Page 59 of Acting on Instinct
“We broke into the apartment above and drilled down with a camera. The targets have painted their windows black. Inside this apartment, they have set up what looks like a large camping tent.” She flipped to a blueprint and then moved to stand near the screen.
“The boxes are along this wall and this wall.” She pointed.
“A tent in the middle of the apartment?” Ty asked. “To what end? What’s the fabric?”
“Tent fabric?” White shrugged. “Since the windows are blacked out, I don’t know why it would be useful other than they’re in their Peter Pan era and refuse to grow up.”
“Or they’re trying to shield something from view if the super comes in to make a repair,” Nitro suggested.
“No, I met the super. He’s glued to his gaming chair,” White said. She flipped to another blueprint. This one showed a hallway. “The stairwell is here. Single stairwell. Tight. You’d have to move furniture up the outside wall with a pulley. No one’s getting a couch up those stairs. Luckily, we’re not moving anything out of this place.”
“Do you think the tent is for heat?” Ty asked.
“How’s that?” White leaned forward.
“What if they aren’t using a heat source?” he continued. “Maybe they don’t want their names on the utility bills for that apartment.”
“That’s possible,” White said. “We lowered different probes to get what information we could. The temperature was consistent with the outdoor temperature. It’s been a cold March. The room is about five degrees Celsius.”
“Because they have something volatile that is more stable at a low temperature, maybe TATP,” Nitro said.
“Well, that wouldn’t be good.” Jeopardy scowled.
“Nitro, tell me about TATP in this instance?” White asked.
“Triacetone Triperoxide is just acetone peroxide. We saw it a lot in IEDs. Because there’s no nitrogen, most detection technologies miss it. It’s highly sensitive and can be set off by most anything—friction, heat, even static electricity.”
“Could they make it themselves in a cold apartment?” White asked.
“Yeah,” Nitro pulled at his earlobe, “they can put it together with stuff they can get at any hardware store and pharmacy. It’s acetone, hydrogen peroxide, and some strong acid to use as a catalyst.”
“It’s stable, though?” White asked. “Stable enough for shipping?”
“They’d need it in some kind of packing material, say sand or something that would act as a shock absorber. I’d still be soiling my britches every inch of that boat. Are they keeping it cold on the trip out?” Nitro asked.
“As a matter of fact, they’re using a refrigerated seafood boat that travels back and forth along the Seine to the Atlantic,” White said.
“If you know that,” T-Rex said, “you know their exit date.”
“Which corresponds with about the time when Phossy Jaw has his next operation. They’d be leaving him behind if they’re leaving with the boat. If we have to, we can grab old Phossy when he’s knocked out on pain meds.”
“When’s that?” Havoc asked.
“Sooner than we expected. That’s why I gathered you up tonight.” White scanned the men’s faces. “Not a second to waste.”
“So cold must be important to them because that’s not cheap when it comes to boats,” T-Rex said. “How cold, Nitro?”
“TATP? They’d want to keep it around freezing, say four degrees Celsius is good.”
“Nitro, you said TATP is hard to detect because it doesn’t have nitrogen,” White said. “That makes sense because those probes we put down through the ceiling hole into the room didn’t get any useful data about any kind of circulating gas.” White turned toward Ty. “Could Rory detect TATP?”
“Dogs are the best method we have to find it,” Ty turned to Rory’s crate, where he was knocked out on his travel meds and snoring up a storm. “Rory has about a 92% detection rate, which is slightly better than average for a bomb sniffing K9. No dog is a 100%."
“What else could it be, Nitro?” Havoc asked.
“Nitroglycerin, maybe? But I’d run on the idea of TATP, that’ll keep our team scared of singeing their eyebrows, and it’s more likely because if these tangos were thinking they had forty mill for an adventure and ended up with nada, this is a cheap—and dangerous as goddamn—but relatively easy means to an end. A very effective end. If I were hellbent on making myself known and being able to get away with it, that’s how I’d do it.”
“Biggest dangers if we walk into a TATP lab?” T-Rex asked.
