The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel (28 page)

D
arren Draco is a terrific chemist,” said Sol Bellinger, the silver-haired founder and longtime owner of Bantam Chemical. “He’s a genius.”

Bellinger had come to work at the Hoboken plant today so that his foreman could take his children to a July Fourth parade. Hearing that, Fisk liked Bellinger. Also there was an undeniable geniality etched between the seventy-year-old’s jowls, which, like his ample belly, spoke of a predilection for comfort food. His sharp eyes were full of a certain reassuring gravitas.

Bellinger added, “I would do just about anything to get him to come to work here full-time.”

Fisk saw no reason to explain why Darren Draco—aka Boyden Verlyn—would never be coming to work at the plant again. Purporting to be here as part of a routine security check, Fisk followed the old man out of an elevator and onto the uppermost of four tiers of catwalks circling a chemical mixing room that reminded him of a giant diesel truck engine. Glinting beneath dim fluorescents stood fuel and oil centrifuges, cylinder heads, alternators, air reservoirs, turbochargers, camshafts, crankcases, pumps—at least that’s what Fisk thought Bellinger was saying. He could barely hear him over a gargantuan turbine that, in combination with the other machines, filled the air with the whine of thousands of vacuum cleaners gunning
at once. Yet the air was stagnant, heavy with oil, and searing—easily 110 degrees. Fisk was relieved on several fronts when Bellinger led him into the vast soundproofed and air-conditioned control room overlooking the works.

Bellinger gestured to the bank of controls that were part late-twentieth-century computer and part World War II submarine. “This is where the magic happens.”

“What exactly does Darren do?” Fisk asked.

“He’s a chemical plant and systems officer, like Priscilla and Jim here.” Bellinger gestured toward a man and a woman sitting at clusters of instruments and computers across the room. Each looked up from their monitors to exchange a quick greeting with Bellinger. Jim was a big, bearded, studious-looking African American man of about fifty, who wore a bow tie under his white lab coat. Priscilla was perhaps ten years younger, a trim and attractive redhead, making the dark circles under her eyes all the more jarring. She looked to Fisk like she’d been sleeping even less than he had lately.

Returning his attention to Fisk, Bellinger said, “Chemical plant and systems officers use all of these gauges and readouts to ensure that your chemicals are mixed in the right order, that the reaction rates, temperatures, and other variables are on target.

“Why?”

“Chemistry is science, of course, but on the industrial scale, it’s an art, and like painters or sculptors, plant and systems officers need to know everything about their materials, especially how they react under all sorts of conditions. Take moisture content: it completely varies depending on the weather. Computers can help you, but in the end it comes down to the skill and judgment of the operator, and, in some cases, like Darren Draco, artistry. He’s as good as they come.”

“Why wouldn’t he want full-time work?”

“Good chemists can make more in two days as a freelancer than they can in a week full-time, because of the union caps. If a plant and
systems officer is going to be out, you have to replace them. Otherwise your operation comes to a standstill. When a plant and systems officer misses work unexpectedly, the subs have you over a barrel.”

“Is that what happened last week?” Fisk asked.

“Well . . .” Bellinger hesitated.

“You don’t need to tell me the specifics of Draco’s contract.”

“No, it’s not that.” Bellinger shot a quick glance at Priscilla, who appeared absorbed by her work. With a look of relief, he hurried to an exit door, pulled it open, allowing Fisk to pass through, then followed him into a tall concrete corridor with heavy acetic fumes like those in a hair salon. Pulling the door shut behind him, Bellinger explained, “Priscilla had to miss a few days because of her father’s death. I told her to take all the time she wanted, but what she really wanted was to be back at work, to take her mind off it. Horrific business. Her father was Walter Doyle, one of the drone victims.”

Shock buffeted Fisk. He tried to hide it. So, Yodeler/Boyden’s claim that he would kill people in New York City at random had been a cover. And likely Boyden killed Walter Doyle with more in mind than getting a gig as a substitute chemical plant and systems officer.

