They Disappeared

27

Jamaica, Queens, New York City

Lori Hall, a criminalist at the NYPD crime lab, had been up late for the past five nights writing her research paper.

In addition to her full-time job, Hall, a thirty-three-year-old single mom with a four-year-old daughter, Carrie, was working on her master’s degree in recombinant DNA technology at New York University.

Shortly after Hall’s divorce a year ago, Carrie was diagnosed with a rare and dangerous lung disorder. She needed specialized treatment with expensive drugs not covered by Hall’s work health plan. Hall needed her master’s degree to be upgraded from 1B to a level 2 criminalist. It meant a raise, which would help pay for Carrie’s treatment.

It also meant Hall faced the added pressure of her university work and her growing caseload at the lab.

This morning she’d hoped to wrap up analysis of trace from an assault in the Bronx and move on to analysis for a homicide in Bed-Stuy when Gil Doddard, her unit supervisor, put a brown paper bag on her workstation.

“Hold up, Lori, got a hot one for you.”

“What’s this?”

“A mystery we need you to unravel.”

Hall glanced at the accompanying paperwork, tugged on fresh gloves, withdrew a small toy airplane and gave it a cursory inspection.

“Take this thing apart, analyze every component.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Anything unusual. Anything that shouldn’t be there. It’s already been processed for latents and trace.”

“And it’s a hot one?”

“You heard about that case that just happened, about the tourists from Montana? A mom and her son abducted near Times Square?”

“Yes, something on the news this morning, might be tied to our double homicide in Brooklyn.”

“This toy is part of it and your analysis is the number-one priority in town right now. So get going.”

“All right, I’m on it.”

Hall inhaled deeply, then let it out slowly.

No pressure. Stay calm. Do the work.

She cleared her other case, set out dating the proper paperwork for the new one. She adjusted herself on her chair at her bench and began examining the toy.

A jumbo jetliner made of plastic. She measured it at four inches long with a three-and-a-half-inch wingspan. Hall then weighed and photographed it. Then she activated the features and the red lights on the nose, tail and wing tips flashed and jet engines sounded. She rolled the plane back on its wheels, released it and it rushed forward, tilting for takeoff. It was absent of any markings, other than a Made in China sticker on the bottom and a tiny bar code on the side of the base.

Hall placed the toy under her illuminated, German-made wide-angle magnifying lamp and recorded the code. She then went online and submitted the code to a number of secure databases.

Results were instant.

This was a common pull-back novelty toy. They are often used for promotion with airline logos and markings. Hall noted that they were manufactured around the globe in India but chiefly China. This one was made in the Chenghai district and shipped around the world from the port at Shantou, Shenzhen. This one was model number F-SE23679C.

The dominant material was non-phthalate PVC.

With the toy enlarged under the lamp, Hall set out to disassemble it, evoking her days when she’d dissected frogs in high school. But as she went to separate the fuselage from the chassis, she caught her breath.

Tiny scratches along the seam.

She went to her forms. The latent and trace process did not involve any disassembly.

Who made the scratches?

She adjusted her magnifier.

These were not marks from the manufacturing process.

This thing’s been opened before.

Hall pried the base from the fuselage to reveal the tiny casing for the motor and batteries. She was gentle, as small wires were tethered to the section.

She examined the motor and tiny gearbox, reviewing how pull-back toys operated on Newton’s third law of action and reaction. The toy was powered by springs and gears through a basic gear train. It could be put in neutral, backward and forward modes, and had the ability to store energy.

Hall got all that.

Nothing out of the ordinary here, she thought, taking photographs and making notes.

She moved on to the housing for the batteries. The sound and lights features were powered by four common AG13 batteries that looked like tiny buttons, or pills. Using tweezers, Hall removed the batteries and examined them until she was satisfied that there was nothing unusual about them.

What is the deal with this toy? I don’t see anything.

She continued analyzing the battery housing, the tiny metal contacts.

Sticking out her bottom lip and shaking her head, Hall was moving to the conclusion that there was nothing suspicious about this item when something caught her eye.

She repositioned the housing under her magnifying lamp.

Something strange about the contact clips.

More microscopic scratches. The clips seem to have been “thickened.” Hall took more photos, then found the right tools and with surgical precision removed the clips.

She held them under the lamp.

Early in her career, Hall had worked in explosives. She’d gone to Hazardous Devices School at the FBI-U.S. army facility at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama. She was posted in Iraq and became an expert on bomb components. When she returned she rode with the NYPD bomb squad.

Hall knew that she was looking at something remarkable.

A microscopic wafer detonator.

She set it under her microscope.

Its components were characteristic of a ceramic substrate with a glaze of polyimide but reengineered with radio static chips the diameter of a human hair. This device could function flawlessly using a dedicated current pulse that fired with a preset or dialed-in frequency.

Nothing could jam it or stop it.

I’ve never seen anything like this before.

Hall had read speculation that some groups were on the cusp of developing microscopic detonators that were virtually invisible to detection by traditional security measures like dogs, swabs scanners and X-rays at airports.

These new devices could be fired through a wireless device like a laptop or cell phone. They were fail-proof.

They could detonate the most powerful explosives one could build.

Hall licked her dry lips and reached for her phone.

“Gil,” she said, “you’d better come see this.”