in and among the eighteen hundred runners were two dozen Secret Service agents plus Todd Van Buren and Elizabeth.
He turned again to stare at the five cargo ships. What was he missing? What were they all missing? Most of them, from the President down, didn’t really believe that an attack would come here. It was against bin Laden’s interests. Yet everyone was frightened. It was bizarre.
A radio on the bridge was tuned to ESPN, and the minute by-minute commentary on the Special Olympics half marathon was being piped over the Margo’s PA system.
Bahmad had horsed the inflated twelve-foot Zodiac out of its locker on the port quarterdeck just forward of where the now-useless helicopter was lashed down, and had attached the lifting sling to the three heavy D-rings on the dinghy’s gun whale line.
The runners were off, but he had plenty of time. From everything that he’d read and knew about this type of event, a woman runner would make a full marathon in a bit over four hours. The President’s daughter was an excellent athlete so it was no stretch of the imagination to believe that she would do a half-marathon in two hours, barring any delays or accidents.
Bahmad looked up at the other container vessels in the basin. There was no movement on their decks. The crews were below eating their midday meal.
Deborah Haynes would run the thirteen miles in two hours, which meant that she would average a little more than nine minutes per mile. The middle of the Golden Gate Bridge was about nine miles from the stadium at Candlestick Park. Eighty to eighty-five minutes after the start of the race Deborah Haynes would be on the center span.
Bahmad powered the Zodiac off the deck with the hand controller, and then swung the boom out over the side of the rail. When the dinghy had stopped swinging and was clear, he quickly powered it forty feet down to the surface of the water within reach of the boarding ladder.
The pilot boat would make fifteen knots easily, and the center span of the bridge was three miles away. Allowing time for the boat to clear the Margo’s bow and make the turn, Bahmad estimated that twelve minutes after he cast off the pilot boat’s lines it would be under the bridge.
The timing could be sloppy, several minutes off either way, because of the blast radius of the nuclear device. If the pilot boat were somewhere in the vicinity of the bridge at the same time the runners were on the bridge or very near it, the President’s daughter and a lot of other people would die.
He walked aft to the stern rail where three fiberglass containers, each about the size of a large suitcase, were bracketed to the deck. Each was marked life raft eight person made in china. He undid the fasteners for the canister on the left and lifted it off its cradle. It was very heavy, more than forty kilograms. He imagined that he could feel heat coming off it, which was nonsense of course. Nevertheless he handled the container with a great deal of care as he awkwardly brought it forward to the gate. He set the package down at the head of the boarding ladder so that he could catch his breath. It wouldn’t do to drop the damn thing halfway down the ladder in the rolling swell. Not after all this. Not when he was this close.
The runners were fifteen minutes into the race on U.S. 101, and according to the ESPN commentator they were already beginning to spread out with Deborah Haynes near the lead as expected.
She would be on the center span in another sixty-five to seventy minutes. He would have to send the pilot boat off twelve minutes before then. He had nearly an hour. Twenty minutes to put the bomb in place and make the final settings. Another twenty to get his things, put them aboard the dinghy and make sure that the outboard worked. And the final fifteen minutes or so to fine-tune the timing based on the ESPN blow-by-blow.
Once the pilot boat was off he would take the dinghy around the sound end of the point, which would afford him protection from the blast. In the confusion afterward he would make his escape.
Plenty of time, he told himself, as he hefted the bomb and started down the ladder.
The Met Life Blimp Secret Service agent Hugh Gardner had seen a lot of stuff in his five-year career with the service, but he’d never seen such a mass of humanity spread out over four miles of highway as he was seeing right now. Some of the runners had given up before they had gotten out of the Candlestick Park parking lot, while others, among them the President’s daughter, were within a hundred yards or so of the lead.
“Lead One, this is Baker Seven, they’re coming up on delta,” he spoke into his lapel mike. Delta was the Mission Dolores just beyond where U.S. 101 made its jog to the west.
“Copy, Baker Seven. How’s it looking from there?”
“No problems that I can see,” Gardner replied. The view from up here was fantastic. He could see the bridge up ahead, the city and the bay to the east, including Alcatraz Island, and the outer stretches of the Golden Gate to the west, the hazy Pacific Ocean stretching off to the horizon.
He sincerely hoped that nothing would go wrong today to spoil the shear beauty of it. His fellow agents razzed him for being so overly sensitive in such a demanding job. But, as he had explained to the guys on his detail last week, the quickest, easiest and cheapest way into a woman’s knickers was reading poetry. Sensitivity, gentlemen. Try it, you’ll like it.
The Pilot Boat Bahmad unsnapped the life raft’s latches and opened the outer cover. He had a little trouble with one of the inner latches, but when it finally popped he prised up the lid to reveal the bomb’s control panel. As he huddled inside the cabin there was nothing to be seen except for the Margo’s rust-streaked hull rising like a shear cliff, and no one to see what he was doing.
He entered the activation code on the keypad and the numerical display and warning lights came to life. The impression that heat was radiating from the device was even stronger now than it had been up on the Margo’s stern, and it was just as foolish. The bomb did not leak. One last time Bahmad was struck with the notion that what he was doing could and should be stopped. Even now. There was no need to go through with this thing. No need for the killing and the suffering. No need for him to become the most hunted and the most reviled man in all of history. No need for revenge. Not his revenge for his parents and not bin Laden’s for his Sarah.
He closed his eyes. He could see Beirut as it had been when he was a child. It had been called the Paris of the Mediterranean. He could see beautiful gardens, laughing happy people, family meals. But then he could hear the Israeli jets, feel the earth-shattering pounding of their bombs, smell the burning flesh.
Bahmad opened his eyes, focused on the control pad and entered another series of codes that set the bomb’s moment of detonation fifty-five minutes from now. At that instant the bulk of the runners would be on the Golden Gate Bridge. For them there would be no pain, not like the pain his parents had suffered, not the pain that Sarah had endured. For the runners there would be a blinding flash of light and then nothing.
He entered another series of codes that activated the antitampering circuits. If anyone tried to stop the bomb it would explode immediately.
Finally his finger poised over the start button. For one moment he questioned his sanity, but then he pushed the button, closed and relatched the inner cover and closed and relatched the outer cover.
The countdown had begun.
McGarvey’s cell phone rang. The number on the display was Rencke’s private office line. He’d been on the computers continuously for four days and nights. But when he had the bit in his teeth nothing could stop him.
“Have you come up with something new?” McGarvey answered.
“It’s there, and I know how it got there,” Rencke rasped. It sounded as if he was on the verge of cracking up. “From Karachi, disguised as a life raft made in China. Oh, boy, it was right there in front of me all the time. Purple—”
McGarvey gripped the phone. “Where is it, Otto? Specifically!”
“San Francisco. The coast. Came by ship, Karachi, Red Sea, the Med. It was laid up for two months in Tampa. That’s what threw me off.”
McGarvey was on the center span of the bridge. He spun around and looked out toward Seal Point, but from this angle he could only see the bows of two container ships. There were four or five of them out there. He’d spotted them earlier when he was on the Marin side. “What ship? When did it come in?” he demanded.
“The Margo, Cyprus registry, home office PKS Shipping, Ltd.” Paris. Ties to bin Laden, ya know. It all fits. It was right there.”
“Okay, calm down, Otto. When did the Margo get here? When?”
“It should be coming in right now. Went through the big ditch where it picked up a helicopter. The Coast
