The Shadows of Power

by James W. Huston

  “I thought you got out.”

  “I say that. But not really.”

  “So you’re still in?”

  Rat nodded.

  “Maybe together we can get him. I’m sitting on the sidelines now in the War on Terrorism. Had the one thing in the Med, but other than that I haven’t really contributed. It’s time to hang my butt out a little.”

  “If you do, I’ll do my best to make sure it doesn’t get shot off.”

  “Let’s do this,” Stovic said finally.

  * * *

  Ismael leaned on his elbow as he stared at his computer screen after another long night of Internet research. He had grown accustomed to living out of motels two or three nights at a time. He couldn’t go back to his apartment. Washington maybe, for the right reason, but not his apartment. Not a chance.

  He thought of Stovic and how close he had been to him. That Toyota haunted him. The movement was too quick, too intentional to be just someone changing lanes. It was someone protecting Stovic, he was sure. But who? Who would be watching out for Stovic? Someone who knew that Ismael was after him. But how could anyone know? How could anyone even suspect him? Maybe all it took was for someone to put his name together with Chakib’s.

  He typed “Stovic” into the web browser again, for perhaps the hundredth time since he had learned the pilot’s name, and hit “enter.” He waited as the list of hits came up and scanned them one last time before shutting down his computer and getting some sleep. His weary eyes passed over the list, page after page, the same list he had seen before: the genealogies for the Stovic family from Wisconsin and in particular Dr. Richard Stovic, who had found a cure for something or other, and the Stovic who was a star on his high school hockey team in Minnesota and had decided he needed his own web site to publicize the inevitability of his future status as an NHL celebrity.

  Ismael was about to shut down his computer when he saw a new hit from the Department of the Navy, a public relations press release. He frowned and clicked on the hyperlink. The text-only document came up on his screen. It was dated that day and released just thirty minutes before. It was a list of assignments, transfers, changes of command, and other irrelevancies. He didn’t see Stovic’s name anywhere. He clicked on “find” and typed in Stovic’s name. It immediately highlighted his name under a paragraph that was headed with the phrase “U.S. Navy Blue Angels flight demonstration squadron announces selections.”

  He had never heard of a flight demonstration squadron and wasn’t even sure what it was. He read through the brief paragraph, which told of Stovic’s assignment to the Blue Angels effective in October.

  He typed “Blue Angels” into the browser and, after reading several articles, was directed to their home page. He clicked through pages of photographs, biographies, and finally, an air show schedule. These were the Navy’s elite, a team that existed to be in the public eye, to show what great, courageous, skillful pilots they were. They flew inches apart at hundreds of miles an hour just feet off the ground. Graceful, beautiful, and awe-inspiring were just some of the adjectives used in every article and description he found.

  Ismael couldn’t believe it. Stovic had applied to become a Blue Angel after killing his brother. No doubt he used the shoot-down to work himself into the position of being considered by this elite team. They probably saw him on the Today show too. Ismael clenched his jaw as he thought of his brother’s death helping the very pilot who killed him take the next step up the career ladder.

  He slammed his laptop closed and got up from the chair. He poured tap water into the coffee pot in the bathroom and waited for it to get hot so he could have a cup of tea. His mind raced, flush with the possibilities of the Blue Angels. After some time, after Stovic became a Blue Angel, he would strike. At Stovic himself but also at the Blue Angels, the famous team that represented the Navy. He would take Stovic’s life for the entire world to see, to be played over and over again on CNN around the world. People would gasp and shudder, wondering how it could have happened.

  He took the tea bag out of his tea, dropped it into the empty metal waste basket with a thump, and crossed back to his computer. He had waited too long and been automatically logged out. He logged back in and examined the Blue Angel air show schedule again. According to the press release, the new team was to report to the Blue Angels on October 6. He checked the schedule. San Francisco. Fleet Week.

