Attack

Zarrabian looked up from the newspaper he was pretending to read. His eyes scanned the restaurant, checking each of the three drivers on his team. They’d arrived at the rendezvous separately and hadn’t spoken or made eye contact yet.

The truck stop was just off US Highway 101, two dozen miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge. It had a no-nonsense atmosphere, the rough friendliness and camaraderie of truckers in their element. The kitchen served what they wanted: piles of bacon and eggs, mountains of pancakes, and strong coffee. And the newspapers were free.

Two of his men, sitting at opposite ends of the lunch counter, had finished eating. One nodded as a trucker seated next to him talked and gestured at the baseball game on TV. The other was getting a refill. Zarrabian watched as the young waitress, soft and plump like so many American girls, smiled and leaned forward just a bit too much while she poured. Zarrabian’s brow started to furrow at her immodesty, but he caught himself. Today he was a trucker, not a soldier.

Zarrabian took another sip of his coffee. It was good, surprisingly rich, an unexpected pleasure in this truck stop. In a country of lite beer and fast-food hamburgers, good coffee was scarce. He held it to his face and let the steaming aroma fill his senses.

His third man was at a table by himself, finishing his meal. Zarrabian suppressed a surge of impatience. His men needed a good meal. They were on schedule. There was no need to rush.

His team was dressed to blend in. Zarrabian wore a faded blue denim jacket over a plaid flannel shirt, topped by a baseball cap. He’d stuffed a pack of cigarettes into his shirt pocket to complete the outfit. His men wore similar garb.

Zarrabian’s complexion was darker than most of these truckers, but he could easily pass for the second-generation son of Iranian immigrants. Here in California, he’d been mistaken several times for one of the Latinos whose ancestors owned this land so long ago, in the time before Americans invaded Mexico’s Alto California and claimed it for their own.

Underneath the trucker disguise, his body was that of a soldier. Decades of service in an army that guarded uncountable square kilometers of rugged, dry mountains and desert sands had made him hard and lean.

He looked back at his newspaper. The stories seemed so trivial. Burglaries, a drought, a minor scandal in the American Congress, rising oil prices—tomorrow these would be nothing.

“More coffee, sir?” He looked up. The waitress smiled and raised her coffee pot questioningly.

“No, thank you.”

“Well you have a wonderful day, OK? Come see us again!”

She set his check down and moved efficiently to the next table. He glanced at it, taking out his wallet. His hand trembled slightly as he removed money from behind a photograph of his wife and daughter.

He dropped money on the counter, stood, and then briefly made eye contact with each of the other three drivers on his team. The mission was on.

Outside, Zarrabian climbed into his truck and pretended to write on a clipboard while he watched the restaurant’s entrance in his mirror. One by one, the other drivers emerged and climbed into their trucks. Twin puffs of black soot belched from the exhaust stacks as each truck rumbled to life. Zarrabian started his engine as a plain white delivery van pulled into the parking lot and stopped alongside him.

His team was ready.

What was it the ancient had said? “We make war that we may have peace.” So true.

Christine Garrett took her eyes off her sails for an instant—just long enough to glance at her competitor’s position.

“Damn!”

Kerry’s boat was four lengths ahead of her and two boat lengths to leeward—a dead heat. They were just one minute from the windward buoy of the race course, where they’d turn and head for the finish line.

They were out past the Golden Gate in vintage San Francisco summer weather: a stiff, cold wind and brilliant blue sky. A dark wall of fog lurked a mile farther out. Behind them, twenty other racers were bashing through the waves, but unless something dramatic happened, it was between her and Kerry.

Sailing was more than a hobby for Christine Garrett. It was her passion, her escape from the daily grind, some even said her raison d’être. In twenty-six years on the job, she’d moved from a rookie reporter to senior investigator for the Bay Area’s biggest TV station, with frequent national coverage of her big stories. At age fifty-one, she was one of the best. She had standing job offers from a dozen other stations around the country and had received an inquiry from the BBC.

But her real passion was sailing. The daughter of an astronomer at the Lick Observatory, Christine had spent her childhood on Mt. Hamilton. The mountain’s isolation meant safety for the eleven children in her tiny elementary school. They were mostly left free to fend for themselves after school, and used their freedom to roam the grassy, oak-dotted mountaintop. It was the best life she could imagine, and she felt sorry for the city kids she knew.

Then one day Pop announced he’d finally been promoted, and the next thing she knew the moving truck hauled her whole life to a little house near the University of California in Santa Cruz. She was horrified. A high school with a thousand students? A backyard the size of a postage stamp? Creeps, hippies, drunks, and weirdos on the streets? She crawled into her room and buried herself in books and TV.

Then Pop bought a sailboat, a fast racer called a Santa Cruz 27. He practically had to drag her from her room for their first outing, and once they arrived at the boat, she’d sat sullenly in the rear of the cockpit while Pop and her brother had made ready to sail.

A light breeze had pushed the boat out of the dock and silently up the harbor, past the restaurants and past the stony arms of the two jetties. As they emerged into the open ocean, a fresh breeze pressed against the white sails; the boat heeled and picked up speed, and the shore quickly receded. There was nothing but the boat, the wind, the waves, and the salty spray stinging her cheeks. It was magical. She felt free again.

By the time Christine was fifteen, she was a better sailor than Pop or her brother, and Pop started letting her take the boat out singlehanded. The twenty-seven foot boat was a lot for one pair of hands to manage, but she she’d made her father sit idle during three successive Wednesday-night races and won two of them. He was convinced.

Where once she’d had the mountain top, she now had the ocean. A hundred yards from shore and you might as well be a hundred miles; the ocean was yours. No creeps or weirdos, no press of a thousand high school students rushing from class to class, nobody who cared whether she was wearing the latest fashion or a cool hairdo. Seagulls, pelicans, and the occasional dolphin kept her company. Her hair styles were courtesy of the wind, fog, and ocean spray; she had little choice in the matter. For makeup, she wore SPF 100 sunblock and white zinc-oxide cream smeared across her lips.

Three and a half decades of sailing had made her one of the best. Her sailing today had been perfect: the racing buoy was dead ahead. But Kerry was paying for an earlier mistake: he’d made his last tack a couple seconds too early, and now his course would take him almost a boat length downwind of the buoy. He was going to have to tack twice to recover from his mistake, and the turns would cost him precious seconds. Christine had the urge to raise her fists into the air in victory, but couldn’t take them off the tiller.

