“Dendoncker was running a smuggling operation. He was piggybacking it on a catering service for private planes out of small airfields. But that’s pretty much been shut down. He seemed unconcerned about it. Strangely so, like he had already planned to move on to something else. The question is, what? I’m not convinced Dendoncker’s working with Khalil. I think he was terrified of him.”
“These guys—they’re weird. Paranoid, most of them. They start out as introverts, then live their whole lives doubly desperate not to draw attention to themselves. Trying not to visit the same electronics store too often. Or to buy from the same websites over and over. They wind up running from shadows. It’s probably nothing. But even if they have fallen out already, there could still be useful clues from when they did work together.”
“The flight thing is all I can think of.”
“OK. Then the second angle is materials. Is he using precursors, for example. Things like ammonium nitrate or fuel oil or nitromethane. Or specialist compounds like TATP, or ethylene glycol dinitrate. Or even military grade explosives like C-4.” Lane paused for a moment and looked right at me. “As an aside, the Beirut barracks bomb used precursors. You were there. Well, we recently recovered new evidence, after all these years. We should have good news on that soon.”
There was something strange about the way Lane spoke those words. How he said, “You were there.” It sounded half like a question. Half like a statement. It caused an echo at the back of my mind. I’d heard something similar recently, but I couldn’t put my finger on what.
Lane said, “Mr. Reacher? Materials?”
“Artillery shells,” I said. “Dendoncker had a bunch of them. At least three hundred. They were locked in a shed. At the abandoned school he was camped out in.”
“Any idea what was in them?”
“No.”
“You didn’t see a code book? If they were recovered from an enemy they’re often deliberately mislabeled. The code book is needed to confirm the contents.”
I shook my head.
“OK. Let me have the location. I’ll arrange collection. Now, the third angle is the method of detonation. We know Khalil used two kinds in his first device. A timer and cellular. Those are quite normal. And three kinds in the device that’s incoming. A timer, cellular, and a transponder. That’s unusual. But whether he was looking for another level of backup, or whether he’s messing with us, I don’t know. Not yet.”
I said nothing.
“Do you know how transponders work?”
I said, “I have an idea what they do. Not so much how they do it.”
“A good example is a car’s ignition. Try to start the engine and a chip in the car sends out a radio signal. A transponder in the key automatically bounces back a reply. If the reply is correct, the chip completes the circuit. That’s why you can’t hotwire modern cars. Even if you join the right wires, there’s no transponder to reply to the car’s chip, so the circuit remains open.”
“And the same thing could happen with this bomb?”
“I assume so. I haven’t seen it yet, obviously. I need to examine it to be sure. But if it’s a technique Khalil has perfected it could be a massive problem. Imagine you have a target with an unpredictable schedule. You plant a bomb somewhere along his route. Sneak a transponder onto his keychain or into his pocket. Anyone else could go by without a problem. But when he approaches—boom.”
“OK. But you said the transponder’s in the key. Not the car.”
“Correct. The chip in the car initiates the communication. The key responds.”
“So the chip in the bomb would be like the chip in the car?”
“Correct. I’ll verify that once the bomb is here, but I don’t see another way it could work.”
“What kind of range do these things have?”
“They vary. Depends on the application. Planes use them for automatic identification, in which case the signal can travel many kilometers. If you use one to unlock a door in place of a key, you’d want the signal to only go a few millimeters. You put one in a bomb, you’d want it to be similar, I guess, or your target would be out of the blast zone when it detonated. Unless it was a giant bomb and you didn’t care about collateral damage.”
Lane had done it again. The way he spoke, I couldn’t tell if “You put one in a bomb” was a question or a statement. And I suddenly realized who he reminded me of. Michael. When he briefly spoke to Fenton, right after we first found him. He either said, “You came.” Or “You came?” And that was right after something else weird. He said, “You got my warning?” Fenton had described it as a cry for help. An SOS. That was nothing like the same thing. I thought about what she had found. What she had based her conclusion on. And stood up.