Liberty (29 page)

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Authors: Stephen Coonts

BOOK: Liberty
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“No. You want my opinion, these two dumped people before. They had the routine down. Bet you ten bucks they dumped Richard Doyle out of this airplane into the Atlantic.”
“We'll have the FBI forensic guys go over that plane. Maybe they can find some trace of Doyle.”
“And the hangar. Don't know where it was—some—where around Washington, I guess. Took about an hour or so of flying to get out over the ocean.”
“You injured?”
“Scraped and scratched, covered with shit and piss. The concrete burned the hell out of my feet-those fucking pricks! God, I'm glad I killed'em!”
“Sit tight and let us talk to the law. Then maybe we can take the chopper back to Washington.”
“We don't have any time to lose, sir. There was a television crew out here, but I told those cops I was CIA, so they ran them off. Don't know what's been on the air. We'd better get the FBI to get agents over to Lalouette's and Foster's houses to sit on them before the news leaks out. Then they can get warrants whenever. Same for their offices, cars, all of that.”
“We'll take care of it,” Jake assured him. “How do you feel now, Tommy? Are you okay?”
“I'm all right.”
“Hey, man, you're alive. It's going to be okay.”
“Remember that time in Hong Kong, when you and I went into that ship after Callie?”
“Yeah.”
“How you just wanted to do the bastards, regardless? It was sorta like that.”
“I hear you.”
“I needed to talk to somebody I trust.”
Jake Grafton didn't reply, and Tommy left it there. After a bit Jake said, “I'll walk you over to the helicopter,” and helped Carmellini to his feet. His feet were so sore he tottered and staggered like a very old man, so the journey took a while. When Carmellini was seated inside the helicopter, Jake walked over to where Harry Estep stood talking to the chief of police.
Captain Joe Zogby was waiting for Jake Monday morning when he arrived at Langley after three hours' sleep. According to Zogby, no one knew the exact location of
Olympic Voyager
. Her owners couldn't raise her on the radio. “They think there's probably been some sort of com casualty. When the owners last talked to her, she was in the Red Sea.”
“She should be in the Med but the owners don't know?”
“That's correct, sir.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Call NIMA. I want that ship found and put under twenty-four-hour aerial surveillance. Now! Make it happen. And get someone from the embassy in Athens over to the owners' offices
now
! We need a list of the crew, have them fax it. We need to know everything the owners know about that ship—everything—from photos to maintenance records to how much fuel and beans were aboard this morning.”
Zogby glanced at his watch. “It's evening in Athens, Admiral.”
“Drag someone away from the dinner table. Get the Greek government involved. Have the U.S. ambassador
call a minister or two—I don't give a damn what the people at our embassy have to do.”
Jake Grafton dropped into his chair and smashed his fist down on the desk. “No more business as usual!” Bam! “It's time for them to get off their asses.” Bam!
The light was flashing on his telephone. “Harry Estep on line one, Admiral,” Gil Pascal said.
Jake snagged the instrument. “Whaddaya got?”
“We found the hangar where they kept Carmellini—found Foster's vehicle parked nearby. The judge is signing search warrants for both men's cars and homes, we'll go in within an hour. We've got people guarding them. We'll search their offices as soon as agency security provides access numbers and safe combinations.”
“Keep me advised.”
Pascal told him the air force was flying a nuclear weapon into Andrews AFB outside of Washington that afternoon to allow Harley Bennett to test and calibrate the Corrigan detection unit.
“How's Carmellini?” The helicopter had dropped Carmellini at Bethesda Naval Hospital early that morning.
“I don't know, sir.”
Jake pulled his cell phone from his pocket and dialed. Three rings later he heard Tommy Carmellini's voice. “Hello.”
“How are the feet?”
“Sore as hell.”
“What do the docs say?”
“Stay off them for a week, which is bullshit. I'm outta here day after tomorrow. See you then.”
“So how are you doing, shipmate?”
“Doing okay, Admiral. Feeling better than I did last night. The sun is shining in my window and the nurse is pretty cute and those two crackers are dead. It feels kinda nice.”
