Joshua's Hammer

by David Hagberg

  The Rover was where he had left it, parked between the battered Mercedes and the Fiat van. But he approached carefully to make sure that it had not been staked out. As far as he could tell, however, there wasn’t a single soul around.

  He got behind the wheel, touched the starter wires together and the car’s engine came immediately to life. He backed out of the parking slot, drove out the alley and headed down the street to the main boulevard that led to the airport.

  To the south on Bebe-Maihro Street, toward the city center, there seemed to be roadblocks, military vehicles and soldiers everywhere, directing the thousands or perhaps tens of thousands of people heading toward the embassy. Traffic was being diverted away from the barricades, and was already backing up.

  To the north, in the direction of the airport, the road was clear, but that was the direction they’d be expecting him to come. There was only one main road to the airport, and it would be heavily guarded until the American transport aircraft came in, picked up its passengers and departed.

  Airports were very large places, however. They sprawled across hundreds of acres of flat countryside. There might be only one road to take passengers to the terminal, but there would have to be several access roads for cargo deliveries, fuel and aircraft repair supplies, and for maintenance vehicles to have access to the ILS lights and electronic aids.

  McGarvey headed straight across the broad boulevard, and found himself in another section of narrow, winding streets that sometimes opened to broad avenues lined with apartment buildings, or parks, or other districts of craftsmen—wool merchants, tin- and coppersmiths and even goldsmiths. Like the other areas of the city he’d seen this morning, most of these shops were closed, some of them boarded up, others with steel mesh security shutters lowered over their windows and doors. The anti-American demonstrations had turned into a national holiday of sorts.

  He worked his way generally north and east, sometimes finding himself stopped by dead-end streets and having to backtrack several blocks before he could find another way. It was like being a rat in a maze. At one point he came around a corner into the middle of another large crowd of people and official vehicles, their blue lights flashing. He jammed on his brakes. But it wasn’t a roadblock as he had feared. A large building that might have been a warehouse was on fire. Flames and smoke shot several hundred feet into the sky. Firemen using antiquated equipment poured water into the building, while on the other side of the street dozens of men had formed a bucket brigade and were dousing down their own shops and houses in a frantic effort to stop the flames from spreading. No one noticed him as he backed up and hurried off in the opposite direction.

  The houses and shops and other buildings began to thin out about the same time the pavement ended. The streets continued in some places only as narrow dirt tracks. He came around another corner, and the track abruptly stopped at a tall chain-link fence topped with razor wire. For several long seconds he gripped the steering wheel and simply stared at the fence as he tried to catch his breath. His vision had gone blurry again, but when it began to clear he realized that he had reached the airport. Directly across from him, perhaps fifty or sixty yards away, was what looked like the main east-west runway. He could make out the white lights along the paved surface. In the distance to the right he could see the markers at the end of the runway. Straight across was a line of maintenance and storage hangers, and in the far distance to the left were the control tower and terminal.

  His heart skipped a beat. Pulling away from the terminal was the distinctive, squat shape of a C-130 Hercules transport. McGarvey checked his watch. It was already past nine o’clock. It had taken him two hours to come this far, but the airplane was almost an hour early.

  In minutes his last chance to get out of Afghanistan would be at the end of the runway and lined up for takeoff. He needed to find a way to get out there, or at the very least signal to them.

  As the C-130 majestically started up the long taxiway, McGarvey threw the Rover in reverse, backed around and spit gravel as he raced through the labyrinth of narrow, bumpy tracks. This far from the city center the dwellings were little more than crude adobe brick hovels. But there were people around, most of them farmers tending small fields or herds of goats. Some of them looked up in astonishment at the speeding car, others didn’t bother.

  He got lost several times and had to backtrack so that he could keep the airport perimeter fence in sight. The C-130 was nearly to the end of the runway by the time he reached a gate. There were no guards, but the gate was secured with a heavy chain and thick businesslike padlock.

