“Can you move it?” Alex asked. “How large are the denominations?”
“We can move it. They’re in stacks of hundreds. But I’d like a different car.”
Alex frowned, but acquiesced. “I’ll try to figure something out. So, Greg, what’s the something else?”
“What?”
“Earlier you said you had leverage, ‘lots of money and something else’.”
I felt Greg’s chest expand at my back, and his arms tightened around me. “Ah yes. About that . . .”
Greg fell silent. When he didn’t continue after several seconds, I twisted to face him again. I found him pressing his lips together, like he had a secret and dreaded having to share it.
“What did you do?”
“I may have,” he tossed his head from side to side in a considering motion before finally admitting, “I may have rigged the refinery to explode.”
It took me a full minute to recover from his statement, that he may have rigged the refinery to explode. When I finally found my voice I said, “Start from the beginning.”
“I added acetone to their spliced line.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning . . . it’s highly probable that the refinery will explode.”
“Greg!”
“I know, I know.” He lifted both his hands as though surrendering.
“Greg!”
“I’m not sorry. These are the wankers who have been stealing from the people of Nigeria for decades, not to mention ruining farmland, fragile ecosystems, and terrorizing innocent civilians. People are left with no usable water. No water means no fish, no farmland. And no fish and no farmland means no food.” He lowered his hands and wrapped his arms around me. “Yes, it was a small refinery—as far as refineries go—but it was impressively large for an illegal operation. And it was obvious to me that they’d invested a good deal of money in its construction. Extensive automation, latest technology.”
“I didn’t see any impressive technology. The place looked dilapidated, like it was falling down,” I countered.
“You wouldn’t have, not the way you entered the building. When they brought us in it was through new control rooms.”
I glared at him. I heard Alex clear his throat. Seconds ticked by.
Greg glared back, but ultimately he broke the stalemate. “I was angry and I wanted to make sure I hit them where it hurt.”
“But where did you get the acetone?”
“At the sentinel house by the mainline where I stole the Jeep. There were drums of it in the garage. Acetone is used to clean up soil after oil spills, specifically a hexane-acetone solvent mixture. I’m guessing he had such a large quantity in order to hastily remove environmental evidence of the spliced line.”
“So you did what exactly?”
“I rolled the drums out and emptied them into the line. At the time, I estimated it would take seventy-two hours to reach the refinery, betting that they’d move the hostages once they awoke and discovered me missing. I calculated the fluid mechanics while you were asleep and the number is closer to seventy-eight hours.”
Alex’s stifled laughter met my ears and I glanced at the computer screen, found him bent to the side, covering his mouth with his hand, his shoulders shaking.
Of course Alex would find this hilarious. Of course.
Of course.
I crossed my arms and continued questioning my husband. “Acetone is volatile and flammable, but how can you be sure it will ignite?”
“When you refine crude oil, you use a distillation tower. The crude oil goes through a heating furnace or a boiler on its way to the tower, and temperatures are in excess of one thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Acetone auto ignites at just under nine hundred degrees.”
I gazed at him with wonder. “So as soon as the acetone moves through the boiler. . . ?”
His eyes brightened with excitement, like a little kid who has just discovered firecrackers. “Kaboom.”
“Kaboom?” I parroted.
Greg made a mushroom cloud motion with his hands, his grin widening. “Big kaboom.”
“Big kaboom? Is that the technical term?” Both Greg and I turned our attention back to the screen, finding Sandra’s face filling the window. “See, this is why I won’t let you play with Alex, Greg. He likes to blow things up figuratively, and you like to blow things up literally,” she chided.
Alex was still smiling as he gently pushed her out of the way, “I like to blow things up literally, too.”
“All men do.” She sounded exasperated.
We needed to get back on track. “How much time do we have left? Before the acetone reaches the refinery?”
“Thirty-six hours, give or take.”
“How are we supposed to get a message to these people in thirty-six hours?”
“Leave that to me,” Alex said, no longer looking at the camera. He must’ve minimized our window because I could see that he was typing and reading and clicking. “We need to be able to stay in contact. Do you still have the phone?”