Liberty

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The two-lane highway ran north through central Florida through scrub pine and swamps and past occasional mobile homes sitting on naked scars in the red earth. The May sky was clear and blue. The asphalt was steeply crowned with berms of crushed coquina.

Nguyen Duc Tran kept the tractor-trailer rig at sixty miles per hour. The van was still behind him, a hundred yards or so back.

The first town they came to had a bypass around it, so he took it. One stoplight, and he began slowing. The light turned green by the time he was down to forty, so he jammed on the accelerator and went on through.

He wouldn’t be so lucky every time.

If the Arabs in the van decided to shoot out the rig’s tires, they would have him. The fact that the rig might crash was the only thing that had kept them from doing that already, he thought.

They were committed men who would stop at nothing. They would do it before long.

Perhaps, he thought, they were using their cell phones to get another carload of terrorists into position ahead of him.

He began looking for roads leading off into the swamps to the left and right.

Akram and Mohammed Mohammed argued over the best course of action. Crashing the truck might damage the weapon — if that happened they were defeated. And yet, failure to stop the truck was certain defeat. Unless they intercepted it farther north when the driver stopped for fuel. Fortunately the road was very straight, a ribbon of asphalt running through the hinterland.

One of the men in the back of the van was on a cell phone to the leader of the third cell assigned to their group. Alas, the cell was only now leaving Broward County, two hours behind them. It would never catch up.

Akram and Mohammed were going to have to make a decision and take their chances.

They came to a decision. “We will shoot out the tires,” they agreed. “Shooting out the rear tires will slow the rig, and it will be forced to stop. Then we will kill the driver and transfer the weapon to the van.”

All they needed was a place along this road with no witnesses to telephone the authorities. Or few witnesses.

While they consulted a road map, they heard a siren, faintly at first, then growing in intensity. Then they saw the police car in the rearview mirror. It overtook them with flashing overhead lights, the headlights blinking … coming quickly at eighty or ninety miles per hour, eating up the road.

In the passenger seat Mohammed checked his submachine gun. If the policeman wanted the van to stop, he would kill him.

But the police car didn’t slow. It moved into the passing lane and didn’t slacken its pace. It roared by on the left and stayed in that lane, passed the tractor-trailer, and moved into the right lane and raced on toward the horizon.

Although Akram and Mohammed didn’t know it, the policeman in the cruiser was being summoned by the joint antiterrorism task force to man a roadblock on an interstate highway near the Florida — Georgia state line. Washington had issued orders for the establishment of roadblocks. Since even the police lacked the manpower to block every road, the interstates were the first priority.

Nguyen Tran suspected that he would find roadblocks on the major highways, so he had no intention of driving on one. He watched the police cruiser until it was out of sight, then checked the van in the rearview mirrors. Still back there. And time was running out.

He reached behind him and pulled the Remington from its resting place. He laid it on his lap, the barrel pointing toward the driver’s door.

Ahead on the left he saw an unpaved road leading away at a ninety-degree angle into the swamp, with its tangled brush and undergrowth. That would have to do.

He pushed in the clutch and downshifted, used the engine to scrub off some speed. He couldn’t get too slow in the turn or the terrorists would be out and shooting before he could do anything. He had to time this perfectly.

And he did. The truck was still going at a good clip when he braked heavily, causing the trailer to fishtail, then released the brakes and jammed the accelerator down as he cranked the wheel to the left.

The tractor turned, the trailer tilted, the left side wheels left the ground … and he just made the turn amid a spray of gravel. He spun the wheel to straighten out and kept the accelerator down. The rig stabilized and began accelerating down the narrow coquina road. The vegetation closed in on both sides.

When the rig began slowing, Mohammed leaned out the passenger window with the submachine gun. Now was the time to shoot out the rear tires!

Akram braked the van too quickly, and the range didn’t close sufficiently before the tractor began turning.

Mohammed thought the trailer was going over. It went around the turn with its left wheels off the ground, smoke pouring from the right-side tires.

The turn was so unexpected that Akram swerved to avoid the truck. He was well past the truck before he got it together and slammed on the van’s brakes.

“Back up,” Mohammed urged. “Follow him. This is our chance.”

Akram slammed the transmission into reverse, squealed the tires backing up, then pulled the lever back into drive and cranked the wheel over.

The delay hadn’t been long, but now the tractor-trailer was several hundred yards ahead, accelerating into the piney woods.

