Liberty

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Star Transport Corporation’s Evening Star was intercepted fifty miles off the coast of Florida by a Coast Guard helicopter. She was a large, modern container ship displacing sixty thousand tons. As the helo hovered, a team of four inspectors went down one by one on the winch. When they were safely on deck the crewman lowered their gear to them, then the helo flew back to the coast for refueling while the team went to work.

Carrying Geiger counters on straps over their shoulders, team members walked beside, over, and around every stack of containers on the ship. They went down into the holds, the engine rooms and machinery spaces, crew compartments, galley, the heads, the ship’s office, the fantail — they inspected the entire ship from stem to stern. The ship’s crew and officers assisted, opening and closing hatches, turning lights on and off, producing manifests and ship’s papers, answering questions. The team leader stayed in contact with Coast Guard headquarters and the pilot of the helicopter, when it was in range, using a handheld radio and satellite telephone.

Not a single Geiger counter registered anything more than normal background radiation during this preliminary inspection. The team had not opened any container and some were buried too deep in the stack to get near, but every container would be wanded individually as it was off-loaded at Port Everglades.

Two hours after they boarded, the team members were winched back aboard the helo, which flew them on to another ship barely making steerageway five miles away.

Evening Star worked back up to fifteen knots and continued toward Port Everglades.

The sun had slipped below the horizon when Evening Star anchored near the entrance to the harbor. The following morning she was boarded by another team of inspectors. Twenty-four hours later she moved against a pier and the process of off-loading her cargo of containers with giant cranes began. More inspectors were on hand, and this time they wanded every container as it was readied for lifting to the pier.

The containers were sorted and moved to giant stacks to await Customs inspection. It was then that Red Citrix first saw the container carrying the numbers that Nguyen Duc Tran had given him. In his stack of paperwork was a multicopy manifest he had prepared showing the shipper, cargo in the box, the consignee, and its final destination. The manifest looked like every other computer-generated document in his stack.

As a soldier in army fatigues walked a bomb-sniffing dog by the box and another walked around it one more time with a Geiger counter, a Customs officer looked at the manifest, scanned the numbers on the box, then wrote on the form, “No duty owed.”

“Okay,” he said, taking one copy of the form for his records and handing the other copies back to Red.

It was that easy.

Although Red didn’t know it, the container held one of the four bombs that General Petrov sold to Frouq al-Zuair. The original manifest, which Red had trashed, would have caused the container to be delivered to the food shipment warehouse where Mohammed Mohammed and his friends worked.

The warriors of the Sword of Islam had not anticipated that one of their weapons would be stolen, but they had thought it likely that the Americans might inspect one or more of the containers and find the bombs, so they took the precaution of sending the four containers to four different consignees, through four different ports.

All the bombs were now on American soil.

Red Citrix was not the only person at Port Everglades to take note of the container of office furniture from Evening Star. Mahfuz Saleh was a data entry clerk who spent his days keeping track of containers on the computer database. He had been waiting for this container for weeks, so when he saw the number, he removed a piece of paper from his wallet and checked it against the number on the paper digit by digit.

Suddenly his palms were sweaty. He looked around guiltily to see if anyone was watching. Apparently not. He took a head break.

He didn’t know what was in the container or why it was special, but he knew it was. He had speculated endlessly about what might be in it and had concluded that it probably contained weapons — rines and ammo and perhaps plastique explosive.

Mahfuz Saleh had no desire to be a martyr. He enjoyed life and even America — he was earning good money and sending much of it home, money the family desperately needed — but the ties of blood and religion were strong within him. A man at his mosque had approached him a year ago and asked for his help. He had agreed, and was given money to purchase a computer and encryption software, the RSP software that the American government had tried to suppress for years. It lost the battle, of course, so this powerful encryption tool was made available to narcocriminals, terrorists, and Third World dictators in the name of privacy.

From time to time Saleh received encrypted messages. He normally used public telephones to pass the messages on to the parties to whom they were addressed. One such message several weeks ago gave him the number of the container and a telephone number to call when it arrived.

“Memorize the container number and the telephone number, then delete this message. When the container comes, call the telephone number from a public telephone. Then wipe your fingerprints from the telephone, so no one can prove you used it.”

Mahfuz Saleh had not followed directions precisely. He had not destroyed the paper containing the telephone number and the number of the container — he knew all too well that he might forget them and shame himself before Allah and the holy warriors.

