The Wrong Man (30 page)

Retired military, that is. A colonel in the U. S. Marines who saw action in Grenada and limited time in Operation Desert Storm in the early nineties.

Wendy had run dry of her peremptory challenges with the second venire panel. She’d gambled that we’d be done after that panel, but she lost—four spots remained, the twelfth spot on the regular jury and the three alternates. And when we opened up the third panel, juror sixty-one was Jack Strauss. Wendy did her best to probe for bias, but the guy wasn’t exactly a shrinking violet, and there was no cause to exclude him. It was the first break I got in this case to date.

I had to find a way to get Tom on the stand to talk about Iraq. I needed Colonel Jack Strauss to know that Tom was a war veteran and a hero.

.   .   .

Shauna and I made it back to the office by a quarter to six, with Shauna’s security detail, a guy who looked like a pro wrestler, along for the ride. (Cowboy that I was, I didn’t have a security guy; then again, I also owned my own gun.)

Bradley John was waiting for us in the conference room.

“She was an organic chemistry major,” he said to us.

“What?”

“Kathy Rubinkowski. She was getting a master’s in organic chemistry, right? I never factored that in.”

Bradley had a copy of Kathy’s handwritten scrawl on the back of the document she mailed her father:

“The symbol AN stands for ammonium nitrate,” he said. “It’s the primary compound in fertilizer.”

“Which Global Harvest sold, obviously,” I said.

“Right. And NM stands for nitromethane,” said Bradley. “Nitromethane is used in drugs, cleaning solvents, pesticides. But here’s the really big thing: You put ammonium nitrate together with nitromethane and you get one of the most powerful mixtures of explosives known to man.”

I looked at Shauna. “Explosives,” I repeated. “Jesus.”

I checked Kathy Rubinkowski’s note again. It made sense. A chemistry student would have used the shorthand terminology.

“
That’s
why the federal and state governments monitor sales of fertilizer,” said Bradley.

I steadied my hands. My juices were flowing, but I had to synthesize this into a formal presentation in court. “Let’s take this slow,” I said. “Ammonium nitrate, there’s no doubt Global Harvest sold it. I mean, that’s their business—fertilizer, right?”

“Sure.”

“But what about nitromethane? Does Global Harvest sell
that
?”

He shook his head. “Not as far as I can tell, no.”

“Then—where’s the connection? Why did Kathy write down NM at all?”

“I don’t know, Jason, but we have to assume that if she wrote—”

“No, no, no. We can’t
assume
anything, Bradley. All we know right now is the universally acknowledged and entirely unsurprising fact that Global Harvest International sells fertilizer. I can’t roll with this. Connect some dots for me and I can use it. See what I’m saying?”

He looked downcast, but he wasn’t giving up. “I do, yeah.”

I shook his shoulder. “This could be what we’re looking for, my friend. But I need more. Start with Summerset Farms. They were the ones receiving the fertilizer. Maybe they were getting the nitromethane, too.”

“I’m on it.”

“Oh, and Bradley,” I called to him. “Remember I said it’s a marathon, not a sprint?”

“Yeah?”

“Now it’s a sprint.”

“Got it.” Bradley left Shauna and me standing in the conference room.

Shauna raised her eyebrows at me. “Look at what we’re getting into,” she said.

“After the other night, seeing them doing target practice, I thought they were gunrunners,” I said. “I figured the fertilizer shipments were some kind of cover for smuggling of weapons. But maybe I have it wrong.” I looked over the symbols scribbled by Kathy Rubinkowski.

“Maybe they’re building a bomb,” I said.

Inside the domed building on the property of Summerset Farms, Randall Manning and Stanley Keane stood on the small balcony overlooking the ground-level floor space that typically housed the farming equipment. Tonight, some of the equipment had to be moved out, because there was work to do. Manning and Keane watched as their six soldiers—they were eight before they’d lost Cahill and Dwyer—got down to business.

The You-Ride rental trucks drove in. They had been rented by Bruce McCabe last week, before his unfortunate passing, using a fictitious name and bogus corporate credit card. McCabe had even worn a disguise in case a security camera was present. The You-Ride trucks were, as far as Manning could determine, entirely untraceable to him or the Circle.

