A Time for War

by Michael Savage

  The old wood-structure shop on the corner of Bay and Taylor was closed. That didn’t surprise Doc: it was not quite six A.M. But the mail from the previous day was still lying on the floor where it had been shoved through the slot and the drain pan from his ancient dehumidifier was nearly overflowing. What an environmentalist, Doc thought as he emptied the pan. The air’s a little damp for Abe’s taste and he slaps an electricity-sucking machine on it.

  Doc went around back. Abe lived alone in a second-floor apartment. The mail was still in the box. No one answered the bell. Doc forced the door easily with a push. Abe didn’t have anything worth stealing and didn’t bother with security—or a lock that was younger than the sixty-seven-year-old door. Doc felt for the wall switch, turned on the light, looked around the apartment that smelled from a blend of weed, unfiltered Camels, and roasted Brussels sprouts. Abe was always igniting some leafy thing or another.

  The bed wasn’t made but Abe wasn’t in it. Doc went to the bathroom, felt his toothbrush. The bristles were dry.

  What the hell happened? Doc wondered as he walked back to the door. You drop your damn phone in the head?

  Even if he did, the Defever Pilothouse had a radio. He would have called for assistance.

  If Abe was hurt, minutes could matter. Angry that he’d waited even this long when he suspected something might be wrong, Doc called the small, family-owned marina where Abe kept his tub of a boat.

  “It’s gone,” the owner told him. “Been out since yesterday afternoon.”

  “You haven’t heard from him?”

  “Not a single sour note,” she said.

  That was it. He phoned ahead to Hayward to have his plane ready to go. Then he climbed on his Ultra Classic Electra Glide. Before he started it he pulled out his phone and scrolled through his text messages. There it was—Abe had texted, I’m going to go listen to elephant seals fart, it’ll be an improvement over you. He’d been headed for the Farallon Islands. Doc fired up the Electra Glide and sped to the airport.

  Less than an hour later he was headed west over the Pacific toward the Farallons. Seen from the air, the granite outcroppings were a jagged black curlicue of rock surrounded by churning white water. The highest of the peaks was 154 feet above the water on the Island of St. James, one of the total of three islands and four smaller, nameless rocks. Though he himself wasn’t a sailor, Doc had always admired the pluck of Sir Francis Drake—reportedly the first human being to land here—for pausing during his 1579 around-the-world journey to collect eggs and seal meat from St. James, which the English privateer also named.

  Doc didn’t know whether to feel relief or concern as he neared the roiling coastline. There were only the birds and sea mammals that frequented the shores; he saw no sign of Abe or his vessel.

  The westward-lying shadows were long and stark, and Doc flew low and wide around the island to make sure he wasn’t missing anything. There were plenty of little inlets where a small vessel could have gone down.

  There was no flotsam or jetsam that Doc could see, and the waters were opaque enough to hide anything that might be below the surface— including sharks, which was one reason they were able to prey successfully on the local fauna.

  However, Doc did see something on Noonday Rock, named for a clipper ship that struck it in 1863 and sank in less than an hour. Doc looked back, saw the thin streak of light flash again. It looked almost like an old-school jeep antenna, one seen at night by muzzle flashes of an AK-47.

  To each his own memory, Doc thought as he heard an imaginary Abe yelling in his ear, “Does everything have to be a gun or knife fight to you?”

  Doc angled around for another look. Noonday was arguably the least welcoming spot in the national wildlife refuge, a desolate place that most of the tour boats avoided because of underwater outcroppings. But it was a natural, lonely, isolated place for someone as perpetually gloomy as Abe to visit, especially someone who knew these waters.

  The sun was rising quickly and the glint he had seen was no longer there. But something else was. It looked like part of the black rock surrounding it, but it wasn’t.

  It was a tarp. He had done enough recon from aircraft and hilltops to know one—even a good one like this—when he saw one.

  Doc looked past the rock, across the horizon. That shallow part of the shoal was within sight of a lighted bell buoy—the only human marker in the region. His mind went where it had been trained to go: is there what the military referred to as a “casual or causal” reason for that?

  And was that, in fact, an antenna he had seen?

  Other than his natural wariness—what Abe bluntly called “unchecked paranoia”—there was no compelling reason to be suspicious of any wrongdoing.

  Except for the fact that your friend had said he was coming out here and never came back, Doc told himself.

  There was nothing Doc could do other than to avoid letting on that he had seen anything amiss. He circled again, ascertained that what he saw was indeed a well-secured artificial covering, not something that had washed up. Then he headed back to the airport.

