The Zarrabian Incident Page 6

  Christine peered into the gloom again. “Pop, I could use you right now.” At least she was in a bay. All she had to do was keep her course and sooner or later she’d run into land somewhere.

  Through the fog, she heard the deep thrumming of a huge engine. The real danger here wasn’t getting lost, it was getting run over by a ship. It was the medium-sized motor yachts that worried her: many had no radar and were “captained” by inexperienced rich boys three sheets to the wind.

  She listened. It had the sound of a very large boat. That meant they had radar. They’d see her.

  She peered through the fog again, hoping to spot a shoreline or wharf. Nothing. Crap! Here she was in the middle of the biggest story of the decade, and she couldn’t report it. There would be live interviews, print stories, Internet articles, YouTube videos, Tweets . . . everything. Articles and interviews about the Iranian terrorist and her. It was going to be one of the most amazing stories ever—a terrorist escaping from the bridge and right into the boat of a Pulitzer-prize-winning reporter.

  This was all wrong. She was supposed to be the reporter, not the story! And she was sitting in the goddamned fog in the middle of the San Francisco Bay.

  The engine was getting louder. Much louder. Then she realized it wasn’t one but two, coming from different directions. No, three? This was not good.

  Suddenly a huge Coast Guard cutter loomed out of the fog dead ahead, so close she had to crane her neck up to see the bow. She threw the tiller hard over to avoid a collision. Another cutter loomed out of the fog to starboard. And one to port, too.

  A heavy-caliber machine gun blasted from the foredeck of the starboard cutter, making a menacing line of splashes ten feet in front of her bow. The gun’s flashes lit up the fog like an eerie strobe light. Her ears started ringing.

  A loudspeaker crackled. “HEAVE TO IMMEDIATELY. YOU ARE BEING BOARDED. LIE FACE DOWN ON DECK. PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR HEAD!”

  Christine sat on a cold steel chair. Her elbows rested on an equally cold steel table. She was surrounded by gray walls and imprisoned by a heavy, locked door. She leaned her forehead onto her hands and closed her eyes.

  A young Coast Guard MP had brought her a blanket and put it over her shoulders. That was a nice gesture. Nice or not, she’d heard the clang of deadbolts as he secured the steel bulkhead door on the way out.

  That had been, what, a half hour ago? Forty five minutes? She brushed a strand of hair, still soggy from the fog, away from her eyes and pulled the blanket tighter around her shoulders. Through the steel floor, she could feel the vibrations of the ship’s machinery humming and pulsing. Occasional clanks and bangs spoke of sailors at their never-ending tasks. The engines had fallen silent a few minutes ago, a sign, she supposed, that they’d reached the dock.

  The deadbolts clanked again and the steel door swung open. A tall man in a business suit, holding a cup of steaming coffee in each hand, walked in. His outfit and attitude screamed FBI. Christine sat up and put on her professional face.

  “Ms. Garrett? I’m FBI Special Agent TJ McCaig. I am so sorry about all of this.” He put a cup of coffee on the table in front of her, then reached into his coat pocket and produced packets of sugar and creamer. She took the warm cup gratefully.

  McCaig sat down in the steel chair opposite Christine.

  Her reporter’s instincts kicked in. He was maybe early fifties, tall and lean but not skinny. The sort of man who ran marathons until he hit forty. He probably still ran every day and watched his diet carefully. His face was slightly tanned, but not too much.

  He was looking her over too, his brow furrowed with seriousness. Looking past his serious demeanor, Christine could see faint laughter crinkles around his eyes. She suspected that few got to see that laughter.

  He pulled out a notepad and pen. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

  “You’re going to anyway, right?”

  McCaig sat back. “Asking permission shows respect, Ms. Garrett, and most people appreciate it.”

  “Ask away.”

  McCaig continued. “So the terrorist was long gone when we found you?”

  “Found me? Is that what you call it? Three Coast Guard cutters, fifty-caliber machine guns firing live rounds at me . . .”

  “Across your bow.”

  “. . . and handcuffing me like a common criminal?”

