Which reminded me. I dialed Kate’s cell phone and it went right into voice mail, so maybe she was still at the Sheraton in D.C., sleeping, with her cell phone off—or she was airborne, heading home.
I left a message: “Kate, I’m using one of my guys’ cell phones, Matt Conlon. Call this number as soon as you get this. Important.” I added, “Love you.”
I tried our home number, but it went into the answering machine, and I left the same message.
It occurred to me that if we didn’t connect tonight, one or both of us might not be receiving or sending any further messages in the morning. We had both missed taking the elevator up to the North Tower minutes before the plane hit. So we were sort of on borrowed time. Luck is often the result of missing your plane or your elevator, and fate is what the gods give you when you run out of luck.
I moved back to the coffee bar and asked, “Are you guys the whole crew?”
Conte was off the phone and replied, “The SAFE boat has a two-man crew, three in bad weather, with bench seats below deck for twelve personnel.” He asked me, “You want more people?”
I did, but I didn’t want to wait for them, and also extra people meant a slower speed and more fuel consumption. “We can handle it.”
“Is your friend coming along?”
She thought so. And actually it might be better if she wasn’t left behind to rat me out. Also, I could see a situation—if we were lucky enough to find and board The Hana—where I could use another gun.
“Detective?”
And to be honest, I sort of… well, I was getting used to her. I said, “She’s coming.”
“What’s she doing in there?”
“Is there a pay phone in the ladies’ room?”
Officer Andersson replied, “No.”
While I was contemplating an unwise remark about women in the ladies’ room, Tess appeared, and said, “Ready to go.”
“Then let’s go,” said Sergeant Conte, and we exited the back door onto the illuminated dock. He said to me, “Kalish thinks you could be right about the flooded garage. He’ll put that out to all agencies.”
“Good.”
He asked me, “Are we talking about radioactive material? Or a nuclear bomb?”
“Radioactive material.”
He didn’t respond for a second, then said, “Well, whatever it is, if it’s underwater, it’s not going to be lighting up the PRDs. So we have a problem.”
“Right.”
The night had grown colder, but there was no wind, so the basin was calm and the fog just sat on the water. The SAFE boat also sat motionless on the water, and the only sound was our footsteps on the concrete dock.
As we got closer I could see the small boat that was going to take us out on the ocean. The hull was aluminum, surrounded by what looked like a huge blue inner tube with the words “Suffolk County Police” in white.
The cabin took up about half the twenty-seven-foot deck, and on the roof of the cabin I recognized a radar tower, a Forward Looking Infrared Radar antenna, and a GPS and VHF antenna. There was also a spotlight, floodlights, blue police lights, a public address speaker, and a foghorn, but unfortunately no naval cannon to blow The Hana out of the water.
Conte walked down the aluminum gangway and stepped onto the port side gunnel, followed by Andersson. Tess and I followed, but before we jumped aboard, Tess said to me, “Last chance.”
“That ship came and went.”
I hopped onto the gunnel and put my hand out for Tess, who took it, and I pulled her aboard. We looked at each other for a moment, then I entered the cabin.
The gray cabin had aft, port, and starboard doors that Conte said were weathertight and sound resistant, as were the windows. The cabin was upholstered to further deaden the sound of the big outboard engines, so the ride should be relatively quiet, according to Conte, who was probably engine-deaf.
Conte said, “Put on your float coats.”
Tess and I found the bulky float coats on the two rear seats and slipped them on.
I noticed two Kevlar vests draped over the backs of the two forward seats, and Conte apologized for not having two more bulletproof vests aboard. “Nikki and I didn’t know we were having company.” He added, “You may take a bullet, but you won’t drown.”
Cop humor is sick and dark. I felt at home.
I asked, “Any more MP5s laying around?”
“You want guns, too? This is the basic cruise package.”
Funny. But not the answer I wanted.
Conte sat in the air-ride captain’s seat and Andersson entered the cabin and sat in the navigator’s seat. She said to Tess and me, “This is going to be a bumpy ride at fifty knots. As you can see, there is one air-ride seat behind me, and one not so comfortable jump seat behind the captain.”
Tess offered, “You take the air-ride seat, John. You’re older.”
I sat in the jump seat.
Conte turned the breaker switches on and fired up the twin 225-horsepower Mercury engines.
Conte and Andersson went through a checklist, looking and listening for normal operations of the radar, GPS, FLIR, and engine readings.
Everything seemed okay, and Andersson left the cabin and cast off, then re-entered, took her seat, and leaned out the port side pocket door and cast off the remaining line from the mid cleat. “Clear.” She said to us, “Seat belts.”
Tess and I strapped ourselves in as Conte engaged both engines and maneuvered away from the dock while Andersson sounded the horn to signal we were leaving the berth.
Andersson monitored the radar, depth finder, and GPS as Conte ran parallel to the Ponquogue Bridge, then cut southeast running a high-speed course through the fog.
As promised, the cabin was relatively quiet if anyone wanted to say anything.
In less than five minutes we passed through the Shinnecock Inlet and we were out into the North Atlantic.
Conte pushed the throttles forward and said, “Hold on.” The rear of the boat squatted and the bow stood almost straight up, then settled down to a forty-five-degree angle as the boat reached fifty knots, nearly sixty miles an hour.
Conte called back to me, “I have a search pattern we can run unless you’ve got something else in mind.”
Actually, I did. “Head due west.”
He cut to starboard and we began running along the shore, about twelve miles out.
The sea was getting choppy and the SAFE boat was bouncing and slapping the water.
“Hold on,” cautioned Officer Andersson.
To the south, I could see the lights of a long line of cargo ships and tankers in the shipping lane, heading west toward Ambrose Buoy, with a final destination of New York Harbor.
At fifty knots, the SAFE boat could be passing under the Verrazano Bridge and into the harbor in less than two hours. I checked my watch. It was half past midnight, and September 11 had come and gone without incident. This was the time when every law enforcement officer and citizen in New York usually let out a sigh of relief. But I wasn’t sure about September 12.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
At 11:55, less than two hours after The Hana had gotten underway, Colonel Vasily Petrov stood on the bridge as Gleb sailed the ship under the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, following in the wake of a large cargo ship.
Petrov was surprised that inbound shipping had not yet been halted, making him think that the Americans were not certain what was happening. Or if they were, they had not expected The Hana to get this far, undetected, and they were still searching on the ocean.