Joshuas Hammer

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Khartoum, Sudan Riding in the back of a battered Mercedes sedan from the airport, Bahmad willed himself to remain calm. This soon before an operation there was only one reason for his sudden recall; for some reason bin Laden wanted to call it off.

In ninety-six hours Deborah Haynes and more than one thousand other handicapped runners would cross the Golden Gate Bridge at the same moment the cargo ship Margo sailed beneath the bridge with Joshua’s Hammer. The two events were coming together as surely as the sun rose and set. But if no one was there to detonate the bomb at the correct time all would be lost.

He looked out the windows at the passing scenery as he battled his impatience. He was still nearly overwhelmed with anger and bitterness from his failure in Chevy Chase. Yet he could see with a critical eye the wild disrepair everywhere in the city; sandbagged street corners, armed patrols, some of the boys wearing uniforms others wearing the ragtag clothing of the rebel factions, and overall the atmosphere of mad confusion and extreme danger.

It was nothing at all like what he had left in Bermuda where he’d taken Papa’s Fancy after the debacle. And certainly nothing like New York where he’d dismissed the crew ten days ago and left the yacht.

He’d had a lot of time to think about the war he’d been waging for most of his life, and he had come to the conclusion that when this project was finished he was getting out for good.

Bin Laden’s compound was off Sharia al-Barlaman a few blocks from the People’s Palace and about the same distance from the Blue Nile. The afternoon was very hot. A reddish-yellow haze swirled through the city, whipping around the corners of buildings and up narrow alleys, causing flags and banners to stream and snap. This was the time of year for fierce desert sandstorms. If they were big enough they even encroached into the cities themselves, like now.

In fact little if anything of any significance had changed here in nearly one thousand years, Bahmad thought morosely. Bin Laden and the others in the various organizations in the jihad such as the Armed Islamic Movement (AIM), the Islamic Arab People’s Conference (IAPC), the Sunni’s Popular International Organization (PIO), the Islamic Action Front (LAP), the Hisb’Allah, the Islamic Liberation Party and dozens more were fighting mostly with words and the occasional terrorist bomb. Even Joshua’s Hammer, though it was a nuclear weapon and would cause a convulsive wave of fear across the United States, was only a gnat’s bite on a giant.

The real education that every terrorist should be required to have was a complete tour of America’s industrial cities, the electronics assembly plants, the military bases, the nuclear processing facilities, assembly plants and storage depots, the electrical generating stations, the ports, the highways, the sprawling medical centers and pharmaceutical research and manufacturing conglomerates, rather than the slums and storefront mosques of a few cities in New York, New Jersey and California. Even bin Laden had no real idea what he was up against. None of them did.

Time to get out, Bahmad told himself. Especially after Chevy Chase. That had been too close a call for him. At the end something had happened to McGarvey. He had been wounded or he had hit his head, but he was out of it, and Bahmad had started to turn back until the daughter had come to her father’s side. She had picked up his pistol and killed Aggad and Ibrahim. Against two-to-one odds she had prevailed.

The car arrived in the anonymous neighborhood of tall stuccoed walls with red-tiled roofs behind them a few minutes after 4:00 p.m. Two solid wooden gates sprung open, and they were admitted into bin Laden’s compound just as a sleeker, newer black Mercedes S500 pulled out. Bahmad caught a brief glimpse of the lone passenger in the back seat. It was Dr. Hassan Abdullah al-Turabi, head of the National Islamic Front party, and Sudan’s attorney general. He was also bin Laden’s longtime friend and mentor, and possibly the most powerful and important man in the entire armed Islamic movement.

The fact that he had come to bin Laden and not the other way around was significant. Something definitely big was in the wind, which was probably the reason Bahmad had been contacted through intermediaries to drop everything and come here to bin Laden’s side. It would also explain why bin Laden had not telephoned him directly by encrypted satellite phone; he hadn’t wanted to take the risk that somehow the call would be intercepted.

Four armed guards immediately surrounded the car as the wooden gates were closed and barred by another two men. Bahmad got his leather bags and got out of the car. Nafir Osman Nafeh, the NEF party’s chief of intelligence, came across the compound, his robes flowing behind him, and gave Bahmad a warm embrace.

“Did you have a safe trip?” he asked.

“A confused trip. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

One of the guards took Bahmad’s luggage, and his driver got out and frisked him. He wasn’t armed, but if he had been he would not have allowed such an affront to the dignity of bin Laden’s chief of staff.

Nafeh watched with a tolerant smile, and when the driver stepped back and gave him a nod, he took Bahmad’s arm and together they walked across the central courtyard which was crowded with a halfdozen cars and three American Humvees.

“It is good to have you back my old friend,” Nafeh said in hushed tones. “There is much work to be done before we can begin the next phase of our struggle.”

The man was an ass, Bahmad thought. He talked like a mujahedeen recruiter trying to drum up enthusiasm among young boys. But the real reason for the recall suddenly became clear to Bahmad. Dr. Turabi and the NIF had somehow found out about the bomb, and for some reason they were pressuring bin Laden into calling off the attack.

“There is-always much work to be done, because the struggle is ongoing,” Bahmad said, using Nafeh’s own words on him.

The intelligence chief beamed. “I was saying the very same thing to Osama at our meeting with Dr. Turabi this morning. And he agreed wholeheartedly.” Nafeh rubbed his nose.

Quitting was a thing that bin Laden would resist with everything in his soul because of the death of his daughter at the hands of the Americans. It was why Turabi had come here in person to give the order, and why Nafeh had stayed behind to act as Bahmad’s personal escort.

They entered the main building and took the stairs up to the second floor. There were armed guards in the corridor. But overall there was an aura of a hospital or a mosque. The atmosphere was heavy, the silence deep.

The meeting had been held in the receiving chamber and bin Laden was still there, looking out the windows. He turned when Bahmad and Nafeh came in, smiled and walked across the room to embrace Bahmad as a long-lost brother. He looked well, as if he had somehow regained his health, and the worry lines in his face, his downcast eyes, were gone.

“I am sorry to have pulled you away from your vacation in the lap of luxury,” bin Laden said.

“I am sorry that I failed you in the first phase of our mission.”

Bin Laden inclined his head slightly. “He is quite a remarkable man. But I was wrong to send you to kill his daughter. I can see that now.” He motioned for them to have a seat on the cushions. When they were settled he poured them tea.

“Now perhaps we can resolve our differences so that we can get on with our legitimate business,” Nafeh said pompously.

There were no armed guards in here, and the significance was not lost on Bahmad. Here, at this time and place, bin Laden was nothing more than an ordinary soldier in the jihad. He was being punished.

Bahmad spread his hands. “I’m sorry, but I am at a loss.” “Don’t play the fool with me, it’s not convincing,” Nafeh said sharply. “We’re searching for a spectacular operation in the United States, but killing innocent Muslim children-handicapped children — will not be sanctioned.”

Bahmad let his voice go cold. “What are you talking about?”

“The Tajikistan bomb. We know all about it. We know that it’s already in the United States, and we know that you plan on blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge at the moment President Haynes’ daughter is crossing it in a footrace. But two thousand other crippled children from two dozen countries will also be on that bridge. Many of them Muslims. Such an action against our own people could never be condoned. It is forbidden.”

“I agree,” bin Laden said. “I can now see the error in my thinking.”

He was lying, Bahmad was sure of it. “What do you want me to do, Osama? Everything is in place.”

“The bomb is in storage at the shipyard in New Jersey and it will remain there until the NIF comes up with another plan,” bin Laden said. He looked to Nafeh for confirmation, and the intelligence chief nodded sagely.

“It will not be wasted,” he said. “When the correct moment comes it will be used.”

“Then the plan to get the bomb to California is to be abandoned?” Bahmad asked, testing. Perhaps the plans had changed. Perhaps the bomb wasn’t aboard the Margo already enroute up the American West Coast.

“Yes, it is to be abandoned. Our contract with the trucking firm that was to drive it across country will be canceled. Do you understand what you have to do?”

Bahmad smiled inwardly. The bomb had never been his New Jersey and there had never been any kind of a contract with a trucking firm. So the plans were not changed after all. “Perfectly.”

“Then you know what your orders are,” Nafeh said.

Bahmad turned to him and arched an eyebrow. “From you, never,” he spat. “I take my orders only from Osama.”

“It will be as the party wishes,” bin Laden assured the intelligence chief. “But Ali will have to return to the United States immediately to make sure that everything is dismantled properly. If we mean to make use of the bomb at some future date it will have to be protected. The people already in place, secured.”

“Perhaps it is a job too difficult for him. I can arrange for several of my Afghans to accompany him.” Bahmad’s eyes flashed. “I know the men you’re talking about. They’re idiots.”

“They follow their orders, and get the job done,” Nafeh shot back. “Even simple tasks such as killing young women.” Bahmad could have killed him, but he willed an outward calmness and even smiled. “I was given faulty intelligence from the Taliban that Kirk McGarvey was dead when in fact he was not. And at the moment of our attack we were surrounded by the police. Something went wrong, and there wasn’t much we could do.”

“You left your Afghanis behind.” The term was now being used all over the Islamic militant movement to mean soldiers of courage.

“They were expendable.”

Nafeh glared at him. “See that you do a better job dismantling the operation. We won’t accept another excuse. Perhaps you will find that you’re expendable too.”

“As you wish.”

“Now leave us. Your business here is finished, and I have other matters to discuss with Osama.”

Bahmad got to his feet, his eyes locking with bin Laden’s.

“Do you understand everything that you must do?” bin Laden asked.

“Completely.”

Bin Laden nodded. “My faith goes with you. Insha’Allah.”

Bahmad’s flight from Paris touched down at Kennedy about 11:00 p.m.” and by the time he had retrieved his bags, cleared customs and caught a cab to the Hudson River boatyard it was midnight. There were lights on in the forward cabins and in the main saloon of Papa’s Fancy, and he saw a shadow pass a window. He stood in the darkness just beyond the end of the dock to watch.

There was no one around this late, and had there been he would have avoided them. He’d come back only to pick up the things he’d left aboard before heading out to California.

Now this.

He hadn’t spent enough time at this boatyard to recognize the few cars that were parked in the lot, but none of them was obviously a government vehicle. Nor did he think that whoever was aboard the yacht was a burglar. No, it was probably one of the crew who’d returned to check on the yacht, or to pick up something that they might have left behind.

On the surface of it, that was just fine, except for one detail. If whoever was aboard at this moment had returned because they were suspicious of Bahmad and were going through his things it could mean trouble.

He had portrayed himself as an independently wealthy international businessman and playboy. But the aluminum case in his stateroom contained weapons and other devices; not things that an ordinary businessman would carry.

He considered turning around and leaving without his things. There was very little in his stateroom, except for the remote control detonating device, that he could not easily replace. Yet most of it was illegal under American law. And the nature of the equipment would raise some red flags with the FBI and CIA, because much of it could be traced to similar sources of the equipment in the van.

He had to weigh that possibility against the fact that the yacht’s owner had secret business dealings with bin Laden and with the Islamic jihad. He had given up the boat for Bahmad’s use without hesitation and without so much as a single question. Perhaps the crew had been briefed to ask no questions either, and to do nothing except what they were told to do. Even if they found the case and opened it they might do nothing.

Bahmad decided that he could not afford to take that risk. For all practical purposes he was now working on his own, independent not only of the movement, but of bin Laden, whose hands were completely tied. If Bahmad ran into trouble he would have to deal with the problem himself. Whatever resources he needed Would have to come from his own connections, as would the extra manpower if and when he needed it.

Which meant he could not make any more mistakes like he had in Chevy Chase, nor could he leave any clues. Or witnesses.

For a moment he was back in Beirut as a child with his parents; happy and safe, feelings that he’d not experienced since their deaths at the hands of the Israelis. From that moment he had, in effect, become a loner. He believed in no one, trusted in no one, and most importantly, depended on no one for help.

This was nothing new to him.

Hefting his bags he walked out onto the dock, making no effort at stealth. The gate at the head of the yacht’s boarding ladder was open, and when he stood on the deck he stopped to listen. There were no sounds from within the boat. They were connected to shore power, so the generators to power the lights weren’t running, but neither was the air conditioner. The night was warm. Whoever was aboard was not planning on staying for long, yet they weren’t afraid of showing lights.

Bahmad went aft and entered the warm, stuffy saloon from the party deck as Captain Web Walker came from the forward part of the yacht. He wore civilian clothes; deck shoes, khaki trousers and a short-sleeved white Polo shirt with Papa’s Fancy embroidered on the pocket. He seemed nervous about something.

“You’re back,” he said. “I thought I heard someone come aboard.”

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” Bahmad said pleasantly.

“I came down for the week, so I thought that I’d check on things. Are you going to need the yacht? Shall I recall the crew?”

“Not for ten days, maybe a little longer,” Bahmad told him. He put down his bags and went behind the bar where he poured a cognac. “Care for a drink?”

“No, thanks,” Walker said. “Everything’s fine here, so I’ll be going.”

“A moment, if you would, Captain,” Bahmad said mildly. It was obvious that Walker was lying. “Did the owner tell you why he wanted you to check on the yacht tonight?”

The captain was a distinguished man, but he looked like a deer caught in headlights. He wanted to bolt, but he was rooted to the spot. “As I said, I happened to be in the city.”

“Yes, yes, I know all of that, but the owner did ask you to check on things, didn’t he?” Bahmad kept his tone friendly. A couple of yachtsmen discussing a simple fact.

“He gets nervous when no one is aboard to watch over things.”

“I don’t blame him.” Bahmad put his glass down and came around the bar. “Did he tell you what you were supposed to be looking for?”

The captain tried to smile. “Primarily that the vessel hadn’t sunk at the dock,” he said. “It’s happened to other boats.”

“For which the captain would take the blame.”

“Naturally.”

“As he would take the blame if there was contraband aboard.” Bahmad laid a hand on Walker’s shoulder. “Drugs, maybe booze. Something that we might have picked up in Bermuda and didn’t declare when we came back.”

“No one is worried about anything like that.”

“Weapons then. Guns with silencers and hollowpoint bullets.”

The captain swallowed.

“So, you came back on the owner’s orders to search my stateroom. You found the case and you opened it. The question is who did you call? The FBI?”

The captain backed up. “I just got here, I haven’t called anyone—” He realized his mistake and clamped his mouth shut.

Bahmad smiled again. “What did you take?”

“Nothing, I swear to God.”

Bahmad turned him around and roughly shoved him up against the bulkhead. “Hands on the wall, feet spread.”

“What the hell is this all about?”

“Do it.” Bahmad gave him a shot in the ribs, and the captain grunted as if he’d been struck by a sledgehammer, but he did as he was told.

Bahmad quickly frisked him, but came up with nothing except the captain’s wallet, some money, keys, handkerchief, comb, glasses and penknife.” “What did you take?” he asked again.

“Nothing—”

Bahmad drove his fist into the same spot in Walker’s side. The man cried out in pain and his knees started to buckle. “What did you take?”

“I tossed the case over the side. I swear to God it’s at the bottom of the slip.”

Bahmad was surprised. It wasn’t what he had expected. “Why?”

“I was told to do it before you got back.”

There it was — the answer. Someone from Nafeh’s staff had called the yacht’s owner and asked that Bahmad’s weapons be found and destroyed. They were fools. He didn’t need the equipment. Not even the remote detonator because the weapon could be manually set to fire from the keypad with as long as a twenty-four-hour delay.

“Then what?” Bahmad asked, though he didn’t care what the answer would be, he was merely distracting the captain for one necessary moment.

He shoved Walker flat against the bulkhead with his left hip, then grabbed the man’s head with both hands and twisted it sharply backward and to the right. The captain’s neck broke with an audible pop.

Bahmad let go and stepped back, allowing Walker to slump to the floor. The captain’s legs twitched, and his eyes blinked furiously as his face turned purple. Bahmad thought it was funny and he smiled. Killing a man this way was silent, but it took a good bit of time. Not only was his spinal cord severed, but his windpipe was crushed so that his airway was cut off at the same time his heart stopped.

After a while the captain stopped twitching and Bahmad set about wiping down everything he had touched with his bare hands and searching the yacht for anything incriminating. He thought about finding the yacht’s diving gear and retrieving his equipment, but that would take too much time, not only to find it and bring it up, but to clean it and dry it all off. He decided to leave it at the bottom of the harbor. The captain’s body would be found sooner or later, but he didn’t think that anyone would go diving beneath the boat until it was too late to make a difference. He would get new weapons.

He would get a hotel room tonight and in the morning he would fetch his things from storage and catch the early flight to Los Angeles. Just a few more days now and he would be free. He found that he was looking forward to his retirement with a great deal of relish.

“How are you doing, sweetheart?” President Haynes asked his daughter.

She looked up, a sweet smile on her face. “Hi, Daddy,” she said. “The clouds look like castles this morning.”

Haynes looked out the window. They were over Iowa enroute to San Diego at about 30,000 feet, and the cloud formations did indeed look like castles. Like the one at Disneyland where they were going tomorrow. The International Special Olympics’ opening ceremony was three days from now, and Haynes was making a sweep through California in support of Governor S. Howard Thomas who was up for reelection in November. It was going to be a hot contest with a lot of major issues, not the least of which was abortion, which Haynes was against, but had to support publicly because of his party’s position; a ban on smoking in all public places including beaches, parks and even streets, something he thought made some sort of sense but was a ridiculous infringement of people’s freedoms by a heavy-handed government; and the elimination of the state income tax, even while Florida was grappling with the creation of a state income tax and Haynes himself was proposing the end of federal income taxes in favor of a flat-rate sales tax. Whatever position he took, there would be a hundred different voices opposing it, five dozen powerful lobbyist groups clamoring to get the attention of Congress and at least twenty talking heads on weekend morning television analyzing and dissecting every single move he and every other politician made. And it brought a smile to his face. This was what American politics was all about. The almost constant bickering, the dissentients, the name-calling and sometimes even mudslinging, the attempts at bribery and influence-peddling, the investigations and sometimes even impeachment proceedings; the give and take of compromise. All of it was working exactly the way the designers of the system had meant it to work. There was no dissolving of Congress or of the government, no tanks coming up Pennsylvania Avenue in another military coup, no President and his cabinet fleeing the country, no armed revolution pitting one people against another, leastways not since the Civil War.

“The clouds do look like castles Haynes said. He looked into his daughter’s eyes. She seemed very happy. “Are you looking forward to the Olympics this weekend, sweetheart?” She was always so open and straightforward that he could tell what she was thinking and how she was feeling.

“I’m nervous, but I was thinking about something,” she replied.

“What’s that?”

“Just about everybody else is going to be just as nervous as me. Mom says all I can do is my best and don’t worry about anyone else, ‘cause they’ll be trying to do their best. I hope. But I’m still nervous. Is it okay?”

Haynes glanced up as his chief of staff Tony Lang came around the corner. He looked nervous. Everybody aboard did. Haynes gave his daughter a peck on the cheek. “It’s okay to be nervous, but not scared.”

She thought about it for a moment, then nodded, her pretty blue eyes lighting up and a smile brightening an already impossibly bright face. “Gotcha.” She looked like a cross between a blond, blue-eyed Scandinavian beauty and a mysterious, almond-eyed Siberian.

Haynes studied his daughter’s round face for a moment, and his heart suddenly hardened. God help the sorry sonofabitch who ever tried to harm so much as a hair on her head. He felt a genuine sorrow and guilt for what had happened to bin Laden’s daughter. He wished that he could somehow make it right, or at least explain to bin Laden how it had happened. But he could not. What he could do was protect his own child, while at the same time protect the freedom of the United States.

“Gotta go,” he said, but his daughter was already looking out the window again. She could grasp some fairly complex ideas, but usually not more than one of them at a time. She was in some ways lucky, he thought.

He joined Lang and they went forward into the corridor separating the family’s space with the President’s private study and conference room.

“Henry would like to go over a few things with you, Mr. President, and Sterling wants to know if you’ll agree to an off-the-record chat with the media sometime this afternoon before we touch down.”

“Tell Henry to come up, and I want you to sit in on it too, because I have a few ideas — assuming he’s talking about security for the games in San Francisco.”

Lang nodded. “He’s running into some brick walls, and he’s probably going to ask you to pull your daughter out of the ISO.”

Haynes’s jaw tightened. “Not a chance. And you can tell Sterling that I’ll talk to the media, but the issues will be limited.”

“Anything but the games?” Lang asked.

“That’s right,” Haynes said angrily. He went forward, pausing at the open curtain to his wife’s office. She was in conference with her press secretary and they looked up and smiled.

“Did you talk to Deb?” his wife asked.

“Just now. She’s a little nervous, but she’ll be okay.”

“Would you like me to come back later, Mrs. Haynes?” the First Lady’s secretary asked, starting to rise.

The President waved her back. “No. Henry wants to go over the arrangements for San Francisco, so I’ve just got a minute.”

“Are we going to be okay up there?” The President’s wife asked.

“We’re going to make it okay, Linda, by covering all the bases, not by hiding,” the President told her firmly. He held her eye for a moment, and a silent message of reassurance passed from him to her. She visibly relaxed. “I wouldn’t take the games away from her for anything.”

“It’s been two months and nothing has happened,” she said. “Do you want me to touch on it in my talks?”

Haynes thought about it and nodded. “It might not be a bad idea. But use a light touch, and maybe you’d better run it past Marty.” Martin Schoenberg was the President’s chief speech writer.

“Sure.”

The President went to his conference room. He pressed the button for his steward, who appeared instantly. “How about some coffee, Alex?”

“Coming right up, sir.”

Haynes was in shirtsleeves; not as informal as Clinton had been, but a lot less tense than Nixon. He set a hardworking but relaxed tone in his administration, and the people he’d gathered around him thrived in the atmosphere.

His coffee came in a large mug bearing the presidential seal, and a moment later Lang showed up with Kolesnik.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” the chief of the Secret Service Protective Division said.

“Morning, Henry. Tony said you had something for me.”

“Yes, sir, but I’m afraid that it’s not very, good news. San Francisco is a mess. There’s just no way that we can guarantee your safety or that of your daughter in the games. It’s as simple as that. We’d like you to pull your daughter out and cancel your part in the opening ceremonies.”

“We’ve gone over this a hundred times.”

“Sir, a lot of those athletes are coming from Muslim countries. Their families are coming with their moms, dads, brothers, uncles. At least men who claim to be brothers and uncles. And there’s just no way we can check all of them. If bin Laden wanted to send an army to San Francisco, he could do it easily.”

“But he’s not going to do that”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but we can’t be sure,” Kolesnik countered. He handed the President a list of all the Special Olympians expected for the games. “There’re nearly three thousand of them, plus relatives or guardians and coaches. At least four hundred are Muslims. But that’s not the worst of it. Bin Laden has supporters just about everywhere, which means that the assassin or assassins could be German or Italian, or Japanese, even American.”

The President flipped through the lengthy list, knowing exactly who these people were. Down syndrome runners, paraplegic swimmers, blind discus throwers, palsied high jumpers; athletes with dozens of afflictions doing the best they could. “That’s exactly why bin Laden won’t make his strike in San Francisco. He’d be killing Muslims. His own people. He’d never survive such an attack.”

“In a strange way, Mr. President, you may be wrong for all the right reasons,” Kolesnik said. “By killing his own people he would be sending a very clear message that absolutely no one is safe from him. It could dramatically increase his stature and that of the NIF, if anyone can follow such logic.”

“Well, I for one cannot.”

“The psychologists on our staff brought it up as a possibility, sir.” Kolesnik was frustrated, but it was clear that he’d expected to run into a brick wall. “If it came to that, Mr. President, the Secret Service could supersede your orders.” Under certain circumstances in which the President’s life was clearly in danger, the Secret Service did have the power to override a President’s wishes, even by gentle force if necessary, and take him out of harm’s way.

“Don’t even try to go there, Henry,” Haynes warned.

Kolesnik straightened up. “Until you fire me, Mr. President, I’ll do my job the best way I know how even if it means disagreeing with you.”

The President handed the list back. “Is there any evidence that bin Laden is planning to hit us in San Francisco?”

“No, sir.” Kolesnik replaced the list in his file folder. “But the bomb is already here in the States.” “Anything on that from the FBI or CIA that I haven’t seen?”

“No, sir.”

“They tried to get McGarvey’s wife and daughter and they failed. Maybe that’s it,” the President said. “Bring me some hard information and I’ll cancel the entire ISO. Until then do what you can.” Haynes softened. “I want you to know, Henry, that I’m not trying to be a bastard here. I appreciate the extraordinary efforts that your people take every day to keep me and my family safe. But you have to understand what I’m faced with. Whoever sits in this chair still has to go out and press the flesh on occasion, even if it means putting his life on the line. And that’s just the way it is.”

“Yes, Mr. President, we do understand,” Kolesnik replied. “We’ll do the best we can.”

“That’s all I can ask from anybody.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“There’s something damned funny going on, if you ask me,” Captain Panagiotopolous told his deck officer. It was after breakfast and they were steaming north at seventeen knots about two hundred miles off the Baja California peninsula. They were slightly ahead of schedule and if the weather held they’d be in San Francisco at least eight hours early.

The entire trip starting in Karachi three months ago had been a cocked-up affair, in the captain’s estimation, although nothing terribly untoward had happened to them other than the brief but intense storm in the Arabian Sea. But there’d been an odd flavor to the home office communiques from Paris, a vagueness that the captain had never noticed before in his twenty-five years at sea. It was the new executives probably; kids who’d never been to sea themselves and yet felt competent to run a shipping company with a fleet of thirty-eight vessels that stopped at just about every port in the world. But the snot noses did know computers.

For two months while the Margo was in dry dock at the Tampa Marine Yards in Florida, Panagiotopolous had gone home to visit his family in Athens. But after just a few days he remembered why he had left in the first place. He took a small boat out to Delos where he worked up a sweat helping prune olive trees. Honest labor. Appreciated labor. When he got back to his ship he was refreshed, ready to go. But after a brief inspection he saw that none of the repairs done to the ship had been necessary. Some painting, a new reefer in the galley, a few new pieces of navigation equipment on the bridge; nothing essential.

He got to wondering what the hell was really going on. For instance, why had the Margo been yanked from service at that particular moment for unnecessary repairs. Instead of earning money, the company had lost a bundle. And, why had the deck cargo bound for San Francisco been unloaded and stored at the shipyard instead of being transferred to another ship?

Or what the hell were they doing with a helicopter tied down on the rear deck?

Panagiotopolous wasn’t surprised by taking on last minute cargo. It happened all the time. But it was the way in which it had been handled in Colon at the eastern terminus of the Panama Canal that was odd. They were ordered to drop anchor in the holding basin, and within the hour the self-loading cargo vessel Antilles Trader out of Havana came alongside. A company representative came aboard with a bill of lading. The helicopter was to be loaded on the Margo’s afterdeck for delivery to M. L. Murty, Ltd.” in San Francisco. The documents were in order, but since it was Cuban equipment bound for a U.S. port a special clearance was needed, something the representative didn’t have. When the captain called the company on SSB he was told in no uncertain terms that the Margo was his ship and his responsibility. He would either have to sail without the papers, or a new captain would be found to replace him. The clearance papers, he was promised, would be delivered to the ship with the harbor pilot in San Francisco Bay. If he was stopped in U.S. waters by the Coast Guard he would have to talk his way out of his problem.

