Max Collins - Fate of the Union

She nodded. “I think we’re up against some seriously professional big-leaguers who we need to get a bead on, before we start accusing our own.”

He thought about that.

Then he said, “Consider me on the same page.”

She smiled, trying not to look too proud of herself.

“But, Patti, let’s still be careful about what we say in front of our people... till we know who your big-leaguers are.”

The number of media vehicles outside the J. Edgar Hoover Building had tripled by the time Rogers pulled into the underground garage. Some were waiting on foot next to the ramp, catching Rogers and Reeder arriving on camera; but uniformed officers kept the reporters and camera crews back and out of the garage.

Upstairs in the Special Situations Task Force bullpen, she and Reeder found every desk vacant but for the one that had recently been assigned to Miggie. Before they’d left for Charlottesville, Rogers had encouraged her team to work for another hour and then go home for some rest and cleanup; it would be late morning before they’d be back in.

As for their Latino computer expert, he had obviously been glued to his chair all night, no doubt mainlining free-trade Sumatran, at least judging by the way his fingers were still flying at the virtual keyboard.

Reeder went right to him and pulled over chairs for himself and Rogers.

He said to Miggie, “Once upon a time there was something called Senkstone... do you know the rest of the story?”

Miggie grinned, obviously ready to be asked. “Okay if I skip the fairy-tale framework and stick to the facts, Mr. Reeder? ’Cause there’s no happily ever after.”

“Make it ‘Joe.’ A coffee guy like you oughta be able to remember that.”

Another grin. “Let’s start with the SIM card pic of that black what’s-it. I’m pretty sure Senkstone, Senk for short, is what our solid-black Rubik’s Cube consisted of. Now, from the outset you need to understand something — none of the net hits we got on ‘senk’ referred to any kind of explosive. Not one.”

Reeder’s smile was faint but there. “So how is it you found out that’s what it was?”

“I’ll get to that. But next let’s look at Chris Bryson and Jay Akers — two smart guys who used to be in the Secret Service, both of whom had long since developed a good, experienced feel for big-time dangerous.”

“Fair statement.”

“ Both of them are concerned about Senk. Both of them got recently made dead — the first after expressing concern about Senk to his wife, the other killed on the job, but making Senk one of his last words.”

Rogers asked, “What do we make of that?”

“We come up with two smart guys who mention a word that refers to something that, I think we can safely extrapolate, both of them considered incredibly dangerous.”

Reeder said, “Let’s so extrapolate.”

“Fine,” Miggie said, sitting forward, “but this incredibly dangerous thing called Senk doesn’t exist... at least, not if you ask the net about it.”

“Everything that exists is on the net.”

“Right, Joe. That’s why I started searching places that don’t exist.”

“Miggie,” Rogers said, half smiling, “maybe you need to knock off for a while. Catch some sleep like the other humans.”

He waved her off. “Joe... Patti... there are entire networks not open to the public: the Silk Road for illegal drugs, the Armory for guns, dozens of others on the Dark Web. Nucleus, Agora, a slew of ’em used for all kinds of illegal activities.”

Reeder said, “And that’s where you found out about Senkstone.”

“Not quite. I found rumors of a compound that was said to be the next generation of plastic explosives... but at first it was like a sea creature said to inhabit a certain loch in Scotland — lots of talk, no proof. Then, at the Armory site, I found a chat room where guys were talking about how cool this compound would be if it did exist.”

“What would make it ‘cool’ to a chat room like that?”

The lightness went out of Miggie’s tone: “For starters, it could be made into anything. ”

“Molded,” Rogers said, “like plastic explosives?”

“No,” Miggie said. He tapped his desk. “I could use Senk to make this desk or that tablet or anything in this office. The chairs you’re sitting on could be fashioned from this explosive material, and you’d never know it... till it went off.” Miggie’s eyebrows went up, then down. “Well, actually, you still wouldn’t know, because you’d be dead.”

Reeder’s brow furrowed. “Sounds like a geek fantasy. How could that even be possible?”

“Because,” Miggie said, “you could theoretically put liquid Senk into a 3-D printer and just ‘print’ yourself a desk, a chair, whatever , and it would also be a bomb. A very lethal one.”

“How lethal?”

“A pound of the stuff would take out a three-story building.”

Reeder and Rogers exchanged slow glances.

“And,” Miggie was saying, “because Senk was deemed unstable, and never went to market, there are no dogs trained to sniff it. Airport-style puffer machines don’t work on it. It’s plastic, so metal detectors won’t pick it up. There’s just no good way to know for sure what it is you’re sitting on.”

Rogers shifted in her chair. “If this Senk stuff got out into the world,” she said, feeling a little sick, “it’d make terrorists unstoppable.”

Miggie just nodded.

“But you said it was unstable,” Reeder said, “and research was shut down...?”

The computer expert’s excitement, at sharing what he’d discovered, had vanished. He was coldly serious now, even somber.

He said, “After I left the Armory site, I got into some secure DOD files...”

“What?” Rogers said.

“... which might, technically, be above my clearance and pay grade.”

“You hacked the Department of Defense?”

Miggie shrugged, smiled sheepishly, but Reeder gave him a grin and a nod and said, “Good man.”

Rogers knew that Miggie’s actions could come back on her, but — like Reeder — she cared more at the moment about moving forward than worrying about trifling repercussions, like losing her job or going to prison.

She asked, “What did you find?”

Very quietly, Miggie said, “A company called Senkian Chemicals developed Senkstone eight years ago, on a DOD contract, working on it for three years and a few months. Five years ago, the DOD shut down Senkian’s research when an explosion killed three employees, including one of the company’s main partners.”

“If they were shut down five years ago,” Rogers said, “why is Senk a topic of discussion now? Even if it’s just limited to the Dark Web.”

Miggie said, “For a year after the Pentagon shut them down, Senkian was in limbo. The company was built strictly around that one area of research — this new breed of explosive. Then, four years ago, an obscure firm called Chemical Solutions, Inc., bought Senkian out.”

Reeder frowned. “And the DOD didn’t stop it?”

Miggie nodded. “Why that’s the case, I haven’t found out yet — it’s all very hush-hush. Payoff to someone high up to sign off, maybe. An elaborate black op, possibly. Anyway, after that, Senkian dropped off everybody’s radar.”

“Absorbed,” Reeder said, “into Chemical Solutions.”

Rogers asked, “What do we know about Chemical Solutions? What’s the ownership?”

“That’s just it,” Miggie said, with a shrug. “They’re a shell within a shell within a shell — if the trail has an end, I haven’t found it yet.”

Reeder asked, “A shell that owns the two buildings that blew up in Charlottesville?”