Thirty-Nine

CHARLESTON

The pilots of the Gulfstream III ran the engines all out to get to Charleston as quickly as the executive jet could fly. When the plane finally touched down just before 6:30 a.m. local time two extremely anxious FBI special agents were waiting. The first person off the plane was Debbie Hanousek, the team leader. The forty-two-year-old health physicist and mother of three hurried down the steps and approached the two agents.

Hanousek was barely five feet tall, with kinky short brown hair. She was dressed casually in jeans and a white T-shirt. A lifelong physical-fitness nut and marathon runner, she extended her hand and sized up the two six-foot-tall bookends. They were dressed in matching FBI windbreakers, and looked fresh out of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

The introductions were quick. Hanousek looked them in the eye and gripped their hands firmly. As the six people on her team poured out of the executive jet, laden with equipment, she looked up at the two agents and said, "You guys mind doing me a favor?"

"Yeah...sure," one of them answered.

"Lose the windbreakers, and while you're at it lose the ties too."

The two exchanged unsure looks, and then one of them asked, "Are you serious?"

"You guys ever been to the docks before?" They both nodded. "You see a lot of people walking around in ties and FBI windbreakers?"

This time neither man answered.

"The idea here is to keep a low profile," she said. "Get in and locate this thing without anyone knowing we're here. You got it?"

The two bookends nodded.

"Good. Let's load up, and get to the docks."

The members of the Search Response Team stuffed all their gear into the back of the big black Chevy Suburban and the trunk of the Ford Crown Vic and then everyone found a seat and they left for the waterfront.

DICK SCHOYER LOOKEDdown at the yard through a pair of binoculars and watched as two U.S. Customs officials approached theMadagascar. He was standing on the observation deck of a three-story building not far from where the ship was docked. With him were the port captain, the chief of the Port Authority Police, the area port director for Customs and Border Protection, and the commanding officer of the local U.S. Coast Guard station. Schoyer had made it clear to all that no person or thing was to leave that ship until he got the nod from Washington.

As a somewhat standard precaution a Port Authority police officer was put on "gangway watch" to make sure no one left or boarded the ship without their knowledge. The Customs officials made their way past the police officer and up the gangway into the belly of the giant ship. They were under orders to find out the exact location of the container in question and then stall, drag their feet, and in general, do whatever it took for them to buy some time until the Search Response Team arrived.

After twenty tense minutes they radioed the port captain that the container they were interested in was buried in the stacks. Upon consultation with the stevedore it was decided that it would take approximately one hour using two cranes to get to the container, and about forty minutes if they used three cranes. Schoyer made a quick call to McMahon up in Washington, who in turn asked Reimer over at the DOE what they should do. Reimer told him it would be easier for his people to assess the situation if they had access to all four sides of the container. When pressed by McMahon on what to do, Reimer told him to take the container off the ship so that it was waiting for his team.

Two of the giant six-million-dollar cranes went to work almost immediately. Upon confirmation that the Search Response Team had landed at the air force base a third crane joined in. Under the close supervision of Customs officials each container that came off the ship was placed in a specific part of the yard.

Special Agent Schoyer watched all of this with a mix of excitement and dread. He liked his job in every sense of the word. Columbia, South Carolina, was not a glamour posting like New York, Miami, or L.A., but that was just fine with Schoyer. Glamour was something that had really never interested him. He was just competitive enough to rise through the ranks at the FBI, and just smart enough to realize a good thing when he'd found it.

That good thing was Columbia, South Carolina. His government salary went quite a bit further down here than it did in New York or Washington, and his wife and five kids loved the place. The people were nice, the climate was wonderful, and the terrain lush. They'd turned into a golfing family, with the kids caddying on the weekends and during the summer, and he and his wife had joined leagues at a public course that was nicer than most of D.C.'s private clubs. After one year his wife told him if he accepted another promotion he could plan on seeing her and the kids when he came home on the holidays.

Over the past two years he'd grown used to the slower pace of the southeast. He was no longer the action junky that he'd been in his early twenties and thirties. He'd started out as a Detroit cop working nights in one of the worst parts of town. That was when he got hooked on the adrenaline. No job since then had compared. Every night it was something. Usually they were domestic calls, which were wildly unpredictable, often violent, occasionally hilarious, and sometimes deadly. After two years it was on to the Bureau and a different type of action. The job entailed more legwork, paperwork, and patience, but when an investigation hit, the feeling of accomplishment was huge. Locking up bad people for a living was immensely satisfying to the forty-six-year-old agent.

Dick Schoyer liked making a difference. That was why he'd gotten into law enforcement, and as he looked out at the massive container ship that had just traveled from the other side of the world he sincerely hoped they were all going to make a difference today. Whether he liked it or not, he was under a microscope. McMahon had told him the president and his National Security Council were monitoring the situation very closely, and if that wasn't pressure enough, somewhere amidst the maze of metal containers was a possible nuclear weapon that could level the entire historic city of Charleston. Schoyer had no fear of taking on the most hardened criminal, but a nuclear bomb...he was out of his depth.

When the Search Response Team showed up at the harbor, he was more than relieved to turn things over to people who actually knew what they were doing. Debbie Hanousek was escorted to the observation deck by one of Schoyer's agents. The introductions were quick and then, thankfully, Hanousek got right to the point.

"I assume," she pointed beyond the observation deck, "this is the high interest vessel that has everyone so excited?"

The port captain handed her his binoculars. "We've been picking around the container for the last ten minutes or so. It's that red one six rows back from the bow sitting all by itself."

"We didn't want to move it until you got here," added Schoyer.

Hanousek nodded. "Well...if she didn't blow on a transatlantic ocean crossing she isn't going to blow getting unloaded. Why don't you have the crane grab it and set her down where my people and I will have some room to maneuver."

The Customs official moved in and pointed to a tentlike structure set up in the yard. "We have the VACIS ready to go."

VACIS stood for Vehicle And Container Inspection System. It was a portable system that measured the density of objects. Hanousek shook her head. "I'd rather check it for a radiation signature first."

She turned back to the harbormaster and Schoyer. "Do you have any place where we can look at it away from prying eyes?" She noted the FBI man's windbreaker, but decided it was probably not a good idea to say anything in front of the others.