The van could go faster down this road than the rig could, Nguyen knew, and would catch him soon. He had little time. Now or never. He jammed the clutch to the floor and locked the brakes. The big rig slewed as it decelerated and he fought the wheel, trying to keep it on the narrow, rutted road. It came to rest in a shower of gravel and dust. The van was still a hundred yards behind. He turned off the engine and pulled the key out of the ignition switch. Grabbing the Remington and the Uzi, Nguyen bailed.

With his feet on the ground, he paused. Dropping the Remington beside him, he lifted the Uzi and aimed carefully at the oncoming van. When it reached forty yards he opened fire.

Akram had just gotten the van stopped and the transmission into park when the hailstorm of 9-mm slugs arrived. They punctured the radiator and the windshield, causing it to craze into an opaque mess. The bullets kept punching holes in it, so chunks of glass began flying out.

Akram was killed by a bullet in the head. A slug hit Mohammed in the neck, incapacitating him.

Behind him the men in back got the door open and threw themselves through it. One caught a slug in the ribs as he got up off the road, then two more in the legs and one in the arm. He fell to the ground and didn’t move again.

By this time Nguyen had fired the entire magazine, thirty rounds, in three ten-shot bursts. He stepped to his right to get a better view of the van as he jerked the empty magazine out, turned it around, and shoved home the fresh magazine that had been taped to it. He glimpsed one of the men bounding for the brush. The other man managed to get to his feet and begin shooting his Uzi from the hip at Nguyen. He should have aimed.

Nguyen fired an aimed, ten-shot burst at the shooter. Five slugs hit him, knocking him backward. Nguyen emptied his submachine gun at the van and the two bodies lying beside it. Then he dropped the weapon, grabbed the Remington, and threw himself to his right, into the waist-high brush. He began crawling away from the tractor and the road.

Mohmad Adeel hid behind a tree and listened to the silence. The shooting had stopped.

One moment they had been sitting in the van, talking about stopping the tractor-trailer, and the next moment they had been trapped in a rain of bullets. He had seen Akram’s head snap back when the slug hit him and knew he was dead. He saw blood pour from Mohammed’s neck. He remembered Alaeddin falling — he didn’t know what had happened to Omar. Both were also dead, probably.

Mohmad Adeel’s hands were shaking violently. As he pressed himself against the tree he felt the wetness in his trousers and realized he had lost control of his bladder.

That kafir was out there with his weapon. Mohmad Adeel’s duty was to kill him to avenge Akram and Mohammed and Omar and Alaeddin.

Mohmad Adeel looked carefully around his tree, which wasn’t large. He could see the container and most of the tractor. Looking the other way he could see the van, see Omar and Alaeddin lying beside it covered with blood.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were holy warriors on jihad. Allah was supposed to protect them.

He pushed that thought away as unworthy.

Where was the infidel? Close to the tractor, probably. No doubt he would try to get back in the tractor cab and drive it away. Drive away with the warhead belonging to the Sword of Islam.

Trying to make as little noise as possible, Mohmad Adeel moved toward the standing rig. He stayed in the brush, moving slowly. If he could get in a place where he could watch the tractor, he could kill the infidel when he tried to get back in it.

When he was abeam the tractor he hunched down so he could see under it. This is good, he thought. I will shoot him in the legs and kill him after he falls.

He moved a little sideways, crouched behind a bush, brought his weapon to his shoulder, and thumbed off the safety.

Nguyen Tran sat in the brush listening. All he could hear were insects buzzing and, high overhead, a jet. The jet sound faded, leaving only the insects. One landed on his face. He gingerly reached and crushed it.

He didn’t know if there were any more Arabs alive. He thought he had seen someone running away from the van on the other side of the road, but perhaps he hadn’t. With the recoil and noise of his weapon and his fierce concerntration on the man shooting at him, he might have been mistaken. Even if someone did manage to escape, he might have stopped a bullet. He might be dead or dying.

The tractor was tempting. If he could get in it, he could leave these Arab sons of bitches here to rot.

If I were one of those Arabs, he thought, I would be hoping that my enemy tried to get into that cab.

Holding the Remington with both hands, he began moving, staying as low as possible. He would get in front of the tractor, where he could see across the road.

From his hiding place behind his bush Mohmad Adeel could see only the tractor. The brush was thick on both sides of him. If he raised his head a little he could see the shot-up van back along the road.

Mosquitoes landed on his face and neck and began chewing on him. He wasn’t used to mosquitoes. Flies, yes, but not bloodsuckers. He tried to shoo them away.

Time passed.

He thought about Akram and Omar and Alaeddin, the men he had lived with for months. This morning they had been so alive and now they were dead. Killed by an infidel. It was horrifying, when you thought about it, the triumph of evil.

