Liberty (41 page)

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Authors: Stephen Coonts

BOOK: Liberty
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He had scouted this area before, so he knew the place he wanted to watch from. He started the car engine, drove there, then parked.
After another careful scan of this area, he gave the binoculars to Ali. “Watch for FBI. They will be difficult to
spot, yet if they know about the bomb, there will be many of them. And police.”
A Freightliner cab pulled out of the yard towing a container on a truck chassis. The driver blew through the stop sign, turned right, and accelerated away down the street.
A locomotive whistle blew, a long, a short, then a long. Through the fence they could see it, a long, sinuous snake laden with containers. It began to move.
“How long are we going to wait?” Yousef asked.
“As long as it takes,” Mohammed said curtly.
The words were no more out of his mouth than another truck came thundering down the boulevard toward the gate and turned in. The corner Mohammed had picked was going to be a busy place.
Nguyen Duc Tran had the same problem that Mohammed Mohammed had—he also needed to know if the container was being watched by federal officers. Unlike Mohammed, he had no intention of sitting outside the Port Everglades gate in plain sight waiting for someone to become suspicious and call the police or FBI.
He was waiting at the location where Red would have the container delivered, a building site of a new golf course in Jupiter, Florida. He had arrived earlier that afternoon, before the construction crew knocked off. With his Corrigan credentials and tractor cab, he fit right in. He actually told the site manager the truth: He was waiting for a container to be delivered that had to go to another Corrigan site.
“I don't know why in hell they decided to send it here, but that's what the dispatcher told me.”
The manager merely nodded. Nguyen wandered off to find a shady spot to sit. Being from Texas, he wasn't bothered much by the heat, humidity, and bugs.
After the construction crew left, he went to eat dinner, then came back to the site. The container would arrive during working hours, of course, when there was someone
there to sign for it. But if the police or FBI discovered what was in the container, they would probably stake out the area before it was delivered. If that happened, the game would be over for Nguyen, and he would merely climb in his tractor and drive away.
The crazy thing was that he didn't know if the container was even in the country. He didn't want any further contact with Red Citrix, and he certainly didn't want Red calling him. If it were in America and the FBI hadn't found the weapon inside, some local hauler would deliver it sooner or later.
At dusk Nguyen found a large earthmover and spread a blanket under it. He lay down on the blanket. From behind the giant tires he could see the two mobile homes about two hundred yards away that were being used as offices for the engineers and foremen. That was the place the truck driver would probably drop the container, he assumed. A light mounted on a pole in front of the newer mobile home lit the area fairly well. He scanned the area with his binoculars.
Nguyen had a rifle lying on the blanket beside him, a Remington Model 700 in .308 with a four-power scope. He used a night-vision scope he had ordered over the Internet from a sporting goods company to glass the vast area unilluminated by the solitary pole light.
Nothing.
Time passed slowly. He napped, drank water from a bottle, scanned periodically with the night-vision scope and the binoculars, then napped some more. Twice he crawled out from under the earthmover to take a pee.
The waiting was difficult. He had spent his life anticipating the opportunity to kick these American bastards in the nuts, and it was finally coming. He shivered as he thought about it. His mind wandered to the pricks he had known through the years, the bastards who had harassed him unmercifully when he was growing up, the teachers he had loathed who loathed him.
Someone once said that revenge is overrated. Whoever that fool was had obviously never drunk very much of it, Nguyen thought. Getting even is one of life's great thrills. Revenge is the only pure emotion, he decided, unleavened by any of the others. Its purity makes it sweet.
Well, perhaps it is not absolutely pure. Hatred is always part of the desire for revenge. And God knows,
Nguyen thought,
I hate these bastards, hate everything they stand for, from their sanctimonious preaching about human rights to their hypocritical tut-tutting over the poverty of the non-white world and their crusade to turn the Earth into a wilderness park for the idle rich to hike in. Americans are truly perfect assholes: the better you know them, the less you like them.
Sonny Tran was tired. At two in the morning he was piloting the van carrying the original Corrigan detector through the mean streets of Boston. Toad Tarkington and Harley Bennett were in the back of the van wearing headsets and watching the needles. With narrow streets lined with parked cars, hills everywhere, and old brick buildings crowding the sidewalk, Boston looked as old as it was.
Sonny's opportunity came suddenly, unexpectedly. He was slowing for a red light when he heard a truck roaring down the hill from his left toward the intersection. The truck had the green light.
Now he saw it, a large garbage truck. The driver was off the brakes, letting it roll.
Sonny waited a heartbeat, then floored the accelerator of the van. It shot into the intersection. For an instant he thought he had judged it wrong, that the garbage truck was going to impact the driver's door.
But no—the van was going just fast enough to escape that fate. The impact was three feet behind the driver's door, a smashing thunk that tore the wheel from his hand and twisted the cab in against the left front wheel of the
truck, which continued across the intersection as it began turning sideways. With tires squalling amid the shriek of tortured metal, the truck's momentum carried it completely across the intersection before it rolled over onto its right side. It impacted several parked vehicles, then jolted to a stop.
Dazed by the impact and skid, Sonny saw that every piece of glass in the van was gone. Glass bits lay everywhere. He unbuckled his seat belt and fought his way across the cab to the right-side door and tried to open it. It was jammed. Carefully, trying not to cut himself, he crawled out the hole where the passenger's window glass had been.
