Rhyme sighed. He understood. "How many billions and billions in production?"
"The Daiwana Corporation in Seoul sold a hundred and forty-two thousand of them last year. To retail stores, OEMs, and licensees. There's no coding on them to tell where they were shipped."
"Great. Just great."
Cooper continued to read the screen. "Hm. The folks at ERC say they're very interested in the device and hope we'll add it to their database."
"Oh, our number one priority," Rhyme grumbled.
His shoulder muscles suddenly cramped and he had to lean back into the headrest of the wheelchair. He breathed deeply for a few minutes until the nearly unbearable pain subsided, then vanished. Sachs, the only one who noticed, stepped forward, but Rhyme shook his head toward her, said, "How many wires you make out, Mel?"
"Just two, it looks like."
"Multichannel or fiber optic?"
"Nope. Just average-ordinary bell wire."
"No shunts?"
"None."
A shunt is a separate wire that completes the connection if a battery or timer wire is cut in an attempt to render the bomb safe. All sophisticated bombs have shunting mechanisms.
"Well," Sellitto said, "that's good news, isn't it? Means he's getting careless."
But Rhyme believed just the opposite. "Don't think so, Lon. The only point of a shunt is to make rendering safe tougher. Not having a shunt means he was confident enough the bomb wouldn't be found and would blow up just like he'd planned--in the air."
"This thing," Dellray asked contemptuously, looking over the bomb components. "What kind of people'd our boy have to rub shoulders with to make something like this? I got good CIs knowing 'bout bomb suppliers."
Fred Dellray too had learned more about bombs than he'd ever intended. His longtime partner and friend, Toby Doolittle, had been on the ground floor of the Oklahoma City federal building several years ago. He'd been killed instantly in the fertilizer bomb explosion.
But Rhyme shook his head. "It's all off-the-shelf stuff, Fred. Except for the explosives and the detonator cord. Hansen probably supplied them. Hell, the Dancer could've gotten everything he needed at Radio Shack."
"What?" Sachs asked, surprised.
"Oh, yeah," Cooper said, adding, "we call it the Bomber's Store."
Rhyme wheeled along the table over to a piece of steel housing twisted like crumpled paper, stared at it for a long moment.
Then he backed up and looked at the ceiling. "But why plant it outside?" he pondered. "Percey said there were always lots of people around. And doesn't the pilot walk around the plane before they take off, look at the wheels and things?"
"I think so," Sellitto said.
"Why didn't Ed Carney or his copilot see it?"
"Because," Sachs said suddenly, "the Dancer couldn't put the bomb on board until he knew for sure who was going to be in the plane."
Rhyme swiveled around to her. "That's it, Sachs! He was there watching. When he saw Carney get on board he knew he had at least one of the victims. He slipped it on somewhere after Carney got on board and before the plane took off. You've got to find out where, Sachs. And search it. Better get going."
"Only have an hour--well, less now," said cool-eyed Amelia Sachs as she started toward the door.
"One thing," Rhyme said.
She paused.
"The Dancer's a little different from everybody else you've ever been up against." How could he explain it? "With him, what you see isn't necessarily what is."
&nb