  He hadn’t found Abe but his gut told him that Abe’s disappearance could well be linked to the presence on the island. Doc would check some of his friend’s other haunts—a couple of bars, one or two old girlfriends, and even the disused Fort Mason Tunnel of the San Francisco Belt Railroad where he hung out with some old, homeless hippies. If Doc couldn’t find him there—

  Then you’ve got two options, he thought as he flew high above the local pockets of fog. Option number one was to notify the Coast Guard. If someone was out there, working with smugglers or a cartel, he would be prepared for such an eventuality. Mines, perhaps. Hand grenades. Automatic weapons. There was no reason to cause needless deaths.

  Option number two was to come back after dark, by sea, and approach unseen. That would not only be safer, it would give Doc something an official visit would not provide: a chance to ask whoever was out here whether they had seen his friend Abe.

  And if so, where he’d gone.

  ~ * ~

  Sausalito, California

  Jack was awakened by one of the last phone calls he would have expected to receive.

  “It’s Carl Forsyth,” the caller said. “I need to know if you’ve learned anything about Squarebeam.”

  There was no “Good morning, hi, sorry if I woke you.” That and the urgency in the field director’s voice caused Jack to sit up. Dover stirred next, followed by Eddie, who was between them.

  “I had a late night,” Jack said. “What happened?”

  “A quarter mile of roadway outside Travis AFB was blown to hell a half hour ago and we believe your hypothetical EMP device took down a police chopper.”

  Jack removed the TV remote from the shelf behind the bed and turned on the flat screen on the opposite wall. Ground-based cameras were showing flame and smoke rising from the road as if a hell pit had split open. Not surprisingly, there were no aerial shots. However, there was cell phone footage of the helicopter falling from about two hundred feet up.

  Dover took Jack’s hand.

  “I met with Hawke, who was definitely playing I’ve Got a Secret but wouldn’t say what it is,” Jack told Forsyth. He put the phone on speaker so Dover could hear. “But he only threatened me, not—not this.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  “On his yacht in the Caribbean,” Jack said. “He flew me down. He also threatened my associate, an intel officer who was furloughed for smelling a rat. He sent some mugs after her when she went snooping around the Squarebeam lab in Riverside County.”

  “Did he say anything about that technology?” Forsyth asked.

  “Nothing we didn’t know or suspect,” Jack replied. “He refused to connect the dots between Squarebeam and China.”

  “That bastard,” Forsyth said. “Jack, we need to find the guy who did this. I’ve got one agent on the ground up there. He just called from a gas station. Th
e guy who did this was Chinese. He was apparently taken to Fairfield after being picked up at SF International. He’s still on the loose up there.”

  “Your man lost him?”

  “He only has two eyes, Jack. They had our target and a ringer.”

  “Fair enough. What’s your game plan?”

  “We’ve got the roads to and from Fairfield closed, all aircraft grounded. If he gets out, he’s going to have to walk.”

  “Fairfield’s a decent sized town,” Jack said. “He could just hunker down somewhere and slip away when the roads aren’t closed and aircraft aren’t grounded.”

  “I know that,” Forsyth said.

  There was exasperation in the man’s voice. Jack empathized completely.

  “What we need to do is find out if there’s a way to zero in on this device or the guy using it,” the field director said. “We went over security footage of the airport. The man we think was the perp was wearing a hat. He knew we’d be watching. All we have is a chin and part of a cheek, which are no help.”

  Dover had already booted her laptap. She turned it toward Jack. It was open to a file on Squarebeam technology.

  “The original handsets operated in a 1620.5 to 1660.5 MHz range—”

  “We’ve got all that,” Forsyth said.

  “Have you asked Hawke?”

  “Not yet. His exec told us he’s out of the country. You confirmed that. He hasn’t called back.”

  Jack didn’t expect him to. The odd thing was, while Hawke had been unacceptably slow shutting down Squarebeam when it was proven to endanger the military, Jack had never pegged him as someone who would be openly antagonistic to America—even for a huge profit.

  “Let us work on this,” Jack said. “Stay in touch.”

  Jack was about to add, “And don’t beat yourself up over this,“ but he knew that wouldn’t do any good. Forsyth had never been his strongest ally but they both wanted the same thing: a safe and secure America. This one had to hurt.

  “Jack, this is sickening,” Dover said. “They’re estimating—look at that,” she read from the crawl on the screen. “At least two hundred dead and scores more injured.”

  “You see where it happened?” Jack said. “Right outside Travis Air Force Base. Think about that.”

  “That was the intended target,” she said.

  “Right. Something got in the way of that. But what does it tell you?”

  She thought for a moment. “If that’s true? Two military targets, plus one target of convenience, the FBI car.”

  “That was a target of necessity, I’m guessing,” Jack said. “They didn’t want to be followed to Fairfield. So we have two military targets—the Chinook in Afghanistan and an attempt on Travis. Why?”

