her go.

  41

  In the months that followed, the world did not miraculously change.

  The good guys had won, but that didn’t necessarily mean the bad guys would be punished. Not in the way that Jack would have liked, with handcuffs and trials and lifetime-without-parole.

  Instead, the rich and powerful managed to prevail, as they often do.

  Despite Jack’s statements to the FBI and Homeland Security and the twenty other law enforcement agencies that seemed to be involved in the investigation, there was no hard proof to put Lawrence Soren and his cronies behind bars. And no real proof that MI6 or the British Home Office had ever been involved.

  The island in the bay had been scrubbed, sanitized. The boats the men had used were MIA. Abdal al-Fida was a suicide, Bob Copeland was listed as an “accidental death,” and Jamal Thomas was an OD. There were no e-mails, no enhanced photos, there was nothing even remotely incriminating on the computers of Dave Karras or Faisal al-Jubeir. Someone had gotten to the machines and washed them, too. Bribes had been paid to the right officials.

  There was only the word of Jack and Sara.

  And that, unfortunately, was not enough.

  The only good news was that the San Francisco District Attorney dropped the charges against the Constitutional Defense Brigade, citing “lack of evidence.” In time—enough time for the FBI to save face—the car bomb was added to the charges against the small band of Muslim extremists, led by Hassan Haddad, who had tried and failed to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

  There was no mention of the tanker and the hydrazine-based rocket fuel that would have been used as an accelerant. Jack hadn’t told Forsyth the worst of it. The destruction of the bridge was a visual symbol to show the world, to encourage other terrorists to strike. On the ground, though—that was where the real disaster would have occurred. He and Tony had done some rough calculations: given the speed and direction of the wind, the heat from that fire would have risen high enough to blanket all of the San Francisco and Oakland regions with lethal levels of radiation from the exploded nuke. There would have been thousands of deaths within days, tens of thousands within weeks, over a million within a month—many of those among people who would have been needed to keep the infrastructure from collapsing. Doctors, police, workers at power plants and sewage centers. The environment would have become so toxic that rescue workers couldn’t have gotten into the area, and poisoned food and water would have added exponentially to the death toll. Airdrops of fresh supplies would have led to riots, more death. Silicon Valley would have been ravaged, all but destroying the U.S. computer industry.

  Fortunately, Tony, Doc, and the other members of the team survived their wounds. After calling Jack, Doc had phoned in a 911 then gone back to the bunker to minister to the others. He stopped the bleeding as best he could and propped them in such a way as to limit the flow of blood toward the wounds. Given everything else that was going on it was morning before help arrived; Doc had gone back out the tunnel to wait for them.

  They were all tough old birds, and Jack had figured it would take more than a firefight with a gang of fanatic Muslim murderers to put them down.

  Maxine went back to doing what she did best, and found herself inundated with work when her own role in the counterespionage activities hit the press—courtesy of Jack, who tipped off a few colleagues. Max and Karras even managed to maintain something that resembled a relationship.

  At least there was also some justice in the world.

  Two months after the attempt, Senator Harold Wickham was caught in a compromising situation with one of his office staff members and was forced to resign his seat. He insisted that he had been set up, that he didn’t even know any hookers from Bulgaria, but video doesn’t lie.

  Especially when the person at the other end of the fiberoptic cable is Maxine Cole.

  Several of the other men in that bed-and-breakfast dining room also left their jobs, suddenly and surprisingly, citing the need to spend time with their families.

  Lawrence Soren himself was caught in a financial scandal that threatened to destroy a good portion of his media empire, when some enterprising reporters at GNT rival Flux News found out about the profit he’d earned from his hedge fund that had made millions shorting Tokyo Electric the same day as the massive earthquake and tsunami hit Fukushima. Even the most rapacious investors don’t want so-called BBFs—Body Bag Funds—as a line item in their annual reports. Still, Jack did not doubt that Soren and the others would be back. These were not the type of men who give up easily.

  The press called Jack and Sara heroes, and while he found the hypocrisy mildly offensive—these were some of the same reporters who had called him a traitor to American ideals—Jack was gratified to find himself fielding phone calls regarding job offers from all the major networks, including his old friends at GNT.

  He let most of those calls pile up on voice mail.

  As he and Sara recovered emotionally as well as physically, they spent many of their days at sea, lounging on the Sea Wrighter, letting the sun and the salty ocean air work their natural healing effects. Their nights were spent in the harbor, drinking wine with Tony, with Eddie curled up at their feet.

  Despite his disappointments, despite the lumps he took to get here, Jack couldn’t imagine a better life.

  He was in the city he cherished, close to people he cared for and who cared for him, with all the material things he needed—and what, after all, could matter more than that?

  Well, there was one thing. And he vowed to do something about that.

  * * *

  Six months after the showdown on the bridge, on a cold Friday night in London, the body of Adam Swain was found by a girlfriend in his apartment near Westminster. He had been strapped to a chair by an unknown assailant, his body covered with burns that were determined to have been made by the application of an electric baton.

  For several hours, according to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

  Coincidentally, on that same night, the imam of a local mosque, Faakhir Zuabi, was found dead in his office, a .22 caliber bullet hole in his forehead.

  Neither of the murders was ever solved.

  The following day, two men boarded a plane at Heathrow and flew into Ben Gurion International with a group of their fellow Chabad-Lubavitcher Chasids.

  Their names were Rabbi Mel Neershum and Jacob Samuel Heshowitz.

  They spent the next few days visiting with the Reb’s cousin Ohad before returning to San Francisco. But before they left, Jack and Sara and Reb, each at the same time, went to his own church or mosque or temple and prayed.

  All of them prayed to God.

  To the same God.

  Acknowledgments

  I want to thank Jeff Rovin for his brilliant suggestions in shaping aspects of this story. To my editors at St. Martin’s Press, Charles Spicer and Yaniv Soha, thank you for your eagle eyes. And my agent, Ian Kleinert, deserves a bucket of stardust for bringing it all together.

  ALSO BY MICHAEL SAVAGE

  Trickle Up Poverty

  Banned in Britain

  Psychological Nudity

  The Political Zoo

  Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder

  The Enemy Within

  The Savage Nation

  About the Author

  Dr. Michael Savage is a multimedia icon in the conservative movement. The Telegraph in the U.K. ranked him as one of the most infl
uential conservatives in the United States, and with 10 million weekly listeners, the Berkeley Ph.D. is the third most-listened-to conservative talk-show host. Recently featured in The New Yorker and Playboy, Dr. Savage is the author of twenty-five books, including four New York Times bestsellers. His media presence and profile earned him the coveted Freedom of Speech Award from Talkers magazine in 2007.

  Dr. Savage holds a master’s degree in medical botany and a second in medical anthropology. Additionally, he earned his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in epidemiology and nutrition sciences. He is an ardent conservationist, is dedicated to his family, and is a proud patriot of his country. Visit his Web site at www.michaelsavage.wnd.com.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  ABUSE OF POWER. Copyright © 2011 by Michael Savage. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Savage, Michael, 1942–

  Abuse of power / Michael Savage. — 1st ed.

  p. cm

  e-ISBN 9781429995818

  1. Reporters and reporting—Fiction. 2. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. 3. International relations—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3619.A836A65 2011

  813'.6—dc22 2011019505

  First Edition: September 2011