  He jumped out of the Rover, drew his pistol and fired three shots into the lock. The bullets fragmented on the hardened steel and ricochetted dangerously around him, but the lock held.

  The Hercules had reached the end of the taxiway and was turning onto the runway as McGarvey popped the Rover’s rear lid, pulled the spare tire out of its compartment and found the tire iron. At the gate he jammed the tool into one of the links of the chain and tried to pry it open. The tire iron bent, but the chain held.

  A pair of Russian jeeps, their lights flashing, were racing directly up the runway from the terminal, directly for the nose of the C-130 as the pilot gunned the four Allison turboprop engines.

  McGarvey tossed the tire iron aside, jumped back into the Rover and backed up twenty yards. He slammed the transmission in drive and floored the accelerator. The heavy car shot forward, slamming into the gate, shoving it backwards nearly off its hinges.

  The C-130 was lined up now and starting to roll, as McGarvey backed up again, dropped the transmission into four-wheel-drive and jammed the pedal to the floor. He hit the fence with a bone-jarring crash. The big Rover climbed up and over the mangled gate, finally breaking free with a horrible screeching of metal. Immediately the oil pressure indicator began to drop and hot oil started to spray out from under the hood.

  He shifted to drive, never taking his foot off the accelerator, bumped over the last few yards of grass up onto the runway and headed after the accelerating C-130 while flashing his headlights.

  He tore the scarf and hat off and tossed them aside. The Rover’s engine started to bog down as the temperature needle climbed into the red and pegged. The C-130 began to pull away from him.

  “Goddammit,” he shouted.

  He started to look for a way out of the airport, when incredibly the rear loading deck of the Hercules started to open and the big airplane slowed down.

  A loud clattering noise started under the hood and the car lost even more power. The transport’s ramp was fully down now just inches off the runway, and several crewmen were frantically waving him on.

  The front tires bumped up on the ramp and he nearly lost control of the car as it swerved sharply to the right. But then he inched the rest of the way up onto the ramp. The crewmen leaped to the side as the Rover’s rear wheels hit the ramp and suddenly the car accelerated like it had been shot from a cannon into the belly of the airplane.

  McGarvey slammed on the brakes and the car slewed to the left, finally coming to a halt against cargo restraining straps that had just been raised.

  McGarvey slammed the transmission into park, and as the rear cargo deck closed, and the big airplane gathered speed, he laid his head back, his hands still gripping the steering wheel as his heart began to decelerate.

  He closed his eyes, and thinking about the Russian jeeps heading toward them, willed the airplane off its front landing gear, and then into the sky.

  One of the crewmen came to the driver’s side. The window had been smashed out. “Mr. McGarvey?” he shouted over the roar of the engines.

  McGarvey opened his eyes and grinned with such intense relief that his mood boardered on the manic. “Actually I’m Evel Kneivel. McGarvey’s a better driver than that.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Washington, D.C.

  What is the purpose of your visit to the United States, Mr. Guthrie?” the Dulles International Airport passport official
asked.

  “Business,” Ali Bahmad replied. “And maybe a day of sailing on the Chesapeake.” He smiled pleasantly. “I’m told that it’s quite nice this time of year.”

  “Fishing isn’t what it used to be,” the officer said, stamping the British passport. He looked up. “But you’re right, it’s real nice down there. Have a pleasant stay.”

  Bahmad pocketed his passport and, carrying the slim attaché case that had been handed to him in London, sauntered down the dingy corridor and out into the customs arrivals hall, a small man without a care in the world. He wore a loose-fitting natural linen suit by Gucci, a collarless white cotton shirt, and a soft yellow ascot tied loosely around his neck. His two bags were Louis Vuitton. He was a dapper, seasoned international traveler.

  “Do you have anything to declare, sir?” the uniformed customs officer asked. The man looked like a bulldog, and Bahmad had to wonder if he came from Queens or Brooklyn in a questionable neighborhood. It would be difficult, he decided, to be pleasant day after day under such circumstances.

  “Nothing,” Bahmad said, handing the man the declaration form he’d filled out on the 747 coming in from London.