  “Look, Ms. Garrett, I’m sorry the Coast Guard had to do that. We thought a terrorist was aboard your boat. Right now I have a few hundred million civilians to protect, and I need to ask you some questions.”

  “OK, sorry. I’m used to asking questions, not answering them. But I’d really like to get out of here and into a warm bed.”

  “We’d all like to get you in a warm bed, Ms. Garrett.” Then realizing what he’d said, he stammered for a moment, “I mean, that is . . . uh . . .”

  His discomfort finally got a smile from Christine.

  “I need to know last things first: where is he? How and where did he get off your boat?”

  “He had me sail somewhere close by. I thought he was heading to the Tiburon peninsula, but he turned to starboard, that is, to the south, to reach the beach.”

  “South? But that would be—”

  “I know, it doesn’t make sense. Why would a terrorist want to be stranded on Angel Island? But there were no houses. Nothing but trees. I thought about it while I was sailing back through the fog. It couldn’t have been Tiburon or Sausalito or I’d have seen houses. Every inch of those shorelines is lined with mansions. And it sure wasn’t Alcatraz.”

  “So that only leaves Angel Island.”

  “Right.”

  “How’d he get ashore?”

  “We sailed up close to a steep beach and ran aground. Then he tossed my radio and GPS overboard. He apologized for that.”

  “Seriously? He said he was sorry for your GPS?”

  “I’m just telling the story.”

  McCaig scratched in his notepad briefly. “OK, so you’re aground by Angel Island.”

  “He got off the boat from bow, you know, the front of the boat, into the water. My boat only draws five feet at the keel, and the water at the bow was only up to his waist.”

  McCaig pulled out his phone and made a call. “Yeah, it’s McCaig. Focus on Angel Island. She’s pretty sure that’s where he got off the boat . . . . Yeah, she seems to know the bay pretty well; I think she’s right.” He cut off the call.

  “Then what?”

  “He gave me rough instructions how to navigate back to San Francisco. Then he pushed the boat back off the sand, told me it would be good for my health to follow his instructions. Then he waded ashore.”

  McCaig made a couple more notes on his pad, then sat for a moment tapping his pen on the table. He looked up again.

  “Was he injured?”

  “What do you think, Sherlock? He fell from a rope that was tied to the bridge.”

  “Fell?”

  “Well, I think the rope burned through. He was trying to reach the water, but those helicopters attacked, and the fire must have burned his rope. He dropped maybe fifty feet.”

  “Was someone there to pick him up? A boat or something?”

  “There was a boat; they had ahold of the bottom end of the rope and were waiting, but someone got shot and fell from the bridge. As soon as the first body hit the water, they took off.”

  “So there was nobody at the bottom to rescue him?”

  “Not that I could see.”

  “Any idea why he was coming down the rope? Isn’t that water pretty deadly?”

  “Well, bridge on fire above, freezing water below. Like being between the proverbial devil and the deep blue sea, I guess. He chose the sea.”

  “Huh. OK, but was he injured? Did you actually see signs of an injury?”

  “Right, sorry. Yes, I think he was injured. No visible wounds, but he seemed to be protecting one side, like maybe he bruised or broke some ribs.”

  McCaig took more notes.


  “What about weapons?”

  “He had a gun. A Glock. When he fell, I did a standard man-overboard triangle that brought me back to him, and hove-to beside him. When I tried to pull him out of the water, he pulled the gun on me.”

  “What’s a man-overboard triangle?”

  “It’s a technique that usually gets you back to the same spot in the water quickly. It’s handy in rough seas when you can lose sight of someone before you know it. Especially when you’re single-handing and have to drive the boat.”

  “Didn’t you have a GPS?”

  “I do, or did. But a GPS doesn’t account for the strong currents. A standard man-overboard triangle will get you back to the body, even if the body’s being pushed by the tide.”

  “Huh. OK, so he’s injured, wearing jeans and a trucker’s shirt, and has one handgun.”

  “He’s wearing my heavy dark-blue fisherman’s sweater, and he has my phone.”

