don’t think we have any millionaires in disguise on our crew list. Why did you ask?”
“We were just wondering why the company ordered us to take it to San Francisco at the last minute.”
“I haven’t a clue. I could call my dad and ask him, I suppose. But like I said, it’s a piece of junk. I don’t know anybody who’d want it except as a museum piece.”
“That’s probably it,” Pangiotopolous said. “Thank you.”
“Yes, sir.” Green started to leave, but then turned back. “Oh, that’s a U.S. Coast Guard traffic advisory that we just got There’s going to be a shipping restriction under the Golden Gate Bridge Saturday morning from ten hundred hours until fourteen hundred. I’ve already done the navigation. If we can keep our present SOG we’ll be under the bridge at least six hours early.” SOG was the actual speed over the ground that the ship made good, which included the effects of ship’s speed through the water, the ocean currents, the wave action and the effect of the wind on the bulk of the vessel.
“Thank you, good work,” the captain said, and Green went back inside.
“What’s that all about?” Schumatz asked.
Panagiotopolous quickly read the brief USCG. advisory. “Something’s going on, probably bridge repairs, so they’re closing down all shipping traffic inbound as well as outbound.” He pocketed the message. “It won’t effect us though.” He glanced again at the helicopter. “Ask around, would you Lazlo? Find out if anyone else can fly one of those things.”
Schumatz nodded. “What about Green?”
“I’ll keep an eye on him.”
It was coming up on noon at the headquarters gym. McGarvey had had a particularly bad bout of depression this morning, so intense that he’d had difficulty concentrating on getting through the morning, let alone doing any real work. He’d fought depression most of his adult life and extreme physical exercise not only kept him in shape for field work, but it somehow combated his dark moods. If he could get through one or two hours of hard work, anything for him was possible afterward.
Murphy had ordered him to take an extra week off, but that was impossible. He’d had the operation to fix the bleeder in his head and relieve the pressure on his brain, and he’d recovered fully. But bin Laden and Ali’ Bahmad were still at large, and the bomb was still out there somewhere. His wife and daughter had almost been assassinated. The President, who steadfastly refused to back down, was putting his own daughter in harm’s way. And the Arabic languages expert Otto had found had translated the rest of the one and only phone conversation between bin Laden and Bahmad that they’d managed to record.
The daughters of the infidels will die like the pigs they are.
Bin Laden had used the plural — daughters — not the singular. It meant that McGarvey’s and the President’s daughters were targets.
According to the timetable, Bahmad had told his master. The package is on its way.
But that was two months ago, and since then the only piece of information they knew with reasonable certainty was that bin Laden was holed up in his compound in Khartoum. Possibly even under a loose house arrest by Sudan’s National Islamic Front.
It was this last bit of information that was so puzzling. The analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence were telling him that if bin Laden were under house arrest it could mean that the bomb project was being delayed or canceled. McGarvey wasn’t so sure. Bin Laden was an independent man, and he was dying. He certainly wouldn’t delay the project, because he might not live long enough to see it done. Nor would he cancel it. No, Bahmad was still here in the U.S.” with the bomb, and he meant to use it. The question was where and when.
If you get close enough to bin Laden, kill him, Dennis Berndt had suggested. It wasn’t that easy, McGarvey thought. It never was. But he was finally beginning to realize that killing bin Laden might just be their only way out. But it was hard, when he was depressed, to keep his mind on track. Hard not to just walk away from the problem, something that he’d never done in his life.
He wiped his face with his sweat towel at the side of the fencing strip and took a drink of Gatorade as he tried to figure out a strategy. Todd Van Buren, his opponent, was not only twenty-five years younger, his reflexes were super sharp because he worked as a hand-to-hand combat instructor at the Farm. The fact that he was sleeping with the boss’s daughter didn’t seem to have any effect on his enthusiasm for the touch. But he did have one weakness. He was primarily a foil est and that’s how he was trying to fight epee this morning.
McGarvey walked back to the en garde line, his mask under his left arm. “One more touch?”
Van Buren nodded. “Getting a little tired, Mr. McGarvey?” he asked, grinning.
“We’ll see,” McGarvey said. Strong physical exercise had always helped him focus on the moment instead of his past, yet it was still hard to concentrate. As soon as he allowed his mind to drift, even a little, bin Laden’s face and that of his daughter’s swam into view.
He came to attention and brought the hilt of his weapon momentarily to his lips in a salute. Van Buren did the same. They donned their masks, brought their left arms up in a graceful arch over their rear shoulders, and raised their weapons to the en garde position.
On a silent signal between themselves they began. Van Buren came out first, testing for McGarvey’s response and speed of response. First a feint in four. McGarvey stepped back easily out of range and took Van Buren’s blade in a counter six, trying for the easy displacement and quick thrust for the touch. But Van Buren rode the pressure of McGarvey’s blade downward, aiming his own lightning quick thrust to McGarvey’s leading knee, barely missing before McGarvey nimbly retreated out of range.
They were at la Belle, a tie score, and neither of them wanted the double touch. They both wanted to win.
McGarvey momentarily lowered his blade in what might have been taken as an unintended invito.
Van Buren declined, retreating out of range himself. “It’s not going to be that easy this morning, Mr. M.,” he said.
Before Van Buren got the entire sentence out, McGarvey made an explosive ballestra and lunge feint to Van Buren’s sword arm just above the bell guard. Surprised, Van Buren retreated again, making what he thought would be the easy parry. But McGarvey disengaged, dropping his blade beneath Van Buren’s and coming up on the outside of his opponent’s bell guard.
Van Buren, quick as McGarvey knew he would be, parried the thrust as he retreated, but instead of coming on guard, Van Buren raised his arm slightly to start a flick.
There it was, the foil est mistake in epee.
A flick was nothing more than a deft snap of the wrist that caused the more flexible foil blade to snap like a bullwhip, the point arching gracefully over the opponent’s bell guard for the touch. An epee blade, however, was too thick and too stiff for a flick to be very effective unless the swordsman had an exceedingly strong wrist. Even so, in order to make it work the attacker sometimes cocked his sword hand slightly, leaving the under part of his wrist behind the bell guard open for just a split instant.
McGarvey brought his point in line, angulated at a deceptively slight upward angle and held his ground. Van Buren’s arm snapped forward in a powerful flick, but before his point could make the arc, his wrist made contact with McGarvey’s waiting epee tip.
Even as the green light came on, indicating McGarvey’s valid hit, and locking out the flick, Van Buren realized his mistake. He skipped backward, and immediately raised his left hand, acknowledging the hit.
McGarvey took off his mask and saluted Van Buren, who did the same. They switched their masks to the crooks of their weapon arms and shook with their bare left hands.
“You knew it was coming, didn’t you,” Van Buren said, grinning.
McGarvey nodded. “Yeah. You were concentrating so hard on the flick that you forgot about defense for just an instant.”
“I’ll remember that for the next time.”
They parted and walked to the ends of the strip where they unplugged themselves from the scoring reels, and it struck McGarvey all at once that bin Laden’s attention would be taken up with his own troubles right now. Not only his illness, but the apparent trouble he was having with the NIF. If the DI analysts were correct, bin Laden would be meeting on a daily basis with his Islamic fundamentalist pals. There would be a great deal of activity at his compound. He would be traveling again, trying to explain his position, consolidate his support, trying to get the green light to proceed.
