Razing Beijing: A Thriller (69 page)

Loose items in the car had collected against the
windshield; his police logbook; a box of crayons he’d picked up for his
daughter had deposited its contents; a stuffed kitten staring back with
cheerful plastic eyes made him grateful that Jennifer was home with her mother.
He could remember looking straight into the sky and expecting to die, followed
by his car landing hard and slamming him backward into his seat. And the road
falling out from under him, screeching metal, tumbling, flying bits of glass.

Ciccone gradually heard the air singing with distant sirens.
Smoke, thick like burning tar, swirled around his patrol car. He reached for
the police-band scanner beneath the dashboard; the motion caused him to clench
his teeth in pain. Nothing but static probably meant that the whip antenna had
been snapped off.

He heard a metallic groan and the bridge shuddered enough
that his daughter’s crayons danced back-and-forth—he held his breath. Some distance
away a chorus of yelling and screaming erupted, then just as quickly trailed
off. The receding cries of an infant were followed by an enormous splash from
the distant surface of water.

His best guess was that upon being hurled into the air, he
must have blacked out for five or ten minutes. It was impossible to know how
soon help would arrive. He braced himself against the steering wheel, and
reached down to unlatch his seatbelt...
okay
. Next, turning his head to
examine his surroundings, he was stunned by the sight of a Hyundai sedan
hanging not ten feet away, its hood and front bumper torn off. By some quirk a
galvanized cable had become tangled with its rear wheel and bumper. Ciccone’s
blood ran cold at the sight of a woman inside staring soundlessly back at him. Fifty
feet beyond, a granite stone wall extended all the way down beneath the surface
of the Hudson River; the officer realized this had to be the massive pedestal
of the New Jersey side tower. In various degrees of destruction surrounding it,
he saw twisted slabs of asphalt with white no-passing lines evident, torn and
twisted girders, cables dangling in the air—
that
, he recognized with
dread, was the essence of what had snagged his car and spared his life. He
heard the distant thumping of an approaching helicopter.

Ciccone turned his attention to the other hapless
survivors. “Are you hurt?” he shouted toward the woman.

Either she was panicked beyond coherence or unable to hear.
Judging by the precarious state of her car it soon wouldn’t matter, unless he
managed to somehow get them free. First, he had to free himself.

“Just hang on!”
Bad choice of words
, he thought as
he tried opening the door, only to find that the handle would not budge. Glancing
up over his shoulder he saw the door had shifted inside the frame; somehow the
driver’s window did not appear to be cracked. There was no way to know if the
passenger window was missing or not; the roof was caved in and obstructed his
access to that side of the vehicle. The security screen between the front and
rear passenger compartments made egress that way out of the question. Between
cracks in the windshield, tiny flecks of whitecap marked the water’s distant
surface. An idea to smash clear what remained of the glass evoked an image of
flailing his arms as he slid over the hood. There was an allure to the idea of
simply staying put which, somehow, seemed more disturbing yet.

With much grunting and groaning, his left hand gripping the
mesh of the security screen over his head, Ciccone maneuvered himself so that
he sat with the back of his thighs on the face of the steering wheel; he was
annoyed to find the horn in working order. By bending his knees slightly he was
able to place his feet against the driver’s side window. Then, gripping the
wheel with his other hand to steady himself, he positioned his heels against
the glass, and started to push...nothing. He took a deep breath and pushed
harder. Soon the muscles in his legs started to burn; his reward was a slight
cracking noise. He relaxed his legs. If only the damn roof were not caved in
and cramping him, he thought. He was simply unable to expend the strength of
his thighs.

Bending his knees yet more, Ciccone inched his feet away
from the glass. A trickle of sweat ran from his temple and down behind his ear
as he took a deep breath. With all his might, he rammed his heels against the driver’s
window. There was a dull pop as the sheet of safety glass fissured and fell
free of the car. His elation was short-lived. The motion caused the car to
shift and slide, then snag to a stop. With a high metallic squeal it was
sliding again—Ciccone froze. The car shuddered to a tentative halt.

Sprawled with the steering wheel in the small of his
back, his legs suspended out through the window, Officer Ciccone didn’t so much
as twitch his nose. Far below, the window splashed into the river.

