But as he continued to watch the incoming craft, its speed didn’t waver. When it reached the mouth of the bay and proceeded to motor toward the harbor at high throttle, Tanner nudged Liam, who had the binoculars trained on the president’s yacht.
“Take a look at the speedboat.”
Liam looked up from the glasses and immediately spotted the approaching watercraft. He lined up his spyglasses and focused the optics on the moving target. “Jet boat,” he observed, referencing a type of boat that used an unconventional engine to suck water in and expel it in order to provide high thrust, similar to a waverunner engine, but scaled up. “Only one man aboard. Don’t see any weapons.”
“Okay. Stay with him.” Tanner had the bird’s eye view of the boat’s overall direction relative to the president’s boat and the harbor, while Liam monitored activity onboard. They continued to observe in this manner for another minute, until it became clear to Tanner that something was wrong.
“I think we may have a problem, Liam. This boat’s not slowing down.”
“Oh crap!”
“What is it?”
“The pilot just put a plastic tank up onto the bow.”
Tanner’s heart sank. If it contained a liquid STX solution, it would likely shatter on impact if the boat hit anything. Yet as he watched, the swift boat veered sharply away from the Lincoln.
“Heading away from the target,” Tanner stated for Liam, who was still glued to the binoculars.
“Where to?”
Tanner assessed the view below. After the president’s yacht, he didn’t see an obvious target for the speeding boat. Was it possible that the pilot of the fast vessel was simply a recreational boater who had lost control of his craft — mechanical problems — the tank containing only extra fuel or perhaps even just water?
But then his gaze tracked inwards, all the way to shore, extrapolating the vessel’s current course. If it didn’t deviate from the heading it was on now, the boat would run into the seawall in front of a busy waterfront walkway, lined with shops and restaurants.
Damn! Tanner felt helpless as he clutched his fists. They’d been so worried about the president that they hadn’t considered the general populace, like a football team concentrating all of their defense on covering the star receiver, and meanwhile the ball is handed off to a no-name running back with a clear path to the end zone. He hadn’t known what exactly they were expecting, but he didn’t think the attack would be so open, so brazen. If that’s in fact what this was.
“Ooooh!” Liam sucked in his breath. “He just ran down a paddle-boarder!”
“Accident?”
“Don’t think so. Even if for some reason you couldn’t shut down the boat’s power, you could still steer it out of the way. What are the chances that he’s lost both the ability to shut off the engine and the steering cable broke?”
“About the same as us being able to stop that boat from hitting whatever it’s going to hit.”
FORTY-TWO
They witnessed the speedboat convert itself into a fireball. Impacting at what must have been full throttle into a stone wall — about sixty miles-per-hour — the explosion was instant and terrifying to behold. Tanner wondered what was in that tank on the bow. Then, with a sickening realization, he understood why it had been perched atop the boat, unsecured.
When the vessel hit the wall, the tank of liquid would have shot forward with the sudden loss of forward momentum. This motion would send it over the seawall and onto the crowded oceanfront walk. There, it would shatter on impact, releasing a deadly splash of STX. Not as effective as an aerosol mist, but certainly deadly to those in close range.
Tanner pondered this. If it was an STX attack, why the shift in dispersal method? The football stadium attack had utilized a mister…Waikiki beach — same. The methods of disseminating the aerosol were different, but they were definitely mist. Here, the liquid in the tank would only be able to affect anyone who was splashed by it, who breathed in the fine droplets. Still, it was a formidable threat, but the deviation from past protocols troubled Tanner. In his experience working Counter-terrorism, once a group succeeded in creating a death toll, they pursued that method, perhaps refining it, but never abandoning it until they were neutralized.
So why would Hofstad want to go through all the risk and expense of carrying out a terror strike only to take out a handful of victims at best, when they’ve been striking en masse? Especially when the POTUS was here. Simply to cause mayhem in the presence of the president in his homeland? But surely they would try to get to him even with a high probability of failure, given the significant degree of resources devoted to protecting President Carmichael on his yacht. Those resources would make it doubly likely that this small boat attack would be contained…
Tanner felt a surge of adrenaline as the realization struck. He slapped Liam on the shoulder to get his attention away from the binoculars.
“Liam! We have to get down there!”
The ex-SEAL tore away the glasses from the view of the walkway on fire.” What — why?”
“What if this—” He pointed down at the fiery fiasco below—” — is only a distraction for the main event?”
Slowly and with mounting awareness, Liam raised the binoculars to his face and aimed them in the direction of the Lincoln.
Tanner continued. “While emergency responders are focused on this…”
Liam nodded. “The Lincoln is more vulnerable. But I don’t see any unusual activity on board yet. The party looks like it’s in full swing,” he added, letting the binoculars hang around his neck. “What’s our best bet for helping once we’re down there? We won’t have this bird’s eye view anymore.”
“Good point. But I think it’s safe to say that we want to focus on the yacht. If we can rent a powerboat, we can get out on the bay and be able to respond in short order.”
Liam made one more scan of the yacht and the bay with his binoculars, then stood up.
They made their way through the park, walking against the flow of heavy foot traffic as people rushed to the bluffs to get a look at the explosion they heard.
“I feel like a salmon swimming upstream.” Liam said, shouldering past a mother towing twins who both gnawed on blue cotton candy.
They could hear people speculating that there had been an explosion or maybe a bomb. The president is here! We’re under attack! A local news reporter-cameraman team ran toward the bluff.
Tanner and Liam walked purposefully, but did not run, out of the park. They didn’t want to alarm anyone, nor did they wish to tip their hand that they had something to accomplish. Once they cleared the seafood festival the going became easier. They moved down the incline to the waterfront area, only to find that a barricade had already been put up, detouring people away from the section that had been set ablaze. It was from here that they got their first good look at the devastation.
They could heard screams of pain — agony. They heard a man wailing, “What’s happening to her?” over and over again. A line of police officers kept repeating that they had no information at this time except to stay clear of the area. They could hear sirens as fire trucks raced in to battle the blaze. The fuel-fed fire raged uncontested.