Joshua's Hammer

by David Hagberg

  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.

  TWENTY-NINE

  M/V Margo Southwest of the Farallon Islands

  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.

  Candlestick Park

  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 off-icals and politicians would officially welcome the athletes and declare that the games were open. The presidental 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 newsmedia 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.

  FEMA Operations Center

  “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.H. 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 VHF 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.

  Candlestick Park

  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 their 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.