First Strike (21 page)

“It’s true, Gerry. I got it from the very top. I spoke to the Army Council.”

Cosgrave looked across at Hoolahan for help. Hoolahan continued staring out of the window.

“Am I right, Pat?”

“You heard it from the Army Council,” Hoolahan smiled. “So it must be right.”

They spent the next few hours making notes of everything they knew about Declan O’Brien, his personal habits, his heavy drinking, his sexual preferences, his MO. They made lists of the bars and clubs he frequented, the Republican sympathisers he might contact in Miami and a dozen cities. 

“Jesus Christ. Can’t you guys tell us something we don’t already know?”

Hoolahan was getting more and more frustrated.

“Now make notes against each name, addresses, phone numbers, professions. I’m especially interested in engineers.”

“Engineers?” Cosgrave was curious. “Why engineers?”

Hoolahan turned and looked out of the window. It was McGuire who said,

“Declan’s been studying electronics. It’s become a bit of a hobby.”

He didn’t mention the Dirty Bomb or the Al Qaeda manual. Not with Cosgrave sitting there.

It was nearly morning when Hoolahan yawned and said,

“’C’mon, fellas. Time for bed. Let’s find you guys somewhere to stay. There’s a motel not far from my place that’s clean, cheap and the owner is one of us. But just remember, boys; you’re in my personal custody. So don’t plan on leaving town without my say-so. Just in case, I’ve allocated a couple of agents as backup, for the company you understand. Tomorrow you’re both off to Washington under escort to testify before a Committee of Congress. Find out what the fuck you’re up to. I wish you luck, lads. The brass is pretty pissed off with you guys. Can’t say I blame ‘em.”

McGuire and O’Rourke checked in to the motel and got ready for bed. An agent of the FBI stood guard in the corridor outside and a second in the car park below the bedroom window.

“I just can’t believe he’d turn us in,” said McGuire, taking off his shoes. “I’ve known Declan all my life. I grew up with him, for Christsake. We’re practically family. He nearly married my kid sister.”

“Do you believe he’d detonate a Dirty Bomb?”

“Commit suicide, you mean? No, I can’t believe that either. If there’s one thing I’m absolutely sure of it’s that Declan won’t sacrifice his own life. Not much point in being famous if you’re dead.”

“Then you don’t really know him, Gerry old son. You don’t really know him at all.”

For the next several days Irish Catholic communities across America were abuzz with activity. Bars, churches, social clubs, cultural societies, all were scrutinised. A volunteer who ratted on his mates was the very worst thing an Irish Republican could imagine. The entire Noraid network was looking for Declan O’Brien. But O’Brien never showed up.

***

32

Bowman woke early, made coffee and stepped out onto the penthouse terrace, overlooking the Potomac. At eight o’clock precisely he picked up the cell phone, scrolled through the directory and dialled Bob Jennings’s number.

“Alex? We have contact. He’s been in Baltimore. FBI’s been making routine enquiries in every major city, doing the rounds of liquor stores up and down the country. Our man ordered two bottles of Bushmills. Said he’d be back in a couple of days to pick them up. FBI is checking hotels and rooming houses in the district as we speak. Seems like he’s changed his appearance, dyed his hair black and grown a beard. Sort of thing you’d expect. But it’s him all right. Careless bastard left prints all over the liquor store counter. The Garda Siochana confirms it’s definitely our man.”

“I’ll get up there right away.”

“No point, Alex. Place is crawling with FBI already. Declan turns up, we’ve got him.”

“If he turns up. Question is, why Baltimore? Maybe he’s just heading north, making for the Big Apple. One of his criteria is high symbolic value. The object of the exercise is maximum publicity. Where’s the mileage in Baltimore? The best targets are all right here in DC or Manhattan. What’s in Baltimore for Christ sake? Nothing.”

“Come on, Alex. The target isn’t a building, it’s an entire city. Doesn’t matter which one and Baltimore’s as good as any.”

Bowman finished his coffee and went down to the street to buy a decent map of Baltimore. What was it he remembered about Baltimore? Something happened there about a year ago. A fire. A fire in a tunnel. He scrolled through the cell-phone directory and dialled Agent Moreno.

“Cal? What do you have on the fire in the Howard Street Tunnel?”

“Whole Goddamn history. You want me to send you the file?”

