Joshua`s Hammer (48 page)

"Why are they taking the risk? That's what I don't get. The ship and our cargo could be impounded."

"Obviously the company thinks it's worth it. Hell, even if we deliver the chopper the new owners will never get it registered with the FAA. Not without the proper documents. Does that make any sense to you?"

"I hadn't thought of that," Panagiotopolous said. He stared at the machine. It was a small helicopter, capable of carrying only the pilot and three passengers. But it was apparently in serviceable condition. According to Schumatz, who had supervised its loading, there was even fuel in the tank. Another thought struck him. "There's plenty of clearance for the rotors. Someone could pull the lines free and take off, couldn't they?"

Schumatz's eyes narrowed. "What are you getting at?"

"Does anybody aboard know how to fly one of those things?"

"I don't. Do you?"

Panagiotopolous shook his head thoughtfully. Something wasn't right. It wasn't adding up. There was some element that he was missing.

First Officer Green came from the bridge with a message flimsy. "We just received this," he said, handing it to the captain.

"Thank you," Panagiotopolous said. "Do you know how to fly a helicopter, by any chance, Mr. Green?"

Green's face brightened. "As a matter of fact I do, sir. The company has a couple of Bell Rangers, which I've used."

"Could you fly that one?" the captain asked, indicating the Cuban helicopter on the aft deck.

"They all fly pretty much the same, so I suppose so. But I took a look at it when it came aboard, and it's a piece of junk. Doesn't have much of a range, either, so I wouldn't get very far."

"Anyone else aboard know how to fly one of those things?"

Green shook his head. "I don't think so, Captain. They cost a ton of money to maintain, let alone fly, and I 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."

CIA Headquarters

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.

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."