He skidded to a stop outside the safe house and went straight to the basement. He walked among the stacks of weapons and explosives, looking for inspiration, looking for anything that would give him a fighting chance. Thoughts formed and faded, but one man simply couldn’t assault a force that was twenty times larger and expect to live.

He spotted the two crates of British PE8 plastic explosives stacked in the corner. Jake had used the blocks in the top crate to hit Yaxaas’s Range Rover and to create the diversion that had drawn the helicopter off the delivery van.

He’d need a similar diversion tonight to distract.

Jake moved the empty wooden box to the floor and popped the latches on the second one.

He stared at it for the better part of a minute.

It was nearly empty.

A disturbing idea crept into his head—regardless of how hard he tried to block it out. It was ridiculous, really, and Jake chided himself for wasting time and got back to work, collecting weapons and gear for his assault on Yaxaas’s compound.

Jake went to the safe for fresh batteries for his night vision equipment.

He entered the combination and picked through the shelves. Up top were stacks of dollars and euros. He lifted a brick of hundreds and briefly considered trying to buy Pickens’s safety, but there were simply too many guards to bribe. A single loyal soldier would ruin everything. Jake kept looking. On the second shelf were the electronics, including more night optics and a device known as an FTIR spectrometer.

Jake looked at the spectrometer. He’d used one briefly during ordnance training back in the States. It was a high-tech gadget but simple to operate. Similar models were in the hands of U.S. soldiers, sailors, and marines throughout the world. It analyzed and identified the type of explosives used in an IED to assist in identification of the bomb-maker.

Jake found fresh batteries for his night vision goggles and the laser on his pistol. He was about to close the safe, but his analytical mind was still having trouble reconciling events as they appeared with facts he knew.

He took the spectrometer down from the shelf. It was a little larger than a brick and about half the weight. He pushed the power button, half wishing that it wouldn’t turn on, but the display lit up, ready for action.

Jake returned to the bottom crate of PE8 and used his knife to slice open one of the remaining packages. He pointed the spectrometer at the exposed block and in just a few seconds it completed its analysis: 12.5 percent binding agents and 86.5 percent RDX.

No surprise there—those were the plastic and the explosive in plastic explosives.