“It makes no sense,” he said.

“I agree,” Schumatz replied. They stood on the port wing looking aft. “I could fray the cables and let the sonofabitch fall overboard. Nobody would be any the wiser. The insurance company would bitch, that’s if the company even made a claim. Without the proper papers we shouldn’t be carrying it, so if it simply disappeared they might say nothing.”

“Why are they taking the risk? That’s what I don’t get. The ship and our cargo could be impounded.”

“Obviously the company thinks it’s worth it. Hell, even if we deliver the chopper the new owners will never get it registered with the FAA. Not without the proper documents. Does that make any sense to you?”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Panagiotopolous said. He stared at the machine. It was a small helicopter, capable of carrying only the pilot and three passengers. But it was apparently in serviceable condition. According to Schumatz, who had supervised its loading, there was even fuel in the tank. Another thought struck him. “There’s plenty of clearance for the rotors. Someone could pull the lines free and take off, couldn’t they?”

Schumatz’s eyes narrowed. “What are you getting at?”

“Does anybody aboard know how to fly one of those things?”

“I don’t. Do you?”

Panagiotopolous shook his head thoughtfully. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t adding up. There was some element that he was missing.

First Officer Green came from the bridge with a message flimsy. “We just received this,” he said, handing it to the captain.

“Thank you,” Panagiotopolous said. “Do you know how to fly a helicopter, by any chance, Mr. Green?”

Green’s face brightened. “As a matter of fact I do, sir. The company has a couple of Bell Rangers, which I’ve used.”

“Could you fly that one?” the captain asked, indicating the Cuban helicopter on the aft deck.

“They all fly pretty much the same, so I suppose so. But I took a look at it when it came aboard, and it’s a piece of junk. Doesn’t have much of a range, either, so I wouldn’t get very far.”

“Anyone else aboard know how to fly one of those things?”

Green shook his head. “I don’t think so, Captain. They cost a ton of money to maintain, let alone fly, and I don’t think we have any millionaires in disguise on our crew list. Why did you ask?”

“We were just wondering why the company ordered us to take it to San Francisco at the last minute.”

“I haven’t a clue. I could call my dad and ask him, I suppose. But like I said, it’s a piece of junk. I don’t know anybody who’d want it except as a museum piece.”

“That’s probably it,” Pangiotopolous said. “Thank you.”

“Yes, sir.” Green started to leave, but then turned back. “Oh, that’s a U.S. Coast Guard traffic advisory that we just got There’s going to be a shipping restriction under the Golden Gate Bridge Saturday morning from ten hundred hours until fourteen hundred. I’ve already done the navigation. If we can keep our present SOG we’ll be under the bridge at least six hours early.” SOG was the actual speed over the ground that the ship made good, which included the effects of ship’s speed through the water, the ocean currents, the wave action and the effect of the wind on the bulk of the vessel.

“Thank you, good work,” the captain said, and Green went back inside.

“What’s that all about?” Schumatz asked.

Panagiotopolous quickly read the brief USCG. advisory. “Something’s going on, probably bridge repairs, so they’re closing down all shipping traffic inbound as well as outbound.” He pocketed the message. “It won’t effect us though.” He glanced again at the helicopter. “Ask around, would you Lazlo? Find out if anyone else can fly one of those things.”

Schumatz nodded. “What about Green?”

“I’ll keep an eye on him.”

It was coming up on noon at the headquarters gym. McGarvey had had a particularly bad bout of depression this morning, so intense that he’d had difficulty concentrating on getting through the morning, let alone doing any real work. He’d fought depression most of his adult life and extreme physical exercise not only kept him in shape for field work, but it somehow combated his dark moods. If he could get through one or two hours of hard work, anything for him was possible afterward.

Murphy had ordered him to take an extra week off, but that was impossible. He’d had the operation to fix the bleeder in his head and relieve the pressure on his brain, and he’d recovered fully. But bin Laden and Ali’ Bahmad were still at large, and the bomb was still out there somewhere. His wife and daughter had almost been assassinated. The President, who steadfastly refused to back down, was putting his own daughter in harm’s way. And the Arabic languages expert Otto had found had translated the rest of the one and only phone conversation between bin Laden and Bahmad that they’d managed to record.

The daughters of the infidels will die like the pigs they are.

Bin Laden had used the plural — daughters — not the singular. It meant that McGarvey’s and the President’s daughters were targets.

According to the timetable, Bahmad had told his master. The package is on its way.

But that was two months ago, and since then the only piece of information they knew with reasonable certainty was that bin Laden was holed up in his compound in Khartoum. Possibly even under a loose house arrest by Sudan’s National Islamic Front.

It was this last bit of information that was so puzzling. The analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence were telling him that if bin Laden were under house arrest it could mean that the bomb project was being delayed or canceled. McGarvey wasn’t so sure. Bin Laden was an independent man, and he was dying. He certainly wouldn’t delay the project, because he might not live long enough to see it done. Nor would he cancel it. No, Bahmad was still here in the U.S.” with the bomb, and he meant to use it. The question was where and when.

If you get close enough to bin Laden, kill him, Dennis Berndt had suggested. It wasn’t that easy, McGarvey thought. It never was. But he was finally beginning to realize that killing bin Laden might just be their only way out. But it was hard, when he was depressed, to keep his mind on track. Hard not to just walk away from the problem, something that he’d never done in his life.

He wiped his face with his sweat towel at the side of the fencing strip and took a drink of Gatorade as he tried to figure out a strategy. Todd Van Buren, his opponent, was not only twenty-five years younger, his reflexes were super sharp because he worked as a hand-to-hand combat instructor at the Farm. The fact that he was sleeping with the boss’s daughter didn’t seem to have any effect on his enthusiasm for the touch. But he did have one weakness. He was primarily a foil est and that’s how he was trying to fight epee this morning.

McGarvey walked back to the en garde line, his mask under his left arm. “One more touch?”

Van Buren nodded. “Getting a little tired, Mr. McGarvey?” he asked, grinning.

“We’ll see,” McGarvey said. Strong physical exercise had always helped him focus on the moment instead of his past, yet it was still hard to concentrate. As soon as he allowed his mind to drift, even a little, bin Laden’s face and that of his daughter’s swam into view.

He came to attention and brought the hilt of his weapon momentarily to his lips in a salute. Van Buren did the same. They donned their masks, brought their left arms up in a graceful arch over their rear shoulders, and raised their weapons to the en garde position.

On a silent signal between themselves they began. Van Buren came out first, testing for McGarvey’s response and speed of response. First a feint in four. McGarvey stepped back easily out of range and took Van Buren’s blade in a counter six, trying for the easy displacement and quick thrust for the touch. But Van Buren rode the pressure of McGarvey’s blade downward, aiming his own lightning quick thrust to McGarvey’s leading knee, barely missing before McGarvey nimbly retreated out of range.

They were at la Belle, a tie score, and neither of them wanted the double touch. They both wanted to win.

McGarvey momentarily lowered his blade in what might have been taken as an unintended invito.

Van Buren declined, retreating out of range himself. “It’s not going to be that easy this morning, Mr. M.,” he said.

Before Van Buren got the entire sentence out, McGarvey made an explosive ballestra and lunge feint to Van Buren’s sword arm just above the bell guard. Surprised, Van Buren retreated again, making what he thought would be the easy parry. But McGarvey disengaged, dropping his blade beneath Van Buren’s and coming up on the outside of his opponent’s bell guard.

Van Buren, quick as McGarvey knew he would be, parried the thrust as he retreated, but instead of coming on guard, Van Buren raised his arm slightly to start a flick.

There it was, the foil est mistake in epee.

A flick was nothing more than a deft snap of the wrist that caused the more flexible foil blade to snap like a bullwhip, the point arching gracefully over the opponent’s bell guard for the touch. An epee blade, however, was too thick and too stiff for a flick to be very effective unless the swordsman had an exceedingly strong wrist. Even so, in order to make it work the attacker sometimes cocked his sword hand slightly, leaving the under part of his wrist behind the bell guard open for just a split instant.

McGarvey brought his point in line, angulated at a deceptively slight upward angle and held his ground. Van Buren’s arm snapped forward in a powerful flick, but before his point could make the arc, his wrist made contact with McGarvey’s waiting epee tip.

Even as the green light came on, indicating McGarvey’s valid hit, and locking out the flick, Van Buren realized his mistake. He skipped backward, and immediately raised his left hand, acknowledging the hit.

McGarvey took off his mask and saluted Van Buren, who did the same. They switched their masks to the crooks of their weapon arms and shook with their bare left hands.

“You knew it was coming, didn’t you,” Van Buren said, grinning.

McGarvey nodded. “Yeah. You were concentrating so hard on the flick that you forgot about defense for just an instant.”

“I’ll remember that for the next time.”

They parted and walked to the ends of the strip where they unplugged themselves from the scoring reels, and it struck McGarvey all at once that bin Laden’s attention would be taken up with his own troubles right now. Not only his illness, but the apparent trouble he was having with the NIF. If the DI analysts were correct, bin Laden would be meeting on a daily basis with his Islamic fundamentalist pals. There would be a great deal of activity at his compound. He would be traveling again, trying to explain his position, consolidate his support, trying to get the green light to proceed.

Either that or he was busy stalling them. If that were the case he’d never leave the compound. He would stay put, letting the Islamic liberation fighters come to him. If he was stalling for time the traffic to his compound would be one-way.

“I said that I have to drive back to the Farm this afternoon,” Van Buren said next to him.

McGarvey turned around. “Sorry, I guess I was woolgathering. What’s happening down there?”

“Summer session. Liz is going with me for a few days, if you can spare her. She has some field experience that I’d like her to share with the class.” Van Buren grinned. “The screwups along with the good stuff.”

“If she thinks that she can spare the time, then go ahead,” McGarvey said. “She’s a handful, isn’t she?”

“That she is.”

“Don’t underestimate her, Todd.” McGarvey gave him a hard stare, playing his role as father now. “She’s my daughter, don’t forget it.”

Van Buren suddenly got very serious. “No, sir,” he said.

McGarvey clapped him on the shoulder. “Save the flick for foil, unless you want to use the preparation as an invito.”

“You would have found another weakness, wouldn’t you, sir?”

“I would have looked for one,” McGarvey agreed. He gathered up his equipment and went into the locker room to take a shower and change clothes while Van Buren put away the scoring machine. He was finished in ten minutes and on his way up to Rencke’s office on the third floor, no longer depressed. He had the bit in his teeth now.

“I want to see everything we’ve come up with on bin Laden’s Khartoum compound over the past two months,” he said, coming down the narrow aisle between computer equipment.

Rencke looked up from his monitor and broke out into a big smile. “Just what the docs ordered, beating the kids at something they do good. It’s that thing he does with the flick, isn’t it?” “How the hell did you know about that?”

Rencke scooted his chair to an adjacent monitor and brought up a series of stop action frames on a split screen; one side showing the bout that McGarvey and Van Buren had just finished, and the other showing stick figures fighting the same bout, their every action and reaction analyzed and tagged with vector diagrams. “When the boss is in the dumper everybody wants to know what to do. So I got elected.”

“Don’t ever take up fencing, Otto.”

“Have someone coming at me with sharp, pointy objects? Not a chance, Mac.” Rencke scooted back to his primary monitor, cleared the screen and brought up a satellite view of bin Laden’s Khartoum compound. There were several Mercedes and three Humvees parked inside the gates, but there was no sign of people. “Take a look at this. We just got our satellite back.”

“Is he still there?”

“There’s activity, so I suspect he’s there.” Rencke looked up. “Are we thinking about another cruise missile strike? There’s a children’s hospital right behind it, and a Catholic school next door. Great propaganda stuff.”

“No missiles. I want to know about the traffic patterns over the past couple of months. Has bin Laden or anyone else from the compound been going visiting, or has all the traffic been incoming?”

“Are you talking about the DI report this morning?”

“It got me thinking that bin Laden might be stalling for time.”

“It would help explain why there’s been only the one phone call between bin Laden and Bahmad. If they were sticking to their original timetable, bin Laden wouldn’t have to do anything except lie around biding his time until it happened.”

“Something like that,” McGarvey said.

“But Bahmad might have already left,” Rencke suggested. “Maybe he was here just long enough to set everything into motion. There were only two guys in the van at Chevy Chase that day. Both of them were bin Laden’s people, we know at least that much. If Bahmad had wanted to come after Liz he would have been there himself. Instead he just sends the two goons. He could be gone.”

“We never found the gun that killed Mike Larsen,” McGarvey said. “It could mean that there was a third person in the van. Somebody that nobody saw.”

Rencke stared at the computer screen for a long time. “There’s probably a couple of thousand satellite photographs of the compound over the past sixty days, I’ll check them all. But we need their timetable. And we need it right now.” Rencke looked up again, his eyes round, his face serious. “This weekend the President’s daughter is going to take part in the International Special Olympics in San Francisco. If the bomb went off there it’d sure as hell make a big statement.”

“It’s crazy,” McGarvey said.

“You could say that, but this President’s not gonna back down for anything. You gotta admire him just a little.”

“But he’s putting his own daughter at risk.”

“And himself too,” Rencke said. “He’s doing the opening ceremonies.”

“Okay, I want everything you’ve got on the games ASAP. We’ll take another look at them.”

“All right. But we’ve got one thing going for us though. A bunch of those people are Muslims. He might not want to kill his own people.”

“That didn’t stop him in Riyadh or Africa,” McGarvey shot back sharply. “If San Francisco is their target the bomb is already there, and so is Bahmad.” He couldn’t believe he had missed it. Where was his head? “I’ll get our people started, and then send the heads-up to the Bureau. In the meantime I’ll try to convince the general to talk some sense into the President.”

“What about Liz?”

“She’s supposed to go down to the Farm with Van Buren this afternoon, but I’m going to keep her here. I’m calling a staff meeting at two and I want everything you can come up with on bin Laden by then. I want to know if he’s still there, I want to know if he’s done any traveling over the past two months, and I want to know who’s come to see him.”

“Are you going after him?”

“Let’s take care of this weekend first. If we can get to Monday in one piece we’ll take the next step.” McGarvey’s eyes narrowed. “I’m tired of screwing around, Otto. One way or the other we will deal with bin Laden once and for all. He’s fucked with us for the last time.”

“This could be a nightmare,” the FBI’s San Francisco Special Agent in Charge Charles Fellman said. It was very windy on the Golden Gate Bridge, and some of his words were blown away, but everyone knew what he was saying, and everybody agreed.

“It’s our job to see that it doesn’t get that far,” Jay Villiard replied. He was a short, intense man who had been a gold shield detective in Manhattan’s Midtown precinct until going to work for the U.S. Secret Service. He was an advance man for major presidential trips. His job was to convince the local law enforcement agencies to do things his way. “Tried and tested, ladies and gentlemen, tried and tested,” he liked to say in response to objections. “The Coast Guard has sent the Notice to Mariners on the five-mile bridge restrictions. But what about ferry traffic?” Beth Oreck asked. She headed the San Francisco Harbor Authority.

“All traffic.”

Beth was a large-boned woman with a broad face. She looked at him over the glasses perched on the end of her nose. “In that case we have a problem.”

Villiard focused on her. “Yes?”

“Pilot boats. They take the harbor pilots out to incoming ships. If they’re held in port we won’t be able to start getting shipping back to normal for three or four hours after the restriction is lifted.”

“Send the pilots out before the restriction takes effect. They can wait aboard their assigned ships until the bridge is cleared.” Villiard waited only a moment for any further objections from her before he looked up at the bridge towers that soared 746 feet above the water. “I want people up there watching the roadway from both directions.”

“We’re already on it,” David Rogan assured Villiard. He was chief of the San Francisco Police Antiterrorism Unit. “I’m putting pairs of my SWAT teams guys on each side of the roadway, on both sides of the bridge.”

“I agree,” Villiard said. “The bridge will be searched Friday night twelve hours before the event, and again Saturday morning two hours before the start.”

No one offered any objections.

Villiard walked over to the rail and looked out over the harbor back toward Alcatraz Island. After a moment Charles Fellman joined him. The others stayed at the two vans that had taken them from Candlestick Park over the route that the presidential motorcade and Special Olympians would take.

“This is about bin Laden, isn’t it?”

Villiard looked at him, his lips compressed, and he nodded. “Nothing in two months. The CIA says he’s holed up in Khartoum, and they haven’t come up with a single shred of evidence that he’ll strike here and now.” Villiard shook his head. “There’ll be runners from Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, even Iran. He’d be a fool to try anything. But I’ve got a terrible feeling about this weekend.”

Fellman, who’d worked with him before, nodded. “I know what you mean. But you have the same feeling before every event.”

“You’re right.”

“So we redouble our efforts. Push the exclusion zone back to ten miles; hell, fifteen.”

Villiard shook his head. “The god damned bomb is the size of a suitcase, Chuck. How the hell do you find something like that hidden in something like this?” He swept his arm to include the entire bridge, and perhaps the entire bay area.

“You don’t,” Fellman admitted after a few seconds.

“But you keep trying,” Villiard said. “There’s no other choice this time. We keep doing the same things; tried and tested.”

“Nothing is going to happen this weekend, Mac, and you know it as well as I do,” Murphy said.

McGarvey had to agree intellectually. He knew all the reasons bin Laden would not strike the President’s daughter in the midst of hundreds of his own people. Yet he could not shake the feeling that had come to him downstairs in the gym. Bin Laden was so desperate to win before he died that he was going to make a foolish move; like Van Buren had with his inappropriate flick. It would be an all-out thrust that he knew could have the consequences of causing his own destruction, but he was willing to take the risk. He had seen it in the man’s eyes and in his voice at the Afghanistan meeting, as well as on the phone call. The effective blast radius of the bomb was more than a mile. Parked in the middle of the Olympic Village it would wipe out all the athletes plus a lot of the surrounding neighborhoods. Hidden somewhere in Candlestick Park stadium, so long as it wasn’t shielded by too much concrete and steel, the nuclear explosion would kill everyone in attendance including the President’s daughter who would be down on the field, and the President and First Lady on the speakers’ platform during the opening ceremonies. Hidden somewhere on the Golden Gate Bridge, anywhere between the two towers, the bomb would serve the exact purpose it was designed for, taking out large bridges. The center span would drop into the bay and no one would survive. That included the President and his wife who would be in the convoy of cars leading the half-marathon from Candlestick Park to Sausalito — Deborah Haynes somewhere in the pack.

“I hope you’re right,” he told Murphy. They were in the DCI’s office, the sun streaming through the tall windows.

“I’m not trying to say that we’re out of the woods. But I don’t think San Francisco is his target.”

McGarvey thought again about bin Laden’s voice on the phone call that NSA intercepted; he was a changed man from the one who had negotiated a bomb for his family’s freedom. Even harder and more desperate than he had been in the cave. “I want you to try to get to the President again. One more time, General, try to convince him to pull his daughter out of the games and come home.”

Murphy shook his head. It was obvious that he had tried more than once and failed. “Not a chance,” he said, and before McGarvey could object he held up his hand. “He’s read all the transcripts and listened to the phone conversation. He knows the risk he’s taking, but he also knows the risk he’d be taking if he packed it up and hid in a bomb shelter until we found it. He told me to tell you that he knows you must be faced with a similar problem allowing your daughter to remain working for the CIA, and not sending her away somewhere out of harm’s way until the monster is caught.” McGarvey wanted a cigarette, but he felt like hell as it was. He’d known the answer that Murphy would give him. He’d merely been trying to delay the inevitable decision that he was going to have to make.

“I’ve called a staff meeting for two,” he said looking up. “We have a lot of work to do.”

“Here we go again,” Murphy replied heavily. He turned away momentarily unable to meet McGarvey’s eyes.

“Nothing’s changed, has it?” McGarvey thought about his past, about everything that he’d done in his twenty-five years with the Company. Had he made a difference? He sometimes doubted it. Leastways nothing had changed because of him in the long run. “We don’t have the luxury of time, so it could end up being messy. I want everybody to know that from the beginning. Another missile strike is out, for humanitarian as well as political reasons. Nor do I think it would be a good idea to send in the marines, and Khartoum is too far inland for any kind of an effective SEAL operation. It’s going to have to be one-on-one.”

“Do we have anybody on the ground out there?”

“Not the kind of an operative that we need,” McGarvey said. “I’ll set up a forward headquarters in Riyadh. It’s just possible that we can flush bin Laden out of his compound by setting up a meeting somewhere. Something he could not afford to miss. Maybe just across the border in Yemen.”

“But you’re not going out on the mission, Mac,” Murphy said firmly. “You’re not going to try to kill bin Laden yourself.”

“It doesn’t matter who kills him, General, he has to die.”

Serafini’s view was a much narrower one. Killing bin Laden would solve only one of her problems. He was just one of dozens, perhaps hundreds or even thousands of crazies out there who would like to do harm to the President and his family. Her job, one that she was proud of and took very seriously, was to stop them, with her own life if necessary. More specifically she was the lead officer on the detail to protect Raindrop, the code name for the President’s daughter.

She was thirty-four, divorced, no children, parents dead, no brothers or sisters. Her entire life revolved around her job. So much so, in fact, that she was already beginning to have bad dreams about the day a new President and First Family replaced the Hayneses. She expected that everyone else on her detail should share the same enthusiasm. They did not, of course, and it was a never-ending source of vexation for her.

The best deal today was that Deborah was staying put. The President and First Lady had left early this morning for a breakfast fundraiser, and were at this moment attending a thousand-dollar-a-plate luncheon at the San Diego Hilton. They had left Deborah here at the La Jolla estate of their old friend and campaign contributor, the real estate multimillionaire Gordon Wedell and his wife Evelyn. The Wedells, currently in Europe, had loaned the house to the President and his family, as they had on several other occasions. Wedell liked the arrangement because when it came time to sell the place its value would be greatly enhanced by its famous guests. The Secret Service liked it because the house was perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific and was easy to secure. The President and Mrs. Haynes liked it because it was comfortable, and Deborah loved it because they had horses, an Olympic-size swimming pool, tennis and racket ball courts, and a place for her to run, all in perfect safety.

Chenna got out of the jeep across from the horse barn and raised her binoculars. Deborah Haynes, dressed in gray sweats, her long blond hair streaming behind her, was coming around the far turn of the one-mile oval horse track. Terri Lundgren, her coach, astride an ATV, paced her on the outside just a few feet away. Even from here Chenna could see the pure, unadulterated joy on Deborah’s face as she loped, rather than ran flat-out. She was turning in respectable eight-minute miles at the start, and from what Chenna had seen over the past couple of years since Terri Lundgren had come aboard, the girl could continue at that pace all day.

Directly behind her, and a few yards back, agent Bruce Hansen took up the rear astride his own souped-up version of an ATV. If anything started to go bad he could get to Deborah within seconds, and if need be he could get her out of there at speeds ranging up to eighty miles per hour.

Chenna turned her chin slightly so that her lapel mike would pick up her voice and activate the VOX. “Hey, you’re lookin’ good out there, Romeo One. But I thought that you were going to start running with her instead of riding.” “I’m out of breath just watching her. She’s getting too good for me. Do you want to try?”

Hansen, who was one of Chenna’s favorites, had been an Olympic sprinter eight years ago. He’d not won any medals, but he’d come close. And the main thing was that he had made the U.S. Olympic team. Everyone on the detail was proud of him.

“I wouldn’t make it one lap,” Chenna radioed. “Bring her in, cook’s got lunch ready to go.”

“Roger that,” Hansen said. He sped up alongside Lundgren, who broke off and angled over to Deborah.

The President’s daughter slowed down, and seemed to stumble as if she had trouble concentrating on talking and running at the same time. But then she looked over to where Chenna was standing, gave a wave, and bounded across the track, this time running flat out.

Chenna was used to the girl’s athletic abilities; she’d watched them develop. But someone seeing the President’s daughter for the first time would have reason to be nervous. Deborah had Down syndrome, and like many people with that handicap she was double-jointed. Watching her run was like watching a Raggedy Anne doll; her arms and legs flew in every direction as if she was going to crash and land in a jumbled heap. But she never did. She was as surefooted as a young gazelle, and under Lundgren’s tutelage she had become a world-class athlete. She was expected to win Saturday’s half-marathon, or at least place in the top three or four out of a field of fifteen hundred runners.

Charlie McGivern, the horse master, came out of the barn and lit his pipe. Chenna caught the movement out of the corner of her eye and turned slightly to see who it was as her right hand headed automatically toward her pistol in a shoulder holster.

He was used to Secret Service agents around the place. He waved.

Chenna grinned and waved back. Charlie was one of the good ones. His wife had died a few years ago and he had nobody, so he doted on the President’s daughter whenever she came to visit. He’d even made a special saddle for her with her initials carved into the left and right fenders.

He watched Deborah run for a moment or two, Lundgren and Hansen following her, shook his head and went back into the barn. Chenna knew what he was thinking, and sometimes she had to agree with him. Being a sitting President’s daughter had to be tough. It was no life for a kid, and yet Deborah thrived. She had friends who loved her and she was protected every single moment of every single day.

“Chenna,” she cried with total joy, her arms wide open. She grabbed Chenna, who was short but solidly built, on the run with a tremendous hug and easily lifted her off the ground. Everything the girl did was with overflowing enthusiasm. It was one of the reasons that Chenna loved her assignment.

“You’re getting strong,” Chenna said, laughing.

“I eat my Wheaties,” Deborah bubbled. “Did you see me running?”

“I did, and I can’t get over the improvement. You’re really getting fast.”

“I can’t keep up with her,” Hansen admitted. “And that’s a fact.” “I’m very proud of her,” Lundgren agreed. “But the best part is that she’s got even more potential. Look out, Ferrari!”

Deborah giggled in pure joy and clapped her hands. It was a daily ritual they went through, but none of them minded because of the utter happiness it gave her.

“Okay, gotta run some more now,” she said, jumping up and down to keep loose. Sweat covered her face, but she didn’t seem to notice.

“Lunch first,” Lundgren said, handing Deborah a towel. “Then we’re going to do a little resistance training in the gym, and afterwards laps in the pool.”

“Can I run later?”

Lundgren looked to Chenna for approval.

“Maybe for an hour,” Chenna said. “But then you’ll have to get ready for dinner. You’re going to be with your parents tonight in town.” Deborah immediately calmed down. “I think I’ll wear the blue dress tonight. And the black heels and pearls.”

Chenna, who was a tomboy, shook her head. “That’s going to be up to your mom.”

Deborah smiled knowingly and nodded. “I think it’ll be the blue dress,” she said with confidence. “And right now lunch sounds good.”

