“You have anything we can pour in here that will eat through plastic?” he asked. “The drives on the inside are layered, like thick CDs stacked one on top of another. To really get all the data out of there, we need to destroy the interior disks.”
Brin glanced around the room, then said, “How about sulfuric acid?” She crossed the lab and grabbed the container and returned, twisting off the top to bypass the nozzle they normally used to apply the solution a bit at a time. She poured the contents over the drive. As the clear liquid made contact with the surface of the hard drive’s case, the solution began to bubble and froth. Then she took down another bottle and said, “Stand back.”
“What’s in that?” Alex asked.
“Water,” she said. She poured a small quantity of water over the acid and it began to spit and boil.
“Sulfuric acid is exothermic,” she explained.
“There won’t be anything but plastic soup left inside.”
The beaker sizzled and bubbled, threatening to spill acid all over the tabletop. Alex watched it carefully. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Brin—he wanted to see the damned thing melt. When he was sure it was done, he turned to her and tried a half grin.
“You ready?” he asked.
“Yeah.” Her voice had a hollow, sad sound to it.
“Where are we going?”
“Home. First we blow this place off the face of the planet, and then we go home.”
“Good,” she replied. “You have one hell of a lot of explaining to do, and you’d better start thinking about it now.”
Alex stepped forward and pulled her to him.
Despite the slight resistance she gave him, he hugged her tightly. He didn’t want to let go, but he knew they weren’t finished. “Get us out of here,”
he said softly.
Brin stepped to the cipher lock, entered the code, and the door swung wide a final time. She set it to lock behind them, and they stepped through into the hall.
Alex knew that the security cameras were still watching, but somehow he thought no one was home. If Dayne had backup, he’d have called on it when things started to go south. They must have kicked the entire security staff out for the night, or fired them outright. It was crazy, and Alex saw the desperation behind it. He wondered if maybe Dayne had come on his own, sort of a last-shot desperation tactic.
The one thing he knew he had to include in his final report was the Chinese Mafia’s involvement.
Some additional cleanup would have to be done to ensure that they weren’t expanding their operations into completely new realms of crime like bioterrorism. It made sense, though, considering the market for weapons, that the organized-crime groups of the world would seek to profit from it all.
Alex led Brin down the maintenance elevator and out through the service doors. His duffel bag was right where he left it next to the Dumpster, and he retrieved it while she watched. He had a bad moment when he thought this left leg was going to collapse. He leaned against the trash receptacle, waiting to see if the leg would come back, or if he’d tumble to the ground.
The spasm in his leg passed and he snagged the duffel bag’s handle and opened it. There were six separate charges inside. He gripped the bag tightly and turned back to the building.
“I can do this myself,” he said softly. “I can tell you where the car is and you can wait for me. I have to place all six around the perimeter on the inside. I don’t want the building flying all over town—I want it come down on itself, and to do that I have to get the placement just right.”
She hesitated.
“But I could really use someone who knows the interior layout better than I do.”
Brin nodded and they slipped back in the service doors and got to work. The building was laid out in a cross pattern, four wings shooting out from a square central lobby area. Alex chose two wings, the one directly below Brin’s office and the wing opposite, to place the first two charges. He attached them carefully to the wall at the far end of each, then returned to the center. Next he did the same for the remaining two wings, leaving two charges.
“What about those?” Brin asked, perplexed. “If there are only four wings, why do we need more than four— what are they, bombs?”
“Simple,” Alex explained. “We’ll place these two near the center, and we’ll set them off first.
Then we’ll trigger the outer charges a few seconds later. This will cause the center to begin crumbling, and when the force from the outer explo-sions pushes in, it will crumble the walls inward.
If it works right, the parking lot outside might get some debris, but no one nearby will be hurt. I doubt they’ll ever find Rand or Dayne, though.”
“Dayne,” Brin repeated. “That was his name?
Alex, he was in those videos. He had a knife, and they had you—”
“Later,” Alex said, giving her another short hug.
“There will be time later, and I’ll tell you everything. He was a bad man, though, the worst.”
“What about you?” she asked softly. “Is that what you are? Are you a bad man?”
“I hope not,” Alex replied, turning back to his work. “They tell me I’m the good guy.”
He worked as quickly as he could. When she saw him struggle once or twice, Brin took the duffel bag without saying a word. Alex did his best to resist each time his body betrayed him because he knew that when she saw it, she was reminded of his own betrayal, or at least his failure to be honest. One lie led to the next, and it was a wonder that she still stood beside him, or waited for him at all. As close as they’d always been, he now saw what a wall of secrets he’d built between them, and despaired of ever tearing it down completely.
Finally, the charges were set. Alex checked his watch. It was nearly four-thirty in the morning.
“How soon until people start getting here?” he asked.
Brin thought for a moment.
“The main lobby opens at eight, but there are a lot of people in before that. The earliest I’ve been in is about five-thirty, and I only saw a couple of others at that hour. We have a little bit of time.”
Alex nodded. “I want to make sure we have time to get out of here and back to the car before I set this off, and I don’t want anyone wandering in in the meantime.”
When the final two charges were set, he pulled a small black box from the pack. Alex attached it to the first charge, flipped up a small antenna and then pressed a button. A series of lights flashed, flickered and then burned green and steady. He crossed to the second charge and repeated the action with a second box.
“The others are set to respond to the shock of the initial blast,” he explained. “It was the best I could do on short notice.”
She stared at him and he flushed. Everything he said made his life of lies more clear to her. More than anything, he wanted to try to explain, but what could he possibly say that would mend the rift between them? He turned away to hide his frustration and adjusted the receiver.
“We’d better get going,” he said at last.
They turned together, leaving the empty duffel bag on the floor behind them. Alex stumbled, nearly fell, and found that Brin had caught him.
She slipped under his arm and supported him without comment as they hurried out the service exit, across the parking lot and down the street to where Alex had parked. Then Brin stopped.
“Alex, I have to get my car,” she said quickly.
“I have mine,” he said, not understanding, and she slipped out from under his arm, nearly dropping him to the pavement.
“My car is in the parking lot, Alex. Why would it be there if I’m not inside? If I’m inside, and the building blows up, they’ll think I’m dead, and they’ll come around with condolences. If they find me, they’ll wonder why my car was in the parking lot of a building that went up in a flaming ball, but I wasn’t killed.” She hesitated for a moment, then turned back. “I’ll be right back.” She started to walk away, then called back over her shoulder, “I thought you were supposed to be good at this.”
Alex watched her go in numb disbelief. She was right, of course, and it was another indication of how tired he was, and how far off his form. He’d almost made a blunder that a first-year agent would laugh at, and his wife had just saved his ass.