Fisk asked, “Are there any chemicals you work with here that they wouldn’t commonly have in plants in Connecticut?”

Bellinger offered a one-shouldered shrug as he gestured with his other arm for Fisk to precede him around the corner. “We make industrial cleaning fluids and sewage treatment products, so we don’t have anything that’s very sexy.”

Fisk started down another corridor, wrought in bare concrete, leading to the supply room. “What about chemicals that can be weaponized?”

“What chemicals can’t be weaponized? Your basic drain cleaner and rust remover contain nitric or sulfuric acid, like H
₂
SO
₄
, which is required to make the high-order explosive nitroglycerine. The little
engines in the model rockets that my grandson’s Boy Scout troop build run on nitro-methane, CH
₃
NO
₂
, which is a chemical with explosive properties greater than TNT, and when you mix it in with an oxidizing agent like a basic ammonium nitrate, NH
₄
NO
₃
, which many agricultural companies use in fertilizer products you can buy at any garden store, the explosive power is even greater.” Bellinger stopped by the supply room door. Signs warned away unauthorized personnel. Opening the door required entering the proper code on the numeric keypad as well as a fingerprint scan. “Here we have a lot of concentrated hydrogen peroxide, H
₂
0
₂
, which we use in our sewage treatment products, and it’s the same stuff my wife picks up at the drug store to sanitize various things in our bathrooms and kitchen. However, as I’m sure you know, Detective, H
₂
O
₂
’s gotten a bit of a bad rap in your world lately.”

Al-Qaeda’s favorite impromptu high explosive of late, triacetone triperoxide, or TATP, could be made using concentrated H
₂
O
₂
—hydrogen peroxide—which was available in most pharmacies and hardware stores. A small quantity of “Mother of Satan,” as terrorists called it, could produce tremendous destructive force. It was famously used in 2001 on a transcontinental American Airlines flight by passenger Richard Reid, subsequently known as the Shoe Bomber. The ten ounces of the explosive he’d packed into his black suede sneakers could have taken down the plane. Fortunately a flight attendant first noticed Reid trying to light one of his sneakers with a match.

Fisk winced at the thought of the damage Boyden Verlyn could cause with a quadrocopter and a four-pound TATP payload if the quad were to land on a city street. Conservatively, everyone within 1,000 feet of the blast would be a potential casualty—the standard Manhattan city block was 264 feet long. The blast itself could cause eardrum damage and lung collapse and, of course, hurl people to more severe injuries or death. And high-velocity flying debris was the biggest threat in such explosions—shards of glass
were responsible for 40 percent of the casualties in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Fisk asked Bellinger, “Does anyone here ever do the chemical plant equivalent of taking home office supplies?”

“Back in the day, sure, guys would take home some concentrated H
₂
O
₂
or C
₃
H
₆
O, especially this time of year, to make their own firecrackers. But since 9/11, no one would dare. Not worth losing your livelihood over. Also, in compliance with the new federal regulations, it’s kind of impossible.” Bellinger typed in a code above the handle and pressed his thumb against the adjacent panel, which glowed red as it scanned. With a series of pops and hisses, the bolts sprang free of the jamb. He pushed down the levered handle and then heaved open the big metal door.

Fisk was hit by a wave of chilled air that smelled intensely like an indoor swimming pool. Bellinger swatted at a light-switch panel on the wall inside the door, illuminating fluorescent ceiling tubes protected by thick sheets of plastic and metal cages, stacks of drums, barrels, and industrial-size bottles in a surprising array of bright colors. If not for the stench, Fisk might have thought he was in the supply room of an ice cream or candy factory. The containers were labeled with the names of the chemicals Bellinger had been discussing, and many more Fisk hadn’t heard of.

“Not that this happened,” Fisk said, “but if someone did get in here and somehow snuck off with a drum full of concentrated hydrogen peroxide, would you know?”

