Total Control (22 page)

"I knew I'd seen it before. Remember that arson case involving the IRS building last year?" Sawyer said.

"Right. Anyway, this thing is capable of sustaining about fifteen hundred degrees Fahrenheit. And it wouldn't be affected by wind or cold, even if doused by the jet fuel, or anything like that. Five-hour supply of fuel, rigged so that if it went out for any reason it would automatically relight. One side was affixed with a magnetic pad. It's a simple but perfect way to do it. Jet fuel comes spewing out when the tank gets penetrated. Sooner or later, it's going to get within range of the flame, and then boom." He shook his head. "Pretty damn ingenious. Carry it in your pocket; even if it's detected, on the surface it's a damned cigarette lighter." Long sifted through some more pages as the other agents closely watched him. He ventured a further analysis. "And they didn't need a timer or altimeter device.

They could roughly gauge the timing by the acid's corrosiveness.

They knew it would be up in the air when it went. Five-hour flight, plenty of time."

Sawyer nodded. "Kaplan and his team found the black boxes. The casing on the flight data recorder was split open, but the tape was relatively intact. Preliminary conclusions indicate that the starboard engine, and the controls running through that section of the wing, were severed from the plane seconds after the CVR recorded a strange sound. They're doing spectrum sound analysis on it now.

The FDR showed no drastic change in cabin pressure, so there was definitely no explosion inside the fuselage, which makes sense, since we now know the sabotage occurred on the wing. Before that, everything was operating smoothly: no engine problems, level flight, ordinary control surface movements. But once things went bad, they never had a chance."

"The pilots' recording on the CVR give any clues?" Long asked.

Sawyer shook his head. "Usual expletives. The Mayday they radioed in. The FDR showed the plane was in a ninety-degree dive for almost thirty thousand feet with the left engine going at almost full power. Who knows if they could even have remained conscious under those conditions?" Sawyer paused. "Let's hope none of them were," he said solemnly.

Now that it was clear that sabotage had downed the plane, the FBI had officially taken over the investigation from the NTSB. Because of the complexities of the case and its massive organizational challenges, FBI headquarters would be the originating office and Sawyer, his first-rate work on the Lockerbie bombing still fresh in the minds of FBI leadership, would be the case agent, meaning he would run the investigation. But this bombing was a little different: It had occurred over American airspace, had left a crater on American soil. He would let others at the bureau handle the press inquiries and issue statements to the public. He much preferred doing his work in the background.

The FBI devoted large resources of personnel and money to infiltrate terrorist organizations operating in the United States, ferreting out plans and grand schemes to wreak destruction in the name of some political or religious cause before they had a chance to come to fruition. The bombing of Flight 3223 had come right out of the blue. There had been no trickles of information from the FBI's vast network that anything of this magnitude was on the horizon. Having been unable to prevent the disaster, Sawyer would now devote every waking moment, and probably suffer through many a nightmare, in his quest to bring those responsible to justice.

"Well, we know what happened to that plane," Sawyer said.

"Now we just have to find out why and who else is involved. Let's start with motive. What else did you dig up on Arthur Lieberman, Ray?"

Raymond Jackson was Sawyer's young partner. He had played college football at Michigan before hanging up his cleats and eschewing an NFL career for one in law enforcement. A shade under six feet, the thick-shouldered black man possessed intelligent eyes and a soft-spoken manner. Jackson flipped open a three-ring notebook.

"A lot of info here. For starters, the guy was terminal. Pancreatic cancer. It was in an advanced stage. He had, maybe, six months.

Maybe. All treatment had been discontinued. Dude was on massive painkillers, though. Schlesinger's Solution, a combo of morphine and a mood elevator, probably cocaine, one of its few legit uses in this country. Lieberman was outfitted with one of those portable units that dispense drugs directly into the bloodstream."

Sawyer's face betrayed his astonishment. Walter Burns and his secrets.

"The Fed chairman has six months to live and nobody knows?

Where'd you get the info?"

