Joshua's Hammer

by David Hagberg

“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.”

  New York City

  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 half-dozen 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 nicad battery out. Only then 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.

  Los Angeles

  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 Serafini said. “We’re identifying you as one of her personal trainers.”

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

&nbs
p; 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 Bruce 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 ran?”

  “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.

  San Francisco 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.