  Stovic and Pete Walters—the other new Blue Angel, whom they called Link—climbed into the rental cars under the watchful eye of Larry McKnight, #7. The Blue Angels’ wives, various VIPs, and other support personnel were already in the caravan. The cars were lined up in front of the large hotel by Union Square in downtown San Francisco. The curbside was crowded with anxious San Francisco police officers on their Kawasaki and Harley motorcycles, who would lead the caravan through the city.

  McKnight signaled to the lead police officer. They roared off with their lights leading the way, blocking traffic from the cross streets down to the waterfront. Residents and tourists stopped and stared, wondering who could be in the ten-car motorcade.

  The cars were so close to each other as they raced through the streets of San Francisco that the Navy drivers—some pilots, some enlisted maintenance men—stuck their left hands out the windows to give the pilot’s signal for “speed brakes”—a sort of lobster claw opening and closing—to warn the driver behind when they were about to slow down. They raced over and down the hills in single file. The police blocking the intersections leapfrogged from one to the next until the group drove through a small army fort down one last hill to the mouth of a long concrete pier that curved to form a sail bay directly in front of Ghirardelli Square. The police gathered around the cars as the Blue Angel group climbed out and stood around trying not to notice how much they were being watched by the audience that had gathered to see the air show. Rat scanned the crowd carefully. Others from his company were already there, already part of the growing crowd.

  Those attendees straining at the barrier took particular notice of the beautiful women who were obviously wives of the Blue Angels. They wore jackets like ski jackets in Navy blue, gold, and white that had blue angels embroidered in script across the back and the number of their husband pilot on the front left side. In the front of the group was a tall, striking blond woman who wore #4. The women stopped to talk to each other about whether this would be a good time to walk over and do some quick San Francisco shopping, as the Blues wouldn’t fly for another two hours.

  First they received the wristbands that would allow them instant access to the secure pier and to the reserved seats for the Blue Angel VIPs. McKnight wrapped them around each wife’s wrist and clipped them expertly.

  Stovic took in the beauty of what lay before them, the prettiest city in the country, the bay, the airplanes, and the excitement. He smiled slightly, then remembered Rat and why he was there. “You think we’re okay here?”

  Rat checked the back of his digital camera, then glanced up. “I never assume anything.”

  “Why would he be here?” Stovic asked, deflated.

  “I didn’t say he would be. It’s unlikely, but possible.”

  Stovic zipped up his new Blue Angels jacket against the cool breeze but also just to feel the new jacket in his hands. “Why would he come here? I’m not even flying yet.”

  “Intelligence. Strictly intelligence.”

  “You really think he’s here?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m going to assume he’s not. I can’t live like some paranoid lunatic.”

  “You won’t mind if I do.”

  “Nope,” Stovic said.

  Rat was surprised at the number of people waiting by the waterfront for the Blue Angels to fly. About two hundred thousand were crowded onto the buildings, balconies, and boats, anxiously waiting for the air show to begin over the water between them and Alcatraz. The sun was dazzling, and the bay was a choppy, inky blue.

  A few hundred feet behind Rat, Ismae
l watched carefully from a grassy area next to the pier by a booth where they were selling Thai chicken sticks. He watched those who had driven down to the concrete pier with the Blue Angels walk toward the guard at the rope line.

  Ismael had arrived in San Francisco two days before the Blue Angels. He realized that the way to look completely inconspicuous was to look extremely odd. He allowed his hair to go wild and his beard to look greasy. He found some clothes at a thrift shop that were much worse than the oldest clothes he owned. He put them on the day he arrived, and he hadn’t changed out of them since. He had slept in them. He had rubbed some foul-smelling dark substance he had found in the gutter onto his threadbare denim jacket. No one would look at him from less than five feet away.

  He ate his chicken on a stick as if it was the first meal he’d had in a week. He moved behind the Thai chicken booth toward the water and watched the Blue Angel VIP procession. He tried to look past them, toward the airplanes conducting the air show over the water. The woman pilot who was talking to the crowd on the radio was flying so low that no one could see her unless they were up and away from the rest of the crowd. Her wings couldn’t be more than a foot off the waves.

