Liberty (53 page)
Authors: Stephen Coonts
Holding his hard hat on, Nguyen tilted his head back and looked up at the statue against the sky. He felt so good he wanted to laugh and shout,
Hey, all you rich American bastards. Sonny and I are going to fuck you good. Fuck you straight into hell!
Hey, all you rich American bastards. Sonny and I are going to fuck you good. Fuck you straight into hell!
He entered the edifice at the tourist entrance. After a glance at his badge, the guard allowed him into the elevator, which lifted him to the balcony level. The door to the stairs that led upward was closed and locked. No one was there, not even a Park Service inspector.
Nguyen took a handheld two-way radio from his backpack and turned it on. He checked the frequency, then keyed the mike.
“Sonny?”
The reply was a while in coming. “Yo.”
“I'm at the door.”
The minutes dragged. Nguyen used them to inspect the
exit door. There were, he knew, two staircases, an up and a down. The door to the down staircase was padlocked. He added a padlock of his own to the hasp, then went back to the door that led to the up staircase.
exit door. There were, he knew, two staircases, an up and a down. The door to the down staircase was padlocked. He added a padlock of his own to the hasp, then went back to the door that led to the up staircase.
Eight minutes after he made the radio call, the door opened. Sonny grinned at him. When he was inside, they closed the door and used a portable electric drill from Nguyen's toolbox to install an interior hasp and padlock. Then they rigged an alarm that would sound if the door were opened.
With that job accomplished, they went around to the exit door and installed a hasp, padlock, and alarm on it.
With Sonny leading, they went back up the stairs. Sonny carried the toolbox and Nguyen his backpack. It was a long climb. The new steel girders wore fresh paint. Even the stairs had a new coat of paint and new nonskid applied. They could hear the noise made by the workmen removing the scaffolding just beyond the lady's copper skinâonly 3/32nds of an inch thick. They could even hear their voices, although they couldn't make out individual words.
When Sonny reached the door to the ladder inside the statue's arm that led to the torch, he opened it carefully. Normally, he knew, this door was padlocked to prevent tourists from gaining access to the torch. Of course now there were no tourists. They padlocked this door from the inside and installed another alarm. The noise it made would be loud enough for them to hear it, they thought, although they didn't really expect to hear the alarms on the doors far below. They were designed to panic intruders, not warn them in the torch.
The arm was small, the fit tight. Sonny and Nguyen had to make two trips to get the toolbox and backpack up to the torch.
They entered the torch where Lady Liberty's hand held it, under the balcony that surrounded the flame. Sonny grinned at Nguyen. “What do you think?”
“I think we're going to fuck these sons of bitches good.”
“You should have been up here when they delivered the thing. What a trip! They started tearing down the scaffolding as soon as the workmen climbed down.”
Nguyen climbed up the ladder beside the structure that held the new light. Its massive circular Fresnel lens was inside the flame of the torch. From the ladder, he carefully stepped out onto the balcony. There sat the weapon in the aluminum box that he and Sonny had installed it in last night.
A dozen ships were in sight, coming and going, a few anchored awaiting a pier up the Hudson or East River. There was an overcast this evening, visibility about seven miles. The buildings of Manhattan were quite prominent to Liberty's left. The Brooklyn shoreline and Staten Island were farther away. Just visible as an outline in the haze was the Verrazano Bridge across the narrows, off to the right.
Sonny joined him on the platform.
“We're high up, aren't we?”
“Three hundred feet,” Sonny replied. “You should have come up the scaffolding and outside ladder! I almost lost my cookies a dozen times.” He stood with both hands on the railing, looking down at the scaffold workers. He was getting more comfortable with the height.
“You got the thing wired to the batteries?” Nguyen asked.
“Not yet. I wired it to the regular power supply just in case. You and I need to wire it to the batteries now and test the capacitor. Then we'll wire the capacitor to the detonators.”
“Think somebody will figure something out before the opening ceremony?”