  McCaig wrote a quick note, then made another call. “Yeah. He’s got Christine Garrett’s phone. Get a trace on it right away. And he may be wearing a dark blue fisherman’s sweater.” He took the phone from his ear and looked at Christine. “You got a find-my-phone app on your phone?”

  “No. I disabled it. Didn’t want to be tracked. You know, by the NSA. I’m a reporter.”

  McCaig put the phone back to his ear. “No . . . . OK, get on it.”

  He ended the call. “Ms. Garrett, what else can you tell us? Any little detail, something he might have let slip, a gesture. The smallest thing could lead us to something.”

  “Oh, there’s a lot more, Mr. McCaig. He asked me to interview him.”

  “What? Seriously?”

  “Serious as a heart attack. I couldn’t believe it. It was the weirdest interview I’ve ever done.”

  When she’d finished relating the details, he sat back and drummed his fingers on the table.

  “Well, this is far more than I’d hoped for, even if his answers were strange. We have a lot to go on. I very much appreciate your cooperation, Ms. Garrett.”

  “Glad I could help.”

  “Is there any chance I could get you to hold back on reporting some of this? I mean, there are some details that would—”

  “Forget it, McCaig. Ain’t gonna happen.”

  “OK, I had to ask. Anyway, I’m sure our guys are going to ask you all these questions over and over until you’re sick of us, but we have enough to get started. I can have a driver take you home any time.”

  “Thanks. I’m sorry I was snappy when you arrived; it was unprofessional.”

  “Forget it. I’ve seen much worse.”

  “One more thing, Mr. McCaig. I, uh . . .” She hesitated. “You know I’m an investigative reporter, right?”

  “I’ve heard of you. Some good stuff.”

  “Thanks. Any reporter can report the facts. I like to think I can read people, too. I like to get behind the facts to their emotions and motives. That’s the real story.”

  “So what’s the real story here, Ms. Garrett? I need more than the facts. I need to see into his head.”

  “Well, I’m alive.”

  “Yeah, I wondered about that. Why? Why aren’t you dead?”

  “There’s something wrong. This guy just doesn’t seem like a terrorist.”

  McCaig sat back in his chair, hands folded in his lap, and stared at her, silent.

  Christine broke the silence. “You don’t believe me.”

  McCaig continued staring at her, the seconds ticking by. Finally he spoke. “You’ve met a lot of terrorists?”

  “A couple.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “It’s a feeling. It’s hard to explain. He wasn’t a zealot. He called himself a soldier, not a terrorist.”

  “They all do.”

  “It was that part about how Americans call any enemy a terrorist, but when Americans attack foreigners on foreign soil, they call themselves soldiers.”

  “It’s actually a good point.”

  “I pointed out that he’d killed hundreds of civilians today. He immediately came back at me with Hiroshima, Dresden, and a bunch of other bombings where we killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. This guy’s no dummy.”

  “A lot of terrorists are indoctrinated with propaganda against America. It makes it easier for them to hate us.”

  “This wasn’t indoctrination. I got the feeling this guy could teach history in college.”

  “I’ll tell you something strange, Ms. Garrett. We haven’t been able to confirm a single civilian casualty today except for the SWAT team that got hit with an anti-tank missile.”

  “What?”

  “Apparently their opening salvo with machine guns was carefully orchestrated to clear the bridge, not kill people. One guy died of a heart attack. Lots of injuries from flying glass. One guy’s leg was blown apart at the knee, but witnesses say he was trying to be a cowboy and was shooting at the terrorists with a hand gun.”

  “So the only civilian shot was deliberately disabled rather than killed?”

  “So it seems.”

  “That’s a story right there.”

  “Yeah. What else?” he asked.

  “Not much. Just that my gut tells me there’s more to this story than a regular act of terrorism.”

  “Blowing up the Golden Gate Bridge is hardly regular.”

