Abuse of Power

by Michael Savage

  In a way, this theft was an act of mercy. If she could not gain access to the parking lot the following day, her life might be spared.

  Of course, in the end they were all spared, weren’t they?

  The black with the gun had seen to that.

  Abdal cursed himself for allowing such an insignificant piece of trash to so easily take control of him. Finding the muzzle of a gun in his face as he waited for the light to change had been so unexpected that reason had fled. Ironically, his training had taken hold then: blend in. Don’t create a scene. It took time for him to get to the rooftop of an unguarded building within a thousand feet of the target, to obtain an unobstructed transmit line from his phone to the one strapped to the primer bomb.

  Allah had spared him, and for that he was grateful, but he had to wonder why. He’d never had any interest in martyrdom, but the shame he felt for this failure was worse than any form of death. He knew that those he worked for, those who at this very moment were probably shocked by his impulsiveness, his impatience—his foolishness—would kill him. The methods were still too horrible to contemplate. Yet he resisted the impulse to disappear. He also resisted the urge to rally his wits, to take his own life in an improvised act of terror. Allah did not smile upon cowards, and willful suicide with a tacked-on purpose was still first and foremost a means to escape punishment.

  Besides, if he were meant to die Abdal preferred to do it in London, where he had lived for nearly twenty of his twenty-two years, in the comfort of his own home.

  Within an hour of the disaster, he sent his primary contact an encrypted text message confessing his sin and begging understanding, if not forgiveness. Several minutes later he received a reply, instructing him to fly home via Los Angeles, where a reservation had already been made in his name. He knew full well that they would consult with Hassan before deciding what to do with him. That was something, at least. Hassan might choose to spare his life so he could surrender it with dignity.

  Whatever the decision, Abdal would use the time he had left to make peace with his God.

  He didn’t want to risk stealing another vehicle, since the California Highway Patrol was particularly vigilant about watching for stolen cars. License-plate reading software gave them the ability to check over ninety percent of the vehicles on their freeway. So he booked bus passage down the California coast, arriving at Los Angeles International Airport at seven in the morning. He had no need for possessions but he had packed a small suitcase anyway, to avoid raising suspicion among the TSA profilers. Abdal kept a “ready bag” for that purpose, a carry-on stuffed with amenities, clothing, a nondescript novel, and a book of crossword puzzles.

  A few minutes after his encounter with the security agent, Abdal was seated at the gate, his paranoia abated. If the woman had suspected anything he would never have gotten this far. She would have motioned one of the security guards over casually but with a hand gesture that indicated there was a problem, and Abdal would have been thrown to the floor, pinned there while another agent handcuffed him.

  Instead, the woman went out of her way to be polite, to smile, to assure him she wasn’t profiling. And in that way she let a terrorist through her checkpoint.

  But that was not his concern.

  All Abdal could think about now was not his mistakes, nor his certain death, only getting home to the woman he loved.

  Getting home to Sara.

  4

  The FBI wasted no time instituting a media blackout.

  They didn’t call it that, of course. At an impromptu press conference near the blast site that night, with particles of dust still visible in the floodlights, newly appointed Mayor Daniel Maywood announced that the city of San Francisco was cooperating fully with the FBI and Homeland Security. However, due to the sensitivity of the investigation all inquiries were being routed to the FBI’s press liaison—which Jack knew from experience was a deep black hole.

  The public was assured that the federal government would spare no expense in finding out who was responsible for the blast, but until the investigation was complete, they would not engage in speculation.

  Questions about Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations were floated, but an FBI spokeswoman repeatedly explained that unless someone came forward to claim responsibility they may not know who was responsible for several days. At this point they didn’t even know who the driver was, who owned the car, or what his target had been.

  Figuring that out didn’t take a Heritage Foundation think tank, Jack thought. The city’s civic center was only blocks away, the fattest target on the route. But the feds had no intention of fueling rumors or causing concern that the center, or any other public space, was not safe.

