Liberty (48 page)

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Authors: Stephen Coonts

BOOK: Liberty
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They went. Tommy Carmellini and the technician bent over the timer, which was ticking away.
“Not much time, boss.”
“LeRoy, what's going to happen if I cut the leads from the timer to that box”—he pointed—“with the bolt cutter?”
LeRoy looked. “That must be some kind of capacitor, I think. If you cut that wire, the damn thing should be disabled.”
“What if the capacitor already has a charge stored?”
“The fucking thing might go.”
“Cutting the wire between the capacitor and the junction to the detonator leads?”
“Maybe we ought to operate there.”
“Fourteen minutes, boss,” Tommy Carmellini said.
Jake picked up the bolt cutter, examined the wires.
His hands were slippery. “Help me with this, Tommy.” Jake placed the jaws of the bolt cutter around the wire, Carmellini provided the muscle. He had plenty of it. The jaws sliced the wire as if it were a garden hose. “Next one.” When both the wires were severed, Jake had Carmellini cut the wires from the timer while he watched, then had him sever the battery wires.
All three men moved the pallet that held the batteries away from the weapon, just in case.
The Corrigan technician used his shirttail on his face again. He muttered an oath.
Jake heard sirens. As he listened the sirens swelled in volume.
And he heard his cell phone ring. He took it from his pocket and opened it.
“Yes.”
“This is Zelda. We have a shot of the vehicle that was parked by the Convention Center loading dock, a pickup truck with a cab over the bed. I have the license number.”
“We found a bomb here. See if you can find where the truck went. And have someone run the plate. I want a name and address. The man who armed the bomb probably drove the truck.”
Jake and LeRoy were sitting on the loading dock with their legs dangling over the edge when the bomb squad truck rolled through the gate. Both men were smoking cigarettes. Although Jake hadn't smoked in twenty years, he had gratefully accepted LeRoy's offer of a cancer stick.
“In there,” Jake said to the bomb squad sergeant, and jerked a thumb over his shoulder.
Carmellini came out of the building and took a seat on the dock beside Jake. “This thing would have popped if we had gone over to the other side of the river to drive around the Pentagon.”
“Yeah.”
“Are there any more in Washington?”
That was the question. Jake sat thinking about it. He had precisely one Corrigan unit and it was here. Two of the four warheads had been seized.
He hauled out his cell phone and dialed Zelda again. “Well?”
“The pickup headed north. We saw it make the turn from New York Avenue onto the Baltimore-Washington Parkway headed north.”
“Okay.”
“The bad news for him is that there has been a wreck on the Beltway on-ramp from the parkway. Traffic is at a standstill.”
“Welcome to the city.”
“Pennsylvania plates on the pickup. It's registered to a
Hamid S. Mabruk.” She gave him the address in a suburb outside of Philadelphia.
“Call Harry Estep. Have the FBI get over to his house and seal it. Harry can get busy on a warrant. Murder One. This guy killed a guard here at the Convention Center. He's armed and dangerous. Give them everything you have.”
He broke the connection and sat thinking. Either Mabruk had armed more than one weapon in Washington, or he was on his way to arm others now. Or both.
The safe way to play it was that both possibilities were true. Once Jake had made that decision, the best course of action became plain. He would leave Carmellini and LeRoy to search Washington for more weapons, and he would have Mabruk followed, not arrested, to see if he would go to another bomb.
Jake called Zelda back. Gil Pascal answered the telephone. “I was on my way in anyway. Couldn't sleep.”
“I want Mabruk found and followed,” Jake told him. “Tell Harry. Give him my cell number. And I'll need a chopper. Get on it, please.”
He turned to Carmellini and LeRoy. “Carmellini's in charge. I want the city swept from end to end. LeRoy, you know about the hot spot on Hains Point. Call Gil Pascal immediately if you find anything. Call me at dawn if you don't.”
“Aye aye, sir,” Tommy said. He wasn't in the military, but that seemed to be the right answer.
“Go,” Jake Grafton said. “Now.”
When he saw the brake lights on the vehicles ahead of him, Hamid Salami Mabruk became worried. He had armed the warhead, locked up the storeroom, and gotten out of the Convention Center without meeting anyone. He had had to cut the padlock on the gate to get the pickup out of the loading area, but an investigation of the broken lock wouldn't lead anyone to the storage room for hours. By then it would be too late.
The cars in front of him halted, crept forward, then halted again. The second time they stopped they didn't move.
He looked at his watch. Ten minutes … the weapon would explode in ten minutes. If he could get past the Beltway he should be okay, essentially out of the two-hundred-kiloton blast area, although to escape the radiation effects completely one would have to be several hundred miles away.
Yet the Beltway was at least six miles ahead.
He darted into the far right lane. The truck behind him honked, and he pretended not to hear.
Perhaps he should drive in the emergency lane, get around all these cars.
Nine minutes!
The traffic crept forward. Up to three miles per hour,
now five … and the brake lights came firmly on. Everything came to a dead stop.
Eight minutes.