“Is there a résumé?”

“Executive summary? Sure. I’ll email it across to you now.”

Bowman went back up to the apartment, switched on the computer and downloaded the file. The blaze in Baltimore’s Howard Street Tunnel had occurred on July 18 the previous summer when a freight train transporting hazardous chemicals through the city had exploded. The blaze burned for three days and attained a maximum of 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit. There was no nuclear waste aboard the train. But if there had been the containers would certainly have ruptured since the canisters that carry spent fuel from the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear Plant that supplies the city with power are designed to withstand a maximum of 1,250 degrees. And this for 30 minutes only. Not three days. So had fissionable material been aboard the train the fire would certainly have triggered a nuclear blast. And aside from thousands of fatalities 500,000 people would have been exposed to a catastrophic release of radiation. For each cask shipped from Calvert Cliffs contained 260 times the amount of radioactive caesium released by the Hiroshima bomb. Whole neighbourhoods would have had to be razed. The city would have been uninhabitable for a generation. But the official report ended on a complacent note. Nuclear waste had been shipped safely by truck and rail across the United States for more than 35 years. During that period over 3,000 shipments of spent fuel had travelled a total of 1.7 million miles. And there had never been a nuclear accident.

Bowman switched off the computer in despair. Of course there wasn’t going to be an accident. But if O’Brien could replicate the conditions that ignited the fire, he wouldn’t even need a detonator.

***

Unlike most of the world’s capitals Washington is laid out according to a coherent plan. Conceived by Pierre Charles L’Enfant in 1792, his vision gives the city its grace and sense of order. Many of the nation’s great emblematic buildings are located within its bounds; the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, the Library of Congress, the monuments to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln, the great national museums. Most of these are ranged along the grand central avenue of the National Mall, the tree-lined ceremonial thoroughfare that runs from Capitol Hill all the way down to the Potomac on the far bank of which looms the daunting citadel of the Pentagon, the world’s largest office building.

As Bowman logged off the computer on the other side of town Declan O’Brien stood in line at Union Station waiting for the bus to take the extended tour of the capital. It was a bright, blue winter’s morning. A fresh fall of snow blanketed the ground and the chill air was clean and sharp as crystal. As he stepped aboard the bus O’Brien glanced at his watch. It was 9 a.m. on Tuesday March 11. He had lined up the explosive and the detonator. The nuclear material was already in place in the docks in Baltimore. Within the next three or four days all the elements of the Dirty Bomb would be united and the device made ready and primed. O’Brien was on schedule to meet his chosen date. What Declan needed now was a target. A precise target. Something with a bit of poetry. A resonance. A building with the high symbolic value that would secure his place in history. But when he got off the bus some nine hours later O’Brien had not seen anything that quite captured the nuance of symbolism he was looking for. And nothing he had seen was remotely personal to him.

***

33

Like most of his compatriots Boss Murphy had never visited the nation’s capital in Washington DC, so when O’Brien offered to reimburse him for the trip the quarryman was delighted to accept. He loaded the detonator and a quantity of Semtex onto the bed of his truck, covered them with a tarpaulin and set off on what was to prove the fatal final journey of his life.

Four hours later he checked in to a modest motel a few miles inside the Beltway off interstate 95 where O’Brien had reserved him a room. Murphy made sure the tarp was still secure over the contents of the truck, checked in, went upstairs to his room, plugged in his laptop and began to search the web. It took only minutes to find the service he wanted. The website had all the relevant details; photographs, phone numbers, hourly rates, customer reviews. What the rent boys would and wouldn’t do. Murphy selected a partner, picked up the phone and made a date for later on that evening, allowing a couple of hours to complete his transaction with the Papist O’Brien. Then he lay on the bed and relieved himself of his hard-on.

O’Brien arrived twenty minutes later by taxi carrying a small overnight bag. He recognised Murphy’s truck in the car park and walked over to take a casual peek under the tarp to make sure everything was there. Then he went up to Murphy’s room. He put his bag on the bed, opened it, rummaged among his clothing and took out a plastic envelope containing five hundred grams of fine white powder.

“What’s this?” Boss Murphy was genuinely puzzled.

“Payment.” What do you think it is, you Protestant asshole? Sherbet?

