Razing Beijing: A Thriller

by Elston III, Sidney

  TRANSIT AUTHORITY stopped wrenching a twisted piece of rusted sheet metal in order to shine a light in at his work. He turned and gave the men below a thumbs-up.

  The man’s supervisor standing to Lee’s left turned to face him. “You can go up and take a look now,” he told Lee in a thick Brooklyn accent. “Be careful to test your footing as you go. There’s a lot of loose debris.”

  Lee pulled on a pair of gloves. “I just hope your man didn’t contaminate anything.”

  He waited for the worker with the pry bar to climb down and hand over his flashlight. The senior FBI agent then climbed gingerly up the tower of twisted metal, stopping once to free his pant leg from a stiff shard of electrical cable. He soon steadied himself at the entrance to the shallow cavern that had been cleared away. He was at first concerned by the liberal quantity of soot from the fire, then decided that could work to his advantage. He pulled aside a plastic pipe and shined his flashlight in past a gray section of girder. Buried amidst a tangle of scrap was the exposed end of the severed main catenary.

  Lee’s concern was that the NJTA worker, having seen the condition of the cable, might circulate comments about it. Of lesser importance were the remaining three ends of ‘severed’ catenary, which he knew in fact had precipitated the collapse. At least two of these were reportedly submerged beneath the river surface and accumulating investigative irrelevance with each corrosive minute. In any event, whatever controversy their examination might contribute to the investigation would arrive too late.

  Lee understood his mission with a clarity he had not expected. There could be little doubt that the object before him was in fact the three-foot diameter steel catenary cable. Actually a composite assembly, the cable’s smooth cylindrical exterior encased thousands of small wires. The severed ends of each, like the exposed wall of the cylinder encasing them, were cut sufficiently straight and clean to reflect the light of his flashlight. The effect was reminiscent of a dismembered hand he had once stumbled upon at the scene of a railway accident, its veins and arteries and tendons severed at the wrist with grotesque precision. Lee frowned. Whatever had caused that cable to break was clearly no explosive with which he was familiar. His instructions had indicated that he should expect these various curiosities, indeed, to prepare for them. Most importantly, he had to keep others from seeing them.

  What Lee did next was for the benefit of the men watching below. He reached into his coat pocket and removed a small plastic bag containing several cotton swabs. He removed one swab and wiped the cotton around the circumference of the cable assembly, carefully extracting any residue from the hypothetical explosive agent used to sever the cable and topple the bridge. He then returned the swab of cotton to the plastic bag. Lee was careful to place the bag of swabs back into the same coat pocket. The forensic scientists would soon arrive with their mobile lab equipment, including a high-resonance magnetic chromatometer that they would use for preliminary analysis of the residue. Lee would be sure to provide them with the bag tucked in his pants pocket, its cotton swabs already contaminated with residue yesterday.

  Finally, Lee produced his Fujinon digital camera. He spent the next few minutes maneuvering into position and snapping frames from various angles to the critical evidence. Those below observing the stroboscopic flashes would not suspect that subsequent to each, Lee pressed the button to delete it.

  “Any idea what did it?” the NJTA supervisor inquired a few minutes later.

  Lee peeled off his neoprene gloves as he debated how best to answer the question. Should he hint at something obscure, but ultimately misleading? He looked into the eyes of the burly man standing beside his boss, anxiously awaiting Lee’s informed opinion, his face smudged with grease and soot—the only other witness to the peculiar condition of the cable.

  “I’m not free to comment. For that matter, I’m going to require that only he be allowed back up there,” he said, referring to the supervisor’s subordinate.

  “No way. He’ll need help removing a piece of that thing.”

  The FBI executive glanced at the Partner, a powerful industrial circular saw to which another coverall-clad worker was bolting a replacement for the eighteen-inch diameter carbide disc. “Two guys, then—but send him up there to cover it first.”