Sitting here he was going to be on the edge of the blast. The initial concussion would be terrific, would blow out car windows and fill the air with flying glass and debris. A few seconds later the thermal pulse would arrive—the heat would take the paint off cars, fry flesh from bone … . As the rising fireball consumed all the air around it, air would rush in from all directions to feed it, creating a hurricane. An explosion that size, two- or three-hundred-mile-per-hour winds could be expected. These winds would cause most of the damage outside ground zero. Buildings weakened and twisted by the initial blast and perhaps set afire by the thermal pulse would be destroyed by the hurricane rushing toward the vortex. The air would become a semi-solid, full of glass fragments, dirt, stone, metal, everything the hurricane could lift. That debris would sandblast structures, shred and abrade anything standing … rip flesh from bone.
Radiation … at this range the radiation from the initial blast might be lethal, so what did it matter what came after?
Seven minutes.
He should have armed the weapon inside the container. That would have been the safe and logical course. Moving it, trying to time the explosion to create the perfect terror strike, was hubris. He knew that now. What had he been thinking?
Mabruk turned on the radio, jabbed buttons, realized that the buttons were set for Philadelphia stations and began twisting the dial, looking for a radio station that would tell him about traffic delays. Had there been a wreck ahead? Or was this a police roadblock? Perhaps an army unit searching trucks for nuclear warheads?
Music, ads … talk, talk, talk. Someone talking terrorism from a telephone … more ads. A preacher ranting about hellfire …
They'll see hellfire soon enough.
He snapped the radio off.
Six minutes.
Why had he picked this route out of the city? Of all the possible ways to exit Washington, why this one?
His hands were shaking. He looked at his watch again. The second hand swept mercilessly on.
Five minutes.
Mabruk cranked the steering wheel to the stop and turned carefully out into the emergency lane. Began creeping forward, accelerating. Someone moved to the right to cut him off, so he jumped the curb and drove up onto the grass to pass, then dropped back onto the pavement. Kept going.
Doing fifteen miles per hour now. Not enough time … every mile between him and the weapon increased his chance of surviving the blast. Every car length was a victory.
Ahead of him was an overpass. Nothing, unusual about that, but as he approached it an eighteen-wheel rig moved right to occupy half the emergency lane. With the concrete abutments on the right, there was no way to get by.
He stopped, pushed angrily on the horn.
The tractor didn't move.
Four minutes.
Now, at last, the tractor crept forward, still taking up half the emergency lane, yet the bank on the right was too steep for vehicles behind it to get around.
Mabruk jabbed the horn savagely, held it down. He cursed, roared his frustration.
Three minutes.
Another hundred yards farther on.
Two.
The
kafir
bastard … he should get out of the pickup and run up there and shoot him, so at least he would die first.
One minute.
The big rig stopped dead.
Hamid Salami Habruk stared at the second hand of his
watch. Frozen, unable to think, he watched the tiny black hand march relentlessly around the dial.
At the very last moment Habruk remembered that the blast would smash the windows from the pickup. He lay down in the seat.
And waited …
Waited …
He held up his wrist, stared at the watch, mesmerized. The second hand continued to swing.
Another minute passed.
The bomb didn't explode!
Oh, it will! It will! The timer was inaccurate—it had never been calibrated—it wasn't a precision instrument. The weapon will detonate at any moment.
But it didn't.
Another minute crept glacially by.
Hamid Salami Mabruk slowly raised himself to the sitting position. The big rig ahead of him inched forward. Automatically he allowed the pickup to creep along after it.
The weapon didn't explode!
The stretch limo slowly entered the parking lot of the Waltham, Massachusetts, nightclub, the Naked Owl, precisely at midnight and crept between the parked cars. When it reached the far end of the lot, the chauffeur turned it expertly and put the car in motion toward the nightclub door.
A man came out of the nightclub, walked around the front of the limo, and opened the right-rear door. The interior was dark, lit only by the glare of the Naked Owl's neon. The limo was moving almost as soon as the door swung closed.
Sonny Tran seated himself diagonally across from Karl Luck, who nodded and muttered something.
The chauffeur turned onto the street and accelerated. Sonny opened his briefcase as Luck said, “You've been watching the news, I presume?”
Sonny nodded. He had the sweep gear in the briefcase. He didn't take it out, merely turned it on. It would have been impossible to use in the dark interior of the limo if the instruments hadn't been backlit.
“One weapon recovered, three still out there somewhere.” Actually two had been found, but the news about the second one had yet to be released.
Sonny concentrated on the gauges of his instrument. Sonny turned the knob that changed frequencies.
“To be frank,” Luck said to fill the silence, “I'm worried that they might not find the other three bombs before the terrorists explode them.”
The needle hit the peg. A jolt of adrenaline shot through Sonny Tran. He refined the freq. The needle pulsated, went from zero to darn near off the scale, then swung back to zero. It did so once every two seconds.
A beacon! There was a beacon in or on the car.
