“The usual,” Allison said. “Bullet to the head, decapitation, evisceration, bombings. It depends on just how strong a message they're trying to send. You'll need to think the way they do.”
Noah nodded. “I can handle it,” he said. He rose from his seat at the table and collected the rest of the team by eye. They shook hands all around and followed him out of the room. A moment later, three vehicles left the underground parking garage. Neil and Moose headed home, while Noah took Sarah along in his Corvette to begin choosing equipment.
Noah flashed his ID at the guard shack that marked the entrance to the restricted area of the gigantic compound. Taking up almost half of the fifteen-square-mile region, this was where the top-secret aspects of E & E could be found, and the local residents simply thought it was some sort of military complex. Noah drove along the twisting, mile-long roadway and emerged into a cluster of large concrete buildings.
He pulled up in front of the R & D building and was greeted at the entrance by one of their security officers. Once again he showed his ID, and Sarah produced her own. The guard studied them intently for several seconds, comparing the photographs to the faces in front of him before he handed them back and allowed them to pass into the main hallway.
Wally Lawson stepped out of one of the rooms off that hallway, saw Noah and broke into a big grin.
“Camelot!” Wally shouted, and then he reached out and grabbed Noah's hand, pumping it vigorously. “It's good to see you. Man, oh man, have I got some goodies to show you today!”
Noah's eyebrows rose slightly. “We got a mission,” he said. “I was told to come to you for vehicles and to see what else you might have.”
Wally's eyes went wide and his face lit up in a gigantic smile. “Oh, great! What kind of mission? Where at? You do know that I'm cleared for all that information, right?”
“Yes,” Noah said, “I've been told that. It's a domestic mission, the elimination of some high-ranking cartel members and their families. They've set up an operation in Columbia, Missouri, and I gather their drugs are flooding the streets throughout the Midwest, maybe even a lot further.”
Wally began chewing on his bottom lip, his eyes darting all around as he thought about what Noah had told him. “Okay, okay,” he mumbled. “Okay, I've got just the thing for you! Come on, you're gonna love this!”
Wally took off down the hall without even waiting to see if Noah and Sarah followed, and they fell in behind. He led them to one of the development rooms further down the hall and motioned for them to follow him inside.
Within the room were two technicians, a man and a woman. They looked up, curious, and Wally introduced them to Noah. “Jazz, Lenny,” Wally said, addressing the woman first, “this is Camelot! Camelot, meet Jasmine and Lenny. These two are a pair of the brightest and most diabolical minds you'll ever find anywhere, and we were lucky to get them.”
Noah shook hands with both of the technicians and introduced Sarah, as well. When all of the introductions and handshakes were over, Wally spoke up again. “Okay, kids, show ’em what you've got.”
Jasmine smiled. “I'm guessing you're familiar with plastic explosives, right? Well, Lenny and I have come up with a whole new formula that is half again as powerful when it explodes, but a dozen times more stable. As a result, we’re able to do things with it that no one has ever done before. Take a look over here.”
She pointed to where Lenny was standing beside a workbench that held what appeared to be a very large suitcase. He opened the lid and raised it, and a metal framework expanded upward until it made a cube that measured about thirty inches on a side. There were a number of components inside the framework and a lot of circuitry on the outside.
Tucked inside the lid of the case was what appeared to be one large plastic tank and several smaller ones. The big one contained a thick, white liquid, while the others contained thinner liquids in various colors.
A slot near the bottom of the case opened up, and something slid out. A second later, it opened to become the keyboard and monitor of a computer.
“This is a high-speed 3-D printer,” Lenny said, “but instead of using plastics, it uses our formula of plastic explosive. The explosive itself is a neutral color, sort of an off white, but this printer can inject color into each cubic millimeter of the plastic, so you can make an object that is intricately detailed. It can blend colors to give you exactly the shade you need, anything from dull plastic to shiny metallic. Let me show you what it can do.”