  Four of the Blue Angels’ wives walked by him toward the shops. Two others headed toward the pier through the security cordon. He wanted to test the security. He hurried to walk immediately behind them, looking down at the ground as if he were half crazed. The wives casually exposed their wrists under their Blue Angel jackets and were waved in by the security guards. Ismael had been careful not to look at any of the VIPs in the Blue Angel party.

  He tried not to look startled as he realized suddenly that he was walking directly behind the wives and right next to Lieutenant Stovic in his new Blue Angel jacket. He hadn’t recognized him in his uniform with a gabardine hat and sunglasses on. Ismael tried not to stare. He immediately drank in the information his eyes provided him. Stovic was of medium height, slightly shorter than he was, probably six feet tall, with a thick frame and black hair. He looked very content. Ismael noticed a man who wore a photographer’s vest full of film and odd bulges walking next to Stovic with a camera. He was filming everything. Ismael ducked quickly and picked up an abandoned Thai chicken stick off the pavement. He began licking it. He couldn’t allow himself to be photographed.

  He stayed down and scoured the area for cigarette butts on the concrete leading to the pier. He waited until Stovic and the photographer had passed. He followed the wives’ group toward the pier. He tried to pass by the security check behind one of the VIPs but was stopped by the security guard. “You got a wristband, scumbag?”

  He looked at the guard confused. “What?”

  “Wristband. You got one?” the guard asked impatiently, knowing there was no way in hell this smelly homeless guy had a wristband to the VIP section.

  “No. What is it for?”

  “This is for VIPs only. You have to have a wristband.”

  “I just want to go on the pier.”

  “No wristband, no pier.”

  Ismael shrugged. “That is discrimination,” he muttered as he turned away. He walked past the food booths and smoking sausage grills toward Ghirardelli Square. Behind him, the Red Baron squadron had begun its air show, flying four white Stearman biplanes. He noticed how loud their propeller engines were over the beautiful San Francisco Bay.

  He moved to the left along the waterfront and down by the water. He waited as the biplanes finished their air show, and listened as the Blue Angel announcer began speaking.

  He could hear the enthusiastic announcer quite clearly. He turned and sat by the sail bay to watch the air show more carefully, to see how and where the airplanes flew. He looked back over his shoulder and saw people everywhere. He took particular note of a tall apartment building on the hill behind the shopping center. Not only were the balconies of each apartment filled with excited onlookers, but people were on the roof of the building, hanging over the edge in anticipation of the Blue Angels, who they knew would soon come streaking in over the bay. It was an amazing sight. It would be quite an audience for a dramatic act of revenge.

  The loudspeakers suddenly burst into life as the Blue Angel narrator said in a distinctive, enthusiastic tone of voice, “Goooood afternoon, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to today’s performance of the Navy flight demonstration squadron, the Blue Angels. . . .”

  The C-130 Hercules cargo plane, flown by Marines, came humming across San Francisco Bay at a low altitude from directly behind them and pulled almost straight up in front of them. After making a couple of passes, the cargo plane disappeared, and suddenly, from his right, appeared the Navy Blue Angel diamond formation. Ismael tried not to be impressed. He tried to force himself to hate the entire production and the beauty of the spectacle in front of him. The sky was clear and crisp with a hint of fog still lingering to their left just across the Golden Gate Bridge.

  He watched the diamond formation pull up into a high loop over the bay. The blue and gold airplanes appeared to be welded together. Ismael had never seen such skill demonstrated in the air. He had been to his brother’s Air Force base many times and had seen numerous demonstrations of fighter prowess, but always by single airplanes going fast or performing difficult maneuvers, never by a group of airplanes performing the maneuvers together.

  He watched the two solos drop down over the water, one from his left, over the Golden Gate Bridge, the other from a point far to his right. They flew directly at each other and, just before hitting, rolled into knife-edge passes to miss each other by mere feet as they screamed past in opposite directions, fifty feet off the water.

