Greg Bear - Quantico

William walked around behind Grange, leaving Rebecca in front of him. ‘I beg your pardon?’ William asked.

‘No disrespect,’ Grange said, twisting his head.

‘FBI found the Patriarch, staked him out, alerted everyone to his presence,’ William said. ‘How is that a screw-up?’

‘I didn’t say it was.’

‘Same as.’

‘I beg your pardon.’

Rebecca gave the DS agent a gesture with her hand and shoulder. ‘You’ve got cream on your lip, Mr. Cat. Willing to contribute something useful?’

Grange pulled up a folding chair and sat. ‘DS and FBI have a long history of friendly dealings. Though sometimes we do let you hog our credit.’ He pointed to the display. ‘The steel tubes are scorched inside and around the lips. Tests show traces of polybutadiene and sprinkles of aluminum-like the charge that blew the barn. Plus talcum powder and small glass beads driven down into the base. Do you know much about fireworks?’

‘No,’ Rebecca said.

‘You might want to learn. After all, the big question is, what’ll they think of next? I hear you have some interesting theories, Agent Rose. Maybe we can compare notes. I’d like that. But not now. Too much doghouse stink in your agency.’

‘You’re with BuDark, aren’t you?’ Rebecca asked.

David Grange stood and intoned, ‘You do not see me. I am not here.’ He walked through the rear door, waving his hand. ‘Give my best to Hiram Newsome.’

Rebecca looked at the door. She wore a simple frown, like a puzzled little girl. ‘Pug-faced shithead,’ she murmured.

‘Beg your pardon?’ William asked.

‘We live in an age of cooperation,’ Rebecca said. ‘But this case, this bastard , is mine.’ She looked back to the display.

‘I know a little about fireworks,’ William said. ‘Griff taught me one summer at Lon Guyland. New York. If this is a launcher, it’s weird. Custom job, small tubes. Rockets, not mortars. Backyard shows, not Disney World. My guess is, it would launch ten or fifteen simple starbursts in succession, not all at once-that much heat would warp the base-set to go off at between five hundred and two thousand feet. You’d load the tubes depending on where you wanted the starbursts to appear-left, right, center. Not a showstopper.’

Rebecca smiled, impressed. ‘Why glass beads?’

‘Insulation,’ William said. ‘Between layers. You can also use metal foil, paper wadding, sand, clay…sometimes, baby powder.’

‘Trune and Grange seems to think that this is the launcher that spread yeast all over the farm. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ William said. ‘Gets pretty hot inside an exploding rocket. Should cook anything alive.’

‘That’s what they said about Challenger,’ Rebecca said.

‘The shuttle?

‘2003. Tumbled out of orbit, breaking up and burning. But big pieces came down.’

‘The astronauts all died,’ William said.

‘Small things survived. An entire ant colony experiment was found intact, remember?’

He shook his head. ‘I was just getting out of college.’

Rebecca ran the video back and then forward, several times. ‘That’s what brought the deputy out here in the first place,’ she said. ‘Lots of starbursts over four or five nights. How much yeast in each charge? A few ounces? Half a pound?’

Then she advanced the video all the way to the bags of yeast stored in the basement stalls. ‘French. Good stuff, I guess.’

William pointed. ‘They’ve been wrapped in double plastic. It’s shiny. The inner bags aren’t sealed. They’ve been closed up again with big staples.’

‘So they were,’ Rebecca said.

‘But the bags look full. Maybe they had been opened and then-either they weren’t used or they were refilled.’

‘Hm.’

‘But refilled with what-more yeast?’

‘If the analysts had found anthrax, we wouldn’t be here,’ Rebecca said. ‘Maybe the yeast was treated, mixed with glass beads. Maybe they used the empty bags to hold clay or baby powder.’ She ran the video ahead. Watson and Griff had pretty thoroughly recorded the barn’s basement.

‘Are those box kites?’ Rebecca asked.

‘Maybe,’ William said. ‘That could be a powder station,’ he added as Griff surveyed the benches. ‘Packing molds, shaping wedges.’

‘Just fireworks?’ Watson asked on the video.

‘Did the Patriarch do the packing?’ Rebecca asked.

‘His family, maybe. The kids. Griff and I put on a small show one August for some neighbors. Things going bang, what’s not to like?’

On the video, Griff was watching sparks dance at the rear of the basement. They could barely see through the drifting haze of black dust. ‘ Screw this ,’ Watson said.

Rebecca turned off the display. ‘The Patriarch wasn’t doing it all by himself,’ she said. ‘And he wasn’t the boss. This is not his style.’

‘What about his sons?’

‘He’d never let his sons take the lead on a project. But that’s not what I mean. He was working with somebody with new ideas. Somebody who convinced him it would be worth his while to stake his farm just to ride shotgun. Something huge.’

The trailer let out a few creaks as the wind blew. The valley was sheltered and the air had been relatively still for weeks. Now, the weather was changing.

‘Proof of concept,’ William said. ‘Box kites to check wind direction. And they could have launched a dummy load-yeast. Yeast wouldn’t attract as much attention as large amounts of BT.’

‘But did they have time to finish?’ Rebecca glanced at her watch. ‘I wonder if someone has caught up with the Patriarch’s family. Maybe they’re in protective custody. Maybe DS or Homeland Security has them.’

‘Wouldn’t they let us know?’

‘What do you think?’ Rebecca asked. ‘We’re second-class citizens, didn’t you hear? We could ask and say pretty please.’

‘Another conference in ten minutes,’ one of the agents alerted them from the door.

‘Five o’clock,’ Rebecca said, looking at her watch. ‘Gluttons for punishment?’

‘Eight o’clock New York time,’ William said. ‘News cycle coming up, everyone wants to be on the same page.’

Virginia

Fouad Al-Husam woke to the gentle pulse of jazz from the motel clock radio. He washed, laid out his rug, and performed morning prayers. After, he read the Quran for an hour, then repacked his kit.

The tortured man had looked like Fouad’s uncle Salim, in his younger days, a handsome, smiling man fond of dispensing candy to his nieces and nephews at family gatherings. It was difficult to imagine Salim being tortured. Salim had been almost as much of a father to him as his own father.

The phone buzzed. Fouad zipped his kit and answered.

‘Be ready to move out in ten minutes,’ a female voice said at the other end.

‘Who is this?’ Fouad asked.

‘Lance Corporal Chandy Bergstrom. I’m your escort. There’s been a change of plans. I’m to take all of you here at the Podunk Hilton to a military airport for rapid deployment. Will you be ready, Agent Al-Husam?’

‘I will,’ Fouad said.

‘Thank you. Big adventure.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Fouad put down the receiver and looked around the room. He closed his Quran, slipped it into its leather travel bag, and returned the razor to his shaving kit.

Washington State

Rebecca had found them a decent motel just off the freeway in Everett. At two in the afternoon, William was asleep in his room but she sat on her bed-her hard, rented bed-with a glass of water balanced on the corner. She stared at the window. Daylight knifed through a crack in the drapes, then-a shadow. Someone with kids passed by on the walkway outside. A man and the kids laughed and tussled and a woman gently reined them in.