In Sheep's Clothing (2 page)

Noah's eyebrows rose slightly. “We got a mission,” he said. “I was told to come to you for vehicles and to see what else you might have.”

Wally's eyes went wide and his face lit up in a gigantic smile. “Oh, great! What kind of mission? Where at? You do know that I'm cleared for all that information, right?”

“Yes,” Noah said, “I've been told that. It's a domestic mission, the elimination of some high-ranking cartel members and their families. They've set up an operation in Columbia, Missouri, and I gather their drugs are flooding the streets throughout the Midwest, maybe even a lot further.”

Wally began chewing on his bottom lip, his eyes darting all around as he thought about what Noah had told him. “Okay, okay,” he mumbled. “Okay, I've got just the thing for you! Come on, you're gonna love this!”

Wally took off down the hall without even waiting to see if Noah and Sarah followed, and they fell in behind. He led them to one of the development rooms further down the hall and motioned for them to follow him inside.

Within the room were two technicians, a man and a woman. They looked up, curious, and Wally introduced them to Noah. “Jazz, Lenny,” Wally said, addressing the woman first, “this is Camelot! Camelot, meet Jasmine and Lenny. These two are a pair of the brightest and most diabolical minds you'll ever find anywhere, and we were lucky to get them.”

Noah shook hands with both of the technicians and introduced Sarah, as well. When all of the introductions and handshakes were over, Wally spoke up again. “Okay, kids, show ’em what you've got.”

Jasmine smiled. “I'm guessing you're familiar with plastic explosives, right? Well, Lenny and I have come up with a whole new formula that is half again as powerful when it explodes, but a dozen times more stable. As a result, we’re able to do things with it that no one has ever done before. Take a look over here.”

She pointed to where Lenny was standing beside a workbench that held what appeared to be a very large suitcase. He opened the lid and raised it, and a metal framework expanded upward until it made a cube that measured about thirty inches on a side. There were a number of components inside the framework and a lot of circuitry on the outside.

Tucked inside the lid of the case was what appeared to be one large plastic tank and several smaller ones. The big one contained a thick, white liquid, while the others contained thinner liquids in various colors.

A slot near the bottom of the case opened up, and something slid out. A second later, it opened to become the keyboard and monitor of a computer.

“This is a high-speed 3-D printer,” Lenny said, “but instead of using plastics, it uses our formula of plastic explosive. The explosive itself is a neutral color, sort of an off white, but this printer can inject color into each cubic millimeter of the plastic, so you can make an object that is intricately detailed. It can blend colors to give you exactly the shade you need, anything from dull plastic to shiny metallic. Let me show you what it can do.”

Lenny turned toward the small computer that was attached to the case. He tapped the keys for a moment, calling up a file in a CAD program, and it displayed a three-dimensional image of an intricately painted figurine of a clown. He used a trackball to rotate the image on the screen, then pointed at some parts on the upright supports of the printer.

“Another difference between this printer and others is that this one is also a 3-D scanner. You simply set an object on the print bed and tell it to scan through the computer, and it does the rest. Those lasers will get an absolutely accurate measurement of the shape and size of the object you’re scanning.” He pointed at the screen in front of them again. “Now, I scanned this figurine in a couple of months ago, as we were first testing the printer. Notice how it has almost a dozen different colors, counting the clown's face and costume, right? Now, watch this.” He tapped another key and the printer's nozzle began moving over the print bed at the bottom of the machine.

“That's going a lot faster than the ones I see on TV,” Noah said.

Jasmine, who was standing beside him, smiled. “It's called a Rep Rap, which means Replicating Rapid Prototyper. That clown is about nine inches tall, and a normal 3-D printer would take up to four hours or more to complete it. This one can do it in about eight minutes.”

Lenny grinned at them. “That's because of our formula,” he said. “Most 3-D printers use a solid string of plastic, melting it a little at a time to put it where it belongs. Ours is liquid, and the hot print head actually causes it to solidify where we want it.”

“Look,” Sarah said, “I can see its feet already. How do you make them so shiny? That almost looks like real ceramic.”