“Yeah, six ways until Sunday. Every last one of these containers has an adhesive decal over the seal that’s not only tamper-proof but contains a transponder that constantly transmits a radio signal. I can track the whereabouts of everything, in real time, using my mobile phone.” He fished an iPhone out of his jeans pocket and clicked open an inventory app. “Let’s take the concentrated hydrogen peroxide as an example. Currently we have seven of the Global Peroxygen brand fifty-six-point-eight-liter containers of standard grade seventy
percent concentration.” He looked up from the phone. “Right over here.” He pointed to three royal-blue plastic containers, each the size and approximate shape of a beer keg, each with an identical container stacked on top of it.

Fisk counted six containers in total.

“Now this is very strange,” Bellinger said.

T
he Connecticut coastline flew past, with the cerulean Long Island Sound making appearances in bursts in and around trees at their summertime lushest. Blackwell had just gone all the way out to Norwalk for nothing. Now he was driving back to the familiar confines of square one in New York. So he couldn’t enjoy the view.

His phone trilled and he answered, “Freeman.”

“A marvelous Independence Day to you, Mr. Freeman,” came Segui’s silky voice, with an excess of joy.

The Cartel man was overcompensating again, Blackwell thought. Meaning the day was about to get even less marvelous. “Back at you, bud. What’s up?”

“Certain CNN viewers were displeased to see our prospective customer from Appleton on live television today, in the embrace of a beautiful young woman no less.”

Blackwell decoded this as: Segui’s Zeta bosses were watching TV—probably a news network other than CNN—and saw the coverage of the man from Appleton (New York), Detective Jeremy Fisk, rescuing Chay Maryland from the clutches of Yodeler.

The Cartel’s problem with “live television” almost certainly referenced their dismay that Fisk remained alive. Once they’d put out a hit on someone, they tended to feel as though each hour the target continued to live cost them in clout. Whether or not that was true,
each hour that Fisk lived certainly depleted Blackwell’s clout, as well as his future earning potential, and, if he were to fail altogether, his future in general.

Segui offered him an out. “Listen, I know you’ve had bad luck on this sales trip.”

Blackwell didn’t need any sympathy. “Amigo, any fool can have bad luck. The art consists in exploiting it.”

“Glad to hear it! Also, maybe F-dash-F-dash-33511-dash-5 will help.”

A few minutes later, sitting inside a Wi-Fi–equipped roadside food court, laptop powered on, Blackwell opened the Tucson junkyard website and entered the middle six characters Segui had given him. F-33511 produced a listing for a 1974 BMW 3.0 CSI driver’s-side chrome flag-shaped side mirror in good condition, $129.95 plus shipping.

Within pixel number 3,351 Segui had inserted his idea of help, or, more likely, that of his impatient superiors, who had determined that Fisk was impossible to find, but not to trap. So they’d gotten a message to Chay Maryland inviting her to an off-the-record interview with a Sinaloa Cartel representative bent on exposing the Zeta hit currently out on Jeremy Fisk. Their idea was to use a Zeta operative in the role of Sinaloa Cartel representative. That operative would kidnap Chay and use her to bait Fisk. The operative was to be none other than Blackwell.

Using Chay as bait had essentially been his own backup plan the other night on East Seventy-Fourth Street, in the event that Fisk hadn’t been with her in the taxi. It had been a convoluted plan then, and it was worse now, because she would probably be on guard. Also she’d seen Blackwell, although it had only been a fleeting look in the dark.

The good news was that they’d gotten her to agree to the meeting.

