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 way points 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 Mar go, and entered them as way points one and two in the autopilot. The first would take the pilot boat well clear of the Marge’s bow and the second would take it directly under the center span of the Golden Gate Bridge.
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.
The security team watching the television monitors had the best seats of all. ESPN was televising the half- marathon live from the Met Life 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 halfdozen 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.
Elizabeth had never run a marathon or any other big race in which she was in the middle of 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 Todd 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.
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 Met Life 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
