Either that or he was busy stalling them. If that were the case he’d never leave the compound. He would stay put, letting the Islamic liberation fighters come to him. If he was stalling for time the traffic to his compound would be one-way.
“I said that I have to drive back to the Farm this afternoon,” Van Buren said next to him.
McGarvey turned around. “Sorry, I guess I was woolgathering. What’s happening down there?”
“Summer session. Liz is going with me for a few days, if you can spare her. She has some field experience that I’d like her to share with the class.” Van Buren grinned. “The screwups along with the good stuff.”
“If she thinks that she can spare the time, then go ahead,” McGarvey said. “She’s a handful, isn’t she?”
“That she is.”
“Don’t underestimate her, Todd.” McGarvey gave him a hard stare, playing his role as father now. “She’s my daughter, don’t forget it.”
Van Buren suddenly got very serious. “No, sir,” he said.
McGarvey clapped him on the shoulder. “Save the flick for foil, unless you want to use the preparation as an invito.”
“You would have found another weakness, wouldn’t you, sir?”
“I would have looked for one,” McGarvey agreed. He gathered up his equipment and went into the locker room to take a shower and change clothes while Van Buren put away the scoring machine. He was finished in ten minutes and on his way up to Rencke’s office on the third floor, no longer depressed. He had the bit in his teeth now.
“I want to see everything we’ve come up with on bin Laden’s Khartoum compound over the past two months,” he said, coming down the narrow aisle between computer equipment.
Rencke looked up from his monitor and broke out into a big smile. “Just what the docs ordered, beating the kids at something they do good. It’s that thing he does with the flick, isn’t it?” “How the hell did you know about that?”
Rencke scooted his chair to an adjacent monitor and brought up a series of stop action frames on a split screen; one side showing the bout that McGarvey and Van Buren had just finished, and the other showing stick figures fighting the same bout, their every action and reaction analyzed and tagged with vector diagrams. “When the boss is in the dumper everybody wants to know what to do. So I got elected.”
“Don’t ever take up fencing, Otto.”
“Have someone coming at me with sharp, pointy objects? Not a chance, Mac.” Rencke scooted back to his primary monitor, cleared the screen and brought up a satellite view of bin Laden’s Khartoum compound. There were several Mercedes and three Humvees parked inside the gates, but there was no sign of people. “Take a look at this. We just got our satellite back.”
“Is he still there?”
“There’s activity, so I suspect he’s there.” Rencke looked up. “Are we thinking about another cruise missile strike? There’s a children’s hospital right behind it, and a Catholic school next door. Great propaganda stuff.”
“No missiles. I want to know about the traffic patterns over the past couple of months. Has bin Laden or anyone else from the compound been going visiting, or has all the traffic been incoming?”
“Are you talking about the DI report this morning?”
“It got me thinking that bin Laden might be stalling for time.”
“It would help explain why there’s been only the one phone call between bin Laden and Bahmad. If they were sticking to their original timetable, bin Laden wouldn’t have to do anything except lie around biding his time until it happened.”
“Something like that,” McGarvey said.
“But Bahmad might have already left,” Rencke suggested. “Maybe he was here just long enough to set everything into motion. There were only two guys in the van at Chevy Chase that day. Both of them were bin Laden’s people, we know at least that much. If Bahmad had wanted to come after Liz he would have been there himself. Instead he just sends the two goons. He could be gone.”
“We never found the gun that killed Mike Larsen,” McGarvey said. “It could mean that there was a third person in the van. Somebody that nobody saw.”
Rencke stared at the computer screen for a long time. “There’s probably a couple of thousand satellite photographs of the compound over the past sixty days, I’ll check them all. But we need their timetable. And we need it right now.” Rencke looked up again, his eyes round, his face serious. “This weekend the President’s daughter is going to take part in the International Special Olympics in San Francisco. If the bomb went off there it’d sure as hell make a big statement.”
“It’s crazy,” McGarvey said.
“You could say that, but this President’s not gonna back down for anything. You gotta admire him just a little.”
“But he’s putting his own daughter at risk.”
“And himself too,” Rencke said. “He’s doing the opening ceremonies.”
“Okay, I want everything you’ve got on the games ASAP. We’ll take another look at them.”
“All right. But we’ve got one thing going for us though. A bunch of those people are Muslims. He might not want to kill his own people.”
“That didn’t stop him in Riyadh or Africa,” McGarvey shot back sharply. “If San Francisco is their target the bomb is already there, and so is Bahmad.” He couldn’t believe he had missed it. Where was his head? “I’ll get our people started, and then send the heads-up to the Bureau. In the meantime I’ll try to convince the general to talk some sense into the President.”
“What about Liz?”
“She’s supposed to go down to the Farm with Van Buren this afternoon, but I’m going to keep her here. I’m calling a staff meeting at two and I want everything you can come up with on bin Laden by then. I want to know if he’s still there, I want to know if he’s done any traveling over the past two months, and I want to know who’s come to see him.”
“Are you going after him?”
“Let’s take care of this weekend first. If we can get to Monday in one piece we’ll take the next step.” McGarvey’s eyes narrowed. “I’m tired of screwing around, Otto. One way or the other we will deal with bin Laden once and for all. He’s fucked with us for the last time.”
“This could be a nightmare,” the FBI’s San Francisco Special Agent in Charge Charles Fellman said. It was very windy on the Golden Gate Bridge, and some of his words were blown away, but everyone knew what he was saying, and everybody agreed.
“It’s our job to see that it doesn’t get that far,” Jay Villiard replied. He was a short, intense man who had been a gold shield detective in Manhattan’s Midtown precinct until going to work for the U.S. Secret Service. He was an advance man for major presidential trips. His job was to convince the local law enforcement agencies to do things his way. “Tried and tested, ladies and gentlemen, tried and tested,” he liked to say in response to objections. “The Coast Guard has sent the Notice to Mariners on the five-mile bridge restrictions. But what about ferry traffic?” Beth Oreck asked. She headed the San Francisco Harbor Authority.
“All traffic.”
Beth was a large-boned woman with a broad face. She looked at him over the glasses perched on the end of her nose. “In that case we have a problem.”
Villiard focused on her. “Yes?”
“Pilot boats. They take the harbor pilots out to incoming ships. If they’re held in port we won’t be able to start getting shipping back to normal for three or four hours after the restriction is lifted.”
“Send the pilots out before the restriction takes effect. They can wait aboard their assigned ships until the bridge is cleared.” Villiard waited only a moment for any further objections from her before he looked up at the bridge towers that soared 746 feet above the water. “I want people up there watching the roadway from both directions.”
“We’re already on it,” David Rogan assured Villiard. He was chief of the San Francisco Police Antiterrorism Unit. “I’m putting pairs of my SWAT teams guys on each side of the roadway, on both sides of the bridge.”
“I agree,” Villiard said. “The bridge will be searched Friday night twelve hours before the event, and again
