have to remind myself he’s older than God.”
“You kiddin’ me?” Doc said. “Who do you think raised the Almighty?”
“So what’s the answer?” Jack asked impatiently.
Doc stopped picking his teeth, dropped the matchbook into his shirt pocket, and got to his feet.
“I started thinking about that little headquarters they appropriated in the bay,” he said. “Wickham told you they picked it because it was isolated.”
“Yeah. So?” Jack said.
“Plenty of places in the city are isolated, secure, convenient, ” he said. “That thing’s a pain in the ass to get to, and there’s always the chance a Coast Guard patrol will stop you, especially with the President coming to town-”
“Cold son of a bitch, too,” Goldman observed.
“No,” Doc went on. “There had to be another reason they picked it.”
“ What reason?” Max asked.
Doc replied, “Location, location, location.” He waited a moment to let that sink in. “I called a buddy at the National Reconnaissance Office. They’ve got a MATS-Maritime Anomalous Traffic Satellite-that flags divergence from normal patterns in the nation’s major waterways. Sort of like NORAD for shipping. All that stuff we’re supposedly not doing to protect our ports? We are.”
“Draw your enemy out by pretending not to be watching,” Jack said.
“Exactly,” Doc told him. “I had him look at the images from that region. He said there’s been very limited nighttime activity along the mainland coast near the island. The infrared images did not raise any alarms at the NRO because it failed to fit any standard danger profiles: it wasn’t adjacent to a populated center, only small vessels came and went, and it stopped.”
“Someone knew what they could get away with,” Jack suggested.
“Obviously,” Doc said. “But it got me poking around that region. And I remembered something. After the Japs struck Pearl Harbor, California was considered a prime target. Not only that, our armed forces relied heavily on munitions and other cargo being shipped out of the bay, so a lot of the existing bunkers along our coastline were fortified and several new facilities were built. Some of those newer bunkers were located under park land.”
“Lincoln Park?” Max asked.
Doc nodded. “Officially, nobody knows the exact locations. This was all very top secret. But years after the war was over, several of these installations were discovered and explored by thrill seekers, until the government went to considerable expense and trouble in the seventies to seal them all off once and for all.”
“I’m a San Francisco native,” Karras said. “So why don’t I know about this?”
“Because you aren’t supposed to. Nobody is. The military has been operating on the theory that they never know when these bunkers might be of use again, so they’ve kept a lid on their existence. After the tunnels were sealed off and the decades went by they became an urban legend.”
“Only this one turns out to be true,” Tony said.
Doc nodded. “A few years back, a small group of urban explorers discovered a way into the Lincoln Park bunker, purely by accident. Nature has a way of shifting the earth and one of them found a hole in the ground and got curious.”
“And they might not be the only ones who know about it,” Max said.
“You know how things travel on the Internet these days,” Tony said. “If some enterprising terrorist wanted to explore the situation, he might-for love or money-find someone willing to show him one of our city’s biggest secrets.”
“Hassan Haddad,” Jack said.
“And you’re sure there’s one of these underground bunkers in Lincoln Park?” Karras asked.
“Absolutely,” Doc told him. “And a section of it that leads straight to the Legion of Honor.”
“How do you know all this?” Max asked.
Doc grinned. “Because, my dear, I’ve seen it firsthand. I used to work in those tunnels.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“It was my first deployment, straight out of boot camp, about a year before they closed the whole operation down. That’s why I stayed here-fell in love with the city. I must’ve traveled the length of those bunkers a thousand times. And I can tell you, they aren’t just limited to Lincoln Park and the Legion of Honor.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked.
“They run all the way to the Golden Gate Bridge. It’s like an express highway system down there, but without the traffic.”
“Okay, so we know of a possible way into the building,” Jack said.
“Not possible,” Doc told him. “Probable. The Legion of Honor was built back in nineteen twenty-four.” He gestured to Karass and pointed to the blueprint on-screen. “Show me the subbasement on that thing.”
Karass did as he was told and the blueprint came up on the screen. Doc pointed to it. “Back in my day, there was a way into the tunnels by an elevator located in this subbasement right about here. They sealed that off after the tunnels were closed but there was a special hatch built close by, in case the elevator wasn’t working.” He shifted his finger to point out the location of the hatch. “It’s a few years since I’ve been down in that basement, but the last time I saw that hatch it was secured by a simple chain and padlock.”
“Wouldn’t the Secret Service know about this?” Tony asked.
“No doubt they would and they’d have a man guarding it,” Doc said. “But if these savages have a friend on the inside, who’s to say he couldn’t neutralize the agent and open the hatch?”
“Jesus,” Max said. “Can’t we just call in a bomb scare?”
“With what proof?” Jack said. “They get a hundred of those a day, and they undoubtedly do routine sweeps.”
“So what’s the solution?” Karras asked.
Tony said, “A two-pronged attack. Doc has a friend he thinks can give him a pretty good idea where the exterior entry point to the bunkers is. I say we wait for cover of darkness then go and see what we find.”
“And what’s the second prong?” Jack asked.
“You and me,” Tony said, then reached into his pocket and took out the VIP invitation to the gala that Danny Pescatori had snagged for him. “Better break out your tuxedo, brother. We’re gonna be rubbing shoulders with the President tonight.”
36
Hassan Haddad sat at a corner table in the Bilal cafe, savoring some of the best meat and potato curry he’d had in months, when the man he was waiting for finally arrived.
It was well past the hour of their appointment, and Haddad had considered a number of times simply getting up and walking away. But as he waited, quietly sipping hot tea, the spicy smell of the curry kept wafting in from the kitchen and he knew he couldn’t leave this place until he’d at least sampled it.
He wasn’t disappointed.
This meeting had not been Haddad’s idea. He had been going about his business these last two days, making preparations as needed, procuring Chilikov’s device from the shipping yards, and selecting seven men out of a field of twenty who he thought would best serve Allah.
Many of Allah’s soldiers showed great confidence when a mission was proposed, but the moment it became a reality some found their confidence start to wane, and Haddad had to know who he could and could not rely on to carry out his orders. The last thing he needed was another Abdal al-Fida on his hands.
Haddad had interviewed each of the twenty, looking for any signs of regret or weakness or fear, and had relied on his instincts to choose the men he needed. All of his preparations had been made and his men were now in position, and everything was going as planned-until he received an unexpected phone call that morning on his pay-as-you-go cell phone.
Only one person knew its number.
“ Assalamu alaikum, my friend,” the familiar old voice said.