McGarvey walked across the hall to the DO’s conference room at two in the afternoon. He had managed to pull together what information they had so far on bin Laden’s compound and his probable movements in the past two months since he’d left Afghanistan. But if they were going to mount an operation to take him out they would have to know a lot more. For instance: They knew that he was never without guards, but almost nothing was known about them; how they were selected, where they came from. If they were going to find a way to get to bin Laden it might have to be through one of his guards. They also had to know more about his communications; who he talked with and how. They needed to know who was coming to see him on a regular basis, and what they were probably talking about. It was possible that he and the NIF had had a falling out, and maybe he could be gotten to through the Sudanese government. They needed to know where his wives and children were staying; who shopped for his groceries and who prepared his meals; where his water came from, and if there was a possibility of poisoning it. Assassinations were not always accomplished with a bullet to the brain.

It was a far cry from teaching at Milford, he told himself. Voltaire would probably have understood what he was trying to do, though the philosopher would have wondered what might become of a man who tried to stamp out evil by doing evil deeds himself. McGarvey had been asking that question all of his life.

“Good afternoon, Dick,” McGarvey said. Surprisingly Adkins was the only one here so far.

“I told everybody else two-fifteen. I wanted to talk to you first,” Adkins explained.

“I should have brought you in this earlier, sorry about that, but I had a lot of thinking to do. The general’s not real happy, but he can’t see any other way out either.”

“Well, you’ve got everybody’s attention. Considering the information you’ve been asking for, the word is already out. But nobody is disagreeing with you — at least not in principle,” Adkins assured him. “The problem is going to be the trigger man.”

“I’m going to set up shop in Riyadh,” McGarvey said.

“Right,” Adkins said. “I can’t imagine that the general went along with that.”

“I’m just going out there to make sure that Jeff Cook gets the word. He knows what resources he has on the ground.”

Adkins gave him a wan smile and shook his head. “Somehow I find that hard to believe. So will everyone else. Beating Van Buren on the fencing strip is one thing, but going back out in the field banged up the way you are is another.”

“We might not have to send any of our own people,” McGarvey said. He knew that this was the kind of reaction he would get. “If we can lure him to a meeting somewhere in Yemen, just across the border, Saudi intelligence can put up an operation to grab him.”

“That might work,” Adkins said after a moment’s thought. “But he’s survived for too long to fall for anything easy. Whatever the meeting is about, and especially whoever it’s with, will have to be damned convincing.”

“I agree,” McGarvey said. “Assuming that Turabi and the NIF are having some sort of a dispute with bin Laden it could be about the bomb. I mean that’s not such a leap of imagination. Maybe they think it’s over the top. Too extreme right now, especially with the moderates in Iran.”

“Okay,” Adkins agreed with some uncertainty.

“We’re guessing that the bomb went through Pakistan, possibly out of Karachi, maybe by ship or by plane.”

“That’s a possibility we’ve looked at, Mac. But we haven’t come up with a thing. Hell, we don’t really have anything here except speculation.”

“But it’s possible,” McGarvey pressed the point.

Adkins nodded.

“Okay, so Pakistan has its own troubles with us right now over the nuclear question an dover their new military government, so they can’t afford to upset us. If the ISI asks for the meeting on neutral ground in Yemen to promise bin Laden that they’ll give him anything he wants providing he turns over the bomb to them, he’ll come.” ISI, or Interservice Intelligence, was the Pakistani intelligence agency.

“What’s to stop him from picking up the telephone and calling them, besides his paranoia?”

“We do, from Riyadh. We’ll leak the word that we’ve redirected our southern India Jupiter satellite into position over the Sudan.” Jupiter was the program to closely monitor Indian and Pakistani communications because they had gone nuclear.

“Do you think that if he’s in custody or dead, that it’ll stop Bahmad from going ahead with whatever plan they hatched?”

“I don’t know, Dick,” McGarvey said. He sat down. “We’ve had no luck finding him or the bomb, and assuming we can get through this weekend in one piece, maybe an end run will be the only practical thing to do.”

“That’s assuming the Saudis will want to announce that they’ve finally caught bin Laden,” Adkins pointed out. “There’d be a lot of repercussions against them and us. Most of the Islamic world would be up in arms.”

“They are anyway, Dick.” McGarvey shook his head. “No matter how this thing turns out we’re going to end up being the bad guys. And that’s just the way it is.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It was a few minutes past 10:30 a.m. when Bahmad entered the Fremont Building just off Pershing Square. He was dressed conservatively in a blazer, gray slacks and club tie, and carried a thin attach case. He’d recolored his hair salt-and-pepper gray.

He took the elevator to the eighteenth floor offices of Omni Resource Financing, Ltd. “Gordon Guthrie to see Mr. Sanchez,” he told the pretty receptionist. He handed her his card.

“Do you have an appointment this morning, sir?” the young woman asked cooly. “Mr. Sanchez is in conference at the moment.”

“No appointment, luv,” Bahmad said. “But if you’ll just give him my card, he’ll see me.”

The receptionist picked up the telephone and pressed a button. “Luis,” she said and she hung up. A moment later a young Hispanic man, very sharply dressed, came out, took the card, glanced at Bahmad and went back inside.

Bahmad smiled. “Have you worked for Mr. Sanchez very long?”

“Yes, sir. Would you care for a cup of coffee?”

“No thank you. I won’t need more than a minute or two of his time.”

She gave him a smirk and turned back to a pile of mail that she had been sorting. Bahmad drifted over to a very nice Picasso print on the textured wall, but when he got closer he saw that it wasn’t a print after all, it was an original. He looked around the large, very well furnished reception area. Six other paintings ranging from a Gainsborough to a Warhol, all originals, hung on the walls with absolutely no sense of coordination or theme. But then he supposed it was to be expected. Emilio Sanchez had no class but he headed the largest Mexican heroin cocaine cartel in history so he had plenty of money. Unlike the Colombian drug lords who operated out of jungle fortresses and seldom took the chance to travel far from their safe havens because they were afraid of being captured, Sanchez conducted his affairs out in the open here in Los Angeles as a respected, if flashy, businessman. He had his financial fingers into everything from real estate to offshore oil exploration, and from Silicon Valley high-tech companies to portfolios of blue chip stocks.

All of it was a front for a highly sophisticated money laundering operation that no government in the world had uncovered yet. Sanchez himself had been nothing more than a small-time gangster in Mexico City until eight years ago when bin Laden’s people had sniffed him out, and set him up in business here.

Since then he’d become a godless, arrogant bastard filled with self-importance, but he was getting the job done. In the last three years alone more than two and a half billion dollars had passed through Omni Resource Financing, and the next three years had promised to bring more of the same. Until now, Bahmad thought. In a few days everything would change, and there would be no going back for any of them.

“Mr. Guthrie,” the receptionist called.

Bahmad turned and gave her another smile. “Yes?” Luis stood respectfully at the open door, and the receptionist’s demeanor had changed from one of dismissal to one of respect.

“Mr. Sanchez will see you now, sir.”

“Thank you,” Bahmad said. He followed the young man down a broad, thickly carpeted hall, more originals on the walls, past several large offices in which a lot of people were very busy at work, to a palatial corner suite of beautifully furnished offices with floor-to-ceiling windows that afforded a magnificent view looking east across the city toward the San Gabriel Mountains.

Emilio Sanchez, dark and dangerous looking, sat scowling on a leather couch by the windows, two men seated in chairs across a broad coffee table from him. One of them got up and came across the room, smiling.

“Welcome to Los Angeles, Mr. Guthrie,” he said. “I’m Francisco Galvez, chief of corporate security.” He looked like a cop, with dark eyes that seemed to miss nothing, square shoulders and a firm grip. The other man was very thin, almost emaciated, with a heavily pockmarked face. He wore thick glasses. He was smoking a cigarette and the ashtray in front of him was nearly half full. He seemed very nervous. Sanchez, on the other hand, was short, going bald, somewhat paunchy and seemed surpremely confident.

“You might be just the man I came to see,” Bahmad said pleasantly.

Galvez who only knew that Bahmad worked for bin Laden, gave him a searching look, then brought him across the room where he introduced the thin man as their CFO Juan Zumarraga, and then Sanchez. Neither of them rose to shake Bahmad’s hand, nor was he offered a seat.

“What can we do for you?” Galvez asked directly.

Good, Bahmad thought, there was to be no time for pleasantries. “I’ll take just a moment of your time,” he said, smiling politely. “Since this has nothing to do with your financial operations, Mr. Zumarraga can get the fuck out of here, and somebody can get me a beer.” He glared at them. “Now.” He sat down in Galvez’s chair, opened his attache case and took out a map of the west coast of Baja California.

After a moment Sanchez nodded. Galvez went off to get the beer and Zumarraga got up and left. Bahmad marked the approximate position of the Margo on the map and handed it across the table to Sanchez. They had been told to expect him, but that had been a couple of months ago, before the missile raid on bin Laden’s camp. A lot of attitudes had changed since then.

“She’s a cargo ship northbound. I have to get aboard her sometime within the next twenty-four hours. Preferably tonight.”

Sanchez glanced at the map, then handed it to Galvez who’d come back with the beer. “What’s in it for us?” he asked.

Bahmad considered the question for a moment. “Your continued employment,” he said. “You’re doing an acceptable job, and we would like to keep it that way.”

Sanchez was amused. “Things have changed. Maybe I will simply continue on my own. I have connections.”

Bahmad considered that for a moment too, and then shrugged. He put the beer aside, took the map from Galvez and put it back in his attache” case. “Someone will be sent to assassinate you and your family. That will include your wife and children, as well as your mother and your young sister, Juanita.” Sanchez sat forward. “You fucking come here and threaten me?”

Bahmad spread his hands. “I’m merely the messenger from our friend,” he said. “I have no part in his plans, Mr. Sanchez. Believe me, I am nothing more than what you might call a bagman. But it is important that I get aboard that ship very soon.”

Sanchez was shaken, though he tried to hide it. He knew very well what bin Laden and his people were capable of. “How is Osama now?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Bahmad replied coldly.

Sanchez bit his tongue. He gave his security chief a questioning look.

“We could chopper Mr. Guthrie to Long Beach and fly him down to Rosario in the Gulfstream by three,” Galvez said. “How far off shore is your ship?” he asked Bahmad.

“A hundred miles by now, I should think.”

“Miguel could have him out there by dark in the Cigarette.”

“Do it,” Sanchez ordered. “Anything else?” he asked Bahmad.

“Forget that I was ever here,” Bahmad said, rising.

McGarvey tired easily, though he was getting better. His staff was putting together the mission parameters, and Dick Adkins would make sure that they stayed on track. McGarvey had his own agenda to work on this afternoon, and at the moment he didn’t want any interference.

Killing bin Laden and getting away safely would be difficult but not impossible if the plans stayed dead simple. Put a committee on it and the first thing that would come up was proof that the mission could not succeed. One man could not do it on his own. The job would take a small army. But the logistics for such a strike would be impossible to keep simple. Look what had happened when Jimmy Carter tried to mount a rescue operation in Tehran. The project should be scrubbed.

And maybe we were already too late, Adkins had suggested after the staff meeting. Killing or arresting bin Laden could very well be a moot point if the bomb were to be detonated in the middle of the planning stage. Then you’d better make it quick, McGarvey had shot back sharply. Adkins was used to him by now, but McGarvey had seen that his remark had been over the top. It was too bad, but they had work to do to avert a disaster. He would apologize later.

Bin Laden was holed up in Khartoum, the troubled and complicated capital of a troubled and complicated country torn apart by almost continuous fighting. Its oil reserves were thought to be as vast as Saudi Arabia’s. Religious factions were fighting each other. And the Iranian military was in Sudan in a very big way because of the strategic importance of the country. It had leases on military bases in Port Sudan and Suakin that ran until 2019, thousands of Iranian soldiers were in training on Sudanese soil and there was a powerful Iranian-funded radio station in Port Sudan that beamed Islamic propaganda to the entire region.

But the CIA also had a hand in Sudanese politics, something that McGarvey had only come to realize after he’d become deputy director of Operations. He was trying to extricate the Company from the morass, but it had become a Dennis Berndt pet project, and getting out was impossible for the moment. Money and arms were being funneled to the Sudan’s People’s Liberation Army of Christian Nilotes. They weren’t doing much to change the nature of the politics over there, but they were a source of potential embarrassment to the U.S. It was something he’d tried to explain to the White House, but his arguments fell on deaf ears. Leave politics to the politicians, he’d been told.

There were any number of the SPLA’s soldiers who could be persuaded to try for a hit on bin Laden. McGarvey had seriously considered the possibility. But there wasn’t one chance in a million that any of them would be successful, let alone survive the attempt. They were farmers turned amateur soldiers. They did not have the discipline, the equipment, the training or the dedication to carry out such an operation. They might be able to supply the shooter with a relatively safe haven after the kill, and possibly the means of getting him out of the country, but nothing else.

A detailed street map of downtown Khartoum was displayed on his computer monitor. The map was keyed to the National Reconnaissance Office’s digital file of satellite photographs. He clicked on the vertical borders and brought them inward until they encompassed the block in which bin Laden’s compound was located. He did the same with the horizontal borders, then clicked on the photo reconnaissance record. A menu came up showing more than a hundred shots, some of them infrared, of the area within the box, each marked with a date and time. He pulled up a series that had been taken over a five-day period starting two months ago, just after the missile raid.

It was too much to hope that one of the satellites might have caught bin Laden himself showing up, but he was looking for the same kinds of patterns he’d asked Rencke to look for. Was the traffic to the compound mostly from the outside, or were bin Laden or his people traveling out of the compound to attend meetings elsewhere in the city, or the region?

A big problem was that bin Laden had an inside track on the satellites’ orbits. It could be someone on the inside of the NRO, or possibly even computer hackers who’d gotten into the system, found out what they wanted to know and then got back out, all without being detected by one of the new anti hacker programs. Rencke thought that was a slim possibility at best. Actually figuring out what satellite would be “overhead at any given time was fairly simple for someone who knew some mathematics and some rudimentary orbital mechanics. If you plotted a satellite’s movements across the sky at night when it could be seen, a mathematician could predict where it would be at any given time. Thus whenever a photo recon satellite was overhead there seemed to be a sharp drop in traffic in the area around the compound.

Finding nothing in the first series of photographs, McGarvey narrowed the horizontal and vertical borders to box in nothing but bin Laden’s compound. As before a menu came up showing a series of photographs that were taken in the past seven years since the compound was first identified as a possible bin Laden stronghold. The number of photographs was well over one thousand, practically speaking, a dead end for him, McGarvey thought.

Rencke came from Adkins’s office unannounced. “You’re not going to get anywhere like that.”

McGarvey looked up, vexed that he was being interrupted. “Try knocking next time.”

“I only meant that I’ve been over all those pictures. You already know what I came up with.” It suddenly dawned on Rencke what McGarvey was really up to and his eyes widened. “Oh, wow, Mac, you can’t be serious. Not after what you already went through.”

“It has to be done.”

“If you say so,” Rencke said. He started hopping from one foot to the other. “But use somebody else.”

“There isn’t anybody.”

“You mean that there’s nobody you’d be willing to send on such a mission,” Rencke countered.

McGarvey shook his head. “You might be beating a dead horse no matter what we do,” he said. “Unless he comes out of his compound, or unless we can lure him out of it, he’s going to stay pretty safe for the duration.”

“That’s about what I came up with, ya know. And it’s different this time, not like the others.”

He had McGarvey’s attention. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t have my search engines so it’d take you a long time to figure out what’s happening. The last three times that bin Laden was in residence he didn’t stay put. He traveled all over the place. He even flew over to London once. Tehran, Beirut, Tripoli, everywhere.”

McGarvey turned to stare at his computer screen.

“He’s hunkered down,” Rencke said. “It means that he doesn’t want to take any risks.”

“Either that or he’s too sick to travel now.”

“In that case guys like Turabi and General al-Bashir wouldn’t be showing up on his doorstep on such a regular basis.” Lieutenant General Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir was the president of Sudan and the leader of the National Salvation Revolutionary Council. “That’s what I came to tell you. He’s staying put for a reason. And the heavy hitters are coming to see him for the same reason.”

“He’s waiting for the bomb to go off, and they’re trying to talk him out of it.”

“Bingo,” Rencke said without his usual enthusiasm. “It’s just like you figured.” “Find the bomb, find Bahmad and keep the President and his family out of harm’s way. We have the best people in the country working on it, but so far we’ve struck out.” McGarvey looked up. “All we can do is keep trying. Starting this weekend in San Francisco.”

“Don’t forget Liz,” Rencke said with feeling. “They tried to hurt her once, they might try again.”

rio de Arriba, Mexico

At ten thousand feet the Baja California coast was little more than a hazy, pale brown slash against the deep, electric blue of the Pacific Ocean, but as they came in for a landing Bahmad could see the Rosario Marina where he would pick up his ride. It was very large and modern, but there were only a few boats tied up at the more than five hundred slips. The parking lot behind the restaurantcondominium complex was nearly empty too. A lot of the boats had to be out of fishing charters now, and the handful left were powerboats, all of them large and expensive.

“We’ve gotten some of the heavy hitters to sign up, but the flood hasn’t started yet,” the Gulfstream pilot Wayne Hansen observed. “The word’ll get out.” Bahmad sat in the copilot’s seat because he thought it might be possible to catch a glimpse of the Margo on the horizon. But they never flew that far off shore, and he did not direct the pilot to do so. He wanted to keep the need to know at an absolute minimum.

“Is this place new?” he asked.

“Opened last year. Sanchez built it. The man’s a genius. He figured the marina would keep the federales busy watching his nighttime activities, and they’d be too distracted to pay attention to what he was doing during the day.” Hansen clenched a small cigar still in its plastic wrapper in the corner of his mouth. “Smart.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Bahmad said.

They lined up for their landing, the afternoon very bright now, and Hansen lowered the flaps and came in slightly crabbed because of a crosswind. He was a very good pilot. “Should I wait for you?”

Bahmad shook his head. “You might as well go back to California.”

“I hope you like fishing and drinking, ‘cause there’s not a hell of a lot more to do here yet.”

Customs was perfunctory; they didn’t even check his bags. Ten minutes after touching down he rode in an air conditioned shuttle over to the marina, where he was directed to Aphrodite near the end of B dock.

The boat was a black-hulled Cigarette of about fifty feet on the waterline. Long and low she looked very sleek. Bahmad knew something about this type of boat. He’d attended a meeting aboard one in Monaco about five years ago. Its low profile made it very difficult to detect by radar, its powerful engines could push it to speeds up to eighty knots if the sea conditions were correct, and if the engine compartment was properly insulated and the exhausts baffled and led below the waterline she could be extremely hard to detect even by infrared sensors. She could outrun just about anything that the Mexican or U.S. Coast Guards could put to sea.

According to the pilot Aphrodite was used almost exclusively for overnight and long weekend cruises that were arranged by Loves Unlimited, a swingers club from Los Angeles. In reality she was used to head off shore during the day and meet with another ship where she would take on several tons of heroin or cocaine. From there she would race north to the U.S. border, where she would drop the weighted containers about a mile or two off a deserted beach at a precise GPS location for later pickup.

A slender man wearing a baseball cap, brightly flowered Hawaiian shirt and white shorts stood on the foredeck coiling up a thick power cord. He looked up as Bahmad approached. His eyes were dark, and there was a five-or six-day growth of whiskers on his angular face.

“Captain Fernandez?” Bahmad asked.

“Who wants to know?”

“I’m Gordon Guthrie. I believe that you are expecting me.”

“Come aboard,” the man said. He stowed the power cord in a locker, and directed Bahmad to the aft sun deck, then below through a smoked Lexan door.

Everything that Bahmad could see about the boat was first class, very expensively and professionally done. The hatches, the fittings, the ports, all of it was extremely heavy duty. If the entire boat had been custom built and outfitted this way, Bahmad thought, it would withstand a typhoon.

“He’s here,” the crewman said.

A huge, shirtless man with long black hair and a thick black beard, seated at the saloon table studying a chart, looked up. Thick black hair covered his chest, and lay in great patches on his shoulders and flanks. Even the backs of his hands were covered. He smiled, his teeth perfectly white.

“Senor Guthrie, here you are.” He extended a hand, but Bahmad ignored it, cocking his head to listen. He thought he heard someone pounding on something below decks. “Who else is aboard?” “Besides Antonio here, no one else except for Hernando, who takes care of the engines.” Fernandez’s eyes narrowed. “What were you expecting?”

“A larger crew.”

“We manage.”

Bahmad laid his bag down, opened his attache case, took out a Bank of Mexico, s.a. envelope and handed it to the captain. “I would like to hire you, your crew and this boat.”

“We are already yours,” Fernandez said. He opened the envelope and took out the bank draft. It took a moment for it to register and when it did he looked up surprised and very interested. “This is a lot of money.” “There will be a second draft for a further half million U.S. dollars when we’re finished.” Bahmad gave the captain a significant look. “Of course the exact nature of this transaction is strictly between us. It need never leave this boat.”

“What do you want us to do?”

“Hijack a cargo ship.”

“What about the crew?”

“There are seventeen officers and men, but two of the officers are mine. Most of the remainder of the crew won’t know what’s happening.”

“Those that do?”

“We’ll kill them.”

Fernandez sat back. “What then?”

“You’ll get your second check and you can come back here or go wherever you would like to go.”

Fernandez looked at the bank draft again. “How do I know that this is legitimate?”

“Telephone the bank.”

Fernandez nodded. “I think I’ll do just that.” “Good. In the meantime I want to meet your other crew member, I want to see your radio equipment and I want something to eat. We have a busy night ahead of us.”

“This is unit two standing by on schedule. This is unit two standing by on schedule, over.” Green was on the radio telephone, obviously waiting for a reply. The crewman normally on the bridge with him had gone below to fetch more coffee. Green had spilled his on the deck. Captain Panagiotopolous had been on deck checking the helicopter. When he came back inside he spotted the crewman and asked why he wasn’t on the bridge. He stood now in the shadows of the chartroom just aft of the bridge, watching and listening.

“Unit one, this is unit two standing by on schedule, over.”

Green was not getting the reply he wanted, and he was becoming frustrated. Something made him turn around and he spotted the captain, his face falling almost comically.

“How long have you been standing there, sir?”

Panagiotopolous came out into the light. “Long enough to want to know what the hell you’re up to. What’s this unit one and unit two stuff?”

“It’s a company code. I was trying to contact my father.”

Panagiotopolous glanced at the SSB radio attached to the overhead. It wasn’t set to any of the company’s frequencies. “You’re lying, Green. Now I want to know what’s going on here!”

“It’s your off-watch,” Green snarled. “You should have stayed in your quarters instead of coming here.” He reached inside his jacket and pulled out a pistol.

Panagiotopolous, surprisingly light on his feet, was across the bridge in two steps and he batted the gun out of Green’s hand. “You little shit. Pulling a gun on me.”

Green stepped back and tried to hit Panagiotopolous in the head with the radio telephone handset. But the captain had been in his share of barroom brawls during his long service as a merchant mariner, and he knew all the tricks. He ducked like a boxer, slipped the blow and shoved Green hard enough against the radar console that the breath was knocked out of the first officer. Nevertheless Green tried to fight back, but he was outweighed by at least seventy-five pounds. Panagiotopolous slammed him against the console again, this time knocking the fight out of him.

The portside door swung open and Schumatz came in. He looked from Green to the captain in surprise. “Do you need some help, Captain?”

“Green pulled a gun on me.”

Green tried to say something, but Schumatz was across the bridge in a few strides and he knocked the first officer to the floor. “I told you that I didn’t trust the sonofabitch.” He looked up. “What was the little pissant trying to do, sabotage the helicopter?”

“No. He was up here trying to call someone on the SSB.”

“My father,” Green croaked from where he was crouched on the floor still clutching the phone.

“That’ll be easy enough to check,” the captain said. “I’ll call the company.”

“It’s the middle of the night over there,” Schumatz pointed out. “Maybe we should wait until morning.”

Panagiotopolous turned back to Green. “Why did you pull a gun on me?”

Green looked away defiantly. The captain snatched the telephone from him.

“Unit one, this is unit two, go ahead.” There was nothing but the soft hiss of a dead frequency. He hung up the phone. “Put him somewhere secure. I don’t want him sneaking up on me tonight and slitting my throat.”

“I’ll put him in the dry storage locker in the galley,” Schumatz said. “He won’t be bothering anyone. I’ll get his gun.”

“Just get him out of here, I’ll take care of the gun,” Panagiotopolous said.

“Do you want me to send Rudi up?” Rudi Gunn was the second officer.

“He’s scheduled to come on at midnight. I’ll stay until then,” Panagiotopolous said. He looked at Green. “See if you can get anything out of him, Lazlo. Something is going on around here that I can’t quite put my finger on.”

“I don’t think so, Liz,” McGarvey said.

“I’m sorry, Dad, but I’m not leaving until you see my point,” his daughter said. It was seven and they were alone in his office. He’d known that she was bringing trouble by the look in her eyes and the set of her shoulders. Girding herself for a battle.

Yet what she wanted to do went way beyond the pale of her duties as a CIA case officer, even in this instance in which she had so much personally at stake. Elizabeth had almost lost her life on the golf course. It was just luck that McGarvey had gotten there in time to spot the van heading out onto the fairway and recognize it for what it was. Just blind luck that he was there to break up what would have been a good hit. Both shooters had been heavily armed and both were well motivated. Since Elizabeth had been cut off from her weapon, she’d done the only thing left open to her, and that was to run. But it was exactly the wrong thing to do. The terrorists had herded her and her mother into a killing ground and would have finished the job if Liz hadn’t gotten to her father’s gun.

Now she wanted to step up to the plate again; deliberately put herself into harm’s way. He was proud of her and angry with her at the same time. And vexed too. Goddamnit, nothing was ever simple. But she had a point and he knew it.

“I’m going to your mother’s,” he told her. “I need something to eat and a few hours’ sleep. You can ride down with me to my car.”

“Good, maybe Dick can talk to you—”

“This has nothing to do with my driver,” McGarvey said. “You’re an intelligence officer, not a Secret Service bodyguard.”

“But I know her, Dad,” Elizabeth said.

McGarvey stopped. He tried to work out where she could possibly have met the President’s daughter. It was impossible, he told himself. They came from two different worlds.

“What are you talking about, Liz?” he asked her.

“I’ve been doing my homework on her and Sarah bin Laden,” she replied. She looked away for a moment and shook her head. “We’re all cut out of the same cloth, you know.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It does! We’re about the same age, our fathers are, for better or worse, important men and we all have handicaps. Sarah couldn’t have any kind of a normal life because there was a price on her father’s head and they were stuck in the mountains. Deborah has Down syndrome. And I—” Her lower lip quivered.

“And you what, Liz?”

She looked up into his face, searching, as if she was looking for an answer. “I want to be just like you, Dad. I want to follow in your footsteps, but I can’t. I can’t.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that, sweetheart.”

“But I wanted it all my life,” she said. “And now I’m falling in love with Todd, and he wants me to get out of the Company. My mother and father want me to quit. Somebody is trying to kill me. And I’m scared.” She was appealing to her father for help that he could not give her. “But Sarah was scared too, and so would the President’s daughter be If she knew what was going on. It’s why I have to be with her until we stop the bastard.”

“I can’t.”

“You have to, Dad. It’s what we do for a living.”