“Well, in a way, it is ceramic,” Lenny said. “Along with the color, we add a glazing agent that crystallizes quickly. As it's pushed through the hot nozzle, the glazing agent melts and gives it that shiny-wet look. Without special analytical equipment, you'd never be able to tell it isn't a real ceramic figurine.”

Suddenly, the print head rose away from the work it was doing, and a mechanical arm swung down from the top of the machine. A small cylindrical object, about an inch long and a quarter-inch in diameter, was placed inside one of the hollow legs that stood there. The arm then moved away, and the print head resumed its work, securing the little device in place.

“Before you ask, I'll just tell you what that was,” Lenny said. “That was the detonator. It has a small charge of its own, a super small battery and a microcircuit receiver that can be activated manually, or set to go off at a certain time or after
X
number of minutes. Give it a few more moments, it's almost done, and then we can show you what it's capable of.”

It took about four more minutes to complete the figurine, and then Lenny invited Noah to remove it from the printer. He picked it up and felt its weight, then ran his fingers over the surface.

“You're right,” he said. “If I hadn't watched you print it out, I'd never know this wasn't real. I'm assuming it's pretty stable? What would happen if I dropped it right now?”

Jasmine grinned. “Not a thing,” she said. “This stuff is so well bonded together that it wouldn't even break. Go ahead, try it if you want to.”

Sarah's eyes went wide, and she shook her head at Noah. “That's okay,” he said, “I'll take your word for it. What about impact, or fire? I know that C4 won't explode unless it's got a detonator, but it will burn.”

Lenny took the figurine from his hand and set it on a workbench, then picked up a propane torch and aimed the flame at its head. After several seconds, it was obvious that the flame was having no effect, so he turned it off and picked up what looked like an eight ball from a pool table.

“I made this the other day,” he said, “but I don't really need it.” He set it on the workbench and then picked up a small, heavy hammer. He grinned at Sarah and then brought the hammer down as hard as he could onto the ball. It shattered into several pieces, and they saw that it had been hollow. Inside was one of the small detonators, stuck to the inner wall of one of the pieces.

“You could shoot holes through it, and it wouldn't explode. It takes a special detonator that uses Triaminotrinitrobenzene and Diaminodinitroethene in combination to produce enough heat and shock to set it off, but boy, when it does! Come on, we'll show you.”

Lenny walked into what appeared to be a steel box with a window in it, and they could see through a square, obviously thick window as he placed the clown figurine onto a heavy iron block. He stepped back out into the room and closed the door of the box, which they could see looked a lot like the door on a major bank vault. Lenny spun the wheel on the outside of the door to secure it and then stepped over beside Noah and Sarah as they looked in the window. Jasmine and Wally stood right behind them.

Lenny reached over to pick up a small black box from the workbench and handed it to Noah, who looked it over. There was a small numerical keypad and a single-line display on the front, a red button that sat in a depression on the side, and an open round socket on the top. “That's the detonator remote,” he said. “Just push the red button whenever you're ready, but keep your eyes on the clown.”

Noah glanced at Sarah, who looked very nervous, then grinned at her. He turned his eyes back to the clown that he could see through the window and brought his thumb down on the button.

A muffled
boom
reverberated around the room, and Sarah grabbed onto Noah's arm to keep from falling as vibrations shook the solid concrete floor beneath her feet. Her eyes were wider than before and she looked at Noah as if in shock.

“Holy cow,” she said.

Noah's own eyebrows were pretty high, as he leaned close to the window to try to see inside. When the clown had exploded, the window had been filled with flames that were bright red and yellow, but that had lasted only a couple of seconds. He could see no visible residue, other than the obvious burn marks on the walls and on the block.

“That's pretty impressive,” he said. “And I can see a lot of uses for it.” He pointed at the printer. “How much does it weigh?”

“About sixty pounds,” Jasmine said, “but that's with all its tanks loaded. You can also carry extra material and inks. The compound is extremely stable, and can't explode without a detonator.”

