Not much of a shot. Have to get lucky as hell. Sensible thing was to let it play out, cover his tracks. But everybody’s got a line they won’t cross. It’s just that Munroe had never hit it. Was starting to think he didn’t have one. Turned out he did.
The Chicago guys would still be in the building. He called Hickman, told him to round them up and bring them back.
CHAPTER 99
Fifteen minutes later, two hours and twenty minutes to go. Starshak, Lynch, Bernstein and Munroe were on one side of the conference table in the windowless room across from the conference room they’d been in earlier. Hundreds of photos of al Din on the walls. Hardin and Wilson stood across the table. Munroe figured they’d been playing footsie with al Din all week, they might come up with something.
“Most of this is out of our system,” Lynch said.
“Your system and elsewhere,” said Munroe.
“So where was all this when you were supposedly cooperating with us?”
Munroe shrugged. “You really want to waste time on that right now? All this will be over one way or another in a few hours. You wanna step outside then, find out if you’re as big a badass as you think you are, fine.”
Lynch clenched his jaw, nodded, looked down at the pictures.
“Fucker’s been everywhere,” said Starshak. “Got him at Sears Tower, Aon Center, the Hancock. Hell, he’s been in and out of anything over fifty stories at least once. Pretty much every hotel within pissing distance of downtown. Illinois Center, all the pedestrian tunnels in there. It’ll take us a week to search that alone.”
“You’ll want to get into the HVAC centers for the bigger buildings,” said Wilson. “Get the building maintenance guys in there with them, they should know if something’s out of place. He gets one of those to pop into the duct work…”
“Good thought,” Munroe said, looking at her a little sideways.
“My ex was an AC guy,” she said. “Always said if you wanted to gas a building, that was the way to go.”
Starshak made calls, got units headed to the HVAC centers at the bigger targets.
“You sure we shouldn’t be starting an evacuation?” Lynch said.
“No time,” Munroe said. “Besides, evacuate to where? We got pictures of him in,” he picked up a sheet of paper, “Schaumburg, Aurora, Naperville, Joliet, Elgin – pretty much every population center you’ve got in fifty miles out in any direction. Malls, hotels, where you going to send ’em? And cranking up the pedestrian traffic while we’re looking for these things is just going to make it worse. Everything we got that can help is on its way here – drugs, docs, we got quarantine contingencies in place for every option we can think of. You let me worry about the worst case, you worry about finding the damn devices.”
Lynch stared at the pictures. Something was itching at him, and he couldn’t think what. Also, Munroe being in the room was hurting his concentration, because every time Munroe opened his mouth, Lynch wanted to stick a gun in it.
“Munroe, your guys took one of these apart,” Hardin said. “How do they work?”
“How about we have shop class later?” said Starshak.
“Hey, it’s a weapon,” said Hardin. “You understand how it works, then you know how it should be deployed.”
Starshak just nodded. Munroe held up an 11x17 sheet, exploded view based off the device.
“When the time hits zero, a CO2 cartridge is going to blow, rupturing the membrane at the end of the container and shooting the bugs out. This stuff is really fine. A particle of talcum powder is ten microns; all of this is smaller than that. Once it’s out, it’s going to float around very easily. Most of these infections will be through inhalation, but a couple of these agents will work transdermal. So his best bet is a confined space with high pedestrian traffic.”
“Which means he doesn’t have to get these up high to get people to inhale anything,” Bernstein said. “Particles that size, they’ll float around on the air. You could dump it on the floor, it would get kicked up like dust.”
“Yeah,” Munroe said.
“You’re al Din, you want to plant these somewhere public because you want traffic,” Hardin said. “You either have to break in and plant them when a place is closed, which ramps up your risk. Or you have to plant them while people are around.”
“If he was going to risk a break in, then he’d go for the HVAC system,” said Bernstein. “Maximum damage. Why risk a break in just to stick them somewhere he could hide them during business hours?”
“OK, that makes sense,” Starshak said. “We got people checking HVAC. So how’s he gonna do it if he’s in public? How do we narrow it down?”
“Shoulder to waist,” Munroe said. “Basic tradecraft, like marking a dead drop. He isn’t going to climb up on anything, get down on the floor, bend over, anything that draws attention.”
“Pointed up, I’d guess,” Lynch said. “If airborne is better, then get it airborne. Why wait for people to kick it up?”
Starshak waved his hand. “Best we’re gonna do. So, waist to shoulder height, somewhere he can just reach in quick, probably pointed up.”
Munroe nodded. “Tell your guys to just walk and look, ask themselves where they’d stick something if they had to.”
Starshak relayed the instructions to dispatch.
Bernstein was leaning on the table, looking down at the pictures.
“Something’s fucked up about this,” he said.
“That’s what I thought,” said Lynch. “Just can’t think what.”
Bernstein started picking up pictures at random: al Din in the lobby at the Hyatt, Sox cap on, but a good side angle, green nylon messenger bag on his shoulder. Al Din in the pedestrian tunnel running from City Hall to Macy’s, Bears’ cap this time, still with the messenger bag. He flipped the pictures over to check the dates and times. He picked up another photo. No cap this time, still with the messenger bag, pretty much looking dead into the camera. He flipped it over. Just a number on the back.
“Where and when?” he asked.
“The numbered ones are shots we’ve got in from suburban locations,” Munroe said. “They aren’t on the city grid so we don’t get the time stamps on the photos. We’ve got them cataloged. What’s the number?”
“317.”
Munroe checked the database. “Woodfield Mall, Schaumburg. That’s off an ATM. Two days ago, 8.12pm.”
“An ATM? You get any ID off the withdrawal? Might give us something.”
“Ah shit,” Munroe said. “Hold on.” He made a call to the tech guys, gave them the time and the ATM location.
“Can we sort these by time, day, anything like that?” Bernstein asked.
“Yeah,” said Munroe. He pointed at the laptop on the desk that was plugged into the projector. “They’re all loaded into a database. You can sort that any way you want.”
Bernstein started tapping away at the computer, plotting locations and times.
“So, until you get out to the ’burbs, he hasn’t been west of the river?” Bernstein said. “Just the Loop, then up Michigan over in River North?”
Munroe shrugged. “Make sense, density wise. Sticking with all the good targets.”
Bernstein nodded.
“Time?” Starshak asked.
“We got an hour and seventeen minutes,” said Munroe.
Munroe’s phone rang. It was the tech getting back about the ATM.
“Fuck.” Munroe snapped the phone shut. “Nothing. Just picked him up passing by.”
Bernstein shook his head. “No, no, no, that’s not right. Where’s that fucking picture?”
Munroe found it, passed it across the table.
“He’s maybe two, three feet from the camera, looking right at it. He’s not passing by. He’s making sure he gets seen. He’s out of the city, so he’s not sure where the surveillance is. But he knows damn well that the ATM will pick him up.”