He knew why there was evil in the world, to test the faith and strength of the men of Islam. But there were so many enemies, so much evil …

Where was that cursed kafir?

He swatted at the mosquitoes. What a place!

What was he going to do after he killed this man? He didn’t know how to drive a truck.

He would use the cell phone, he decided, call the leader of the other cell in his group, tell him where he was. With the help of the other holy warriors, they could get the warhead into a van. That is what he would do.

Mohmad Adeel was swatting mosquitoes and looking under the tractor when the bullet from the Remington sledgehammered him off his feet.

At first he didn’t understand what had happened. He tried to rise, to find his weapon, then stared at that red stuff gushing from his side. The second bullet killed him instantly.

Five minutes passed before Nguyen Duc Tran came sneaking up. One look at Mohmad was enough. His mouth was open, his eyes staring fixedly at infinity.

Nguyen continued along parallel to the road, back toward the van. There might be another man out here, and if there were and he saw Nguyen first, he would get the first shot.

When he got to a position where he could see the right side of the van, he could see four bodies. Mohmad made five.

That was right. He had seen five of them in the van.

Nguyen moved over to the van, staying ready. The Arabs were quite dead.

He paused and lit a cigarette. Should he pull the bodies over in the brush out of sight, push the van off the road? He would not be able to hide the van, just get it out of the center of the road.

Whatever he did, he was going to have to get on with it. Someone would be along this road before long and he had to be gone.

After three deep drags, he flipped away the cigarette. He put the Remington on the ground out of the way, then grabbed the nearest body by the ankles. When he had it out of sight he pulled the next one over beside him. The two in the vehicle took some time to extract. They hadn’t bled much because they had died so quickly. He pulled the driver off into the brush to the left, the passenger off to the right. Then he put the van in neutral, cranked the wheel slightly left, and got in front of it.

The front of the van was perforated with bullet holes and only shards of windshield remained. Antifreeze leaked from the radiator and made a puddle on the road. The tires were still intact. With a mighty shove he got it rolling. The crown of the coquina road helped. He managed to get it rolling fast enough so that it went down off the road before the brush stopped it. Good enough. He used his shirttail to wipe away his fingerprints on the steering wheel and the front of the vehicle, then wiped the perspiration from his face.

He kicked the weapons in the road into the brush.

Nguyen retrieved the Remington and walked to where his submachine gun lay. He put both weapons in the cab of the tractor, lit another cigarette, and wiped his hands and face with a rag from behind the seat. He checked his reflection in the mirror, making sure he had no blood on his shirt. Satisfied, he climbed behind the wheel. The diesel roared into life, spewing smoke from the chromed stacks. When the engine was running smoothly, he slipped the tractor into gear and fed gas.

The rumor that the shipping container in the Wal-Mart parking lot in suburban Atlanta contained a nuclear weapon, not drugs, spread quickly. A policeman used his cell phone to tell his wife; she called her best friend, who called her husband, a reporter at an Atlanta television station. In minutes the rumor was on the air. Within an hour the White House was forced to admit that the rumor was true.

Trading at the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ were suspended at noon. In Washington nonessential government workers were sent home by nervous cabinet officials in early afternoon. The president decided to address the nation via television from the Oval Office that evening, and the networks agreed to broadcast his speech.

The White House press spokesman went in front of the national media to answer questions about the FBI’s arrest of a terrorist group and answer questions about the nuclear warhead. One of the very first ones was, “Is this a stolen American weapon?”

“No,” the spokesman replied.

He refused to amplify that remark or answer additional questions on the warhead’s origin, so talking heads all over the nation began speculating.

Tommy Carmellini and Anna Modin walked into a café in Virginia Beach for a late lunch and found the staff huddled around a television. He and Anna watched over their shoulders. After ten minutes he steered her to a table.

“I have to go back to Washington,” he said. “It’s hit the fan. Vacation’s over. They may need me.”

She nodded. She hadn’t discussed the four Russian warheads with Carmellini, but she certainly had with Jake Grafton, and she knew Carmellini worked for him.

They ate in silence, each of them lost in their own thoughts. When they were walking back to the motel to pack and check out, she told him about General Petrov and Frouq al-Zuair.

“How do you know all this?” Carmellini asked.

“I was there when Petrov sold the warheads and Zuair took delivery. I told Janos Ilin. He came to America and told Jake Grafton.”

Carmellini nodded. He had wondered how it went down but never asked Grafton or Tarkington, and of course neither of them would volunteer a fact like that, which could cost Ilin his life if it got out. Carmellini had no need to know. “You shouldn’t be telling me this stuff,” he said.