“Does it take a separate detonator and remote for each piece you make?”

Lenny pointed at the remote that was still in Noah's hand. “You need a separate detonator for each one, but that remote will handle them all. All you have to do is insert a detonator into the hole on top and you'll see the numbers zero through nine appear on the display. One through nine are the channels available and you simply press the number of the channel you want that particular detonator to respond to. That programs it, then you just put it into the grip on the detonator placement arm. The computer will decide the best place to put it inside whatever you make. Then, when you want to set it off, you just press the channel button and then the red button. Or, if you choose zero, it goes into timer mode. You'll see a 1 and a 2. If you choose 1, it will let you put in a time based on a twenty-four-hour clock, and then it will ask for a date. That sets the detonator to go off at a particular time on a particular day. If you choose 2, on the other hand, it asks you for the number of minutes you wanted to wait before detonating, and you can go up to 525,600 minutes. That's the number of minutes in a year. It's that easy.”

“What frequency does it work on? What's the chance that a stray signal might set it off?”

“There's no chance, none at all. The signal is encrypted, a string of numbers so long that you couldn't fake it in a million years. You can have a thousand devices transmitting on the same frequency, and none of them could ever set these off.”

“So, if I want to detonate manually, I can have up to nine devices ready to go and set them off in whatever order I want, right?” Noah asked.

Lenny nodded. “Yes, or you can have more than one device on a single channel. As long as you're in range of all of them, they all go off at once. The detonator has a range of about three-quarters of a mile.”

Noah said. “How many of those clowns could it make on a single fill-up?”

“Probably about thirty,” Jasmine said. “Making figurines and such, you just make it hollow. The outside is about a quarter-inch thick, but that gives you plenty of explosive power, as you saw. If that explosion had been set off in an average house, it probably would have taken out about half of it. Walls, ceiling, roof, you name it.”

Noah looked at her for a moment, then asked, “So a smaller object that was solid, not hollow, would have just as much effect?”

“Or more. The compound tends to reverberate, actually build on its own shock wave. The denser the item you make, the more explosive pressure you get from its detonation. The clown was nine inches tall, but hollow. A three-inch clown that was solid, molded around a detonator, would deliver about half again as much power as the hollow one.”

“Okay, one more question. How do I get the things I want to make into the computer?”

Lenny grinned. “There are two options. Number one, just use the built-in scanner if the object is small enough to fit inside. Number two, we’ve adapted the 3-Sweep software that can make a 3-D model from a single photograph, so you can just take a few pictures of something, extract them into 3-D, and then print it out. Or number three, if you know how to use CAD, you can literally just design something and then print it out. The software in the computer already has about fifteen thousand 3-D images stored in it.”

Noah stood and looked at the printer for several seconds, then turned to Wally. “I want one, and give me a couple of refills on the explosives and inks. I'll need a few dozen of the detonators, too.”

Wally grinned from ear to ear. “I had a feeling you might like that,” he said. “Would it be safe to assume that your cartel people might be receiving some presents in the near future?”

“Yeah,” Noah said. “They're likely to think I'm Santa Claus.”

W
ally led them through several other sections of this facility, but Noah didn't choose any other devices. He ended the tour by leading them out into a parking area behind the building. There were numerous vehicles there, ranging from beat-up old pickup trucks to new luxury cars. Two security guards sat in a small air-conditioned office, and they waved at Wally.

“We'll need two cars,” Noah said. “Anything special about these?”

Wally grinned again. “Nothing like James Bond's cars,” he said, “but don't let their looks deceive you.” He pointed to a line of cars and pickup trucks. “Every vehicle in that line has a lot more power than you would expect. We're talking the eight hundred horsepower range, so don't let it get away from you.”

“Eight hundred horsepower?” Sarah asked, incredulously. “That's pretty serious.”

Noah looked at her, and one side of his mouth lifted in what she thought was almost a grin. “Pick the one you want,” he said, and then pointed at a small utility van. “We'll take that one, besides whatever Sarah wants. How long would it take to get a florist's logo on the side?”