Abuse of Power - Michael Savage [123]
“And how are we supposed to do that?”
“Teamwork,” Max said. “Teamwork and a whole hell of a lot of luck.”
* * *
They had turned the salon and pilothouse of the Sea Wrighter into a makeshift command center, reminding Jack of the apartment house in Paris. The Sea Wrighter itself was anchored in the middle of the bay, away from prying eyes and ears, and who knew what else. If they were going to make some kind of move, it had to be done with the greatest of stealth.
Three of Tony’s buddies were here, the same three who had helped them assault the island. Jack had met them over the months in various bars that he and Tony frequented around town, old hardened war vets who still remembered what it meant to fight for your country. Back in the days when the bad guys were easier to spot and you knew who your friends were by the uniform they wore.
Now those uniforms had been replaced by street clothes, and you never knew who might be hiding behind a simple T-shirt and a pair of jeans. And thanks to fascists like Lawrence Soren and the people he bankrolled, there was no way to know when a look of concern or surprise was genuine, or merely a façade designed to manipulate and deceive.
But like Tony himself, his buddies were old-school, the kind of guys you could rely on in a pinch.
There was Mike Abernathy, a steel-eyed sixty-five-year-old former army combat commando badass, who looked as limber as a kid out of high school. Mike had done four tours in Vietnam, earned a chest full of medals, and at one time was even on the short list for a Medal of Honor.
Then there was Jonah Goldman, a fifty-year-old former Navy SEAL whose search-and-rescue missions around the globe were legendary, a guy who looked like a young Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And finally, Doc Matson, former medic and paratrooper who had trained Tony himself. Grizzled, white haired, Doc was the oldest of the bunch, and possibly the toughest, and the others sometimes kidded that he’d fought alongside Ulysses S. Grant.
It was a motley crew, all right, but these men were as tough as they came and had the mental and physical prowess to best any twenty-year-old coming out of the box.
But the biggest surprise here was Dave Karras, Max’s old flame and computer hacker extraordinaire. After that night in his apartment Jack figured he’d never see the guy again, especially in the same zip code as Max herself. Yet here he was, with a shave and a haircut, commandeering three laptop computers that projected their images onto Jack’s sixty-inch television screen.
Jack shot Max a quizzical look and she just shrugged and said, “What can I tell you? I’m a sucker for men who grovel.”
Jack still couldn’t picture them as a couple, but he’d given up on trying to figure out the ways of the heart a long time ago.
“Okay, guys,” Karras said. “I found it.”
He punched a button on one of the laptops and the television screen came to life with a building blueprint.
The California Palace of the Legion of Honor.
The Legion of Honor was a revered part of San Francisco’s history, a common destination for tourists and locals alike. Built in 1924, it was a smaller, multicolumned replica of France’s Palais de la Légion d’Honneur, which sits on the west bank of the river Seine.
San Francisco’s palace stood on a small hill in Lincoln Park, surrounded by a golf course and beautiful ocean vista, looking out toward the Golden Gate Bridge. Jack had always thought its architecture was reminiscent of the buildings in Washington, D.C., and Thomas Jefferson himself had used the original French palace as inspiration for Monticello, his estate in Virginia.
The Legion of Honor had served as a museum since its doors first opened, and had one of the finest collections of ancient and European art in the world.
Jack had been there many times, but looking at it in the form of a blueprint was a new experience