F
isk stood on the roof of Bantam Chemical, looking out at the industrial landscape of Hoboken, and just across the Hudson River, Boyden Verlyn’s probable target, Manhattan. In the waning sunlight, the skyscrapers and the harbor resembled molten copper. As much as anything, TATP was a security headache because of the difficulty in detecting it. The explosive defied most standard methods of chemical sensing: it didn’t fluoresce, it didn’t absorb ultraviolet light, you couldn’t readily ionize it. Moreover, screening for TATP required cumbersome and expensive equipment, and even with the best machines, it took a ridiculous amount of time to prepare the samples for testing. Eventually, the NYPD invested in handheld colorimetric sensors. With a readout that changed colors based upon the TATP concentration in the air, the way litmus paper reacts to pH, the devices detected as few as two parts per billion. If Boyden had in fact made TATP and then snuck it elsewhere, thought Fisk, the Department would now need about five million sensors to track it.

Fisk had decided to come up here because Bantam’s owner, Sol Bellinger, had told him that Darren Draco often came up here for cigarette breaks. Fisk saw no evidence of that now, no quadrocopter launch pad, nothing but gull shit, crumbling asphalt roof tiles, a road map of blemished ducts, and a water tower that looked ready
to topple off its stilts as soon as a strong gust came along. On the elevator ride up, he had confided to Bellinger the truth about Boyden Verlyn in hopes of spurring him into additional recollection. Now Bellinger just paced in the shadow of the water tower, in stunned silence. The elevated corner of the roof supported a pair of giant air-conditioning units that spewed hot and chemical-laden air, the vapor slicking the wall of the wood-slatted water tank.

“Do you drink the water from that?” Fisk wondered aloud.

“Oh, God no,” said Bellinger. “I’d have grown scales and five eyes by now. Thing’s been dry since my father bought the place.”

A couple of years ago at a party in Chelsea, Fisk and Krina had been handed an antique pocket watch by one of her friends, who instructed them to go to the top floor of the building, climb the fire escape to the roof, and then knock on the trapdoor at the base of the water tower there. How could they resist? Knocking on the trapdoor gained them admission to the Night Heron, a bar within the tower that was as exclusive as it was lawless, and due to the latter, was soon shuttered.

Fisk now tapped the rusty ladder running up the side of the Bantam tower. “Would it be okay if I have a look in there?” he asked Bellinger.

“Fine with me,” the old man said, then, as if having thought better of it, hastened over and gripped the side rails. “I’d better hold on, just in case.”

Fisk hoisted himself on the metal ladder, cold and wet on account of the discharge from the elevated cooling units, before he too had second thoughts. If Boyden had used the tower for any Yodeler-related business, it could be booby-trapped.

“You better stay back,” he told Bellinger.

When the old man was out of harm’s reach, Fisk continued to the top of the ladder. The rungs terminated at the pitched roof, a six-sided pyramid atop the barrel, which was once covered with tar paper. Now it was covered with scraps of tar paper and, mostly, more seagull crap. The point of entry was a square hatch on the nearest of
the six triangular panels, wide enough to admit a man—or launch a Specter quadrocopter through.

Fisk leaned as far away as the ladder would allow, ducked his face so that the barrel shielded him, then reached the Pelican to the hatch and poked at the knob. The hatch, unlocked and already open, flew sideways, clattering against the roof panel.

“Everything okay?” Bellinger called up.

“So far,” Fisk said.

He set the flashlight on full lumen blast and peered into the barrel. If he hadn’t once visited the illicit nightclub, he would have been shocked by the structure’s expanse. The air was stagnant, oven hot, and smelled like soil. The base was ringed with deposits of some sort, decayed leaves or dust or more droppings.

But the central part was oddly clean, as if the debris had been swept or pushed to the side. Before climbing down the interior ladder, rungs bolted to the inner wall, Fisk scoured the place with the flashlight, searching for a booby trap and then for a sign of weakness in the rungs. That was when the beam landed on a black rotor blade. At first glance it was identical to the Specter blades Fisk had seen. On closer look, he realized, it was twice their size. A bigger blade, meaning bigger rotors, meaning a bigger drone. Which you would want why? he thought. To carry a bigger payload? Like a bomb?