  Another customs agent came over with a drug-sniffing German shepard that circled Bahmad’s two bags on the low counter, and then sniffed the attaché case. The dog looked up at his handler as if to say, no.

  “Would you like me to open my suitcases?” Bahmad asked. “Just dirty laundry, I’m afraid.”

  “That won’t be necessary, sir,” the officer said. He made chalk marks on all three pieces, then turned away indifferently as the other agent with his dog went off to another passenger’s luggage.

  Bahmad summoned a porter for his things, and heading out into the terminal, and across to the taxi stands outside, it amused him to think what he could do to the customs officer with little or no effort. When he finished it would be enough to give the man’s family nightmares for the rest of their lives.

  He’d changed some pounds into dollars at Heathrow and he gave the redcap a nice tip, and ordered the cabbie to take him to the Corinthian Yacht Club in southwest Washington on the Anacostia River, then sat back to enjoy the ride.

  “We can take the Beltway. It’s longer, but much faster,” the driver, an east Indian, suggested.

  “Go through town, I haven’t been here in a long time and I’d like to see some of the sights.”

  “Yes, sir,” the driver said. He noticed in the rearview mirror that his passenger was looking out the window obviously not wanting to talk. Which was fine with him. Brits gave him a headache.

  Bahmad smiled his secret smile, his face a bland mask of indifference. It was 4:30 in the afternoon local time, and he was amazed, as he was every time he traveled in the west, at the number of big, shiny cars on the road. After living for so long in the mountains of Afghanistan and in desert training camps in Libya and Iran, you tended to forget the quotidian face of the enemy. Rapers of the soil, despoilers of the earth’s resources and peoples, conspicuous consumers indifferent to the plight of the other eighty or ninety percent of the world, Americans should have been miserable. But the sky over the Virginia countryside was clear of all but a few puffy clouds, there were no burned-out cars or trucks along the side of the highway, no tanks on the overpasses, no helicopter gunships swooping low. Despite his mission, Bahmad was able to relax and thoroughly enjoy himself as he hadn’t for entirely too long a time.

  Two days out of Afghanistan and already he was beginning to realize how much he despised the life of a terrorist in hiding in the Middle East. The lack of simple amenities got to him. The dirt, the abysmal ignorance and the fanatic adherence to Islam—to any religion for that matter—was depressing. His mother and father, before they had been killed by the Israelis, had lived an oftentimes very good and even elegant life in Beirut. And he had enjoyed his time spent in London and here in Washington, even though he hated the Americans who in their blindness supported the Israelis against every other people. That was what his fight was all about. Not religion, not any ideology or idealistic notions about the destiny of the Arab peoples. His motivation was simple revenge.

  That, and the fact he enjoyed what he did for a living.

  Coming back like this though brought another memory to mind, and he was somewhat disturbed by it. During the six months he had worked at the CIA’s Langley headquarters he had met a woman. She worked as an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence, and had little or no intelligence value for him, but she was nice. Her name was Anne Larson, she was divorced and was raising two children on her own. Weekends they were off with their father, and Bahmad spent time with her. She was a kind and patient lover, and although she was a little odd because of the work she did, she was always pleasant to be with. For months after he had left Washington he thought about her everyday. But then he dropped out, and ran back to Lebanon. Since then he seldom gave her a thought, though when he did it was with regret. He wondered what a life with her would have been like. Certainly it would not have been as lonely as the life he had led in the Afghan mountains. He wondered where she was now.

  “Men like you are Imans of your profession,” bin Laden told him. “Religious leaders. Dedicated and lonely by necessity.”

  The early rush hour was in full force by the time they crossed the Roosevelt Bridge onto Constitution Avenue, and the cabbie was content to let the meter run as they crawled past the Ellipse and the White House on the left, the Washington Monument on the right. He dropped down to Independence Avenue past the Smithsonian and then took South Capitol Street, turning off before it crossed the Douglass Bridge over the Anacostia River. Finally the taxi passed through the yacht club gates and Bahmad ordered the driver to the slips where they pulled up at a very large motor yacht, all her flags flying in the pleasant breeze, the boarding ramp down.

