Michael Savage - Abuse of Power

Sara needed him.

But his body had had enough. It didn’t want to move.

Now Haddad was on his feet and moving toward him with feral eyes. Before he could reach Jack, Sara blindsided him, shoving him to the floor. The backpack and her bonds made it difficult for her to move and Haddad threw her off effortlessly. Then he was on his feet again, kicking her mercilessly in the head and stomach.

“Jack…”

Sara needs me.

Marshaling every scrap of his strength, Jack used the rail to pull himself up and he ran at Haddad.

Blinded by fury, by pain, Jack hit the man like a linebacker. They both went down. Climbing to his knees, Jack punched down, blow after blow, driving the man’s head against the metal of the bridge. Haddad’s hands came up defensively but Jack yelled and swatted them aside, continuing to slam his fists at that evil face, fueled by hatred for everything the man had done, everything he stood for. Ignoring the pain in his shoulder, Jack thought only about Sara and Copeland and Drabinsky and Jamal, thought about the havoc people like this brought to the world, used his fists to turn thought into action.

And then Haddad stopped struggling, his breath coming in bloody gurgles, his face raw and torn. But if he somehow expected Jack to be merciful, he’d picked the wrong night. Without a second thought, Jack grabbed hold of the man’s shirt and dragged him back against the rail, flopped him against it, stared at the pulped flesh and bloody wisp of a beard.

“Enjoy the virgins, asshole.”

Jack slammed his open hands hard against Haddad’s chest, the terrorist’s battered eyelids going wide with horror as he sailed over the side of the tower to the pavement five hundred feet below, his terrified screams rising into the night sky.

The fall took just three seconds. It ended with ugly abruptness.

A moment later, the wind kicked up again.

Once more, the city could breathe.

Jack staggered, dropping to one knee, and grabbed the rail for support. He heard Sara moan, and crawled over to her. Using what little energy he had left, he ripped the bonds from her wrists and unstrapped the backpack, laid it aside. He noted the location of the cell phone.

He’d get it later. Or someone would.

Right now, all he wanted to do was pull Sara into his arms and hold her as if he’d never let her go.

In the months that followed, the world did not miraculously change.

The good guys had won, but that didn’t necessarily mean the bad guys would be punished. Not in the way that Jack would have liked, with handcuffs and trials and lifetime-without-parole.

Instead, the rich and powerful managed to prevail, as they often do.

Despite Jack’s statements to the FBI and Homeland Security and the twenty other law enforcement agencies that seemed to be involved in the investigation, there was no hard proof to put Lawrence Soren and his cronies behind bars. And no real proof that MI6 or the British Home Office had ever been involved.

The island in the bay had been scrubbed, sanitized. The boats the men had used were MIA. Abdal al-Fida was a suicide, Bob Copeland was listed as an “accidental death,” and Jamal Thomas was an OD. There were no e-mails, no enhanced photos, there was nothing even remotely incriminating on the computers of Dave Karras or Faisal al-Jubeir. Someone had gotten to the machines and washed them, too. Bribes had been paid to the right officials.

There was only the word of Jack and Sara.

And that, unfortunately, was not enough.

The only good news was that the San Francisco District Attorney dropped the charges against the Constitutional Defense Brigade, citing “lack of evidence.” In time-enough time for the FBI to save face-the car bomb was added to the charges against the small band of Muslim extremists, led by Hassan Haddad, who had tried and failed to blow up the Golden Gate Bridge.

There was no mention of the tanker and the hydrazine-based rocket fuel that would have been used as an accelerant. Jack hadn’t told Forsyth the worst of it. The destruction of the bridge was a visual symbol to show the world, to encourage other terrorists to strike. On the ground, though-that was where the real disaster would have occurred. He and Tony had done some rough calculations: given the speed and direction of the wind, the heat from that fire would have risen high enough to blanket all of the San Francisco and Oakland regions with lethal levels of radiation from the exploded nuke. There would have been thousands of deaths within days, tens of thousands within weeks, over a million within a month-many of those among people who would have been needed to keep the infrastructure from collapsing. Doctors, police, workers at power plants and sewage centers. The environment would have become so toxic that rescue workers couldn’t have gotten into the area, and poisoned food and water would have added exponentially to the death toll. Airdrops of fresh supplies would have led to riots, more death. Silicon Valley would have been ravaged, all but destroying the U.S. computer industry.

Fortunately, Tony, Doc, and the other members of the team survived their wounds. After calling Jack, Doc had phoned in a 911 then gone back to the bunker to minister to the others. He stopped the bleeding as best he could and propped them in such a way as to limit the flow of blood toward the wounds. Given everything else that was going on it was morning before help arrived; Doc had gone back out the tunnel to wait for them.

They were all tough old birds, and Jack had figured it would take more than a firefight with a gang of fanatic Muslim murderers to put them down.

Maxine went back to doing what she did best, and found herself inundated with work when her own role in the counterespionage activities hit the press-courtesy of Jack, who tipped off a few colleagues. Max and Karras even managed to maintain something that resembled a relationship.

At least there was also some justice in the world.

Two months after the attempt, Senator Harold Wickham was caught in a compromising situation with one of his office staff members and was forced to resign his seat. He insisted that he had been set up, that he didn’t even know any hookers from Bulgaria, but video doesn’t lie.

Especially when the person at the other end of the fiberoptic cable is Maxine Cole.

Several of the other men in that bed-and-breakfast dining room also left their jobs, suddenly and surprisingly, citing the need to spend time with their families.

Lawrence Soren himself was caught in a financial scandal that threatened to destroy a good portion of his media empire, when some enterprising reporters at GNT rival Flux News found out about the profit he’d earned from his hedge fund that had made millions shorting Tokyo Electric the same day as the massive earthquake and tsunami hit Fukushima. Even the most rapacious investors don’t want so-called BBFs-Body Bag Funds-as a line item in their annual reports. Still, Jack did not doubt that Soren and the others would be back. These were not the type of men who give up easily.

The press called Jack and Sara heroes, and while he found the hypocrisy mildly offensive-these were some of the same reporters who had called him a traitor to American ideals-Jack was gratified to find himself fielding phone calls regarding job offers from all the major networks, including his old friends at GNT.

He let most of those calls pile up on voice mail.

As he and Sara recovered emotionally as well as physically, they spent many of their days at sea, lounging on the Sea Wrighter, letting the sun and the salty ocean air work their natural healing effects. Their nights were spent in the harbor, drinking wine with Tony, with Eddie curled up at their feet.