Calculated Reaction, page 17
Quinn crossed her arms. “Okay, we’ve checked this area for bugs and can consider this a controlled area. Parker and Ree are currently watching it from the van. A representative from the nuclear safety regulatory body came in and gave the green light to the whole operation. All of Fritz’s safety systems seem to be working as intended, and if something goes wrong with the primary and secondary systems, a poison slurry will be injected into the reactor.”
Matt furrowed his brow. “Didn’t Fritz say that would ruin his equipment?”
Quinn nodded. “Oh yeah. But, no one would get exposed to radiation. Of course, that only applies to normal reactor problems. Not foul play.”
Matt scanned the control room. “On that note, are there any signs of explosives?”
Cam shook his head. “None that I can see. But if someone familiar with Fritz’s system planted them, I don’t think they’ll be obvious.”
Matt asked, “What about the guy who came out with you? Is he here?”
Quinn set her mouth in a line. “Joey is in town. He thinks the job starts tomorrow. Parker and Ree are monitoring his whereabouts. If he reaches out to Lindsay, we’ll have enough evidence to take him down. Has she given you any indication she knows you guys are doing work for us?”
Alexis considered the question. “Not directly. She’s been around, though. A lot. And asking questions. Did you figure out who Lindsay’s mystery caller is? Is it Joey?”
Cam put his hands in his pockets. “I’ve tried backing out his or her real voice from the software, but they used a sophisticated text to voice to disguise their identity, rendering the speech pattern largely inconclusive. Interestingly, the software they used isn’t ours, so Dmitri may have created it.”
Alexis closed her eyes for a moment. “If they mimicked the voice, how do we know they didn’t mimic the signal? I get junk numbers on my personal phone constantly, and they’re never from the real location.”
Cam set his mouth in a line. “I think they did mimic the signal. The analysts would have picked up on that right away, but since I was the one looking into it, it took me a little bit of time to figure out that they routed the calls through a call center that does a lot of telemarketing. We’ll let the call center know they’re being used by a foreign government once we have the investigation wrapped up.”
Alexis pointed to her dog, whose ears were still listening for noises and eyes were watching the room. He was ready. “Okay, can I put this guy back to work?” Waffle’s tail started swishing against the epoxy floor.
Quinn looked towards the mass of equipment in the center of the reactor area. “Of course. According to the maintenance logs, this has all been here for months, but the control room had some last-minute changes. Let’s start with the reactor area, then we’ll let Waffle figure out what’s new in the control room.”
Waffle sniffed around the whole reactor space and alerted on Lindsay’s scent a few times but didn’t give the signal for anything explosive. Once Alexis acknowledged it, he merely kept walking and wagging his tail. Quinn checked everything Waffle alerted on until she was satisfied there was no foul play. Alexis recognized the safety switch design from Fritz’s demonstration when they passed, but Waffle remained utterly uninterested in the component. Waffle occasionally lifted his nose and paused, so something wasn’t quite right, but he didn’t alert on anything else in the reactor space. Instead, he tugged gently on the leash. Alexis looked up at Quinn. “He’s on to something, but it’s not in here. Let’s check the control room now.”
“Absolutely.” Quinn followed Alexis, who let Waffle take the lead, giving him time to stop and sniff on the way. As they got closer to the control room, where Cam and Matt stood talking, his tail wagged harder. He tugged a little harder on the leash and when he reached a gauge, he lay down.
“Good boy, Waffle! Good boy!” Alexis gave him his reward toy, and adrenaline rushed through her system.
Quinn froze. “Is that the sign for explosives?”
Alexis shook her head. “No. That’s the sign associated with Dmitri’s hit man, Andrei. Dmitri may be our mastermind, but Andrei is doing all of Dmitri’s dirty work. Have you touched that gauge?”
Quinn shook her head. “No. I was waiting on you to get here, so I didn’t confuse Waffle.”