  Bahmad paid off the driver and, when the cab was gone, stood looking at the boat. She was the Papa’s Fancy, a 175-foot Feadship out of Newport, owned by a wealthy New Jersey banker with considerable though secret financial ties to the bin Laden worldwide empire. He’d agreed to lend the yacht to Bahmad for as long as he needed her, no questions asked. As it turned out, the boat had been docked at a shipyard farther down the Potomac where her annual inspection and refit had just been completed, and had been moved up here yesterday on a moment’s notice. She was the biggest boat in the club and had garnered a lot of attention already.

  A slightly built man in his early forties with a ponytail and earring, but dressed impeccably in crisp white trousers and a yacht club polo shirt, trotted up from the dockmaster’s office.

  “Mr. Guthrie, welcome to CYC, sir. I’m Terry the dockmaster. If there’s anything I can do to make your stay more pleasant just ask me, sir.”

  “Thanks,” Bahmad said with a pleasant smile. “We’re all hooked up and provisioned?”

  “Yes, sir. Your crew took care of that first thing when they got here yesterday,” Terry assured him. “May I help you with your bags?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” a pretty, athletically built young woman with a deep tan called out coming down the ramp. She was dressed in white shorts and a dark blue shirt, CHERYL—PAPA’S FANCY stitched above the left pocket.

  Terry gave her an appreciative look, then nodded pleasantly and walked off.

  “Welcome to Washington, Mr. Guthrie,” Cheryl said, picking up the bags. “If you’ll come with me, I’ll show you to your quarters and afterwards Captain Walker would like to have a word with you.”

  “Where is he at the moment?”

  “I believe he’s checking something in the engine room.”

  “Ask him and the rest of the crew—all the crew—to join me in the main saloon immediately.”

  Cheryl gave him a worried glance. “Yes, sir.”

  At the top of the ramp they stepped onto a broad, gently sloping deck, the gleaming superstructure rising above them, the bridge forward and the main saloon aft. She showed him the way, then disappeared with his bags
.

  The yacht was in immaculate condition. The furnishings and appointments were out of Yachting magazine or Architectural Digest. Thick carpeting covered the floors, rich, thickly cushioned furniture was arranged tastefully and the large windows admitted the late-afternoon sun through thin venetian blinds. Some very good artwork hung on the richly paneled walls, and the second movement of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons played softly from built-in speakers.

  Bahmad set his attaché case down, and was pouring a glass of white wine from the extensive bar, when a tall, distinguished man with white hair came in with a much shorter, heavier, younger man. Both were dressed in whites. The older man’s epaulets were adorned with four gold stripes, the young man’s with three.

  “Mr. Guthrie,” the older man said, extending his hand. “Welcome aboard, sir. I’m Captain Web Walker.”

  Bahmad shook his hand. “I’m happy to be aboard, Captain.”

  “May I introduce my first officer Stuart Russell.”

  Bahmad shook hands, and moments later the rest of the crew showed up; the engineer, Blake Walsh, two aides, two chefs and four young deckhands, including the young woman who had helped with his bags. They were short-handed because Bahmad was the only guest, and he’d wanted to keep the numbers low.

  “A package was to be delivered for me,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. It arrived this morning, and I had it put in your quarters.”

  “Very well,” Bahmad said. The crew was looking at him somewhat apprehensively. They didn’t know what to expect. He put down his wine. “I don’t know what you were instructed about the nature of this cruise.”

  “Just that the ship was to be put completely at your disposal for as long as you required her, sir,” the captain said.

  “I’m here on business,” Bahmad said. “Somewhat stressful business, I’m afraid.”

  The captain’s lips compressed.

  “Which means that when I am not conducting my business, there will be no long faces around here. I want smiles, music, good food and drink, and that’s an order. Do I make myself clear?”