The Enemy Within

Inside a sleek black-and-white cruiser parked just off Highway 101, California Highway Patrol Offficer Steve Dwyer sat sipping the last cup of coffee from his thermos, studying the cars streaming past him through bleary eyes. He yawned, trying to get some oxygen into his bloodstream. After a long shift spent scouting for drunks, joyriders, and other lowlifes, the steady crackle of voices over his radio and the lukewarm coffee were just about the only things keeping him awake, Dwyer stifled another jaw-cracking yawn and ran a hand over his scalp, frowning when his fingers along skin where only months before there had been hair. This god damned job was getting to him, he thought. Hell, he was only thirty-two way too young to be going bald. Maybe he could put in a stress claim and get the department health plan to cough up for some of that Rogaine stuff before he started hearing Kojak jokes and finding lollipops taped to his locker.

The sight of a gasoline tanker mixed in with the traffic streaming past him brought the CHP officer fully awake. For safety reasons, tankers and other carriers of hazardous materials were banned from the bridge and its approaches during rush hour. Everybody knew that, didn’t they? For damned sure, every trucker who wanted to keep his license knew that. Everybody except this idiot, obviously.

Dwyer plucked his radio mike off the dashboard. “Dispatch, this is Five-Two. I have a HazMat rig trying to cross the Gate.” He squinted into the slowly growing dawn. “Plate number is Delta, Tango, Two, Nine, Four, Five, Three. I’m making the stop now.”

With its lights flashing, the CHP cruiser pulled onto the highway.

Highway 101

Shahin cursed as the American police car suddenly slid in right behind Nadhir’s truck. The Iranian bent down to tear open the gym bag between his feet. He tugged a Czech-made Skorpion machine pistol out of the bag and checked its twenty-round clip. Satisfied, he flipped the weapon’s folding wire stock into place and looked up. “firing that close to that police car!”

When Zadi hesitated, the Iranian lifted the Skorpion’s muzzle, aiming it casually at the older man’s stomach. His eyes were cold. “Do it,” he said softly.

Horrified, Haydar Zadi swerved left into the next lane and accelerated. Horns blared in outrage behind them.

Shahin ignored the noise, his eyes fixed on the patrol car still trying to pull Nadhir off the road. He could hear the policeman using his loudspeaker now. That was a wasted effort, he knew. The younger Iranian didn’t speak or understand any English.

Weaving slightly under Zadi’s unsteady hands, the Nissan drifted up alongside the black-and-white police cruiser. Still pinned by heavy traffic, neither vehicle was moving more than twenty kilometers an hour. Shahin held his breath, waiting for the right moment. Closer. Closer. Now.

The two cars were less than two meters apart.

He poked the machine pistol above the door frame, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger.

The Skorpion stuttered wildly, bucking upward in Shahin’s hands as he emptied a full magazine into the other vehicle at point-blank range. Sparks flew off torn metal, and glass shattered, smashed into a thousand fragments by the hail of gunfire. Blood fountained across the police car’s dashboard. Still rolling forward, the black-and-white slowly veered off the highway, spun around until it bounced into the hillside, and came to rest with its lights still flashing.

Inside the Nissan, Zadi flinched, panicked by the sudden deafening noise. He yanked the steering wheel left again and then back hard right, narrowly missing another car. More horns sounded angrily behind and all around them.

“Fool!” Shahin snarled. He glimpsed a road sign ahead and off to the right. They were practically right on top of the last exit before the bridge itself. They had done their part. They had brought Ibrahim Nadhir safely to the brink of Paradise. Now it was time to pull away to live and fight and on another day. He grabbed Zadi’s shoulder and pointed. “There! The exit! Go! Go!”

Pale and shaking harder than ever, the older man obeyed. He jammed his foot down hard on the gas pedal. The Nissan sped off the freeway and flashed into an intersection without stopping. But they were moving too fast to make the turn that would have taken them back onto 101 heading north. Instead, Zadi skidded left, turning onto a small, two-lane road that snaked around and up the Marin Headlands, climbing ever higher along the sheer bluffs overlooking the Golden Gate and the Pacific Ocean.

Shahin whirled in his seat, straining to look through the Nissan’s rear window. Behind them, the gasoline tanker continued straight on down the highway. It roared steadily past the exit, driving toward San Francisco.