Nor did he intend to use a public telephone. Last week the telephone company removed the nearest public telephone, the one at the filling station a block from Saleh’s office. So many people used cell phones now that the revenues from the pay phone didn’t justify its maintenance.

As he walked the hallway toward the men’s room Mahfuz Saleh nervously fingered the cell phone in his pocket. The rest room was empty. He went into the stall and removed the paper from his pocket. He turned on the cell phone and waited for it to log onto the net. When the symbol in the little window indicated the device was ready, he carefully dialed the number, checking it digit by digit before he pushed each button.

Finally he pushed the send button and held the small phone to his ear.

One ring, two, three, four — what if no one answered? — five, six …

“Yes.” The word in Arabic.

“It’s here,” Mahfuz Saleh said.

“Allah Akbar!” the voice proclaimed in his ear, and the connection broke.

Mohammed Mohammed stood with his cell phone in hand, momentarily overcome by the moment. It was here! The great moment was approaching!

He put the phone in his pocket and went looking for Ali and Yousef. After Naguib’s death, Yousef had applied for the empty warehouse job and gotten it, which was fortunate.

Patsy Smoot had asked them where the big man had gone, and Mohammed told her he had gone to live with other friends.

No policeman had ever interviewed Mohammed, Ali, or Yousef about Naguib’s death. Mohammed didn’t even know if the authorities had found the body. He had been very nervous for days after the killing, but it had to be done and all three of them knew it. Even, he told himself, Naguib.

Yousef said that Allah was protecting them from the authorities. Mohammed felt Allah’s power and might and knew it to be true.

There were three hours left in the shift; Mohammed felt it was too dangerous to leave early. He watched the clock as he stacked boxes, thinking of what must be done.

The telephone call from Mahfuz Saleh to Mohammed Mohammed should have been intercepted by the FBI, which had indeed applied for and received court authorization to tap Mohammed’s cell phone number. Unfortunately the agents monitoring cell phones and hard-wired telephones for the joint task force were so overwhelmed with work that they had yet to enter Mohammed’s number into the system.

Yet things were happening at the task force. Some of the suspected seventeen cells were showing signs of activity. Cryptic telephone calls to two of them had been intercepted. Both these cells had checked out of the rooming houses where they resided and set forth upon the highway.

A call from Baltimore sent another cell driving north up the interstate in a two-year-old flower-delivery van. After the initial calls, two of the cells called members of other cells. Before long nine of the suspected seventeen cells were in motion.

Hob Tulik called FBI director Myron Emerick in Washington and told him what was happening. Both men sensed that the waiting period was over.

“Three calls,” Emerick mused.

“From Baltimore, Boston, and Savannah,” Tulik repeated.

“Nothing from Florida?”

“Not yet.”

“And not a peep from Customs,” Emerick gloated. “After Corrigan units and Geiger counters and mobilizing the army and navy, they still didn’t find those damned bombs!”

“Apparently not, sir.”

“Stay on these guys with a full-court press, Hob. This is it! Use as many assets as necessary. Everything else in the country can wait. These people are going to lead us to those things.”

“Yes, sir,” Tulik replied.

“Remember what we talked about. When the on-scene commander is sure the weapon is present, move in fast. Shoot anyone that doesn’t surrender quick enough. Under no circumstance are those people to be given a chance to detonate one of those things.”

“I’ve briefed every office on the East Coast,” Hob Tulik assured his boss, then said good-bye.

He stood staring at the telephone for several seconds, tugging at his lip, troubled by the fact that there had been only three initial telephone calls. If there were four bombs, why not four calls? Were there cells the FBI didn’t know about? Or had one of the bombs gone elsewhere? Europe, perhaps, or Los Angeles. Maybe San Francisco.

Oh, well, he thought, worrying about the West Coast and Europe and undetected cells was Emerick’s job, not his. He picked up the phone and called FBI offices in other cities to tell them what was happening and what assets he needed.

Tulik was quickly inundated with requests for manpower. It was then that he made a serious mistake. Since eight of the suspected cells had received no telephone calls and seemed to be continuing with their normal routine, he called off the agents who were following or monitoring them and gave them other assignments. After all, no one had ever suggested that all seventeen of these groups were terrorists. Had he thought about it he would have probably left an agent to watch Cell Eleven, the members of which were suspected of killing one of their own, but he was thinking about nuclear weapons and extremely busy, and he forgot.