Could he do it? It was too close to call. The moment Kerry made his first tack to port, he’d lose right of way to her starboard tack. If he was too slow and she had to turn to avoid bumping boats, he’d be disqualified from the race.

She loved these tactical duals.

She checked Kerry’s position again; it was close. Very close. She cranked the groaning jib winch in another notch and brought the boat a half point harder into the wind.

Kerry started to move. He was going to tack! This was it. She held her course, aiming directly for the rapidly approaching buoy.

In a flurry of action, Kerry tacked his boat across the wind and trimmed his jib. Christine tensed—would he pass in front of her? No! He was too late!

“Starboard!” she yelled. “Got you, Kerry!”

At her yell, Kerry was forced to turn. She felt a rush of glee as he passed behind her.

She drew abeam of the buoy and pulled the tiller to weather, then quickly eased the sails. Watergate surged forward as the wind got behind it, racing toward the Golden Gate Bridge.

Behind her, Kerry executed his second tack and rounded the buoy perfectly. She’d taken the mark, but Kerry was still breathing down her neck.

He quickly altered his course to get directly upwind and steal the wind from her sails. She altered her course too, but knew that Kerry would be matching her, move for move. He was catching up.

Christine looked at the spinnaker sail lashed in its bag on the foredeck. It was the namesake of the Sphinx, a San Francisco yacht that, over a century earlier, had put up a billowing sail so huge that it became the “Sphinx’s acre.” A century later, it had evolved into the brightly colored balloon-like “spinnaker” sail that was waiting on her foredeck.

She could almost hear it calling to be unleashed. It was a risky choice. Spinnakers were for light to medium conditions and could be very difficult to handle, even dangerous, in a single-handed race.

But she wanted to win—badly.

She looked back. There wasn’t enough distance. Kerry was gaining. She felt her sails slack just a bit as Kerry’s boat moved on top of her wind again.

It was now or never.

Christine pulled on the lines. The spinnaker pole jumped off the deck to its ready position, its windward guy taut. She uncleated the halyard and hauled. The sail leapt free from its bag and climbed to the top of her mast, billowing and snapping untamed in the wind. Finally ready, she winched in the leeward sheet.

The wind filled the huge sail’s belly with a snap. She grabbed the tiller and pulled hard, wrestling for control. The Watergate surged ahead, sailing so fast that she started overtaking the waves. Christine struggled for control as the boat ground up the back of each wave under the relentless power of the huge sail, crested the top, then accelerated wildly down the wave’s face like a surfer on a huge breaker.

Ten exhilarating and exhausting minutes later, the Golden Gate Bridge loomed in front of her. A few of her fellow racers, left far behind by her rash choice of sails, had finally raised their spinnakers, but Christine was too far ahead. The race was hers!

A sudden gust hit the huge spinnaker, making Watergate reel to one side, threatening to spin out of control. Christine strained at the tiller, pulling fiercely to regain control.

With a loud crack!, her spinnaker sheet parted. The huge sail, which moments ago looked like a beautiful half-balloon soaring across the seas, transformed into a snapping, flapping, horrible mess, shaking her mast and rigging.

“Crap! You piece of . . . goddamn it!”

She rounded up to spill the wind from her sails, preparing to heave to and haul down the shredded sail before it could entangle the rest of her rigging. Dead in the water, Christine watched helplessly as Kerry overtook her, followed closely by the rest of the racing fleet.

“Hey Christine, need any help?”

“Up yours, Kerry!”

Kerry laughed and waved. “See you at the dock!”

Zarrabian’s truck convoy wound its way south down the long hill past Sausalito, then around the last few curves of Highway 101. They’d caught several tantalizing, distant views of the Golden Gate Bridge as the freeway twisted and descended, but the bridge quickly disappeared behind the hills each time.

As they passed Alexander Avenue, the massive Golden Gate Bridge finally came into full view. Zarrabian couldn’t help but admire it. The bridge’s mighty cables spanned more than a kilometer of blue, wind-whipped waters, joining San Francisco and Marin. It was a magnificent work of engineering, architecture, and art.

A short few minutes later, the convoy rolled onto the bridge, carefully obeying the forty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Zarrabian checked his mirrors; the trucks were in perfect formation. Ahead, traffic was light. There was plenty of room.

He reached the center of the span where the huge cables nearly meet the deck. To the west he could see sailboats racing, leaving trails of white foam in their wakes. One even had its colorful spinnaker sail flying. They had no idea what was going on right over their heads. But they soon would.

Zarrabian jerked his steering wheel violently left. Behind him, the second truck mirrored his movement. He knew the third and fourth trucks would do the same, creating a carefully choreographed ballet of violence as the four trucks overturned in unison.

He felt the truck lean heavily to one side as it careened across the lanes of the bridge into oncoming traffic. The cargo in his trailer, deliberately packed to be top heavy, started to topple the big rig. Zarrabian clutched the steering wheel tightly as the huge truck crashed onto its side, screeching down the pavement in a cloud of dust and sparks. He felt a couple thumps.

Amidst the violence of the crash, Zarrabian’s mind was oddly calm. He supposed the thumps were collisions with cars in the oncoming northbound lane. He felt mildly sorry for the drivers, but another part of his mind told him that at this relatively low speed, their airbags would protect them. With any luck, the northbound lane would be completely blocked by his truck.

The screeching stopped. Zarrabian was hanging by his seatbelt in the now-sideways cab. Thousands of hours of training kicked in as he swung his foot off the brake and onto the passenger seat, unsnapped his seatbelt, and stood up, using the seats and steering wheel as footholds.

He reached behind the driver’s seat to extract a broomstick, cut exactly to length for this moment, pulled the door latch, and pushed upward to open the door over his head. Using the broomstick to prop the door open, he climbed out.

Zarrabian quickly surveyed the scene from atop the overturned truck. Horns were blaring. A few people were shouting and crying. He ignored it; there was work to do.

The four trucks had crashed perfectly in two pairs, each pair forming a complete wall across all lanes of the bridge with a twenty-meter gap of clear space between them. The white cargo van was parked perfectly in the center of their instant fortress.

Ibrihim, the van’s driver, was already in motion, flinging the doors open. Zarrabian saw the other three trucks’ doors opening as their drivers repeated his escape maneuver and climbed atop their overturned truck cabs.

Perfect.

He reached down into the truck, grasped the end of a rope that was tied loosely to a handgrip near the door, and hauled. It was heavy, but it felt good as his shoulders, arms, and back bent to the task, strong again after his long recuperation. A military duffel bag appeared at the end of the rope.

“Hey! Hey! Are you OK? I called 9-1-1!”

