The three ran onto the promenade. They were midway when they realized the hopelessness of their position. All of the restaurants faced toward the west, and the pedestrian walkway was on the west side. There was no public promenade behind the restaurants.
“Richard, it’s a fucking bridge,” snapped Zak, ignoring the tourists and the liveliness of the place. “All they need to do is block both ends.”
“They’ve already done that, Zak.” Richard pointed to red-and-blue flashing lights at the south end of the promenade. Many of the restaurants had roof-level patios, and they were on one of them. “North end, south end. We’re trapped.”
“Okay, Richard. They are going to shoot to kill. If Kumar here can change the world balance of power just by opening his mouth—”
“I know,” said Richard. “Any suggestions, Kumar?”
“We need to be on the south end of this bridge, and about half a mile along the shore. That is where the KDDE yards begin.”
“I know,” said Zak. “How do we get there?”
“Zak, I think I know how they found us,” Richard said. “Your arm has some kind of GPS transmitter embedded in it. Has to in order to be able to connect to a military-grade comm-link. They’ve found us by tracking you.”
“That means we jump, guys,” said Zak, looking at the water thirty feet below them. “The water will short out the GPS transmitter, if that’s what it is they’re tracking. The water will short out any electronic gizmos in the arm. They will lose the blip on their cell phones.”
“As if they need a blip to catch—”
“Behind here,” said Richard, pointing to a narrow walkway behind one of the restaurants and the eastern face of the bridge. “Down here, jump. Now. Get under the bridge.” Kumar was hesitant, but Richard swept him up in one arm and jumped.
The water was not cold, and Richard and Kumar were able swimmers. Zak, robbed of a forearm, was able to make do. Richard shooed Zak and Kumar underneath the Port Grand Promenade and out of sight. Away from the jangle and lights of the main promenade, no one had witnessed the move. Richard’s prediction was correct—as soon as Zak’s arm hit the water, much of the internal circuitry, including the GPS transmitter, fried. Zak dropped off the radar screen.
“We’ve got to get under the railway bridge,” Richard said. “You can see from here that the pylons are much closer together. They might not think of looking there first.” The promenade was, in fact, the middle of a cluster of three bridges: the eastern bridge being the Native Jetty Bridge, which was the normal traffic viaduct from one side of the harbor to the other; the center bridge was the Port Grand itself; and the western bridge was a railway trestle with spaces to permit smaller seafaring traffic passage.
“We have no chance, Rich,” said Zak, shaking his head and wiping the salt water out of his eyes. “There are a thousand cops on the Port Grand, and it won’t take them long to figure out we’re down here.”
“We have one thing in our favor. That blip on everyone’s cell phone or computer screen just disappeared. That will confuse them. That might give us a couple of minutes. Now we’re fifty feet from the railway bridge. We’ve been through worse than this. Let’s go.”
The three were able to move between the piers and piles so as to maneuver underneath the promenade to its western side, and then make their way to the railway bridge. This bridge rested on a forest of steel columns and cross members that in turn rested on twenty steel and concrete piers that spanned the shallow inner Karachi Harbor. There were many cross members and further columns and supports between a complex substructure of piers and abutments. The whole structure consisted of a series of low trestles, and at high tide, the foundation of the superstructure was only three or four feet above the water’s surface. Fortunately it was high tide. The low support sills rested on enormous wide-flange H beams that stretched from one concrete pier to the next. Each flange was some two feet wide and provided a lane along which an individual, crawling on elbows and knees, could negotiate the bridge with the only obstacles being the various cross members and the piers themselves. Kumar was able to scamper around each steel obstacle as though he were a fifteen-year-old; Richard was somewhat more awkward but was able to circumnavigate the various sills, diagonals, and other components of the long and complex trestle. Zak, with his impaired balance and absence of a forearm, had much more difficulty, but he was also able to move from sill to sill and pier to pier.
Within minutes of the three making the leap, the Port Grand was shut down and police began to search from both ends toward the middle. Some witnesses thought they had seen someone jump or fall, but it took another fifteen minutes to notify the Coast Guard and harbor patrol, and fifteen minutes after that for a cutter to be dispatched to the three bridges area. By then Richard and his crew had reached the south side of the harbor. Various watercraft were brought in, but the three fugitives stood just minutes ahead of the search.
Soaking wet, pig-filthy, and covered with slime, Zak turned to Richard. “I think being shot was the preferable solution,” he grumbled.
Richard shook his head. “You Air Force guys always were such
