Authors: Stephen Coonts
Liberty (24 page)
“Lanham, Twilley, and Tran,” Zip said, glancing at the list.
“We'll do our best, Admiral,” Zelda said.
Jake left thinking about Janos Ilin, the tightrope walker. If the Russians killed Doyle or kidnapped him to keep him from talking, one had to assume they knew that Ilin sold him out. If that was the way it went down, Ilin was dead or in prison or soon would be. And Jake had no way to contact him. He felt helpless, as if he were living a nightmare in some dark, smoky room filled with mirrors that distorted every image and made it impossible to separate the real from the unreal.
An hour later Toad Tarkington bounced into Jake's office upstairs with Sonny Tran bobbing along in his wake. “Got'er down front, boss. Let's take a ride, see what she'll do.”
Jake grabbed his hat and followed the two men from the office.
“There she is,” Toad said when they reached the parking lot. He gestured to an unmarked white van, a fairly new one by the look of it. Except for two small windows in the back doors, it had no windows behind the driver's
and passenger's seats. “Sonny, you drive and the admiral and I will sit in back and play with stuff. Sir, the technician's name is Harley Bennett.” He opened the door. Bennett was sitting at the control console. Toad introduced the two men.
and passenger's seats. “Sonny, you drive and the admiral and I will sit in back and play with stuff. Sir, the technician's name is Harley Bennett.” He opened the door. Bennett was sitting at the control console. Toad introduced the two men.
As Bennett explained the Corrigan detection unit, Sonny Tran got the van under way. He threaded it through the parking lot, which was only about half full on Saturday afternoon, stopped for the guard at the gate, then dropped down the ramp onto the southbound lane of the George Washington Parkway. Traffic into Washington was flowing well. Tran accelerated to sixty miles per hour and held the van there.
Harley Bennett chattered on as the van swung onto the George Washington, headed toward the heart of the city. “We hunt alpha particles, X rays, gamma rays, and free neutrons. Each has its own characteristics. These types of radiation generally do not propagate far, especially in the atmosphere, and therefore detection ranges are limited. We think our arrays of sensors, which are mainly banks of crystals, push the technology as far as practical.”
“Crystals?”
“Yep. Remember all those crystals that NASA was trying to grow in space to advance pure scientific research? Crystals are used to detect radiation. In any event, Corrigan Engineering couldn't get really big crystals in sufficient quantity. We have ganged little ones together to achieve the same effect and invented some new ones. Other sensor improvements and digital signal processing enable us to determine the amount and specific type of nuclear material being detected, which we think pretty much solves the false alarm problem.”
“False alarms?” Jake hadn't really considered that angle.
“The problem is that our society is full of radiation. Darn near every electromagnetic device is radiating on some frequency. We want a device that won't ring fire alarms when we drive by a dentist's office and he's
X-raying teeth.” Bennett was an enthusiastic talker and Jake Grafton was a good listener, so Bennett charged on, discussing the truckloads of radioactive waste that crisscrossed the nation's highways daily. Hospital waste, medical and industrial isotopes, even some types of concrete give off radionucleides.
X-raying teeth.” Bennett was an enthusiastic talker and Jake Grafton was a good listener, so Bennett charged on, discussing the truckloads of radioactive waste that crisscrossed the nation's highways daily. Hospital waste, medical and industrial isotopes, even some types of concrete give off radionucleides.
“The innovation that makes the Corrigan detection system unique,” Bennett confided, “is the patented active measures we devisedâmainly e-ray sources and neutron generatorsâfor interrogating the emitter and inducing it to increase its emissions rate.”
“All that is in this thing?” Jake asked as he inspected the aluminum cabinet in the center of the van.
“It's in there,” Harley Bennett said warmly, and patted the box.
Sonny drove to a hospital, which excited the Corrigan device. “Medical radiation,” Bennett said after he actively queried the emitters. He showed Jake and Toad the instrument readings. “Occasional X rays, and some low-order medical isotopes.”
