Liberty (54 page)

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Authors: Stephen Coonts

BOOK: Liberty
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She went out onto the observation balcony. The Geiger counter audio was louder. She had to turn down the volume. It was above her, then.
She went back inside, rode the elevator down, then walked out of the old fort. She went west across the island, past the construction trailers, piles of sand and scaffolding material, closed concession stands, public rest rooms, and the museum. When she was as far from the statue as she could get, she removed a cell phone from her pocket and draped the earphones around her neck. She dialed Jake Grafton's private line at Langley.
He picked up the telephone after the second ring. “Grafton.”
“It's here, Admiral, just as you thought. It's in the statue.”
When Jake finished his conversation with Rita Moravia, he stood mesmerized by the aerial photo that covered the wall. He sighed, then picked up the telephone and dialed Sal Molina at the White House.
“Jake Grafton. We need to talk as soon as possible.”
“This evening?”
“How about within the next half hour?”
“I have a meeting.”
“Cancel it.”
“Come on over to the White House.”
“Okay.”
The subway was crowded. Jake Grafton stood and casually examined his fellow passengers. They were all sizes and shapes, ages and colors. A lot of tourists, apparently, here to see Washington before the heat and humidity of summer became oppressive. Kids wriggled, adults chattered or read or watched the walls of the tunnel flashing past.
Sal Molina was waiting for him at the security station. “We found it,” Jake said as soon as he got through the metal detector.
“Where?”
“New York Harbor—the Statue of Liberty.”
Molina stopped, stared into Grafton's eyes. “Sure?”
“It's there.”
“Corrigan do it?”
“No.”
“We'd better go see the president. He's twisting Senate arms just now.” Molina led the way.
The president left the senators to listen to Jake's recitation.
“Good God,” he said when Jake paused for air. “We're
living in the age of maniacs.” He sat silently for several seconds, trying to digest it.
“We'd be irresponsible if we didn't cancel Fleet Week,” he said. “Maybe we should start evacuating New York City.”
“We can't do either of those things,” Jake said sourly. It was obvious that the president didn't understand the situation, which was a reflection on Grafton himself. He should have explained it better. “Those two homicidal idiots have the bomb in the statue. Wiring it to batteries and a capacitor is pretty simple. We must assume the weapon is hot—it's armed now. They haven't blown it yet, so they must be waiting for something. I suspect they are waiting for the Fleet Week opening ceremonies. They're waiting for the ships to arrive so they can sink them, and for you to arrive, Mr. President, so they can kill you.”
“And if they are discovered or the party is canceled,” the president said bitterly, “they'll just detonate the thing.”
“That's about the size of it.”
Jake's cell phone rang. He hauled it out of his pocket without apology and opened the mouthpiece cover. “Yes.”
“Rita. Sonny's brother Nguyen just came out of the men's john. He's getting something to eat at the snack wagon.” Fortunately neither man had ever laid eyes on Rita, yet she had studied their photos.
“Sonny must be around,” Jake said. “Stay put, see if Nguyen goes up and Sonny comes down. Don't let either man spot you watching.”
“Okay,” Rita said, and broke the connection.
So they weren't holed up in the statue. Didn't need to be. It only took one man to push the button.
“You're still in charge,” the president said pointedly, as Jake returned his cell phone to his pocket.
“They're maniacs, and we're running out of time,” Jake said. “I'm going to New York as quickly as I can get there. We'll need the cooperation of the FBI and the Coast Guard. It's critical that we don't let these men suspect we're on to them—it's got to be business as usual on that island until we're ready to move.”
Late Tuesday afternoon U.S. Coast Guard cutter
Whidbey Island
dropped her hook a half mile east of Liberty Island and backed down. Then she dropped another from the stern and tightened the cables so that she was moored between the two. Anchored bow and stern, she wouldn't swing when the tide changed.
On her closed bridge, Jake Grafton studied the Statue of Liberty with binoculars. There was someone on the balcony of the torch. A man. The warhead was probably there. The FBI had questioned Hoyt Wilson in his office on Liberty Island a few minutes ago and telephoned Jake. Wilson said the chopper delivered a box, “Pulpit,” which was placed on the balcony since it was too large to go in the torch.
The agent who talked to Jake said, “We had to threaten this guy with arrest as a material witness, but he finally said that Gudarian told him the Pulpit device was a Corrigan radiation detection unit. I think he's afraid of going to jail for having classified information.”
“Keep him there,” Jake had said. “I want to talk to him.”
It must still be on the balcony of the torch, Jake thought, and lowered the glasses. He rubbed his eyes.
The statue was in the ship's forward port quarter, about twenty degrees left of the ship's centerline. Beside Jake a
sailor used a laser range finder to compute the exact distance. “Nine hundred and forty yards, Admiral.”
“Very well.”