"I found a bottle of chemotherapy drugs in the medicine cabinet at his apartment. Then I went right to the source. His personal physician. Told him we were just doing routine background inquiries.

Lieberman's personal calendar evidenced a lot of doctor visits.

Some visits to Johns Hopkins, another to the Mayo Clinic. Then I mentioned the medication I'd found. The doc was nervous when I asked him about it. I subtly suggested that not telling the whole truth to the FBI could land his keister in a shitload of trouble.

When I mentioned a subpoena, he cracked. He probably figured the patient was dead, what the hell would he care."

"What about the White House? They had to know."

"If they're playing straight with us, they were in the dark too. I talked with the chief of staff about Lieberman's little secret. I don't think he believed me at first. Had to remind him FBI stands for fidelity, bravery and integrity. I also sent over a copy of the medical records to him. Word is the president went ape-shit when he saw them."

"That's an interesting twist," Sawyer said. "I always understood Lieberman was some financial god. Solid as a rock. And yet he forgets to mention he's about to check out with cancer and leave the country in the lurch. That doesn't make much sense."

Jackson grinned. "Just reporting the facts. You're right about the guy's abilities. He's a bonafide legend. However, personally, he wasn't in such great shape financially."

"What do you mean?" Sawyer asked.

Jackson turned the pages of his fat notebook and then stopped.

He flipped the notebook around and slid it across to Sawyer. Sawyer stared down at the information while Jackson continued his report.

"Lieberman was divorced about five years ago after twenty-five years of marriage. Apparently he was a naughty boy caught fooling around on the side. The timing could not have been worse. He was just about to go through Senate confirmation hearings for the Fed position. His wife threatened to shred him in the papers. The Fed chairmanship, which I'm told Lieberman coveted, would've gone bye-bye real quick. To get rid of the problem, Lieberman gave just about everything he had to his ex. She died just a couple of years ago. To complicate matters, rumor has it his twenty-something girlfriend had expensive tastes. The Fed job is prestigious, but it doesn't pay the Wall Street bucks, nor anywhere near. Fact is, Lieberman was up to his ass in debt. Lived in a crummy apartment over on Capitol Hill while trying to crawl out of a financial hole the size of the Grand Canyon. The stack of love letters we found at the apartment apparently came from her."

"What happened to the girlfriend?" Sawyer asked.

"Not sure. It wouldn't surprise me if she'd walked out when she found out her little pot of gold was full of the big C."

"Any idea where she is now?"

Jackson shook his head. "From all accounts, she's been out of the picture for some time now. I tracked down several colleagues of Lieberman's back in New York. The woman was beautiful but brainless according to them."

"It's probably a waste of time, but make some more inquiries on her anyway, Ray."

Jackson nodded.

Sawyer looked at Barracks. "Any word from the Hill on who's going to take Lieberman's slot?"

When Barracks answered, Sawyer was rocked for the second time in less than a minute.

"General consensus: Walter Burns."

Sawyer stared at Barracks for several moments and then wrote the name "Walter Burns" in his notebook. In the margin next to it he scribbled the word "asshole" and then the word "suspect" with a question mark next to it.

Sawyer looked up from his notebook. "Sounds like our Mr. Lieberman was riding a streak of particularly bad luck. So why kill him?"

"Lots of reasons," Barracks spoke up. "The Fed chairman is the symbol of American monetary policy. Make a nice little target for some third world crap-can of a country with a big green monster on its shoulder. Or pick from about a dozen active terrorist groups who specialize in plane bombings."

Sawyer shook his head. "No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing yet."

Barracks snorted. "Give 'em time. Now that we've confirmed it was a bombing, whoever did it will be phoning in. Blowing Americans out of the sky to make a political statement, that's what those assholes live for."

"Goddammit!" Sawyer slammed his massive fist down on the table, stood up and started pacing, his face a sheet of vivid red. It seemed as though every ten seconds the image of the impact crater swept across his thoughts. Added to that now was the smaller but even more devastating vision of the tiny, singed shoe he had held in his hand. He had cradled each of his children in one big hand upon their birth. It could have been any of them. Any of them! He knew that vision would never fully leave his thoughts for as long as he remained on this earth.

