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.
M/V Margo
Bahmad reached the bottom of the boarding ladder as the pilot boat rounded the Margo’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, cleated 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 waypoints. 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 Margo, and entered them as waypoints one and two in the autopilot. The first would take the pilot boat well clear of the Margo’s bow and the second would take it directly under the center span of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Candlestick Park
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.
FEMA Operations Center
The security team watching the television monitors had the best seats of all. ESPN was televising the half-marathon live from the MetLife 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 half-dozen 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.
Candlestick Park
Elizabeth had never run a marathon or any other big race in which she was in the middle o
f 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 Tod 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.
Golden Gate Bridge
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 MetLife 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.
M/V Margo
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 gunwhale 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 LIFT RAFT EIGHT PERSON MADE IN CHINA. He undid the fasteners for the cannister 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 MetLife 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.
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