Zarrabian glanced down into the face of a friendly young man wearing khaki shorts and a bright Hawaiian shirt. More good Samaritans were getting out of their cars and running toward the wreck.

“Hey, can you get down from there? That was one badass crash, dude! Need a hand?”

Zarrabian ignored the young man. He unzipped his duffel bag and pulled out an Israeli-made Negev NG-7 machine gun. The kid’s eyes grew wide.

“What . . .?”

Zarrabian saw understanding dawn on the kid’s face.

It was time to clear the bridge. Zarrabian felt a fleeting moment of irony about using an Israeli-made weapon for this operation, but the gun was dependable. The kid spun and started to sprint away. Zarrabian raised the machine gun to his shoulder and took aim.

President Oliver Whitman burst into the Situation Room. Jack Patterson, the president’s chief of staff, jumped to his feet, followed quickly by the rest of the staff.

“Mr. President!” said Patterson.

Erica Blackwell, the president’s National Security Advisor, breathed a sigh of relief. They’d been waiting almost five minutes for Whitman’s arrival, and this wasn’t the first time the president had been slow when called on an urgent security matter.

“Please sit,” said the president. He took his own seat. “Sorry to keep you waiting. I had to put off that group of high school scholars. Those young Einsteins are amazing, aren’t they?”

Blackwell cringed inwardly. How was it that she, one of the most brilliant political minds of the decade, was playing second fiddle to this quarterback-turned-politician? Money, looks, and fame, that’s why. Whitman had money, Whitman had looks, and most of all, the voting public was too dumb to know the difference between heroism on the football field and true heroism. At least Whitman was an incredibly fast thinker, like most great quarterbacks. She’d give him that.

Long ago, Erica Blackwell had dreamed of a presidential bid of her own. A Stanford law degree, a term in Congress, a track record as one of the best political strategists alive, extensive service with the State Department—she had been on the fast track to become the first female president of the United States of America.

An ill-considered affair, a nasty divorce, and a vengeful husband who made it clear he’d stop at nothing to torpedo her future had ended her dreams. He’d sentenced her to a lifetime of helping less capable politicians rise to the top while her own accomplishments were lost in history.

Well, when life throws you a lemon. . . . Blackwell knew who really ran the country.

At age sixty-three, President Whitman’s jet-black hair had turned to silver, but he kept his six-foot-three frame trim and fit. He’d won three Super Bowls, a record only beaten by Joe Montana, Tom Brady, and Terry Bradshaw. After he threw his last touchdown, Whitman parlayed his fame into a political career as congressman for his home district in Saginaw followed by eight years as the outspoken, candid governor of the state of Michigan. It turned out that in addition to his athletic skills, he was a masterful speaker. When Whitman gave a speech, people felt like he was right in their living room talking to them one on one. They loved him.

Erica Blackwell had assured the party bosses that Whitman was their man. He was a genuinely nice man, there wasn’t a hint of scandal in his life, and his wife of forty years was equally loved by the public. And he was a natural team player, used to working with a coach.

Blackwell had laid out the cards for him: do it my way, and I’ll take you to a win far bigger than the Super Bowl. It had taken twelve years, moving Whitman from governor to two low-key terms in the Senate, but they had gotten their presidential candidate. Whitman proved even more popular on the national scene than he had in Michigan, and at the end of the campaign, Erica Blackwell became one of the most powerful women in the world.

Unfortunately, Whitman’s football career and his governorship hadn’t prepared him for the realities of world politics, nor for his role as commander in chief of the world’s most powerful military. He could fool the voters, but he couldn’t fool men like Jack Patterson. And he sure couldn’t fool Erica Blackwell.

“OK, what’s the situation, Erica?” he asked.

“Ten minutes ago,” said Blackwell, “a group of terrorists took control of the Golden Gate Bridge. We don’t know their motives or demands.” She gestured toward a large screen that showed a live video feed of the bridge. “We’ve seen seven terrorists. They used four semi trucks to blockade the bridge. There was a lot of shooting with automatic weapons. We don’t have a casualty count. SFPD’s SWAT team is trying to get to the bridge.”

“Who are they?” asked the president.

“This one is out of the blue, sir. No buzz. No suspicious wire transfers. No unusual travel. Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No, sir. This is a complete surprise.”

“Any idea yet what they want?”

“We don’t know, sir,” she said. “But we can see what they’re doing. Give us a zoom.”

The technician operating the displays zoomed in, enlarging the center of the bridge.

Blackwell continued. “They’re unpacking crates. From this distance we can’t see what’s in them, but the most likely scenario is that those are high explosives and light weapons.”

“What about demands?” asked the president.

“None, sir. Our prediction is that the terrorists will threaten to blow up the bridge before making political demands.”

“What are our options?”

“Sir, our teams are evaluating several responses right now as we gather information.”

The president turned to Patterson. “Fill me in, Jack. Just seven guys and no hostages, right? Can we send in some aircraft and end the situation?”

Blackwell watched Patterson. His face remained neutral, but she was sure she detected a clenched jaw. Before becoming the president’s chief of staff, he had been retired Lieutenant General Patterson. He’d served in three wars under four presidents and was known as a hard-assed leader who brooked no excuses from his subordinates. Never once had Patterson shown the slightest hint of disrespect for Whitman, but Blackwell imagined Patterson at home alone, a Scotch in hand and a fire in the fireplace, reminiscing about serving under other presidents.

Patterson was forced on Whitman as a condition for the party bosses’ support: take Patterson, or you won’t be president. Patterson, they said, would provide needed military experience. Whitman hadn't had a choice. But Patterson? Blackwell had never fully understood why Patterson had accepted the job of running the president’s staff.

Patterson’s uncle was none other than Senator Dean Platte, head of the Senate Armed Services Committee. There’d never been any rumors of nepotism, but then with Platte, you wouldn’t expect rumors. The senator controlled Washington like a puppeteer with invisible strings.

Well, whatever had happened in the back rooms of Washington, Blackwell was glad that Patterson was around.

Patterson contemplated the president’s question for a moment. “Sir, we’re looking for assets in the area right now. Travis Air Force Base is nearby, but it’s mostly heavy transport. Beale AFB is up in Sacramento, and Lemoore is down by Fresno. They both have fighter jets, but it will take a few minutes to get them to San Francisco, and fighter jets aren’t ideal for this situation. The best response, sir, would be from helicopter gunships like the Apache or SuperCobra, but there are none based anywhere near San Francisco.”

“Sir!” said one of the Situation Room’s staffers. “I think we may have something.”

