tolerating grubby, dirty-fingered mechanics like these.
“The technical details do not interest me, gentlemen,” he ground out angrily. “The fact that a piece of equipment failed does. I expect to be informed instantly of such an event in the future. Is that clear?”
Both technicians nodded rapidly.
“Very well, then. Finish your repairs.”
Ibrahim turned away, focusing his attention on one of the working aircraft control consoles. It was built around two monitors — one a television, the other a color computer display.
The television screen was blank. So was the computer monitor. In use, the TV would show the pictures taken by one of the cameras his crews had mounted on each attack plane.
The computer screen would display the position, altitude, speed, fuel status, and other relevant flight data of up to four separate aircraft.
Ibrahim ran his eyes over the rest of the console. A custom-designed electronics panel augmented a standard computer keyboard.
The panel held UHF radio controls, jacks where headsets could be plugged in, basic flight instruments, and a series of selector switches. A joystick, black cable coiled around it, perched on top of the console.
He nodded, satisfied by what he saw. These consoles were for use only in an unforeseen emergency. Barring that, his aircraft would fly to their targets entirely on their own — using the preset flight plans loaded into each autopilot. Once they were airborne, nothing could stop him from plunging the United States into a cleansing nuclear fire.
Helen Gray finished laying out the first wave of their newly purchased equipment and stood back to look it over. The gear completely covered one of the room’s two queen-size beds. Acquiring it had taken several trips and a sizable chunk of their cash reserves.
The big-ticket items they’d picked up had come from one of northern Virginia’s police supply stores. To get them, she’d had to show her FBI credentials and fill out a form — but that piece of paper should take several days to make its way far enough up the official ladder to set off alarms. She was sure the store owner had been surprised when she’d plunked down close to three thousand dollars in cash, but nobody questioned the FBI too closely.
Helen moved closer to the bed and hefted the heavy tactical assault body armor she’d bought. These bulky Kevlar vests had been among the most critical pieces of gear on their wish list. No matter how she and Peter got inside the Caraco compound, they were going to be heavily outnumbered. Armor tough enough to shake off pistol and light rifle rounds might give them at least a fighting chance to last long enough to do some good.
She put the assault vests back down and moved on to unwrap the radios she’d purchased at the same store. They were police-issue, two-way “vox,” or voice-activated, sets. Each weighed about a pound or so and came with a headset. She installed the batteries and then adjusted all three radios to a common frequency.
A military surplus store had supplied the web gear and ruck sacks they would need to carry everything they were taking in with them. The same place had also sold them a tube of black camouflage grease paint.
The packs of firecrackers next to the web gear had come courtesy of one of the Fourth of July fireworks booths already springing up on what seemed like every open street corner.
Helen put the firecrackers down as the door swung open and Peter Thorn came in, weighed down by shopping bags.
“Success,” he announced. “I put a couple of hundred miles on the car, and I had to run through two hardware stores, an autobody shop, a gun store, a chemical supply house, a Radio Shack, and a building supplies place — but I got everything.”
“Any trouble?”
Peter shook his head. “Nope. I only had to show my handydandy Chris Carlson armed forces ID two times. Once at the chemical supply place and the second time when I picked up the Primacord and detonators from the building supply store.”
“Nobody asked what you wanted those for?” Helen asked.
“Sure,” Peter said. “I told ‘em I wanted to clear some stumps off a piece of property I’d just bought. No muss, no fuss.”
“And you paid cash?” she finished for him.
Peter grinned. “Yeah. And I paid cash.” He set one bag carefully apart from the others and in a corner of the room. “That one’s got the nitric acid in it.”
Helen nodded.
He started unloading the rest of his purchases, building a pile on the other bed: plastic pipe sections and caps, glue, duct tape, a sack of nails, black powder, a container of the putty auto body shops used to repair dents, and other ingredients.
When Peter was done, he started sorting them into the order in which he would need them. He picked up the auto body putty and frowned.
“There’s going to be one hell of a stink when I start mixing this stuff up. Let’s hope the bathroom exhaust fan can handle it.”
Helen nodded. The resiny putty, the black powder, and a few other common household chemicals could be combined to make a low-grade equivalent of C4 plastic explosive. But it was a dangerous process — one that required precise measurement and timing.
It was also a process that was notoriously hard on the olfactory nerves.
She caught the pair of tiny digital cooking timers he tossed her and laid them beside the firecrackers and some small lengths of tungsten filament. “Houston, we have liftoff,” she murmured to herself.
Peter disappeared into the bathroom with the bulk of his purchases.
Helen was just finishing her preparations when Sam Farrell returned from his own various expeditions. His arms were full, and she had to go back to the car and help him carry in the rest of his plunder.
Farrell had drawn the best part of the shopping list — at least as far as she was concerned. He’d bought the extra weapons and ammunition they would need for the assault. While he’d joked about “pulling rank” to get the job, the plain truth was that neither of them could have done it. To buy firearms you needed to show a driver’s license and other forms of ID. Their phony armed forces badges wouldn’t have cut it. There was also the fact that some of the more expensive purchases could only be made by credit card.
Swiftly, efficiently, with the expertise of people trained to use them, Helen and Farrell unwrapped and examined three Winchester 1300 Defender pump-action, 12-gauge shotguns. The general had also picked up bandoliers, speedloaders, and two hundred rounds of shotgun ammunition — plus more ammo for his Beretta and Mcdowell’s SIG-Sauer P228.
The shotgun ammo came in five-round boxes. Most of it was triple-ought, three-inch magnum loads holding nine pellets the size of pistol bullets, but there were also several boxes of solid slugs and sabot.
The solid slugs were just that — one lead round filling the entire shotgun shell. They were terribly inaccurate when fired from an unrifled barrel, but they made very good “doorbreakers.”
The Winchester sabot rounds were more exotic. Each shell carried a smaller, finned projectile. Using them allowed a shotgun to be fired accurately at a distant target — and with enough punch to go through a steel door.
They’d almost finished when Peter emerged from the bathroom in a cloud of noxious vapor.
Farrell coughed. “Any problems?”
“Aside from my stinging eyes?” Peter shook his head. “The stuff’s curing now in the tub.” He took in the arrayed weapons with a satisfied smile — a smile that grew even broader when he saw the aluminum suitcase Farrell had set beside the bed. A small, embossed plate above the handle read “Mossberg.”
“I’ll be damned, Sam, you actually found one,” he said.
“Had to, didn’t I?” Farrell countered. “This whole thing would have been off otherwise.”
Peter nodded. “True.”
“I called eight places before I found one in stock, and even then I had to drive all the way out to Annapolis to get it,” Farrell said with some satisfaction.
“A gun store in Annapolis?” Helen asked.