They started with the first You-Ride truck. With a cordless electrical drill, a soldier bored two holes in the truck’s main cabin area in a concealed space under the seat. Then he ran a cannon fuse through each hole, sending the fuse through the floorboard and underneath the truck itself, where it spooled onto the concrete floor. The fuse was wrapped in plastic tubing conduit to protect it while in transit.

Then he got out of the cab and slid underneath the cargo area of the truck. He drilled two more holes into the floor of the cargo space. He reached over and took the plastic tubing that dangled beneath the cab area and pulled it over to him. He fed the tubing into the cargo area and slid back out from under the truck.

The cabin and cargo areas of the truck were now connected by the two fuses.

The soldier then climbed into the rear cargo area and attached each fuse to a blasting cap. To the extent there was slack in the tubing— they had measured carefully, but it was better to overestimate than to underestimate—he duct-taped the tubing against the cargo wall to prevent the accidental detachment of the fuses from the blasting caps in transit.

Now for the fun part.

From flatbed trucks, the crew unloaded two hundred fifty bags of high-grade ammonium nitrate fertilizer weighing fifty pounds each. They unloaded seven fifty-five-gallon drums of liquid nitromethane as well.

The crew carted empty fifty-five-gallon barrels into the rear cargo areas of the truck. They nailed boards onto the floor to hold sixteen barrels in place. They loaded into the cargo area one hundred bags of the ammonium nitrate fertilizer and three of the nitromethane drums. They mixed the chemicals using plastic buckets and industrial scales and filled each of the barrels with the cocktail. Each barrel would ultimately weigh about five hundred pounds.

The soldiers looked over their work with professional pride. They were not quite done, but the final touches would take place the day of the operation, December 7. They would attach the blasting caps to explosive “sausages” that would snake through the barrels to ensure their detonation.

When it was all said and done, it came to this: From the front cabin, the driver could ignite the fuses that would set off the blasting caps in the cargo area, which in turn would ignite the massive drums filled with explosives. The driver, without much more than leaning down into a concealed area beneath his seat, could set in motion an explosion that would level the nearest building at a minimum, and send tremors throughout the entire commercial district.

Now it was time to repeat the process with truck number two.

Manning, who had watched the preparation of the first truck with rapt fixation over several hours, now pushed himself off the balcony railing. It was exciting, no doubt. It was finally happening. But it was tempered by a threat that had presented itself.

They’d planned this over eighteen months, carefully selecting and
recruiting men from underground hate groups, purchasing the necessary materials, planning and rehearsing this operation, without a single bit of attention from the outside world—with the exception of that paralegal Rubinkowski, who had started asking her boss, Bruce McCabe, some pointed questions about ammonium nitrate and nitromethane. But they had taken care of that. They had outsourced her murder to the Capparellis, and their performance had been bravura. Not only did they get away with it, but someone else was implicated in the murder. An Army veteran, which was truly regrettable, but life wasn’t perfect.

Still, that minor hiccup aside, everything had gone astonishingly smoothly.

And now, with a week remaining—this. This lawyer Kolarich. First asking questions, getting closer than anyone else had.

And now his two best men, Cahill and Dwyer, whom he’d dispatched to take out the lawyer, were in custody on weapons charges. Manning had the money, naturally, to afford any bail, and he’d worked cash through the channels so that someone unconnected to him could post the bond. But the bond hearing had gone badly. Each of these men came from the White Aryan Nation, and that background, coupled with possession of high-powered assault rifles, knives, and a body bag—a body bag, for Christ’s sake—while in a city that was two hours from their homes, had given the judge pause. Bond was denied. Cahill and Dwyer would remain locked up pending trial.

His two best men—the two men he was going to use for the most critical facet, the part nearest and dearest to Manning’s heart—were now out of the picture.

Manning and Stanley Keane walked into the conference room for some privacy. They walked sluggishly, their minds heavy with anticipation and responsibility.