The network’s central newsroom was barely controlled chaos. Grant Petri’s voice boomed over it all, making reporters and clerks cringe involuntarily. “Linda! I want a chopper from the local affiliate station over the Golden Gate. Now!

“Karl! Find out if there’s one decent reporter on the West Coast. Someone. Anyone! Find out if there are traffic cams on the Golden Gate Bridge and get them streaming live into this newsroom.”

His voice briefly quelled the chaos as everyone paused to listen, but the moment he stopped the noise resumed and redoubled. Hands reached for phones, fingers flew across keyboards, couriers grabbed folders and dashed.

Petri launched himself across the newsroom with long strides, pursued closely by Jennifer, a young assistant who was practically running to keep up. She was trying to get his attention. “Mr. Petri?”

Petri’s voice boomed out again. “OK, I need to see it, people! Get me a live feed, any network. Now!”

Another assistant answered, “The BBC has it, sir!”

“Show it to me!”

Jennifer tried again. “Mr. Petri?”

“And Linda, start digging up info on these terrorists. Who are they? What do they want? You know the drill!”

Young Jennifer raised her voice. “Mr. Petri! Christine Garrett is back in San Francisco . . . uh, sir.”

Petri stops in his tracks. “Who is?”

“Christine Garrett. Sir. She got back yesterday.”

“Get her on the phone! Now! Jesus Christ, she’s right there? Get her!”

“Yes sir!” Jennifer dashed away.

Christine looked up into her rigging, furious at the mess. The spinnaker was still snapping and rattling her mast and rigging. The halyard had somehow gotten snarled in a big knot. She couldn’t lower the sail. Her competitors were long gone, a cluster of receding masts and sails in the distance.

The Golden Gate Bridge loomed just ahead, arching gracefully over the waters. Even hove-to with her flapping spinnaker, the boat was drifting fast; she would be under the bridge soon.

She felt for the knife she always kept on her belt for just such emergencies but didn’t pull it out yet. Landlubbers thought nothing of cutting a rope, but the Kevlar-and-polyester rigging on a state-of-the-art racing sailboat was expensive. She didn’t want to cut the halyard as long as there was a chance of untangling the mess. Besides, if she cut it, the sail would immediately fall in a heap into the water, turning the ultra-light nylon sailcloth into a sodden, saltwater-soaked hundred-pound mess.

This was getting dangerous. Leaving the huge sail flapping meant her only choice was to continue downwind; if she had to do a maneuver that required a turn, she’d end up with the spinnaker tangled up in her mast and stays. And if San Francisco’s gusting trade winds caught her sideways with that huge sail tangled in her rigging, a complete capsize wasn’t out of the question.

Another strong gust shook the spinnaker and made the whole boat shudder from mast-top to keel. She looked up again at the mess. Was it hopeless? The waters of the bay ahead were calmer. Maybe she could turn downwind, let the spinnaker flap in front of the boat, and sail over to Sausalito. There she would be shielded from the wind by the mountains of the North Peninsula and could untangle the halyard.

She had drifted almost under the bridge. She usually loved this part—being a sailor on the raw, open ocean enjoying the wind, sun, spray, and the feel of a lively craft at her fingertips while just a few hundred feet overhead commuters and truckers roared by.

Maybe another day. Today she wasn’t feeling so euphoric.

The bridge was oddly quiet. Must be a traffic jam up there, she thought.

She made her decision: Sausalito’s calm waters.

As she grabbed the tiller to turn the boat, her cell phone started ringing from down in the cabin. But before the first ring died away, it was drowned out by the sound of machine guns firing over her head.

FBI Special Agent Thomas “TJ” McCaig was bored. Really bored.

He leaned his chair up on the two back legs, something that always annoyed Smith, Special Agent In Charge of the San Francisco FBI office. McCaig waited for a reprimand, but Smith was absorbed in his own voice and didn’t notice McCaig’s transgression.

McCaig glanced at his young partner. Special Agent Omar Bashir was the new face of the FBI. He’d grown up with video games in his blood, and had probably used a computer before he could walk.

Crimes, the big ones at least, were committed on computers and networks these days. Sure, there would always be a few bank robbers, kidnappers, and the occasional terrorist who still preferred guns and bombs. But McCaig’s kind was a dwindling breed. He was a weatherbeaten cowboy on an old horse in the era of helicopter herding and factory farms.

Smith droned on, “. . . we’ll be coordinating with local law enforcement on this case. The welfare recipients are the jurisdiction of DPSS, and the drug dealers will be arrested by SFPD. We’re only interested in the organized crime mob—the Russian Mafia gangsters who coordinated the welfare fraud and drug dealers. We have over one hundred and fifty warrants, and we have to serve them all as quickly as possible. I want complete cooperation with our partners in SFPD and DPSS. Is that understood?”

McCaig felt his chair clunk against the wall, startling him awake. He must have nodded off. He quickly glanced around, but Smith was still absorbed in his own voice and hadn’t noticed.

Smith continued, “. . . and I want each of you to submit a summary to me by morning showing how your department is going to address these budgetary issues. Understood?” He paused for a moment and glanced around the room. “Good. Now, the next item on our agenda . . .”

McCaig gave Bashir a sideways glance and rolled his eyes. Bashir had to suppress a smile. They both leaned their chairs back against the wall.

Two more years, thought McCaig. Two more years. He’d done his time. His condo in Hawaii was ready.

A lot people begrudged federal pensions. They called it “eating at the public trough.” Well, he’d earned that pension and then some. He’d been a good G-man. The best. Two more years. Then he’d never look back.

McCaig glanced at his watch. Was Smith never going to stop? McCaig knew his sidelined career meant meetings, but this was ridiculous. He leaned back again and tried to take his mind to other places and times.

He’d been a Marine, and a good one. Then he joined the Bureau and became one of their best agents.

Omar Bashir’s ethnic background was another thing that was forcing McCaig to adjust. Bashir was born in Chicago, but his parents moved the family back to Palestine when Bashir was just two years old. Bashir’s stories of childhood pranks involved throwing rocks and bottles at Israeli trucks and tanks and then running gleefully down twisty little streets to escape angry soldiers. A job opportunity brought Bashir’s father back to Chicago when he was twelve years old. Bashir ended up an American-as-apple-pie kid with a unique international perspective.

McCaig thought back to his first big bust. He was the junior agent on a team of eight, five of whom were named Dave. The other two agents were named John and Bob. There was no ethnic diversity and no women. After a couple of days of confusion, the team voted to use only last names to keep everyone straight.