  “You don’t want a forensic photog—”

  “What I want is the end capped off in a plastic bag before you take the saw to it. Preferably Tyvek but Glad trash bags cut to fit will do. And be sure to tape it off.” Lee glanced at the name stenciled over the supervisor’s breast pocket. “I cannot stress enough the importance of preventing contamination, Mr. Brooks. Is that understood?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Good. Now, can you point me—”

  “Toward our hero? He’s been waiting for you right over there,” said Brooks with a jab of his thumb toward the south side of the bridge.

  Lee started to leave, then turned back toward Brooks. “By the way, how long a section do you plan to remove?”

  Brooks shrugged. “A foot or so.”

  “A foot or so. Do you know how much that’s going to weigh? Keep it to three or four inches or we won’t be able to budge it.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “Wait a minute.” TRANSIT AUTHORITY stepped forward holding a roll of duct tape and a folded sheet of black Tyvek plastic. “I want to make sure you guys understand somethin’. The saw makes a 9 inch-deep cut—only gets me halfway through. You sound as if you expect me to slice off a 36 inch diameter piece of bologna here.”

  Supervisor Brooks rubbed the back of his neck. “That’s a point.”

  “Get a bigger saw,” Lee suggested.

  “That’s the K-18.” Brooks shook his head. “They don’t come any bigger than that.”

  Lee looked at TRANSIT AUTHORITY. “What were you planning to do?”

  “I was thinking I could run the saw over the face and slab off maybe four big pieces, you know.” The man portrayed this by running the edge of his hand like a knife across a clenched fist. “Then back maybe six inches cut—”

  “No, no—you cannot contact the fracture surface with any sort of tool. I thought I made that clear. You’ve got to come up with some other way.”

  Supervisor Brooks spent five head-shaking minutes off caucusing with his men. Afterward, TRANSIT AUTHORITY put forth their proposal to the FBI man while his supervisor, arms folded, listened nearby. “You don’t care what we do two feet back from the end, so long as I give you your clean four inches, that right?”

  “I don’t care if you get down on all fours and chew it the fuck off.”

  TRANSIT AUTHORITY nodded. “Chewed is about what you’re going to get. Okay. I’m going to start in a couple feet, slab with the saw, cut with the torch, working toward the end until I sever through the thing. Now, we’re worried about wires fallin’ out. I can try to dabber weld ’em together as I go, but no guarantees.”

  That specific concern had already been allayed within Lee’s instructions. He shook his head. “That’s a virtual shrink-fit inside the cylinder. Ever heard of Poisson’s ratio?”

  The middle age mechanic-at-large rubbed his nose.

  “Never mind. Don’t let loose wires slow you down because there aren’t going to be any. And don’t hand over something weighing two-thousand pounds.”

  “You’ll get what you need, but it ain’t going to be pretty.”

  “Sounds beautiful to me. Just treat those last few inches like your pension depended upon them.”

  TRANSIT AUTHORITY blinked. “It might take a few hours.”

  Lee examined his watch. “You’ve got two.”

  Over the supervisor’s vigorous objections, Lee accompanied TRANSIT AUTHORITY back up the scrap heap to assist with taping Tyvek over the exposed end of the cable. For good measure, Lee insisted that they also drape the final product in heavy canvas before attempting to lower it to the roadbed. Satisfied he and the laborer were of like minds on technique, Lee descended in order to make way
for the man’s assistant.

  Lee finally turned his back to the stream of sparks spraying overhead and headed for the southern face of the bridge. Side-stepping bottomless potholes and asking directions from an ATF agent, Lee found the witness sitting alone on a handrail with a blanket draped over his shoulders.

  Lee presented his FBI identification. “I’m sorry you had to wait.”

  The man gazed back at him resignedly and slowly extended his hand. “Joe Ciccone, New York PD.”

  Lee took in the bloodstained gauze wrapped around the man’s knee. One of the local field agents had already briefed him on what the police officer had lived through. “You’re injured. Why are you still here?”

  “This official, or you just here to wish me well?” Ciccone quickly waved the words away. “Forget I said that. I’m not hurt near as bad as most of these folks. I know why you’re here. I’m happy to help.”