STRIKING THE SURFACE
of
the Hudson River at eighty miles per hour killed most of the motorists. Many
died as their cars bobbed on the surface and were slammed from above by others.
The US Coast Guard quickly dispatched every asset they had from New York Harbor
in an attempt to locate survivors. NYPD and Port Authority patrol boats, blue
strobes flashing, were directed to ward off vessels attempting to pass beneath
the treacherous remains of the bridge. Highway traffic had quickly backed up
twenty miles in either direction; helicopter reports confirmed that vehicle
pile-ups and buckled asphalt obstructed rescue efforts on all approaches to the
bridge. Motorists gradually tuned their radios or used cell phones to determine
the source of delay. Police choppers surveyed the carnage and began directing
emergency and fire-fighting personnel arriving on the scene toward survivors
trapped on isolated sections of the bridge.

Compounding rescue difficulties was an asphalt and
automobile fire blazing out of control near the New Jersey tower. With a water
tender miles down-river there was no immediate way of quenching the flames
threatening dozens of stranded motorists, notwithstanding doubts that the
boat’s pumps were powerful enough to reach them. Another complication stemmed
from the bridge’s ready convenience for breaching the river with all manner of
public utility needs. Tens of thousands of gallons of water and secondary
effluent were dumping into the Hudson. Electrical service was disrupted to
several thousand homes and businesses in the Palisades and Hackensack. The
first attempts at saving life began. Three stranded motorists huddled beside a
man whose legs were crushed, watching closely as a crew of firemen positioned
an extension ladder across a chasm created by a missing thirty-foot section of
upper-deck roadway. Ten feet below, a sixty-year old woman had wrapped her arms
and legs around a distorted steel beam, shaking uncontrollably with her eyes
clenched shut, too panicked to signal for help.

A Sikorsky helicopter chartered by WABC-TV was diverted
from its morning rush-hour traffic report over the Tappan Zee to cover the ‘failed
section of GW bridge.’

“Five-eight-kilo, please advise when in sight of the
bridge.”

Rounding a crest of land, the true extent of the damage
was immediately obvious. “Holy Christ,” the pilot muttered, “
what
bridge?” He eased back the cyclic and slowed the helicopter to a hover just
upriver of what had been the George Washington Bridge. Thirty seconds later,
the live news camera was fed via satellite to every major network in the world.
Unlike the early minutes of the ‘9/11’ World Trade Center attack, speculation
of a terrorist strike was immediate.

SPECIAL AGENT EDWARD
HILDEBRANDT
was behind the wheel of his rental car, contemplating the
prospect of Paul Devinn’s emergence as Carl Smith in the swank Manhattan hotel,
when word of the calamity arrived. His reaction had been the same as most every
law enforcement officer in the vicinity; his priority was to beat the quickest
path to the bridge. Blocking his way was three miles of stalled northbound
interstate traffic.

Hildebrandt turned toward the field agent seated beside
him. “You’re from New Jersey. How do we get the hell out of here?”

Agent Nicholas Brophy directed them south through Palisades.
Ten minutes later they were cruising along the shoulder past gridlocked
traffic. Even to drivers without their radios tuned-in, it was clear by the
flurry of fire trucks, ambulances and police cars that something serious was
taking place. Hildebrandt and Brophy made their way, but without emergency
lights of their own.

A MOTORIZED WHINE
filled
the air when a forklift entered the room through a segmented rubber curtain,
its white-gloved operator delivering for auction yet another pallet of some
gargantuan species of fish, frozen solid and evenly stacked like firewood. Carolyn
Ross strolled among the crowd of tourists and Japanese traders, casting her
charge the occasional casual glance.

Stuart pressed the satellite phone to his ear and cupped
his hand over the other. “Did you say Chinese characters?”

“We’re not certain yet,” Emily admitted. “The image is
weakly encrypted. It’s still going to take some work to clean up.”

“Could the image have come from a regular spy satellite? I
mean, they must have them.” McBurney would certainly know, although Stuart
doubted he’d reveal that he did. Emily proceeded to briefly describe the
process by which Thackeray determined whether or not any known satellite should
have been transmitting over the region and time in question.