  Ismael tried to pull back from the enjoyment of the show to evaluate whether the show was vulnerable. The Blue Angel aircraft were unarmed. He was confident they expected nothing difficult out of an air show other than the flying.

  As the solos completed another blistering pass, then pulled up into high G turns above the crowd, Ismael glanced back at the apartment building. He thought of how the Concorde was brought down in Paris by a small piece of metal on the runway that caused the tire to come apart, fouling the engine. He realized how little it took to bring down a jet. He looked at the solos as they passed over the water again, then back at the apartment building.

  He watched every move of the entire Blue Angel routine. He sat until they were finished, until the crowd started to disperse. He pulled his feet back to avoid being stepped on. He listened to the comments of admiration and awe. He fell in with the moving crowed and walked toward the apartment building and up the hill. He stopped at the point near Ghirardelli Square where men pulled the cable cars around a rotating platform to head back uphill. Tourists waited in line for forty-five minutes, a captive audience for the musicians and beggars who were there every day asserting their turf rights against others who might want to move in. He walked to his seedy hotel room on the edge of Chinatown. It had bars on the windows on the ground floor and puddles of urine on either side of the front door where homeless men slept every night. He went into his room, turned on the television, and pulled his laptop out from behind the curtain where he had placed it in a silly attempt to hide it. He disconnected the room phone from the wall jack and plugged in his computer. He dialed in and quickly went to the Internet and his e-mail account. He called up the encryption software and sent a note to those in Algeria. He had decided on a course of action, a course that was bigger than a handgun and a car wreck.

  * * *

  Groomer slipped his headphones over his head and swiveled in his chair to face the screen in the back of the white van.

  The door opened, and Rat stepped in and closed the door behind him. “Anything?”

  Groomer shook his head. “Nothing. Pretty place, though.”

  “Everybody in place?”

  “Sure.”

  Rat didn’t like the tone. “Don’t get complacent on me.”

  “Never,” Groomer replied. He slipped his headphones off and flipped the switch that turned on the s
peakers in the van so he could hear any phone calls made at the Stovic residence without using his headphones.

  “You hear anything from Washington?”

  “Yeah. Robby says the guy’s not going anywhere near his apartment. Not a chance. He may be in Washington, but he’s not going to his apartment.”

  Rat nodded. “That’s my take too. State says he hasn’t even come back into the country.”

  “So he must not be here at all, and that guy that stove in my Toyota must be somebody else, just some random asshole.”

  “Exactly. Or maybe he has a fake passport. But we know that can’t be.”

  “Why?” Groomer asked.

  Rat frowned at him. “That would be illegal.”

  Groomer chuckled, a deep rolling chuckle, then got serious. “Can I ask you something?”

  Rat nodded, looking at him.

  “Why hasn’t Stovic told his wife what the hell we’re doing?”

  “She’d just get spooked. If this Ismael guy sees any of that, he’ll know someone’s onto him.”

  “That’s what I’m missing. So what if he knows we’re onto him? He’ll just go away, and that will be the end of it.”

  Rat shook his head. “If he knows someone’s waiting for him, he won’t go away, he’ll go deeper underground or get more help. It’ll make it much harder. When you turn the light on, do the cockroaches give up, or do they just get smarter?”

  Groomer chuckled. His massive shoulders were exposed in the Surf Company tank top he was wearing. He was amazingly strong, and had a bushy goatee. His hair was cut in a buzz. His status as a member of Dev Group would not be obvious to anyone. “They get smarter.”

  “You’ve got to be smarter than the cockroaches, Groomer. See, I don’t turn the lights on at all. I use night vision goggles when I’m hunting cockroaches.” He watched an image on one of the remote cameras. “FBI guys check in with you yet?”

  “Yeah. I gave them our entire layout. They’re impressed, which is good, because they’d better be. But they think they’re in charge—”