Liberty (55 page)

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Authors: Stephen Coonts

BOOK: Liberty
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“I take full responsibility. Believe me, the people in Boston have their hands full burying Mr. Corrigan. You'll catch no grief from them.”
“Who is Gudarian, anyway?”
Jake rose from the chair and came around the desk. He put a hand on Wilson's shoulder. “Go home and stay there. Turn on a ball game. Tell anyone who calls that you are running a fever. No statements to the press. Nothing to the neighbors.”
“This is my job,” Wilson said, shaking off Jake's hand.
Grafton's tone changed. “You're smack in the middle of a classified matter involving national security. If you reveal it to anyone without a security clearance, you'll be arrested and prosecuted. Do you understand?”
“Who the hell are you?”
“You don't need to know that either. What will it be—home with the mouth shut or jail as a material witness, without bail?”
“Hey,” Hoyt Wilson said. “Let's not go off the deep end here. I haven't done a damn thing wrong and I've
been cooperative. I want to go home—I'll keep my trap shut.”
Jake turned to Rita Moravia. “Take a tour and be seen with him. Shut down the scaffold crew and the crane. Have them come back in the morning at the usual time.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and, taking Wilson by the elbow, steered him out.
Harry Estep, Tommy Carmellini, and Toad Tarkington arrived on Liberty Island after dark. Together with Rita Moravia and another half dozen FBI agents, they met in a small conference room in the National Park Service's admin building. Through the window the floodlit back of Lady Liberty was visible.
The FBI had brought pizza, sandwiches, and sleeping bags for their troops. When he saw Estep, Jake said, “Thanks for doing the witness protection thing for Anna Modin.”
“Sorry it's taking so long. We'll have everything in place next week.”
“Next week?”
“Yeah. She's staying at your place, isn't she?”
Jake realized that Carmellini was standing beside him, staring at Estep as if he'd seen a ghost.
“Let's talk about it next week,” Jake said.
Tommy Carmellini took a seat in the corner and stared at his toes.
Over pizza Jake explained the situation. “There's an armed nuclear warhead on the torch balcony. Two homicidal maniacs are baby-sitting it. I think their plan is to blow it Saturday night during Fleet Week opening ceremonies, but they may panic and pop the thing anytime. In fact, the longer we wait, the more likely it is that they will sense the presence of law enforcement and push the button. I propose to take them down tomorrow morning.”
Dead silence. It was broken when Harry Estep asked if anyone had thought about evacuating the people from the
area around the harbor. “There must be eight or ten million people around this harbor who will be killed or maimed or poisoned with radiation if those criminals detonate that thing.”
“How much time will an evacuation take?” Jake asked. “Can we keep it off radio and television? I don't know that Sonny and Nguyen have a portable radio or TV up there, but they might. What if we're evacuating and they blow the thing tomorrow night?”
“I'll be blunt, Admiral. Was the decision to take these people down in the morning made in the White House?”
Before Jake could reply, Toad Tarkington jumped into the fray. “I don't know how you do things in the FBI, but when an admiral in the United States Navy says we're going to fight, we're going to fight.” He opened his mouth to say more, but a look from Grafton stoppered him.
Jake was deadly calm. “You've been ordered to cooperate, Harry. If it goes wrong tomorrow we'll all be dead and it won't matter who did or didn't sprinkle holy water on the grand plan.”
Estep wasn't intimidated. “Input from a variety of sources might increase our chances of success.”
“This is a military operation, not law enforcement,” Grafton shot back. “I've been placed in command. Like everyone in this room, I obey the orders of my superiors. If you are unable to perform your professional duties for any reason under the sun, say so now so that I can get. someone else.”
Estep surrendered. “I withdraw my objection,” he said.
“Fine,” the admiral replied coldly. “There are several unknowns, and they complicate our problem. We don't know if the warhead detonator is radio-controlled. Nor do we know if the stairs and arm are booby-trapped. In any event, I suspect they could detonate the weapon with ten or fifteen seconds' warning.
“We have a Coast Guard cutter anchored nine hundred forty yards in front of the statue. If worse comes to worst, I propose to order the captain to use his deck cannon to
shoot the torch off the statue. The risks are obvious.”
Dead silence followed that remark.
“I propose to put an FBI sniper on the crane. The problem is the location of the crane, to the north. It is not in the optimum location, and there's nothing we can do about that. Still, a sniper there would have a shot at anyone on the northern half of the balcony at a reasonable distance.”
He certainly had their attention. His audience didn't seem to be breathing.
“The door from the torch to the balcony is on the west, or back, side of the torch. I intend to put four snipers on the west side, on top of the admin building or in trees, wherever. They'll have longer shots than the man on the crane, but with four of them, we increase our chances of a fatal hit.”
“We don't have that many snipers here in New York available right now,” Estep said.
“We'll use marine riflemen from the
Reagan
,” Jake said without missing a beat.
He continued, “Once we get the two men, we need to get someone to the weapon as quickly as possible. A properly equipped man on top of the crown, maybe up the arm, might be able to get to the torch, bypassing any booby traps or triggers on the stairs.”
“What about a helicopter?” Estep asked.
“These guys came down from the torch yesterday evening one by one, went to the rest room and got food,” Jake said thoughtfully. “They may have a timer set to detonate the weapon if they don't return within a certain period of time. The nearest places we can base a helo are Battery Park or the
Reagan.
It'll take time for a chopper to fly over, hover, and lower someone. It might take more time than we have.”