She reached for his hand and held it. “It’s nice to have one person in this world that I can tell everything. Sometimes the load gets very heavy.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder, turned her around, and kissed her.

The cabinet room at the White House was crowded that evening. Jake Grafton found a seat against the wall. Cabinet officers sat around the table, the heads of various agencies behind them, and interspersed here and there, key members of both houses of Congress. These people were talking to each other in earnest, whispered conversations.

The president’s address was an hour away. Jake knew he planned to show the nation the videotape of the weapon the FBI had made that morning.

The White House photographer took a few candid shots after the president came in, and Jake managed to stay out of those. The president stopped on his way in for a few private words with a knot of senior members of Congress. The president looked tired. Jake noticed that Myron Emerick managed to be talking to the attorney general when the photographer aimed the camera at the people around the table.

When the photographer left the room, the president got down to business.

“As everyone in America knows, the FBI confiscated a nuclear weapon from a group of Islamic terrorists this morning in Atlanta. Regardless of the speculation on television, the warhead was not American. We believe the terrorists had four of them.”

The Senate majority leader, who was not of the president’s party, spoke up. “Why weren’t we briefed about this sooner? Four nuclear weapons imported by terrorists? How the hell do we know that?”

“I’m not going to stand here and discuss intelligence sources,” the president snapped.

“I was briefed about nuclear threats. And biological and chemical and so on, all very theoretical. Nobody told me there were four goddamn bombs being delivered to Wal-Mart. What in hell is going on here, anyway?”

The president was not apologetic. “This administration has kept you as informed as the needs of national security would allow. The intelligence oversight committees were briefed in more detail.”

“We weren’t told enough, sir,” the senator said hotly. “Not by a long shot.”

The meeting went downhill from there. The president was at the center of a firestorm, an inevitable one, Jake thought. Regardless of what the man did or failed to do, the critics were going to be after him. Jake wouldn’t have traded jobs with him for all the money on Wall Street.

“We’ve heard all about these damned Corrigan detectors,” one congressman said loudly, “and we’ve been asked to provide money to buy hundreds more. Where are they and why didn’t they work?”

After a few heated exchanges, the president demanded silence and got it. “We are trying with every means at our disposal to find the weapons,” he said, “and arrest terrorists. What we can’t do is shut the country down and stop the economy dead while we hunt for them. If we do that, the terrorists have won. That is what they are trying to make happen. Our way of life is at stake. This is a war we cannot afford to lose.”

“If a bomb goes off, we’ve lost it,” a congressman shot back.

“We all know that,” the president retorted. “And we lose if the public panics—”

“I got news for you,” another congressman said hotly. “They’ve panicked.” He waved hugely. “You’ve got 250 million frightened people out there. They wake up on a Thursday morning in May to another ordinary day, and by the time the sun goes down they are on the brink of being victims in a nuclear war. They want to know what the hell happened.”

Before the president could respond, another congressman thundered at his colleague, “Last week you were on every network saying the administration was too focused on terrorism and ignoring the economy.”

The president was icily calm. “Enough! We’re doing our best to keep the country running and find the bombs. We’ve found one warhead. We’ll find the others. We’ll tell the public everything we can, when we can. Someone around here has to have some faith in the good sense and resiliency of the American people. I do! They’ve survived civil war, world wars, depressions and recessions, and September eleventh. They can weather this crisis, too.”

That ended it. The cabinet officials stayed behind, but everyone else was asked to leave the room.

Sal Molina was waiting for Jake Grafton outside the room. He led him along the corridor to his office. Before he could close the door the president joined them.

“Talk to me,” the president said.

“All four warheads are probably in the country,” Jake said, meeting the president’s gaze. “The FBI has been tracking seventeen suspected terrorist cells in south Florida; last night they began moving. Two of the cells rendezvoused at that parking lot in Atlanta, and soon thereafter a truck drove up to deliver a container to that Wal-Mart store. The weapon was in the container packed in lead, which is why all our search efforts with Geiger counters didn’t find them. I hope and pray the Corrigan detector will do better.”

“Detector? I thought we had two of them.”

“One was hit by a garbage truck last night in Boston. We have one operational detector, and it’s in Washington, which is, in my opinion, the most likely target.”

“Emerick thinks that some of these groups will lead him to the other weapons,” the president said. “He promised me they would.”

“I hope he’s right, but I doubt it. I think the terrorists thought the FBI might know of these groups, so they were sacrificed as a diversion.”

