The ESPN reporter and pilot turned and looked at him. They’d caught the urgency in his voice.
“Problems?” the pilot asked.
“We have to get on the ground right now,” Gardner said.
“What the hell are you talking about—?”
“Right fucking now,” Gardner shouted. “If you want to save your life, put it down!”
“Flagler, Lead One,” Villiard radioed to the Secret Service agent riding shotgun in the President’s limousine. The Ops center was in full swing, but stopping the race without getting anyone hurt was going to be next to impossible. These were handicapped runners, some of them mentally handing capped And there were eighteen hundred of them. It would be a nightmare.
“Lead One, Flagler.”
“We’re closing down the race. Do not take Thunder onto the bridge. Get him out of there.” “We’re on the approach road. There’s no way in hell we can turn around. It’s wall-to-wall runners behind us.”
Villiard made a snap decision. “Get him across the bridge then. I want him behind the hills ASAP.”
“He’s going to want his daughter with him—”
“Go now!”
Villiard switched channels to Chenna Serafini’s. She was on the golf cart with the CIA officer shadowing the President’s daughter. “Raindrop One, Lead One.”
“Raindrop One.”
Villiard recognized Chenna’s voice. “Do you have visual contact with Raindrop?” “Not continuously. She’s in the middle of a bunch forty yards ahead of us.”
“Okay, listen up, Chenna. I want you to go to her right now and get her off the bridge. You don’t have much time.”
Villiard could hear Chenna say something away from her lapel mike, and then she was back. “What’re we facing?”
“They might hit the bridge. We’re closing down the race. Thunder’s already on the way out. I’m giving you a head start.”
“We’re on it.”
Villiard switched channels again and began issuing orders to the local and state cops to start shutting everything down and clearing the bridge, with almost no hope whatsoever that they would be in time.
Coast Guard Cutter WMEC 9O7 Escanaba Lieutenant Gloria Sampson braced herself as the Escanaba came around hard to starboard. This was her first command and she was too excited to be nervous. Yesterday at the briefing on nuclear terrorism she’d been frightened, but there was no time for that today. She spotted the small boat well out into the Gate heading directly toward them at the same time her XO looked up from the radar.
“It’s the pilot boat, their radio’s out,” Ensign DeL illo told her.
“Forget it, the Margo’s already got her anchor up.”
So far as McGarvey could tell, the wheelhouse was empty and the decks were devoid of any life. It could have been a ghost ship, except that an army could have hidden in the containers stacked eight deep. But they had finally run out of time. It was only him at this point; a situation he neither liked nor disliked. It was just the way things had worked out.
“Put me down on the afterdeck as close to the helicopter as you can,” McGarvey shouted to the chief.
The chief said something into his helmet mike, and the Sea King, which was just off the container ship’s starboard quarter, slid to the right and dropped directly for the two stacks of containers on the portside.
“The skipper wants to know if we should stick around,” the chief shouted.
“You know the score, it’s up to you.”
The chief spoke into his mike, then grinned and gave McGarvey the thumbs-up. “We’ll hover just off your quarter. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” McGarvey said.
The Margo was moving around in the swell, so the helicopter did not attempt to touch down. It hovered a couple of feet above the stack of containers until McGarvey jumped out, then peeled off directly aft.
As soon as he was out of the rotor wash, McGarvey scrambled to the end of the container to look for a way down. There were no handholds except for the chains that held the stacks tightly to the deck. The helicopter was tied down and the rotors still secured. It would take at least twenty minutes to get it ready to fly. McGarvey stared at it. Goddamnit, this wasn’t making any sense.
He holstered his pistol and started down the chain, the links greasy and dirty with rust, shackled at intervals with big jagged U-bolts. He was at his most vulnerable at this moment. If Bahmad or one of his crewmen took a potshot at him they wouldn’t have to actually hit him. A near miss might be enough to dislodge his tenuous grip and he would fall the fifty or sixty feet to the steel deck. If it didn’t kill him, he would certainly be out of action for the duration.
But it was useless to think about that possibility, or any of a hundred other things that could go wrong. One step at a time. It was all he could do.
On deck finally, McGarvey pulled out his gun and ran around to the left side of the helicopter. It was definitely not ready to fly. The controls were still secured with their locks, and the engine exhaust and intake caps were still in place. It made no sense. Why had Bahmad carried the machine all this way if he didn’t intend on using it. And where the hell was the Margo’s crew?
McGarvey’s eyes strayed aft, to the stern rail, and his breath caught in his throat. Two fiberglass life raft canisters were secured to the deck on aluminum brackets. The brackets for a third canister were empty.
He took a step forward. The bomb had been right there, and now it was gone.
He felt a sudden, deep-throated rumble and vibration through the soles of his feet. He turned and looked up as a thick plume of black smoke rose from the Margo’s stack. The water at the stern began to roil, and the ship started to move forward.
McGarvey started around the chopper to find a hatch into the superstructure when a mind-numbing roar swooped down on him, blotting out all sounds, even those of the Sea King hovering just off their port quarter.
He turned back in time to see a Harrier jet slide into place not more than a couple of hundred feet aft of the stern. He could see the Coast Guard’s diagonal orange stripes on the fuselage, the Sparrow I’ll and Sidewinder missiles on the wing racks and the determined look on the pilot’s face.
McGarvey slowly raised his hands in the air. Destroying the chopper while it was still on the Mar go’s deck was one thing, but he did not want to be mistaken for one of the bad guys.
“Base, Victor-sierra-three-one. I’m in position aft of the Margo. There’s a Cuban military chopper on deck, and one possible bad guy standing next to it with his hands up. Advise.”
“Base, Three-One, is the chopper ready to fly?”
“Negative. It’s still tied down, and her rotors are secured. But the ship is getting under way. Request permission to go weapons free.”
“Permission granted—”
“Negative, negative,” someone overrode his primary channel. “This is Victor-tango-one-seven, the Sea King just off your port wing. That is one of our people on deck. Copy!
Lieutenant Bill Dillard had spotted the Coast Guard helicopter as he came in, of course. But he had his mission orders. Splash the chopper on the Marge’s deck if it so much as twitched.
“Stand by One-seven,” he radioed. “Base, Three-one, did you copy that last transmission.”
“Roger, stand by.”
Lieutenant Dillard had no idea what the hell was actually going on, except that it was a possible threat to the President, and the Margo was picking up speed. Somebody had put the pedal to the metal.
“Three-one, Base. Confirm that is a friendly on deck. But stick with the ship. If someone, I don’t care who, tries to get that chopper ready to fly you have authorization to splash it before it gets off the deck.”
“Roger, copy that.” Dillard backed up and waggled his wings.
Elizabeth pressed her earpiece closer. Something was going on. There was a steady stream of chatter on