“The Secret Service is watching her. Twenty-four hours a day. She can’t make a move without them seeing it.”

“That’s the difference. They’re watching her. I want to go out there and be with her. She deserves at least that much from us, don’t you think?”

McGarvey nodded after a long time, and he never suspected how much pain such a simple gesture could bring nun. “Take Todd with you, okay?”

“Okay.”

“His name is Gordon Guthrie,” Cheryl Cook said in the main saloon of Papa’s Fancy. She was distraught. “But I don’t know where he came from. England, maybe.”

Jim Lane, NYPD gold shield detective, looked up from his notebook with interest. “Why do you think that it was this guy and not one of the crew, or maybe a burglar caught in the act?”

Cheryl had come down to New York to be with Captain Walker for a few days. They had been having an affair over the past six months, and although she knew that it would never come to anything, she did love him in a way. They were supposed to meet at the Plaza, but when he didn’t show up she came over to see what was going on. She still couldn’t believe what she had walked into. She looked over to where she had found his body. She could still smell the foul odor of his death lingering on the air.

“The captain got along real well with the crew, but Mr. Guthrie showing up all of a sudden was creepy.”

“Creepy how?”

“We were in the middle of our annual haul-out when Mr. Richter, the owner, ordered us to drop everything and get up to Washington to meet him.”

“What’s so creepy about that?” Lane’s partner, Nicole Nickles, asked.

Cheryl shivered. “Just the way he came aboard, smiling all the time. But there was something wrong with his eyes. Like he had X-ray vision, or something. Whenever he was around I felt like I wasn’t wearing any clothes.”

“Where’d he go?” Lane asked. The young woman had made the initial 911 call, and until the ME had taken a look at the body and found the probable cause of death, she’d been a chief suspect.

“The day after we got back from Bermuda he told us that he was done with the yacht for a couple of weeks. He packed up everything except the aluminum case and left.”

“You already told us about that. But the case isn’t on the boat now. Could he have come back and got it?”

“Anything’s possible,” she admitted. “But if you find him, you’ll have the captain’s murderer. I’d bet anything on it.” She lowered her head and began to cry. “Damn.”

Nicole put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “We’ll find him.

Guaranteed,” she said. “But we’re going to need your help. Is that okay?”

Cheryl looked up and nodded.

“We’re going to need a better description of him. You can work with a police artist to come up with a drawing of his face. And then you can look at some photographs. Are you up for that tonight?”

“Whatever it takes to catch him.”

“Okay, just hang in there. We have a few things to take care of here, and then we’ll drive you downtown.”

The yacht was filled with evidence technicians who were going over everything with a fine-toothed comb. So far they hadn’t come up with much except that the man identified as Guthrie had fine, light brown hair, which they found on the pillows in his cabin.

Lane turned back to the girl. “By the way, why did Captain Walker pick last night to check on the yacht?”

“I think Mr. Richter asked him to do it.”

“Any idea why? I mean was this something that normally happened when the crew was away for a while?”

“Not often, but sometimes. Especially if there was a storm, or something like that.”

Lane pocketed his notebook. This case wasn’t going to be as open and shut as some of the ones they got. In fact he had a gut feeling that it wouldn’t even be theirs for very long. He’d shared his feeling with Nicole and she agreed with him. A federally documented yacht just returned from a long trip outside the U.S. A suspect who might not be an American. An absentee owner. No apparent motive. And worst of all the lack of fingerprints. Ed Bowser, their chief evidence technician, said that they were finding only one set of fingerprints throughout the boat, plus a second set that was probably the young woman’s confined to a few spots in the main saloon.

“If you want my best guess, I’d say that someone who knew what they were doing wiped down the entire boat. The prints we’re finding will turn out to be the captain’s.”

“He came back to check on the empty boat, so what exactly did he check?” Lane asked.

“That’s the best part Besides here in the saloon and up on the bridge, the only other area that we’re finding prints are in the guest stateroom. And they’re all over the place in there. Looks like the good captain came in, checked something on the bridge and then tossed the one cabin.”

Looking for an aluminum case, Lane thought. He took Nicole aside. “Let’s get a dog over here to sniff out what we might be missing.”

“Drugs?”

“Could be,” Lane said. “In the meantime I’m going to put what we have so far on the wire, see if Guthrie’s name turns up anyplace else. And we’ll get it over to the feds. Who knows, we might even catch a break.”

Nicole chuckled. “Yeah, right.”

Rencke left his office a little before midnight and walked down the corridor to the bathroom surprised that everything was so quiet. When he was working he sometimes forgot about time. All that mattered was the job at hand. And so far he was coming up empty-handed and it puzzled him.

He had a halfdozen computer search programs going simultaneously, searching the Net and every database he could think of for a number of basic bits of information: bin Laden’s whereabouts and movements, Ali Bahmad’s whereabouts and movements and the bomb’s whereabouts and movements, plus anomalies in the entire investigation. The bits and pieces that didn’t seem to fit into any pattern; the stray telephone conversation, the odd satellite shot, the interrogation of a prisoner somewhere that turned up something that seemed out of place.

Anything. Anything at all.

Back in his office he telephoned Lieutenant Ritter at NSA. “Hiya, kiddo, anything new?”

“Nothing from the Rome exchange,” she answered. “We’re checking across the board with the vorep upgrades. If bin Laden talks to anybody by phone or radio we’ll know about it.”

“He’s still holed up in Khartoum, or at least we think he is, so you can concentrate there,” Rencke said, dismally. “What about the programs I gave you to use?” “Otto, if I’d gotten them from anybody but you, I’d have to say that they’re worthless.” She sounded just as frustrated as he did. “Whoever knows anything about the bomb, they’re keeping quiet about it.”

“Nothing out of Afghanistan, maybe Iran or Yemen, or even Saudi Arabia?”

“Zippo.”

Rencke ran a hand across his eyes. “Anyway, thanks, Johanna. Keep on truckin’.”

“One of them is bound to make a mistake somewhere. We’ll catch up with them.”

“Yeah,” Rencke said, and he hung up. He sat back and closed his eyes, not even interested in having a Twinkie at the moment. Maybe he was losing his touch. Maybe he could no longer see the colors. Maybe he’d used up his edge. It happened to everybody sooner or later, even to McGarvey, or so the DO’s gossip mill was saying.

Fifteen years ago when he was trying to work out an exceedingly complex CIA computer program system that involved multidimensional bubble memories and intricate mathematics, he hit on the notion of thinking of systems as colors. A shade of lavender, for example, brought into his head the LaPlace transformations. Red was for curl, blue for spin, and more involved melding of colors were for tensor calculus matricies, quantum mechanical statements, chaos equations and a couple of new fields that an Indian mother of three had come up with that only a handful of people in the world understood or had even heard about.

The color this time was orange. He opened his eyes and looked at his monitors, all of them presenting steady streams of data, diagrams and pictures. The information was useless, less than useless without the one piece that would start tying the bits together. Even the universe had been created one pair of particles at a time after the Big Bang. For a minute or two he thought about going home to get some sleep. But he didn’t want to leave because he would have to admit that he had failed. He picked up the phone and called Louise Horn next door in the NRO. “Tell me yes, and make me the happiest man on the planet,” Rencke said, trying to keep it light.

“I’d love to, Otto,” she said. “But nothing’s changed. They’re all bedded down over there.”

A faint spark stirred in Rencke’s gut. “It’s only seven in the evening in Khartoum. Nothing’s stirring right now? Not even a mouse? All day, maybe?”

“What are you getting at?” Louise said, but then she stopped herself. “Oh, I see,” she said. “No one has been in or out of the compound in the past twenty-four hours.”

“Not so much as a delivery van?”

“Nothing,” Louise said. “What’s going on?”

“They’re hunkering. Means the battle is going to start any second,” Rencke explained excitedly. “If anything moves in or around the place, and I do mean anything, I want to know about it right then.”

“Will do—”

“Gotta go,” Rencke told her. He broke the connection and called Johanna Ritter again. “I think whatever’s going to happen is going down any minute. Within a few hours maybe, but certainly before the end of the weekend. Have there been any calls whatsoever to the compound?”

“I don’t know. We’ve just been looking out for bin Laden or Bahmad.”

“I want you to start monitoring every single call, in or out of there, and get them over to me immediately.”

“Okay, I’m sending the heads-up right now,” Johanna said.

One of his computer programs began to chirp. The screen went pale orange. Rencke broke the connection and slid over to the monitor. The screen was split. On the left was a FBI advisory and APB from its New York office. Gordon Guthrie, a Caucasian male, early to mid-forties, five-eight, a hundred fifty pounds, thinning light brown hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing marks, possibly a British citizen, was wanted for questioning in a homicide aboard the yacht Papa’s Fancy docked at the Hudson River boatyard, New York City. No fingerprints. Police artist drawing to follow.

On the right was the reason his search engine had picked out the bulletin and went orange. Papa’s Fancy had been docked at the Corinthian Yacht Club here in Washington, and had cleared customs for departure to Bermuda the day after the Chevy Chase attack.

Rencke pulled up the artist’s sketch and grinned like a kid at Christmas. “Oh, boy,” he said. “Ali Bahmad. Gotcha!”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

There she is,” Captain Fernandez shouted over the terrific noise. A very strong radar return was showing up on the twenty-mile ring. “How do you know that it’s the right ship?” Bahmad demanded. It was getting too late to make stupid mistakes.

“She’s heading in the right direction, she’s going at the right speed, she’s the right size and she’s the only fucking ship out here, amigo,” the captain replied tightly. He wasn’t used to being questioned.

They were alone on the Aprhodite’s open bridge; the captain at the wheel, Bahmad seated next to him and the radar screen between them. It was midnight, and the other two crewmen, Antonio Morales and Hernando Mendoza, were below. They’d been drinking beer for the past four hours since they’d left Rosario, but the captain assured Bahmad that when the time came they would function with their cojones intact. The seas were fairly calm, but the motion and noise aboard the speedboat slamming through the water in excess of sixty miles per hour was tremendous.

Before they’d left the dock, Bahmad had finally made SSB radio contact with the Margo. Green had foolishly allowed himself to be discovered by the captain and locked up. It might necessitate eliminating the entire crew immediately rather than later.

“Can the three of us operate the ship?” he’d asked his other contact aboard.

“With all the automatic systems it’ll be no sweat. We can set the autopilot to work with the GPS navigators and thread a needle ten thousand miles away without touching a control.”

“Very well.”

“The port quarter ladder will be down starting at midnight, and I’ll block the radar sets aft.”

“What if one of the crew spots us?” Bahmad asked.

“I’m on top of it. Can you bring some extra muscle to do the job tonight? Someone we can trust?”

“Yes.”

“See you soon, then. Insha’Allah.”

“Insha’Allah,” Bahmad muttered. He switched off the SSB and smiled.

“Is there trouble?” Captain Fernandez asked. He’d heard only half the conversation. He and the other two were seated at the saloon table while Bahmad made the call from the nav station.

“Nothing that we can’t handle, providing you’re willing to carry out your orders.”

“For a million dollars I’d screw the Pope.”

“Nothing quite that drastic,” Bahmad assured him. He glanced over at the other two men. Morales, the man he’d first met on deck, was staring at him and Bahmad made a mental note to keep an eye on him. He’d done nothing out of the ordinary, however, since they had left the dock and slipped out of the harbor. But there was something about the man that didn’t sit right with Bahmad.

They were one hundred miles off shore now, and not even the strong lights of Ensenada were visible on the horizon. The stars were out, but there was no moon. The night was so dark that Bahmad could not tell where the sky ended and the sea began.

“We’re to make our approach from the port quarter,” he shouted to the captain. “Their radars will be blinded from the rear, and a boarding ladder will be lowered for us.”

“I don’t want to run into a hornet’s nest. Are you sure that everything aboard that sonofabitch is secure?”

“I’ll go up the ladder first. If something goes wrong you can take off.”

Captain Fernandez eyed Bahmad with suspicion. “I’ll leave Antonio with my boat.” “As you wish, but we’ll need to arm ourselves with the MAC 10s.”

“What kind of trouble are you expecting?”

“None, if you do as you’re told. But we need to take care of the crew. All of them, except for my two officers. There’ll be an extra two hundred fifty thousand in it for you. Just for you, and not your crew.”

“Fifteen men,” the captain shouted.

“That’s right,” Bahmad replied. “Do you have a problem with it?”

The captain looked away for a minute, obviously wrestling with his conscience. Bahmad found it amusing, especially considering the business Fernandez was in. “I have no problem,” the captain finally said.

Lazlo Schumatz slipped into the silent galley and waited a full minute in the darkness. The cook and his assistants were not usually down here at this hour of the night, though at sea some men got restless and wanted something to eat. But not tonight. He made his way across the dining area and through the kitchen to the pantry. He unlocked and opened dry storage locker A. “I was starting to wonder how long you were going to leave me in here,” Green said angrily. He stormed out of the locker.

“If you hadn’t been so stupid you wouldn’t have been caught.” Schumatz handed him a 9mm Glock pistol. “It’s just about time.”

“Did you make contact?” Green demanded. He followed Schumatz out of the galley and aft.

“A few hours ago.” Schumatz opened the steel outer door to the port rail and checked the after deck. Sometimes crewmen came back here to smoke. But the deck was deserted now. “I think that we’re going to do the entire crew tonight.” “The captain’s mine,” Green shot back. He had been nursing an anger against Panagiotopolous ever since the storm in the Arabian Sea.

Schumatz nodded. They were going to be using the new navigational equipment installed during the layover sooner than he’d expected. But killing the crew now would simplify matters. They wouldn’t have to try to hide Guthrie for two days. They went out on deck. Green opened the rail gate and secured it as Schumatz unlashed the boarding ladder, opened the control box and activated the small motor that lowered it.

The Aphrodite pulled alongside the Marge’s port quarter. Captain Fernandez matched speeds and timed the approach so perfectly that Mendoza, waiting on the bow had no trouble grabbing the boarding ladder skimming just off the surface of the water. He tied them off.

Morales took over the controls.

“Keep it steady, we won’t be long,” the captain shouted to him.

“What if there’s trouble?”

“There won’t be. Sonofabitch, don’t take off with my boat and leave me behind.”

“Don’t worry, I haven’t been paid yet,” Morales said.

Fernandez grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “There’ll be plenty for all of us, amigo. Even enough for you to buy your Ferrari.”

Bahmad, his MAC 10 drawn and at the ready, was first up the ladder. Schumatz and Green were waiting for him. They’d never met each other, but Bahmad recognized them from their dossiers. At first they were uncertain, but then Bahmad lowered his weapon. “So good of you to invite me aboard, gentlemen.”

Schumatz guffawed and Green chuckled.

“May I presume that there have been no further problems?” Bahmad asked.

“Everything’s quiet now,” Schumatz assured him. “I just released Joseph from the lockup five minutes ago. The captain is in his cabin, and I convinced him not to call the company until later this morning, so we still have a few hours.”

“Very good.” Bahmad waved Fernandez and Mendoza waiting below to come up. “Who is presently on the bridge?”

“Second Officer Gunn and an AB,” Green said.

“That leaves twelve other crew.”

“There’s two in the engine room. Everybody else is in their rooms asleep or watching television. The next watch isn’t scheduled until six.”

Fernandez and Mendoza appeared at the head of the ladder and came aboard. Bahmad introduced them by first names only. They didn’t shake hands, but they all looked at each other nervously.

“What’s the plan?” Schumatz asked.

Bahmad had worked out this operation in precise detail, as he did all his operations. Leave nothing for chance, he’d always maintained, yet be ready for any contingency.

“If the captain were to call a meeting in the galley would everybody show up? Even the on-duty crew?”

“Of course,” Schumatz replied.

“Take our two friends to the galley, turn on the lights and then hide yourselves,” he told Green. “Stay out of sight unless the situation falls apart. I don’t want the crew getting spooked seeing the three of you charging in with guns drawn.”

“What about the captain?” Green asked.

“Lazlo and I will fetch him.”

“Let’s do it,” Fernandez said. He wanted to get this business over with and be gone.

They all went inside. Green and the two drug runners went forward to the galley, while Bahmad and Schumatz took the stairs up eight decks to the captain’s quarters aft of the chart room and bridge. Except for the throbbing noise of the engines the ship was as still as a tomb compared to the speed boat. But it was nothing as quiet as it would be an hour from now, Bahmad thought.

So far the only real glitch had been in New York aboard Papa’s Fancy, but he had a hunch that even that was going to work out to his benefit in the end. Chevy Chase had already been forgotten, relegated to another section of his brain that was able to deal with failures by forgetting about them while at the same time learning from his mistakes. There would be no mistakes this time. He was sure of it.

Schumatz listened at the captain’s door for a couple of moments. He looked up and shook his head.

“If he cries out will they hear it on the bridge?” Bahmad whispered.

“No.”

Bahmad motioned for him to do it, and Schumatz knocked on the door.

“Captain, I have to talk to you. We have a problem.” Schumatz tried the door but it was locked. “Captain?”

“Just a minute,” Panagiotopolous said impatiently.

Bahmad stepped to the side. Schumatz held the pistol out of sight behind his right leg. The door came open and the captain was there, fully dressed, Green’s pistol in his hand.

“What’s this?” Schumatz stepped back in surprise, almost stumbling over his own feet Sensing that something was wrong, Panagiotopolous started to turn, but he was too late. Bahmad diverted the captain’s gun with his left hand and jammed the barrel of the MAC 10 into the man’s face.

“Your death at this moment would be pointless, Captain,” Bahmad warned in a reasonable tone.

The captain tried to raise his pistol, but Bahmad tightened his grip and jammed the submachine gun harder against the man’s cheek.

“I will kill you.”

Panagiotopolous held himself in check for another second or two, but then came down. Bahmad took the pistol from his hand, thumbed the safety catch on and stuffed it in the belt of his slacks at the small of his back.

“What the hell, Lazlo. I trusted you.”

Schumatz shook his head. “This has nothing to do with you,” “Who the hell is this bastard then, and what is he doing aboard my ship?”

“All in good time,” Bahmad said. “First we’re going to assemble the crew and I’ll make everything clear. But I want to assure you that we mean you absolutely no harm. If you cooperate this will all be over with by morning.”

“Is Green one of yours too?”

“Yes. He’s a little hotheaded, I’m afraid. But he will be reprimanded.” Bahmad stepped aside and motioned for the captain to precede him. “I think the galley will do nicely for our meeting.”

“I knew that something was wrong,” the captain muttered. He led them to the end of the corridor and downstairs.

The lights were on in the galley dining room, otherwise it was deserted. Green and the others had to be hiding in the kitchen. There were four metal picnic-style tables attached to the deck, plus the head table for the officers. Bahmad sat down next to the captain at the head table and concealed his gun between them. The ship’s interphone was on the bulkhead behind them.

“I would like you to call the crew now. That includes Mr. Gunn and the second man on the the bridge, the two in the engine room and the other ten who are off duty. I don’t care what you tell them, but if you try to issue any kind of a warning I will kill you instantly, then we will hunt the rest of them down and kill them, after which we will sink this ship. On the other hand if you follow my instructions to the letter we’ll simply lock you and your crew up, take what we have come for, which is only one very small package, and then leave.”

“How will we free ourselves?”

“I’ve brought plastic explosives. We’ll place a small charge on the door lock with a timer set for eight this morning. It will give us plenty of time to make our escape.” Bahmad smiled sincerely. “Believe me, Captain, I don’t want to kill anybody. There’d be no advantage in it for me.”

Something dawned in the captain’s eyes. “The helicopter is yours?”

“That’s right,” Bahmad said, “Mr. Green will be our pilot. All very neat, all very simple if you will cooperate.”

The captain turned to Schumatz who had stuffed his pistol in his pants pocket and stood by the door. “Lazlo?”

“It’s just like he says, Captain. Nobody’s going to get hurt.”

Panagiotopolous shook his head again as if he couldn’t believe what was happening, but then reached back for the telephone and entered a three-digit number. “Attention all hands,” his voice boomed throughout the ship. “Attention all hands, this is the captain. I want to see everybody in the galley on the double. That includes the bridge and engineering duty crews.” He looked at Bahmad, and repeated the announcement. When he was finished he released the talk switch and hung up the phone. “Where’s Green?”

“He’ll be here in a minute,” Schumatz said.

The phone buzzed and Panagiotopolous picked it up before Bahmad could stop him. “This is the captain.”

Bahmad prodded him in the side with the gun.

“If there’s no traffic within our twenty-five kilometer ring leave us on autopilot, make sure the alarm is set and the both of you get down here. Now.”

The captain replaced the phone.

“Your bridge officer?”

“Yes. He’s a conscientious man. He’ll be along shortly.”

“Then we’ll wait.”

Panagiotopolous gave Schumatz another baleful look. “You had this planned from the start, didn’t you? Was it in Karachi, or was it even earlier than that?”

“That doesn’t matter—”

“Goddamnit, I want to know. If it started in Karachi then the company is involved.”

“The company is not involved,” Bahmad said. “But even if it was, it would make no difference.”

“Yes it would,” Panagiotopolous said. He suddenly looked old and tired. “It would to me.”

The first of the crewmen showed up a minute later. “What’s up, Mr. Schumatz?” he asked. He eyed Bahmad seated with the captain.

“Sit down, the captain wants to tell us something,” Schumatz told him, and the crewman took a seat as others drifted in. Some of them were in bathrobes and had obviously been sleeping, while others were fully dressed and looked wide awake. The two from the engine room, their white coveralls dirty, came in, followed by Gunn and the able bodied seaman from the bridge.

“That’s the lot,” Schumatz said, closing the door.

The fourteen men assembled were curious, but none of them seemed alarmed or in the least bit suspicious until Bahmad prodded the captain to his feet with the MAC 10.

Several of them jumped up.

“Sit down or I shall kill your captain,” Bahmad warned. The first few seconds of these kinds of situations were always the most dicey. Anything could happen if the crew acted in concert.

Some of the men turned in desperation to Schumatz who had pulled out his pistol. But he pointed his gun at them.

“Do as he says, gentlemen,” Schumatz shouted. “Sit down! Now!”

Now they were confused, some of them frightened, others sullen, obviously looking for a way out. But they had lost the moment when they could have done something, and Bahmad smiled inwardly at this little triumph. In general people were like cattle.

“My name is not important,” Bahmad said. “But with the help of Mr. Green and Mr. Schumatz I am taking over this ship for the next eight hours. We’re going to lock you in the pantry dry storage area while we conduct our business. When we are finished you will be released unharmed. I give you my word. The last thing we want or need is a bunch of injured men. It’s not why I’m here.” Bahmad looked at them. There were a couple of men who were obviously potential troublemakers, but it was too late for them to put up any effective resistance, and he could see in their eyes that they were just realizing that fact now.

“At least stop the ship before you leave,” the captain told Bahmad. “I don’t want to run into anything.”

“As you wish,” Bahmad said. “You’ll be a little cramped, I’m afraid, but it shouldn’t be too bad for a few hours.”

“Who the fuck are you trying to bullshit?” one of the crewmen demanded angrily. “You’re going to kill us all.”

“Why would we do such a thing?”

“You don’t want any witnesses.”

Bahmad smiled faintly. “If that were the case we would have killed those of you who were sleeping in your beds and taken the bridge and engine room first. It certainly would be a lot less messy than calling you all down here and shooting you dead.”

The crewman had no answer for that and he said no more, but he was suspicious.

“On your feet, please,” Bahmad instructed. They did as they were told with a lot of hesitation. But there was no leader among them and they didn’t know where to turn or what to do. “I would like you to follow Mr. Schumatz, in single file please, to the dry storage locker. If anyone decides to try something, I will shoot the captain first and then turn my gun on you.”

No one said a thing.

“Very well,” Bahmad said. He nodded to Schumatz who walked into the kitchen and through to the pantry where he opened the heavy door into the large walk-in locker, men stepped aside, his pistol at the ready.

“What’s this all about, Mr. Schumatz?” one of the younger crewmen asked. “Is it drugs?”

“You’ll read all about it in the newspapers in a few days, Rudi,” Schumatz said. “Now inside with you so nobody has to get their ass shot off.”

“Well, I hope you rot in hell, you dirty prick,” Rudi Gunn said, and he walked into the storage locker. The captain was the last in and he turned to face Bahmad. “Eight hours?”

“Or less,” Bahmad assured him. He motioned to Schumatz who swung the door shut, the lock dropping into place with a loud snap.

Bahmad turned around. “Joseph,” he called.

Green, Fernandez and Mendoza came around the corner from the other side of the kitchen. Green’s face was animated with excitement. “That was god dammed smooth,” he said. He held his pistol in both hands, and he kept looking at the locker door. “Are we going to kill them now?”

“First things first. I want you to go up to the bridge and stay there for the time being. I’m going to have Lazlo stop the ship, but I want you to make sure that the autopilot is set and that we’re on course, and make sure that no one has been trying to reach us by radio. From this point on we have to be on the watch for the U.S. Coast Guard.”

“But I want—”

“I know, Joseph, but for now I need you on the bridge,” Bahmad said soothingly. “Your time will come.”

Green backed up and looked at the others, but then his head bobbed. “Okay, but when the time comes I want Panagiotopolous.” He turned and left.

“I’ll tend to the engines,” Schumatz said.

“Give us an hour and then come up to the bridge, please.”

Schumatz glanced at the locker door then left.

“Why are you stopping the ship?” Fernandez asked suspiciously. He was jumpy.

“We’re going to set some explosives and sink her here.”

Fernandez’s eyes strayed to the locker door. “You’re going to let them drown, huh?”

Bahmad shook his head. “Either finish the job, or walk away right now and we’ll call it even.”

Fernandez and Mendoza exchanged a look and Mendoza nodded. “I say kill them now.” “Si,” Fernandez said with some hesitation. He pulled the MAC 10’s top-mounted bolt and he and Mendoza stepped apart directly in front of the locker door. When they were ready he nodded.

Bahmad unlatched the door, pulled it open and quickly got out of the way. Someone inside shouted something in desperation, but Fernandez and Mendoza opened fire, unloading their thirty-round magazines in a couple of seconds, immediately reloading and firing again.

The noise hammered off the steel bulkheads. Spent shells skittered hollowly like metal popcorn across the deck. And finally the screams and cries of the Margo’s crew subsided until Fernandez stopped shooting and stepped back.

“Madre de Dios” he said softly, and he crossed himself.

Everyone in the storage locker was down. Blood was splashed everywhere; on the overhead, the walls and boxes on the shelves, and lay in thick pools on the floor.

“Make sure that they’re all dead,” Bahmad said.

“You do it,” Fernandez answered in disgust.

“Finish the job, Captain. It’s what you were hired for.”

Mendoza was excited. He reloaded and went to the locker door. He fired a couple of shots into the bodies, then a couple more. Fernandez joined him, reloading his gun, and he too fired into the bodies.

Bahmad raised his MAC 10 and fired a short burst, at least a halfdozen rounds catching the two drug runners in the backs of their heads. They were driven forward into the locker on top of the pile of bodies, none of which was moving any longer.