“After your encryption lecture the other day, I’m a little
surprised you were able to process any image at all.”

“It’s called steganography. We think they tried to disguise
their data for transmission among other innocuous data streams. But isn’t it
curious the transmission began immediately prior to the bridge collapse? And
what about the flash?”

“What’s this weak encryption imply for the control
protocols?” Stuart asked.

“According to Thack, probably nothing at all.”

Stuart thought for several moments. “I’m not sure what I
can do with this. I doubt you’ll be able to reach me again.” Stuart could
easily guess McBurney’s reaction to her being able to reach him at all. “In
fact, I’m pretty sure that you won’t. In the meantime, you and Thack keep up
the good work.”

“But what about all those people? What if this is only the
beginning?”

“We can only do what we can do. What more have you heard
about Congress terminating the program?”

“Only that Mr. Perry is trying to stop them in court. There’s
some sort of a hearing scheduled in the next few days.”

Carolyn Ross caught his eye and flashed him a frown. Stuart
turned away, angrily realizing how little faith nowadays he had in his
partner’s ability to extricate CLI from such a financial mess. “You and Thack
might want to think about what you’re going to do if you get booted out of
there.”

“Stu?”

“Yes?”

“Please be careful.”

Stuart smiled, surprised to find he liked Emily telling
him that. “I’ll try to get back to you in a day or two.”

THIRTY MINUTES LATER,
Stuart left the Kokkaigijidomae subway entrance, collected his bearings, and
began walking up the street toward the hotel. His message for Carolyn Ross to
pass to McBurney had been simple: A Chinese satellite might have been involved
in the destruction of the George Washington Bridge. Stuart couldn’t know
whether the CIA woman’s stunned expression was disbelief or confusion, or, for
that matter, some ruse to keep him in the dark. Already he was tired of the
games these people played.

He did, however, take their security precautions seriously.
Cracking his window curtain earlier that evening, Stuart had observed a steady
flow of limousines and taxicabs returning Chinese guests to the hotel. Presently,
he strolled past a Buddhist shrine while backtracking the way he had come on his
way to the fish market. Deciding to take Ross’s advice, he bypassed the drive
leading up to the main entrance of the Tokyu. Stuart finally walked past a row
of dumpsters and into the service entrance at the rear of the building—he
nearly stepped into the path of a cart of collapsed cardboard boxes. The wiry
young man pushing it paused to let him pass, nodding politely before resuming
his task. If the fellow was surprised at seeing a guest step into the service
elevator at 1:40 in the morning, he hadn’t shown it, at least not to Stuart’s
eye.

Stepping off the elevator on the fourteenth floor,
Stuart was unnerved by activity at the end of the hallway. Two hotel employees
collecting room service trays paid him no notice. Great, he thought, now I’m
becoming paranoid. Stuart entered his room and locked the door behind him.

PANFILO CORPUS TOSSED
the
last of the cardboard into the dumpster and wheeled the empty cart to its place
outside the service door. To the young man’s growing list of resentments he
decided to add the incredible waste in Japan. In the scatter-site community
outside Manila where he had grown up, people yearned for such precious
material. That he had lived with his mother and sister in a hutch made of
cardboard, and done so contentedly, was a source of private humiliation. By his
people’s standards, the ramshackle flat he currently shared with six other
Filipinos was extravagant. Nowadays, Panfilo knew better than to trust
contentedness as anything more than a childhood illusion.

He had come to Japan to escape such a past, and being so
inclined, he was hard pressed not to latch onto every opportunity to earn a few
extra yen. Did the man entering the service entrance look Australian? Actually,
Panfilo thought maybe he dressed more like an American. And no Aussie or
Britisher would walk past a pile of garbage and smile so friendly, no doubt
happy to see a peasant hauling trash for some slave’s wage. His mother and
uncles always did say Americans were a peculiar blend of sentiment and
arrogance. Americans were easy to read, were they not? No matter. He would make
sure to relate what the Anglo was wearing, and to which floor the elevator had
gone, just as the Chinese man had instructed. That should earn him the
additional tip.