Nir just shook his head. “CARL it is. Now, let’s see if we can get as much work done in CARL as we did in our team headquarters.”

“I’ll start,” Nicole said.

She proceeded to fill them in on the same information she’d passed on to Nir. When she gave them the Saad Salim story, violent threats were voiced against his person, his boat, and his financial empire. The anger turned to cheers when she let them know about Alicia’s sticking it to him to the tune of ten million dollars.

Nicole concluded her report by saying, “Now, here’s the one negative. Our timeline just blew up. Before, we were looking at two months to get the explosives mounted to the artwork. Now, we’re looking at two weeks since this guy wants the originals. He’s not the patient type.”

Cries of panic came from around the table.

Nir said, “I know, I know. That’s what my little chat with Efraim was all about. But after some threats on both sides, we came to a mutual understanding.”

“Meaning you got him to agree with you,” said Yossi.

“Well, yes, but I agreed with him agreeing with me.” Nir unwrapped one of the little chocolate bars and popped it into his mouth. “It’s not as impossible as it seems. While I was on the phone, Efraim checked with the bomb folks. They already have the generators we need standing by in a warehouse. Our little lab of horrors will finish up the explosive sheets in a couple of days. But we’ll have only eight, so we need to choose which bad guys will get them.”

Groans of disappointment this time. They’d all been counting on more.

“Listen, I’m bummed too. But at least that’s more than half of what we wanted. In every operation, you have to adapt. Let’s just be smart about who gets them.” He unwrapped a second candy bar and tossed it into his mouth, then immediately regretted it. Looking at the wrapper, he read Elite Bittersweet Chocolate. He spit the offending “treat” back into the torn wrapper and threw it toward the trash can. It missed and splatted on the ground.

“Stay classy,” said Dafna, as Nir wiped his fingers on his pants.

“Who eats… Never mind. The sheets of explosives will be sandwiched in a false back in the generators. The detonator will be hidden as part of the machine’s electronics. The cement backs will be stored in a false bottom in each crate. And they’ll fudge the weight of the generators to hide the extra kilos.”

“Obviously, we don’t have time for them to be transported by ship,” Lahav said. “Are we going to fly them to the States?”