Bahmad stood for a long time listening to the relative silence, and waiting. The storage locker doorway had a raised lip so very little blood had gotten out into the pantry, only a few splashes here and there on the deck.

Finally the distant vibration of the engines died and he could feel the change in motion as the ship began to slow down.

He laid the MAC 10 aside for a moment to push Fernandez’s and Mendoza’s legs all the way inside the locker and close the door, then went back through the galley to the main athwart ship corridor. A radio played music from somewhere, barely audible. It sounded Latin. A woman was singing. Other than that, the ship was very quiet.

Outside, he looked over the rail. The Aphrodite’s bridge was deserted, and the boat wallowed at the end of her tether, her engines idling with pops and throaty rumbles in neutral. Everything had gone smoothly to this point, but he smelled trouble now.

He scrambled down the ladder to the speedboat and hopped nimbly aboard the foredeck. He nearly lost his footing on the slowly pitching deck, but then regained his balance and sprinted aft to the open bridge. When the Margo’s engines had been shut down, Morales had dropped the Aphrodite’s engines into neutral and since he was no longer needed to tend the helm he’d gone below. But why? To do what? Get a beer?

Bahmad dropped down on the deck between the curving windscreen and the sleek radar bridge just as Morales, a pistol in his hand, came from below.

“What the fuck—” he said, rearing back,

Bahmad calmly raised his MAC 10 and fired a burst into the man’s chest, driving him backward down into the main saloon with enough force that he broke his spine on the edge of a cabinet before landing dead in a bloody heap.

One step at a time. It was all coming together. He could see with perfect clarity each step he had taken from the mountains in Afghanistan months ago when he had first devised his operation, here and now to this point. There wasn’t much left to do except deliver the package at the correct time and place, and history would be his.

Careful not to step in the gore, Bahmad went below and let his eyes sweep the cabin. There were several empty beer cans on the table, an empty speed-draw holster on the cushioned se tee and a bullet-resistant vest lying next to it. It was curious that the man hadn’t taken the time to put it on if he thought there was going to be trouble, unless he’d been interrupted. The SSB radio was on and still tuned to the frequency that he’d used to contact the Margo. Nothing was different, and yet he sensed something; something just outside of his awareness, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He was missing something that was possibly important and it irritated him.

He glanced at Morales’s body, then went forward to the head where he shot out the sea cocks for the toilet and sink.

Water immediately began gushing into the boat in two-inch streams.

He did the same for the se acock serving the galley sink, and the sea cocks for the aft stateroom toilet, sink and shower sump.

Already the water was a couple of inches above the floor boards, the bilge pumps unable to keep up. Bahmad opened several portholes so that the boat would sink easier without trapped air, then went up to the open deck, closing and latching the door. Aft on the sundeck, he pulled up the two large teak floorboards exposing the slowly idling engines nestled in their spotless, silver insulated compartments. They were huge ten-cylinder supercharged diesels and needed a lot of water for cooling. Two hoses, each of them five inches in diameter, sucked raw water from the sea through strainers and directed the flow to the massive heat exchangers. Bahmad reloaded and shot both hoses completely apart. Instantly two streams of seawater with the strength of firehoses began rushing into the engine compartment, flooding the air intakes. Within seconds the diesels sputtered and died.

Bahmad calmly climbed back up onto the foredeck and made his way to the bow. The boat was already down six inches on her lines. He jumped across to the Margo’s boarding ladder, then took out his stiletto and cut the tether holding the powerboat.

The Aphrodite slowly began to drift away, her bow much higher now than her sinking stern. She would be completely gone in minutes.

Topsides Bahmad found the control for the boarding ladder and brought it up, secured it in its cradle and closed the rail gate.

The last he saw of the Aphrodite before he went inside, she was fifty yards away, her aft deck awash, her bow rising up at a sixty-degree angle.

“Coast Guard Station San Diego, Petty Officer Wickum.” the young man answered. It was 2:00 a.m. and he’d just started on his fifth cup of coffee this shift to keep awake. Absolutely nothing worth a shit was on television tonight.

“This is Special Agent Susan Ziegler with the Drug Enforcement Agency, let me talk to your OD,” she said urgently.

“Yes, ma’am, stand by.” Wickum slid over to the duty officer’s door. The young ensign, his feet propped up was reading a copy of Playboy. “Got a woman from the DBA on one for you, sir. Sounds stressed.”

The OD put the magazine down and picked up the phone. “Ensign Rowley, may I help you, ma’am?”

“I’m Special Agent Susan Ziegler, DBA. I’m about a hundred miles south of you, just outside Ensenada. Is your MECODIR program up and running?”

“Ma’am—”

“I’m on your list, Ensign, look me up. Star-seventeen bright Do it quick because you might have a problem coming your way.”

“Stand by,” Ensign Rowley said, he put her on hold. “We’ve got a possible MECODIR request,” he told Wickum. “Pull it up while I make sure she’s who she says she is.” MECODIR was a Message Content and Direction program that was new to the Coast Guard. Receivers scanning millions of frequencies automatically monitored radio transmissions from seaward around the clock, recording their content and the direction they came from for review by the Coast Guard itself along with a host of other law enforcement and intelligence-gathering agencies. It was a NASA-designed program that had gone operational six months ago. Messages were stored digitally for up to one month. If they were not retrieved by then they were automatically erased. Maydays, or other standard distress calls, kicked off alarms so that human operators could intervene.

Susan Ziegler’s name and the proper identifier code were listed in the authorized users manual and he reconnected with her.

“Yes, ma’am, we’re up and running.”

“We received a partial message that we think came from one of our deep cover agents about twenty minutes ago. Since then there’s been” nothing. We think that he’s aboard a fifty-foot speedboat called Aphrodite somewhere off shore. We’re not sure how far out he was, but we picked him up on fourteen three-ten at oh-one-forty hours on a relative bearing of two-five-four degrees. Puts him a little south of west from us.”

Wickum slid back to his console and brought the MECODIR program up on his monitor.

Ensign Rowley could see him on the other side of the glass partition. A couple of the other night-duty operators drifted over to see what was going on. “Okay, ma’am, we’re pulling that up now. Be just a couple of secs.”

“I want a cross bearing so we can tell exactly where he is, and a filter wash on the message. It was broken up. Sounded like heavy interference of some kind.”

Wickum raised his hand. He’d found it.

“I’m transfering to a headset,” Ensign Rowley said. He put the call on hold, grabbed a headset, went out to Wickum’s console and plugged in. “Ma’am?”

“I’m here.” She sounded strung out.

The message came up on Wickum’s screen. “We have it,” Ensign Rowley said. “It’s weak. Relative bearing two one-five. Stand by.” Wickum entered the bearing Susan Ziegler had given them and the computer instantly crossed the two and came up with a map position. “That’s ninety seven nautical miles southwest of your position, ma’am. We’re bringing up the audio now.”

Wickum played the very garbled message through once. It lasted only five seconds and was extremely broken up,

as if the antenna were bad or blocked. He put the message on a loop so that it would repeat itself over an dover again, and began dialing in circuits that would filter out some of the interference and allow the computer to help reconstruct some of the words. It was like fine-tuning a radio to get the best reception. The machine could do it on its own, but human operators still did a better job. Very slowly a few recognizable words began to emerge from the mush. “… home plate… we’ve… trouble.” There were three seconds of nothing useable. “… going down, but… Stand by! Stand by!” The message ended after that.

They played the message several more times, but nothing else became recognizable.

“Okay, that’s our agent and it sounds like he’s in trouble.”

“We’ll start the precoms and excoms tonight, but we can’t send a chopper up until morning. If you’re declaring an emergency we can get a cutter headed that way within the hour though.” Precoms, short for preliminary communications, was a quick search by radio for any and all ships in the vicinity of the last known position of the vessel in distress. Excoms, or extended communications, expanded the search pattern to a much broader area including marinas, lighthouses and other facilities on shore. A lot of the time vessels calling Mayday were found hours later safe in some harbor, not bothering to call anybody to say they were safe.

“I’m declaring a Mayday, Ensign. But if he’s aboard the Aphrodite and he’s in trouble you can expect armed resistance. Pass that along to your people.”

“We’re on it, ma’am,” Ensign Rowley said. “If you come up with anything new shoot it up to us, would you?”

“Right,” Susan Ziegler said, and she rang off. Ensign Rowley went back into his office to start calling in people. It was going to be an interesting night after all.

The wind whipped around the corner and Bahmad had to brace himself against a piece of angled steel in order to accomplish his task without making a mistake.

They were heading directly west at their best speed of nineteen knots in order to put the most distance between them and where Aphrodite sunk before dawn. Something about Morales and the setup aboard the drug boat had continued to bother him until they had gotten underway, and it finally came to him.

The SSB radio in the Aphrodite’s main saloon was set to the Margo’s frequency. The one Bahmad had used to make contact. But he finally remembered that before they had left Rosario the captain had switched the set to a different frequency. Morales had been up on deck at the time and had not seen it.

It was a small discrepancy. But paying attention to such seemingly minor details had saved Bahmad’s life before. It was possible that Morales had radioed somebody and when he heard Bahmad coming back aboard he had switched frequencies.

When it got light they would turn north again, on a parallel course to their previous one, but more than seventy nautical miles to the west of the Aphrodite.

The last of the inner latches clicked up, and Bahmad raised the lid of the bogus life raft canister to expose the control panel.

Green was in the chart room re plotting their course to San Francisco, and Schumatz was below tending to the engines. There was no one to see him. He was alone and he could feel the power emanating from the device. The Americans had invented nuclear weapons, the other nuclear powers simply stole the secrets from them. And now that might was coming home to roost. Live by the sword, die by the sword. That was the adage Westerners foolishly liked to bandy about. But none of them really understood what they were saying.

That would change in less than thirty-six hours.

Shining the narrow beam of a penlight on the keypad Bahmad entered the ten-digit activation code, and the panel suddenly came to life.

He hesitated for several seconds, his fingers poised above the buttons. Even flow he could walk away from this insanity. He could kill the other two, rig the ship to sink and fly the helicopter to a deserted stretch of beach and make his way to Mexico City from where he could disappear. He had learned to fly helicopters courtesy of the British SIS, a fact he’d concealed from the others.

But he would go ahead with this for the same reason he had come up with the plan in the first place. The infidels had killed his parents. It was a fact that no act on earth or in heaven could erase. His parents would never return from their graves. What he had done in the name of Islam, and what he was doing now, was not his fault He’d been made to do this thing by the one senseless act the Americanbacked Israelis had carried out on innocent civilians. Now they would pay.

He sat back on his heels in the darkness for a few moments longer, contemplating exactly how long it would take him to get to the helicopter, start the engine, lift off and fly to a safe distance before the weapon exploded.

The hills would help. He could duck down behind one of them on the Sausalito side of the bridge.

He entered sixty minutes and five seconds on the keypad, and entered the start code. The panel beeped softly and the LED counter switched from 00:60:05 to 00:60:04, then 00: 60:03, 00:60:02, 00:60:01.

Bahmad pressed the interrupt button and the counter stopped at 00:60:00. He entered another series of codes that removed the nuclear weapon’s failsafes and entered in their places a series of counter-measures that would make it next to impossible to shut the bomb down.

Now simply pressing the start button would begin the countdown at sixty minutes, and nothing could stop it from happening.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The headaches were back. McGarvey got out of bed at six, quietly so as not to awaken Kathleen, and went into the bathroom. He softly closed the door, switched on the light and looked at his haggard image in the mirror. The hair on the side of his head where the surgeon had gone in with a tiny laser cauterizing tool had grown back. There was a ninety percent cure rate. But if the headaches returned it meant they’d missed a bleeder and would have to go back in. It’d mean another six weeks of convalescence.

He hadn’t had any choice in the matter the last time, but he was going to have to hang on now. Whatever was going down was going to happen very soon. All the evidence pointed to it, and his gut bunched up in knots as it did before every major mission. The biggest problem they still faced was not knowing where the attack would come. So far they hadn’t come up with a single clue.

Bin Laden and his staff were hunkered in Khartoum. There had been no definitive word on where his wives and children had gotten to, but since none of the CIA’s assets in the region had made any positive sightings, they were guessing that bin Laden’s family was with him in the compound. In some way that had been the most ominous bit of news all afternoon. Bin Laden had lost one daughter, he didn’t want to lose another child. He had brought them to his side, to the one place that he considered was safe, unassailable. They couldn’t stay there forever, of course. The situation in Khartoum was far too unstable. But for now it was where they were staying; waiting.

Bin Laden would have made plans though. He knew that he could be dead before the year was out, so he would have worked out what would happen to his family afterward. After not only his death, but after the nuclear attack on the United States. Maybe the CIA could guarantee the safety of his family in exchange for the bomb. They could try.

“Yeah, right,” he told his image in the mirror. It’d be the same kind of a deal that we’d offered him just before we’d killed his daughter.

He took a couple of Extra Strength Tylenols with-a glass of water, then rinsed his face, switched off the light and went back into the bedroom. Kathleen was up and she was putting on a robe.

“Sorry, Katy, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, coming around the bed to her.

“It’s time to get up anyway,” she said. They kissed, and she looked at him critically. “Did you sleep all right?”

“I’ve had better nights, how about you?”

She touched his face. “Fine,” she said. “But you look tired.”

“When we get past this one, you and I are going to take a vacation. A cruise.”

She smiled warmly. “I’d like that. Why don’t you take the bathroom first, and I’ll get breakfast started.”

“Nothing heavy, Katy, this is going to be a tough one.” Kathleen gave him another smile, as if he’d just stated the obvious. He grinned sheepishly. “If I knew how to golf, I’d retire right now.”

“You could learn,” she said, and she went downstairs.

McGarvey lit a cigarette and went to the window that overlooked the golf course. The sprinklers were still on, but the first golfers would be on the course within a half hour. The windows in the house were bulletproof Lexan plastic. Eight weeks ago the doors and locks had been seriously beefed up and the CIA had installed a state-of-the-art security system around the entire property. But somebody on the fifteenth fairway could pull an RPG out of his bag and punch a hole in here like a knife through Swiss cheese.

A cheery thought to start off the day, he told himself. But he was back for the duration this time. He wasn’t going to run out in a stupid attempt to draw off the bad guys. This time when they came looking for someone to hurt, they were going to find him. His jaw tightened. One-on one That’s what he really wanted. Sorry that your daughter was killed, but you put her in harm’s way. Killing hundreds, probably thousands of innocent people would not bring her back.

His anger, which had percolated all night, spiked and he savagely ground out his cigarette in the ash tray. One-on one he told himself again, going into the bathroom. Him and Ali Bahmad on any field of play with any weapons he wanted. Soldier against soldier. Not soldier against women and children; especially not handicapped women and children.

When he came out of the bathroom Kathleen had laid out gray slacks, a white shirt, club tie and the blue blazer for him. Rencke had made the comment a few weeks ago that since Mrs. M. had taken over, McGarvey was starting to look pretty sharp. “Watch it,” he’d warned Rencke. “She’d love to get her hands on you.”

Rencke hopped from one foot to the other. It was a tiny moment of lightness in an otherwise bleak few months, and it made him smile now, but just for a moment because he had another big hurdle to get over this morning. Something he had put off last night. He had to finally tell Kathleen exactly what Liz was facing. He had a pretty good idea how she was going to take it because this wasn’t the first time Liz had been put in harm’s way, but at least he was no longer afraid that Katy would turn her back on him like she had done before. “We’re in this together, darling,” she was telling him now. “You and me, no matter what.”

He stopped in the middle of getting dressed. For the first time since Paris he couldn’t say that he missed working on his book about Voltaire. He’d worked on it for a long time. But at this stage of his writing he needed to be in the libraries of Europe pouring over the philosopher’s letters, reading his notes and manuscripts in their original drafts; talking with scholars. Work, he decided, that was just as real as what he was doing now; in fact possibly even more genuine than what he was doing for the CIA, and in some ways more satisfying because it was like playing detective; but work that was not as necessary as controlling evil. In that, at least, Voltaire would have agreed wholeheartedly.

Kathleen had used the spare bathroom and she looked fresh and bright, but she was troubled. She poured McGarvey a cup of coffee at the kitchen counter. “You look nice,” she said distantly.

“What’s the matter?”

“Otto called. He wants you to call him right back. And your car is here.”

“Sorry, Katy,” McGarvey said. He phoned Rencke’s direct line. “What have you got?”

“There was a murder aboard a yacht in New York City less than forty-eight hours ago,” Rencke said excitedly. “It looks like the work of Bahmad.”

“Call Fred Rudolph, and then let the President’s Secret Service detail know about it. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“The FBI is already on it. I’ll talk to Villiard. We’re close, Mac.” McGarvey went back to the counter and got his coffee. “Gotta go, Katy. This could be the break we’ve been waiting for.”

Kathleen was on the other side of the counter, a funny look on her face. “I figured as much, that’s why I didn’t make breakfast. Where’s Elizabeth?”

It was the hurdle. McGarvey girded himself. “She’s working.”

“There’s no answer at Todd’s and the locator wouldn’t even take a message.”

“I sent them to San Francisco.”

She assimilated that information for a moment. “The President’s daughter is running in the Special Olympics. Do you think that bin Laden will try to harm her?”

“We thought so, Katy, but we might have been wrong.”

“But you sent our daughter there.”

“To be with the President’s daughter.”

She held herself very still, very erect, until finally she nodded. “Okay,” she said. She came around to him and straightened his tie. “I’m having a hard time with this, Kirk. But I swear to God that I’m trying.”

“It’s never easy, Katy.”

“Whose idea was it to send Todd with her?”

“Mine.”

“Good,” Kathleen said. She patted his lapels. “Be careful, Kirk.”

“Will do,” he promised and kissed her. Dick Yemm was waiting in the driveway with his car, the morning absolutely beautiful.

“Could somebody else have come aboard the yacht and killed the captain?” McGarvey asked Rencke.

Adkins came over and he looked almost as strung out as Rencke. They’d both been pulling a lot of overnighters.

“Not likely, if you’re thinking robbery,” Rencke said. “The only thing missing is an aluminum case that the girl said had been delivered to the yacht here in Washington two months ago.” “Looks as if the captain came to the yacht searching for it when he was interrupted,” Adkins said. “That’s what the police are saying. It could have been the bomb.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” McGarvey said. “They took a big risk by just bringing it into the States. Why would they take it out to Bermuda and then back again? Why triple their risk?”

“There are lots of hiding places on a yacht that size,” Adkins pointed out. “Fred Rudolph has sent a Bureau counterespionage team up there. If there’s anything to be found they’ll find it. But for now it looks as if Bahmad came back to the yacht to pick up the case, walked in on the captain who was searching his cabin and killed the man. He’s somewhere in New York. Wall Street maybe. Or maybe the top of the Empire State Building right in the middle of midtown. If it were to blow at noon, let’s say on a Monday, it’d kill a lot of people.”

McGarvey turned away and walked to the end of the row of computer racks. Rencke had all but taken over the DO’s main computer center as his personal domain. It was large, the equivalent of a halfdozen supercomputers, fanning out from a central area that contained a dozen monitor consoles. The morning shift computer operators were starting to drift in, but they stayed respectfully out of the way.

After Washington, Papa’s Fancy had sailed off to Bermuda where Bahmad and the crew partied. To kill time. Not just to wait for the dust from the Chevy Chase attack to settle, but to wait for a specific date. Back to New York Bahmad dismisses the crew and disappears for ten days. To wait a little longer? Why not in Bermuda? Because the plans may have changed and he needed new instructions. Then he shows up at the yacht at the very same moment the captain is there. Perhaps the captain searched the yacht on the owner’s instructions. But there were way too many coincidences for McGarvey, all of them starting with the failed attack in Chevy Chase, and ending presumably at any moment with the detonation of the nuclear weapon.

He walked back. “How do we know it was Bahmad?”

“All the descriptions the Bureau has gotten so far are a match,” Rencke said. “They’ve talked to three of the crew from the yacht and the staff here in Washington at the Cor inithian Yacht Club. Everything adds up, and it’ll be the same in Bermuda.”

“What about the owner?”

“Alois Richter, Jersey City. Until a couple of years ago he was involved with a company called Tele/ Resources which — surprise, surprise — is an agent for the bin Laden family. He left the day before yesterday on business in Europe. No one knows where he is at the moment.”

“How about the marina in New York?”

“No one noticed him,” Rencke said. “But all the better hotels in the city are being checked. No one thinks they’ll come up with anything, but they’re trying.”

“Airlines?”

“Those are being checked too. But the hairs that were found in Bahmad’s bathroom had been dyed gray. He’s changed his appearance.”

Rencke was an absolute mess; his clothing was filthy, his long red hair totally out of control, and his complexion sallow from spending almost no time out of doors. But his eyes were bright and an electric current seemed to surround him. He had the bit in his teeth.

“It’s very soon, isn’t it, Mac?” he said reverently.

“It looks like it.”

“So what do we do next?” Adkins asked.

“Keep looking for him and the bomb on the assumption we’re wrong about New York, and the bomb was never aboard the yacht. I’m going up there. It’s probably a waste of time, but I want to see the yacht.”

Tony Lang came in with Henry Kolesnik a couple of minutes before 6:00 a.m. The President looked up from his breakfast alone in the living room of the Century City Plaza Hotel’s presidential suite, his nerves giving a start. Something had happened.

“Good morning, Mr. President,” his chief of staff said brightly. “We have some good news, I think.”

Whenever possible especially if they were on the road, the President liked to have his breakfast in private with his wife and daughter. But it had been a late night and the girls were leaving for San Francisco later this morning, so they were sleeping in.

“What is it?” the President asked, quelling his irritation.

“The CIA called two hours ago,” Kolesnik said. “Ali Bahmad, the guy we think bin Laden sent over with the bomb, has been placed in New York City, and he’s apparently been there for a while. The FBI is looking for him, but now we’ve got a decent description.”

The President’s eyes narrowed. “Am I missing something, Tony?”

“We just might be off the hook in San Francisco,” Lang said. “The Bureau thinks that the bomb may have been aboard a private yacht in a New York marina two days ago.”

The President understood what they were getting at, but he didn’t think they did. “San Francisco has been under a microscope for the past seventy-two hours. If the bomb isn’t already in place, it’s not coming. It wouldn’t get through. Is that about right, Henry?”

“Yes, sir. You were right all along, Mr. President. San Francisco never was his target.”

“Well, I am relieved to hear that,” the President said sharply. He got up, nearly knocking his chair over.

“Yes, sir,” Kolesnik said uncertainly.

“We don’t have to worry about a nuclear device being detonated in San Francisco killing me, my wife and my daughter, and maybe tens of thousands of other people.”

Lang saw it, and he backpedaled. “We didn’t mean it that way, sir.”

“If I were president of California that indeed would be good news. But of course that’s not the case. I’m President of the entire United States, which includes New York City, which is, I think you’re telling me, the target for the largest terrorist attack ever planned in all of recorded history.”

“I see your point, Mr. President,” Kolesnik said. He was a professional, not a politician, so he didn’t back off. “The Bureau and the CIA are handling the investigation on the East Coast. In the meantime my job is to protect you and your family. From my standpoint learning that New York City may be the target rather than the Special Olympics is good news.”

The President’s stomach was sour. Breakfast was over, and his day was about to begin. In situations like these he sometimes asked himself that if he knew then what he knew now, would he have quit campaigning for the White House and gone home. The answer was of course no. Most of the time the job was interesting; not much different than being the CEO of a very large and complicated corporation. But at other times, like now, he felt like a father driving a car, his family asleep, trusting him to do a good job in a blizzard at night on a very dangerous road. His decisions could mean life or death. And he was completely alone to make them.

McGarvey and Dick Yemm took the CIA’s Gulfstream bizjet to La Guardia From there they choppered across to the West Thirtieth Street Heliport near the Penn Central Yards. A car was waiting for them, and Yemm drove him to the marina. He had to show his credentials to a cop at the Papa’s Fancy boarding ladder before he was allowed to go aboard. Yemm waited on the dock.

The yacht was a mess. The main saloon had been all but dismantled; the furniture had been cut apart; the bar and cabinets reduced to pieces; ceiling tiles removed, wall panels taken off and set aside and the carpeting and padding pulled up to show the bare metal of the deck.

“We didn’t find a thing,” a man in shirtsleeves said coming from the forward passageway. He looked like a ward politician, or a Teamsters boss. Tough and gnarly. “You McGarvey?”

“Yeah,” McGarvey said. They shook hands.

“I’m Kevin O’Brien, FBI Counterespionage. Mr. Rudolph said you wanted to come up and take a look.” He glanced around the saloon and shrugged. “We took it down to bare metal and didn’t find a thing other than what’s on the amended police report, so I sent everybody home.”

“No radiation?”

O’Brien shook his head. “Nada. That would have been a bad sign anyway. Would have meant that the device was leaking, which would have given us a whole host of other problems.”

McGarvey pegged O’Brien as a former street cop. Probably from right here in New York. He’d bea good man to have at your back in a crisis. “There was supposed to be an aluminum case here. Any sign of it?”

“We found some indentations on the carpet beside the bed in the master suite. Traces of aluminum oxide. It could have contained the device. The package was just about large enough, and our forensics people estimated it weighed between fifty and eighty pounds, from the depth of the indentations.” O’Brien shrugged again. “Makes you wonder though, just how cool and collected the sonofabitch would have to be in order to lie down and go to sleep next to a nuclear weapon.”

“If he’s who we think he is, he’s cool enough to push the button,” McGarvey said. This had been a waste of time after all. He was picking up no sense whatsoever that Bahmad was ever here, let alone why he chose a yacht as his base of operations. Nor was he any further ahead in trying to work out the man’s tradecraft.

“Well, he’s had a two-day head start and he left nothing behind. He could be just about anywhere.”

McGarvey started to turn away when what the FBI Counterespionage agent just said struck him. Bahmad didn’t have a two-day head start. He had an eight-week head start. The bomb was never aboard the yacht. There was no reason for it to be here. The aluminum case contained Bahmad’s equipment for the strike: weapons, explosives, maybe lock picking sets and surveillance devices. Things that he might need in order to set up the attack and then get away afterward. Maybe a remote detonator for the bomb.

“Did you find any weapons?”

“A Ruger Mini-14 in stainless and a couple of Beretta 9mm pistols in the captain’s quarters. A couple of boxes of ammunition. About what you’d expect to find on a boat like this.”

“No explosives?”

“You mean like Semtex?” O’Brien shook his head. “Nada.”

“Was the captain armed?”

“He had nothing on him when the gold shields showed up.”

“Was he carrying any keys?”

“He had a key to get in, and the key locker in his cabin was open.”

“The bulk of his fingerprints were found in the master stateroom?”

“That’s right,” O’Brien said. “What are you getting at, Mr. McGarvey?”

“I think that the captain was ordered to search the master stateroom. Probably for the aluminum case.”

“Right. And this guy kills him because of it.”

“Maybe,” McGarvey said. “Or maybe the captain had already gotten rid of it and was killed to keep his mouth shut. Get a diver over here, I want to find out what’s at the bottom of this slip.”

Southwest of San Diego They had turned north around dawn and were making fifteen knots on their new course of 340 degrees which would close slowly with the U.S. mainland when the Coast Guard helicopter came at them out of the sun.

