Cobb cursed himself for not taking a sample of the compound when he had a chance. ‘If we can get you a forensic report, can you trace the signature?’
‘Probably not,’ McNutt answered. ‘But that’s okay. We don’t need to go through all of that.’
‘Why can’t you trace it?’ Sarah asked.
‘And why don’t we need that information?’ Cobb added.
McNutt answered Sarah’s question first. ‘You probably won’t get a trace because taggants weren’t mandatory in Semtex until recently. And even then, the regulations only apply to new Semtex. There are still warehouses full of older, unmarked Semtex that has yet to be sold.’
He turned toward Cobb. ‘The reason it doesn’t matter is because the explosive is only part of the equation.’
Cobb didn’t understand. ‘How so?’
‘Well, when I learned that you can’t trace Semtex, I looked for something else that might help us.’ He opened the folder he had brought with him and held up a picture of a detonator attached to a bomb pack. ‘And I found this.’
Cobb recognized the image. It was a close-up shot of the timer used to synchronize the explosions in the cisterns.
McNutt didn’t wait for questions. ‘It may look like an ordinary digital counter, but it’s not. It’s one of a kind. It’s made in Tunisia by a company named Mecanav. They make ships, of all things. This sucker actually belongs in the instrument panel of a high-end marine display.’
Sarah tried to connect the dots. ‘I don’t get it. Why is a Tunisian boat timer being used to detonate explosives?’
McNutt smiled. ‘Convenience.’
He pulled out a map of Northern Africa and pointed at the small country of Tunisia, which sat at the tip of the northern coast. He ran his finger south into Libya.
‘Remember Muammar al-Gaddafi — the whack job who ruled Libya for, like, forty years? Under his leadership, Libya became Explosia’s biggest and most-important client. The Semtex that they received was technically the property of the Libyan Army, but most of it ended up on the black market.’
Cobb needed specifics. ‘How much are we talking about?’
‘A scary amount,’ McNutt replied. ‘At least seven hundred tons. And that might be a conservative estimate. Some experts put that figure at well over a thousand.’
Cobb groaned. For Sarah’s benefit, he put the number into perspective. ‘Remember the Lockerbie bombing in 1988? A few ounces took out an entire airplane.’
Sarah was familiar with the incident in Scotland, having studied it extensively during her training with the CIA. She knew about the damage not only to the plane, but also to the two hundred and fifty-nine people who had lost their lives.
McNutt didn’t let her linger on the past. ‘Libya is a hotbed for the Semtex market, but it doesn’t have the manufacturing base to supply the rest of the components needed to construct a bomb. The nearest source of reliable electronics is Tunisia, their neighbor to the north. Namely: Mecanav. Entire truckloads of these timers have disappeared as they made their way from the company’s assembly plant to the shipyards. They almost always turn up on the streets of Tripoli or Benghazi.’
McNutt tapped the picture of the timer to reinforce his next point. ‘Forget about the tomb, this is where the real money is. You could buy an entire boat for the same price that just a few of these timers go for on the black market.’
Cobb finally had the whole picture. It might have taken McNutt a few minutes to get there, but it was worth the wait. The Libyan border was less than three hundred and fifty miles from Alexandria — close enough for a team to get in and out in less than a day. It meant that they could narrow their investigation.
‘Sarah—’
She cut him off. ‘I can limit the parameters of my search. I’ll focus on groups operating out of Libya, specifically those who have a track record with explosives.’
‘Well-financed groups,’ Cobb added. ‘If the timers are that expensive, there’s got to be some big money supporting their efforts. The way they blanketed the whole network of cisterns, they certainly weren’t worried about the cost.’
Sarah grabbed the laptop she had been using to pull up research material and attacked it with renewed vigor.
Though it was only a minor breakthrough, Cobb felt the need to compliment McNutt. ‘Nice job, Marine. Well worth the price of a sandwich.’
McNutt smiled and burped. ‘Thanks, chief.’
42
Garcia raced down from the command center as Cobb and McNutt talked and Sarah pounded away on her keyboard. ‘Do you mind if I interrupt?’
Sarah shouted, ‘Yes!’ as Cobb said, ‘No.’
Cobb grinned. ‘Did you find something?’
Garcia tossed him the used glow stick. ‘I found the distributor.’
Cobb rolled the plastic cylinder in his hand. ‘Let me guess: Libya?’
Garcia, unaware of the conversation that had prompted the response, was temporarily confused. He knew that Cobb wasn’t prone to wild shots in the dark, but the comment seemed to be coming out of nowhere. ‘Um, no. Not Libya.’
Sarah chimed in. ‘Tunisia?’
McNutt couldn’t resist. ‘The Czech Republic?’
Garcia didn’t know what was happening, but the expressions on their faces told him that they weren’t joking. ‘No and no. It was sold in Greece.’
‘Greece?’ Cobb echoed. ‘Are they available in other countries?’
Garcia shook his head. ‘Nope. They’re manufactured in Piraeus, Greece, and the company only sells them domestically. No exports at all for tax reasons.’
Sarah cursed under her breath. ‘Back to square one.’
Annoyed that someone had ruined his moment, McNutt hurled the rest of his sandwich at Garcia. ‘Thanks a lot, Fernando.’
Garcia tried to catch it, but the sandwich separated in mid-flight, sending chunks of bread, cheese, and mustard-covered meat at him like shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade. All he could really do was try to protect his face.
‘What the heck?’ he screamed as he surveyed the damage to his vintage T-shirt. ‘That was totally uncalled for.’
‘And so was your update!’ McNutt shouted back.
Cobb ignored their bickering and tried to make sense of the new development. Everything he had just learned about the nautical timers and the Semtex pointed to a force operating out of Libya. They hadn’t yet determined if the men were affiliated with a larger group or if they were hired mercenaries, but their location was a good lead.
A lead that Garcia had just thrown into doubt.
Given the magnitude of the setback, Cobb needed more. ‘How sure are you that the glow sticks came from Greece?’
‘I’m ninety-nine percent positive,’ Garcia replied as he peeled a slice of salami off of his chest. He knew better than to offer anything higher. In his world, nothing was an ironclad certainty. There was always a margin of error.
‘But not one hundred?’ Cobb asked.
Garcia sensed that Cobb wouldn’t let it rest until he heard exactly how he had reached his conclusion. Unfortunately for Garcia, that meant their conversation was about to go in a very strange direction. ‘Have you ever been to a rave?’
The typing stopped as Sarah cocked her head to the side. She honestly didn’t know which was more amusing: Garcia’s question or Cobb’s reaction.
‘A rave?’ Cobb repeated.
The mere thought of it made McNutt laugh. ‘Oh sure, Jack’s a regular on the rave scene. Trip-hop, acid house, reggae dub — he’s into all that shit.’