Authors: Stephen Coonts
Liberty (50 page)
When the meeting broke up, Alt buttonholed Grafton. Sal Molina appeared at Jake's elbow. “Good work last night,” the chairman said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Where's the other warhead?”
“God only knows. I'd bet a paycheck, if anyone wants to bet, that it's in New York or on the way there.”
“This crowd hasn't a clue,” Alt said sourly. “How are you going to find it?”
“We can't search the whole country,” Sal Molina said while Jake considered his answer. “Atlanta surprised me. It could be anywhere, Chicago, L.A., San Fran, Dallas ⦔
“Do you have a plan?” Alt snapped at Grafton. He was in a snapping mood.
“Keep doing what I'm doing, General, which is looking for the bad guys and trying to anticipate their targets. And praying we get a break. Last night was pure luck. If we had gotten there seventeen minutes later than we did, we'd be having this discussion in hell.”
“There's one still out there,” Alt said heavily.
Jake spoke slowly, feeling his way along. “We didn't find these warheads when they came into the country because they were packed in lead. They're here now. Let's stop searching the ships and redeploy our people.”
“I agree that searching ships now is futile,” Molina said. “I'll talk to the president about shuffling the troops.”
Jake continued, “We've got to stop searching trucks going into New Yorkâwe're strangling the city. We'll search them in the city with roadblocks at random places. I want to use everybody we can lay hands on to search Washington and New York, and every other big city in the country.”
“You're looking for a needle in a haystack. We'll never find it that way.”
“Probably not, but we'll show the public we're looking, and we'll show the terrorists, too. Whatever plans they had for that last weapon are going to be reconsidered.” He gestured with his hands. “We need to make them do what we want them to do, then be ready when they do it.”
Alt looked around. The three men were the only ones left in the room. “Let's hear what you think.”
“Fleet Week. If I were a terrorist, I'd find a way to detonate that warhead in New York Harbor during Fleet Week, which starts eight days from now. Ships from navies all over the world will start arriving any day. If there is a nuclear explosion in the harbor during Fleet Week, half the people on earth will assume that a U.S. Navy weapon detonated. The other half will assume the terrorists did it. Either way they win.”
Jake ran his fingers through his hair. “If I were a terrorist and I had one bomb left, that's what I'd do with it.” It sounded lame, and in truth it was.
“We could cancel Fleet Week,” Molina pointed out.
Alt looked askance at Grafton. “You still feel lucky?”
“This is our best shot, General.”
“General Alt?” Molina asked the chairman.
“Don't cancel it.”
“I am never going to play poker with you two,” Molina said. “You'd bet the ranch without even a pair in your hand.”
Jake Grafton was so tired his eyes burned, yet there was something he had to do before he went home. When he arrived at his office in Langley, he called Gil and Zelda into his office and closed the door. As they brought him up to date on the weapon that had been discovered that morning in New York and filled in more details about the bodies in the limo in Boston, Jake rummaged through the stacks of files on the floor behind his desk.
He pulled one out and opened it on his desk. He hunted for the paragraph he wanted. “Ah-ha! I thought I remembered seeing this.” He motioned to Zelda and Gil to come around the desk. They read over his shoulder.
“Sonny Tran had a brother, Nguyen Duc Tran. Trouble with the law as a youngster, fighting, drinking, dropped out of school at the age of sixteen. Diagnosed as a passive-aggressive personality. Got a GED when he was twenty. Is now a long-distance truck driver.”
Zelda took a step back. “That incident yesterday at the golf course could have been a hijacking,” she mused. “Did I tell you?âCorrigan Engineering is the contractor building the courseâthe container was addressed to them.”
Jake Grafton smiled. It was his first smile in weeks, and it felt good. “I think I see a light at the end of this tunnel. It's a mighty small glow, but it's there.”
He closed the file and carefully inserted it in his desk.
“Don't breathe a word of this to anyone,” he said. “I want the fourth warhead, not suspects in jail.”
They nodded.
“Corrigan,” he said to Zelda. “Cell and landline telephone conversations, e-mail, everything you can get on him.”
She nodded her understanding.
“Now if you good people will excuse me, I've been up for nearly thirty hours; I've got to go home and get some sleep. See you this evening before you go home.”
With that Jake Grafton walked out of the office, whistling softly.
The Corrigan van dropped Tommy Carmellini in front of the Graftons' apartment building. He rode the elevator up and knocked on the door. Callie opened it. “Come in, Tommy,” she said, and pulled the door wide.
He looked around for Anna.
“Jake isn't home yet,” Callie said. “Anna left an hour ago with two U.S. marshals. The FBI is putting her in the witness protection program.”
“She coming back?”
“I don't think so.”
“She leave a phone number or anything?”
“No. Just this note.” Callie handed him an envelope, then went to the kitchen to give him some privacy while he read it.
Carmellini sat down on the couch and carefully tore the envelope. Inside was a piece of notepaper, folded once. She had written in ink, “Tommy, I'll be back someday. I love you, Anna.” That was it.
He crushed the note in his hand, wadded it into a tiny ball.
He sat frozen, breathing in and out, in and out, listening to the thudding of his heart. After several minutes he opened his hand, looked at the wadded-up piece of paper, and carefully smoothed it out. He read the words again, then folded the paper until it would fit in his wallet. He stowed it behind his driver's license.
Callie Grafton came out of the kitchen carrying Carmellini's pistol and shoulder holster and two glasses of water. Tommy accepted a glass and sipped at it.