  Lee noted the man’s irritation. “I understand you responded to a disabled vehicle here on the bridge last evening. Can you describe the men you saw?”

  Ciccone looked away. He seemed to be struggling with some sort of torment. “I think both men were Iranian, professionally attired middle-class types. We ran the plates, looked pretty clean, no prior arrests. One mentioned he was here on a grad student visa. I’m sure it’s all on file.”

  “I know it’s getting late, but would you mind sitting with one of our artists?”

  Ciccone nodded forlornly and reminded Lee that they could also try the bridge surveillance and squad car videos. He looked Lee in the eye. “I need to make something perfectly clear. There was absolutely no cause to suspect anything other than what I reported, two guys changing a flat. I’m sure you can appreciate my taking the time to reflect on this.”

  “Of course.”

  “The only suspicious thing about it is, in hindsight, where on the bridge it was they happened to stop. There was nothing in the trunk but a spare and a jack. A briefcase or two...” Ciccone shrugged.

  “But there could have been something in the trunk before you arrived. Did you see inside the briefcases?”

  “I had no probable cause to open them.”

  Lee considered the man’s overall persona. Perfect, he thought. Comes across credibly, acted courageously under duress, putting his own life at risk while saving others—the press will latch onto everything he says. “I’d recommend you and the department withhold from making public comment for the time being.”

  “I got no problem with that. I can’t speak for the brass.”

  “You seem certain they were Iranian.”

  “Well...yeah. They exchanged a few words in Farsi.” The police officer noticed him frowning. “My brother-in-law spent a few years in Tehran,” Ciccone explained.

  “Ah.”

  WITH THE AID of a block-and-tackle attached high up the side of the tower structure, Lee watched beneath the glare of floodlights as the two NJTA men maneuvered the irregular slab of cable down toward the roadbed. True to his word, TRANSIT AUTHORITY had delivered something that more resembled a log freed by the teeth of a beaver than a high-tension structural member. And it was exceedingly heavy and awkward to handle, a contingency for which the rented pick-up truck waiting below was equipped with a hydraulic crane.

  Aloof from the contingent of emergency personnel, a man with his hands in the pockets of a hooded FBI parka rested his foot on the bumper of the pick-up. Lee caught the man’s attention. The hooded figure joined him and the others in order to help.

  The block-and-tackle was up to the job. Five men together were able to coax the canvas-covered slab of steel suspended within a web of nylon straps past the edge of the big Ford’s bed. The load carried by the block-and-tackle was eased, and the truck settled on its undercarriage. With much shoving and grunting, the specimen was slid all the way on.

  FBI AGENTS HILDEBRANDT AND BROPHY covered the last half-mile to the entrance of the bridge on foot. As best either man knew, the wailing of sirens and the countless helicopters hovering over the river had, if anything, intensified in the last eleven-odd hours. Agent Brophy had been in touch with the New York office by cellular phone. His unit chief urged that the men avail themselves to assist in emergency efforts or, better yet, report to the Washington investigative team already onsite.

  Hildebrandt lamented with Brophy that a team dispatched all the way from D.C. had beaten them to the bridge.

  They walked past the upper deck Jersey-side tollbooths and approached one of several harried NYPD officers. The cops were trying to keep personnel from wandering aimlessly through wreckage, deploying them where emergency services were the most needed.

  “The last FBI guys we saw are a good half mile through that,” the officer pointed at the chaos over his shoulder. “Watch your step, fellas. Don’t walk directly underneath anything.” The policeman left the two FBI agents in order to deal with another incoming ambulance.

  Hildebrandt had never in his life seen or imagined so much destruction. He and Brophy worked their way toward the support tower, the base flooded by bright lights and the throbbing hum of gasoline engines. They stopped along the way to help an ambulance crew hoist a woman strapped to a gurney up over the side of collapsed pavement, where hours ago cars and trucks and busses hurtled along the southbound lanes just as they had for decades.

  He and Brophy stepped aside as a big, 2-ton pickup truck bounced slowly in, out, and around sunken sections of pavement on its way back to terra firma. Hildebrandt approached a figure wearing orange NJTA coveralls directing the efforts of others.

