Patrick Robinson: To The Death

The tenth book in the Arnold Morgan series, 2008

United States Senior Command

Paul Bedford (President of the United States)

Professor Alan Brett (National Security Adviser)

Admiral Arnold Morgan (Personal Adviser to the President)

Rear Admiral George Morris (Director, National Security Agency)

Lt. Commander Jimmy Ramshawe (Assistant Director, NSA)

Vice Admiral John Bergstrom (C-in-C, SPECWARCOM)

United States Navy

Commander Rick Hunter (SEAL team leader) (recalled)

Commander Bob Wallace (USS Grabber)

CPO Mark Coulson (SEAL dive chief)

LPO Ray Flamini (SEAL diver)

Commander Hank Redford (USS Cheyenne)

CPO Skip Gowans (Sonar, USS Cheyenne)

U.S. Police Officers

Pete Mackay (Boston Police Department)

Danny Kearns (Boston Police Department)

Mike Carman (NYPD)

Joe Pallizi (NYPD)

American Travelers

Donald Martin (Boston financier)

Elliott Gardner (President, Boston corporation)

Middle East Jihadists

General Ravi Rashood (C-in-C, Hamas)

Mrs. Shakira Rashood (Hamas field agent)

Ramon Salman (Boston-based Hamas chief)

Reza Aghani (Boston terrorist)

Mohammed Rahman (Palm Beach insurgent)

Commodore Tariq Fahd (First Minister, Hamas)

Major Faisal Sabah (2/IC, Hamas, Gaza)

Colonel Hassad Abdullah (Hamas field officer)

Fausi (Jordanian attaché/chauffeur)

Ahmed (Jordanian embassy cultural attaché/spy)

Captain Mohammed Abad (CO, Iranian submarine)

Lieutenant Rudi Alaam (Navigation Officer, Iranian submarine)

National Air Traffic Control

Steve Farrell (Radar Operator)

Northeastern Air Defense

Colonel Rick Morry

Major Scott Freeman

Washington Writers

Anthony Hyman (White House Presidential Staff)

Henry Brady (Washington Post)

Israeli Personnel

Ambassador David Gavron

Colonel Ben Joel (Mossad team leader)

Lt. Colonel John Rabin (Explosives Chief)

Major Itzaak Sherman (Israeli patriot)

Abraham (Bodyguard and hitman)

Brockhurst, Virginia

Emily Gallagher (Mother of Mrs. Arnold Morgan)

Jim Caborn (Manager, Estuary Hotel)

Detective Joe Segel (Murder inquiry)

Matt Barker (garage owner) (dec.)

Fred Mitchell (Doorman, Chesapeake Heights)

Ireland

Detective Superintendent Ray McDwyer (Skibbereen Police) Officer Joe Carey

Jerry O’Connell (West Cork farmer) (dec.)

Patrick O’Driscoll (Central Milk Corporation)

Mick Barton (Shamrock Café, Skibbereen)

Bill Stannard (Captain, Yonder, Crookhaven)

London

Reggie Milton (Dover Street doorman)

George Kallan (Admiral Morgan’s bodyguard) (dec.)

Al Thompson (Chief bodyguard)

Scotland

Admiral Sir Iain and Lady MacLean

Logan International Airport, which sits atop a zillion-ton concrete promontory, hemmed in by runways, tunnels, and the harbor, was heaving with travelers. Thousands of them, packed into lines for tickets, lines for check-in, lines for security, lines for coffee, coke, donuts. They even had lines for cheeseburgers, and it was not yet 8 A.M. on a gloomy, freezing January morning.

South. South. The demand was always south. South to Florida. South to Antigua, Barbuda, St. Barts, south to the islands, any island, anywhere to get the hell out of this cold, snow, sleet, and ice. It was the peak of the season. High fares. Ruinous hotel bills. Nobody cared. This was the ice-bound airport of the winter-grim northeastern city of Boston, Massachusetts. Beyond the departure terminals, a bitter easterly wind howled straight off the slate-gray waters of Massachusetts Bay. A mile to the west stood the frozen granite towers of the downtown area.

All this had once been home to a battle-hardened race of New En-glanders who accepted the cold, fought it, and shrugged it off. Not any more. Modern prosperity, air travel, and a sense of indignation and entitlement pervaded. Goddammit, I don’t need this tundra crap. Get me out of here.

Thus the eager vacationers collided in a tidal surge with the already-irritated business crowd, which was, en masse, fed up with late takeoffs. As Monday mornings go, this one was up and running.

“This is totally fucking crazy,” muttered Officer Pete Mackay, adjusting his gloved hands on his light machine gun as he moved through the crowd.

“Tell me about it,” said his teammate, Officer Danny Kearns. “Osama bin Asshole could vanish without a trace in the freakin’ donut queue.”

Mackay and Kearns were buddies beyond the confines of the Boston Police Department. Each of them brought a missionary zeal to the fan base of the New England Patriots. For almost eleven months of every year, and sometimes for twelve, they believed to the depths of their souls that this year was theirs, that the glorious years of Super Bowl victories would stand before them again.

They lived football. They ate and slept football. Each of them would awake in the night, leading the blitz as the Patriots surged forward; the big, bullnecked Pete Mackay, in his dreams the greatest defensive lineman who ever lived; Danny, more modestly, the fastest running back on earth. Whenever they could, they went to the games together, taking turns bringing the kids, Pete’s Patrick and Sean, Danny’s Mikey and Ray.

Both cops were fifth-generation Boston Irish; they both lived on the south side of the city, across the water from the airport. And their great-great-grandparents had emigrated from Ireland around the same time, right after the famine. No one could remember when the Mackays and the Kearnses did not know each other. Both Pete’s and Danny’s fathers had been Boston cops.

The whole lot of them had attended the same grade school in Southie, played football together, played baseball together in the streets, got in fights with their neighbors, and endured a cheerful scrappy childhood. Pete and Danny both made it to Boston University, and both played football-though not at the highest level, however much effort they put in.

Subsequently, both men viewed the Patriots with a kind of stricken pride, a complicated self-irony that burst into an unreasoning, inflamed passion when the Barbarians were at the gate-that is, when any other team from any other city in the United States challenged the boys from Foxborough.

As a cop, the 34-year-old Pete Mackay was scheduled to go right to the top. He was ambitious, tough, and cynical, though not unreasonably. In action, he was still fast on his feet and a master at dealing with the occasional outbreak of inner-city violence. Like Danny, he was an expert marksman. Also, he packed a right hook like a jackhammer, should anyone be foolish enough to attack him.

Officer Kearns, the resident comedian of the precinct, was not quite so dedicated to the police department. He had a very beautiful Italian wife, Louise, and by the end of most days he was about ready to call it quits and get home to the family. His straight man, Pete, also had a pretty wife, Marie, but he was always looking around for crimes to investigate, chatting with the detectives, moving steadily toward the day when he would become Detective Sergeant Mackay.

They were a popular team, Mackay and Kearns, and they both spent a lot of extra hours raising funds for the families of police officers killed or injured in action.

This morning, in the jostling hub of the airport’s Terminal C, they were on high alert for anything that looked even remotely suspicious. Normally they patrolled slowly, moving from one end of the terminal to the other but never straying too far from the sightline of the security staff.