'Plastic explosive. The stuff was used in Vietnam, but now it's sold to private industry for construction, mining, demolition. Hel, farmers can get it to blast out tree stumps.'

'Aren't explosives tightly controled?'

'Yes and no. The regs for transport are tighter than those for storage and use. If a highway is under construction, for example, you need a special truck with escorts and a prescribed route bypassing congested areas. But once the stuff is on-site it's usualy stored in a mobile vault in the middle of a field with the word explosive written on it in large letters.

'The company hires some old geezer as guard and pays him minimum wage, mainly to meet insurance requirements. Vaults can be burgled, misplaced, or simply disappear.'

Ryan drew on his cigarette, exhaled.

'The military is supposed to account for every ounce of plastic explosive, but construction crews don't have to ledger up that precisely. Say a blaster gets ten sticks, uses three quarters of each, and pockets the rest. No one's the wiser. Al the guy needs is a detonator and he's in business. Or he can sel the stuff black market. Explosives are always in demand.'

'Assuming Simington filched explosives, could he have gotten them on board?'

'Apparently it's not al that hard. Terrorists used to take plastique, flatten it to the thickness of a wad of bils, and put it in their walets. How many security guards check the bils in your walet? And you can get an electrical detonator the size of a watchcase these days. The Libyan terrorists that blew up Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie slipped the stuff on in a cassette case. Simington could have found a way.'

'Jesus.'

'I've also had news from la belle province. Earlier this week a group of homeowners got suspicious about a Ferrari parked on their street. It seems sports cars costing over a hundred thousand dolars don't commonly overnight in that part of Montreal. Turned out to be a good cal. Police found the owner, one Alain "the Fox" Barboli, stuffed in the trunk with two bulets in his head. Barboli was a member of the Rock Machine and had ties to the Sicilian Mafia. Carcajou's got it.'

Operation Carcajou was a multiagency task force devoted to the investigation of outlaw bikers in Quebec province. I'd worked with them on a number of murders.

'Does Carcajou think Barboli was revenge for Petriceli?'

'Or Barboli was involved in the Petriceli hit and the big boys are sanitizing the witness list. If there was a hit.'

'If Simington could get his hands on explosives, the Hels Angels would have no problem.'

'Like buying Cheez Whiz at the 7-Eleven. Look, why don't you get back up here and tel this Tyrel—'