The captain of the cutter was a lieutenant in rank, Schuyler Coleridge. With the anchors out, he ordered the bridge cleared so that he could be alone with Grafton. The admiral repeated the range to him.
“Think you can do it if necessary?”
Coleridge used his binoculars to glass the background behind the statue, then turned to the chart of the harbor. “Got a great shot from this position, but if we miss the shells are going into New Jersey.”
“That's why you're here. You have a twenty-five-millimeter gun. If we use a five- or eight-inch gun, we'll blow up refineries, and we would have no guarantee that the contact fuses in the shells would detonate when they passed through the torch.”
“Yes, sir.” Lieutenant Coleridge couldn't have been over twenty-eight years old. He looks about Amy's age, Jake thought.
Ah me, his own ship. The lucky dog!
“I think this is the best angle,” Jake said, turning back to the business at hand.
“I agree,” Coleridge said, and raised his binoculars again.
Jake continued, “The warhead is probably on the torch balcony. The renovation superintendent says the box it was in was too large to go inside the torch, and the warhead's probably too heavy for two guys to move, even if they took it out of the box.”
“I see two men on the torch balcony.”
Jake looked. He saw them, too.
“We're going to try to verify the weapon's location,” Jake continued, “give you its exact position within the structure. I'll use the radio to give you the information. I want your Bushmaster manned and ready at all times. Don't aim it until I tell you; if the bad guys see that gun pointing at them, they'll smell a rat.” The Bushmaster cannon
was a 25-mm chain gun with a 400-rounds-per-minute cyclic rate. It had a 150-round magazine.
Coleridge lowered his binoculars and looked Jake square in the eyes.
“If I tell you to fire,” the admiral said, “I want you to open immediately at the torch, right above Liberty's fingers. I want to shoot the torch off the statue.”
“Sir, our gun is electro-optically aimed and unstabilized. I can't guarantee hits with the first rounds out of the tube.”
“Got a good shooter?”
Coleridge grinned. “My gunner is an artist.”
“Okay. Shoot until I tell you to cease fire or you run out of ammo. The skin is copper plating—the shells will go right through. There is a steel framework, and that is what we have to cut. The gunner will have to work his fire from side to side across the torch. I just hope to hell a hundred and fifty rounds is enough. Be ready to load a second magazine.”
“If the warhead is armed, it may explode when it hits the ground,” the lieutenant objected. “Or if one of the twenty-five-millimeter slugs hits the electric triggering mechanism.”
Grafton nodded. “Indeed it might. I guarantee you that if it's armed and one of those maniacs pushes the button, it'll go nuclear. If it does, you and I will learn about it from St. Peter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The more likely outcome is a conventional explosion—some of the high explosives in the warhead might go off and spew plutonium around the island and harbor if a shell hits the warhead or it smashes into the ground. That happens, we'll have a hell of a mess on our hands. But I'd prefer that to a nuclear blast.”
Schuyler Coleridge took a deep breath.
“You're my last card, Mr. Coleridge. I won't ask you to shoot unless all else fails.”
“Do I have permission to tell my crew what they are shooting at, sir?”
“No. This matter is classified top secret. You may tell your executive officer and your gunner. No one else.”
“Aye aye, sir.”
“By the way, liberty is canceled. Button up the ship. No visitors. No mail, e-mail, or telephone calls.”
“I've already given the order.”
Jake and the Coast Guard officer discussed radio frequencies and he used his handheld radio to talk to the cutter's radio operator. Finally he shook Coleridge's hand. “Good shooting,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later a Coast Guard launch came alongside to take Jake off. It came up on the starboard side so that a watcher with binoculars on Liberty Island, if there was one, wouldn't see who boarded the launch.
Jake took the launch to Battery Park and walked to the dock that Corrigan Engineering was using for their crew boats. He displayed a Park Service badge and boarded the boat. No one he knew was aboard, he noted with relief. Not that he expected anyone. He had been talking to Rita via cell phone. Both the Trans were in the statue this evening. After Nguyen went to the rest room, ate, and returned to the statue, Sonny came down. He also used the rest room, then got something to eat from the snack wagon just before the operator closed for the night. After he had eaten he too returned to the statue.
When Grafton got to the island an FBI agent in work clothes and hard hat was waiting for him. He had an extra hat in his hand and handed it to Jake, who put it on. The agent led the way to the administration building and went upstairs to the second floor. A man in dirty jeans and T-shirt sat on the stairs with a backpack between his knees. He was also FBI, and there was a weapon in the backpack. He flashed a smile at Jake as he went by.
Sonny and Nguyen had checked the capacitor last night. It worked precisely as it should. The car batteries put out twelve volts each. They tightened all the connections, inspected the detonator terminals, wired everything up. Sonny put two firing switches in the circuit, either of which was capable of triggering the warhead. One he put right on the box that held the warhead. The other he put in the little work area where the goddess's hand grasped the torch. He checked each of the switches before he completed the final connection from the capacitor to the detonators.
