Hell or High Water (Deep Six #1)(17)
“Isn’t it possible the tangos simply tossed the tracking devices overboard?” Wolf asked, falling back into old habits and using military slang to refer to the terrorists. “The simplest answer usually being the right one?”
“Nope.” Olivia shook her head emphatically. “If they’d screwed with the devices or removed them from the capsules, we’d have known.”
“How’s that?” Leo asked, trying really hard not to notice how the sunlight cutting through the kitchen windows bathed her in a warm, golden glow, picking up the subtle auburn highlights in her otherwise black-as-midnight hair.
“Those tracking devices are the latest to come out of the science and technology department back at Langley. Not only do they have heat sensors, pressure gauges, and the ability to connect to all satellites everywhere—foreign and domestic, civilian and military—but they’re also about the size of one grain of rice.”
Uncle John whistled, and Leo looked over to find the old man’s hands now resting ever so casually on the big duffel bag. “You really are James Bond, aren’t you?” his uncle said. “Or Jamie Bond. You know, since you’re a girl and all,” he added unnecessarily.
“But that’s not the real kicker,” Olivia continued, wiggling her eyebrows at his uncle, “because all of that technology is pretty standard in today’s spy market. What isn’t standard is the adhesive on these tracking devices. It’s embedded with nanotechnology that transmits a warning signal if the apparatus is tampered with.
“So far, we haven’t received any such signal. So the weapons were tossed or the whole damn boat sank. Either scenario sucks, and have I mentioned how much I hate that guy Murphy?” She blew out a breath and shook her head. “But regardless of what happened, we have to get those CWs back. We can’t leave three capsules of chemicals lying around on the ocean floor that, if combined and aerosolized, could take out the population of a small city.”
“Sonofabitch,” Wolf cursed. “Just what kind of stuff are we talking here?”
“Methylphosphonyl difluoride, cyclohexylamine, and cyclohexanol.” She rattled off the list of tongue-twisting agents like a bona fide chemical engineer.
Leo wondered if it were possible for a person to shit their own heart. “Cyclosarin?” he demanded. “You let these sonsofbitches escape with the mixture for cyclosarin?” It was one of the most deadly nerve agents ever to come out of a German laboratory. He thought he’d been joking when he named her one of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse. “Jesus H. Christ, Olivia!”
“Why am I picturing you with your pinky held to your lip while you stroke a hairless cat in an ominous fashion?” Bran asked her, eyes hard as stone.
“Huh?” She frowned at him.
“You know, Austin Powers?” When her face remained blank, Bran added, “Dr. Evil? How long has it been since you watched a movie?”
“Look,” she said, her tone defiant, “if we could’ve planted fake capsules, we would have. But these types of weapons have elaborate QR codes etched into their casings. Those QR codes can’t be duplicated with any sort of precision. The OPCW made sure of that.”
“The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons,” Wolf clarified for Leo’s uncle’s sake.
“If the mole or moles wanted to,” Olivia continued, “they could have had the tangos snap a picture of the code for verification, and it would have been easy to check that code against the OPCW’s online manifest.” When no one said anything to that, she continued to plead her case. “Was it a risk using the real chemicals as bait? Yes. Undoubtedly. But catching the traitor or traitors, plugging the leak in the Intelligence Community, and potentially saving the necks of agents and civilians alike made the reward worth the risk. We just…”—she sighed and threw her hands in the air—“we just didn’t bargain for all of this.”
Bran glanced around the kitchen as if he was expecting to see someone other than the six of them and Meat who, after finishing his kibble, had immediately retired to the doggy pillow shoved beneath the freestanding, farmhouse-style sink. The big, furry dope was sprawled on his back, legs spread wide, cock and balls all on display, and snoring loud enough to rattle the windowpanes.
“Okay, I get it,” Bran said. “So you and Morales saw an opportunity and you took it. But then where the hell are these contractors you were talking about? Why aren’t you with those spostatas”—the New Jersey Italian in him came out when he got worked up or tipsy, and it was like being in the middle of a Sopranos episode—“instead of here with us?”
She squinted at the clock on the wall. Like everything else, patience was finite, and Leo could tell she had just about reached the limit of hers. He couldn’t blame her, of course. I mean, she’d allowed frickin’ chemical weapons to be stolen and then sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Her and Morales’s asses were definitely in a bind here.
“None of the contractors are dive specialists,” she admitted, slicing her hand through the air like a karate chop. She used the gesture as punctuation. A physical exclamation point. “But don’t you worry, Morales has already had them transfer to Key West and rent a boat. They’ll meet us out at the, uh, the code name we’re using during transmissions is ‘the package.’”