This meeting? No Daves here. McCaig looked around the table. Nakamura, Rheinholt, Lee, Garcia, Atkins, Musa, Gupta—it could have been the United Nations. Both sexes were equally represented.

The truth was, McCaig liked it. These were the best of the best. Their job was to prevent crime if they could, and catch the criminals if they couldn’t. Macho didn’t work any more. Brains, motivation, and a clean record were the ticket to an FBI career.

McCaig leaned his head back and rested it against the wall. Smith droned on, “. . . and I shouldn’t have to tell you, but apparently I do, about your agents wearing professional attire at all times . . .”

Captain McCaig and his team of six special-ops Marines are heavily camouflaged to match the drifting desert sands. Peering through powerful binoculars from the ridge of a sand dune, they see a small industrial complex in the distance. It is surrounded by security fences topped with barbed wire.

A large truck is pulling out of the compound. It stops, and a uniformed man gets out. He closes and locks the gate behind the truck, then climbs back in. The truck picks up speed slowly, revealing that it is heavily loaded. It lumbers down the road, leaving a trail of sandy dust in its wake.

“Is that the last one?”

McCaig puts down his binoculars and squints against the glare, scanning the horizon with his naked eyes.

“Ten in, ten out. That’s it.”

“Looks pretty exposed, sir. No way to approach except wide open.”

“Yeah. Well, that’s why they sent us, isn’t it?”

A ringing interrupted McCaig’s dream. He blinked and shook his head to clear it. Smith was staring angrily at a telephone in the middle of the conference table. It rang again, loud and shrill. Smith stabbed at a button and the phone went silent.

“OK,” said Smith. “Agent McCaig, you were going to give us an update on—”

The phone rang again.

“Damn!” said Smith. He grabbed the handset. “What? Sir! Sorry, no, we are—” Smith fell silent and listened.

McCaig was suddenly alert. The only person Smith would call “sir” was the director himself. McCaig could see the tension building in Smith’s body as he listened. Smith picked up a pencil and started scribbling notes. Every now and then he would say, “OK,” or “Yes, sir,” followed by more scribbled notes. He finally ended the call with a curt, “OK, sir, we’re on it,” and hung up.

Smith looked around the room for a moment and took a deep breath.

“OK, team, this is the big one. Terrorists just took control of the Golden Gate Bridge. They’ve barricaded themselves in the center of the bridge using some big trucks, and there are reports of automatic weapons fire—lots of it. That’s all we have at the moment.”

A rustling and murmur of exclamations ran around the room as everyone took in this news. Smith glanced down at his notes. “All other operations are suspended. Nakamura and Musa, you’re coordinating with the CIA, NSA, and other agencies. Find out who these guys are, who’s behind this, and what they want.

“Rheinholt and Lee, get to work coordinating incoming civilian news and videos: radio, TV, citizens’ cell phones, whatever. I need minute-by-minute updates.

“Garcia and Atkins, you’re coordinating with local law enforcement. Get in touch with SFPD, Marin County Sheriff’s Department, the Coast Guard, and CalTrans, too, and set up communications, then get out to the bridge to coordinate.”

Smith looked down at his notes again, then looked McCaig in the eye. McCaig felt a rush of adrenaline; his senses were suddenly alert, a feeling that had eluded him for years. But as quickly as it arrived, the rush evaporated. He didn’t want this. His road to retirement was quiet, smooth, and boring—and it sure didn’t include terrorists, bombs, and international politics. His hammock in Hawaii was already swinging in the tropical breeze, beckoning to him.

Besides, Smith was going to give him another desk assignment: coordination, logistics, information liaison, anything to keep him off the front line.

“McCaig,” said Smith, then paused again. He glanced down at his notes, then back at McCaig. “You’re in charge.”

“Sir?”

“You’re in charge, McCaig. Get out to the bridge as fast as you can. Take Bashir with you. Bashir, you’ve got about three minutes to grab whatever communication equipment you need to set up a command post until we can get a proper team up there. McCaig, your first job will be to establish contact with the terrorists. We’ll get the negotiators in touch with Bashir, then I want you to figure out what these bastards want. We’ve got a bridge to save. Go!”

Zarrabian released the trigger of the smoking machine gun. The ammunition was spent. Behind him, he heard the last few rounds of fire from the other truck drivers’ guns. A quiet fell over the bridge, punctuated only by the distant sound of a car alarm.

In front of him, every car within a hundred meters had at least one bullet through its windshield. The closer windows were completely shattered. Coolant dribbled from radiators and steam billowed from under hoods. One had erupted in flames. The pungent smell of leaking gasoline hinted that more fires would soon follow.

In the distance, he could see the backs of civilians running, shuffling, hiking, and limping, escaping the deadly gunfire any way they could. There was even one on crutches lurching frantically down the roadway.

The nerdy Silicon-Valley whiz kid who’d tried to help Zarrabian had been the first to turn tail. Zarrabian had encouraged him with several very close shots. One bullet shattered a car’s side mirror right next to the kid and sent shards of glass into his temple, causing him to scream and clutch the side of his head.

Then there’d been one man with a gun—a wannabe cowboy. He’d fired a couple shots at Zarrabian, but like most untrained amateurs, the reality of a genuine gun battle gave him an instant adrenaline surge. His shaky hands had sent his bullets wildly astray. Zarrabian took time to aim carefully. The man would live, but might lose his leg. Two young men running by had stopped long enough to drag him away.

The rest had been fast. The Negev machine gun was very efficient. He scanned the bridge one more time to ensure that no threats remained. It was clear. Time for the real action.

Zarrabian climbed down from the overturned truck and scanned the scene. Two of his drivers had climbed from their cabs across to the overturned trailers to serve as lookouts. The other men were using crowbars to pry the tops off of five large crates they’d unloaded from the van. He joined them, issuing curt, calm orders.

One by one, the crates revealed their contents: a huge quantity of high explosives, detonators, timers, wires, surface-to-air missiles, and several dozen more small- to medium-caliber guns. They had enough firepower to defend against just about anything civilian police could throw at them, and could even make a brief stand against a minor military assault—long enough to finish their task. And they had enough explosives to bring this bridge down.

“Colonel!” one of the lookouts yelled. Zarrabian turned to the voice; it was on the south side, as he expected. “Police are approaching!”

Zarrabian quickly reached into one of the crates, pulled out a long metal case, and laid it on the roadway. He flipped the latches and opened it, revealing a Russian-made anti-tank missile launcher. One of his men pulled an aluminum ladder from the van, extended it, and leaned it against the truck. Zarrabian loaded a missile into the launcher, shouldered it, and climbed the ladder to join his lookout.