  The mayor had no comment about the assertion that a person involved in the carjacking had identified the driver as an Arab. He didn’t want to speculate and create a reactionary spike against Muslim Americans.

  When he heard that, Jack wished he had been there instead of riding in the back of an ambulance with Maxine. He would’ve gone on record as saying that he, for one, was tired of all the special-interest hyphenates and wished that any fill-in-the-blank Americans would be Americans first and something else second.

  Even though that was the kind of thing that got you tossed off the air, he reflected. But it was worth it. People said he was insensitive and a racist. He said he was a patriot, which was different from most of the mainstream media who seemed to be happy watching the country perforate along ethnic borders like Spain or the former Soviet Union or Iraq.

  Jack lived and worked on a fifty-nine-foot Grand Banks yacht in the Sausalito Marina where, as if reflecting the mood of the region, the wind and tides were making some pretty ugly chop. Still, he managed to snag a few hours’ sleep around dawn then watched as local and national law enforcement across the country were put on high alert and did everything they could to create the impression of ensuring the public’s safety. The President made an Oval Office speech the following morning, reminding the country of his commitment to keeping the citizens of the United States secure—and to raise his mortally wounded poll numbers—while politicos from both sides of the aisle clogged the cable news networks and talk radio with enough hot air to float a horseshoe. That bugged Jack the most. Despite the magnitude of what had happened, and the devastating scope of what had accidentally been avoided, the news coverage had no real depth to it, no dimension, no insight.

  Only one thing resonated with him. At the center of the newscasts and speeches, the one piece that was never far from anyone’s mouth was that while debris and shrapnel had caused several minor injuries, there had been only one fatality: Officer Thomas Drabinsky of the SFPD bomb squad, whose attempt to defuse the device had ended as he was en route to the target. There was one thing about him that no one mentioned, however, probably because it was too bizarre a thought for anyone to process. It was something he heard from the marines in Iraq and air force personnel when fighter pilots went down.

  Tragic as the loss was, Thomas Drabinsky accomplished something that not a lot of people got to do: he died with his boots on and he would not be forgotten.

  Jack had seen enough forgotten soldiers in his time. He’d tried to rectify this when he was still on the air, had used the last two minutes of his show to honor the fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan, to put names and faces to these men and women he so admired. It was a reminder to his viewers that the enemy they fought wasn’t some abstract notion, but a real, living danger to the western world. Nine/eleven was a decade past, and too many of us were becoming complacent—including and especially our so-called representatives in Washington.

  He had even started a fund, raising money for the kids of fallen vets, and for training guide dogs—by prison inmates, no less—to aid those who had left arms, legs, eyes, and ears in the Mesopotamian war zones.

  Jack checked with the hospital at nine A.M. Max was sleeping and her injuries weren’t serious. She had a gash on the side of her head that took twenty-seven s
titches to close, but there was no concussion—her camera had taken the hit for her. It thanked her with a smack to the temple that looked, to Jack, like the recoil of a .357 Holland & Holland Magnum. However, he was not surprised when she called early in the afternoon and told him that she wanted to get to recuperate at home. What she said, actually, was, “The deductible on the health coverage I was forced to buy is going to kill me faster than my injuries, so get me out of here.” She said she’d cleared it with her doctor, and calling a cab, Jack went and collected her.

  After taking her home, putting her to bed, and making sure the nice old woman who rented her the attic space would look in on her, Jack went back to the boat and began editing the footage they’d shot over the last several days, retooling it to focus on Drabinsky himself. Nothing she had shot at the blast site had survived, but in the end it wasn’t needed. The money shot was not the explosion, it was the proud, smiling face of the fallen warrior.

  It took Jack most of the day to assemble it, and when he was done he realized he had something special. He also knew he could make anywhere from fifty to a hundred grand with the package, but decided to offer it to the networks free of charge. His entire reason for becoming a journalist was not to sleep on silk but to sleep well, knowing he had done the right thing.

  This was the right thing.