“Good work. That gauge, right there, has been touched by Andrei. Good boy, Waffle! Good boy!” She rubbed his head and he thumped his tail. He chewed on his toy and looked at her curiously, as if sensing her fear through her praise. Her heart began to race, and she focused on the job to slow it. “Have you seen Andrei? Is he back in the States?”
Cam shook his head. “If he is, we didn’t know it until now. We’ll have to let our people know he may have slipped through. Shit. We’ve been watching for him.”
Alexis’s jaw tightened. They’d all missed him. Again. She pointed at the gauge. “What does that connect to?”
Quinn shook her head. “It’s just a readout technically, but if it’s connected to the control system…” Quinn got on her hands and knees and looked under the table. “Son of a bitch, he’s going to do it again.” Quinn began to reach for the wires.
Alexis touched her arm. “Is that a good idea?”
“Did your dog say it was going to explode?”
“No.”
“Then, yes. It is a good idea.” Quinn lay on the floor to look under the control panel, then paused to pull a pair of gloves out of her pocket. She snapped them on and shook her head. “Finally. It’s taken us months, but he finally made a mistake. Messing with sensors was how they took down the rocket.” Quinn turned her cell phone light on to get a better view. “He’s tapping into the control system.” Alexis squatted to see what Quinn was doing. Quinn took a picture of the setup, then wasted no time disassembling it, not even pausing to explain what she was doing. She held the coated wires one at a time, tracing them to their connections and gently removing them. She stood, pulled the gauge off the control panel, then gave the back a slight twist, revealing a battery and circuit board. Finally, she held up the disassembled gauge with a connected mass of wires triumphantly. “I knew he’d pull something. Whew. I was starting to worry I was losing my touch.”
Matt raised an eyebrow. “What did he connect that to?”
Quinn placed the device gently in a large plastic bag, then zipped it shut. “This gauge is supposed to record heat data and feed it to the primary and secondary safety systems. Andrei’s design has some bonus features. It has a false back with additional hidden processing capacity. Our friend in Russia was going to hack the connection and use it to deactivate the safety systems.”
Alexis closed her eyes. “Even if he wasn’t successful in causing a full-blown meltdown, the reactors would inject the last resort poison slurry. Fritz said it would torpedo the progress of his whole team.”
Quinn put her hands on her hips. “Exactly. The reactor would be completely destroyed, and the program scrapped. It’d be less expensive to burn money since there wouldn’t be any cleanup afterward.”
Alexis looked at Waffle, contentedly chewing on his reward. “But, if Andrei was here, why doesn’t Waffle smell Andrei anywhere else? Why only around the gauge?” She gave Waffle a command, and he hopped to his feet to search the rest of the area. He alerted on the plastic bag with the gage, then kept sniffing.
Cam and Matt crowded in to look at the area Waffle had been sniffing, and Matt pointed to a shiny line near the gage. “The gauge has been popped out. That scratch is probably from a screwdriver. Dr. Fritz. The bad part. Is the gauge the part Dr. Fritz replaced?”
Quinn picked up the maintenance logs and nodded. “It says he replaced it last weekend.”
Matt held up a hand. “Think like a researcher for a second. A too-busy researcher trying to impress his donors in spite of a short-notice problem.” Before he finished his sentence, Matt began rummaging through the cabinets. At the same moment Waffle reached him, Matt pulled a box from the cabinet. Waffle lay down again. He grinned at the dog. “Good boy, Waffle!”
Matt pulled a gauge out of the box, nearly identical to the gauge that Quinn had just disassembled. He wiggled it in the air. “Or we can just look at the box the new one came in. It arrived this week, rush shipping. International. That enough evidence for us?”
Cam took a picture of the shipping label with his phone. Alexis nodded. “It is for me. Let’s get this all documented. Then what? Do we delay the test?”