The northbound bridge lanes were completely blocked by damaged and destroyed cars, but Zarrabian could see a menacing-looking SWAT truck racing north in the empty southbound lanes. He crouched down and aimed, then waited. The Russian-made missile was a very old design; embargoes had made it hard to acquire quality weaponry. His team had to be content with the castoffs of so-called revolutionaries who could be made to forget their ideals with a bundle of American hundred-dollar bills.

He looked through the sight of the launcher at the oncoming SWAT truck. It was now near enough that he could make out the shape of the policeman driving it. The man was a civilian, not a soldier. This wasn’t a fair fight. The men in SWAT truck were trained to take out deranged gunmen and desperate, jealous husbands brandishing small-caliber weapons. When these men had sworn their policeman’s oath, it hadn’t been with the idea that they’d face a Russian-made missile designed to pierce an armored tank. He hesitated.

Then he remembered. The marketplace. His beautiful wife and daughter, strolling hand in hand. The American cruise missile.

He pulled the trigger. The launcher jumped on his shoulder as the missile streaked away.

“Damn, damn, damn!” yelled McCaig. The on-ramp to Highway 101 north was completely gridlocked. Their siren and flashing lights were useless. McCaig’s honks and curses frightened the drivers, but there simply wasn’t room for them to get out of his way.

In the passenger seat, Bashir was madly banging the keyboard and clicking the mouse as pictures and news feeds flashed by.

“I need another another route!”

“Maybe cross over and drive north in the southbound lanes?”

“Where’s the nearest place we could get on?”

“Well . . . forget it, we can’t get to it. It’s up by the bridge, and those roads are jammed too. We could go back toward downtown and try that.”

“Too far! Tell me what’s going on!”

“Nobody knows anything yet. There’s been a lot of shooting. One of the local news choppers got this photo.”

He turned the screen toward McCaig. McCaig could see the masterful “crash” of the four trucks that had turned the bridge’s center into a fortress. Inside it, open crates and equipment were lined up. McCaig could make out at least a half-dozen men working.

“Crap. They’re gonna try to blow the bridge.”

“Why do you say that, boss?”

“Use your head, Bashir. Why else would terrorists be on a bridge?”

“Oh. Right.”

“Hang on.” McCaig whipped the wheel to the left and accelerated into a screeching U-turn. Bashir gripped his computer with one hand and had a white-knuckles grip on the armrest with the other.

“Find me a clear route to The Marina!”

“The Marina?”

Grant Petri and his team were gathered around a bank of video monitors. Below the monitors, a row of technicians and news directors talked on headsets, typing, clicking, and orchestrating the flow of data arriving from around the world. On a large screen in the center, a newscaster was broadcasting from San Francisco’s Pier 39 with the Golden Gate Bridge as his backdrop. Several columns of black smoke were rising from the bridge.

“Let’s hear him!” Petri barked. A technician poked a button.

“. . . the terrorists have apparently taken control of the Golden Gate Bridge. We have unconfirmed reports of dozens killed by gunfire. The terrorists have barricaded themselves using trucks, but as of now, nobody knows what they want.”

A director turned to Petri and pointed to one of the smaller video monitors. “Got a live video, sir. The local station’s chopper.”

“Put it on the big screen!”

The technicians clicked madly for a couple seconds and replaced the news anchor’s report with the helicopter’s view. Smoke was billowing from burning cars and trucks. There was no moving traffic. The chopper’s camera zoomed in on the center of the bridge, revealing the overturned trucks, the white cargo van, and the crates and gear. Men could be seen lifting and carrying equipment.

Petri scowled and leaned closer. “Christ, they’re going to blow up the bridge!” He spun around. “Has anyone found Garrett yet?”

Christine couldn’t believe what she was hearing overhead. She’d been in war zones, but it didn’t take an expert to know the sound of heavy-caliber machine-gun fire. This wasn’t just a few shots, it was a sustained barrage from multiple weapons. What the hell was going on?

She was still drifting, now almost directly under the bridge. She had to get to her phone. A huge news story was playing out literally over her head, and she’d missed the call. Damn!

Above all else, she was a journalist. She’d fought for her career from the first day of her job. There were asshole producers who thought women shouldn’t go into dangerous areas, directors who thought women were supposed to be eye candy for viewers and wanted her to do fluff stories, and cutthroat coworkers who would walk over anyone to get to the top.

Crime scenes, freeway pile-ups, political intrigue, corruption, a war zone, and even a mass murders—she’d investigated them all, and had done it better than anyone else, male or female. She’d managed to keep her integrity on the way, and had only bent the rules when someone showed her that they weren’t playing by those rules.

Now the biggest story of her career, just three hundred feet overhead, might as well have been on the moon. She couldn’t see a thing. Above her, several columns of black smoke were billowing from the bridge. She had to contact the station. Right away.

She looked at the flapping spinnaker, then at the ocean. Maybe during a lull in the wind? She waited a few seconds, felt the wind slacken just a bit, and let go of the tiller. She dived for the hatch, hoping to get the phone before the boat turned too much. But the lull was too short; she felt the boat heeling over sharply as it started to turn. The wind snapped the spinnaker even harder.

“Crap!” She jumped back to the tiller and pulled hard, turning the boat back to a safer angle. The spinnaker’s shaking was relentless.

An explosion assaulted her ears. Above her, a huge armored van flew off the bridge, spinning end-over-end and trailing smoke and debris. Her eyes registered the word “SWAT” on the van’s side.

She thought for a moment that it was going to land right on top of her boat. Down it tumbled before finally crashing into the ocean a boat length in front of her bow. Christine threw her arm up to shield her face from the stinging spray. A huge wave crashed onto the foredeck of the Watergate and swept back into the cockpit. Christine had one hand on the tiller and grabbed the mainsheet with the other but was nearly washed overboard.

The wave passed and the water in her cockpit drained rapidly out the scuppers. Everything was still intact. She leaned over the side and peered into the deep water. Fifty feet below, the red-and-blue police lights of the SWAT van were somehow still flashing. She watched it sink into the depths.

A new sound started to grow over the whistling wind and her flailing spinnaker. As quickly as she could turn her head to toward its source, a US Marines Harrier jet roared past, nearly deafening her.

Zarrabian scrambled down from the top of the truck. This was no time for regrets over the SWAT van and policemen. It was unfortunate, but it also served a good purpose: the local police would realize they were outgunned. They would keep their distance.

