Shahin scowled at their slow, snail-like pace. As their local contact, Zadi had been responsible for scouting this section of their route. But nothing in the older man’s reports had fully prepared him for this halting procession of luxury sedans, sports cars, and minivans. It was grotesque an evil display of wasted wealth and power. Though a child on foot would arrive in San Francisco sooner, not one of these decadent, arrogant Americans could bear the thought of parting with his prized automobile.
Inside the Iranian, contempt warred briefly with envy. His scowl grew deeper. These people worshipped their creations of steel, chrome, fiberglass, and rubber above all other things above even God Himself.
So be it, Shahin thought with grim finality. The HizbAllah would teach these idolaters a harsh lesson a lesson scrawled in fire and blood. His dark eyes settled on the gasoline tanker truck up ahead. “How much further?”
“Two kilometers. Perhaps less,” Zadi answered. He cleared his throat nervously. “The last exit before the bridge is very near.”
Shahin nodded, ignoring the fear in his companion’s voice. The old man would have to hold his cowardice at bay a while longer.
He leaned forward to get a better look at their surroundings. The steep hillsides of the Marin Headlands rose to the west black masses still more felt than seen through the last remnants of night and fog. To the east, the ground fell away into the dark waters of San Francisco Bay. Distant lights twinkled along the eastern horizon, slowly fading as the sky paled before the rising sun. Ahead to the south, the Golden Gate Bridge’s massive towers and suspension cables were already visible, rising out of the mists.
Inside a sleek black-and-white cruiser parked just off Highway 101, California Highway Patrol Offficer Steve Dwyer sat sipping the last cup of coffee from his thermos, studying the cars streaming past him through bleary eyes. He yawned, trying to get some oxygen into his bloodstream. After a long shift spent scouting for drunks, joyriders, and other lowlifes, the steady crackle of voices over his radio and the lukewarm coffee were just about the only things keeping him awake, Dwyer stifled another jaw-cracking yawn and ran a hand over his scalp, frowning when his fingers along skin where only months before there had been hair. This god damned job was getting to him, he thought. Hell, he was only thirty-two way too young to be going bald. Maybe he could put in a stress claim and get the department health plan to cough up for some of that Rogaine stuff before he started hearing Kojak jokes and finding lollipops taped to his locker.
The sight of a gasoline tanker mixed in with the traffic streaming past him brought the CHP officer fully awake. For safety reasons, tankers and other carriers of hazardous materials were banned from the bridge and its approaches during rush hour. Everybody knew that, didn’t they? For damned sure, every trucker who wanted to keep his license knew that. Everybody except this idiot, obviously.
Dwyer plucked his radio mike off the dashboard. “Dispatch, this is Five-Two. I have a HazMat rig trying to cross the Gate.” He squinted into the slowly growing dawn. “Plate number is Delta, Tango, Two, Nine, Four, Five, Three. I’m making the stop now.”
With its lights flashing, the CHP cruiser pulled onto the highway.
Shahin cursed as the American police car suddenly slid in right behind Nadhir’s truck. The Iranian bent down to tear open the gym bag between his feet. He tugged a Czech-made Skorpion machine pistol out of the bag and checked its twenty-round clip. Satisfied, he flipped the weapon’s folding wire stock into place and looked up. “firing that close to that police car!”
When Zadi hesitated, the Iranian lifted the Skorpion’s muzzle, aiming it casually at the older man’s stomach. His eyes were cold. “Do it,” he said softly.
Horrified, Haydar Zadi swerved left into the next lane and accelerated. Horns blared in outrage behind them.
Shahin ignored the noise, his eyes fixed on the patrol car still trying to pull Nadhir off the road. He could hear the policeman using his loudspeaker now. That was a wasted effort, he knew. The younger Iranian didn’t speak or understand any English.
Weaving slightly under Zadi’s unsteady hands, the Nissan drifted up alongside the black-and-white police cruiser. Still pinned by heavy traffic, neither vehicle was moving more than twenty kilometers an hour. Shahin held his breath, waiting for the right moment. Closer. Closer. Now.
The two cars were less than two meters apart.
He poked the machine pistol above the door frame, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger.
The Skorpion stuttered wildly, bucking upward in Shahin’s hands as he emptied a full magazine into the other vehicle at point-blank range. Sparks flew off torn metal, and glass shattered, smashed into a thousand fragments by the hail of gunfire. Blood fountained across the police car’s dashboard. Still rolling forward, the black-and-white slowly veered off the highway, spun around until it bounced into the hillside, and came to rest with its lights still flashing.
Inside the Nissan, Zadi flinched, panicked by the sudden deafening noise. He yanked the steering wheel left again and then back hard right, narrowly missing another car. More horns sounded angrily behind and all around them.
“Fool!” Shahin snarled. He glimpsed a road sign ahead and off to the right. They were practically right on top of the last exit before the bridge itself. They had done their part. They had brought Ibrahim Nadhir safely to the brink of Paradise. Now it was time to pull away to live and fight and on another day. He grabbed Zadi’s shoulder and pointed. “There! The exit! Go! Go!”
Pale and shaking harder than ever, the older man obeyed. He jammed his foot down hard on the gas pedal. The Nissan sped off the freeway and flashed into an intersection without stopping. But they were moving too fast to make the turn that would have taken them back onto 101 heading north. Instead, Zadi skidded left, turning onto a small, two-lane road that snaked around and up the Marin Headlands, climbing ever higher along the sheer bluffs overlooking the Golden Gate and the Pacific Ocean.
Shahin whirled in his seat, straining to look through the Nissan’s rear window. Behind them, the gasoline tanker continued straight on down the highway. It roared steadily past the exit, driving toward San Francisco.
On the Golden Gate Bridge Sitting tall behind the wheel of the tanker truck, Ibrahim Nadhir paid little heed to the chaos and confusion breaking out on the road behind him. Zadi and Shahin were there. They would do whatever was necessary to safeguard his mission.
The young Iranian smiled gently. All the long months of his training and religious instruction were close to fruition.
His full awareness, his very soul itself, was focused on one overriding objective: the huge structure looming out of the fog in front of him. Everything in his life had come down to this one moment. This one place. This one act of faith.
He crossed onto the Golden Gate Bridge. The sound of the road beneath the tanker’s tires changed, becoming hollower and more metallic.
Taillights blazed a brighter red as the cars ahead slowed, preparing to wend their way through the tollbooth plaza blocking the bridge’s southern end.
Still smiling, Nadhir brought the big rig to a stop right in the middle of the span. The situation was perfect. Cars crowded with Americans hemmed him in on all sides.
He lifted his gaze from the road before him and looked east. A bright glow through the mist marked the rising sun and a new day. His eyes alight with an inner fire, he murmured, “God is great.”
Ibrahim Nadhir breathed in for the last time and reached for the detonator on the seat beside him.
The tanker truck exploded, spewing jagged pieces of steel shrapnel and ten thousand gallons of burning gasoline across the deck of the bridge. Vehicles inside the blast radius were shredded, smashed, and then set ablaze. Other cars and vans further out were hit broadside by the shock wave and blown completely off the span, plummeting into the icy waters below. Everywhere the gasoline landed, fires erupted, fed by new fuel from ruptured automobile gas tanks. Within seconds, the jammed center of the Golden Gate Bridge was a roaring sea of flame.