“Wait until you can walk before you sneak out of the hospital. I don't want you crawling around here.”
“The nurse is smiling at me now. She's very empathetic.
She obviously understands post-traumatic stress. If she'll bring me another bagel from the cafeteria and hold my hand a little, my recuperation will rocket along. I'll let you know.”
Zip Vance and Zelda Hudson were hard at it in the SCIF. Surrounded by computer monitors, they were both so submerged in what they were doing they were oblivious to Jake's and Toad's presence when they walked in. Jake watched for a moment. Zelda was apparently writing a software program; one of the CIA technicians was instructing Zip in the proper way to search a bank's credit card transactions records.
The data scrolled up the screen too fast to read, then paused. Zip looked, made a note, hit a key, and the scrolling continued at a sickening speed. After a couple minutes of this, Zip got out of the file with a few keystrokes, all the while chattering away to the technician.
“Ah,” Zelda said. “I was going to call you. We're putting info together on those three men you asked about … nothing leaps out yet.”
“Here are two more names,” Jake said, passing her a sheet of paper containing everything Gil could garner quickly in the CIA personnel office on Foster and Lalouette.
“Zipper has been monitoring the telephone calls of that Post reporter—Jack Yocke. He said he wanted to talk to you about one of them.”
Vance glanced up when he saw Jake, then handed him a piece of scratch paper. “This guy called Yocke and used your name twice. I have a tape.”
Jake nodded.
Getting the tape ready to play and finding the right spot took several minutes. Jake donned a headset and waited, trying to exude more patience than he felt.
Finally Zip pushed the right buttons and Jake heard a voice in his ears. “Yocke.”
“Jack, how are you?” A male voice, cultured, a hint of New England, perhaps.
“Fine, sir, and you?”
“Busy. Got a tidbit you might want as deep background.”
“Okay.”
“There was a meeting Sunday in the old Executive Office Building about Jake Grafton and his task force. A lot of people don't feel comfortable with him or the way he's going. He was there on the carpet.”
“I see,” Yocke replied, drawing out the words. Jake could almost see the reporter making notes as he listened. “Could you elaborate on that?”
“He's a lightweight, in way over his head. Doesn't have a clue what in hell is going on. Baldly, we're worried that he's incompetent.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You remember those items I mentioned to you—I don't think he's any closer to finding them than he was before he was appointed. People feel that time is running out.”
“Thanks for sharing that with me,” Jack Yocke said warmly. “I hope you feel better.”
“What do you mean?”
“Amigo, I need something I can put in the goddamn paper,” Yocke replied. “I got inches to do very day. This father confessor thing goes with the job, of course. I hope you successfully get in touch with your inner self, but at some point you gotta stop jerking me off and give me something I can use, like from an anonymous source or a highly placed government official. A tidbit, a crumb,
something
!”
“Now is not the time.”
“Okey dokey. It's your call. But when the time comes—and I hope it gets here soon—I need something hard, you know? Not gossip column fluff. I need solid nouns and verbs and predicates that I can spin into that who, what, where, when, why jazz.”
“I just wanted to bring you up to date.”
“Appreciate it.”
“Maybe I do need to share. This thing is troubling me, if you know what I mean. Grafton's a featherweight with big friends—I'm damn worried.”
“Right.”
“Talk to you soon.”
“Yeah,” and the connection broke.
Jake handed the headset to Zip.
“I have the number of the cell phone that call originated from, Admiral, if you don't recognize the voice. I can get into the telephone company records and get you a name and address.”
“I recognized the voice.”
“Those items I mentioned to you”—Jake thought he knew what those were.
Oh, well. So Butch Lanham played hardball. He knew that already.
He paused to talk to Zelda before he left the SCIF. “How is it going?”
“The computer experts from NSA and CIA are very, very good. I'm just coordinating and trying to stay out of their way.”
“What's the software you're working on?”