Neither Tulik nor Emerick called Jake Grafton. The FBI could handle it, thank you very much.

After their shift in the citrus packing house was over at midnight, Mohammed Mohammed and his two colleagues drove to a personal storage facility that Mohammed had rented under another name. There they retrieved three 9-mm submachine guns, two thousand rounds of ammunition, binoculars, and night-vision goggles. There was another submachine gun in the storage unit — Naguib’s — but they left it there.

They then drove to the Port Everglades shipping terminal and parked along the fence. They sat in the car looking at the thousands of containers stacked within and, above the tops of the buildings, the superstructures and cranes of container ships.

It was an awesome sight. The river of world trade flowed through Port Everglades. In those containers were riches beyond the wildest dreams of the American Indians and Spanish explorers who walked this land just a few centuries ago.

The three Arabs were unimpressed. They were interested in people. Was the container with the weapon being watched? Had American Customs or the FBI learned what it contained?

Naturally Mohammed didn’t know which container was his, so he scanned everything in sight, the entire scene, with his binoculars. He knew that surveillance would be sophisticated, but assumed that if it were there, he would see something. A plane overhead, perhaps, or a van with antennas. He looked in vain for vans, even opened his car door and scanned the sky with the binoculars. He saw a passenger jet that quickly flew beyond his range of vision.

He could see no one atop the buildings, no one walking around with nothing to do.

“No guards in sight,” he said aloud, then passed the binoculars to Ali.

If the FBI indeed had the container that held the weapon under surveillance, it was lost to Mohammed Mohammed, and he well knew it. He also knew that under American law, until he approached the container there was no way for the prosecutors to link him to it.

He had thought about this moment for many a night this past six weeks, lying on the floor or the bed at Smoot’s Motel. He needed to get to a point where he could see the containers as they left the shipping depot. If the FBI knew about his container, he would probably see agents. If so, he could drive back to Smoot’s Motel and await the arrival of another bomb in three months, or six, or a year. Whatever.

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.”

“Sir, this is Memorial Hospital in Boston. One of our patients, a Mr. Tran, asked us to call you.”

He was awake now. “Sonny Tran?”

“I’m looking at the admission form …. His first name is Khanh — I hope I’m saying that right. There has been a traffic accident. He and Mr. Tarkington were brought here. There was another passenger in their vehicle, a Mr. Bennett I believe; he was dead on arrival.”

“Can I talk to Tran or Tarkington?”

“They are both still in the emergency room. Mr. Tarkington is unconscious.”

“Have Tran call me as soon as possible.”

Callie was wide awake. Jake cradled the telephone and turned on the light. “There’s been a wreck in Boston,” he told her. “Toad is unconscious. One of the other men with him is dead — fellow named Bennett.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Get a plane and go to Boston. Would you call Rita on your cell”—Rita Moravia was Toad’s wife—“and ask her if she would like to go? I’ll have more info for her when I get it.”

While Callie was making that call, Jake used the landline to call his chief of staff, Gil Pascal.

The night had been long and tiresome for Mohammed Mohammed. He had stayed awake to check the numbers on every container that left Port Everglades. Ali and Yousef periodically walked to the McDonald’s a block away for coffee or soft drinks, but he had stayed in the car.

It was still dark that Friday morning when the container he was waiting for came through the gate. The driver even made an attempt at a legal stop before he cranked the steering wheel and turned left, passing right by the rental car where Mohammed Mohammed sat at the wheel, with Yousef asleep in the passenger seat and Ali asleep in the back.

That was the container! Those numbers on the side … that was it!

No one following the truck. That was plain. The driver had been alone in the cab.

But why did he turn left? The container was to be delivered to the citrus warehouse, and he should have turned right to get there.

The truck was fast disappearing in Mohammed’s driver’s door mirror. He made a quick decision to follow it rather than go to the citrus warehouse and await its arrival.

The engine started with the first crank. Mohammed pulled the transmission into gear, cranked the wheel over for a U-turn, and fed gas.

Ali and Yousef awoke as the car lurched through the turn and accelerated with tires squealing.

“Is that it?” Yousef pointed at the truck, now a hundred yards ahead of them.

“Yes, and the driver is going the wrong way.”