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.
“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.m. 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,