Bahmad was in the chartroom going through the ship’s documents and memorizing the captain’s papers and company orders when Green came to the doorway. “It’s the god damned Coast Guard,” he said, out of breath. Bahmad looked up calmly. Green was pale.

“Have they attempted to make contact with us? Is it a ship?”

“It’s a helicopter, a Sea King, and it’s heading right at us.”

Bahmad put down the dividers and followed Green onto the bridge. The helicopter was at about eye level just off to the starboard and pacing them. Bahmad found that he wasn’t surprised by its presence, nor was he. going to allow himself to become distressed. If the Coast Guard was on a drug interdiction mission they would have sent a cutter with a boarding party, but there were no ships on the radar. He was going to play it cool for now because he had no other choice. If the Coast Guard actually put someone aboard the mission would be over.

Bahmad picked up the VHP radio handset and keyed it. “Good morning, Coast Guard, this is the Margo. Would you care to come aboard for some fresh coffee and doughnuts?”

“Thanks for the invite Margo, but it’d be a little tough setting down. Switch to twenty-two and identify yourself please, sir.”

Bahmad switched from channel 16 to the Coast Guard frequency. “I’m George Panagiotopolous, the master.”

“What is your cargo and destination, sir?”

“We’re carrying twenty-seven containers of Italian tile, fifteen containers of teak furniture, three hundred seventeen containers of Nike shoes, and the remainder, four hundred eighteen containers of marine life rafts, plus one helicopter on the afterdeck bound for San Francisco.”

“Looks like a Russian chopper.”

“Sorry, I don’t know a thing about such machines, except that this one is inoperable and it’s heading for a museum.”

“How many POBs, skipper?”

Bahmad held his hand over the mouthpiece and gave Green a questioning look.

“Persons-on-board,” Green whispered.

Bahmad turned back to the radio. “In addition to myself, we are sixteen men and officers, no passengers.”

“When was your last course or speed change?”

“About thirty-six hours ago,” Bahmad said. “What brings you gentlemen all the way out here this fine morning?” If they were looking for drugs they would have already asked the Margo to heave to.

“We received a possible distress call last night about seventy miles southwest of here. Did you pick up anything, skipper?”

“There was nothing in the log.”

“Did you see any traffic last night?”

“Nothing, Coast Guard. Like I said, the log is blank except for positions, weather and sea states.”

“Okay, skipper, sorry to have bothered you,” the Coast Guard said. “Have a good one.” The helicopter peeled off to the right, seemed to hesitate for a moment, and then headed east back into the sun.

“What the fuck was that all about?” a greatly relieved Green demanded.

“Whatever it was, it’s no longer any concern of ours,” Bahmad said, smiling faintly. “The Coast Guard has looked us over and has given us a clean bill of health. We won’t be bothered again.”

It took less than an hour to summon a New York City Police Department search and rescue dive team to Papa’s Fancy. McGarvey told the two men exactly what they were to look for, but to pick up anything that looked suspicious. A halfdozen uniformed cops showed up and expanded the area cordoned off by police tape to include the entire dock. A small crowd of people, some of them marina employees, others yacht crew or owners, gathered in the parking lot and adjacent docks to watch. The divers, police sergeants Benito Juarez and Tom Haskill, suited up and slipped into the water at the bow of the yacht “What if they find the aluminum case down there?” O’Brien asked.

“Depends on what’s inside it,” McGarvey said absently. Yemm had gotten out of the car and came over. He was watching the crowd with suspicion.

“The bomb?”

“I don’t think it was ever aboard,” McGarvey said. “This will be his weapons, and maybe the remote detonator.”

O’Brien looked at the black water roiled up by the bubbles rising from the divers’ scuba equipment. They were slowly working their way aft. “I don’t get it. Why would the captain dump the stuff overboard?”

“Because he was ordered to do it. Bin Laden might be getting cold feet, so the captain was told to get down here and grab whatever he could. It was just bad luck that Bahmad showed up at the same time. I’m betting that the captain spotted Bahmad coming aboard and tossed the case overboard. About the only thing he could have done.” McGarvey was working all that out in his head as he spoke.

“So Bahmad killed him because of it, and then he took off. Means we’re out of the woods, doesn’t it? No detonator, no explosion?”

“The bomb can be set off manually.”

O’Brien looked at the water again. “Then if the detonator is still down there, it means he was in too big a hurry to bring it up. He had to get somewhere. Could mean that the bomb isn’t here in New York after all.”

“Something like that,” McGarvey said, still working it out. Bahmad had come back for his things, which meant that the attack was going to happen very soon. Yet he didn’t bother trying to recover any of it. That’s if the case was actually at the bottom of the slip.

The divers surfaced just aft of the flare of the bows and passed up a line. “It’s down there, just like you said,” Haskill called up to McGarvey.

Two uniformed cops hauled the muddy aluminum case to the surface and then pulled it up onto the dock. McGarvey walked over and hunched down in front of it.

“Maybe we should get the bomb squad over here first, boss,” Yemm suggested. “No need,” McGarvey told him. “It’s already been opened. The locks have been forced.” He popped the latches and opened the lid. Some water came out. In addition to some cameras and photographic equipment the case contained a gun, a silencer, some ammunition, a lock pick set and an assortment of other things.

He pulled out a small leather case and from it withdrew an electronic device that looked very much like a television remote control.

“The detonator?” O’Brien asked in a hushed tone. Even Yemm was impressed. The police officers were impressed.

McGarvey nodded. “No telling the range,” he said. He carefully eased the battery cover open on the back of it and pried the Nnicad battery out. Only men did he allow himself to relax, and release the pent-up breath.

“This guy isn’t going to give up, is he?” O’Brien said. “I don’t think so,” McGarvey said. He put the detonator and battery in separate pockets and got up. “Get the rest of this stuff down to Washington and see what your people can come up with.”

“What about the yacht?”

“The owner won’t be coming back,” McGarvey said, but his mind was elsewhere. He was sure now what bin Laden’s target had been all along. And he had done exactly what bin Laden would have wanted him to do by sending his daughter to California to be with the President’s daughter. Now he was going to have to figure out how to save both of their lives.

At ten of twelve President Haynes was racing through downtown Los Angeles in the back of his limousine with his chief of staff Tony Lang and his press secretary Sterling Mott. They were going over some last-minute changes to the lunch speech he was giving to the Association of California Mayors at the Convention Center. Normal traffic was backed up at every intersection to allow the motorcade, sirens blaring, lights flashing, to pass. Since it was the lunchtime rush hour he didn’t think that a poll of stalled motorists would elect him to any office, not even that of dog catcher. It was one of the downsides that any city hosting a presidential visit was faced with. But L.A. cops were used to just about everything, and within a minute after the eight car, four motorcycle motorcade had passed, traffic was back to normal.

A telephone in the console beside Lang chirped softly and he picked it up. “This is Tony Lang.”

The President looked up.

“Just a moment,” Lang said, and he touched the hold button. “It’s Kirk McGarvey, Mr. President. He’d like to talk to you.”

The President’s jaw tightened. McGarvey had sent his own daughter out to help look after Deborah. If it had been anyone else doing it, he would have taken it as grandstanding. But that wasn’t McGarvey’s style. But what the hell did he want now? “Where’s he calling from?”

Lang glanced at the display. “New York City. It’s a cell phone.”

“Maybe it’s good news,” Mott suggested.

“Right,” the President said dryly. He held out his hand for the phone. “Good morning, Mac. What do you have for me?”

“The bomb is not in New York, Mr. President. It was never here. I think it’s already in San Francisco. You have to cancel the games.”

The President closed his eyes for a moment. He could count on the fingers of one hand how many people he could trust implicitly. McGarvey was one of them. “One hundred percent sure?”

“Ninety percent. It’s your call, sir, but the bomb could be just about anywhere in the city.”

“What’s your best guess?”

“Candlestick Park.”

The President felt a cold knot of frozen lead in his gut “Our daughters are there right now. Mine to practice and yours to keep an eye on her.”

“Yes, sir.”

The President could hear a note of resignation in McGarvey’s voice, and he understood exactly what the man was going through. What both of them were going through. “If you’re so certain why don’t you pull your daughter out of there?” It was a low blow, but he had to know what McGarvey’s reaction would be.

“Because she has a job to do.”

The President nodded. It was the answer he had expected. “We all do, Mac,” he said gently. “I’ll have the Secret Service tear the place apart again, but I won’t cancel the games because I still don’t believe that bin Laden will kill his own people.”

“I understand, Mr. President,” McGarvey said. “I’ll be in San Francisco this afternoon then.”

San Francisco Candlestick Park

“Ms. McGarvey, I’ll take you down to meet her now,” Chenna Seranni said. “We’re identifying you as one of her personal trainers.”

“Sounds good,” Elizabeth said. “But my friends usually call me Liz.”

Chenna allowed herself to relax just a little. She had no idea how the CIA was going to act out here, and especially not in the person of the daughter of the deputy director of Operations. “Okay, Liz. It’s just that we’re all pretty protective of Deb. And not just because it’s our job. She’s a good kid.”

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Elizabeth said. She was dressed in a dark blue jogging outfit with the ISO linked rings logo on the back. She carried a Walther PPK in a quick-draw holster under her left armpit, and a comms unit that fit nearly out of sight in her ear like a hearing aid. The unit was voice-operated, and the tiny microphone picked up her words through the bones in the side of her head. They walked out of the skybox high above the field where hundreds of athletes and their coaches were working out, and took an elevator to the ground level. There were Secret Service and FBI agents everywhere. Orders had come down to tear the stadium apart for the third time in an effort to find the bomb, and the cops were doing so with discretion but with a lot of enthusiasm. There were hundreds of other people in the stadium as well; family members, journalists, technicians, ISO officials and a handful of park staff. Everyone had been vetted, and no one got near the stadium without the proper pass. Todd Van Buren had gone off with Brace Hansen to review the security procedures for the start of tomorrow’s half-marathon. He shared Elizabeth’s feeling that protecting the President’s daughter in this crowd would be next to impossible, but they had no other option than to try.

Down in the field the day was absolutely gorgeous; a lot cooler and windier than Washington, but just perfect for most of the track and field events. They got into an electric golf cart and Chenna drove them to the opposite side of the field where Deborah Haynes was going through her stretching and warmup routines with Terri Lundgren. Elizabeth was struck all at once by how beautiful the President’s daughter was. She could have been a runway model from somewhere in eastern Russia; Siberia maybe, except that when she looked up, her eyes were somewhat blank. Her face was animated, but something was missing; something that was hard for Elizabeth to put her finger on even knowing that the girl suffered from Down syndrome.

When she saw them pull up, her face lit up like a million watt lightbulb and she bounded over. “Chenna,” she cried. They hugged.

“I brought someone over to meet you,” Chenna said. “Her name is Liz and she’s going to be working out with you during the games.” Deborah gave Elizabeth an oddly appraising glance as they shook hands. “Do you work for the CIA?”

Elizabeth was somewhat taken aback, but she smiled. “What makes you think that?”

“Ah, I heard my mom and dad talking about it this morning. Are you a spy?”

“I guess you could call me a spy,” Elizabeth said, exchanging glances with Chenna and the other Secret Service officers standing nearby. “They sent me over to help keep an eye on you.”

“Oh, cool,” Deborah said with genuine enthusiasm. “Can you work out with me? Can you run?”

“I can give it a try, Deb, but I don’t know if I can keep up with you. I heard that you were awfully good.”

Deborah’s face went blank for just a moment. “That’s an oxymoron … awful and good.”

Elizabeth had to laugh. “That it is.”

“Let’s go,” Deborah suddenly shouted. She looked to her coach for approval and Terri Lundgren gave her a nod.

“Just take it a little easy, we don’t want to kill the new girl on the first day.”

Deborah laughed from the bottom of her toes, then turned and practically leaped onto the track as if she had been shot out of a cannon. Elizabeth scrambled to catch up, and after forty or fifty yards they settled into a very fast loping run. Dozens of flags from all the participating nations fluttered and snapped at the top of the stadium, while in the stands more than a thousand spectators watched the athletes work out on the field — pole vaults and high jumps, shot puts and discus throws. A couple of dozen runners shared the track with them, and when Elizabeth looked over her shoulder she saw Chenna and Terri Lundgren in a golf cart pacing them on the outside line. For a second or two she seriously wondered if she was up for this, but then she turned back and began to enjoy the moment that for the President’s daughter was one of absolute and total joy.

FEMA Operations Center “We have orders to do it all over again,” Secret Service unit leader Jay Villiard announced.

There were only a few groans from the dozen people assembled because each of them knew what they were facing, and none of them had any illusions that stopping bin Laden was a hundred percent certainty no matter how many people and resources they threw at the problem.

Setting up the mission nerve center in the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s ops center seemed appropriate under the circumstances. Besides, it was located downtown in a hardened concrete shelter in the basement of the federal building. Earthquakeproof, flood-and fireproof, they all sincerely hoped that it would be nuclear bomb proof if it came to that.

“We’re scheduled to make our final sweep of the bridge at midnight. I have assets already in place,” the San Francisco PD’s chief of antiterrorism David Rogan said. “Does it make any sense to start one now?”

“We do the same for every presidential visit if we think there’ll be trouble, David,” Villiard said from the podium. “By the numbers; a hundred times if need be. We do it this way, people, because the method is tried and true. It works.”

There were two tiers of consoles facing a big projection screen on the wall behind the podium. Rogan picked up the phone at his console and looked up at the screen as he began issuing orders to start the search of the Golden Gate Bridge and its approaches.

A giant map of the Bay Area from Pacifica and San Bruno in the south, to Sausalito and Tiburon in the north and to Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond in the east was projected on the big screen. Candlestick Park was highlighted in red as was the route that the half-marathon runners would take tomorrow at noon: West Park Road to Third Street; south to the Bayshore Freeway, one lane of which would be barricaded; north to U.S. 101; from there north to Van Ness Avenue where the road made a jog, and onto the bridge. On the Marin County side the runners would head east, off U.S. 101, past Fort Baker and then the last mile and a half to the finish line at the Sausalito houseboat docks. Buses would be waiting to return the runners to the Special Olympics village at Candlestick Park.

Tens of thousands of spectators from all around the world were expected to line the route. More than one thousand city, county, state and federal cops would be there to keep them away from the runners so far as that was humanly possible. But nobody would get close to the presidential motorcade leading the race, or to Deborah Haynes who was expected to be among the first fifty runners by that point.

Two dozen helicopters would pace the runners from behind, directly above and at the head of the pack. A pair of Coast Guard cutters would be stationed, one on the bay side of the bridge and the other on the ocean side, to make sure that the only vessels moving during the race were the pilot boats. The biggest concentration of manpower would be at the start and finish of the race as well as on the bridge. All traffic on the bridge itself would be halted a half-hour before the first runner hit Van Ness Avenue and would not be allowed to resume until the last runner had safely made the Fort Baker turn on the Marin County side.

All air traffic in and out of San Francisco International Airport would be rerouted around Daly City to the south and San Quentin to the north. Everything in between would be a no-fly, exclusion zone for the duration of the race.

Every known or suspected member of any hate group, anarchist society or even mildly left wing organization had been interviewed. Any person or organization that had even the slightest hint of being Arabic, having Arabic ties or having so much as checked out a copy of the Koran in the last two months from the public library system was screened; their driver’s license numbers, car tags and Social Security numbers or passport numbers were computer searched. All of it was done as quietly and as discreetly as possible.

The FBI’s San Francisco SAC Charles Fellman checked his 401k retirement fund the day before yesterday and gave a realtor friend the heads-up on their Russian Hill home. With all the civil rights they were trampling on he figured that he might be looking for another line of work sooner than he’d counted on.

“If we’re sweeping the bridge we might just as well go over the park again, Jay,” he suggested. “But it’s going to be tough with everybody out there. Have you seen the place since last night? It’s a madhouse.”

“Our people started a half-hour ago,” Villiard told him.

“How about us?” Toni Piper, the San Francisco FEMA director, asked. “I can field a hundred volunteers to canvas the neighborhoods along the route.” She was the one who had come to Villiard with the offer of the FEMA ops center. She was a dynamic woman with flaming red hair. “Might not turn up a thing, but it can’t hurt.”

“If something actually develops they could be placing themselves in the middle of it,” Villiard said.

Toni shrugged. “They’re used to dealing with earthquakes, you know. Buildings falling on their heads.” “Do it,” Villiard said, making his decision. “But make sure that they carry proper IDs. I don’t want to turn this into a three-ring circus, my people arresting yours.”

“I’ll have them on the street within the hour,” she said.

Villiard gave her a smile. She was on the ball. She’d had her people organized and standing by even before she’d been given the green light. Maybe she belonged in Washington. He’d have to see.

The phones on the various consoles were starting to ring now, and the noise level was rising as people began gearing up for the first crucial thirty-six hours. The Olympics would be here for ten days. Just because something didn’t happen tomorrow didn’t mean that they were home safe. But by this time tomorrow night, Villiard thought, the biggest period of danger would be past, the machinery for dealing with the threat would be firmly in place and running and he would be able to breathe his first sigh of relief in two months.

Thirty-six hours. Please God, he told himself, just get us through the first hurdle and I promise a double novena, all eighteen days of it.

“Just this way, Mr. President,” Marty Grant, one of his Secret Service agents, said, holding the door. “The skybox has been cleared for you.”

The team owner’s private elevator took them directly up to the glass enclosure used by the media during sporting events. The cameras and equipment were in place, but the technicians were gone, replaced by four additional Secret Service agents. They’d gone through a lot of hassle to pull this off.

“This is great,” the President said. “Tell Dick Evers thanks for me. I didn’t want to cause a fuss, but I wanted to see my daughter.”

“She’s on the track, Mr. President,” one of the agents said, handing him a pair of binoculars. “Out by the right field foul line.”

The President adjusted the focus and found Deborah right away, her long blond hair streaming behind her unmistakable. A young woman in blue sweats was running with her. At first he thought she was the chief of Deborah’s Secret Service detail, but then he spotted Chenna riding shotgun in a golf cart with Terri Lundgren.

“Who’s the girl running with Deb?”

One of the agents also watching through binoculars said something into his lapel mike. “Elizabeth McGarvey, sir.”

Watching them running together it was clear that Deborah was the superior athlete, though not by much. But it was also clear in his mind the great difference that existed between the two young women. Elizabeth had her entire future ahead of her; varied, interesting, maybe with a husband and children, maybe alone. There would be challenges in her life, problems to overcome, situations to be faced and dealt with. Deborah’s life on the other hand was already determined for the most part. She would be protected, loved and cared for around the clock. She would never marry or have children. The dangers she would face were only because of who and what her father was. And the major challenges she would have to overcome were her mental limitations. Every morning when he got up, President Haynes prayed to God that Deborah would never fully understand her handicap. It was a rotten, selfish attitude, he knew that. But he wanted to protect his only child from all harm, not only to her physical self, but to her self-esteem.

He lowered his binoculars, and he couldn’t help but think about Sarah bin Laden. Her death was something that he would regret for the remainder of his life. He could clearly understand bin Laden’s rage, and he didn’t even want to think about what he would do in the same circumstances. God help the sorry bastard who ever harmed a hair on his daughter’s head.

“Too bad the First Lady isn’t up here to see this,” Tony Lang said, watching through binoculars. “Deb’s a heck of a runner.” The First Lady was meeting with three separate women’s groups this afternoon and wouldn’t be coming up from Los Angeles until later this evening.

“That she is,” the President said. “Marty, would you tell Chenna to bring her up here, and ask Ms. McGarvey if she would join us.” “Yes, sir,” the chief agent on his detail said. He spoke into his lapel mike, listened, then spoke softly again. “Be just a couple of minutes, Mr. President.”

“Thanks.” The President raised his binoculars and watched as Chenna caught up with them. The two daughters climbed into the back of the golf cart for the trip across the field. It was a madhouse down there; handicapped athletes from all around the world were doing their best, the same as everybody else. Deborah was having the time of her life, and he would not have taken this away from her or from the others, for all the bin Ladens in the world.

They disappeared down one of the tunnels below, and a minute later the elevator came up. When the door opened Deborah spotted her father, bounded across to him and threw herself into his arms.

“Daddy,” she cried. She was very strong, and her entire body hummed with an electric joy. He was never more proud of her than he’d ever been in his life. “Did you see me down there?” she bubbled. “Did you see me running?”

“I sure did, sweetheart. You looked wonderful.”

“Not awfully good?” she asked, crinkling her nose. “That too,” the President said. Deborah laughed, and he wondered what he had said that was so amusing to her.

“I’m afraid that it’s a little joke between us, Mr. President,” Elizabeth said.

“An oxymoron,” Deborah explained.

“I see,” the President said. “You’re Elizabeth McGarvey?”

“Yes, sir,” Elizabeth said, and she shook hands with the President. It was clear that she was respectful, but she wasn’t the least bit nervous. She was a lot like her father, the President decided; a heads-up person. McGarvey was stamped all over her. When she matured she was going to be one hell of a woman.

“Thanks for coming out here and helping out.” “Yes, sir.”

The President picked up a discordant note. “You don’t think that this is such a hot idea?”

“No, sir. The games should be canceled immediately, or at least postponed until we bag the bad guy.” Deborah watched the interplay as did everyone else.

The President suppressed a slight smile, though he was a little irritated. “You are your father’s daughter.”

Elizabeth’s shoulders squared up a little. “Yes, sir,” she said with a barely concealed pleasure.

“Do you understand why I can’t do that?”

Elizabeth started to say something, but then she smiled. “Yes, sir, I believe that I can.” She glanced at the President’s daughter. “My father’ll be here tonight.”

“Yes. What about tomorrow?”

“For me, Mr. President?” she asked. “I’ve already got permission from the ISO to run in the half-marathon, if you have no objections.”

The President was deeply touched. “I can’t ask you to do that, under the circumstances.”

Elizabeth grinned and looked at Deborah again. “I know what you mean, Mr. President. I’m probably going to run my legs off trying to keep up with her.”

“Start all over again,” McGarvey said in the computer center. Rencke was still at his console and he looked like death warmed over, but his eyes were alive. McGarvey had to wonder if Otto was on something, a stimulant of some sort, but now was not the time to ask. “We’ll start from the assumption that the bomb is already in San Francisco. Probably Candlestick Park. The Secret Service and Bureau are doing everything they can to find it, so we’ll leave that end to them. But if we can get a clue as to how it got here, maybe it’d give us an idea where to look for it.” “Liz is there,” Rencke said. “Right in the middle of it.” “I couldn’t stop her,” McGarvey said. He felt as miserable as Rencke looked. “Maybe she’ll see something that everyone else is missing.”

“Van Buren is with her. He’ll move heaven and earth to make sure that nothing happens to her. Pretty good motivation, don’t you think?”

McGarvey laid a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Otto—”

Rencke smiled a little. “Don’t be, Mac. I’m the uncle, remember? Not the love interest.” His smile broadened. “Besides, Mrs. M. made me an honorary family member. It’d be incest, ya know.”

“Then I’d have to kill you.”

“Yeah,” Rencke said glumly. He looked at his computer screen. “It got across the Atlantic either by air or by ship. And from there it got to California by air, by road or by rail.”

McGarvey’s headache was bad now, making it hard for him to focus. They were missing something, he felt it, and he had felt it all along.

“So we cover all the possibilities,” Rencke was saying. “It’s like a double-ended funnel with the small ends in Afghanistan and California.” He looked up, but it was obvious that his mind was already elsewhere, chewing on the problem, setting up parameters and methodologies. “Violet,” he mumbled.

“As soon as you come up with something call me,” McGarvey said.

While Adkins was setting up his transportation, McGarvey went home to grab a quick shower and a change of clothes. He called his wife on his cell phone on the way out to Andrews Air Force Base.

“I’m leaving for San Francisco now.”

“It’s going to happen tomorrow or Sunday, isn’t it?” she said after a slight hesitation.

“I think so, Katy. I can’t stay here.”

“I know you can’t. But listen to me.”

“I’m listening.”

“Come back to me, Kirk. Bring Elizabeth with you. Just come back.”

“Promise,” he said.

Green came onto the bridge out of breath as if he had run up the stairs from the engine room two at a time. He was a mess, Bahmad saw, his eyes were bloodshot, he had a serious five o’clock shadow, his uniform was dirty with blood or oil stains and his complexion was sallow. But the navigation he’d worked out that would take them north to the Farallon Islands where they would turn east into the Golden Gate was already entered into the autopilot. If they did not touch the controls the Margo would sail on her own into San Francisco Bay.

“Something’s happening with one of the engines,” Green said.

Bahmad had been dozing in a chair he’d brought from the captain’s cabin. The afternoon sun slanted at a low angle through the bridge windows. For as far as the eye could see the electric-blue ocean and pale blue sky were clear of all traffic. Only a high contrail marked the passage of a Hawaii-bound jet.

“What’s the problem?” Bahmad asked languidly.

“There’s some kind of a vibration in the shaft bearings. They’re starting to heat up. Lazlo traced it to the port engine. The gearbox may be frying itself. He wants to shut down the engine and take the cover off the heat exchanger.”

“What will that do to our speed?”

“It’ll cut it in half unless we push the starboard engine. But if we do that we could end up a shit creek. Both engines could go down.”

“Is Schumatz an engineer?”

“You don’t have to be a fucking engineer to read a temperature gauge.”

“For all he knows the temperature of the gearbox could be well within normal operating limits—”

“The dial is marked red.”

“And the mechanism could run for a week, perhaps cross an ocean before it had to be tended to. But we need less than twenty-four hours.”

“I’m not going to get stuck out here with a locker full of dead men. I say we take the helicopter and the three of us fly to Los Angeles.”

“We need to get to San Francisco.”

“The ship will make it on its own. It’s even programmed to make the turn at the Farallon buoy.”

“But you said the port engine might not make it.”

“So we won’t be on schedule. I don’t give a shit, do you understand, you fucking wog?”

Bahmad suppressed an evil grin. People were so easy. “Why didn’t Schumatz come up here and tell me himself? Or pick up the ship’s phone and call me?”

“How the hell should I know? Why don’t you go down there and ask him yourself?”

“I think I’ll do just that,” Bahmad said. He got up, turned slightly as if he was heading for the door, pulled his pistol, thumbed the safety catch off and turned and shot Green in the forehead at a range of less than five feet.

The first officer’s head snapped back, his arms shot out and he was flung to the deck, killed instantly. Bahmad cocked an ear to listen to the sounds of the ship now that Green had stopped complaining. They were still making fifteen knots, which would put them in the Golden Gate around ten in the morning, two hours before the runners were expected to be on the bridge. Everything was going as planned.

He stuck the Glock 17 in his belt and headed down to the engine room. From what he personally knew about the Sulzer diesel engines there was nothing to worry about. As long as they had sufficient fuel and air they would run practically forever. It would take a catastrophe to stop them. Such as something a motivated man might do.

His step lightened. First he would take care of Schumatz, then he would get something to eat and finally get a few hours’ sleep. The radar’s proximity alarm would warn him of any impending obstacles in their path. He needed to be alert. Tomorrow promised to be a long, interesting day.

