Remembering back to the marina he worked at, he pulled up the carpet beneath the hatch. There was a small door that opened to the bottom of the hull. Mitchell reached down there and felt a box the size of a thick wallet. He yanked it free. It came out attached to two cables. He was looking for the key but found the GPS alarm system. He unplugged it and tossed it aside.
Mitchell reached his arm back down again and found a plastic bag wedged between some cables. He pulled it out. Through the plastic he could see several keys. One for the hatches, one for the ignition and another one that unlocked the lockers that held the dive gear and the reason he wanted to steal this boat in particular.
Mitchell made sure the johnboat was firmly fastened to the stern and then made his preparations to leave. He leaned out and undid the line at the stern. To avoid being seen on the dock, he climbed into the cabin and up a hatch and unfastened the line attached to the bow.
He looked out over the marina. It was still quiet. He paid careful attention to the scanner. On that frequency, Mitchell would have heard a police car dispatched to the marina. It would also let him know if they had alerted the Marine Patrol.
Mitchell gave the dock a push and sent the bow of the boat in a gentle arc away from the dock. He climbed back into the cockpit and peeled away the front of the covering. He slid the key into the ignition and gave it a turn. The powerboat started with a powerful roar.
He looked around the marina but nothing stirred. With his right hand on the throttle and his left on the wheel, he reversed the boat and slowly pulled it backward out of the harbor. When he was clear of the last boat, he nudged the throttle forward and slipped the shifter into forward. The vessel moved away from the docks and Mitchell and his latest prize faded into the night in search of a quiet place where he could finish his home improvement project on the boat.
Fifty miles away from Mitchell, the man called Mr. Lewis had his own shop project. He set a briefcase on the hotel room table next to a bag of things he’d purchased at a drug store. The Discovery Channel played in the background.
The briefcase had been with him his whole trip from Virginia onboard a private aircraft. Any prying eyes that had a look inside it would have had a lot of questions. But Mr. Lewis wasn’t in the business of answering questions, at least not truthfully. His job was to stop people from asking them or at the very least make them ask the wrong ones.
He opened up his case and pulled out a few parts and some tools. He took apart a hand-held cutting torch and used the pieces to make something new. He took a can of spray-on suntan lotion and drained it into a wastebasket. He then used a Dremel tool to saw it neatly in half.
He took a break for a half-hour to watch a documentary on snow leopards. He then returned to his work.
He used some epoxy on a few parts and then used a drill to make several punctures into the top half of the suntan spray canister. Two hours later it was finished. It was obviously a rushed job by his standards. It was put together with the minimal amount of craft needed to make it looked plausible. The device was just a prop for a larger piece of theater.
With the addition of Mr. Baylor’s “bow,” it would look like a plausible device. The CO2 cylinder attached to the valve from the hand torch led to a small valve that extended outside the thin aluminum cylinder. The valve opened up to a small chamber lined with very thin gauze. Two screws would hold in place a glass cylinder like the kind used to store a blood sample. A third screw, this one a thumb screw, would break the glass cylinder when it was twisted. The open valve would blow a blast of compressed gas into the chamber and blow whatever was in the glass cylinder into the open air, quickly filling every corner of whatever room it was in.
Prop or not, it was still a lethal device when the “bow” was added to it. Mr. Lewis wanted to make sure that he was well clear after he planted it.
He placed his tools back into his case and put his leftover materials into the plastic shopping bag to be disposed of away from the hotel.
He sat down on the bed and sorted through various ID badges and chose the one he wanted to use when he got the call to proceed. The advantage of working for the people that he did was that most of them weren’t forgeries.
43
When Baylor arrived at the Super Center, fire engines blocked the streets while hazardous materials teams under the direction of the DHS were in the process of sealing off the entire building. Baylor watched the scene from next to his car as large pieces of plastic were wrapped around the entrances, exits and air handlers.
The unfortunate people who were inside at the time were being held in sealed trailers parked near the garden center while men and women in blue and yellow hazmat suits with different agency names written on them went about the process of containment.
Since Baylor was on the scene in an advisory capacity, his access would be determined by the DHS director. Fortunately for him, the director knew of his political connections. Getting access wasn’t going to be a problem.
The real challenge was going to be trying to contain the story. He needed to make sure that attention wasn’t directed to where he didn’t want it. His work for the country was too important for that.
A rental car sedan like his pulled up next to him. A man got out dressed in slacks and a blue polo shirt. Slightly receding hair, middle-aged, he looked like any of the dozen other government functionaries running around the scene. At his waist was an ID badge that said he was with FEMA.
Baylor nodded to Mr. Lewis and went to his trunk. He took out a locked box from a suitcase and opened it. Inside were three small glass cylinders. He carefully removed one and placed it into the folds of a towel he’d put in the trunk for that purpose.
Mr. Lewis took the wrapped object and sat inside his car and finished the assembly of the package. Baylor shielded him from view and watched as he worked. The spray canister was a stroke of genius.
Mr. Lewis finished sealing the glass vial inside and then wrapped the canister in the towel. He finally turned to Baylor and spoke.
“You have a preference?” Baylor looked at the Super Center. It would be tempting to have Mr. Lewis plant the canister inside, but too many people had already been on the scene. He also didn’t know what kind of coverage the surveillance cameras had. He trusted Mr. Lewis’s sleight of hand but wanted to avoid anything that could even bring up the idea that it was planted.
It was one thing to have the press start spreading conspiracy theories; it was something else to have different federal agencies suspicious. From experience, he had no doubt believing that they would accept the narrative he created, no matter how many gaps and leaps of logic, if all the puzzle pieces looked like they were part of the same picture.
“I’m going to tell DHS and the FBI to go out of their way to tell Roberts that they’re ready to go along with him. That should bring him in faster. When he surrenders, I want you to put that somewhere on his person or his belongings.” He looked at the ID Mr. Lewis was wearing.
“When he surrenders, I’ll tell them to keep a 500-foot perimeter and to only approach him using hazmat suits. Once you’re in a suit, you should be able to move about the perimeter freely. Try to put it in a bag or a pocket if possible.”
“I can put a strap around it so it’ll look like he wore it under his clothes slung from his shoulder,” said Mr. Lewis.
Baylor nodded. Mr. Lewis was a practical man. “Very good.” Baylor pointed to the towel with the cylinder inside. “Is that a functional device?”