“We agreed on $20,000 in cash. Folding money.”

“This is more, asshole. This is a whole lot more.”

Christ sake you Protestant pick, don’t you recognise a bargain when you see one?

“Cash.” Boss Murphy shook his head firmly. “I only want cash. I wouldn’t know how to handle this shit. Wouldn’t be much use to me back in Warm Springs Ridge.”

O’Brien considered his options. He could convert the coke to cash in an hour or two and keep the surplus for himself. Make everybody happy. But his comings and goings might be noticed by the desk clerk, the FBI was out there looking for him and hotels were a prime target. The big Protestant was a pain in the fucking ass. He didn’t seem to understand that cocaine hydrochloride was more valuable than cash. Apart from which the Loyalist asshole knew too much already.

“OK, Murph,” O’Brien smiled. “Have it your way. You want cash, I’ll get you cash. Problem is you’ll have to drive me.”

“How long is this going to take?”

Murphy looked at his watch, thinking about his date with the rent boy.

“An hour.” O’Brien shrugged and re-packed his bag. “Two max.”

“That’s cool.”

Murphy grabbed his jacket and the keys to the truck.

“Long as it doesn’t take any longer, I have plans for tonight.”

Then he hurried downstairs and climbed into the flatbed.

“Where to, little man?”

Murphy grinned, pissed off about the cash but not wanting to let it show.

“Go north on Columbia Pike,” said O’Brien “And not so much of the little man.”

”It was almost dark and the evening traffic was thinning out to a trickle. It began to rain, not hard enough for the wipers to work, just enough to obscure the road ahead. Murphy was getting more and more irritated with O’Brien, pissed off about the cash and worried the rent boy would show up before he got back to his room. After twenty minutes O’Brien told him to hang a left and they joined a narrow country road heading west toward Rockville.

“You sure you know where the fuck we’re goin’?”

Murphy was beginning to have doubts. Images of the boy and what he would do with him kept flashing across his mind, making him more and more disgruntled.

O’Brien peered ahead into the darkness, his anger at the big Protestant coming slowly to the boil.

“Will yer shut the fuck up, Murphy? I’m concentrating here.”

Ahead O’Brien saw the flashing neon of a cheap motel. Rooms $20 a nite. Adult channels. The dimly lit car park seemed deserted.

“Pull in over there,” O’Brien gestured.

Boss Murphy swung the truck off the road and headed slowly toward the distant sign that read “Reception.”

“Go round the back, will yer, Murphy?”

O’Brien unbuttoned his shirtsleeve.

“Hey, what the fuck is this?”

Murphy slammed the breaks on hard. As he did so the nine-inch blade of the Bowie, double edged at the curved tip, ripped into his belly. It made a neat surgical incision. Blood seeped through Murphy’s shirt. He grabbed O’Brien by the neck and smashed the little bastard’s head hard against the windscreen.

“What the fuck is this? You piece of Papist shit!”

O’Brien drove the blade upward into the Protestant’s throat, severing the jugular, and felt the grip around his neck begin to slacken. Thick warm blood pulsated rhythmically against the glass, splashing back into the cabin of the truck and drenching them both in a sticky covering of gore. O’Brien’s Bowie was the ideal weapon in a confined space and the third thrust pierced Boss Murphy’s heart.

“Holy Mother of Jesus!” O’Brien climbed out onto the tarmac, pointlessly wiping the blood from his face with his blood-stained hands. “Shite! What a fucking mess!”

Murphy’s heart still pumped as O’Brien hauled the massive body over into the passenger seat. Then O’Brien climbed behind the wheel, turned the key in the ignition and switched on the windscreen wipers. It didn’t help. He rummaged under the dashboard, found a cloth and cleared a small area of glass. Murphy groaned as O’Brien put the truck in gear and re-joined the road, heading west away from interstate 95. He hadn’t planned the killing. It just happened. But it did make things more complicated. A body on his hands was the last thing Declan needed. Murphy groaned again. O’Brien pulled over to the side of the road and stabbed him viciously several times in the throat face and chest.

“Will yer shut the fuck up, Murphy? I’m concentrating here.”

After a while O’Brien spotted a sign that said Great Falls and knew he was nearing the river. He guided the truck down a rutted track across open fields and came to a halt on the north bank of the swiftly flowing Potomac.