Quinn shook her head. “No way. We’re not going to give Dmitri another opening. I can fix this.” She held out an open palm and Matt gingerly laid the real gauge in it. It was shallower than the one Quinn had removed, with the back firmly fastened in place. “I’ll have our regulators run the test again early tomorrow morning and vary the inputs to some they don’t typically use. That’s probably how they missed it the first time. We can also use the regulators’ equipment to prove my theory with the substitute gauge. If our repair works, we let Fritz run his test and find out who sent the faulty gauge.”
Alexis rubbed her hands together. “Then Matt and I can watch everyone here to see how many people didn’t expect it to work.”
In short order, they located the tools they needed to replace the gauge and clicked the electronic connections into place. Quinn dropped the plastic bag containing the faulty gauge into the box used to ship it and snapped off her gloves. “Now, let’s get out of here before someone realizes what we’ve done.”
19
After a very short night’s sleep, Matt drove Alexis and Waffle back to the reactor facility. Fortunately for them, Waffle looked more like a family pet than an FBI working dog. By the time they arrived, a small crowd had already gathered despite the early hour, wearing coats and hats in the cool fall air. Matt had moved his weapon to his hip since his coat could cover it up. There was no telling whether any of the others present had done the same. Based on the welcome banners hanging under a large white tent, several of the countries sponsoring Dr. Fritz’s grant had sent at least one representative, with Russia noticeably missing. The large tent would limit the number of spots a sniper could use to get a clean shot at them during the test, and Matt socialized while he discreetly checked the perimeter.
With some time remaining before the test began, Dr. Fritz came out of the building to mingle with the crowd. He shook hands with onlookers and occasionally wiped his forehead, now glistening as a result of exertion or nerves. He sported a blazer with elbow patches and the promised polka dot bowtie. He looked more like a professor than an experimental nuclear scientist, although there wasn’t really a lot of blue sky between the two personalities. The CIA officer, Joey, stood on the outside of the crowd along with the rest of the press. Matt watched the man from the corner of his eye. Joey’s demeanor was relaxed, and he held a DSLR camera with a long zoom lens, not unlike the model Matt had used when he and Alexis had gone hiking. According to Quinn, Joey had been told not to come armed. Still, Joey’s position and equipment gave him a good view of the crowd, which unfortunately meant that he had a favorable line of sight to Matt and Alexis. Matt stepped away from the crowd to tell the team in the surveillance van as much via his earpiece, and Alexis drifted in Joey’s general direction as if looking at the scenery, with Waffle in tow. Waffle’s tail wagged, but he didn’t alert until he saw Lindsay, and it wasn’t the same sign he used for explosives. Once Alexis told him he was a good boy, Lindsay made a fuss over him, and Waffle didn’t alert on anything else. Matt scanned the nearby mountains one more time but saw no movement.
Matt moved closer to Alexis, and they socialized within the crowd, explaining to the people they met who they were and what their research was about. Everyone fawned over Waffle, and he wagged his tail, remaining aloof, since Alexis hadn’t told him to stop working. After a couple of weeks in the lab with Matt, Alexis sounded like an old pro. Lindsay walked up to Dr. Fritz, and Alexis gave Matt’s arm a quick squeeze. They took turns watching her by unspoken agreement. Lindsay seemed to be asking a lot of questions. Matt scanned the open spaces past the tent again. Something in the back of his mind warned him he was missing something important, but the conscious part of his brain couldn’t quite figure out what it was. He joined Alexis under the large tent, currently serving up donuts and coffee. Once under cover of the tent, he relaxed a fraction. There was a section of the tent that held higher-end folding chairs and a large screen. The screen was displaying the currently empty control room. The crowd would remain outside the building due to space limitations inside, so that was one less thing to worry about. Dr. Fritz eventually made his way over to them and shook their hands. “Drs. Phillips. So glad you could make it.” He leaned down to pet Waffle, who sniffed his hand curiously, but remained standing. “And how nice you brought your dog along. We may have to make him the official lab mascot!”
