the radio. She was catching snatches of orders. Something about the bridge being closed.
“Raindrop Elizabeth, Lead One.”
“This is Elizabeth, Lead One. Go.”
“Are you on the bridge yet?” Villiard demanded.
“We’re just coming up on the tower. Do we have trouble?”
“Chenna and Todd are on their way. Get Raindrop off the bridge.”
Elizabeth’s gut tightened, but then a calmness came over her. “Copy,” she spoke into her mike. She shouted for Deborah who was a few yards ahead of her to hold up.
Halfway across the bridge the President was stunned. He’d been saying something to his wife when John Flagler gave the order to their driver to bug out, and the limousine suddenly shot forward like a shell from a cannon.
“What the hell—?”
“I’m sorry, Mr. President, but there is a possible threat,” Flagler said sharply. He said something into his radio, then looked over his shoulder past the President and First Lady out the rear window.
“We have to get Deborah,” the President told him.
“Her detail is picking her up now, sir.”
“We’re going back for her, John, and that’s an order.”
Flagler said something else into his mike. He had an Ingram MAC 10 out. He looked the President in the eye, his expression devoid of anything other than professionalism. “I’m sorry, Mr. President, but that’s not possible. Your daughter is being taken care of. In the meantime we’re getting you off the bridge.”
On the opposite side of the bridge Chenna Serafini and Todd Van Buren were bogged down. The runners were bunching up again. Van Buren jumped out of the golf cart and ran ahead to make a path for Chenna. The President’s daughter was somewhere out ahead of them. Chenna was sick that she had let them get so far ahead. The girl had to be up around the tower by now. Hopefully she hadn’t left Elizabeth McGarvey behind.
“Raindrop Elizabeth, this is Raindrop One,” Chenna radioed.
Van Buren was bodily shoving runners aside, knocking some of them to the pavement. He made a hole and Chenna sped up. As she passed he jumped aboard.
“Liz, you copy?” Chenna spoke urgently into her lapel mike.
“This is Lead One, she can’t hear you,” Villiard radioed back. “I’ll patch you over.” The runners ahead cleared another path, and Van Buren spotted Deborah and Elizabeth about thirty yards away at the side of the road. “There,” he shouted.
Chenna spotted them too. They had stopped at the edge of a big pileup of runners just across from the ocean side leg of the San Francisco Tower. It was a security nightmare. There were runners and spectators all within arm’s reach. Getting to her and then getting her back out without hurting someone was going to be next to impossible. And calling for their helicopter to pick them up would be equally impossible until they could get Deborah out to the middle of the span away from the towers and suspension cables, or back out of the crowd somewhere off the bridge approaches.
“Chenna, this is Liz, I can see you,” Elizabeth responded.
“Stand by, we’re getting you and Deb out of there,” Chenna radioed back. She jammed the pedal to the floor and shot out around a group of six runners, missing them by inches.
Elizabeth said something to the President’s daughter who backed up a step and shook her head. Even from here Chenna could see that the girl was frightened by all the noise and sirens and commotion. When she was backed into a corner she always ran. It was something that Elizabeth could not know about.
“Don’t push her,” Chenna shouted into her mike at the same moment Elizabeth reached out for Deborah’s hand.
Almost in slow motion the President’s daughter reared back, turned and jumped over the high curb onto the sidewalk. The spectators parted for her and for Elizabeth who was right on her heel, and they disappeared around the outside of the tower leg.
The bridge was empty. McGarvey saw a puddle of congealed blood on the deck, but there was no one up here controlling the ship. There was no sign of the crew anywhere. Bahmad had killed at least one of them, but where the hell were the others?
The ship was already starting to make a wide turn to starboard that would bring it into the Golden Gate and line it up with the bridge. But the Margo could not make it to the bridge in time. What was he missing?
The bomb had been removed from its bracket for some reason. Think, for God’s sake. His head felt like someone had driven a hot spike through his skull.
He looked at the pool of blood again. Bahmad was a brilliant man. He would have contingency plans. The Margo might not make it to the bridge in time, but the bomb would.
“Sonofabitch.” The bomb was no longer aboard this ship, or wouldn’t be for long.
McGarvey hurriedly studied the control panel, finding and disengaging the autopilot, then flipped the switch that dropped the anchor.
He tore out of the bridge and raced downstairs to the main deck. All this time they had concentrated on this ship to deliver the bomb. But Bahmad was smart. He’d been trained by the British and American intelligence establishments. Getting the Marga underway was a diversionary tactic. He had another boat. Maybe the captain’s gig to deliver the bomb. And afterward in the confusion he would use the helicopter to make his escape. But then why move the ship where it would be exposed to blast damage? It was getting hard to think straight.
McGarvey emerged winded from the starboard stairwell on the main deck athwart ship corridor as Bahmad stepped out of a hatch twenty feet away.
For a split second they stared at each other, but McGarvey raised his pistol first and fired as Bahmad ducked back inside.
A MAC 10 came around the edge of the steel door and McGarvey just managed to pull back inside the stairwell landing as Bahmad fired a short burst, and then another, the bullets ricocheting all over the place.
McGarvey immediately fired three quick shots down the corridor in the general direction of the hatch and ducked back as Bahmad fired an answering burst. This time the shells ricocheted off the steel deck and walls just outside the stairwell.
The sonofabitch had raised the anchor and set the autopilot from the bridge by himself, and then had raced down to the engine room to start the diesels. Bahmad was alone.
He had killed the entire crew and now he was trying to get out. The bomb was already on its way.
The pilot boat!
McGarvey checked his watch. If the runners were on time the bulk of them would be coming on to the bridge at any minute. There was no time.
“Mr. McGarvey, you are an inventive man,” Bahmad called.
“The bridge has been closed and the Coast Guard is intercepting the pilot boat,” McGarvey said. “It’s over. Toss your gun out into the corridor.”
“It’s much too late for such a simple lie as that to work. Actually it’s you for whom everything is over.”
McGarvey reached around the corner and fired two shots, but Bahmad was waiting for him, and he fired a sustained burst directly down the corridor.
McGarvey fell back as a shell fragment slammed into his hip, and another into his right side. He grunted involuntarily in pain. He was starting to get real tired of being shot up.
He heard an empty magazine clatter to the steel deck, and another being slapped into the handle. He turned and limped up the stairs as Bahmad fired, ricocheting bullets filling the landing with hundreds of deadly fragments.
“McGarvey,” Bahmad shouted.
The athwart ship corridor one level up from the main deck was dark, although McGarvey could clearly see that the ceiling lights were on. He trailed his left hand on the bulkhead for balance as he hurried to the portside stairwell and started down. His hip was numb, but his whole right side was on fire. It was becoming increasingly harder to concentrate.
The main deck corridor was ominously silent. McGarvey closed his eyes for just a moment to garner the last of his strength, then eased just far enough around the corner so that he could see what was going on.