  “It’s not like the Chinese to take an offensive public posture like this,” Dover said. “They’re more like snakes moving through high grass, striking and then retreating.”

  “Yeah, I had that talk with Hawke,” Jack said. He thought for a moment. “You speak Chinese, right?” ‘

  “Mandarin.”

  “You’re still naked.”

  She shot him a surprised look. “So are you.”

  “I know,” Jack said. “We need to get dressed.”

  “Why?”

  “Hawke has an estate in Carmel. We’re going up there.”

  “But—he’s not home.”

  “Exactly,” Jack said. He picked up his cell phone, dialed the last number.

  “Who are you calling?” Dover asked.

  “Carl Forsyth,” Jack said. “I need a favor.”

  ~ * ~

  Fairfield, California

  The explosions filled Sammo with a sense of validation unlike anything he had ever experienced.

  This had to be what it was like to create art, he thought as he ran from the conflagration. Something lasting, something that affects so many others—yet it emerged from a small place in your mind, an idea that was part invention, part inspiration, part desperation.

  He met up with the driver, who was standing outside the shoe store. He was alone, the employees having gone into the back, ducked behind a counter. Sammo could see them in the sharp, vivid glow of the flames.

  “Let’s go,” Sammo said, pulling the driver by the shoulder.

  “Your back,” the man said.

  Sammo turned so he could see it in the plate glass of the store. It was smoking. The driver darted behind him and slapped at the embers with his palms.

  “That’s good,” Sammo smiled. “It will help us.”

  The driver, stunned and malleable, followed as Sammo walked south. They stayed on the main road, quickly joining a snake-like exodus of motorists and pedestrians, store workers and shoppers, who were moving away from the blast. Fire engines tore past them, running on the sidewalks as necessary to get through the traffic jam. All along the way drivers were trying to get onto side streets just to get out of the way; police were turning vehicles at the back end of the thoroughfare around, sending them away from the air force base.

  You were responsible for all of this, Sammo thought proudly. It was not the primary target, the one he had been instructed to hit. But his colleagues would be pleased. It would have been unthinkable to come away from these last two days with empty hands. He would have irretrievably lost face, and the morale of the mission would have suffered grievously.

  It was an hour or so before they met up with the men from the hotel: his consulate liaison and his doppelganger. Sammo and the driver were supposed to have collected them by car along Don Wilson Creek, a tree-lined area well behind the hotel. After the explosion the two consulate workers had waited until their comrades arrived.

  “Tear your clothes and cover yourselves with dirt,” Sammo advised.

  Though uncertain why, the men did as he had instructed, after which they walked along Central Way headed south, toward the entrance of Interstate 680. The freeway was packed with slow-moving vehicles looking to get out of the area and Sammo had no trouble waving one down, a Caltrans bus that was happy to take them on.

  “No charge,” the young driver said as the men squeezed on board. “You folks look like you been through hell.”

  “Thank you,” said the consulate liaison.

  “We all pull together in times like these,” the man said as he shut the door. “Horrible stuff, man. I was stationed in Kabul, never saw anything like this. You see what happened?”

  “Yes,” the liaison said. “It was awful. Where are you headed?”

  “My run is Sacramento to San Jose, but we’ve taken on a bunch of people who want to get off in Frisco so I’ll be stopping there as well. What about you?”

  “San Francisco is fine,” the man said with a gracious bow.

  “Make room as best you can, people!” the driver yelled back.

  The thickly packed group in the aisle maneuvered to the sides to give the new arrivals space. There were reassuring smiles and a gracious air of support for these men who were scuffed and singed.

  As the quartet maneuvered, Sammo made sure he had his own people on either side, giving him a small buffer. He was still wearing the device and did not want it damaged in the crowd. Although that was the only target he was supposed to strike here, Beijing might ask for another. The goal had been to strike the military and that had not happened.

  But that lay in the future. Right now he was grateful just to have gotten his team out of Fairfield, away from the FBI. There had been a saying on the blackboard when he was in training, wisdom from Confucius: It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop. The essence of espionage was to have a goal in mind but to focus on one small step at a time. Beyond that, nothing was guaranteed.

  He shut his eyes as the bus hummed and swayed slightly, the rubber floor covering vibrating beneath his feet. Withal, despite the challenges, it had been a good day.

  He allowed himself a belated smile as he had in Afghanistan.


  It had been a very good day.

  ~ * ~

  Al Fitzpatrick reached the hotel around the same time as the thin tester of smoke from the fires. The staff was gathered in the lobby with guests. He heard the news streaming from a computer behind the counter, a small group gathered around it.

  The bellman who had run after the agent was the first to spot him.

  “Is this why you were here?” the man asked. “Did you—”