Swain, of course, thought her hoarse voice was sexy. She was beginning to think she could sneeze and he would find it sexy. As often as he’d made love to her over the past week and a half, she suspected he’d lied about his age and was really just twenty-two, with premature gray in his hair. Not that his attention wasn’t flattering; in fact, she soaked it up like a plant starved for rain.
However, it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been doing anything other than going at it like bunny rabbits. Either Swain had a talent for locating the sleazoids in the city, or he had some really questionable acquaintances. While Lily-always disguised-had handled the peripheral things they needed, such as locating a van that fit their requirements and having two magnetic signs made, getting the business cards printed up as well as forms with very official-looking technical checklists on them and “SSC” at the top, clipboards, a variety of tools, their coveralls and boots, Swain had been associating with some very rough characters in order to buy the detonators they needed.
He had wanted to build the remote control himself, something he said was easily done with the remote-control system from any radio-controlled toy-such as a car or an airplane, available in any good toy or electronics store-but decided that using a custom control would look more professional, so he had forked over the money required, and bitched about the cost for days.
Then, going by the information contained in the blueprints, he had set about determining where the charges should be placed, and how strong they should be. Lily had never really thought about demolitions from a mathematical standpoint, though she’d known Averill had taken pride in calculating the strength of his charges to exactly what was required to do the job, and nothing more. Swain had explained it all, reeling off numbers as if they were general knowledge: this much Semtex would do this much damage. He used the terms plastique and Semtex interchangeably, but when she asked, he acknowledged that they weren’t exactly the same. C-4, plastique, and Semtex were all in the same family of explosives, but plastique was the more widely known term and was used ail-inclusively, but incorrectly. Lily hated when details were wrong; too often her life had depended on getting the details right, so she insisted he say Semtex when he meant Semtex. He’d rolled his eyes, but humored her.
He’d spent hours showing her how and where to place a charge and set the detonator. The detonator was the easy part, but he was very particular about where the charges went. He had numbered the locations, then prepared the charges for each and labeled each charge with the number corresponding to where he wanted it to go. They had studied until they could reel off each location and its number without hesitation, memorized the blueprints, then driven out into the country, where he had marked off the distances to give them a better feel of the size of the complex and how long the job would take.
The good news was, they had a cover for being in the complex. The bad news was, depending on what they found when they got in there, placing all the charges could take a couple of hours or more. The longer they were in there, the better the chance of discovery. Swain was safe; Lily was not, especially if for some reason Rodrigo showed up. He would know from Damone that “security experts” were touring the facility, and he might be curious. If he did appear, Swain would handle the meet-and-greet while Lily busied herself elsewhere and hoped Rodrigo wouldn’t insist on meeting the other “expert.”
Dr. Giordano was the other danger, as far as recognizing Lily was concerned. Likewise, she would try not to attract his attention, though that would be more difficult. After all, the facility was his and his work was his pride and joy. He would be very interested in Swain’s opinion of the security measures in place. Since Swain was supposedly the owner of SSC, he would be more the focus of attention than Lily, but she couldn’t hope to escape completely.
Neither of them had forgotten that this was to be Dr. Giordano’s last day on earth. Lily remembered how kind he’d been to her when she’d been so ill, but at the same time she knew he was at the heart of an evil scheme. So long as Giordano was alive, the knowledge of how to mutate a virus so it would pass from human to human could be used to produce a pandemic. If not avian influenza, then it would be something else. Viruses were deadly enough without his help. The pandemic might occur anyway, at any time, but she’d be damned if she would let it be deliberately timed so someone would make a lot of money.
The plan was, after the charges were set, they would hold a mock bomb-threat drill, timing how fast the buildings could be emptied. When everyone was outside, Swain would detonate the charges and almost simultaneously Lily would execute Dr. Giordano. The percussion and fire from the explosions would certainly cause panic, perhaps some injuries. They themselves would slip in earplugs before detonation, and make certain they were standing behind something for shelter. In the confusion they would get into the van and drive away-they hoped. Nothing was taken for granted.
A luxury hotel wasn’t the best place they could have chosen to prepare explosive charges. Everything had to be tidied away every day before the arrival of the housekeeping service, and they didn’t want to put the charges in the van as they were completed, in case the van was broken into. The last thing in the world they wanted was some punk in possession of that much Semtex.
“Are you ready, Charles?” Swain asked. Charles Fournier was the name they had chosen for Lily. Swain got such a kick out of it he’d been calling her Charles even when they were alone.
“I think this is the best it’s going to get,” she said, getting up from the vanity and pirouetting for him as best she could in the heavy work boots. “Do I look okay?”