Sonny grinned again. “Doesn't matter. We can pop this thing anytime we wantâtomorrow, the day after, next week ⦠. When it goes, most of New York is going to be
a radioactive smoking hole. We did it, Nguyen!
We've won!”
a radioactive smoking hole. We did it, Nguyen!
We've won!”
Sonny used a screwdriver to open the access panel to the warhead's housing. He giggled from time to time.
“Checkmate,” he muttered, “checkmate,” and laughed aloud, a high-pitched keening noise.
Of course it was Zelda who first produced solid results. When Jake came to work Tuesday she was waiting.
“Do you ever sleep?” he asked.
“Can't. Nguyen D. Tran has a Texas commercial driver's license and owns an over-the-road tractor registered in Texas.” She passed Jake printouts of the information from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles. “He paid road-use taxes on that tractor in thirty-four states last year, and twenty-two so far this year. Sometimes he uses a credit card to buy fuel.” She passed him a printout of the credit card company's computer records.
“Using that you can construct a history of his trips. It's tenuous because he only fills the tractor once a day and sometimes he pays cash.
“He often hauls for Corrigan Engineering as an independent contractor. Corrigan issued him an ID card so he can get into Corrigan job sites.” She handed the admiral a printout of the Corrigan data on Nguyen Tran. There was even a photo.
“Would a truck driver need an ID card?” Jake asked. “I guess I sorta thought truckers would be admitted only if they had invoiced material to deliver.”
“One suspects so, so the ID card means that something is going on with Corrigan. The Trans have an âin.' I surfed the Corrigan photo library and came up with this.” She gave Jake a sheet showing a photo of another Vietnamese man, one Harold P. Gudarian.
“Sonny Tran,” Jake muttered, and tossed the sheet on the growing pile.
“As you know, Corrigan Engineering does major projects
all over the world. Here's a list of the projects they have going in the New York area.”
all over the world. Here's a list of the projects they have going in the New York area.”
Jake looked at the list. There were only four projects. Two of them were sewage system expansions on Long Island, one was a bridge job in Hoboken ⦠and one was the refurbishment of the Statue of Liberty.
“Sweet Jesus!” Jake Grafton whispered.
Zelda wasn't finished. “Corrigan project managers update the home office on their progress every evening via e-mail. Here is a printout of the Statue of Liberty daily progress reports for the last three months.”
It was a serious pile of paper. As Jake thumbed through it, Zelda said, “Yesterday's report is on the top page.”
Jake turned to it. Read about delivery of “Pulpit,” and initiation of scaffolding tear-down. There was more, a lot more, about rest room final inspections and electrical problems and site cleanup, but the word “helicopter” leaped from the page at him.
“A helicopter.”
“It could fly a bomb right over all those inspection teams.”
“Oh, yes.” He ran his fingers through his hair and pulled at his nose. “Pulpit,” he said, trying out the word. “Whatever that is. Good work, Zelda. Has Gil come in yet?”
“I saw him at the coffeepot a moment ago.”
“Send him in, please.”
Gil had a copy of the morning paper with him when he came in. Jake was studying the wall photo of New York Harbor.
“Did you see this, Admiral?” He held the paper out. Thayer Michael Corrigan had made the front page below the fold. Died yesterday afternoon of an apparent heart attack. Found in his study at dinnertime by a maid. Captain of industry, prominent philanthropist, friend of presidents, and so on.
“Darn,” Jake said, and glanced at the other headlines.
“Just got off the telephone with Harry Estep,” Gil continued.
“He says the local police found an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the desk beside Corrigan's body. The wife doesn't want any talk of suicide. She's already had a pet doctor sign the death certificate certifying a heart attack. Harry thinks the local prosecutor is going to let him be buried without an inquest or autopsy.”
“He says the local police found an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the desk beside Corrigan's body. The wife doesn't want any talk of suicide. She's already had a pet doctor sign the death certificate certifying a heart attack. Harry thinks the local prosecutor is going to let him be buried without an inquest or autopsy.”