It was ten o’clock already and the lights of the city were on. Traffic on the bridge was heavy, made more difficult for the motorists because a halfdozen highway patrol cars blocked one lane for fifty yards at the crown of the span. McGarvey stood at the rail. He’d had a hell of a time convincing Dick Yemm to stay behind, but he had more freedom of movement without a bodyguard. He’d already managed to check out the security arrangements at the park and on the bridge, though he’d missed Liz who’d gone with the President’s daughter to a welcoming ceremony in the Olympic Village.

More than three hundred city, state and federal law enforcement officers aided by Golden Gate Transit people were searching the bridge as unobtrusively as possible. But passing drivers couldn’t help but notice so they slowed down to gawk, which further snarled traffic.

An unmarked Chevy van with federal government plates came up and stopped in the far right-hand lane behind a GOT maintenance truck. Jay Villiard got out and came over.

“How does it look?”

“Hello, Jay.” McGarvey said. They shook hands. “If you can’t search the city you might as well search the bridge.”

“That’s what we figured.” He bummed a cigarette from McGarvey. “Lousy habit. Maybe I’ll give them up again next week.” “How’d you do it last time?” McGarvey asked. He was ready to pull the pin himself, mostly because Kathleen had taken up smoking because of him, and he hated to see her with a cigarette in her hand. “Cold turkey. It’s the only way. Tried and true,” Villiard answered. “Why is it that I don’t think you brought good news with you. God only knows we need some, because we haven’t turned up a thing.”

“We thought we had a pretty good lead in New York,” McGarvey said, and he briefly explained what had happened. “We’re back to square one, right here.”

“The President won’t quit.”

“I know, I’ve tried, and so has Murphy.”

“Bin Laden won’t quit either,” Villiard said glumly. They leaned against the rail watching the night deepen. “I met your daughter; pretty sharp kid. My people are already in love with her.”

“That’s nice to hear.”

“Are you pulling her out?” Villiard asked.

A genuine pain stabbed at McGarvey’s heart. “No,” he said. “She wouldn’t go if I ordered her out anyway.” He turned to face Villiard. “You have kids, Jay. Do they always listen to you?”

Villiard laughed. “I have a fourteen-year-old daughter who hasn’t listened to me since she was ten. I was trying to tell her something, you know, something to help. Anyway, when I was all done she put a hand on her hip, raised an eyebrow, and said: “Obviously.” ” Villiard laughed again. “I told my wife that maybe we should just kill her and make a new one.”

McGarvey had to smile. He knew the feeling. He flipped his cigarette over the rail, then looked up at the towers soaring high overhead, the cable bundles tracing perfect arches. “If I were going to do it, this would be the place.”

Villiard followed his gaze. “It’d be a triple play if he could take out the President, the President’s daughter, and the bridge. Not to mention your daughter and a couple of thousand runners and spectators.” He paused. “There won’t be a non secure aircraft of any type within five miles, or a boat we don’t know about within three miles. No cars, trucks or buses. Nobody on foot with any kind of a package bigger than a purse. Every television van will be assigned a cop. We’ve searched the bridge and everything around it three times and we’ll do it twice more before the race tomorrow. We’ll have sharpshooters in the towers, Coast Guard helicopters overhead, Coast Guard cutters in the water on both sides of the bridge, and even though you’re not supposed to be able to launch this thing on a missile, we’ll have men watching every place from where a missile could be launched.” He shook his head. “Goddamnit, we’ve got it covered. Just like in the textbooks. Just like every time before. Tried and true. It works. But I’m real scared.”

“It’d have to be pretty close to take the bridge out,” McGarvey said.

“A plane right overhead or a boat under the span, we’ve got them covered.”

“Someplace on the bridge.”

“We’ve searched every square inch of it from both ends and top to bottom.”

“How about inside the concrete?” McGarvey asked. “Have there been any repairs in the past six or eight weeks? New concrete poured on the roadways, maybe in the piers? Someplace the bomb could be buried?”

A startled expression crossed Villiard’s face. “I never thought of that,” he said softly. He was the expert and he’d been caught flat footed It showed in his eyes. “I’ll get on it right now.” He started to go, but McGarvey stopped him.

“Better put some divers in the water around the base of the towers too. Bin Laden’s chief of staff is an inventive bastard.”

Villiard nodded tightly. “Anything else?”

“Not for now.”

“I’m going to get my people together. We’re going to rethink this thing from the get-go.”

“It’s not the stuff that we think of that gets me worried,” McGarvey said.

“Yeah,” Villiard replied. “It’s the shit that we don’t think about.” He studied McGarvey’s face. “Where you going to be?”

“Around.”

“Sleep?”

“Later.”

“I know what you mean,” the Secret Service agent said, and he left.

It was going to be a long night, McGarvey thought, pulling out another cigarette. He felt battered. He was still on eastern time, so for him it was after two in the morning. Time to sleep. Perchance to dream? It was exactly what he was afraid of, because lately in his dreams he was seeing Sarah bin Laden’s bloody body lying in a field of flowers like in the Wizard of Oz. His daughter and the President’s daughter were running up the hill toward her when there was a bright flash over the Emerald City and they were torn apart just when they thought that they were home safe.

On the bridge the radar proximity alarm sounded. Bahmad who had been listening to the police, harbor control and Coast Guard frequencies in the chart room came out to see what was ahead of them. The sky to the east was getting light with the dawn. They were still far enough off shore that he could not pick up the coast line, though he could see the smudge of the distant mountains inland. The radar was painting a very large object within the thirty-five mile ring directly ahead. It was the high rock face of one of the Farallon Islands. He checked his watch. They were right on time.

According to the ship’s SOP manuals, a Notice to Mariners they’d received yesterday and the radio chatter he’d listened to most of the night, he’d been presented with an apparently insoluble problem. No shipping was to be allowed anywhere near the bridge while the runners were crossing. The separation zone was a minimum of three miles. Ships coming in early were to drop anchor in the holding basin to the west of the center span and wait for the all clear. But then, about an hour ago, the solution presented itself all at once in a neat and tidy package, as these things usually did.

As soon as the Margo cleared the Farallons and made the pre-programmed turn to starboard that would bring them to the holding basin in the Golden Gate, he was supposed to call for a harbor pilot who would be brought out on a pilot boat. It could not have been better. In effect the stupid bastards were going to do his job for him.

His step was light and he whistled a little tune as he went to prepare Joshua’s Hammer for the final countdown.

McGarvey sat in the stadium a third of the way up at-the fifty-yard line sipping a cup of coffee trying to get rid of a blinding headache. He’d accomplished nothing of any value overnight, and he was frustrated with himself. He was missing something, they all were. But he couldn’t put his finger on it. He’d called Rencke twice during the night, but both he and Adkins were coming up empty handed.

“We’ve still got time, ya know,” Rencke said. “It’s turning purple.”

“What’s that mean?”

“I don’t know yet,” Rencke cried in anguish. “Maybe you should get Liz outta there, ya know. Something.”

“Take it easy. We’re doing this one step at a time. We’ve got it covered at this end. All we need now is one thing, how the bomb got here.”

“I’m on it, Mac. Holy shit, I swear to God, I’m on it—” Rencke broke the connection, leaving McGarvey very worried about him. He thought about having Adkins pull him out, but that would be even harder on Rencke than leaving him where he was.

The stadium was coming alive with the dawn. A portable stage had been set up in midfield for the opening ceremonies set to start at 11:30 a.m. President Haynes, California Governor Thomas and the International Special Olympics director Octavo Aguilar along with a number of local officials and politicians would officially welcome the athletes and declare that the games were open. The presidential motorcade would lead the half-marathon runners out of the park at noon. And from that point for the next ten days there would be more Secret Service and police activities here than at any other place or time in U.S. history.

Grounds crews were busy making sure everything was set up the way it should be and that the field was in good shape. Workmen were putting the final touches on the stage, and technicians were testing the sound and lighting systems. Some of the coaches and athletes were already starting to drift into the stadium for their workouts, and the news media were busy setting up their equipment. There was an air of nervousness among just about everyone except the athletes. Something was going on. Everybody knew it because of the increased security. The President was here, but nobody had ever seen such stringent measures. It was as if the entire world had suddenly gone nuts.

No one was saying anything out loud about the precautions, but it was clear that bin Laden was on everybody’s minds.

“Hi, Daddy,” Elizabeth said, dropping into the seat next to him.

McGarvey looked up and gave his daughter a smile. He was glad to see her. ” “Morning, Liz. Did you get any sleep?”

“Not much,” she said. Her eyes were red, but she looked bright. She was dressed in sweats with a dark blue ISO warmup jacket and cap. “I stayed in the dorm with Deb last night, and those kids are wired. Most of them didn’t get to sleep until a couple hours ago.” She gave her father a critical look. “How about you? Are you okay?”

“I’ll be glad when this weekend is over,” he replied tiredly. “Where’s Todd? I haven’t seen him since I got out here.”

“Neither have I. He’s been busy with Deb’s Secret Service people. They’re putting a blanket around her.”

“Won’t help if the bomb goes off.”

“They know that. But if we get some kind of a warning, even a hint, Todd’s worked out a way to get her out of here within a minute or two. They’ve got a souped-up golf cart that can top eighty, and a chopper to pull her out”

McGarvey looked away. How to tell her what he was thinking? What any father in his shoes would be thinking. If there was an opposite end of the earth from bin Laden’s mountain camp then this was it. But McGarvey was finding that he didn’t belong in either place. Especially not here. It seemed as if an evil pall had followed him from Afghanistan and had settled over this stadium. It was his own dark mood, he understood that. But he had to ask himself how he would have reacted to the death of his own daughter. If he were bin Laden what would he have done?

One of the previous deputy directors of Operations had told him once that he was an anachronism. Shooters like him were a dangerous breed out of the past In fact they had become indistinguishable from their targets. The lines between the good and the bad had blurred somehow. Progress.

He’d wanted to tell the smug bastard how wrong that was, but he couldn’t. Maybe the man had been right after all. But he sure as hell hadn’t formed that opinion while sitting next to an Osama bin Laden. He had not felt the man’s anger and religious zeal. He had not felt the man’s dedication of purpose, his — for him — high principles.

God save us from the self-righteous, for it’s them who’ll likely inherit the earth, not the meek.

“Anything I should know about?” Elizabeth asked.

McGarvey focused on his daughter. He reached out and touched her face. “Are you happy, sweetheart?” he asked.

The question startled her. She started to give him an answer, but then hesitated for a moment, embarrassed. Finally she smiled wanly. “Not right at this moment, I guess. I’m a little scared.” She looked up, her shoulders back a little. “But overall things couldn’t be much better. I have a job that I love, I have you and mom back together — and that’s a dream come true — and I have Todd. I think that I’m in love with him, and—”

Someone shouted her name from down on the field. They turned in time to see Deborah Haynes and her coach and Secret Service detail coming out onto the field. Deborah had spotted Elizabeth and was waving wildly. Elizabeth waved back.

“I have to go,” she said.

“You started to tell me something.”

“It’ll keep.”

An overwhelming wave of love surged through McGarvey. “I’m very proud of you.”

“Thanks, Daddy.”

“I’ll do everything I can to stop the bastards.”

“When haven’t you done your very best?” she asked. She kissed him on the cheek and then headed down to the field.

“Damn,” he said softly. A very large hollow spot ate at his gut watching his only child taking the steps lightly, two at a time, as if she didn’t have a care in the world. If there is a God who isn’t indifferent, he prayed softly, please watch over her and help me stop the monsters.

“There were no concrete pours that big in the past eight weeks. In fact there was no work like that for the past six months,” Andrew Stroud said. He was the chief engineer in charge of the Golden Gate Bridge. He and Jay Villiard were flipping through a thick sheaf of bridge blueprints.

“What about new steelwork? Someplace he could have hidden the package.” Villiard asked. He was starting to get frantic, he could hear it in his voice.

“Nothing like that. We just finished our MMRs in July, I’m telling you, and this time our biggest problem was the turnbuckle pins on the Marin Pier main cable saddles.”

Villiard was tired and a little cranky, but he held his impatience in check. “What exactly is a MMR, Mr. Stroud?”

“Major maintenance routine,” the engineer explained. “We check all the major systems annually, of course. But every ten years we go through what we call a “MMR cycle. We check every single rivet, every cable, every connector, every square inch of plate steel and concrete. The roadways, the piers and fenders, anchorages, cable housings, the lighting and electrical systems, elevators, the suspenders, even the approach roads, sidewalks and railings. Everything.”

“And there were no major repairs?” Villiard asked again.

“Like I said, just the turnbuckle pins.”

“What about the piers themselves?”

“The underwater parts?”

“Yeah. Do you check those as well?”

“All the time. Same as every other part of the bridge.” The pinch-faced engineer shook his head. “I’d really like to help you guys, but nothing’s gone on out there in the past couple of months that fits what you’re talking about. I mean there’s a million places to hide something like that, but you’ve already checked it out. All I’m saying is that the bomb is not buried in the structure.”

“Could someone have snuck out there in the middle of the night?”

“And opened a hole in the bridge, dumped the package and resealed it without us knowing about it?” Stroud asked. “Not likely.”

“You mean that it’s possible?”

“No, I mean that there’s not a chance in hell. We would have spotted the fix,” Stroud assured him. “Look, I’ve been working on this bridge for twenty-five years. I know it better than I know my wife’s body, and I’ve got five kids. There’s nothing out there.”

It was the same message he’d gotten from the divers that Dave Rogan had sent down at first light He glanced up at the clock. It was coming up on 8:00 a.m. In three and a half hours the President of the United States and his wife would drive into the stadium at Candlestick Park for the opening ceremonies. Thirty minutes later their motorcade would head for Sausalito followed by 1,837 handicapped runners including Raindrop, the President’s daughter. And at this moment the Secret Service was no further ahead in its efforts to assure their safety than they had been eight weeks ago when this first became an issue.

Villiard closed his eyes and ears for a moment, blocking out the sights and sounds of the busy operations center. Tried and true. Maybe that was a crock of shit after all.

M/V Margo Golden Gate Holding Basin A thin sheen of perspiration covered Bahmad’s forehead as he picked up the radiotelephone and depressed the switch. “San Francisco Harbor Control, this is the Motor Vessel Margo with Charlie at the holding basin, requesting a pilot.” Charlie was the latest Notice to Mariners about the holding basin and bridge approach closure.

“Good morning, Capt’n, Russ Meeks is your man and he’s on his way. But you’ll have to stay put until the Coasties give us the all clear. Should be around two.”

“That’s fine. Gives me a few hours to catch up on some paperwork I was going to do when we docked. I might as well get it done now.”

“I hear you, Capt’n. Have a good one.”

“Thanks. Margo, out.”

Four other ships, all of them container carriers, were anchored in the holding area just off Seal Rocks Beach. The wind was unusually light, but the Margo still rolled a little with the incoming Pacific swells. Five miles out Bahmad had raced down to the engine room where he’d powered down the big diesels, and then had rushed back up to the bridge to steer the boat to the holding area. Except for all the running around it was ridiculously easy. The huge cargo ship was steered with a wheel that was smaller in diameter than the saucer for a tea cup. When the ship’s speed was down to practically nothing, he hit a switch that released the starboard bow anchor. When it hit bottom it dug in almost immediately and the vessel swung ponderously around so that its bow faced a few points off the wind and seas and came to a complete halt, portside to seaward.

From here he could see the Marin side of the bridge a little more than three miles away. He studied it through binoculars. Traffic was heavy, and he could make out a lot of police cars and official vehicles, lights flashing, crossing and recrossing the bridge. Hundreds of people had gathered at the rails, and hundreds more on foot were streaming onto the bridge to wait for the race.

There were at least four helicopters in the air passing back and forth directly over the bridge, and a pair of Coast Guard cutters patrolling the waters on either side of the center span. Their bow guns were uncovered, the barrel caps off, and the three crewmen who he could make out on the nearest cutter wore their Kevlar helmets. They meant business. No ship would be allowed anywhere near the bridge until the runners were safely over.

He continued to study the waters on either side of the bridge until he spotted a small white powerboat, some sort of a pennant flying from a whippy mast, passing the Coast Guard cutter on the seaward side of the bridge.

The cutter did not challenge the little boat, which continued straight out toward the holding basin.

Bahmad lowered the binoculars and allowed a faint smile to crease his lips. It was the pilot boat and it had a free rein in the harbor.

He pocketed a walkie-talkie, set to the standard VHP channel 16 and went to open the port quarter gate and lower the ladder. It was too bad about the helicopter. But there was more air traffic than he had counted on. Someone was bound to see the chopper lift off from the Margo. What wouldn’t be so easy to spot however, would be the Zodiac and powerful outboard motor that he’d found in a deck locker last night. At the time he’d merely noted that it was there, along with the lifting tackle to put it in the water. But now he was glad he had gone looking out of curiosity and had found it.

Soon, he thought. Very soon now and the United States would be a very different place in which to live. He would also have to get back to the chart room to do a final bit of navigation, but that part was easy compared to what he’d already gone through.

The presidential motorcade, lights flashing, sirens screaming, swept down the Candlestick Park exit off U.S. 101 a couple of minutes before 11:30 a.m.

“Thunder is clear, seven,” the Secret Service officer riding shotgun in the President’s limousine radioed softly.

Crowds had gathered along the half-marathon route over the bridge. Thousands of them waved small American flags, but there were many along the route who waved the flags of the several dozen participating countries.

“It’d be nice to think that they turned out for us in such numbers,” Governor S. Howard Thomas commented. His complexion was florid. He’d drunk enough Chivas to float a battleship at last night’s AP managing editor’s dinner. But he had given a creditable speech this morning to the San Francisco Downtown Rotary Club that surprised even Haynes.

“Your being here won’t hurt, Howard,” the President said. “The talk will get around.”

The governor shot him a sly look, not sure if the President wasn’t being sarcastic. It was no secret that Haynes disliked him. But Thomas was the party favorite; he had done a reasonably good job in his first term, and the ass running against him was a total flake.

“I can see him hitting the Pentagon, or Wall Street, even the Congress, but not here.” The governor gave the President’s wife and his wife the famous Thomas reassuring smile. “Not here, not today. Too many of his own people would get hurt. They’d tear him apart back home. Limb from limb.”

“I’m still nervous,” Mildred Thomas admitted.

The President’s wife patted her hand. We would have canceled the games if there was a possibility that something was going to happen. Our own daughter is here.”

“I know. And I think you’re so brave,” Mrs. Thomas said sincerely. “But I’m not.”

The President gave his wife an appreciative look. What they didn’t need right now was a nervous or even hysterical woman on the stage at the opening ceremonies. It was difficult enough keeping the truth from the public though the media had started to put it together. A few calls to the presidents of the networks had put the lid on the story for a little while, at least through this weekend. But the dam would break soon. Then they would be faced with conducting an investigation in the face of a frightened nation. At that point even if the bomb were never to be used, bin Laden would have already won. The idea of a terrorist act was to terrorize. Well, just the threat of this attack was going to be enough to set the average American off. Nobody would ever feel safe in their homes so long as bin Laden was alive. It was the argument he had used on the TV execs.

“Nothing to be brave about, Mildred; unless Deb wins the race in which case they’ll say that the fix was in and scream for our blood,” the President assured her.

They slowed down as they passed through the stadium entrance directly onto the field. The stadium was filled to capacity. All the athletes were lined up in ranks and files behind then: national flags. Most of them wore white blazers and dark blue slacks or skirts, but the marathon runners were decked out in their shorts with their numbers pinned on the backs of their shirts.

The stage was decorated with red, white and blue bunting and the pennants of all the participating nations.

A huge cheer went up through the stadium as the President’s limousine crossed the field and stopped in front of the stage. ISO director Octavio Aguilar and the other dignitaries all rose, and as the President and first lady got out of the car the band played “Hail to the Chief.”

The President searched for his daughter’s face in the middle of the American delegation. He thought he spotted her, but then he wasn’t sure as he and his wife started slowly up the stairs with Governor and Mrs. Thomas, shaking hands as they went. Two of his Secret Service agents were already on stage, four flanked the President and First Lady, and a dozen others ringed the platform. There were even more in the skybox and at other strategic positions in the stadium. Everyone was alert, no one was asleep on the job this morning.

It was a poor defense against a nuclear weapon, the fleeting thought crossed the President’s mind, but then he was shaking hands with the tiny, birdlike Octavio Aguilar and his even more diminutive wife Marianna.

“International Special Olympians,” the announcer’s voice blasted through the stadium. “Coaches, trainers, ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States of America.”

The crowd cheered as the President stepped to the microphone to make his remarks and declare that the games were open. He prayed to God that this would be the beginning of a completely uneventful week.

Bahmad reached the bottom of the boarding ladder as the pilot boat rounded the Marge’s stern. One man was in the cabin at the wheel, and another was at the rail on the aft deck. He would be Russell Meeks, the pilot, who was supposed to come aboard to guide the Margo to her berth after the race. Bahmad raised his hand and waved. Meeks waved back as the man driving the pilot boat expertly brought her alongside, throwing the transmission into neutral at exactly the right moment.

Bahmad passed a line across to Meeks, who seemed to be surprised, but took it. The usual procedure was for the boat to come alongside and for the pilot to simply jump across.

“I’d like to talk to you for a minute before you come aboard, Mr. Meeks. If you don’t mind,” Bahmad said.

“What’s going on?” Meeks wore a San Francisco Harbor Pilot cap and jacket. He carried a walkie-talkie in a holster in his belt like a gun. If he reached for it Bahmad would kill him on the spot.

“It’ll just take a minute, sir. I need to talk to you and your driver. I have to show you something.”

Meeks was an older man, white hair, deeply lined face, but he was built like a linebacker. He’d probably worked on or around boats all of his life. He was suspicious now. “Who are you?”

“I’m Joseph Green, first officer. I’ve really gotta talk to you, man. There’s nothing wrong, I mean, but this is important. Believe me.”

Meeks turned, leaned into the cabin and said something to the delivery skipper that Bahmad didn’t quite catch. He turned back, nodded, cleared off the line and stepped aside.

Bahmad jumped aboard and stumbled as if he had lost his balance. He reached out to Meeks with his left hand to steady himself, while he reached in his jacket for his pistol with his other. He turned toward the delivery driver who watched from his high seat at the helm, a calm but curious look on his narrow, dark face. Bahmad got the impression that he might be Hispanic.

“Easy,” Meeks said.

Bahmad pulled out his pistol, thumbed the safety catch off and fired one shot into the delivery driver’s face.

Meeks reacted immediately, batting Bahmad’s hand away. But he wasn’t quick enough. Bahmad swung the pistol around and pumped two shots into the pilot’s chest, the second destroying his heart. He fell backward and nearly pitched over the rail before Bahmad managed to grab a handful of his jacket and haul him back. His body slumped to the deck in a spreading pool of blood.

The day was suddenly very quiet except for the cries of the seagulls overhead.

Bahmad holstered his pistol and dragged the pilot’s body out of sight inside the cabin. Back on deck he found a bucket and sponge and quickly cleaned off the blood. Once again inside the cabin he cleaned the blood off the windshield, then propped the pilot boat driver’s body up against the wheel. He cut a couple of pieces of rope from a heaving line and tied the man’s arms to the wheel and his back up against the back of the seat. From the air everything would look normal here. The open deck was clean and the pilot boat driver was at the helm where he belonged.

Bahmad studied the instrument panel long enough to find what he’d hoped to find. Because of the frequent fogs in the bay the pilot boat was equipped with a pair of GPS navigators tied to an autopilot with a hundred programmable way points With the right settings the boat could practically thread its way through a maze without anyone touching the wheel.

He took out a piece of paper on which he had jotted down two pairs of latitudes and longitudes that he had worked out at the chart table aboard Mar go, and entered them as way points one and two in the autopilot. The first would take the pilot boat well clear of the Marge’s bow and the second would take it directly under the center span of the Golden Gate Bridge.

The Secret Service agent riding shotgun in the President’s limousine turned around. “The starter is ready, sir.”

The President looked out the rear window. The motorcade of six cars was poised at the fifty-yard line exit from the stadium. The runners were massed behind where the fifty-yard line would be if this were football season back to the end zone. People in the stands were on their feet, most of them waving flags and cheering. The noise even inside the bulletproof limo was thunderous. Somewhere back there was his daughter, and the President of the United States could not remember a time when he had been more frightened. “Tell him to start,” he said. The Secret Service agent relayed the message. A few seconds later the runners surged forward and the President’s motorcade headed out.

The security team watching the television monitors had the best seats of all. ESPN was televising the half-marathon live from the Met Life blimp that would pace the runners from the park across the bridge to Sausalito. One of Villiard’s men was aboard as crew, and he kept up a running commentary over one of the tactical radio channels the Secret Service used. The view from about six hundred feet was spectacular.

They received more than a dozen other television images from Coast Guard, San Francisco PD and National Guard helicopters aloft, as well as from a halfdozen security cameras on the bridge.

Six radio operators were busy monitoring on-the-site reporting from more than one hundred Secret Service and FBI agents. In addition they monitored all the frequencies used by the county and local police, the National Guard, Coast Guard, San Francisco Harbor Control and the FAA’s air traffic control units and flight service stations within the entire San Francisco and Oakland Terminal Control areas.

They had direct radio links to the presidential motorcade, including to the President’s Secret Service detail as well as to the president himself. They could talk to Kirk McGarvey and Todd Van Buren as well as to Elizabeth McGarvey who planned on keeping up with the President’s daughter for at least the first half of the race. If need be she could be picked up by one of the SFPD motorcycle cops and leapfrogged ahead But she’d told Villiard that she would keep up until they were across the suspended part of the bridge. After that they would probably find her dead body fallen alongside the road.

Villiard had to smile thinking about her. She was a hell of a young woman. A chip off the old block. Tried and true.

He glanced up at the images from the blimp as the presidential motorcade emerged from the stadium followed by the first of the eighteen hundred runners and his heart began to pound in his chest.

Elizabeth had never run a marathon or any other big race in which she was in the middle of hundreds of runners. The experience now bordered on the surreal. Deborah was on her right and slightly ahead, and they were surrounded by a sea of white muscle shirts, arms and elbows, heads bobbing and weaving. Already she was beginning to smell sweat and running shoes and some unpleasant unwashed body odors. Some of the runners limped or hopped because of their disabilities; others took huge bounding leaps and still others ran flat-out, pushing their way through the mass of human flesh. They probably wouldn’t even last until the highway, and she was sure that their coaches had tried to drum into their heads the notion of pacing themselves. But this was the Special Olympics, and most athletes here were so enthused for the moment that they could hardly contain themselves.

The President’s daughter, however, and perhaps a hundred other runners like her who had received good training, were pacing themselves for the long haul, something over thirteen miles. For at least that much Elizabeth was grateful, although the pace Deborah was running was not going to be easy to keep up with. She would be doing the half marathon in under two hours.

Elizabeth saw the blimp overhead and the helicopters crisscrossing the sky. Somewhere still well out ahead was the presidential motorcade, lights flashing. Once they got out onto U.S. 101 there would be spectators cheering them on, and a mile and a half out, when the field would be spreading out, there would be the first of the water stations.