She sat down. “Jake called a while ago,” she said. “He
said you two found the warhead in the Convention Center last night.”
said you two found the warhead in the Convention Center last night.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was a long night.”
“I heard on the news that one was found at a truck crash in the Bronx this morning.”
“I heard that, too. Good news, huh?”
He finished the water and put on the shoulder holster. “Thanks for the water.”
“Come by and see us, Tommy.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I'll do that.”
Jake was in a good mood when he arrived home less than a half hour after Carmellini departed. He kissed his wife, gave her a huge hug, then said, “I'm hungry.”
“We've got some leftover chicken.”
“Terrific. How about a chicken sandwich?”
While he ate she told him about Anna Modin's departure and Carmellini's visit. “He's in love with her, Jake.”
“Renews your faith in humanity, doesn't it?” her husband said with his mouth full. “Here we are on the brink of Armageddon and people are still falling in love. Maybe the species will survive after all.”
“So there is one warhead still out there?”
“Yeah.”
“Where is it?”
“I think it was hijacked. That's good and bad. The terrorist cells in Florida were made up of suicidal warriorsâthey would have popped the thing pretty quick. Mabruk didn't want to die in the explosionâhe set the weapon to blow after he cleared town, which was damned lucky for us, by the way. We arrived seventeen minutes before it exploded.” He snorted. “Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket today. I'm shot with luck.”
He drank some milk, then said, “The hijackers have something planned. I don't think they'll blow it the minute they lay hands on it.”
“How could anyone hijack a bomb? How would they know where it is to steal it?”
“They knew the plan. Someone who knew it had to tell them.”
“So who are the hijackers?”
“I've got an idea, but I tell you, Callie, the evidence is thin enough to read a newspaper through. Still ⦔ He took another bite and munched slowly, savoring the food. When he swallowed he said, “Corrigan probably put up the money to buy the weapons, figured on double-crossing them, making sure we found them. The terrorists double-crossed him. Yet someone in the terrorist organization knew where the weapons were to be shipped, and that person sold or gave away the information. My guess is it was someone involved in the transportation of the weapons. Could have been any one of the people who knewâdoesn't matter whoâthe point is the hijackers learned where the weapons were being delivered. Maybe they had one delivered to a destination they picked, maybe they were there to meet it at the terrorists' destination. What is indisputable is that we have seven dead terrorists and a missing weapon.”
He finished the sandwich and stood. “I feel better.”
“Toad's coming home today,” she said. “Rita called from Boston.”
“Shouldn't have had Toad and Bennett riding around with that asshole,” Jake grumped. “Should have known better.”
Callie was going to ask him to explain that remark, but Jake headed for the shower. Fifteen minutes later he collapsed in bed.
The news that Karl Luck had been murdered shook Thayer Michael Corrigan badly. He had been watching the continuous news coverage of the discovery of the warheads on television when the police arrived to give him the news, and to ask questions. Who had Luck met, when,
where, why? Corrigan didn't know any of the answers. The fact that he didn't know was the thing that shook him, not Luck's death.
where, why? Corrigan didn't know any of the answers. The fact that he didn't know was the thing that shook him, not Luck's death.
After the police left he sat trying to figure out what in the hell was going on. He hadn't a clue, and he knew it.
Who killed him? Not muggers or thievesâthe police said both Luck and the chauffeur still had their wallets on them. A prostitute? Corrigan didn't think Luck went in for that sort of thing, and if he did, he certainly wouldn't want the chauffeur along as a witness. And then there were the wallets.
Sonny Tran? That was a possibility.
Or Arab terrorists?
One of the two, surely.
A knife. Not a gun, but a knife. Corrigan thought about that, too. He had never killed anyone, but if he were going to, he would use a pistol. Perhaps poison. A knife was too personal, too messy; you had to get so close, and you had to have a lot of strength. The police said Luck was stabbed through the heart and the knife was jammed to the hilt in the chauffeur's back. There was something ⦠brutal ⦠about the knife.
Was the killer after him, too?
Ah, that was really the issue, wasn't it? Being stalked by an assassin was one thing, but one who got so close he could ram a knife into your heart and watch your face as you diedâthat was a man to be feared.
Although it was only two hours after breakfast, the sun was shining outside, and the room was pleasantly warm, Corrigan felt a chill. He opened his desk and found the automatic he kept there. He took it out, looked at it. Rust spots in several places. He hadn't had it out of this drawer in years.
He checked to make sure it was loaded and the safety was on, then slipped it into his jacket pocket. The weight of it pulling on his tailored wool suit jacket made him feel silly.
A popgun like that wouldn't stop a suicidal assassin on
a mission from God. Holy damn, those people used submachine guns and car bombs in Egypt. And knives. Hacking up tourists was one of their tactics.
a mission from God. Holy damn, those people used submachine guns and car bombs in Egypt. And knives. Hacking up tourists was one of their tactics.
He sat down before the computer on his desk and turned it on. While it was booting up, he opened his safe and removed a small leather-bound address book. He had used a codeâit took him several minutes to decode the computer address he wanted and the public key.
He spent ten minutes composing the e-mail message, correcting it several times before he was satisfied. Then he encoded it on the RPS software and hit the send button.
Zelda Hudson had Corrigan's encrypted e-mail within minutes after he had sent it. Unfortunately, she couldn't decode itâshe had neither Corrigan's public key nor the recipient's private key. She printed it out and put it on Jake Grafton's desk. When he came in that afternoon, he found it there and went to the techno-wizards' basement computer center.
“What's this?” he asked Zelda.
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