“Making the police surveillance cameras useful. I want to show you something I've put together.” Jake's schedule was full to overflowing, yet Zelda's enthusiasm made it difficult to refuse her a few minutes. And he knew that sooner or later some senior someone—probably Lanham, who was casting about for ways to torpedo Jake's boat—would get wind that Zelda and Zip were working on Jake's team; when it happened—and it would—he was going to have to use valuable political capital to defend their presence or send them back to prison. So he stood rooted, listening to the life in Zelda's voice, watching her fingers fly across the keyboard and images dance across the monitors.
“It's a movie,” she told Jake. “Here goes.” The scene was a street in Washington, one of the poorer neighborhoods, from the look of it. The camera zoomed in on several young men standing on a street corner. A car pulled up, one of the men went over, accepted money, passed something into the car. There was a close-up of a license plate as the car accelerated away. A minute later another car arrived and a similar transaction occurred.
When the video stopped playing, Zelda stood and faced Jake Grafton. “These are drug dealers doing business. The people in the cars are their customers. With only a little work someone could put names and addresses to license numbers and compile a list of people using this stuff.”
“Uh-huh.”
“With a little more work, we can identify the car that delivers the product.” Her eyes and intensity held him pinned. For the very first time Jake felt the force, the fire, the charisma of the brilliant mind that was Zelda. Inadvertently he glanced at Zip, then found himself recaptured by her. “I wrote software that tells the computer to search the video feeds for whatever license plate we identify. With this tool we can uncover entire networks—whole- salers, dealers, customers—and put together overwhelming evidence to put these networks out of business. We could make a digital movie of the entire network in operation.”
Jake glanced again at Zip, who was now watching him.
“Our job is security,” he objected, “not law enforcement.”
“I understand that. I am not suggesting that we waste a minute on this project that could be used to further the primary mission. I want to put a movie together on my own time, a few minutes here and there, when I'm not busy with something else. Even if the lawyers refuse to use it, the movie would show the system's capabilities.”
And Zelda's, Jake thought. “Do it,” he said, and headed for the door.
Midnight at the Oasis. Naguib had never heard the song by that name—didn't even know there was one—so the irony of the name of the beer joint escaped him. This establishment was two hundred yards and five parking lots south of Smoot's Motel, which he had sneaked away from ten minutes ago.
He looked around the smoky bar and saw her sitting alone in the booth against the wall. She was facing him. As he walked toward her, her face broke into a smile. He slid into the booth beside her.
“I can't stay long,” he said. “Mohammed will awaken before long and come looking.”
“He will look in the place next door to Smoot's, honey. He won't come all the way down here.” She rubbed her hand up and down on his thigh, pressed a large, firm breast into his arm. “Aren't you glad to see me?”
“Oh, yes.”
“I been waiting for you, hoping you'd come in.”
He put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her. She opened her lips.
When he finally broke for air, she said, “Oh, honey. You got me so hot! I wish there was something we could do about it.”
While he was digesting that comment, she continued, “My husband is such a pig. I sneaked out just to see you. I think he might be getting suspicious, though. And to think, all we've done is kiss.”
For the life of him, Naguib couldn't remember her name. Something that began with an S. Sophie? Susan? Sue-something. With a husband.
She rested her head on his shoulder while he took a sip of her beer. “I don't have much time either,” she said. “You know what I mean, honey? A man like you, with a job and friends and everything, you must know how it is?”
“Of course,” said Naguib, intensely conscious of the
location of her hand on his thigh and what she was doing with it.
“You and I could get something going, honey, if we had a little time. You know? A few Saturdays and some nights, you and me'd be friends for life. You ever thought about a woman like that, honey?”
No, he hadn't, not for life, but he didn't want to tell her that. “Sure,” he said, lying through his teeth.
“Just lovin' and leavin' ain't enough, honey. One-night stands don't do it for me. I'm looking for something more. Larry is such a pig.”
Larry must be the husband, Naguib thought, as that hand moved up, up, up his thigh.
“'Course, you aren't American, so that complicates things. You aren't going back to Pakistan anytime soon, are you?”
“Arabia,” Naguib said, too much into the presence of her to bother lying. “Never going back.”
“That's good, honey. You aren't already married or living with someone, are you?”

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