  * * *

  Jack had known Tony Antiniori for a little over a year, but the moment he’d met the guy they’d felt an immediate kinship. And that was the kind of compliment he didn’t hand out often.

  A former Green Beret paratrooper, Tony had done three tours in Vietnam, had cross-trained as both a medic and a rifleman, and was still active in the National Guard, teaching combat medicine to young recruits headed to Afghanistan.

  He was sixty-nine and still teaching field medicine to the young recruits. Maybe that was part of what kept him young, having to shame the know-it-all out of kids less than half his age. The other part was staying in shape. He was solidly built, more muscle than fat, but at first glance you’d never know that he was career military. He looked like a fugitive from a Fellini movie, his thick head of shoe-polish-black movie-star hair framing a tanned, creased, bearded face and wise but playful eyes. He kept his lanky, six-foot-four-inch frame in shape with a brisk morning flurry of push-ups, jumping jacks, and crunches every other day. Nothing high impact; just enough to get his heart rate up and help keep his cholesterol down. He dressed younger, too—casual, mostly turtlenecks and corduroys. And he dyed his white hair black, his one concession to vanity. If he squinted, he could still find and sometimes talk to the twenty-year-old who always wanted to be where he ended up.

  That sense of accomplishment was the real reward, though sometimes there was unexpected blowback.

  Tony had once told him the story of Beth Middleton, and how he was attracted to her the instant he saw her. The woman’s smile hooked him and her tight jeans held him. Her quick wit did its job, too. In that sense he was not unlike most men: it was lust at first sight.

  Beth was thirty years younger than him but something about her was much older. When they finally got around to talking about something other than medicine, he learned that she had grown up in a military family, moving from base to base, though she had managed to stick around the Florida panhandle, near Panama City, long enough to go to high school. Maturity is something he found in a lot of army brats. Because they never really got to put down roots, because they rarely got to make friends for very long, their lives were spent on the outside, reading when they were alone, watching when they were with people.

  Beth’s father had been a lieutenant colonel in the air force. He flew a hundred combat missions in Nam, in the F-4—a classy, long-range Mach-buster that was still being used in the Gulf War. The sky jocks always said that if you had to be away from home and honey, this was the baby you wanted to be with. Lieutenant Colonel Middleton apparently felt the same. He later became a flight instructor, keeping close to the Phantoms, married late, and had Beth even later.

  She worshipped her father and craved his attention—which he obviously didn’t bestow as readily or happily as he did lectures on the range of his big silver bird. Beth didn’t have to say it for Tony to figure out that he was the reason she was attracted to older men. He didn’t imagine he was the first.

  After college she earned her master’s in Arabic language studies from Texas A & M and, after hours, snagged a Ph.D. in MdS—Marquis de Sade. She liked to be dominated and humiliated, something Tony didn’t know till later.

  Although it was against military rules and regs they fraternized in the most intimate way. At first in his car and later in motels near the base in Sacramento. As they came to know each other better, she became more open about her desires.

  At first Tony went along with the “game,” as he called it, by tying her up and telling her she was a “dirty girl.” But he—and his anatomy—quickly tired of the sport because he wasn’t wired for it. He decided to self-prescribe Levitra. He took it with a Coke from the vending machine outside their favorite cheap motel. When they got back to the room, Tony slipped into the bathroom. As he undressed he looked at his old friend in the mirror and was shocked to see it standing at the same angle as his seventeen-year-old self. And he didn’t even have to squint.

  In the months to come he would jokingly tell his friends about his experience, noting that, “I took that little orange tablet, looked at myself, and fell in love.” It never failed to get a laugh.

  The Levitra worked all right, except where it counted most: inside his head. This wasn’t lovemaking, it was psychodrama. After a couple of months he found the sight and feel of the clothesline she carried in her bag to be a turnoff. It had the smell of the recent past but the less tangible odor of the distant past, a lack of attention from daddy. That was something he didn’t want to be a part of.

