Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (14 page)

Paul smiled wistfully. “A nice idea. I’ve missed you too,
CB. But, to stay on topic, I did a bit of research on thermobaric weapons.
According to Wikipedia, the explosive material typically used is either
ethylene oxide or propylene oxide. Both of those fuels are widely available on
a commercial basis practically anywhere in the world. Iran itself is a major
producer of ethylene oxide. My guess is that’s what they used for their test in
the desert.”

“Oh, I see,” Capie slowly said. “If they wanted to use a
bomb somewhere, they don’t need to make the bomb in Iran and ship it out. That
might be hard to do, if it’s really big and heavy. They can build the bomb
almost anywhere, using local materials, including the fuel for the bomb. The
only special component is the detonators, which are much smaller and lighter
than the bomb itself and more easily shipped.”

“Exactly,” Paul admitted. “Although the detonators are
explosives all by themselves. You certainly couldn’t ship them by UPS!”

But Capie was looking very green around the gills. “What you
just told me, about the fuels? I just put that together with what I learned in
Shiraz.”

Paul blinked in return, looking suddenly apprehensive.
“Which is what? How did it go in Shiraz?”

Capie leaned earnestly forward. “They made several
detonators. Most of them are still in Iran. But at least one and probably more were
shipped out of the country, just after the test out in the desert.”

What she wasn’t saying and had no plans to tell him was the
story of her run-in with the Oni at the airport. Her husband wouldn’t take that
very well. In truth, she herself was still shaking a bit from that encounter.
The only reason she had escaped was that the fusion spell had startled them.
Next time, that spell probably wouldn’t work so well, at least, not as a distraction.
She would need to think up a better solution before she had another such confrontation
with them.

And she had been lucky too, in avoiding their pursuit. Using
the power of McDougall’s full talisman, she had managed to screw with the
energy of her portal from Shiraz, sending any pursuit off in a different
direction. She wondered what the Oni’s reaction had been when they had portaled
into the tomb of Ramses the Great in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. Oh, to
have been a fly on the wall for that event!

Her husband looked down and shook his head. “So they are
planning to use the detonators and build a bomb somewhere. But where? Here in
the States?”

“No,” was her answer. “I traced the detonator shipment to a
specific airline and a specific flight. It went by cargo service by Iran Air. First
leg of the journey was to Caracas, Venezuela.”

“Venezuela?” Paul asked, a puzzled frown on his face. “Why
there?”

“From there, it was transferred to a Gol Linhas Aereas
Inteligentes flight, non-stop to Guarulhos International Airport, Sao Paulo,
Brazil.”

Paul put hand to chin, deep in thought. “Sao Paulo, Brazil…”
And then he dropped his hand, his face blanching white, his eyes opening wide
in unrestrained and total surprise.

“That’s right,” Capie said, confirming his sudden obvious
guess. “Sao Paulo. Only two hundred miles from Rio de Janeiro and that was only
a few weeks ago, so plenty of time before the start of the International Summer
Olympics to build a bomb.”

“Oh, my…!” Paul started to say and then he caught his
breath. “They wouldn’t dare! The international repercussions! It could mean
war! It’s so incredible that they would even
think
of doing something so
hideous!”

She leaned closer to the Skype view. “Out in the desert, in
the test area, there were pieces of burnt wood and melted aluminum tubing. I
think that they built a few bleachers there, as part of the test, to see what
the blast would do to them. Bleachers like those in the Olympic stadium. And
remember, we are talking
Errabêlu
, remember? No regard for Normals,
right?”

Paul swallowed what he was about to say and closed his eyes.
“You’re right. This is probably an effort toward some larger goal of theirs. Heaven
only knows what that might be.  You’ve done excellent work. I take back everything
I said when you started this investigation. Now I need to make up for my lost
time. I’m not sure, but I think the Olympics opening ceremony is tomorrow
night. I’ll leave immediately for Rio. For all we know, the bomb might already
be in place at the sports stadium there.”

