Power and Empire

The scouting visit on the previous evening revealed the heating vents were held in place by friction rather than screws. In theory, this should have made it easier to remove. Beatriz kicked off her shoe as soon as they sat down, going straight to work with her toe. The metal louver appeared to be glued in place at first, but she finally got it to budge a little by pushing the face back and forth rather than trying to simply hook it with her nail and pull it out. Eventually, she was able to wiggle it out. She felt the metal and surrounding boxy collar slide free from the wood panel at the same moment Franco chose to visit their table. Beatriz was just able to catch the piece of metal with her bare foot and wedge it against the wall. The waiter smiled at Amanda, paying Beatriz no attention at all, and placed a platter containing their picada on the table. The girls’ accents gave away the fact that they were not from Argentina, and Franco felt it a duty to explain the bits of baked cheese and sliced meat people from his beloved country ate before a main meal. Beatriz balanced the grate in place, keeping her face passive while the arch of her foot began to spasm and cramp. Amanda noted her friend’s discomfort and asked Franco to suggest another wine for them to try. He scurried off to find “something just right” for the beautiful señorita who had chosen to return to his restaurant.

Beatriz sighed with relief when she let the grate slip to the floor and come to rest on top of her foot. Franco was a waiter and therefore not trained in the art of espionage or tradecraft — but surely any man with his pudgy physique and halting demeanor would suspect that two attractive women he’d only just met might have ulterior motives.

One of them might, perhaps, be trying to distract him while her friend placed a bomb inside the wall of his restaurant.

Beatriz gave a whispered scoff, shaking her head at Amanda. “Hope. It is every man’s demise.”

Amanda raised her eyebrows, the facial equivalent of a shrug. “And the downfall of most women,” she said.

The bomb itself was small, made from military-grade RDX. A key component of C-4 was cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine. The name was a mouthful, so the British developers simply called it Research Department eXplosive. This particular batch of RDX was manufactured at a munitions plant outside Islamabad. Pakistani operatives were fond of the stuff and had used it to great effect in bombings against India and the West. Motor oil or some other carbon-based product was often mixed with the explosive to mask the material’s origin. Amanda and Beatriz left it plain. They wanted investigators to know the RDX came from Pakistan. Their briefcase device contained half a kilo of the plasticized material, a bit of PETN, and a blasting cap with a detonator attached to an arming device and then a mobile phone — also from Pakistan.

As the two women talked, Beatriz used her foot to lift and push her briefcase into the space behind the vent cover. It took only a moment, and stooping slightly, she was able to replace the cover before Franco returned with a bottle of Schroeder Merlot from Patagonia.

To his shame, Amanda said she preferred the earlier Malbec, and he slunk away with the open bottle.

Fairly giddy with the success of this portion of their mission, the women dug into the contents of the picada. Beatriz absentmindedly twirled a lock of blond hair over her ear as she began to peruse the menus, getting down to the business of deciding what to have for dinner. It turned out that placing a bomb was very good for one’s appetite.

Neither woman noticed the tall, bearded man with the fit-looking blonde. The well-dressed couple stopped just inside the front door, both scanning the now crowded restaurant as if looking for just the perfect table.

33

Moco almost hit his head on the roof of his S-10 pickup when his mobile phone began to buzz in the front pocket of his jeans. He nearly ran a fat woman in a green minivan off the road. She flipped him off, which would have normally caused him to chase her down, if only to scare her for disrespecting him. Instead, he took a deep breath and imagined the woman’s head sitting on a fence post. Maybe later. That calmed him down some. The phone buzzed again, but Moco let it. He was terrified that it might be Zambrano, checking on the status of the hit. The sicario had felt like he was about to throw up ever since Gusano wasted the wrong dude. Not because he felt any remorse at Aaron Bennet’s death, but because he knew that Zambrano would very literally set him on fire if they didn’t kill the FBI bitch today. This Callahan puta had her federal fingers all over the boss’s North Texas operation — and Zambrano had made it clear. He wanted those fingers floating in a jar of tequila on his mantel by the time he went to bed — pretty nail polish and all.