Alexis’s shoulders tensed, but her smile was radiant. “Of course. We wouldn’t miss it! And I’m glad you don’t mind we brought the dog. Waffle spends so much time alone during the week, I couldn’t bear to leave him home this morning. But enough about us. How are you? Is everything ready?”
Dr. Fritz leaned in. “It is, but I hope the food and drinks are good. My show is going to be short. Just a switch flipping, then a bunch of temperature data streaming in like what you saw in my lab. This got much bigger than even I expected. I’m afraid everyone will be a little let down by the lack of a flash-bang test.”
Alexis raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I doubt that. The lack of a bang sounds like the definition of success to me.” Waffle sniffed around Fritz’s shoes, but his tail kept wagging.
Fritz chuckled. “Yes, of course. I just don’t think the press pool will be as impressed by my charts as the tree huggers who work down the hall.” He gestured over to the small group of people. Technically, the “press pool” was only four reporters, one of whom was CIA. However, it was likely more attention than Fritz was accustomed to. “I can only imagine what they’ll say if it doesn’t go well.” He tugged at his jacket sleeves.
Matt leaned in, conspiratorially. “Lindsay told us you had some trouble with a part. Is everything okay?”
Fritz looked to the sky with exasperation. “It is now. A supplier called, last week, to let me know there was a problem with a gauge I had ordered, and we didn’t get the replacement part until a few days later. Then, I had to install the new part, inspect it, and retest the entire setup. Double-checking everything took up most of my weekend. Fortunately, it passed. This test is enough stress for me without needing to replace faulty equipment.” Fritz pulled at his bow tie.
Alexis pulled something out of her bag and handed it to him. “Well, if it helps, I brought something for you. For luck.”
Fritz looked down at the plastic banana keychain and laughed. “Dr. Alexis, you are a hoot.”
“You promised me less exposure to radiation than I would get from a banana, so it seemed a fitting good luck charm. Now that you have the banana, I guess you can begin your test.”
“It’s perfect. Thank you.” Fritz smiled at her and tucked the keychain into his suit pocket. He checked his watch. “I better get in there. It’s time.”
Once he was out of range, Matt’s earpiece crackled with Parker’s voice. “We’re tracking him. Alex, you might be the first agent to suggest embedding a tracker into a plastic banana. Guess it was a good thing we let you out of the office again.”
Alexis grinned. The end of the banana had just enough room to stick a tracker with a day’s worth of battery. Now they’d know immediately if Dr. Fritz went anywhere other than the control room. A voice boomed in the speakers. “May I have your attention, please? It is now time to make your way over to the viewing area. The test is about to begin.” The crowd turned toward the noise, and the attendees drifted over to the assigned viewing space. Dr. Fritz was now in the control room, streaming a live video to the screen. He explained what they would see in the test and a small graph appeared on a split-screen next to him. A moment after he reached for the controls, Lindsay stood up, pulling her phone out of her pocket to answer it. Parker’s voice crackled in his earpiece. “The number from D.C. is calling Lindsay again. Patching you in.”
Alexis exchanged a look with Matt, and they remained still, even as they heard Lindsay’s voice. “Hello?”
“Lindsay, there’s a problem with the test. It’s a danger to everyone. Someone tampered with the safety systems. We need you to get in there and stop it.”
Lindsay’s voice was pure panic. “What? Why? What do I need to do?”
Kurt’s voice was calm. “Start by going to the control room. I’ll give you instructions once you’re in there.”
Lindsay’s eyes darted to the front of the building. “There’s a guard at the door. Does he know we’re trying to protect everyone? Can I tell him I’m working with you?”
Kurt replied, “The control room, Lindsay. Hurry.”
Matt whispered, “What the hell is going on?”
Alexis grabbed Matt’s arm and hissed. “Oh, no. Why didn’t I see this before?”
“What?”
