Michael Savage - Abuse of Power

As his feet penetrated the darkness, he felt the ground suddenly give way beneath them, nothing but open air below.

Catching hold of the edge of the slab, he said, “How far is the drop?”

“Not far,” she told him. “Just let yourself go and be mindful how you land.”

Haddad steeled himself and let go of the slab, working his way downward until his legs were dangling in open air. Then, turning his head to the side, he squeezed through and let himself drop.

He landed hard, but on his feet, the sound of the impact echoing against cement walls. Pulling a small flashlight out of his shirt pocket, he flicked it on and found himself inside a narrow concrete shaft. To his left was another shaft with a built-in rusted rebar ladder that led deeper into the earth.

“Watch out,” Tally said, “here I come.”

He shifted his flashlight beam upward as she shimmied through the hole, having a much easier time of it thanks to her smaller size. As he stepped back she dropped down beside him, faltering only slightly as she landed.

Pulling her own flashlight out, she flicked it on and gestured to the second shaft. “What are you waiting for, slowpoke? Let’s do this.”

She stepped onto the rebar ladder and started down.

Haddad followed her, perturbed by her familiar manner. In a way, that was more annoying than her purely biological need for sex. This behavior was learned.

When he got to the bottom of the ladder he saw only her flashlight shining into the darkness. What he saw was a marvel. A long, wide tunnel-big enough to fit a truck through-made of reinforced concrete. There was occasional graffiti spray-painted on the walls, names of other explorers and when they’d been here. Most of it dated several decades ago, which Haddad assumed meant that the place was only rarely frequented these days. Rusted remnants of a rail system with narrow-gauge tracks ran along the ceiling and he could clearly tell that this had indeed been a military bunker. He had seen this kind of setup before, in Egyptian coal mines in the north Sinai. It maximized space by allowing workers to walk under the cars.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever into the darkness.

“Pretty amazing, isn’t it?” Tally asked.

“More than I imagined,” Haddad said, thinking that if this tunnel led where he believed it did, the final piece of Allah’s plan was indeed in place. “How far does it go?”

“It branches in different directions,” Tally told him. “Some of the old-timers say there are at least eighty-seven thousand square feet down here.” She gestured. “But if you follow this tunnel right here without deviating from the path, it’ll take you straight to the Golden Gate Bridge.”

“Amazing,” Haddad said. “And it also leads to the place we spoke about?”

She nodded. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

She took the lead, working her way through the tunnel with the confidence of a regular visitor. They walked through the dark tunnel for quite some time. As they turned to their right, moving into another tunnel, Haddad saw that it opened out into a space that could have been a bunkhouse or a storage supply. They continued past it, took another turn, and the floor began to rise, getting steeper with every step. They crested the rise and made another turn into a tunnel on their right, where it opened into a single rectangular room. There was another narrow shaft at the far side, a rebar ladder leading upward into darkness.

“This is it,” Tally said, stopping.

“You’re absolutely certain?”

“Oh, I’m sure. It’s right over your beautiful Egyptian head.”

Haddad’s lips parted in a smile and Tally came toward him with a seductive look on her face. “Happy?”

“Better than you will ever know,” Haddad told her as he grabbed her by the throat and shoved her into the cement wall, her eyes going wide as she slammed against it.

He ripped at her flannel shirt, breaking away the buttons, then gripped her exposed left breast and squeezed as hard as he could, enjoying the look of pain and terror in her eyes.

This was how all infidel whores should be treated, Haddad thought as the woman squirmed under his grip, her features contorted. They needed to be taught their place in the world.

When he was done here, there would be one less pig inhabiting the earth.

Thanks to her, countless others would soon follow.

Jack and Sara flew from London on a private charter, a Gulfstream G550 courtesy of Senator Harold Wickham.

Although Jack had been reluctant to get the senator involved before, he knew he had no choice now but to bring him into this mess.

Harold Wickham was a Texas oilman, a hard-line hawk who always put country first and politics last. Jack had met him several years before, when he and two fellow senators were visiting Iraq’s green zone while the search for WMDs was still ongoing. Jack had interviewed Wickham for GNT. Wickham had assured him that the weapons were out there somewhere and it was only a matter of time before they were found.

Off the record, however, Wickham confessed to Jack over a beer that he wasn’t all that confident that they ever would find the weapons. He had become convinced that the U.S. was either victim to sloppy intelligence or-more likely-that the WMDs had been quietly smuggled into Iran.

Neither scenario made the senator happy.

Over the years, Jack had interviewed Wickham many times, and during the days of Truth Tellers, the Texan became a regular panelist who always had insightful observations about the news and politics of the day. The senator leaned heavily right, but had an independent streak that sometimes rankled his fellow Republicans when he refused to vote the party line.

It was a trait that Jack had always admired. But what had sealed the deal was Wickham’s unwavering support after the public relations fiasco that had destroyed Jack’s career. Wickham had even made the rounds on the news show circuit, trying to rehabilitate Jack’s reputation, but the tone had already been set and the senator was drowned out by the braying of the crowd.

So when Jack saw the message in those encrypted e-mails he immediately got on the phone to Wickham and laid it all out for him, from beginning to end. If either phone was tapped and someone was listening, they were welcome to the information. It was too late to be overly cautious.

Wickham had never been prone to alarm, but Jack heard a slight rise in his voice. “Goddamn it, Jack, are you sure about this?”

“As sure as I can be, Senator.”

“You’re talking about the British government, for God’s sake! How far up the chain do you think this thing goes?”

“It’s hard to say. Possibly all the way to the top. The group I told you about, the one that Copeland was involved with, has been shut down, and all of their databases are fried.”

“So you’ve got no evidence.”

“Just the USB key. But if I’m interpreting those messages correctly, there’s gonna be big trouble at the Legion of Honor on Saturday night.”

“With the President smack in the middle,” Wickham muttered.

“I know it all sounds crazy, Senator, but I think we have a major crisis on our hands. The first thing you need to do is to find out who these e-mails went to. The initials are TDL, which doesn’t help much. It could be a throwaway account. But it’s someone at Allied, which leads me to believe they’ve got a shipment coming in.”

Wickham sighed heavily. “I’m bowled over, Jack. Completely bowled over. If this thing is as pervasive as you seem to think it is, I’ll have to go into stealth mode and tread very lightly.”

“But quickly, ” Jack urged. “From what I’ve learned, the Hand of Allah isn’t an organization you want to underestimate. I’m pretty sure their top soldier is already in San Francisco, doing God knows what. A guy named Hassan Haddad. Somebody has to find him and stop him.”