  The night he told her wasn’t fun for either of them. Beth dropped her bag on the bed, crawled toward the pillows, and when he sat beside her she curled into a tight, fetuslike ball, covered her face with her hands, and began to sob, “Tell me I’m a bad girl … tell me I’m a whore!”

  He gently lifted her hands and held them between his.

  The light shone on her tears. The edge of the rope poked from the top of her bag like a fuse.

  “Tie me up,” she demanded. “Make me feel like the dirty slut I am.”

  “Not tonight, Beth,” he said softly, cradling her to him.

  She seemed to recoil slightly before yielding. “You’ll be back?”

  “Not tonight or ever again.”

  Tony missed what she made him feel, but not how she made him feel. On the other hand, after nearly seven decades, it was good to feel challenged. More than anything, that was what life had to be about.

  As soon as he got back to the city that night, he immediately went to Peter and Paul Church in North Beach and begged Jesus to forgive his sin. Like millions of lapsed Catholics, Tony loved Jesus, admired the Church less, and was no longer constrained by the sexual edicts of a corrupt priesthood.

  * * *

  When Jack finished editing the footage of Drabinsky, Tony was the first person he showed it to.

  “Damn if I don’t have tears in my eyes,” Tony Antiniori said.

  “Thanks,” Jack said.

  “I mean it, that’s a helluva tribute,” Tony said. “You think you’ll run into any resistance from the networks?”

  Jack shrugged. “My name isn’t exactly welcome, but considering what I’ve got here and the price I’m asking, how can they refuse?”

  “Because they’re kind of like reverse terrorists,” Tony said.

  “I don’t follow.”

  “They will blow up an entire network news division just to keep one guy from the spotlight.”

  Jack smiled. That was as good an assessment of the network mind-set as he’d ever heard.

  “They’re putzes,” Tony added for good measure.

  “That’s what my grandfather used
to call my old man.”

  “Your mother’s father?”

  Jack nodded.

  “Because your dad wasn’t Jewish?”

  Jack shook his head. “No, because he was hoping his daughter would marry up. In Granddad’s mind, watch repair didn’t quite cut it. Even though my dad loved it.”

  They were sitting in the aft salon of Jack’s Aleutian 59 he’d dubbed the Sea Wrighter. He and Rachel had bought it during the real estate boom, with money she made from flipping houses. Jack had been a live-aboard for two years, since moving out of the house in Tiburon he’d shared with his ex-wife. He often marveled that his boat was almost double the size of Hemingway’s famous thirty-eight-foot Pilar. Named for his second wife, Pauline, whose nickname was Pilar, it was also the name of a pivotal character in For Whom the Bell Tolls. Built in Brooklyn, New York, in 1934 by the Wheeler Shipyard, it cost $7,455. Jack chuckled thinking about the 70-hp Chrysler Crown gasoline engine, which drove her at 8 knots with a top speed of 16 knots. Jack’s Aleutian had two 1000-hp Caterpillar diesels, which could drive his forty-ton beauty upwards of 22 knots. Jack also had a small apartment in town but he rarely spent time there, preferring life on the marina instead. There was a sense of community here, of shared purpose, that you didn’t get in the city.

  Tony lived aboard the Tarangi, a thirty-two-foot Chey Lee clipper just three slips down—a slot he’d managed to score despite size restrictions when one of the larger boats pulled anchor. So a day wouldn’t be complete without Tony at least popping his head in, and more often than not he brought along a bottle of wine. Tony considered himself something of a budget connoisseur and liked to share.

  Jack preferred beer or a single malt himself. His favorite combo was a few ’85 Glenrothes followed by a couple of cold Becks, but he indulged his friend’s passion and usually gave in when offered a glass. Tony’s selection tonight was an ’04 Gaja Sori San Lorenzo, which he’d received in exchange for his mechanical skills on an Atomic-4 engine. They toasted Officer Thomas Drabinsky at the top; it was the first time since the blast that Jack had choked up. Something about the finality of the gesture, the acknowledgment that a life was over, his story had been told, The End.