CHAPTER 81
Egorov compound
Palm Beach, Florida
“The beauty of this device is its simplicity,” Pavel Egorov explained. “A child could work it.”
Pavel was giving his demonstration to his twin brother, Taras, as well as to Rowan Anderson and Elise Courville.
Courville had been able to secure a French embassy jet for this trip to Florida, ostensibly to take a meeting on behalf of her ambassador father, though the assumption that the new widow would also take time out to do some retail therapy didn’t hurt.
The women would be able to transport the materials back to Washington, DC, as easily as they could bring a purse purchased on Worth Avenue without fear of TSA or customs. And Anderson’s badge and pistol would be quite enough to send anyone who did get too close in the other direction.
Now the four co-conspirators were gathered around a large heavy wooden table in a fortified room—essentially a bomb shelter.
While Alexander Egorov was a master of the arms trade, both his sons were savants with explosives.
They partied too much and spent outrageous sums of money pushing the limits of their father’s patience.
But if a customer ever needed something exotic in the explosives department, the Egorov boys were as good as could be found anywhere in the world.
For the past year, they had given both product and advice to the customer in Boston. The Serbian was good, but they were better. Most of the bomb building and design work had been done offshore, but this latest order was homemade in Florida.
“Only three things you need,” Taras Egorov explained. “One, the bomb sheet. Two, the miniature initiating device. And three, your cell phone. Let me show you how it works.”
He pulled from a heavy cardboard sleeve what appeared to be a three-by-four-foot sheet of green Christmas wrapping paper. At the southeast corner of the sheet were several items that resembled sticks of chewing gum.
Pavel Egorov pointed to the sticks, which were all wrapped—not with aluminum foil, but a neutral-looking cover.
“This is the igniter that is built into the device. We color-coded everything, so there is no mistake about what goes with what. This green wrapper is matched with the green initiating device my brother is holding. The parts can be easily adapted for camouflage purposes.”
Taras Egorov reached inside a box the size of a pack of cigarettes and held up what looked like a green coin, no bigger than a half dollar.
“This is the initiating device. Again, it is color-coded to its matching explosive sheet so you don’t get mixed up.
The industrial-grade adhesive can be applied to almost any surface, wet or dry. ”
“What’s the range between the two?” Rowan Anderson asked as she nodded her head in appreciation.
“Fifty feet, maximum,” Taras said. “It has worked at fifty-two, but there are too many variables. At forty-five feet or less, it has never failed.”
“So all I need to do is set up the device where I need it and then plant the initiator about forty feet away?”
“Set it and forget it,” Pavel Egorov laughed. “Once you dial the number, the detonation is almost instantaneous.”
“Using heavy shears,” added Taras, “you can cut this sheet to whatever size you need. A three-inch square will vaporize a human body. A foot square will cripple and demolish an armored military vehicle, and this whole sheet with make a three-story building crumble.” His face was expressionless.
“It’s good work, and our client said this is what you wanted. Yes?”
Anderson looked at Elise Courville, then back at the twins. “Oh, yes—this is precisely what we wanted. I promise you it will be put to good use.”