Standing on the pavement, he saw that the truck driver was alive, although his face was bloody. That's when Sonny felt something wet on his own face. He wiped at it and found that it was blood.
He heard a groan from the back of the van. The rear doors were sprung and he could see into the twisted, crushed interior. He saw somebody wedged between one of the seats and the floor. Toad Tarkington. Toad groaned again.
Sonny grasped Toad's arm, tried to work him out of the wreckage. Tugging, pushing, swearing, he slid the moaning man from the van and laid him in the street. Vaguely he was aware that someone was watching from the sidewalk, someone using a cell phone.
Toad was only half-conscious. He was breathing and had a good pulse, although his eyes wouldn't focus.
Sonny crawled into the wreckage to check on Harley Bennett. The engineer was obviously dead, crushed and pinned by twisted metal. Sonny could just reach an arm … without a pulse. He went back to Toad.
He was trying to make him comfortable when a police car came roaring up with lights flashing. Seconds later a fire truck with siren moaning slammed to a stop and firemen bailed off.
Karl Luck was worried. He had been trying to contact Sonny Tran and had yet to hear from him. The bombs should be in the country. He stayed glued to the television, waiting for the government to announce they had found the bombs and arrested a clandestine army of suicidal raghead fanatics, and that hadn't happened either.
He was waiting in front of the television in the library of the Corrigan mansion when the industrialist came home at three in the morning. He had attended a reception at the White House and flown back to Boston on his private jet. The maid told him Luck was waiting, so he sent his wife on to bed and joined Luck in the library.
“Don't you ever go to bed?” Corrigan asked as he crossed the library and opened the door to his private office. “Come on in. Let's fix ourselves a drink.” Corrigan led the way to a wet bar in the far corner of the room.
Luck waited silently, watched Corrigan pour the cognac into snifters, and accepted one. He sipped politely and waited.
“President told me they're closing in. The FBI knows who these people are. He expects arrests tonight or tomorrow—make that today. Public announcement within twenty-four hours of the arrests.”
Luck felt the weight of the world lift off his shoulders. He sank into the nearest chair and took a healthy swig of cognac.
Corrigan opened a drawer and selected a cigar. He didn't offer Luck one. He guillotined the butt end and fired it up with a silver cigar lighter.
“The president wants us to sell the government a thousand detectors on a cost-plus basis,” he said, eyeing Luck through the smoke. “The Europeans and Japanese will probably buy another thousand. We'll build a factory to make'em. After we get them delivered we'll upgrade the things and sell parts and get service contracts—we're talking serious money; I estimate a couple billion over the
next five years. At least half that will be pure profit. Naturally I said yes. And he talked again about naming me to the London embassy.”
Luck raised his glass in silent tribute, then took another healthy swig. It was at that point that he realized he loathed Thayer Michael Corrigan.
“He's also talking about announcing a worldwide war against the Islamic fanatics after we recover the bombs,” Corrigan continued thoughtfully. “Wipe the bastards out wherever we can find'em. When the country learns about the bombs, the Congress and the public will demand it.”
Karl Luck drained the last of the cognac from his glass, then rose from his chair and walked to the bar. He poured himself another and sipped on it. Corrigan seemed lost in thought, puffing slowly on his cigar.
“‘He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind,'” Luck muttered into his glass.
“What's that?” Corrigan said.
“Nothing,” said Karl Luck. “Just an extraneous thought.” The truth was that he had always known Corrigan was a shit. Yet he was in a position to make serious money with little risk, so he had become his trusted lieutenant. He was as dirty as Corrigan and the thought didn't make him happy. Okay, the big scam was about over, and he was a triple millionaire. Time to go fishing permanently and stop fretting the fact that the world belongs to the Corrigans.
“Good night,” Karl Luck said distinctly. He left the empty glass on the wooden bar.
Corrigan watched him go through the tobacco smoke.
U.S. ambassador to Great Britain! He'd come a long, long way, by God, and he was wise enough to realize how lucky he'd been. Fought and scratched and taken huge risks. Used his head every minute. Was bathed in luck, a lot of which he manufactured for himself. Sure, he'd done some things that he didn't want to read about in the public press or even think about. Who the hell hadn't?
That was the way the game was played in America. All
these big houses around here, out on the Cape, in the Hamptons, Newport … new money, old money, the people all did the same thing—used their brains to play the system and make their fortune, and used their lawyers to keep it.
Those ignorant fanatics are going to make me filthy rich,
he thought, not for the first time. The irony was exquisite.
The only man alive who could put him in prison was Karl Luck.
He thought about that. The man wasn't given to idle chatter, and he was far too smart to incriminate himself or anyone else as a sop to his conscience. He liked money and the good life it would buy. Unless, of course, he was looking at a lot of years in prison. If the prosecutors gave him immunity in return for his cooperation, he'd tell them everything he knew, Corrigan reflected. Karl Luck would do a deal like that. Most men would.
Thayer Michael Corrigan was going to be an ambassador. He'd put his Corrigan Engineering stock in a blind trust for three or four years, let the engineers run the company until money was piled to the rafters, then he'd sell out for five or six billion. Laugh all the way to the bank.
He didn't need liabilities like Karl Luck.
Corrigan took a good pull on the cigar and exhaled slowly, savoring the taste and smell of the smoke. He remembered the White House this evening, the president, the beautiful ladies and the lights of Washington … A smile crossed his face. He was at the very top.
London was going to be fantastic. Meeting the queen, the P.M., dinners at the embassy …
He'd mention Luck to the Russian. Why take a chance?
The hospital in Boston called Jake Grafton at home. The ringing telephone woke him. Still three-quarters asleep, he got it off the hook and up to his ear. “Grafton.”

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