Any further interference would be from the military, and here in America, the military wasn’t prepared for domestic operations. The United States of America could fly a B-1 bomber twelve thousand miles to drop a precision-guided bomb on a terrorist sitting on his toilet, but it would be slow to respond to an enemy on its own soil.

He looked with satisfaction at his team’s progress. Their planning and training were paying off. The explosives were in place. The team was busy with detonators, wires, and switches. In just a few more minutes, they’d be ready.

Almost before Zarrabian heard the jet approaching, his men dropped their tasks and grabbed an anti-aircraft missile.

The US Marines Harrier blasted under the bridge with a roar that made the whole bridge shudder. He watched the jet bank into a hard turn and slow, its engines rotating downward to the hover configuration.

This was bad luck. Very bad luck. There were no aircraft like this stationed anywhere near San Francisco—the Harrier must have been training nearby.

Behind him, Zarrabian knew without looking that his men had a deadly surface-to-air missile prepared. A few seconds later, the Harrier was hovering menacingly two hundred meters to the east. Zarrabian wondered briefly if it was even armed—it was most likely just a pilot in training.

A missile streaked out from the bridge. The Harrier bloomed into a fireball. Bits and fragments streaked outward, leaving a starburst of smoke trails behind. One of those fragments suddenly popped a parachute: the pilot had ejected before impact. His lucky day, thought Zarrabian.

The Harrier’s carcass dropped out of the fireball and plunged into the ocean. Ibrahim, who had fired the missile, raised his fist in victory.

Zarrabian turned quickly. “Your job is not done!”

“Yes, Colonel!” But Ibrahim was still smiling.

A minute later, Zarrabian scanned their work. It was almost ready. On the east side, two of his men were placing the last detonators and stringing wires to the van. But on the west side, there was only one man. Zarrabian strode quickly across the bridge.

“Where is Ibrahim?”

“He went to the van to get more detonators.”

Zarrabian walked quickly to the van. It was empty. Puzzled, he looked around. Something caught his eye, and he jogged back to the east railing. A rope? It was a mountaineer’s rope, tied to the railing and hung over the side of the bridge. That was odd.

He leaned over the railing. Eighty meters below on wind-whipped waters, a motor launch was idling, holding its position against the strong Pacific trade winds and waves. The rope was swinging wildly in the strong wind, but was held fast at the bottom by a man at the stern of the boat.

Then, just below on the great steel beams of the bridge’s structure, a movement caught Zarrabian’s eye. It was a man’s shoulder, barely visible.

“Ibrahim!”

Ibrahim leaned out to look up at Zarrabian. He had a cell phone pressed to one ear. Zarrabian caught the faint sound of approaching helicopters, growing louder rapidly.

Understanding dawned.

“Traitor!”

Zarrabian pulled out his handgun, leaned over the edge, and fired, but Ibrahim disappeared and the shot missed. He could hear Ibrahim’s voice, talking excitedly on his phone.

Zarrabian looked back at the rest of his team. They were staring in his direction; one had left his task and taken a couple steps toward Zarrabian.

“Get back to work! Do not stop for anything!” he yelled. He climbed over the railing and wrapped his legs around the rope, then twisted it around one arm, protected by his sleeve for a fast descent. With his free hand, he pulled out his gun, then began sliding down the rope.

The thump-thump of the heavy helicopters was growing loud.

Petri, for once, wasn’t moving. Nor was most of the newsroom. All eyes were glued on the big monitor filled with the image of news anchor Dana Poindexter.

“With this latest development, our senior military correspondent, retired General Daniel Newman, tells us these are not al Qaeda-style terrorists. Colonel?”

The news anchor’s image was replaced by Newman. His conservative business suit barely concealed his tight muscles and trim body. Iron-gray hair was the only thing that indicated his true age.

“Yes, Dana, there’s no question. We’re watching trained military professionals at work.”

“Is that because of how quickly they shot down one of our fighter jets?”

“No, quite the contrary, Dana. Anyone can be trained to point a missile and pull the trigger. In fact, I’m frankly surprised we sent in an asset like that without knowing what we were facing.”

“So what impresses you about this operation, sir?”

“Well, I hate to use the word ‘impresses,’ but I am impressed. These guys are fast and precise. Every move is rehearsed. They follow orders. Their planning was meticulous. It was timed for maximum publicity. And they are very well financed. Those four trucks probably cost them close to a million dollars, and there’s no doubt they destroyed one or two others rehearsing that crash.”

“Colonel, do we have any idea what they want?”

“We can only guess. The first concern here will be to neutralize the threat. We may never know what they wanted.”

“Are they planning to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“I hate to speculate. I’m sure that scenario has crossed a lot of minds. My guess is that they’re going to hold the bridge hostage for some other demands. Once they blow it up, assuming they manage to survive, they’ll have no further leverage.”

“Thank you, General. That was retired General Daniel Newman, speaking to us from . . .”

Petri spun around. “Talking heads! That was filler. I want facts! Sources! What have we got? Speak to me!”

Nobody answered.

“Nothing?”

A senior producer spoke up. “These guys seem to have appeared out of nowhere.”

“Nobody appears out of nowhere!”

“We can’t find any buzz on social media or terrorist web sites, Al Jazeera is stumped, and our sources at the Pentagon are blank. No rumors, no speculation.”

“Christ!” Petri stormed toward his office, trailed by several assistants. “This operation is huge! Somebody somewhere knows about it. Find him! And I mean—”

A collective gasp from the newsroom stopped him in his tracks. He spun around again. On the monitor, the center of the bridge was shrouded by smoke and dust from an explosion. Two Marine Corps helicopters, speeding toward the bridge and still connected to the explosion by missile contrails, banked sharply and turned away, their mission accomplished.

The voice of Dana Poindexter came from the monitor. “We’ve just witnessed a major counterstrike! This may be the end of the siege. It’s clear this was a major blow against . . .”

Petri shouted, “Where the hell is Garrett? I want her in front of the camera, and I mean now!”

Christine could see an oily sheen of jet fuel where the Harrier had crashed. A parachute decorated the waves three hundred yards downwind.

Her senses were spinning: machine guns, a destroyed SWAT truck on the sea floor, a United States Marines Harrier jet shot down, and smoke billowing from the bridge overhead.

It finally dawned on Christine: she really was in a war zone. Not Kuwait or Iraq or Afghanistan. San Francisco.

