They rigged a trap door, pressed a button, dropped the payload. Then used a scatter charge to detonate it.”

“Sheriff said it was a dust bomb.”

“The canister was filled with powdered aluminum.”

“Why?”

“The first explosion created a mushroom cloud of aluminum powder. Then the grease guy fired a thermobaric warhead from the ground into the cloud.”

“To enhance the explosion?”

“Right.”

Callie says, “Why not just drop a bigger bomb from the crop duster?”

Joe says, “They probably just had the one crop duster, and needed the two-step process to do enough damage.”

“But they didn’t kill anyone.”

“Only because they didn’t want to.”

“So it’s not a terrorist attack,” Callie says.

“I think it was,” I say. “Just not a conventional one.”

She stops walking a moment, so Joe and I stop. Then she says, “You should be relieved, but you’re not. You look concerned. Why?”

“I’m getting a really bad feeling about this.”

“Why?”

“The writing.”

“BWC?”

I nod.

Joe’s look says he thinks I’m crazy. “Someone detonated an FAE over a civilian neighborhood and the part that bothers you is three people got grease on their asses?”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

Callie looks at me, then Joe, and says, “It’s a Monty Python.”

Joe says, “What’s a Monty Python?”

“Something completely different.”

“It fits no profile,” I explain. “This was a test of some sort. An attention-getter.”

“Which means?”

“Something big’s about to happen. And the letters are a clue.”

We start moving again. After a few minutes we pass Agent Phillips, who’s rolling around on the ground, glaring at us. Joe nods at him, as if apologizing.

Callie says, “There were three people with writing on their asses.”

“What about it?”

“What made you pick the young, pretty one?”

“I planned to photograph all three asses.”

“But you started with hers. Why?”

“Of the three, I figured Abbey would make the biggest fuss about stripping. If we saved her for third, she would’ve known what was coming. She would’ve thrown a fit. You know how cops are with locals. They would have insisted we didn’t have the right to pull her pants down.”

Joe says, “They’d have been right.”

“For a bomb builder, you’re an odd duck,” I say.

No one responds or comments, so we walk quietly for several minutes. As we near the chopper I ask, “What did you whisper to Abbey to make her stop screaming?”

“I told her if she kept her mouth shut I’d kill Emma Wilson for her.’”

“Brilliant.”

“Thanks.”

I pause a minute, then say, “But you can’t kill her. You know that, right?”

“We’ll see,” Callie says.

We climb in the chopper, take our seats. While awaiting lift-off, I eye Callie carefully. It doesn’t take much to set her off, and I hadn’t noticed it before, but she’s clearly on edge about something. While Callie’s not the only person on earth with bi-polar issues and a hair-trigger personality, she’s quite unique in how she expresses displeasure.

What I’m saying, when Callie gets like this, people die.

“Everything okay?” I ask.

“Peachy,” she says.

8.

Jill Whittaker.

JILL’S CELL PHONE is ringing?

Not possible.

Is it?

She answers, “Jack? Please tell me it’s you!”

“It’s me. What’s up?”

Shit, she thinks. Then says, “Who is this? How’d you get my number?”

“It’s Jack. Talk to me.”

“Look, asshole. First of all, Jack doesn’t sound like a cartoon character. Second—”

“Yeah?”

She hangs up.