The small windows in the roll-up door were about five feet high, and Simms stood bent over in the air lock looking into the clean room.
“How can we do this if he’s watching?” asked Yulana.
“I’m hoping his back will start hurting from bending over and he’ll lose interest. In the meantime, I’m trying to come up with plan B.”
The sergeant appeared to be standing still as stone, observing from the other side of the glass as Kit opened the crate. The small device, which looked like a conventional type of bomb dropped by an aircraft, rested on rubber-padded mounts. It was only about three feet long and weighed one hundred pounds. A GPS guidance system was enclosed in the rear next to four stabilizer fins.
“The bomb was designed to be worked on without being taken from the crate,” said Yulana. “I can simply remove the housing panels and do my inspections and the alterations we discussed.”
“I think we’d better take it from the crate and position it next to my toolbox. Make a big show of it, like the bomb is heavy and it takes two of us to move it, okay? Then you can go to work.”
She nodded. They took up positions at either end of the bomb crate and carefully lifted the unit, exaggerating its weight, and making it look to Simms or any security watching on camera that it took two people to move the bomb.
With the device securely on the cart, Yulana went to work. Kit checked the lead pipes he had already removed from his toolbox and had hidden under towels on one of the aluminum carts. But if Simms didn’t stop watching, there could be no switch. No switch, no trade for Staci’s life. Kit started sweating under his clean-room garb, even though the room was quite cool. He used his right thumb to press hard on the pressure point on his hand; he didn’t get migraines often, but when he did, they were killers. The balls-out stress of the last few days had opened the door for one of his debilitating head-bangers to make an appearance—headaches so bad he could barely walk. Acupuncture worked best to fend off the symptoms, but this was hardly the time to go looking for a doctor of Oriental medicine.
Yulana completed her work. From the corner of her eye, she saw Sgt. Simms looking at her through the small window in the roll-up door. Even if the man were a weapons engineer, he stood far enough away that there was no way he could know what kind of adjustments she had just performed. She carefully replaced the bomb housing panels and then looked to Kit. “I’m finished,” she said. “The bomb functions check out, so if someone tests it, the results will be good. I changed the GPS identifier and modified the guidance system so that we hold the key to track the bomb. The U.S. government has now lost any tracking capability of this device. And as we discussed, I installed a remote kill-switch. It will be up to you or me to deactivate the weapon.”
“How?”
“By sending a special code using the GPS carrier signal.”
“And we can do that from any computer connected to the GPS system?”
She nodded. “I’ve been thinking…” She looked to the bomb, then to Kit. “Why does Popov want an RT-Seven? This is old technology. Very old in terms of EMP devices, even for Russia.”
“It’s not just old, it’s ancient,” said Kit.
“Boeing Phantom Works has developed a microwave missile called a CHAMP—Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project. A burst of high-powered microwaves will knock out the electronic systems and computers of a targeted building. A single building. And the weapon won’t cause chain-reaction blackouts.”
“So Popov must want the rolling blackouts, the chain-reaction failures of electrical substations that will cause large areas to lose all electrical power.”
“Because he’s hitting multiple targets?” asked Yulana.
Kit nodded. “He must be. But there are other ways to create rolling blackouts. You don’t have to go to the trouble of using an e-bomb.”
“Unless you needed the effects of the e-bomb at the first target, but not the subsequent targets,” she said. “Does that sound plausible?” Yulana was feeling more and more at ease with her give-and-take with Bennings. Somehow he made her feel comfortable, even in the middle of a high-tech heist that could get them both sent to Death Row.
Kit looked like a man having an epiphany. “You, Doctor Petkova, are brilliant. There are two targets. I’d kiss you, but Simms is watching, and I think he’s already jealous.”
“If we get out of here, I’ll give you a rain check.”
He flashed her a small smile, then nodded. “Popov always was three steps ahead of me at chess.”
“He made the mistake of putting us together, forcing us to marry with the assumption we’d remain at odds. So he’s not invincible, is he?” she asked, smiling. “If he always beat you at chess, play a different game with him. Play your game with him.”
Kit locked eyes with her. “You’re right. I have to game Popov in a new way.”
“Anyway, what’s next? The soldier sometimes looks away for a few seconds, but he always looks back.”
“What’s next is a command performance starring you, in the reprisal of a role you play very well.”
CHAPTER 29
Sgt. Simms watched as the woman walked in his direction but then crossed to the “man door,” the door that accommodated personnel traffic when it wasn’t necessary to open the roll-up cargo door.
Damn, she’s beautiful. He’d never seen a scientist so good-looking.
Simms watched with anticipation as the doorknob turned, the door opened, and the woman sort of poured through it. Sweet Jesus, she was a fox, even though she was a doc. He called all of the scientists “Doc”—since most of them had Ph.D.s and always called themselves doctors. Doctors of Bull Crap, is what Simms thought most of them were. But this woman was…
“Sergeant, you didn’t check my ID yet. And I need a break from that jerk, Doctor Gned.”
Well, hello. Maybe she didn’t have her head up her butt like all the others did. Simms watched her pull off the translucent white cotton hair covering, and then a cascade of thick, jet-black hair fell down all the way to her waist. Hot damn.
She popped open all of the snaps of her lab coat and produced her CIA ID from the front pocket of very tight blue jeans.
“Yes, ma’am, I’ll check you out.” Simms crossed over to Yulana at the man door, meaning he was no longer able to look into the clean room through the small windows in the roll-up cargo door. He knew the camera jockeys were probably watching from the overhead eye in the sky—even the air lock had a security cam—so he would have to be quick. But maybe not too quick.
He took his time and studied her name. “I can’t place your accent, Doc.”
“Finland. I’ve been an American citizen for over ten years but can’t lose my accent.”
He handed her ID back. “I don’t mind if you don’t mind,” he said, smiling.
“Sergeant, do you smoke?”
“Yes ma’am, but—”
“Call me Elfi.”
“We can’t smoke inside the building, Elfi.”
“I know that,” she said with a grin. “Can you give me one for later? Doctor Gned is a nonsmoker and he won’t stop anywhere for me to buy cigarettes.”
“Sure, Elfi.” Simms produced a pack and gave her a smoke.
Yulana opened her lab coat wide, and Simms’s eyes riveted instantly to her cleavage. She tucked the cigarette into the front pocket of her tight blouse. The fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra was not lost on Simms.
“You need another one?”