He said, “We call that one The Building. Never tell me G-Men have no imagination, eh? Anyway, ever seen that Indiana Jones movie about the Ark of the Covenant? The scene at the end where they hide its crate in a warehouse? That’s what it’s like inside. Shelves, floor to ceiling, end to end. More than a hundred thousand containers. Every piece of every device we’ve analyzed over the last eighteen years. The place is almost full. We’ve already broken ground on another one. But that’s not where we’re going.”
Lane started walking toward the right-hand building. This one had two distinct sections. A single-story part with a flat roof, stone walls, and tall windows. And a part with a higher, angled roof, white walls, and no windows. The way they were butted up together made it look like the second half was trying to swallow the first.
“This is where the magic happens.” Lane paused at the door. “The labs are here. Plus the less interesting things. Like admin. And the meeting rooms. That’s where we’re going. Sorry.”
Lane used his ID to unlock the door then led the way along the main corridor until we reached a room labeled Conference One. Inside there was a space about fifteen feet by twenty. There was a wooden-topped table in the center. It was rectangular. Surrounded by eleven chairs. They were angled toward the far wall, which was plain white. I guess it doubled as a projection screen. There were three closets built into the wall on the right. Windows to the left. And a carpet that looked like a kind of muted, textile version of a Jackson Pollock painting.
Lane took the chair at the head of the table, facing the wall. He said, “I’m sorry to be treating you like a regular visitor. I’ve read your record. I know all about your service. I would like to give you a full tour. But, you know, regulations. There was no time to get clearance. And at the end of the day more than two hundred people work here. We have a lot of equipment that would be extremely hard to replace. And a trove of evidence from all over the world that’s vital in the war on terror. This place might not be the most glamorous target. But it’s near the top of the list, strategically. It’s what I’d hit if I were on the other side. So we have to take precautions. And we can’t make exceptions. I hope you understand.”
“Of course.”
“So, down to business. Khalil’s fingerprint. Finding it is a two-sided coin. The good thing is, he can be arrested now. If anyone can find him. But the bad thing is that if he’s active here, currently, we must stop him. Fast. The problem is figuring out where to look. There are so many potential targets available to him. We need to narrow them down. The bomb you helped us secure will be arriving in the next thirty minutes or so. That may give us some pointers. Or it may not. We won’t know until we try. Either way, it will take time. In the interim we’re looking for all the help we can get. The angle I’d like to start with is the delivery mechanism. Khalil could be working on a bomb to be carried in a car, for example. Or a truck. Or a plane. Or worn as a vest. Or even sent in the mail. Did anything you saw or heard give any kind of a clue?”
“Dendoncker was running a smuggling operation. He was piggybacking it on a catering service for private planes out of small airfields. But that’s pretty much been shut down. He seemed unconcerned about it. Strangely so, like he had already planned to move on to something else. The question is, what? I’m not convinced Dendoncker’s working with Khalil. I think he was terrified of him.”
“These guys – they’re weird. Paranoid, most of them. They start out as introverts, then live their whole lives doubly desperate not to draw attention to themselves. Trying not to visit the same electronics store too often. Or to buy from the same websites over and over. They wind up running from shadows. It’s probably nothing. But even if they have fallen out already, there could still be useful clues from when they did work together.”
“The flight thing is all I can think of.”
“OK. Then the second angle is materials. Is he using precursors, for example. Things like ammonium nitrate or fuel oil or nitromethane. Or specialist compounds like TATP, or ethylene glycol dinitrate. Or even military grade explosives like C-4.” Lane paused for a moment and looked right at me. “As an aside, the Beirut barracks bomb used precursors. You were there. Well, we recently recovered new evidence, after all these years. We should have good news on that soon.”
There was something strange about the way Lane spoke those words. How he said, “You were there.” It sounded half like a question. Half like a statement. It caused an echo at the back of my mind. I’d heard something similar recently, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.
Lane said, “Mr. Reacher? Materials?”
“Artillery shells,” I said. “Dendoncker had a bunch of them. At least three hundred. They were locked in a shed. At the abandoned school he was camped out in.”
“Any idea what was in them?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see a code book? If they were recovered from an enemy they’re often deliberately mislabeled. The code book is needed to confirm the contents.”
I shook my head.
“OK. Let me have the location. I’ll arrange collection. Now, the third angle is the method of detonation. We know Khalil used two kinds in his first device. A timer and cellular. Those are quite normal. And three kinds in the device that’s incoming. A timer, cellular, and a transponder. That’s unusual. But whether he was looking for another level of backup, or whether he’s messing with us, I don’t know. Not yet.”
I said nothing.
“Do you know how transponders work?”
I said, “I have an idea what they do. Not so much how they do it.”
“A good example is a car’s ignition. Try to start the engine and a chip in the car sends out a radio signal. A transponder in the key automatically bounces back a reply. If the reply is correct, the chip completes the circuit. That’s why you can’t hotwire modern cars. Even if you join the right wires, there’s no transponder to reply to the car’s chip, so the circuit remains open.”
“And the same thing could happen with this bomb?”
“I assume so. I haven’t seen it yet, obviously. I need to examine it to be sure. But if it’s a technique Khalil has perfected it could be a massive problem. Imagine you have a target with an unpredictable schedule. You plant a bomb somewhere along his route. Sneak a transponder onto his keychain or into his pocket. Anyone else could go by without a problem. But when he approaches – boom.”
“OK. But you said the transponder’s in the key. Not the car.”
“Correct. The chip in the car initiates the communication. The key responds.”
“So the chip in the bomb would be like the chip in the car?”
“Correct. I’ll verify that once the bomb is here, but I don’t see another way it could work.”
“What kind of range do these things have?”
“They vary. Depends on the application. Planes use them for automatic identification, in which case the signal can travel many kilometers. If you use one to unlock a door in place of a key, you’d want the signal to only go a few millimeters. You put one in a bomb, you’d want it to be similar, I guess, or your target would be out of the blast zone when it detonated. Unless it was a giant bomb and you didn’t care about collateral damage.”
Lane had done it again. The way he spoke, I couldn’t tell if “You put one in a bomb” was a question or a statement. And I suddenly realized who he reminded me of. Michael. When he briefly spoke to Fenton, right after we first found him. He either said, “You came.” Or “You came?” And that was right after something else weird. He said, “You got my warning?” Fenton had described it as a cry for help. An SOS. That was nothing like the same thing. I thought about what she had found. What she had based her conclusion on. And stood up.