  “FBI?” asked the man, the name Brooks stenciled over his pocket. Brooks looked blandly at the two men for a moment and said: “We got plenty. You just missed the big-shot, though, carting the evidence back to his ivory tower.”

  “Oh, in the truck?” Hildebrandt asked.

  “The truck, yeah. Help from cocksuckers like him we can do without.”

  AIDED BY THE ABSENCE of southbound traffic, Lance Lee steered the lemon-yellow pick-up onto New Jersey Turnpike exit 15E. Carl Smith, a.k.a. Paul Devinn, rode wordlessly in the passenger seat and looked mostly at the office complexes and warehouses they passed. In the pick-up truck’s bed was an important element for explaining the loss of over four hundred innocent lives. By leaving the highway three exits north of the airport, Lee was violating the strict ‘chain of custody’ rules that bound investigating agents to an auditable record of court admissible evidence.

  Everything had so far proceeded according to plan. Complaints from forensic scientists that he hadn’t allowed them to examine or photograph the specimen had been handled by asserting the importance of gophering it off to Quantico. Their attention was easily diverted to the plastic bag containing the cotton swab that Lee had thrust into their hands.

  Lee drove by memory toward his destination several miles east, past abandoned warehouses, landfills, and refuse dumps long since closed following the region’s declaration as a migratory waterfowl refuge. Driving further into deserted marshland, they left the buildings behind. Finally, three-point-six miles from the exit, he turned left onto an unmarked dirt road. A half-mile further, the truck totally obscured by darkness and towering salt grass, Lee and Devinn found the waiting men.

  Each vehicle flashed its headlights four times—Lee pulled up beside the Chrysler sedan. Two Asian men seated inside returned anxious stares before exiting their car. Lee readily recognized the driver, who identified himself as ‘Orville,’ by the missing outer knuckles from the fourth and fifth digits of his right hand. His partner lugged a suitcase as both men climbed onto the bed of the truck and ogled the cargo.

  “A hundred yards,” Orville instructed Lee with a wave.

  A minute later the truck rolled to a stop. All four men got out and wordlessly went about their task. Here again, the crane came in handy. Orville re-attached the hook on the end of the cable to the nylon straps. Paul Devinn operated the crane to elevate the cable specimen clear of the truck bed.

  The
re on level ground, where Orville and his assistant had previously left it, the ‘boot’ was already prepared. The boot consisted simply of a large wooden shipping crate lined with thick heavy-duty canvas, beneath which and covering the entire bottom of the crate was a quarter-inch thick, solid steel plate. With Devinn at the controls of the crane, the three other men were able to help maneuver the nylon sling containing the cumbersome object as it was lowered onto the boot. It took the efforts of all four men and a pry bar to remove the nylon web.

  Orville directed his assistant to tighten a metal packing strap around the circumference of the cable, firmly encasing all but the ‘fracture surface’ within protective canvas. This done, they removed the Tyvek sheet taped in place by Lee and NJTA personnel, thereby exposing the critical evidence.

  Orville opened the suitcase and removed a thick, dinner-platter diameter charge of Composition-4 plastique explosive—extremely powerful, however grossly inadequate to accomplish the damage for which it would later be blamed. Lance Lee directed Orville to position the charge on the extreme edge of the cable’s ‘severed’ surface. A narrow detonator the size of a child’s crayon was pushed into place.

  Lee knelt to examine the work. It was unlikely the metal strap would survive the blast but probably adequate to achieve the desired effect, which was to limit contaminating the more recently cut surfaces with explosive residue. Any unintended contamination he would explain away as shoddy hygiene of the Jersey transit authority.

  Lee stood. “Two minutes ought to be enough.”

  Orville nodded. He knelt to complete the final step of connecting the insulated wire leads between the detonator and battery-operated timer, ten feet away. His assistant climbed onto the roof of the truck in order to make one last check for intruders.

  “What about the other suspension cables?” Devinn asked Lee.