After everyone had shaken hands and taken their seats, Nicole appeared in the doorway, standing for a moment in a black tailored suit, her hair piled up and pinned with two strands broken free and framing her face. She struck a pose that was both businesslike and suggestive, as if this very professional woman had just rolled out of bed after hours of spirited lovemaking, which Frank knew was exactly the case.
She walked over to Frank and he introduced her to Magnuson, who seemed utterly unaffected by her charms. Not so with the other eight men, who watched with various degrees of restraint as Nicole walked to one of the last open seats and took her place behind a laptop.
The meeting lasted an hour. Magnuson ran the show, laid out the plan, explained the seriousness of taking down this target.
Paul Chee was a master bombmaker who’d been trained by the best demolition experts the navy had. He’d demonstrated extraordinary skill at both disassembling and assembling munitions of every kind. He’d defused and dismantled IEDs in Iraq and Afghanistan and grenades and unexploded artillery shells on battlefields and in sensitive public locations throughout Europe. He’d also planted highly sophisticated explosive devices in a variety of black-ops maneuvers that were classified but which Magnuson hinted were highly successful in removing leaders of various terrorist organizations.
Sheffield’s guys listened, no questions, no whispering. The NCIS guys had obviously already been briefed on Chee’s history, but they kept their eyes fixed on Magnuson. A disciplined bunch.
“During his time as a SEAL, he acquired the reputation for slipping in and out of hot zones with such stealth that some of his buddies began to consider his abilities supernatural. Now that Chee is on the run and has affiliated himself with a terrorist group, he’s still living up to that reputation.
“Four times in the last two years we’ve had him in our sights, and when we moved in, he’s eluded capture. It is important to note that after each of those close calls, he has dropped off the radar for sustained periods.”
Magnuson played a series of headshots of Paul Chee on the laptops. An exotically handsome man. The Navajo blood was clear, but his Anglo genes softened the angles in his face so he might easily pass for Greek or Italian. A strong nose, hard-edged cheekbones, dark, intelligent eyes, lips that seemed sensuous in some shots, severe in others. Chee might have impersonated an international banker, a manual laborer, or even a high-fashion model.
“He’s physically strong, adept at martial arts, in excellent health. He’s a formidable enemy on any field of battle. But the fact that we believe he has in his possession several pounds of HpNC puts him at the very top of our list. HpNC was first synthesized in a lab in California a few years ago. It remains the most dangerous explosive in our arsenal, the one with the greatest density of any nonnuclear device.”
Magnuson called their attention to a series of videos on their laptops.
The clips featured steel-reinforced concrete walls, extrahardened and cast in place, built specifically to withstand direct assault. The kind of wall that surrounded military complexes, diplomatic stations, and the White House.
These demonstrations had taken place at a military testing range in a desert setting where six walls of this type were subjected to different explosive assaults. TNT, dynamite, C-4, Semtex, HMX, and finally HpNC. In the first four cases, after the blasts, the walls were ruptured to some degree, but no breach was made in the concrete.
In the next-to-the-last clip, the HMX opened a hole that a man might have slithered through, but the structural integrity of the wall remained firm.
“Now this is why we’re concerned,” Magnuson said. “HpNC is a different animal.”
And, yeah, the final detonation was something else entirely. No dust and debris sprayed into an explosive cloud. There was simply a bright flash, a whoosh. After the air cleared, only the foundation of the concrete wall remained among some smoldering rubble.
“The explosive charge used in this final test consisted of a half pound of HpNC. Like most military explosives, it is detonator sensitive but bullet safe. Can’t be set off during a firefight by a stray round. But unlike all other devices of this type, after an explosion all components of the bomb and its detonator are obliterated. Which of course makes identifying the fingerprints of the explosive virtually impossible. A perfect terrorist weapon.
“We believe Mr. Chee has in his possession about fourteen times the amount used in that video. And furthermore we believe he’s been scouting for some time for the appropriate target. The maximum effect.”
Billy Dean Reynolds came to his feet. “We were told this group, Earth Liberation Front, they’re into arson. Burned down some SUV dealers and a ski development in Aspen. That’s the intel we have. How’s that match up with a guy like this?”