A motor launch was racing toward her. Crap. Probably some do-gooder hoping to rescue a damsel in distress. The motor launch was bashing through the choppy waves, going far too fast for these rough conditions. She raised her arm to wave them off, but when the boat was about fifty yards away, it suddenly stopped. A man in the boat looked up to the bridge and started swinging his arms in the air. That's weird, she thought.

Then she realized he was trying to catch a rope that was swinging wildly in the breeze. What the hell? The rope rose into the air and seemed to be tied to the bridge above. The man in the boat finally caught the end of the rope, then waved at someone above. There was another gunshot from far above.

Enough of this. It was time to get out of here. Way past time. She took one more look at the flailing spinnaker and pulled her sailor’s knife from the sheath on her belt. As she leaned forward to the halyard cleat, a new sound drew her eyes back to the sky. Two heavy helicopters were approaching rapidly. These weren’t police choppers, she realized. They were military gunships, their menacing weapons pods vividly outlined against the sky.

There was another shot from above, followed by a scream. A body fell from the sky and splashed a dozen yards from the motor launch. The man holding the rope released it, and the boat spun around and sped away.

The deep thump-thump of the helicopter rotors grew so loud she could feel it in her seat. Two missiles blazed from the helicopters’ weapons pods and streaked to the bridge. The explosion knocked her breath away.

She shook her head. Her ears were ringing. What was she doing? There was a knife in her hand. Why? The halyard. She was supposed to cut the halyard.

She snapped out of her disorientation and slashed the lines—first the spinnaker guy, then the halyard. The huge sail, finally freed, billowed on the wind and drifted away, settling on the waves a dozen boat lengths away. She released the spinnaker-pole lift and the long boom dropped to the foredeck. Not great, but secure enough. She looked up into her mast and rigging to be sure everything was clear.

Above her, the bridge was engulfed in flames, with black smoke billowing in the wind. There was a man sliding down the rope. He was still fifty feet up and descending quickly. But to what?

Suddenly the rope he was descending broke, and he fell the last fifty feet into the water. The three-hundred-foot rope trailed behind, it’s top end aflame, leaving a smoking trail as it fell and was finally quenched in the sea.

She could see the man’s body bobbing. Christine’s drilled-in man-overboard training kicked in. It would only take moments to lose sight of a body in these waves and swirling currents. Ten boat lengths away and you might never find it again.

She pulled the tiller hard over, let the boat fall off to a downwind course, and loosed the mainsail to catch the wind. As she passed the body, she yanked the man-overboard flag from its place on the backstay and threw it into the water where it bobbed to mark the position. There was no chance of stopping while running downwind; she had to come at the man while heading upwind. She started counting off the standard man-overboard procedure—one, two, three . . . ten boat lengths downwind, heave the tiller and haul up into the wind on port tack . . . one two, . . . six boat lengths, tack to starboard, one, two . . . six and she was abeam the flag. There he was!

She turned into the wind to kill her speed, silently thanking her father. Pop had made her do this drill over and over and over again until she got it right every time. Northern California’s freezing waters were deadly: a sailor in the water would be paralyzed from cold in twenty minutes and dead in forty. Pop had wanted a daughter who could actually rescue him if he fell overboard.

Her maneuver was perfect: Watergate stalled right next to the body. As the wind started to push the bow off to port again, the boat drifted against the body. Christine had no idea how she was going to pull a full-grown man onto her deck, but she had to get his face out of the water and get him breathing. She reached down and grabbed his collar, heaving his head out of the water.

His eyes opened and looked directly into her face. With shock, she realized this was not a drowning man. She was looking into the eyes of a predator.

His left hand clamped onto Christine’s wrist with an iron grip. His right hand rose from the water holding a nine-millimeter Glock. He pointed it directly between Christine’s eyes.

Inside the boat’s cabin, her cell phone rang.

Farid opened his eyes. Something was wrong inside of him. Very wrong. It was odd—he hurt, but not terribly. But somehow he knew.

It took a moment to figure out what his eyes were seeing. It was all sideways. He was lying on the ground, his face pressed to the concrete. Now it made sense. The bridge, the roadway. Smoke rolling across his vision. What had happened? The images came back . . . helicopters . . . missiles.

He rolled over. A large piece of metal—maybe a piece of the Chevy van?—was protruding from his chest. It was hard to breath. He wanted to pull it out; it looked so wrong there.

There was something he must do. His brow creased. So much fog in his brain. The mission. The bridge. That was it. His eyes searched the area. There it was. Close.

He pulled himself, inch by inch, to the controller. It was still connected. He flipped up the safety cover and put his finger on the switch. He was supposed to set a timer, and they were all going to escape. This wasn’t a suicide mission. Colonel Zarrabian had been clear about that: there was more to do after this mission. But now . . . he took one last look around. There was no escape. He could feel the blood leaving his body. His vision was growing dark. He pressed the switch.

“Boss, boss, stop the car!” Bashir was stabbing frantically at his keyboard. “Something’s happened. We gotta see the bridge!”

McCaig slammed on the brakes, screeching to a halt in the middle of Marina Boulevard. Horns sounded, and Bashir heard curses. Without bothering to pull over, McCaig flung his door open, leapt out, and jumped onto the car’s hood. Bashir did the same.

The center of the bridge was shrouded in smoke from an explosion, and two US Marine Corps SuperCobra helicopter gunships were banking low over the waterfront, headed back to wherever they’d come from.

McCaig whistled. “Damn. I guess that’s one way to stop a terrorist.”

“Wow. I hope they didn’t blow up the bridge, too.”

“Sure didn’t do it any good. But it’s still there, so that’s good.”

“What now, boss?”

“Well, we were supposed to get out there and negotiate with the terrorists. Looks to me like there’s nobody left to negotiate with. But we’ve still gotta get out there. Let’s—”

As he spoke, a massive explosion bloomed in the center of the bridge. Huge ripples from the shock undulated up the suspension cables. As if in slow motion, the golden cables parted in the center. The Golden Gate Bridge began to fall.

They both watched wordlessly.

McCaig felt the world shifting underneath his feet. This felt like another 9/11. He knew his life and career would never be the same. His throat was tight. He had to blink his eyes a couple times to clear them.

As the mighty cables sagged into the water and cascades of spray fell back into the sea, the famous San Francisco fog finally won its daily battle with the sun. The gray crept forward, enveloping the now-barren towers in its soft shroud. The bridge faded into the grayness. On the bay below, the brightly colored sails lost their color one by one and disappeared.

He shook his head to clear it. Enough sentimentality.

“Come on, Bashir. We’ve got work to do.”