“Naturally you've tested this thing on a real warhead?”
“Oh, yes, sir,” Harley said, slightly offended. “The air force made one available to us last week.”
“We also went by Three Mile Island on the way down here, Admiral,” Toad said. “This thing lit up like a drunk on Saturday night.”
They talked about the readings, what each meant.
“Let's drive south to the Beltway,” Toad suggested. “Sit beside the road and see what goes by.”
Jake nodded. Toad spoke to Sonny, who started the engine and got the vehicle under way. They ended up on the I-95/I-495 interchange. Sonny pulled over and turned on the emergency flashers.
He came back to join Bennett and the naval officers. The men sipped coffee and watched the gauges. “We got some hits with radioactive waste being transmitted while we were driving down from Boston,” Toad said.
“We've got one detector and a whole city to protect,”
Jake said to Bennett. “How should we proceed?”
Jake said to Bennett. “How should we proceed?”
“I recommend that we make a map of the city, a grid, and take a sample in every sector, establishing a baseline. Then we keep going back over the sectors sampling radiation levels. I imagine we could do the whole city a couple times a week. When we get more detectors, we will get more proactive, visit the airports daily, for example.”
“Do you think the goal of finding the weapons as they come in is unrealistic?”
“It is until we get more detectors. When we have enough, put one at every airport, establish corrals on all the major highways coming in to force the trucks to pass by. But since we can't build a wall around the city and limit traffic to a few gates, I don't see how you'll ever get away from sector searches.”
“How about an airplane? Put one in a plane and have it fly over the city?”
“That would work, if we could fly low enough.”
It wasn't long before a truck hauling medical isotopes went by. The device squealed an audible warning.
When the excitement died down, Jake said, “Sonny, let's get this thing rolling. I want to drive around the Capitol, then the White House and Lincoln Memorial and the Pentagon.”
“You don't really think the bombs are already here, do you?” Toad asked.
“If our source was telling the truth? No, let's get busy establishing a baseline right now.”
Sonny moved back into the driver's seat.
The van was proceeding north on 1-295, past the old Naval Station Anacostia, when the detector began squealing again.
“That's strange,” Bennett muttered. As the van rolled north, the emissions faded. “Must be some kind of radioactive waste around here.”
“Here?” Jake said, and went forward so he could look out the windows. He could hear the audible tones sounding
behind him. As the van rolled, the sounds faded.
behind him. As the van rolled, the sounds faded.
Bennett scratched his head. “That was something, anyway.”
“What?”
“I don't know, Admiral.”
False positives! Jake cursed under his breath, then told Sonny to turn around. He got off at the next exit, crossed the overpass, and headed south.
The Corrigan detection unit came alive again. An hour later the van was sitting on the waterfront. Reagan National Airport was across the river.
“Something's triggering this damned thing!” an obviously frustrated Harley Bennett exclaimed. He had put out sensor cables, gotten the direction of the strongest reaction.
Jake and Toad got out of the van and consulted the map. “Could be something at Fort McNair,” Toad said, pointing across the Anacostia River. “Or at Reagan National, or maybe over on that golf course at East Potomac Park.”
“Let's do Fort McNair first,” Jake said. Traffic was building, so it took a while to get there. At Greenleaf Point the machine was indicating the presence of a weapon.
“I don't believe it,” Toad said. “There is no way in hell that terrorists have got a bomb here from Russia in five weeks.”
“We haven't found the locus of the signals yet,” Jake said. He pointed toward the golf course on Hains Point, across the Washington Channel that led to the Tidal Basin. “Roll it, Sonny.”
The golf course security guard didn't want to let an unmarked van onto the grounds. While he called the course groundskeeper, Jake used his cell phone. Ten minutes later two squad cars and a car full of FBI agents arrived within a minute of each other. Opposition from the groundskeeper vanished. He unlocked the access gate and let the van and police cars through.
