Abuse of Power

34

Jack forgot about his shoulder and ran, heading straight for the ramp, raising the Glock as he approached them.

“Let her go!” he commanded.

But now Swain and his other men were emerging from the foghorn building and moving in his direction.

“Give it up, Hatfield,” Swain called back. “You gave us a good fight but now it’s over.” He snickered. “Think of the environment, Jack. All this gunfire can’t be good for the gulls and seals.”

Jack froze and looked at Sara and her gaze locked on his.

Even through the mist he could see that her eyes had gone cold, all vulnerability gone. He knew this was her game face. She wasn’t Sara the victim but Sara the hardened ex-Interpol agent.

“Leave me, Jack!” she said. “If they take us both, it’s over.”

It was a ridiculous notion. “No way.”

“You have to! I would if the situation were-”

“Shut up,” the thug spat, rapping the gun barrel hard against her head.

“As much as I’m enjoying this, get her the hell out of here,” Swain snarled.

The gunman backed Sara closer to the Luhrs.

Jack momentarily forgot the mission. There was only Sara-Sara, who was a captive and needed his help.

He shone the laser pointer in the thug’s eyes. “Let her go, you son of a bitch!”

The thug squinted.

Swain turned to Sara. “Turn that off or I’ll kill her right now! Do it! ”

Jack didn’t hesitate. He lowered the light.

Sara said, “Go, Jack.”

Jack looked at her, his heart breaking, not wanting to do as she asked. There had to be a way out for both of them.

But even as he thought that, he knew he had no choice. Time seemed to suspend for a moment. The watch repairman’s son needed a tick tick tick to spur him to action.

Swain gave it to him by drawing closer, raising his gun as he approached. There would be no more talk. Jack guessed that the only reason Swain held his fire was proximity: he wanted to see Jack’s face clearly, through the fog, as he took everything from him. Not just his life but his love.

Jack gave Sara one last mournful glance then swung around, once again shining the beam of the laser pointer into Swain’s eyes. As Swain recoiled, Jack jumped from the ramp, ignoring the pain in his shoulder as he hit the Novurania.

While Swain and his men struggled to get a bead on him in the thick darkness, Jack threw off the line, shots gouging the dock above him. The forty-horse power Yamaha outboard roared defiantly and Jack took off, more shots punching the water behind him, Swain’s shouts in his wake.

“Go! After him!”

But Jack was already out of reach. The acceleration of the Novurania was flawless. There was no hesitation in the slightly choppy waters as the boat responded easily to the throttle control.

The shore was only a quarter mile away but there was nothing there save for desolation, no sign of civilization. Jack knew they would catch him on the two-mile run to the nearest roadway, especially with him losing blood. He had a better idea. Maxing out the engine, he steered toward the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, trying to squeeze as much speed from the RIB as he could.

Jack heard a motor fire up behind him and turned to see that two of Swain’s thugs had commandeered one of the boats from the other side of the dock and were already headed in his direction.

Good luck, he thought gravely. The boats were bigger but they were also slower. They didn’t have a chance in hell of catching him.

That didn’t keep them from shooting, however. The muffled sounds of gunfire punched through the night, bullets whizzing past Jack’s head. They probably sounded closer than they were though Jack couldn’t take that chance. He ducked and returned fire until his ammo was spent.

He kept goosing the throttle, heading for one of the towers of the bridge. He could see the lights of the bridge through the fog-dim, beautiful beacons on top of the main towers used to warn away low-flying aircraft. Having boated by the area hundreds of times, he remembered the built-in maintenance ladders that led toward the roadway above. He could hear the bridge as he saw it, the bounce of his own engine coming back at him as it struck the stanchion.

Covered by the fog, Jack tied a rope to the Novurania’s engine and climbed out. He had sent the boat toward Tiburon, some four miles to the west, then he clambered onto the landing where the workers’ ladders began.

More shots were fired-at the boat, not him-as he grabbed hold of the ladder and worked his way upward, slowly, painfully, rung by rung. Jack was halfway up when he heard his pursuer’s boat roar by, headed in the direction of the RIB.