“That’s a good idea,” Capie said, with a grimace. “While you
do that, I’ll go directly to Sao Paulo and try to track the detonators. If I
can find how they plan to deliver the bomb, that will help us stop them.”

Paul reached out, holding his hand in sign language, thumb,
pinkie and index fingers extended, middle fingers folder over. “I love you,
dear, with all of my heart,” he said longingly. “You be careful. Take your
satellite phone with you—”

She grimaced distastefully. “I haven’t had time to figure
out how it works yet.”

He grinned. “Remember the ten percent rule, dear. You have
to be—”

“Ten percent as smart as the device you are trying to
operate,” she interrupted him with a glower. “You’ve said that before.”

“And remember to keep it charged. I love you.”

“You be careful too, Dom. And I love you,” she told him with
a slow shake of her head and the hint of a smile.

• • • •

Paul was forced to admit it, with all eight Oni talismans
strapped on him, he looked pretty odd. Three armbands on his arms, two overly
large belt buckles and three heavy medallion pendants hanging around his neck
not only looked weird, it was awkward to carry or even to walk around in a
normal fashion. But there was little choice. Even all eight talismans barely
provided the power of McDougall’s talisman (or that of any other wizard of
Errabêlu
).
He thought it highly likely that he would need that power of those talismans
too, heading into what could very well be a battle situation.

Now the groundwork. Where in Rio would the Olympics be held
specifically? And what would be the schedule? Would there be, like in years
past, an opening ceremony? If so, when and where would that be?

There was a lot to learn and, he strongly suspected, very
little time left in which to learn it.

• • • •

Forgoing sleep, and also throwing caution to the winds, Capie
portaled westward, straight across the North African Sahara desert, and out
into the Atlantic not far north of Cape Verde.

From there she turned south-westward, lengthening her stride
and paralleling the eastern coast of Brazil. She passed to the south of the
city of Rio de Janeiro, approaching the coastal city of Santos at nearly the
same time that Paul was nearing the Marianã Stadium in Rio.

Just north of Santos, she made her last portal jump, now airborne
and flying to the northwest over rugged country, on a direct bearing towards
the Sao Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport. Her first stop, once she got
there, would be to find the Gol Airlines computer network and hack into it.
Then she would need to check the Olympics schedule, to find out how much time
she had in order to stop this vile plot.

• • • •

In the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, Paul hitch-hiked on top
of a tractor-trailer riding east on the Via Dutra, approaching the city center
from the west. The ride was bumpy and noisy and he didn’t care much for the
smell either. However, the truck did obligingly change over to the 101 freeway
and take him nearly all the way downtown, to within two miles of the Maracanã Stadium.

The sun was low in the western horizon. According to the
Internet, sunset would occur locally at 5:24 p.m. And the opening ceremony
would start at 6 p.m. That wouldn’t leave him much time once he actually reached
the stadium to search for the bomb. He flew off when the truck reached the
cloverleaf near the waterfront, landing lightly on the asphalt of a side
avenue, the Monsenhor Manuel Gomes Road.

And then he leaned forward, dropping into a fast run.

“Steve Austin, eat your heart out,” he muttered, casting an
internal spell to increase the flow of O
₂
into his blood stream, and
the purging of CO
₂
and lactic acid from his muscles. He ramped up
his speed to thirty miles per hour. He could have gone faster, but the pedestrians
and vehicle traffic kept getting in his way.

Maneuvering through the city streets took him to and then
through the grounds of the Museu Nacional. Past that, he tap danced over
several sets of railroad tracks and a divided highway.

And up to an eight foot tall fence which, with a little
additional assistance from another spell, he leapt over.

Into the stadium parking lot. Well, one of them anyway. And
full too.

The opening ceremonies started in just two hours. Two hours
to search the largest stadium in Brazil, the second largest in all of South
America, with a seating capacity of over 78,800 spectators. Just thinking of
all of the places to search in a facility of this size seemed daunting.

On the other hand, like a dog trained to sniff out
explosives, the first thing he planned to try was an aerial detection spell of
ethylene oxide. Trotting over to the nearest emergency exit door, he unlocked
it with a flick of the fingers and ducked inside.