“What are the odds Cahill or Dwyer give us up?” Stanley Keane asked, once they were inside.

Manning shrugged. You learned not to predict too much about human behavior. These men, he was informed by the lawyer he hired for them, could soon find themselves transferred to federal custody, where weapons charges could land these men in prison for ten years. What would they be willing to do to shave off some or all of that time?

“Cahill, hard to see,” Manning said. “Dwyer, I guess I don’t know.”

He looked up at the diagram on the wall. It showed the city’s commercial district, including the government buildings north of the river. The federal building, housing federal law enforcement, other agencies, and the federal courts, was three blocks from the river over the Lerner Street Bridge. One block north and one block west was the state building, which held virtually every state agency and the offices of the governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and the like.

And to make it even better, the county building was immediately across the street from the state building and held dozens of county agencies and the civil courts. Connect the buildings on a map and they linked together in what looked like a squared-off number seven. The civil engineers who designed the city in the early 1800s never thought about terrorist attacks. They had no clue about the impact of truck bombs like the ones they were assembling.

The Pearl Harbor Day procession, led by Governor Trotter, U. S. Senator Donsbrook, and Mayor Champion, would arrive at the federal building for the outdoor commemoration at approximately 12:45
P.M.
to one
P.M.
That was when the trucks would hit. One at the federal building, one at the state building. The impact would be felt throughout the downtown, but particularly in the government buildings. If timed properly—and the team had spent countless hours and days on this point—the blasts would hit simultaneously.

Thousands would be killed, including the chief executives of the state and city, plus one of the two U. S. senators. It would make the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City look like kids throwing firecrackers. It would dwarf even September 11 in terms of casualties.

It would finally get the government’s attention.

“We’re not going to get away from this clean, are we?” said Keane.

Manning studied him for a moment. This question might sound like cold feet, but he didn’t think so, not with Keane. McCabe had proven weak, and Keane had his faults as well, but commitment wasn’t one of them.

“I don’t know what Kolarich is going to accomplish before December seventh,” he said. “But I know I can’t afford to send anyone else after him.”

“And now they have Cahill and Dwyer,” Keane noted. “Cahill is one of your employees. They’ll sweat him like it’s Guantánamo Bay.”

Manning had considered that as well. “They’ll tie him back to me. Not necessarily you, Stan. What did you do, after all? Your company sold nitromethane to Summerset Farms. That’s no crime, and there’s no evidence you were a part of this.”

“We have our men,” Stanley said. “Not just Cahill and Dwyer but the six downstairs. You’re that sure we can ensure their silence?”

Manning gave him a patronizing look. “You think these men expect to get out of this alive? They’re not going to survive, Stanley. On the surface, they’re soldiers aware of the risk of death and accepting those risks. But deep down, I think they know the odds are well against them. They’ll be damn lucky if they even make it into the subway tunnels. And they’d be even luckier if the tunnels don’t implode, too.”

Keane didn’t respond. This couldn’t be a surprise to him.

Manning put his hand on Stanley’s shoulder. “I’d hoped to continue this fight beyond December seventh,” he said. “I won’t be able to do it. I hope that you can. Nobody’s going to find our additional supplies. There will be enough for several more December sevenths.” He nodded to Stanley. “Stay away from this. Go to work. Whatever. Just make sure you stay away from the city’s downtown. I’m counting on you to carry the mantle going forward.”

Keane nodded gravely. The two men shook hands. Given the threat that Kolarich, and now Cahill and Dwyer, posed to the operation, it was no longer safe to house the trucks in this dome or anywhere on the property. Tonight, the crews would scatter into designated remote locations. The crews wouldn’t communicate with the others. They would lie low and prepare for the attack.

Manning and Keane would never see each other again.

“God bless, Stan,” said Manning, cupping his second hand over Keane’s. “Don’t ever forget why we’re doing this. No matter what happens, don’t waver in the face of doubters. We are changing the course of this nation, my friend—you, me, and those six martyrs down there.”

Manning walked to the doorway of the conference room, looked back once at Stanley Keane, and disappeared.