Somewhere in the pack behind them Todd Van Buren and whatever Secret Service agent he’d been assigned to this morning were drifting through the field on the souped-up golf cart. They were looking for any sign of trouble, and they were keeping up with Deborah.

Elizabeth resisted the urge to look over her shoulder to see if she could spot them. It was hard enough keeping up without making it more difficult for herself.

She pulled up even with the President’s daughter. Deborah’s long blond hair streamed behind her, there was a thin sheen of perspiration on her face and there was a look of absolute joy, even rapture, on her sweet face.

Deborah turned and gave Elizabeth a huge grin. “Isn’t this just so cool?” she shouted. She wasn’t even breathing hard yet.

“Cool,” Elizabeth said. She caught a glimpse of the highway in the distance, and settled back for the long haul. For the very long haul, she told herself as she took several clearing breaths.

McGarvey bummed a ride across the bridge from an SFPD cop. As they passed under the Marin side tower he directed the officer to pull over and he got out.

The wind was down, which would make it a lot easier on the runners. There weren’t even any whitecaps on the bay or in the Golden Gate. Directly below the bridge an eighty-two-foot Coast Guard cutter was making its turn back to the south. In the distance, at Seal Rocks Beach, McGarvey could see five big cargo ships at anchor waiting to come in after the race.

He pushed his way through the spectators sitting on beach chairs and on the curb, and went to the rail. He lit a cigarette and stared at the ships, allowing the urgency that had gripped him for the last twenty-four hours to ease up a little.

There was no other activity in the Golden Gate. Nothing moved except for the cutter. Even if the bomb was aboard one of the cargo ships, there was no time for the anchor to be pulled up and the ship to make it to the bridge by the time the runners arrived. The Coast Guard cutters would intercept it long before it got close. If need be, the Coast Guard jet that was standing by at the Oakland Airport could be scrambled.

All the bases were covered.

He turned and gazed down the length of the bridge. Thousands of people lined the roadway. Police units, their lights flashing, seemed to be everywhere. Overhead, he counted six helicopters and in the distance to the south the Met Life blimp was heading this way. It meant that the race was underway.

There were sharpshooters atop both towers in case someone tried to bull their way onto the bridge. Salted in and among the eighteen hundred runners were two dozen Secret Service agents plus Todd Van Buren and Elizabeth.

He turned again to stare at the five cargo ships. What was he missing? What were they all missing? Most of them, from the President down, didn’t really believe that an attack would come here. It was against bin Laden’s interests. Yet everyone was frightened. It was bizarre.

A radio on the bridge was tuned to ESPN, and the minute by-minute commentary on the Special Olympics half marathon was being piped over the Margo’s PA system.

Bahmad had horsed the inflated twelve-foot Zodiac out of its locker on the port quarterdeck just forward of where the now-useless helicopter was lashed down, and had attached the lifting sling to the three heavy D-rings on the dinghy’s gun whale line.

The runners were off, but he had plenty of time. From everything that he’d read and knew about this type of event, a woman runner would make a full marathon in a bit over four hours. The President’s daughter was an excellent athlete so it was no stretch of the imagination to believe that she would do a half-marathon in two hours, barring any delays or accidents.

Bahmad looked up at the other container vessels in the basin. There was no movement on their decks. The crews were below eating their midday meal.

Deborah Haynes would run the thirteen miles in two hours, which meant that she would average a little more than nine minutes per mile. The middle of the Golden Gate Bridge was about nine miles from the stadium at Candlestick Park. Eighty to eighty-five minutes after the start of the race Deborah Haynes would be on the center span.

Bahmad powered the Zodiac off the deck with the hand controller, and then swung the boom out over the side of the rail. When the dinghy had stopped swinging and was clear, he quickly powered it forty feet down to the surface of the water within reach of the boarding ladder.

The pilot boat would make fifteen knots easily, and the center span of the bridge was three miles away. Allowing time for the boat to clear the Margo’s bow and make the turn, Bahmad estimated that twelve minutes after he cast off the pilot boat’s lines it would be under the bridge.

The timing could be sloppy, several minutes off either way, because of the blast radius of the nuclear device. If the pilot boat were somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge at the same time the runners were on the bridge or very near it, the President’s daughter and a lot of other people would die.

He walked aft to the stern rail where three fiberglass containers, each about the size of a large suitcase, were bracketed to the deck. Each was marked life raft eight person made in china. He undid the fasteners for the canister on the left and lifted it off its cradle. It was very heavy, more than forty kilograms. He imagined that he could feel heat coming off it, which was nonsense of course. Nevertheless he handled the container with a great deal of care as he awkwardly brought it forward to the gate. He set the package down at the head of the boarding ladder so that he could catch his breath. It wouldn’t do to drop the damn thing halfway down the ladder in the rolling swell. Not after all this. Not when he was this close.

The runners were fifteen minutes into the race on U.S. 101, and according to the ESPN commentator they were already beginning to spread out with Deborah Haynes near the lead as expected.

She would be on the center span in another sixty-five to seventy minutes. He would have to send the pilot boat off twelve minutes before then. He had nearly an hour. Twenty minutes to put the bomb in place and make the final settings. Another twenty to get his things, put them aboard the dinghy and make sure that the outboard worked. And the final fifteen minutes or so to fine-tune the timing based on the ESPN blow-by-blow.

Once the pilot boat was off he would take the dinghy around the sound end of the point, which would afford him protection from the blast. In the confusion afterward he would make his escape.

Plenty of time, he told himself, as he hefted the bomb and started down the ladder.

The Met Life Blimp Secret Service agent Hugh Gardner had seen a lot of stuff in his five-year career with the service, but he’d never seen such a mass of humanity spread out over four miles of highway as he was seeing right now. Some of the runners had given up before they had gotten out of the Candlestick Park parking lot, while others, among them the President’s daughter, were within a hundred yards or so of the lead.

“Lead One, this is Baker Seven, they’re coming up on delta,” he spoke into his lapel mike. Delta was the Mission Dolores just beyond where U.S. 101 made its jog to the west.

“Copy, Baker Seven. How’s it looking from there?”

“No problems that I can see,” Gardner replied. The view from up here was fantastic. He could see the bridge up ahead, the city and the bay to the east, including Alcatraz Island, and the outer stretches of the Golden Gate to the west, the hazy Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon.

He sincerely hoped that nothing would go wrong today to spoil the shear beauty of it. His fellow agents razzed him for being so overly sensitive in such a demanding job. But, as he had explained to the guys on his detail last week, the quickest, easiest and cheapest way into a woman’s knickers was reading poetry. Sensitivity, gentlemen. Try it, you’ll like it.

The Pilot Boat Bahmad unsnapped the life raft’s latches and opened the outer cover. He had a little trouble with one of the inner latches, but when it finally popped he prised up the lid to reveal the bomb’s control panel. As he huddled inside the cabin there was nothing to be seen except for the Margo’s rust-streaked hull rising like a shear cliff, and no one to see what he was doing.

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 antitampering 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.

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 ocean side “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 mid-sentence 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 Mar go’s boarding ladder. Bahmad had some difficulty jumping across because the pilot boat was pitching and hobby horsing 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.

“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 Met Life 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!”

“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 handing capped 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 9O7 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 DeL illo told her.

“Forget it, the Margo’s already got her anchor up.”

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. Goddamnit, 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 that 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 I’ll 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 Mar go’s deck was one thing, but he did not want to be mistaken for one of the bad guys.

“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.”

“Base, Three-One, is the chopper ready to fly?”

“Negative. It’s still tied down, and her rotors are secured. But the ship is getting under way. Request permission to go weapons free.”

“Permission granted—”

“Negative, negative,” someone overrode his primary channel. “This is Victor-tango-one-seven, the Sea King just off your port wing. That is one of our people on deck. Copy!

Lieutenant Bill Dillard had spotted the Coast Guard helicopter as he came in, of course. But he had his mission orders. Splash the chopper on the Marge’s deck if it so much as twitched.

“Stand by One-seven,” he radioed. “Base, Three-one, did you copy that last transmission.”

“Roger, stand by.”

Lieutenant Dillard had no idea what the hell was actually going on, except that it was a possible threat to the President, and the Margo was picking up speed. Somebody had put the pedal to the metal.

“Three-one, Base. Confirm that is a friendly on deck. But stick with the ship. If someone, I don’t care who, tries to get that chopper ready to fly you have authorization to splash it before it gets off the deck.”

“Roger, copy that.” Dillard backed up and waggled his wings.

Elizabeth pressed her earpiece closer. Something was going on. There was a steady stream of chatter on the radio. She was catching snatches of orders. Something about the bridge being closed.

“Raindrop Elizabeth, Lead One.”

“This is Elizabeth, Lead One. Go.”

“Are you on the bridge yet?” Villiard demanded.

“We’re just coming up on the tower. Do we have trouble?”

“Chenna and Todd are on their way. Get Raindrop off the bridge.”

Elizabeth’s gut tightened, but then a calmness came over her. “Copy,” she spoke into her mike. She shouted for Deborah who was a few yards ahead of her to hold up.

Halfway across the bridge the President was stunned. He’d been saying something to his wife when John Flagler gave the order to their driver to bug out, and the limousine suddenly shot forward like a shell from a cannon.

“What the hell—?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but there is a possible threat,” Flagler said sharply. He said something into his radio, then looked over his shoulder past the President and First Lady out the rear window.

“We have to get Deborah,” the President told him.

“Her detail is picking her up now, sir.”

“We’re going back for her, John, and that’s an order.”

Flagler said something else into his mike. He had an Ingram MAC 10 out. He looked the President in the eye, his expression devoid of anything other than professionalism. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but that’s not possible. Your daughter is being taken care of. In the meantime we’re getting you off the bridge.”

On the opposite side of the bridge Chenna Serafini and Todd Van Buren were bogged down. The runners were bunching up again. Van Buren jumped out of the golf cart and ran ahead to make a path for Chenna. The President’s daughter was somewhere out ahead of them. Chenna was sick that she had let them get so far ahead. The girl had to be up around the tower by now. Hopefully she hadn’t left Elizabeth McGarvey behind.

“Raindrop Elizabeth, this is Raindrop One,” Chenna radioed.

Van Buren was bodily shoving runners aside, knocking some of them to the pavement. He made a hole and Chenna sped up. As she passed he jumped aboard.

“Liz, you copy?” Chenna spoke urgently into her lapel mike.

“This is Lead One, she can’t hear you,” Villiard radioed back. “I’ll patch you over.” The runners ahead cleared another path, and Van Buren spotted Deborah and Elizabeth about thirty yards away at the side of the road. “There,” he shouted.

Chenna spotted them too. They had stopped at the edge of a big pileup of runners just across from the ocean side leg of the San Francisco Tower. It was a security nightmare. There were runners and spectators all within arm’s reach. Getting to her and then getting her back out without hurting someone was going to be next to impossible. And calling for their helicopter to pick them up would be equally impossible until they could get Deborah out to the middle of the span away from the towers and suspension cables, or back out of the crowd somewhere off the bridge approaches.

“Chenna, this is Liz, I can see you,” Elizabeth responded.

“Stand by, we’re getting you and Deb out of there,” Chenna radioed back. She jammed the pedal to the floor and shot out around a group of six runners, missing them by inches.

Elizabeth said something to the President’s daughter who backed up a step and shook her head. Even from here Chenna could see that the girl was frightened by all the noise and sirens and commotion. When she was backed into a corner she always ran. It was something that Elizabeth could not know about.

“Don’t push her,” Chenna shouted into her mike at the same moment Elizabeth reached out for Deborah’s hand.

Almost in slow motion the President’s daughter reared back, turned and jumped over the high curb onto the sidewalk. The spectators parted for her and for Elizabeth who was right on her heel, and they disappeared around the outside of the tower leg.

The bridge was empty. McGarvey saw a puddle of congealed blood on the deck, but there was no one up here controlling the ship. There was no sign of the crew anywhere. Bahmad had killed at least one of them, but where the hell were the others?

The ship was already starting to make a wide turn to starboard that would bring it into the Golden Gate and line it up with the bridge. But the Margo could not make it to the bridge in time. What was he missing?

The bomb had been removed from its bracket for some reason. Think, for God’s sake. His head felt like someone had driven a hot spike through his skull.

He looked at the pool of blood again. Bahmad was a brilliant man. He would have contingency plans. The Margo might not make it to the bridge in time, but the bomb would.

“Sonofabitch.” The bomb was no longer aboard this ship, or wouldn’t be for long.

McGarvey hurriedly studied the control panel, finding and disengaging the autopilot, then flipped the switch that dropped the anchor.

He tore out of the bridge and raced downstairs to the main deck. All this time they had concentrated on this ship to deliver the bomb. But Bahmad was smart. He’d been trained by the British and American intelligence establishments. Getting the Marga underway was a diversionary tactic. He had another boat. Maybe the captain’s gig to deliver the bomb. And afterward in the confusion he would use the helicopter to make his escape. But then why move the ship where it would be exposed to blast damage? It was getting hard to think straight.

McGarvey emerged winded from the starboard stairwell on the main deck athwart ship corridor as Bahmad stepped out of a hatch twenty feet away.

For a split second they stared at each other, but McGarvey raised his pistol first and fired as Bahmad ducked back inside.

A MAC 10 came around the edge of the steel door and McGarvey just managed to pull back inside the stairwell landing as Bahmad fired a short burst, and then another, the bullets ricocheting all over the place.

McGarvey immediately fired three quick shots down the corridor in the general direction of the hatch and ducked back as Bahmad fired an answering burst. This time the shells ricocheted off the steel deck and walls just outside the stairwell.

The sonofabitch had raised the anchor and set the autopilot from the bridge by himself, and then had raced down to the engine room to start the diesels. Bahmad was alone.

He had killed the entire crew and now he was trying to get out. The bomb was already on its way.

The pilot boat!

McGarvey checked his watch. If the runners were on time the bulk of them would be coming on to the bridge at any minute. There was no time.

“Mr. McGarvey, you are an inventive man,” Bahmad called.

“The bridge has been closed and the Coast Guard is intercepting the pilot boat,” McGarvey said. “It’s over. Toss your gun out into the corridor.”

“It’s much too late for such a simple lie as that to work. Actually it’s you for whom everything is over.”

McGarvey reached around the corner and fired two shots, but Bahmad was waiting for him, and he fired a sustained burst directly down the corridor.

McGarvey fell back as a shell fragment slammed into his hip, and another into his right side. He grunted involuntarily in pain. He was starting to get real tired of being shot up.

He heard an empty magazine clatter to the steel deck, and another being slapped into the handle. He turned and limped up the stairs as Bahmad fired, ricocheting bullets filling the landing with hundreds of deadly fragments.

“McGarvey,” Bahmad shouted.

The athwart ship corridor one level up from the main deck was dark, although McGarvey could clearly see that the ceiling lights were on. He trailed his left hand on the bulkhead for balance as he hurried to the portside stairwell and started down. His hip was numb, but his whole right side was on fire. It was becoming increasingly harder to concentrate.

The main deck corridor was ominously silent. McGarvey closed his eyes for just a moment to garner the last of his strength, then eased just far enough around the corner so that he could see what was going on.

Bahmad, his attention on the starboard stairwell, had flattened himself against the bulkhead and was creeping forward.

McGarvey stepped out into the corridor and raised his pistol. The ship started to spin, but then steadied down. Bahmad turned, a surprised look on his face. He brought the MAC 10 around, but he was too late and he knew it.

“You lose,” McGarvey said softly, and he squeezed off two shots, the first catching bin Laden’s chief of staff in his chest, driving him backward, and the second under his jaw, the bullet spiraling upward into his brain.

Elizabeth raced up the narrow stairs that had replaced the elevator inside this tower, taking them two at a time. Her radio was useless in here because of all the steel, though she could faintly hear the sirens and sounds of pandemonium out on the bridge deck below. There would be time later to chastise herself for allowing the President’s daughter to slip away, and for the SWAT shooter who had left the tower door unlocked to get reamed. For now she had to concentrate on finding the girl, getting her the hell out of here and off the bridge before it was too late.

She stopped and cocked an ear to listen. Somewhere far above she could hear footfalls on the metal stairs.

“Deborah,” she shouted, and she listened again. The footsteps stopped. The stairwell was only very dimly lit, casting ominous shadows on the honeycombed interior of the tower. There were a million places for someone to hide in here forever.

“Liz,” Todd shouted from below, his voice booming in the stairwell.

“Stay back,” Elizabeth warned.

“The chopper’s on its way. Hurry.”

Elizabeth turned and looked up the stairwell. There were no footsteps now. Deborah was crouched up there somewhere. Frightened. Not knowing who to trust or what to do.

“Deb, it’s me, Liz,” Elizabeth shouted, starting up. “I’m coming up to talk to you. This is really important, so stay right where you are. Please.”

McGarvey reached the port rail, blood streaming from his wounds, everything dancing crazily in front of his eyes as if he was in the middle of an earthquake. He could make out the Harrier jet a few hundred feet aft of the ship and the Sea King helicopter hovering about the same distance straight out. But he couldn’t tell if the Margo had stopped, though it seemed to him that it had.

The bomb was on the pilot boat heading straight for the bridge and nobody but him knew about it. Even if they did now, there wasn’t a damn thing they could do. Sinking the boat wouldn’t help. When the bomb went off it would vaporize tons of water into a radioactive deluge. Nor would taking the boat in tow and heading it out to sea work. There simply wasn’t enough time.

“Goddamnit!”

The gate was open, the boarding ladder deployed. McGarvey looked down and spotted the inflatable, its motor idling. The procedure for shutting down the Russian nuclear devices couldn’t be much different than that for deactivating the American bombs. Or at least it shouldn’t be, but he had no other choice. Liz was on that bridge.

He scrambled down the ladder nearly falling several times. His legs threatened to buckle under him, his right hip where he had taken a hit was nearly useless and his vision kept fading in and out.

The Sea King slid in closer to see what he was doing, but its rotor wash became so strong it threatened to blow the dinghy over, and the pilot backed off.

McGarvey didn’t bother to look up or wave, it was hard enough keeping in focus as it was. He managed to untie the painter with fingers as thick as sausages, climb aboard, throw the motor into gear and take off.

This is exactly how bin Laden envisioned the scenario would unfold. McGarvey had seen it in the man’s eyes. Television viewers from all over the world would witness the United States being brought to its knees. The most powerful nation on earth was unable to protect itself. They would see the helicopters, the police, the military and the Coast Guard ships surrounding the bridge and the runners. And then the bright flash.

When he cleared the Margo’s huge flaring bows, McGarvey turned directly toward the bridge. The Coast Guard cutter Escanaba a hundred yards out now was bearing down on him, the Sea King had taken up position about fifty yards over his left shoulder and an outgoing tide raised a four-foot chop in the Gate that threatened to flip the dinghy over backward.

He couldn’t see the pilot boat yet, but it was in the channel and it wasn’t going very fast. He’d seen that from the air. He twisted the outboard’s throttle all the way open and the dinghy shot ahead, leaping over the waves, nearly throwing him out each time it came down.

The President’s daughter was huddled on the stairs, her knees up to her chin, her eyes wide with fright. When Elizabeth reached her the girl was shivering almost uncontrollably, tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Hey, take it easy, Deb,” Elizabeth told her. She sat down just below the girl and took her hands, her palms were cold and sweaty.

“They’re going to kill me and my dad,” Deborah whimpered.

“Don’t be silly. Nobody’s going to hurt you.”

“Yes, they are. I heard my dad talking about them. They’re all rotten bastards.”

“That’s why you’ve got us, Deb,” Elizabeth said, keeping her voice calm and gentle. The girl was on the verge of hysteria. “We’re not going to let anyone come near you.”

“What about my dad?”

“He and your mom are okay. They’re waiting for you to catch up.” Elizabeth smiled warmly. “Unless you want to stay here in the dark.” Deborah shook her head, her movements tiny and birdlike. “The bastards won’t hurt me if I come with you?” “I promise,” Elizabeth said. “But maybe you’d better not call them that anymore.” She got up and helped Deborah to her feet. * “That’s what my dad says they are.”

“I know, but that’s just the way dads talk sometimes. It’s not the way girls are supposed to talk.”

Deborah managed a little smile. “Okay,” she said.

“All right then, let’s do it.”

Elizabeth started down the stairs, the President’s daughter clinging tightly to her arm, conscious that they had just about run out of time.

McGarvey spotted the pilot boat a couple of hundred yards from the center span of the bridge, but it took another five minutes to catch up with it. There were still thousands of people up on the bridge, flashing lights, sirens and someone issuing instructions over a bullhorn. Even from here he could see and hear the mass confusion. People were getting hurt up there right now.

He could see someone at the helm of the slowly moving pilot boat. Until he got closer he thought that Bahmad had a partner after all. But as he came up from behind he saw that the helmsman was probably dead. Blood covered the back of his head and neck, and his body swayed back and forth with an unnatural looseness.

Bahmad had been the consummate professional. He’d planned for every contingency, even for McGarvey to show up in the middle of his operation. Even for his own death.

The terrorist had sent a corpse to deliver the bomb.

McGarvey came up on the pilot boat’s port quarter and matched speeds. He grabbed the rail with his tree hand and held there for a couple of seconds. The chop here where the Golden Gate was at its narrowest was the worst, the waves short and very steep.

He waited until the pilot boat’s rail dipped, and then as it started to come back up, he let go of the outboard’s throttle and heaved himself up an dover with both hands, landing in the pilot boat’s open deck well with a painful thump, cracking his head against the opposite coaming.

A million points of light burst inside of his head, and an overwhelming wave of nausea incapacitated him for several seconds. When he was able to raise up on his hands and knees the boat was spinning around in tight circles like a roller coaster going through an endless series of corkscrews.

He was conscious that they were very close to the bridge now. If Bahmad’s timing was correct the bomb would ignite as they passed under the center span.

The Escanaba was practically on his stern, and the Sea King was right behind it.

No time.

McGarvey forced himself to crawl into the cabin. Besides the dead man at the helm another body lay in a bloody heap on the deck.

For another long moment McGarvey, on all fours, simply swayed with the motion of the boat. He wanted to be lulled to sleep. He wanted to go away to another safer more comfortable place.

The Escanaba blew its ship’s whistle, the sound so loud in the confines of the pilot boat’s cabin that it was almost a physical assault on his body.

McGarvey looked up out of his stupor and shook his head as he slid back into reality, into the here and now; the CD that had been playing in slow motion in his head speeded up and came into sharp focus.

The bridge was less than fifty yards away when McGarvey scrambled over to where the bomb was wedged between the helmsman’s seat and the bulkhead. He pulled it free with great difficulty, barking his knuckles and wrenching his back under the weight. He undid the latches, threw back the outer cover and undid the inner latches. One of them stuck. He desperately hammered at it with the butt of his pistol until it suddenly snapped free and he yanked the inner lid open.

The LED counter switched from 00:00:20 to 00:00:19, but McGarvey’s eyes were drawn to the matte black aluminum plate in the lower left hand corner.

He knew this device! Goddamnit, he knew it!

The counter switched from 00:00:19 to 00:00:18 then 00: 00:17.

He almost entered the ten-digit deactivation code on the keypad when he noticed that the antitamper indicator was lit and he pulled back his hand.

The LED switched to 00:00:16.

Bahmad had reprogrammed the weapon’s firing circuits with an encrypted deactivation code. Unless you knew the code anything done to the device would cause it to immediately bypass its normal sequence and fire immediately.

00:00:15.

He knew this. Rencke’s research program had included the operations manual for the firing circuits and encryption techniques. It was a quantum mathematical code in which the riddle of SchrSdinger’s cat was apparently solved. There was no single solution to the code; instead there was a series of correct answers that could, depending upon how they were entered, also be simultaneously wrong.

00:00:14.

McGarvey entered a five-digit code that opened the firing circuit.

00:00:13,

The center span of the bridge was almost on top of the pilot boat now. McGarvey looked up and could see people lining the rail staring down at him.

00:00:12.00:00:11.

He entered a ten-digit code that when activated would, if it was the correct one, return the firing circuits to the non-encrypted mode.

00:00:10.

He pressed ##, and the antitamper indicator went out. He let out the breath he’d been holding.

00:00:09.

Shutting the weapon down was accomplished with another ten-digit code, this one the simple reciprocal of the firing code. Zero was nine, one was eight, two was seven, and so on until the end when nine was zero.

00:00:08.

McGarvey drew a blank. He’d had all the other numbers, but now there was a roaring in his ears, his vision was starting to go dark and the boat was beginning to spin.

00:00:07.

The pilot boat’s bow cut into the shadow cast by the bridge.

00:00:06.

The numbers came to McGarvey all at once. He held onto the bomb case with his left hand to steady himself and entered the ten-digit code with his right.

00:00:05.

He stared at the indicator as the boat came under the center span.

The LED indicator read 00:00:04.

Slowly he sat back on his heels as the pilot boat came out of the Golden Gate Bridge’s shadow into San Francisco Bay. The LED indicator read

00:00:04.

He turned and gave the skipper of the Escanaba the thumbs-up, and she started to toot the ship’s whistle over an dover. Other ships in the bay and out in the holding basin took up the salute, as did people on the bridge. A lot of them were whistling and cheering, though McGarvey suspected that none of them knew why.

People on the bridge were cheering and clapping as Elizabeth and Deborah emerged from the tower. Boats in the bay and out in the Gate were blowing their whistles, helicopters were flying all over the place, sirens were blaring, horns were honking and someone down on the approach road was still bellowing instructions over a bullhorn. Elizabeth’s radio came alive with chatter, but it was hard to make any sense of it. Everyone was talking at once, and they all seemed excited.

A greatly relieved Chenna Serafmi was holding her earpiece close and was beaming from ear to ear.

Deborah started to clap too, her tears completely forgotten, her face animated with excitement. She began to jog in place.

“You missed all the excitement,” Van Buren shouted over the din.

“What happened?” Elizabeth demanded. “Did we get them?”

“It was your dad. He did it.”

Something clutched at Elizabeth’s gut. She grabbed Van Buren’s arm. “Was he hurt? Is he okay?”

“Of course he’s okay,” Van Buren assured her. He was laughing. “He’s your dad. The man is indestructible.”

“I wish,” Elizabeth said softly.

Deborah was beside herself with excitement. “Can we run now? I want to run.”

“Later,” Chenna said. She gave Elizabeth a warm smile. “Tell your dad thanks for me,” she said.

Several other Secret Service agents had closed in on them, and a National Guard helicopter was waiting in the middle of the center span, its rotors turning.

“We’ll run later,” Chenna told the President’s daughter. “But right now your mom and dad are waiting for you.”

“Okay,” Deborah said. She grabbed Elizabeth and gave her an exuberant bear hug. “I think that you’re neat,” she said in Elizabeth’s ear. “And I hope that it’ll be a girl.”

Elizabeth’s mouth dropped open, but before she could say anything Chenna and the other Secret Service agents were hustling the President’s daughter to the golf cart that would speed her to the waiting helicopter.