The president rubbed his face. He looked ten years older than he did the last time Jake saw him.

“I’ve damn near kissed Corrigan’s ass to get more detectors. Promised him everything but sainthood, and if I had ten detectors right now, I’d put in a personal call to the pope.”

“His engineers are hand-building the things and having their troubles. It’s a complex piece of gear. Corrigan was never in a position to manufacture them.”

“Shit!” said the president of the United States, and dropped into Molina’s desk chair. Jake sat on the desk with his legs dangling. Molina sat behind the desk.

Jake continued: “The CDs Anna Modin brought from the bank in Egypt led us to believe that the money the Sword of Islam used to purchase the weapons came from the United States. It’s a tenuous trail and wouldn’t hold up in court. As far as I know, the FBI has done nothing to try to find that trail in this country.”

The president grunted.

“One of the possibilities is that Corrigan provided the dough.”

That comment rocked the president and Molina. They sat stunned. “T.M.?” the president said. “Blowing up a city?”

“Oh, no. Selling the government a hundred Corrigan detectors. Being named ambassador to Great Britain — oh, yes, I’ve heard the rumors. Money, prestige, power, position. He’s the man of the hour, so he’s my prime suspect.”

“I told you he’s a suspicious bastard,” Molina remarked to his boss.

“You’re wrong,” the president said fervently, directing that remark at Grafton.

“Let’s hope I’m not. If I’m right, I’m on the trail of a bomb. If I’m not …”

The president was thoroughly confused. “But you said Corrigan doesn’t want to blow up a city.”

“He may not, but apparently the possibility that someone might double-cross him never crossed his mind. His number two man is a guy named Karl Luck; he likes to ride around Washington and Boston in Corrigan’s limo. He’s been meeting with a CIA employee named Sonny Tran. Tran works for me. Tran could be the man behind the disappearance of another CIA agent, a man named Richard Doyle.”

“Got any evidence?”

“Of the meetings, yes. Zelda Hudson has tapes of Corrigan’s limo driving around Washington. She has Sonny Tran on two of them getting into that limo. One shot of him getting out.” He explained about the police traffic cameras at intersections, how he was stealing a video feed from police headquarters. “And last night Sonny Tran was behind the wheel of the van carrying Corrigan Unit One when it was hit by the garbage truck in Boston. The fact that he was there was a mistake on my part — I thought I should keep him away from Washington.” He threw up his hands. “We’re monitoring Tran’s and Karl Luck’s cell phones, we’ve got a beeper on the limo, we’re digging into both men’s backgrounds, trying to find leads that will take us somewhere.”

The president looked at his watch, then at Grafton. “What about the buried bombs? Who put them there?”

“We won’t know for sure until we dig one up and inspect it. I think we’ll find the Russians buried it when they realized Star Wars was going ahead regardless. There’s a faction in the Russian government that refuses to give up a nuclear deterrent.”

“Secret weapons don’t deter anything if your enemies don’t know about them.”

“Ah, they know they have them, so the weapons are political chips in Moscow.”

The president knew all about power politics in a nation’s capital. He accepted that assessment without further comment. “Who sent Ilin to us?” he asked.

“No one in Moscow. Ilin came on his own hook. If you need a conundrum to ponder when you go to bed tonight, ask yourself if Ilin knew about the buried weapons. Did Ilin arrange for Petrov to sell warheads to the Sword of Islam so that we would look for weapons, thereby finding the buried Russian bombs, or was that a coincidence?”

“Jesus Christ, who is this fucking guy?”

Jake Grafton took a deep breath before he spoke. “Assuming we can find these terror warheads before they pop, he’s a guy who did us a favor.”

The president stood, adjusted his trousers and tie. “I’ve got to talk to the nation. Find those goddamn bombs!”

“Aye aye, sir.”

The president reached for the doorknob, then paused. “I may have been the only elected person in that room a while ago who believes in the American people. Even if these things go off, the American people will endure. The survival of our republic isn’t in jeopardy. The terrorists believe it is, but they are wrong.

“It’s the survival of their way of life that will be on the block. If nuclear weapons explode in American cities, we are headed straight for World War Three, and all the words in the world won’t be able to stop it. The war won’t be fought here — it will be fought over there.

“If you thought the public was outraged after Pearl Harbor and September eleventh, you won’t believe what will happen in America if Washington goes up in a mushroom cloud. The American people will elect some implacable bastard who will lead a holy war against Islam. The Romans tore Carthage down and sowed the earth with salt — this will be the twenty-first-century equivalent. Think genocide.”

With that he opened the door and went out.