Lang saw it, and he backpedaled. “We didn’t mean it that way, sir.”
“If I were president of California that indeed would be good news. But of course that’s not the case. I’m President of the entire United States, which includes New York City, which is, I think you’re telling me, the target for the largest terrorist attack ever planned in all of recorded history.”
“I see your point, Mr. President,” Kolesnik said. He was a professional, not a politician, so he didn’t back off. “The Bureau and the CIA are handling the investigation on the East Coast. In the meantime my job is to protect you and your family. From my standpoint learning that New York City may be the target rather than the Special Olympics is good news.”
The President’s stomach was sour. Breakfast was over, and his day was about to begin. In situations like these he sometimes asked himself that if he knew then what he knew now, would he have quit campaigning for the White House and gone home. The answer was of course no. Most of the time the job was interesting; not much different than being the CEO of a very large and complicated corporation. But at other times, like now, he felt like a father driving a car, his family asleep, trusting him to do a good job in a blizzard at night on a very dangerous road. His decisions could mean life or death. And he was completely alone to make them.
McGarvey and Dick Yemm took the CIA’s Gulfstream bizjet to La Guardia From there they choppered across to the West Thirtieth Street Heliport near the Penn Central Yards. A car was waiting for them, and Yemm drove him to the marina. He had to show his credentials to a cop at the Papa’s Fancy boarding ladder before he was allowed to go aboard. Yemm waited on the dock.
The yacht was a mess. The main saloon had been all but dismantled; the furniture had been cut apart; the bar and cabinets reduced to pieces; ceiling tiles removed, wall panels taken off and set aside and the carpeting and padding pulled up to show the bare metal of the deck.
“We didn’t find a thing,” a man in shirtsleeves said coming from the forward passageway. He looked like a ward politician, or a Teamsters boss. Tough and gnarly. “You McGarvey?”
“Yeah,” McGarvey said. They shook hands.
“I’m Kevin O’Brien, FBI Counterespionage. Mr. Rudolph said you wanted to come up and take a look.” He glanced around the saloon and shrugged. “We took it down to bare metal and didn’t find a thing other than what’s on the amended police report, so I sent everybody home.”
“No radiation?”
O’Brien shook his head. “Nada. That would have been a bad sign anyway. Would have meant that the device was leaking, which would have given us a whole host of other problems.”
McGarvey pegged O’Brien as a former street cop. Probably from right here in New York. He’d bea good man to have at your back in a crisis. “There was supposed to be an aluminum case here. Any sign of it?”
“We found some indentations on the carpet beside the bed in the master suite. Traces of aluminum oxide. It could have contained the device. The package was just about large enough, and our forensics people estimated it weighed between fifty and eighty pounds, from the depth of the indentations.” O’Brien shrugged again. “Makes you wonder though, just how cool and collected the sonofabitch would have to be in order to lie down and go to sleep next to a nuclear weapon.”
“If he’s who we think he is, he’s cool enough to push the button,” McGarvey said. This had been a waste of time after all. He was picking up no sense whatsoever that Bahmad was ever here, let alone why he chose a yacht as his base of operations. Nor was he any further ahead in trying to work out the man’s tradecraft.
“Well, he’s had a two-day head start and he left nothing behind. He could be just about anywhere.”
McGarvey started to turn away when what the FBI Counterespionage agent just said struck him. Bahmad didn’t have a two-day head start. He had an eight-week head start. The bomb was never aboard the yacht. There was no reason for it to be here. The aluminum case contained Bahmad’s equipment for the strike: weapons, explosives, maybe lock picking sets and surveillance devices. Things that he might need in order to set up the attack and then get away afterward. Maybe a remote detonator for the bomb.
“Did you find any weapons?”
“A Ruger Mini-14 in stainless and a couple of Beretta 9mm pistols in the captain’s quarters. A couple of boxes of ammunition. About what you’d expect to find on a boat like this.”
“No explosives?”
“You mean like Semtex?” O’Brien shook his head. “Nada.”
“Was the captain armed?”
“He had nothing on him when the gold shields showed up.”
“Was he carrying any keys?”
“He had a key to get in, and the key locker in his cabin was open.”
“The bulk of his fingerprints were found in the master stateroom?”
“That’s right,” O’Brien said. “What are you getting at, Mr. McGarvey?”
“I think that the captain was ordered to search the master stateroom. Probably for the aluminum case.”
“Right. And this guy kills him because of it.”
“Maybe,” McGarvey said. “Or maybe the captain had already gotten rid of it and was killed to keep his mouth shut. Get a diver over here, I want to find out what’s at the bottom of this slip.”
Southwest of San Diego They had turned north around dawn and were making fifteen knots on their new course of 340 degrees which would close slowly with the U.S. mainland when the Coast Guard helicopter came at them out of the sun.
Bahmad was in the chartroom going through the ship’s documents and memorizing the captain’s papers and company orders when Green came to the doorway. “It’s the god damned Coast Guard,” he said, out of breath. Bahmad looked up calmly. Green was pale.
“Have they attempted to make contact with us? Is it a ship?”
“It’s a helicopter, a Sea King, and it’s heading right at us.”
Bahmad put down the dividers and followed Green onto the bridge. The helicopter was at about eye level just off to the starboard and pacing them. Bahmad found that he wasn’t surprised by its presence, nor was he. going to allow himself to become distressed. If the Coast Guard was on a drug interdiction mission they would have sent a cutter with a boarding party, but there were no ships on the radar. He was going to play it cool for now because he had no other choice. If the Coast Guard actually put someone aboard the mission would be over.
Bahmad picked up the VHP radio handset and keyed it. “Good morning, Coast Guard, this is the Margo. Would you care to come aboard for some fresh coffee and doughnuts?”
“Thanks for the invite Margo, but it’d be a little tough setting down. Switch to twenty-two and identify yourself please, sir.”
Bahmad switched from channel 16 to the Coast Guard frequency. “I’m George Panagiotopolous, the master.”
“What is your cargo and destination, sir?”
“We’re carrying twenty-seven containers of Italian tile, fifteen containers of teak furniture, three hundred seventeen containers of Nike shoes, and the remainder, four hundred eighteen containers of marine life rafts, plus one helicopter on the afterdeck bound for San Francisco.”
“Looks like a Russian chopper.”
“Sorry, I don’t know a thing about such machines, except that this one is inoperable and it’s heading for a museum.”
“How many POBs, skipper?”
Bahmad held his hand over the mouthpiece and gave Green a questioning look.
“Persons-on-board,” Green whispered.
Bahmad turned back to the radio. “In addition to myself, we are sixteen men and officers, no passengers.”
“When was your last course or speed change?”
“About thirty-six hours ago,” Bahmad said. “What brings you gentlemen all the way out here this fine morning?” If they were looking for drugs they would have already asked the Margo to heave to.
“We received a possible distress call last night about seventy miles southwest of here. Did you pick up
