Jack hesitated, looked at that long, cruel thumb poised over the keypad, then slowly crouched. He laid the Glock on the catwalk floor and kicked it toward Haddad.
“Thank you,” Haddad said.
At least he was a polite lunatic.
Jack shot a glance at Sara and noticed at once that she had her game face on. She obviously had a plan of some kind, something that had occurred to her while he and Haddad were talking.
That meant, keep Haddad talking.
“So what’s the plan?” Jack asked. “You do realize they’re closing the bridge. So if you’re waiting on that tanker-”
“It’s already here, and right on schedule,” Haddad said. “They won’t turn any cars back. They’ll have to wait until they’ve cleared the bridge before they can seal it off.”
“Oh?” Jack said, looking over the rail toward the road below. “Because it looks to me like they’re already escorting the tanker back the way it came.”
Haddad frowned and swiveled his head, looking at the road. It took him a moment to realize his mistake, but by then it was too late. Sara made her move, swinging her bound hands at his face, knocking him sideways.
He fumbled the cell phone and it landed at his feet. But Jack was already in motion, leaping across the catwalk, grabbing for it. He felt it brush his fingers as his momentum knocked it spinning toward the rail.
Haddad lunged for it, but Sara threw her hands over his head and, with a grunt, yanked him toward her using her bonds as a garrote. His expression ferocious, Haddad snapped his head back, butting her face. Sara stumbled back, dazed, and he slipped from her grasp. He reached for the cell phone again but Jack was on his feet. He kicked it, sent it spinning to the opposite side of the catwalk. Haddad raced forward as it clattered against the steps.
Roaring, Haddad set out after it. Jack looked frantically for the Glock, couldn’t see it in the dark, and lunged after Haddad. He hit shoulder first. Jack had forgotten about his wound; the impact was a forceful reminder as his nerve endings exploded, sending pain down his arm and torso.
Jack couldn’t let that stop him. He dug in and continued to press the man forward, slamming Haddad into the rail. But Haddad was not an amateur. He turned as he went back, facing Jack, and brought a knee into his groin. Jack stumbled backward toward the opposite rail. The tower was slick with mist and he lost his footing. Sara screamed as Jack fell against the rail, hitting his head. Her cry kept him from losing consciousness.
Sara needed him.
But his body had had enough. It didn’t want to move.
Now Haddad was on his feet and moving toward him with feral eyes. Before he could reach Jack, Sara blindsided him, shoving him to the floor. The backpack and her bonds made it difficult for her to move and Haddad threw her off effortlessly. Then he was on his feet again, kicking her mercilessly in the head and stomach.
“Jack…”
Sara needs me.
Marshaling every scrap of his strength, Jack used the rail to pull himself up and he ran at Haddad.
Blinded by fury, by pain, Jack hit the man like a linebacker. They both went down. Climbing to his knees, Jack punched down, blow after blow, driving the man’s head against the metal of the bridge. Haddad’s hands came up defensively but Jack yelled and swatted them aside, continuing to slam his fists at that evil face, fueled by hatred for everything the man had done, everything he stood for. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Jack thought only about Sara and Copeland and Drabinsky and Jamal, thought about the havoc people like this brought to the world, used his fists to turn thought into action.
And then Haddad stopped struggling, his breath coming in bloody gurgles, his face raw and torn. But if he somehow expected Jack to be merciful, he’d picked the wrong night. Without a second thought, Jack grabbed hold of the man’s shirt and dragged him back against the rail, flopped him against it, stared at the pulped flesh and bloody wisp of a beard.
“Enjoy the virgins, asshole.”
Jack slammed his open hands hard against Haddad’s chest, the terrorist’s battered eyelids going wide with horror as he sailed over the side of the tower to the pavement five hundred feet below, his terrified screams rising into the night sky.
The fall took just three seconds. It ended with ugly abruptness.
A moment later, the wind kicked up again.
Once more, the city could breathe.
Jack staggered, dropping to one knee, and grabbed the rail for support. He heard Sara moan, and crawled over to her. Using what little energy he had left, he ripped the bonds from her wrists and unstrapped the backpack, laid it aside. He noted the location of the cell phone.
He’d get it later. Or someone would.
Right now, all he wanted to do was pull Sara into his arms and hold her as if he’d never let her go.
41
In the months that followed, the world did not miraculously change.
The good guys had won, but that didn’t necessarily mean the bad guys would be punished. Not in the way that Jack would have liked, with handcuffs and trials and lifetime-without-parole.
Instead, the rich and powerful managed to prevail, as they often do.
Despite Jack’s statements to the FBI and Homeland Security and the twenty other law enforcement agencies that seemed to be involved in the investigation, there was no hard proof to put Lawrence Soren and his cronies behind bars. And no real proof that MI6 or the British Home Office had ever been involved.
The island in the bay had been scrubbed, sanitized. The boats the men had used were MIA. Abdal al-Fida was a suicide, Bob Copeland was listed as an “accidental death,” and Jamal Thomas was an OD. There were no e-mails, no enhanced photos, there was nothing even remotely incriminating on the computers of Dave Karras or Faisal al-Jubeir. Someone had gotten to the machines and washed them, too. Bribes had been paid to the right officials.
There was only the word of Jack and Sara.
And that, unfortunately, was not enough.
The only good news was that the San Francisco District Attorney dropped the charges against the Constitutional Defense Brigade, citing “lack of evidence.” In time-enough time for the FBI to save face-the car bomb was added to the charges against the small band of Muslim extremists, led by Hassan Haddad, who had tried and failed to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.
There was no mention of the tanker and the hydrazine-based rocket fuel that would have been used as an accelerant. Jack hadn’t told Forsyth the worst of it. The destruction of the bridge was a visual symbol to show the world, to encourage other terrorists to strike. On the ground, though-that was where the real disaster would have occurred. He and Tony had done some rough calculations: given the speed and direction of the wind, the heat from that fire would have risen high enough to blanket all of the San Francisco and Oakland regions with lethal levels of radiation from the exploded nuke. There would have been thousands of deaths within days, tens of thousands within weeks, over a million within a month-many of those among people who would have been needed to keep the infrastructure from collapsing. Doctors, police, workers at power plants and sewage centers. The environment would have become so toxic that rescue workers couldn’t have gotten into the area, and poisoned food and water would have added exponentially to the death toll. Airdrops of fresh supplies would have led to riots, more death. Silicon Valley would have been ravaged, all but destroying the U.S. computer industry.
Fortunately, Tony, Doc, and the other members of the team survived their wounds. After calling Jack, Doc had phoned in a 911 then gone back to the bunker to minister to the others. He stopped the bleeding as best he could and propped them in such a way as to limit the flow of blood toward the wounds. Given everything else that was going on it was morning before help arrived; Doc had gone back out the tunnel to wait for them.