He scanned every freq the device was capable of detecting. He got the hit on only that one frequency. He turned off the gear and sat looking at Karl Luck, who was rambling. “ … Corrigan's feeling pretty damn good. He's making money like he owned the mint, the president is going to make him ambassador to Britain, and if a bomb pops, it's the victims' tough luck. He'll drop a check for the relief committee in the collection plate at church. The man has the conscience of a hamster.”
Try as he might, Sonny could think of no reason that Luck or Corrigan would want to track this vehicle. That left the feds.
They were on to Corrigan. And Luck had led them to him.
Sonny put the briefcase on the seat next to him and moved over beside Luck. Now they were both facing forward. A curtain obscured the view of the driver's compartment, and presumably his view of the passengers.
Luck went on in a conversational voice. “The other night Corrigan talked about hiring a Russian he knows to kill the Arabs who shipped the weapons here. He doesn't want them squealing if they're arrested.” Luck's head
turned, and he looked at Sonny. “Wouldn't surprise me if he pays Ivan a few extra bucks to get rid of you and me. Maybe not. But maybe yes. Consider this fair warning.”
“Thanks.”
“You're talkative tonight.”
Sonny shrugged. He rested his chin on his right fist and looked out the window, trying to look relaxed as his mind raced. Obviously the feds were tracking this car from a distance. Perhaps they had photographed him getting in, perhaps not.
Grafton! That bastard!
He had been in this limo before, of course, and if the FBI had already checked it for prints, they had him. The chauffeur probably washed it daily. It was a risk, but he could wipe the door handles and seats. That would have to do.
Luck was still talking. “ … The Arabs killed our man in Cairo, made it look like suicide. Threw him out the window of his apartment.
Olympic Voyager
is missing with all hands, including Vandervelt. They're obviously going to kill everyone in the chain, given enough time.”
Sonny Tran reached for the briefcase, put it on his lap, and opened it. He extracted the knife with his right hand, then rammed it up to the hilt in Luck's chest. Luck shuddered once, then collapsed.
Sonny closed the briefcase, put it on the floor. He left the knife in Luck's heart until he was sure he was dead. He picked up his left wrist, felt for a pulse. Nothing. Only then did he extract the knife. It took quite an effort to pull it out. He arranged Luck's tie and coat so the wound wouldn't be obvious.
The limo was driving along a street in an industrial area. This would have to do.
He leaned over the dead man and pushed the intercom button. “Mister Luck has fainted. Perhaps a heart attack. Pull over and help me.”
“Certainly, sir.”
As the limo came to a stop, Sonny hopped out the right
side and walked around behind the vehicle, holding the knife down by his thigh. No pedestrians. A truck passing, going the other way.
The chauffeur opened Luck's door, leaned in. Sonny rammed the knife into his back, straight into his heart.
He pushed the man into the car, lifted his legs in, and closed the door.
The engine was still running. Sonny got behind the wheel and drove away.
Should he try to find the beeper? Even if he found it and got it off the limo, how much extra time would that give him?
Not enough, he decided.
Using a knuckle, he opened the glove compartment. Yes, it contained rags—chauffeurs habitually wiped these limos every time they stopped for any length of time.
As he drove he used a rag on the glove compartment and the shift lever and scrubbed the steering wheel, which was covered in leather.
He parked the limo on the top deck of the parking garage at the downtown train station. Not a soul around at this hour of the night. He took the keys, stuck them in his pocket. Working as quickly as he could, he wiped all the door handles and latches, inside and out. The knife was still in the chauffeur's back; he wiped the handle and left it there. Finally he removed the briefcase, rubbed down the exterior door handles, then locked the car with the button on the key and walked away.
With the rag around his fingers so that he wouldn't leave prints, he walked along the parked cars, trying each door. He found an older sedan that was unlocked. He got in, looked under the mat and in the cup holder and glove compartment for a spare key. No.
Hot-wiring the car took ten long minutes. The car started and ran strongly. Three-quarters of a tank of gas.
The ticket to get out of the garage was over the visor. He had the ticket he had taken from the automatic dispenser when he came in driving the limo, but he would
owe no money on it since he had been in the garage less than thirty minutes. If he used it, the man at the booth would have a reason to remember him.
He presented the ticket from the visor and paid forty dollars. The man in the booth saw him, which was unavoidable. A video camera photographed the car's rear license plate as the car sat at the booth; there was no camera pointed at the driver.
Out on the street Sonny Tran fed gas and rolled.
Hamid Salami Mabruk drove northeastward toward Wilmington at ten miles per hour below the speed limit, trying to figure it out. After the weapon failed to explode, he had needed another thirty minutes to creep by the off-ramp wreck. Since the off-ramp to the Beltway was closed, he found himself headed northeast on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, where it seemed as if every other overpass was being reconstructed. Traffic routinely slowed to twenty miles per hour, formed a single line, and crept by. Sometimes the pace dropped to stop-and-go as people raced forward as far as possible, then cut into the one open lane. He had finally turned off on an east-west road that took him over to 1-95. He found himself in another traffic jam going through the Harbor Tunnel in Baltimore. At two in the morning. He pounded the steering wheel in frustration.

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