They ended up at the southern end of the island behind
a seawall made of pilings. Harley Bennett unwound sensor cables and plugged them into sockets in the van, then flaked them out on the ground. After consulting his machine, he announced, “We're right on top of it, almost. Within a few feet.” He and Jake joined the police officers, who were searching the grounds, looking under bushes and hedges.
a seawall made of pilings. Harley Bennett unwound sensor cables and plugged them into sockets in the van, then flaked them out on the ground. After consulting his machine, he announced, “We're right on top of it, almost. Within a few feet.” He and Jake joined the police officers, who were searching the grounds, looking under bushes and hedges.
There was a small building nearby. The groundskeeper unlocked it. The building was full of shovels, rakes, mattocks, tools, and spare parts to repair the course's watering system.
“This is all fill dirt, isn't it?” Jake asked the groundskeeper as he gestured at the area around them.
“Yessir, it sure is. About five, maybe six years ago, the city hauled in dirt and piled it on this mudflat. They built the wall around here to hold it all in and made that fairway over there longer. Moved that putting green. Moved some trees, too.”
“Any digging around here lately?”
“Oh, no. Nothing like that.”
“I seem to remember the construction five years ago. I was living at Fort McNair around then.”
“The environmentals didn't make much noise about this mudflat, not like they would today.”
“Five years,” Toad muttered to Jake. “Something's wrong with that gadget.”
“Let, go.”
Bennett was embarrassed. “I can't explain it, Admiral. Unless maybe someone dumped a drum of Three Mile Island waste into that fill.”
“I want you to go over this gizmo with a fine-tooth comb, Harley, check every lead and sensor. Call Toad in the morning, check in with him.”
Bennett nodded sadly and checked his watch.
“Sonny, take me back to the office.” He thanked the law enforcement officers and groundskeeper for their time, and led the little procession back toward the clubhouse.
When he returned to the office, Jake Grafton found a telephone message waiting. He had received a call from Sal Molina, the president's aide. He was requested to attend a meeting at nine o'clock that night at the Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House.
Jake removed the card with Molina's telephone number from his wallet and dialed the telephone. “What's this meeting tonight about?” he asked.
“The heads of the FBI and CIA are hearing about your plans from their liaison officers. They want to argue about your decisions.”
“I see.”
Molina sighed. “The president asked the national security adviser, Butch Lanham, to referee. DeGarmo wants you canned. You're a lightweight, Emerick told the president, in over your head.”
“And Emerick's such a nice fellow.”
“Right.”
“How about inviting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to this soiree, General Alt? Maybe even the guy I work for, Stuffy Stalnaker?” Stalnaker was the chief of naval operations.
“I'll talk to Butch, see what he thinks,” Molina said. “Nine o'clock.”
Lying on the table totally paralyzed, Tommy Carmellini's mind wandered freely. He thought of his parents, friends, places he had been, things he had done, stupid things he was ashamed of, things he regretted.
The night had come, and the building was totally dark. He heard some airplanes for the first few hours after the sunset, then silence.
Complete silence, broken only by the gentlest whisper of the breeze around the gaps in the metal siding of the hangar.
His mind resumed its aimless wanderings. Norv and Arch were going to kill himâof that he had no doubt. If they didn't kill him, he would kill them, and they knew that.
He certainly never thought it would end this way. Or this soon. He was still a young man, with a lot of great years left.
He was thinking about dying when he heard a plane coming. The noise grew louder and louder. It seemed to be taxiing up right outside the building. Then the pilot cut the fuel to the engines and they died. EnginesâCarmellini was sure there were two.
He filled his lungs, tried to shout. And couldn't.
Tommy Carmellini tried to moan, to speak, to say a single word, He couldn't make his lips or tongue move. He couldn't swallow, couldn't move his head â¦
The door of the hangar opposite the one he was in creaked as it was opened. Voices reached him, although he couldn't distinguish the words. A small gasoline engine started ⦠probably a nose tug of some kind being used to move the plane.
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