“Below the fold,” Jake mused. “He wouldn't have liked that. And he's going to miss Fleet Week.”
He tossed the paper into the unclassified wastebasket and pointed to Liberty Island in the photo on the wall. “Here it is, maybe,” he said.
“Do you think it's already there?”
“That's the problemâit might be. We go charging in with Geiger counters or Corrigan units and the Tran brothers might push the button.”
He looked at his watch. He was just flat running out of time. He walked out into the main office. Tommy Carmellini, Toad Tarkington, and Rita Moravia were there. Tommy was casually dressed, ready for another day riding around in the van with the Corrigan unit. Toad and Rita were wearing khaki uniforms. He pointed at Rita and raised his voice. “Go home and change into jeans and work shoes or flying boots, something leather. Gil, get Rita a helicopter. Tommy, get her a Geiger counter and backpack. I want her on Liberty Island by the noon hour.”
He clapped his hands. “Go, people. Now!”
At eleven-forty-five that morning Rita Moravia boarded the crew boat in lower Manhattan for the ride to Liberty Island. She was wearing jeans, leather hiking boots, and a hard hat. Around her neck was a National Park Service ID. In her backpack was a Geiger counter.
Jake Grafton talked to her on her cell phone as she drove to the Pentagon to catch a helo. “If they brought the warhead in by helicopter, it isn't packed in lead anymore. The Geiger counter should pick up the radiation. Check the whole island.”
She also had a clipboard. She would walk around the island making notes, trying to look like a typical government inspector out to fill up a form with cogent observations.
During the night the first of the foreign warships had arrived in New York Harbor, two destroyers from Italy. They were anchored adjacent to each other. As she watched, a liberty boat departed from the side of one of them, jammed to the gunwales with sailors in whites.
Three gulls flew alongside the crew boat, eyeing the passengers one by one to see if anyone was interested in making a food donation. Apparently not. They rode the wind wave off the boat all the way to Liberty Island anyway.
Halfway to the island Rita turned and looked back at Manhattan. Then Brooklyn, Staten Island ⦠Millions of people lived and worked within ten miles of this island, all busy with life.
The head, arm, and torch of the Statue of Liberty were clean of scaffolding, which was almost down to Liberty's waist. Even as the boat approached, the large construction crane lowered another pile of scaffolding to the ground. Rita could see the men high up, taking the scaffolding apart.
When the boat docked, she queued up and took her turn getting off. She didn't expect to recognize anyone, and she didn't.
Out of the stream of workers and members of the press, who were also taking a tour today, Rita paused and took off her backpack. She unzipped it to gain access to the Geiger counter and donned the headset so that she could listen to the audio.
She checked the readings on the gear, then set out for the old fortress. If the Trans knew anything about nuclear weapons, they would try to get the warhead as high as possible to maximize the blast effect of the detonation. That meant the statue and the construction crane were the most likely places.
She got some buzzing as she walked around the outside of the old fort. She went in, took the stairs to the base of the pedestal. On the lower observation deck, which was really the top of the old fort, the Geiger counter squealed in her headset.
It was here! She walked completely around the base. The tone increased in intensity and volume the closer she got to the pedestal, and dropped as she walked away, to the edge of the old fort wall.
She circled the statue again, walked away, came back, left in another direction, and so on, until she was sure. The radiation seemed to be centered on the statue, not the construction crane, which sat beside the star-shaped fort. The crane's main tower rose to a fantastic height, then the arm stuck straight out across the gap between the crane and the statue. Cables led down from the end of the crane to the hoist platform the steelworkers were loading with scaffolding components. The weapon could be on the arm of the crane, she thought, but she doubted it.
Most of the island was behind the colossal statue, which faced east. Rita walked around, looking at everything, then went back inside.
She took the elevator to the upper observation level. She inspected the closed door that led to the “up” staircase, but didn't try to open it. She noted that the door marked “down” wore two padlocks.
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