As he reached the top of the bridge, Jack paused to slip off his belt and use it as a tourniquet. Then he threw a hand up trying to flag someone down, but all he got were squealing tires and angry horn blasts in return. The bright red blood staining his shirt wasn’t exactly a stoplight and the gun in his hand didn’t help much, either.

There wasn’t time to walk. A carjacking? Bring the damn thing full circle?

Then he remembered something else. He recalled seeing workers on bicycles up here. Maintenance personnel used them to move around on the roadway. He needed to find where they kept them.

He took off down the bridge roadway, looking left, right, and ahead as he shambled along. He found the bikes chained to a rail near the end of the bridge. The chain was held in place by a padlock-an old Wilson Bohannan, brass case, brass shackle. He’d finally caught a break.

Jack knelt beside the bikes, not caring whether anyone saw him or not. Let someone call the cops; at least Jack would get a phone call and he could let Tony know what was going on.

Holding the laser pointer in his mouth, Jack focused it on the Glock. The slide stop lever was set in a ridge in the trigger pin. He pushed on the trigger pin as he wiggled the slide stop lever. That enabled him to push the trigger pin and the upper pin free. Using the gun parts as a lock pick, he went to work. In less than a minute the chain was off. Sliding the pieces of the Glock into his pants pocket, he sat on an old two-wheeler that was badly rusted by the sea breeze. It worked fine, if noisily, and he churned down the road to the Richmond side, to the railroad yards he remembered there. Up ahead he saw several long rows of sleek train cars silhouetted in the darkness, idle for the night.

That would be his second stop. First, there was something he needed to find.

Jack got off the bike and reassembled the Glock as he walked. He didn’t need it to work, only look like it would. He moved quickly through the solemn darkness of the yards, a graveyard for the relics of a passing era. The cars afforded some relief from the cold, blocking the wind and releasing some of the baking heat they’d stored during the day. One of the trains-the only one that appeared to have any activity-smelled of livestock. Jack was looking for a light, any light, that would suggest a night watchman, a security shack… a phone.

He didn’t find one. What he did find-bless its antique self-was a pay phone. It was housed inside a green booth with a door that folded in the middle. Jack staggered toward it, legs aching from the bike ride. The light bulb was long dead but Jack didn’t need it. He lifted the receiver, holding his breath, and caught his second break of the night as he heard a dial tone. He exhaled, thanking God for technology that wasn’t designed to be so disposable.

He dialed-actually dialed — the O and placed a collect call. The operator actually sounded surprised as she put it through.

Jack waited, still running the night’s play through his head, wishing to Christ he hadn’t left Sara behind.

But what else could he have done?

She had wanted him to go because she knew he was their only chance of stopping this thing, and she was willing to sacrifice herself for the greater good. Still, he couldn’t help feeling as if leaving her had been a mistake, and he knew he had to divorce himself from his feelings-just as Sara had. He needed to forget that he’d fallen in love with her and concentrate on doing what had to be done.

What had to be done was that Jack needed to build a small army. Fast. And there was only one person who could do that.

A moment later a familiar voice came across the line.

“Hello?”

Tony Antiniori.

Jack struggled to speak, then finally got the words out. “I need you to gather the troops and come get me.”

“Jack-where the hell are you?”

“I’m at the rail yards in Richmond, but I can’t stay here-meet me at the north end of the Oakland yards in about two hours,” he said.

“Okay-”

“And get some manpower. We’ve got a war to wage.”

“What kind of manpower?”

“MARSOC,” Jack said. “Bare-bones assault.”

Jack had asked for a Marine Special Operations Command. Tony would understand he wanted three or four good men. If he had other questions-and Jack was sure he did-Tony didn’t bother to ask them. Jack hung up and hurried back to the train where he’d smelled livestock. The door was partly ajar for ventilation and he confirmed what his nose had suspected: the car was loaded with goats bound for the slaughterhouse. From there, no doubt, many of the carcasses would be sent to the halal market.

“Hope you don’t mind if I ride with you,” Jack said as he painfully pulled himself in, his arm aching and his legs wobbly from the unaccustomed bike ride. He nestled himself in a corner, beside a water tank that fed a plastic hose into the pen. “I promise that at least one of us is going to give those guys indigestion before lunchtime.”