This afternoon he checked all the connections again, looked everything over, then he and Nguyen sat on the balcony and kept an eye on things with binoculars. He kept down, under the level of the top rail, and looked out through the gaps.
“Either one,” Sonny told Nguyen, gesturing to the switch on the box. “The one here or the one in the hole.” He laughed. He was laughing a lot now. It was all so funny—checkmate! The bastards didn't even know they were doomed. Perhaps he should tell them, somehow. How would he do that?
He asked Nguyen about that.
“Why tell them?” his younger brother sneered. “They think they're so goddamn smart, with all the money and power. When this thing explodes they'll learn different. Learn that life's a dangerous journey and it doesn't always go the way you want.”
“Through no fault of your own,” Sonny added.
“Yeah,” said Nguyen. He wished he had something to drink. A beer or whiskey or something. He lit a cigarette and savored the smoke as he watched the crane lower another load of aluminum scaffolding. Idly he focused his binoculars on the Coast Guard cutter. Someone was swabbing the deck, another sailor was using a hose on the upper works, two guys were working on the gun forward of the
superstructure. They had the cover off the gun and were doing something—he couldn't see what. He lowered the binoculars and sat thinking about things.
So it was about over. The end of the trail was in sight.
“We tell them we're going to do it,” Sonny said, “they'll know that a nuke aboard a Navy ship didn't blow.”
Nguyen didn't reply. He was thinking about wasting those ragheads in Florida, watching the little bastards die. That had been fun. He sat thinking about how it had been. When his cigarette burned down to the filter, he lit another and threw the butt over the rail.
“Don't do that,” Sonny grunted. “Bastards will come up here.”
“So? We'll blow'em all to hell. Maybe shoot a few.” Nguyen removed his pistol from his toolbox and put it on the deck beside him.
“Not yet.” Sonny pointed to the
Ronald Reagan
, which was maneuvering into her assigned anchorage with the help of two tugs. She was three or four hundred yards farther east than the Coast Guard cutter that had anchored earlier. “When the big honchos are aboard and the television cameras are broadcasting the signal all over the world, then we do it.”
Nguyen nodded. Too bad he couldn't watch New York go up in a mushroom cloud on television. The fall of the American empire, and he and Sonny would be the dudes who shoved it off the cliff.
He felt damned good.
No wonder Timothy McVeigh didn't apologize. Fuck'em all.
“You know,” he told his brother, “there's something to be said for giving the world the finger.” He jabbed his aloft.
Sonny Tran laughed and laughed.
Hoyt Wilson was chewing a fingernail when Jake Grafton came into the room. Two FBI agents were with him, a man and a woman, and a tape recorder sat between them.
“Mr. Wilson has been very cooperative,” one agent said.
“Terrific,” Jake said, and dropped into a chair behind the desk. He pulled out the bottom drawer and propped his feet up on it. “Hope you don't mind,” he said to Wilson.
“Not my office,” Wilson replied.
“This man who called himself Gudarian—did he say he was spending the night on the island?”
“Yes. Said he and a colleague were going to stay in the statue through Fleet Week.”
“Did you see a colleague?”
“No. Anyone could have come over on a work boat if they had the right credentials. He said he was going to lock it up, keep unauthorized people out.”
“When did you leave last night?”
“Around six on one of the boats. Didn't see Gudarian after I left him.” He shrugged.
“Seen him today?”
“No.”
The man was plainly nervous. There was no way Wilson could pretend everything was normal if Sonny Tran dropped in for a chat. Jake asked one of the agents to find Rita Moravia.
“Do you have a guard on the statue?”
“We had one, construction security, a rent-a-cop. I didn't want workers sneaking up there on company time. I laid the man off. Maybe I shouldn't have with the Pulpit project and all, but it didn't seem—”
“What work remains to be accomplished inside the statue?” he asked Wilson.
“Everything is done except for a thorough cleaning. The best time to clean any construction site is after the construction debris is removed.”
“Sure.” He led Wilson on, chatting about the renovation
of the statue, what had been done, how close to budget they were.
“Did Gudarian say he was expecting anyone else?”
“No. I told him about the television crew that has permission to film from the crown during the opening ceremony on Saturday, and he said we might have to cancel. Said he'd let me know.”
“Okay.”
“I want you to know that I thought this was a legit thing, Department of Defense approved. We had messages on it. Gudarian had a D.O.D. pass. He looked okay to me. I don't want to get in trouble over …”
When Rita came in, Jake introduced her to Wilson. “This is your new assistant. She's going to sit in your office in case Gudarian wants to talk to you. You need to get off the island, go home. Stay there.”
“But the scaffolding, the cleanup … the job! We've got a contract to fulfill!”

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