• • • •

According to the cargo records of the Gol Airlines, the
single crate in question had been offloaded from Flight 408 from Caracas and
then shipped to the business address of a Usinagem de Precisão (
Precision
Machining
) in the nearby city of Jundiai, a little over thirty miles away.
A quick check of the Internet revealed the address to be located at the Comte
Rolim Adolfo Amaro-Jundiai State Airport, apparently at a hangar not far from
the flight line. She was headed there now, as fast as she could fly. Her watch
told her it was 4:34 p.m. local time.

• • • •

Nothing. Nada. Zilch. El zippo. Nichts. Ninguna cosa. Rien.
A big fat zero.

There was a chance that he had missed it, obviously. His
search wasn’t as complete and as thorough as he would have liked it to be. On
the other hand, he was assuming that this bomb (or bombs, plural?) would be
massive, weighing a thousand pounds or more, and that they would be placed in a
location to inflict the greatest amount of damage and causalities. And be placed
in a spot without it being obvious what it was and also escaping the notice of
the hundreds of security personnel and police wandering around on a regular
basis.

That sort of cut down on the possibilities. And he had
examined all of them.

And nothing.

It wasn’t here. For a few moments, he considered the
possibility that he and his wife had jumped to the wrong conclusion. They could
be totally mistaken about the whole chain of events. But Paul dismissed the thought.
He would go back over the stadium all over again. And again, if need be. There
were just too many lives at stake. If he and Capie were wrong, then they would
know that in just a couple of hours. Then they could laugh about it and go
home. One way or another, it would be over with. At that time, he could quit
looking and take a rest. But not until then.

Nervously, he checked his watch. It was 5:12 p.m. He cast a
spell in an attempt to calm himself.

He headed back to the place where he had started the first
search and began a second one.

• • • •

She touched down lightly in front of a small hanger to the
east of the airstrip and walked over to a small side door. The knob was locked
and there was a padlocked hasp too. The two locks hardly slowed her down at all
and she strode through the entryway into the building. However, there was
nothing to see. The building’s interior was completely deserted except for some
paper litter scattered around on the floor.

“Quem é você? O que você está fazendo aqui? O que você quer?
(
Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want?
)” demanded a
voice from behind her at the doorway.

She spun around. The voice belonged to a middle-aged man
wearing dirty mechanics overalls, with heavy jowls and a short black crew cut. With
a rapid snap of her fingers, she immediately froze him in place.

“I don’t have time to be courteous about this,” she snarled.
“Forgive me for being rude.” With another snap of her fingers, she created an
avatar of the guy. At the appearance of a duplicate of himself, the eyes of the
man grew incredibly wide and beads of sweat instantly arose on his forehead.

Capie turned to the avatar. “How long has this hangar been
empty?”

“Only an hour or so,” the avatar replied in Portuguese. The
mechanic groaned, his eyes darting back and forth in panic. Capie ignored him.

“Tell me about this place,” Capie gruffly commanded of the
avatar. “Who was here? What did they do? What happened to them and the stuff
that was here?”

“Four men, I think, moved in a month ago. The sign they hung
up said ‘Precision Machining’ but I never saw any customers and the doors were
usually locked. I don’t know what they did. A few trucks came here, making
deliveries. Then, this morning, I come in early, to work on engine on bosses’
plane, two hangars over. I get here at sunrise, just in time to see a huge
plane land here. A big four engine one, with a rear cargo ramp. Looked North
American. Even though runway here is only 1,400 meters long, big plane has no
problem landing, with room to spare. Taxied over here and the rear ramp, she
drops open. Two men get out. The big hanger doors here opened up and a fork
lift loaded two large pallets covered with tarps on board. After that, the
ramp, she goes up, the two men get in and the plane takes off. A beautiful
sight, that. Didn’t need the whole runway then either. Then the four men, they
are still here. An hour ago, they load the forklift onto a trailer and drive
off in two big trucks. They left the hangar all locked up. That’s all I know.”