“This isn't much of a plan,” Estep observed sourly.
“I thought about having a cruiser use an eight-inch gun to shoot the torch off. I doubt that the shell would explode, but a hit would probably wipe the torch right off Liberty's arm. The problem is the weapon is undoubtedly armed.
I'm afraid that course of action would simply mean that we pulled the trigger ourselves.”
In the silence that followed, Jake directed his gaze at Carmellini. “Will you climb the statue? There won't be ropes, and we can't drill holes for safety anchors. You may fall off. If the enemy sees you too soon, I'm going to have the snipers and Bushmaster open up, but they may shoot you off that thing. Will you try it?”
Carmellini took a deep breath and exhaled completely before he nodded yes.
Jake looked from face to face. “Whatever we're going to do has to be done before the scaffold removal crew comes to work. We don't need an audience to gawk and point. And we can't afford to change the routine around here and make these guys suspicious. Whatever we do, it must be quick and deadly.”
“You don't really have a plan,” Estep said again.
“If you have a better idea, trot it out.”
“One option is to wait for them to make a mistake.”
“Time works against us. Every minute that passes with us on this island looking at them is a minute in which something can go wrong.”
No one had any more objections. They discussed details for an hour.
As the meeting broke up, Carmellini buttonholed Jake. “Who were those guys who came for Anna?”
“Either assassins or Ilin's men. We'll sort it out next week. She's alive or she isn't.”
Jake walked on out. There was much to do, and he didn't have time to fret about Anna Modin.
The Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert was an army warrant officer—Jake asked how much experience he had—who had been working with explosives for twenty-five years. The name tag on his uniform shirt said “Dillingham.”
“I got a good look at the one you found in Washington,
Admiral, so I shouldn't have any trouble disarming this one.”
“Is there any way to rig it so that it will blow if someone tries to disarm the thing?”
“Yes and no, sir. If the cables to the detonators are severed downstream of the capacitors, then it can't go off. Of course, you can put a loop circuit on the thing with a sensor that will fire it if it senses a voltage drop, like someone cutting a wire. But they have to be cutting the wire on the loop circuit.”
“Can you tell by inspection if it's rigged that way?”
“Yes, sir. If I have enough time.”
“You're implying that they may rig a timer of some sort.”
“Just like the fellow did in Washington.”
“Umph,” Jake muttered, and commenced chewing on his lower lip. Well, hell, this was going to be damned dicey—he knew that going in. “You stay out of sight and out of the way, Mr. Dillingham, until we need you. When we need you, the need will be urgent.”
During the night a visitor arrived, Sal Molina. He found Jake watching the technicians set up the communications equipment in the conference room, the same room Jake had used to brief everyone.
They stared out the window at the floodlit statue as Jake briefed Molina, who grunted occasionally. He had no suggestions. When he had heard everything Jake had to say, he went into a private office, shut the door, and called the president.
When the darkness of night faded, low, dirty gray clouds could be seen scudding across the sky. The dark water of the harbor was frothy with whitecaps. Three more warships had anchored during the night. Ferries were steaming on their usual routes, airplanes were coming and going
from Newark and JFK, wisps of smoke rose from the stacks of the refineries in Bayonne and Jersey City. The day promised warmth and rain.
Jake Grafton glanced up at the torch of the statue, visible above the foliage of the trees outside the admin building, and wondered what those two up there were thinking this morning.
He didn't wonder long. He had decided some time ago that they were both crazy, hate-filled killers. He just hoped that they weren't going to do the dirty deed in the next few hours.
He went back into the admin building. The FBI had set up a command post in the second-floor conference room. A technician in earphones was sitting there turning the pages of a morning newspaper someone had brought over from Manhattan during the wee hours. He shook his head at Jake, who put on the second headset anyway and sat on the edge of the table.
Nothing. The technician continued to turn the pages of the newspaper, read selective articles. His name was Salmeron.
The headset cord was just long enough to allow Jake to get to the coffeepot and box of doughnuts without taking it off. He helped himself and sat back down on the table.
“Looks like rain.” That wasn't Sonny. Must be Nguyen.
“Yeah. Wind kept me awake.”
“Sleeping on a steel floor kept me awake,” Nguyen said. “And the way this damn arm thing moves in the wind. It's a wonder it hasn't broke clean off.”
Sonny muttered something. Jake pressed his earphones to his ears, trying to catch the words. Nope, all he heard was noise.
He and Salmeron were listening to three parabolic microphones aimed at the torch. Each of them caught some of the sound, and the computer put the tracks together and played them for the listeners in real time.
One of the mikes was under the trees to the northwest
of the statue, another was east, in front of it looking up, and the third was to the south, on the lady's right hand. The parabolic dishes of the east and south mikes were both visible from the torch, if either man had looked. So far they hadn't. The trick, Jake well knew, was not to listen too long.
“Have the technicians break down the parabolic mikes and get them out of there,” he told Salmeron. “I don't want them spotted.”
He glanced at his watch. It was two minutes after six. Around seven-thirty the steelworkers were going to be back at it.
There was a small replica of the Statue of Liberty on the desk nearby. He picked it up, ran his fingers over it, then placed it so he could reach it.
He used the handheld radio to call the cutter
Whidbey Island
. “You guys ready this morning?”
“That's affirmative.”

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