Page 77 of Acting on Instinct
Ty and Nitro took a few minutes to understand what they were seeing, and as the picture started to clear, Nitro and Ty stood perfectly still, staring at each other in silent communication.
“Shit,” Ty hissed.
Nitro pointed to the side of the tent where whiteboards leaned against the tent poles. “You figure out what those say, take photos. I’ll bring White up to speed on the explosives.”
“Good call, man. You pegged this from the start.” Ty said as he squatted down to take pictures.
Nitro stepped outside before he pressed his comms. “Echo Five: White, we have suicide vest production. Over.”
“White: Copy. What’s the main ingredient, TATP?”
“Affirmative. The vests are wired for remote detonation. There’s documentation and schematics. Ty’s working on a translation.”
Over the comms, Ty heard. “White for Echo Two.”
“Hey, Nitro, keep going in here,” Ty said as he moved out into the hallway. He pressed his comms. “Echo two.”
“I need to call this in to DGSE and get someone headed to the site immediately. You’ll bring out what you can safely extract. I’m giving you four minutes to get out of the building.”
“Copy.” He turned his head. “Four minutes,” he whispered.
“Wilco.” Nitro with just enough volume for Ty to hear.
“Echo Two, give me a rundown of what you saw at first glance. Any specific information to warn DGSE about? Over.”
“The whiteboard seems to outline the master plan. The attacks are set for Washington, D.C. operation, ma’am.” Ty assessed the hallway. No one would hear him using his bone mic, but he didn’t want curious eyes on him. “They wrote in Russian. Over.”
“All right. You read Russian, so what did it say?”
“I glanced down the lists of places, distances, and time stamps. It seems they will take a bus full of people hostage, outfit them with the vests, and tell them that they are committing a series of robberies.”
“What kinds of places?”
“Banks. Jewelry shops. One, the target is a man’s briefcase at the airport. The locations are in malls or high-population areas around the city.” Ty swallowed. “It’s not a robbery. It’s a long-assed chain-terrorist attack. There’s a script for what they will tell the hostages. The instructions said how they’d keep the people calm by telling them it was about robbing. You bring back the items, and you go free.”
“Are you believing this shit?” broke through from Nitro. “The vests have radios and cameras for monitoring.”
“At a glance,” White asked, “why the distances between hits?”
“My guess,” Ty said, “They calculated the sound range so the hostages waiting their turn wouldn’t hear the explosions. There’s a follow car on comms with the bus, managing the speed based on what the hostage is doing on site. They divided a team of six on the bus: three in the first follow car and two in a second backup car. There’s one more name, perhaps a TOC? That would make a cell of twelve.”
“You have names?”
“Yes, ma’am, first names divided by lines and the vehicle.”
“I guess that way if the person tried to be a hero and screamed out that they were a bomb, sacrificing themselves for the good of others, then the car guy could just press the button to shut them up,” White said. “Might as well make their death easy – hope is a motivator.”
“I’m forwarding images to you now,” Ty said, pressing the send button, then bending to scrub his fingers behind Rory’s ears. “There’s more. There are notebooks. The whiteboard seems to be their overview.”
“I’ll send these images on to DGSE. Stand by.”
Nitro came to the door and handed Ty a box of computers, phones, documents, and a sample of the vest components.
“You’re not bringing home any of the explosives for shits and giggles, right?” Ty asked.
“TATP is not something I willingly mess with,” Nitro said. “Hey, man, you’ve been petting Rory. I need you to stay out of here, brother. I’m not risking you building up static electricity.” Nitro went back in to do a final check.
A few moments later, Ty heard in his ear, “White for Echo Two and Echo Five, I need you to leave everything you haven’t already gathered in place. Exfil the apartment. Lock it behind you. Get in the van and head to the extraction location to support the rest of your team. Get out. Get out of there now.”
