Foreign Influence_ A Thriller - Brad Thor [54]
Vaughan walked back into the kitchen. Davidson was sitting at the table and looked up. “Anything?”
“Nothing,” replied Vaughan.
“Do you mind if I take a look around now that you’re done?”
Vaughan grabbed a towel off the counter and threw it to him. “Go ahead. Just make sure you wipe everything down. I don’t want to leave any prints behind.”
“Cautious motherfucker, aren’t you?”
“Ten minutes,” he replied, “and then we’re out of here.”
Davidson nodded and headed toward the bedroom.
Opening up the double doors beneath the sink with the toe of his shoe, Vaughan bent down and looked for another towel or a rag of his own. There were certain places you didn’t want to be linked to. An apartment you broke into without a warrant was definitely one of them, followed closely by a residence belonging to a Muslim cab driver who had a fondness for Sayyid Qutb. Nothing but trouble could come from being connected to this place.
Under the sink, he found a white plastic grocery bag stuffed with more of the same white plastic bags. In the center was what looked like a pink towel. He emptied the lot of them onto the kitchen floor only to realize that the pink mass in the center wasn’t a towel but a folded shopping bag from a beauty supply store.
It was an odd item for Nasiri to have. Maybe someone had left it in his cab. Or maybe Nasiri had a girlfriend. If they could locate a girlfriend, they might be able to locate him.
Vaughan unfolded the bag. There was a silhouette of a woman with perfectly coifed hair and the name, address, and phone number of the store. Vaughan opened the bag and looked inside. He found a receipt dated two days before the accident. Nasiri had purchased only one item, but multiple bottles of it.
Vaughan began going through the other bags looking for receipts. He didn’t find a ton, but he found enough and they were very interesting.
In addition to purchasing hydrogen peroxide at the beauty supply store, he had also bought more of the same, along with drain cleaner, at grocery stores and pharmacies. He included other odds and ends to try to mask what he was doing, but Vaughan knew what he was up to. Nasiri wasn’t giving out dye jobs and throwing drain-cleaning parties for his friends.
Davidson stepped back into the kitchen and saw Vaughan with the plastic bags. “What’d you find?”
“Do you know what the mother of Satan is?”
“No idea,” said Davidson.
“Triacetone triperoxide. TATP,” said Vaughan, holding up the receipts.
“Should I know what that is?”
“It’s also called acetone peroxide. It is an explosive popular with terrorists. Its ingredients are very easy to get. The two most important things you need to make it are hydrogen peroxide and sulfuric acid.”
“Where do you get sulfuric acid?”
“Drain cleaner,” said Vaughan, holding up the receipts. “It looks like every time he goes to the store, he picks up a bottle or two, or sometimes even three. He appears to have been doing it in small batches so as not to raise suspicion.”
“And fly right beneath the radar.”
Vaughan nodded. “Exactly. It’s called the mother of Satan because it is so volatile. One of the ways we could spot bomb makers when I was in Iraq was because the best ones were missing fingers, sometimes even hands.”
“The best ones were missing fingers or hands? That doesn’t make sense.”
“They were the ones who learned to respect their craft. Lose a finger, or two, or three and you become incredibly conscientious. Lose a hand and you’ll probably end up being an instructor.”
“Is that the stuff that was used in the London bombings?” asked Davidson.
“Yup. It was also part of the shoe bomber plot, the 2006 transatlantic plane bombing plot, the underwear bomber plot, and what that Afghan named Zazi they busted in Denver was working on.”
“So Nasiri is a bomb maker?”
“That, or he was acquiring the ingredients for someone else,” said Vaughan. “Either way, this is probably the real reason he took off after hitting Alison Taylor.”
“So what do we do now? I’m no lawyer,” Davidson stated,