A few minutes later, they came out. Ghosn got in next to Marvin. He was nervous, too.
“Ready, man?”
“Yes.”
“Okay.” Russell dropped the van into reverse and backed out of the parking place. He pulled forward, checking that the rental car was following, then headed off the parking lot onto the highway.
The drive to the stadium required only a few uneventful minutes. The police were out in force, and he saw that Ghosn was eyeing them very carefully. Marvin was not concerned. The cops were only there for traffic control, after all, and they were just standing around, since the traffic had scarcely begun. It was almost six hours till game time. He turned off the road onto the parking lot at the media entrance, and there was a cop he had to talk to. Qati had already broken off, and was now circling a few blocks away. Marvin stopped the van and rolled his window down.
“Howdy,” he said to the cop.
Officer Pete Dawkins of the Denver City Police was already cold, despite the fact that he was a native Coloradan. He was supposed to guard the media and VIP gate, a post he'd been stuck with only because he was a very junior officer. The senior guys were in warmer spots.
“Who are you?” Dawkins asked.
“Tech staff,” Russell replied. This is the media gate, right?"
“Yeah, but you're not on my list.” There was a limited number of available spaces in the VIP lot, and Dawkins couldn't just let anyone in.
“Tape machine broke in the ”A“ unit over there,” Russell explained with a wave. “We had to bring down a backup.”
“Nobody told me,” the police officer observed.
“Nobody told me either until six last night. We had to bring the goddamned thing down from Omaha.” Russell waved his clipboard rather vaguely. Out of sight in the back, Ghosn was scarcely breathing.
“Why didn't they fly it down?”
“'Cause FedEx don't work on Sunday, man, and the damned thing's too big to get through the door of a Lear. I ain't complaining, man. I'm Chicago tech staff, okay? I'm Network. I get triple-time-and-a-half for this shit, away from home, special event, weekend overtime.”
“That sounds pretty decent,” Dawkins observed.
“Better'n a week's normal pay, man. Keep talking, officer.” Russell grinned. “This is a buck and a quarter a minute, y'know?”
“You must have a hell of a union.”
“We sure do.” Marvin laughed.
“You know where to take it?”
“No problem, sir.” Russell pulled off. Ghosn let out a long breath as the van started moving again. He'd listened to every word, sure that something would go disastrously wrong.
Dawkins watched the van pull away. He checked his watch and made a notation of his own on his own clipboard. For some reason, the captain wanted him to keep track of who arrived when. It didn't make sense to Dawkins, but the captain's ideas didn't always make sense, did they? It took a moment for him to realize that the ABC van had Colorado tags. That was odd, he thought, as a Lincoln town car pulled up. This one was on his list. It was the commissioner of the NFL's American Conference. The VIPs were supposed to be pretty early, probably, Dawkins thought, so they could settle into their sky boxes and start their drinking early. He'd also drawn security at the Commissioner's party the night before and watched every rich clown in Colorado get sloppy drunk, along with various politicians and other Very Important People — mostly assholes, the young cop thought, having watched them — from all over America. He supposed that Hemingway was right after alclass="underline" the rich just have more money.
Two hundred yards away, Russell parked the van, set the brake, and left the engine on. Ghosn went in back. The game was scheduled to start at 4:20 local time. Major affairs always ran late, Ibrahim judged. He'd assumed a start time of 4:30. To that he added another half hour, setting T-Zero at 5:00, Rocky Mountain Standard Time. Arbitrary numbers always had zeros in them, after all, and the actual time of the detonation had been set weeks before: precisely on the first hour after game start.
The device did not have a very sophisticated antitamper device. There was a crude one set on each access door, but there hadn't been time to do anything complicated, and that, Ghosn thought, was a good thing. The gusting northeast wind was rocking the van, and a delicate tumbler switch might not have been a good idea after all.
For that matter, he realized rather belatedly, just slamming the door closed on the van might have… What else have you failed to consider? he wondered. Ghosn reminded himself that all such moments brought up the most frightening of thoughts. He swiftly ran over everything he had done to this point. Everything had been checked a hundred times and more. It was ready. Of course it was ready. Hadn't he spent months of careful preparation for this?
The engineer made a last check of his test circuits. All were fine. The cold had not affected the batteries that badly. He connected the wires to the timer — or tried to. His hands were stiff from the cold, and quivered from the emotion of the moment. Ghosn stopped. He took a moment to get control of himself and attached them on the second try, screwing down the nut to hold them firmly in place.
And that, he decided, was that. Ghosn closed the access door, which set the simple tamper switch, and backed away from the device. No, he said to himself. It is no longer a “device”.
“That it?” Russell asked.
“Yes, Marvin,” Ghosn answered quietly. He moved forward into the passenger seat.
“Then let's leave.” Marvin watched the younger man get out, and reached across to lock the door. Then he exited the van, and locked his. They walked west, past the big network up-link vans with their huge dish antennas. They had to be worth millions each, Marvin thought, and every one would be wrecked, along with the TV weenies, just like the ones who had made a sporting event of his brother's death. Killing them didn't worry him a bit, not one little bit. In a moment, the bulk of the stadium shielded them from the wind. They continued across the parking lot, past the ranks of early-arriving fans and the cars which were pulling onto the lot, many of them from Minnesota, full of fans dressed warmly, carrying peanuts and wearing hats, some of them adorned with horns.
Qati and the rental car were on a side-street. He simply slid over from the driver's seat, allowing Marvin to get behind the wheel. Traffic was now becoming thick, and, to avoid the worst of it, Russell took an alternate route he'd scouted out the previous day.
“You know, it really is a shame, messing with the game like this.”
“What do you mean?” Qati asked.
“This is the fifth time the Vikings have made it to the Superbowl. This time it looks like they're going to win. That Wills kid they have running for them is the best since Sayers, and because of us nobody'll see it happen. Too bad.” Russell shook his head and grinned at the irony of it all. Neither Qati nor Ghosn bothered to reply, but Russell hadn't expected them to. They just didn't have much sense of humor, did they? The motel parking lot was nearly empty. Everyone staying there must have been a fan of one sort or another, Marvin thought as he opened the door.
“All packed?”
“Yes.” Ghosn traded a look with the Commander. It was too bad, but it could not be helped.