by the time he ran them down. A super calmness came over him. He could see everything that had to be done, and the order in which it had to be accomplished. Once the daughter and her mother were taken care of, he would drive the van to a service road on the far side of the eighteenth fairway. Aggad and Ibrahim would take it back to their rendezvous point and he would meet them tonight when he would kill them. There would be no loose ends.
A gray SUV of some kind burst out of the woods on his right, and headed directly toward them. Bahmad could do nothing except swerve to the left, directly across the fairway and into the dense trees and underbrush.
It was McGarvey. He got just a brief glimpse, but it was enough to recognize the man behind the wheel, and suddenly Bahmad wasn’t so sure about anything. The tide might have turned. Now it was he who was running for his life.
McGarvey saw Katy and Liz off to his right by the edge of the creek. He had only an instant to see that they were okay, and no time to be relieved, before he had to turn his attention back to the van. He was right on top of it. As it plunged into the woods he crashed into its rear left quarter, sending it skidding out of control to the right through some thick underbrush, finally slamming to a halt against a large tree.
He hauled the Nissan left, as he jammed on the brakes sliding to a halt finally twenty yards behind the van. He whipped off his seat belt and pulled out his pistol. But there was something wrong with his fingers, he couldn’t quite seem to switch the safety catch lever to the off position.
A man climbed out of the van, and although the day had somehow gotten very dark, McGarvey could see that he was raising what looked like a LAWs rocket tube to his shoulder.
It was hard to keep on track, hard to think straight. It was all he could do to relate what the man beside the van was trying to accomplish with the simple concept of danger.
McGarvey fumbled with the door latch, his fingers like sausages at the end of his impossibly long arm. When the door swung open suddenly, he half-slipped, half-fell out of the Nissan, banging his head on the door frame as he went down.
He was on all fours, the world spinning around him, but he still had his pistol. He had to get away. He didn’t know why, just that he had to get away from here right now! He started to crawl on all fours directly away from the Nissan and into some deeper underbrush.
The day lit up with a tremendous flash and bang, followed by a searing hot blast of wind that picked McGarvey up and sent him crashing into the brush.
There were shots, he could understand that, but his world was reduced to a series of brightly colored lights and images from a kaleidoscope, sliding and moving all over the place.
“Daddy!
Someone was holding him up, brushing dirt and debris from his face. He thought it was Elizabeth, but then Kathleen was there too, holding him in her arms, her eyes wide and frightened.
He heard shooting, and he understood that Liz had picked up his gun, but it didn’t matter so much this time because he was with Katy. He managed to smile up at her, before he slipped away into a dark, swirling haze.
Bahmad walked into the clubhouse, went directly to the bar and ordered a Bombay martini, up, very dry and very cold. Most of the other members were out by the first tee trying to figure out what all the commotion was about. Explosions, gunfire, sirens; it sounded as if someone was making a movie.
“What’s happening out there, sir?” the bartender asked as he fixed the drink.
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Bahmad said. His nerves were jumping all over the place, but by dint of an iron will he gave the appearance of bored indifference. “I was late for my tee time, I was supposed to catch up with my foursome on the second hole, and now this.” He shook his head. “But then we’re too close to D.C.” what can you expect?”
His martini came, full to the rim, and even though he was boiling over with an almost out-of-control blinding anger, he lifted his glass, took a delicate sip and replaced the glass on the bar napkin without spilling a drop.
The first phase of the operation, attempting for absolutely no valid reason to assassinate McGarvey’s daughter, was bin Laden’s idea. Because of unforseen circumstances and because the Taliban had provided him with misinformation about McGarvey, the mission had failed. Bahmad considered himself lucky to have been able to shed his coveralls and simply walk away in the confusion, just another man dressed for golf out on the course. Aggad and Ibrahim shot dead by the young woman.
The second phase of the operation, however, was his and his alone. He would not fail. He smiled, the first glimmers of contentment and anticipation for a project coming to him.
“Is the drink to your liking, Mr. Guthrie?” the barman asked.
Yes, indeed,” Bahmad replied. “It couldn’t be better.”
DEBORAH HAYNES
TWO MONTHS LATER
Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken into the ground.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Khartoum, Sudan Riding in the back of a battered Mercedes sedan from the airport, Bahmad willed himself to remain calm. This soon before an operation there was only one reason for his sudden recall; for some reason bin Laden wanted to call it off.
In ninety-six hours Deborah Haynes and more than one thousand other handicapped runners would cross the Golden Gate Bridge at the same moment the cargo ship Margo sailed beneath the bridge with Joshua’s Hammer. The two events were coming together as surely as the sun rose and set. But if no one was there to detonate the bomb at the correct time all would be lost.
He looked out the windows at the passing scenery as he battled his impatience. He was still nearly overwhelmed with anger and bitterness from his failure in Chevy Chase. Yet he could see with a critical eye the wild disrepair everywhere in the city; sandbagged street corners, armed patrols, some of the boys wearing uniforms others wearing the ragtag clothing of the rebel factions, and overall the atmosphere of mad confusion and extreme danger.
It was nothing at all like what he had left in Bermuda where he’d taken Papa’s Fancy after the debacle. And certainly nothing like New York where he’d dismissed the crew ten days ago and left the yacht.
He’d had a lot of time to think about the war he’d been waging for most of his life, and he had come to the conclusion that when this project was finished he was getting out for good.
Bin Laden’s compound was off Sharia al-Barlaman a few blocks from the People’s Palace and about the same distance from the Blue Nile. The afternoon was very hot. A reddish-yellow haze swirled through the city, whipping around the corners of buildings and up narrow alleys, causing flags and banners to stream and snap. This was the time of year for fierce desert sandstorms. If they were big enough they even encroached into the cities themselves, like now.
In fact little if anything of any significance had changed here in nearly one thousand years, Bahmad thought morosely. Bin Laden and the others in the various organizations in the jihad such as the Armed Islamic Movement (AIM), the Islamic Arab People’s Conference (IAPC), the Sunni’s Popular International Organization (PIO), the Islamic Action Front (LAP), the Hisb’Allah, the Islamic Liberation Party and dozens more were fighting mostly with words and the occasional terrorist bomb. Even Joshua’s Hammer, though it was a nuclear weapon and would cause