The agents eyed him anxiously. Sawyer had a well-deserved reputation as being one of the sharpest agents among a legion of them at the bureau. Through twenty-five years of seeing fellow humans gallop a crimson path through the country, he had continued to attack each case with the same zeal and rigor he had shown from day one on the job. He ordinarily chose carefully analysis over scattergun hyperbole; however, most of the agents who had worked with him over the years understood crystal-clearly that his temper was contained by a very slender catch.

He stopped his pacing and looked at Barracks. "There's a problem with that theory, Herb." His voice was once again calm.

"What's that?"

Sawyer leaned against one of the glass walls, crossed his arms and rested them on his broad chest. "If you're a terrorist looking to make a big splash, you sneak a bomb on the plane--which, let's face it, isn't all that hard to do on a domestic flight--and you blow the plane into a million pieces. Bodies pouring down, crashing through roofs, interrupting Americans eating breakfast. Leave no room for doubt that it was a bombing." Sawyer paused and intently looked at the face of each agent. "That did not happen here, gentlemen."

Sawyer resumed his pacing. All eyes in the room followed his progress. "The jet was virtually intact on its way down. If the right wing hadn't come off, all of it would be in that crater. Mark that point. The fueler from Vector is presumably paid to sabotage the plane. Surreptitious work performed by an American who is not, at least as far as we know, linked to any terrorist group. It would be hard for me to believe that Middle Eastern terrorist groups have started admitting Americans into their ranks to perform their dirty work.

"We had the damage on the fuel tank, but that could as easily have been caused by the explosion and fire. The acid was almost all burned away. A little more heat and maybe we would have found nothing. And Kaplan has confirmed that the wing didn't have to come off the fuselage in order to crash the plane in the same manner. The starboard engine was destroyed from debris ingestion, critical flight control hydraulic lines were severed by the fire and explosion, and the aerodynamics of the wing, even if it had remained intact, was destroyed. So if we hadn't found the igniter in the crater, this thing might've gone down as some horrific mechanical failure.

And make no mistake about it, it was a damned miracle that the igniter was found."

Sawyer looked through one of the glass walls and continued. "So you add that all up, and what do you have? Arguably, someone who blows up a plane but maybe doesn't want it to look that way. Not your typical terrorist MO. But then the picture gets even more cloudy. The logic starts to cut the other way. First, our fueler ends up with a full clip in him. His bags ,ere packed, half a disguise on, and his employer presumably changes the plan on him. Second, we have Arthur Lieberman on the same flight." Sawyer glanced at Jackson.

"The man went to L.A. every month, like clockwork, same airline, same flight each month, right?"

Jackson, eyes narrowed to slits, nodded slowly. Each agent was unconsciously leaning forward as they followed Sawyer's logic.

"So the odds of the guy being on the flight by accident are so high it's not worth debating. Looking at it cold, Lieberman had to be the target, unless we're missing something really big. Now put the two pieces together. Initially, our bombers may have tried to make it look like an accident. Then the fueler ends up dead. "Why?" Sawyer looked sharply around the room.

David Long finally spoke up. "Couldn't risk it. Maybe the chances are it goes down like an accident, and maybe not. They can't wait around until the papers report it one way or another. They have to take the guy out right away. Besides, if the original plan was to have the guy take a hike, him not showing for work would raise suspicion.

Even if we didn't think sabotage, the guy skipping town would sure as hell turn us in that direction."

"Agreed," Sawyer replied. "But if you want the trail to end there, why not make it look like the fueler's some fanatical zealot? Put a bullet into his temple, leave the gun and some BS suicide note behind filled with I-hate-America language and let us think the guy's a loner. You fill him full of holes, leave behind evidence pointing to the guy getting ready to run, now we know there are others involved.

Why the hell bring yourself that kind of trouble?" Sawyer rubbed his chin.

The other agents leaned back in their chairs, looking confused.

Sawyer finally looked at Jackson. "Any word from the ME on our dead guy?"