  “No, it’s not.” She looked down into her coffee cup. “The Golden Gate Bridge. It’s really gone, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. It really is.” McCaig looked down at his notepad. “OK, thank you, Ms. Garrett. We’re going to be looking under every rock to figure out who this guy is. We have some grainy photos, but you’re the only one who saw him close up. We’ll need you to work with our sketch artist, talk to our profilers, and all that stuff.”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  Zarrabian lay back on the bed of the small RV he had “acquired” and closed his eyes. There was a time to attack, a time to run, and a time to wait. This was a time to wait.

  Even in times of danger, Zarrabian had the uncanny ability to relax when there was nothing to do. His fellow soldiers thought he was strange, sleeping soundly before a fight while they paced, bragged, or prayed. Zarrabian thought they were the strange ones. Why worry when it was utterly useless? It would be better to get some sleep and then face the danger refreshed.

  A hundred yards away, four police cars were gathered around the front door of the WalMart superstore. These looked like sheriff’s cars—little towns like this one couldn’t afford their own police department, so they contracted for police services from the county sheriff. Zarrabian could hear their police radios squawking. The red-and-blue flashing lights dimly lit the curtains pulled across his RV’s windows.

  Zarrabian thought it was very peculiar, but convenient, that WalMart allowed anyone with an RV to park and sleep overnight in their parking lots. Anywhere in America. Like that was some kind of gift. America was a huge, magnificent country, five thousand kilometers from shore to shore, and WalMart just said, hey, you can camp on our asphalt for free! And by the way, buy our stuff.

  There were three other RVs residing for the night in the tiny town’s WalMart parking lot. The four vehicles made an informal cluster in the far corner of the lot, not too close to one another, but still close enough to be an ephemeral community for one night. Humans, no matter how badly damaged or downtrodden, sought company.

  Zarrabian had watched as his fellow travelers came out and socialized a bit. Two of them looked like Vietnam War veterans. They sported long, graying hair that they probably cut themselves using a mirror and scissors and wore combat boots and denim jackets. One vet had a limp and walked with a cane. The other had the faraway look of the permanently stoned. They’d sat in folding chairs after the sun had set; the pungent smell of marijuana drifted through Zarrabian’s windows as they chatted and told stories.

  The third RV belonged to a bedraggled-looking couple. Probably homeless and jobless. Zarrabian imagine
d the husband might have been a warehouseman or machinist. He’d probably been proud of his trade. Maybe he’d followed in his father’s footsteps, thinking he’d be a skilled tradesman, respected and middle class. Maybe his wife had been a factory worker too, or a secretary. Now robots ran the warehouses and factories, computers ran the milling machines, and nobody needed a secretary. Neither of them would ever get another job.

  America. The land of opportunity. And yet, it really was still the land of opportunity compared to so many parts of the world.

  Zarrabian heard knocking on one of his neighbor’s doors. He sat up and lifted the curtain a fraction. Two sheriffs were talking to the couple, asking questions. In the orange sodium glow of the parking lot’s floodlights, it was hard to see skin color, but one of the cops was definitely too dark to be Mexican. Probably African-American. Good.

  Zarrabian kept watching. The man in the RV was gesticulating a bit, and for a moment he moved back inside, allowing a bit of the light from his RV to spill out and light the other cop’s face. He was white. Zarrabian would have no problems.

  He stood up and looked at himself in the mirror. In the dim light coming through his curtains, his disguise was perfect. Californians, especially in these little farm towns, assumed that everybody with light olive to dark brown skin whose hair wasn’t curly and eyes weren’t slanted must be a Mexican. An Arab man could easily pass for a farmworker to anyone who didn’t speak Spanish. All it took to complete the illusion was a big, drooping black mustache, the remnants of what had been a full beard until an hour ago, and a long-sleeved light-blue workman’s shirt, denim blue jeans, and some old leather work boots.

  And an accent. During dinner, he’d watched an old DVD of I Love Lucy that he found in the stolen RV and practiced imitating Ricky Ricardo’s accent. Americans wouldn’t know a Cuban accent from a Mexican accent. Then he’d listened to a couple of Cheech and Chong comedy routines, repeating Cheech Marin’s lines over and over until he had a passable imitation of a Mexican accent.