DIESEL WAS AT the dining room table with coffee and my computer when Carl and I walked in.
“Every time I call you for help, you don’t answer your phone,” I said. “Where were you this time? Peru? Madagascar?”
“I was in the shower. You didn’t say to call back. I figured you were pulling on rubber gloves and decontaminating Munch’s house.”
“The monkeys all escaped through the pet door.”
“There’s a pet door?”
“Anyway, I found them and took them back to the habitat. Ranger has one of his men staying there until we find Gail.”
“It looks like you didn’t take them all back to the habitat.”
“I guess Carl had enough of the nuts and berries thing. What are you doing on the computer?”
“HTPB stands for hydroxyl-?terminated polybutadiene. It’s a clear, thick liquid used for rocket fuel. APCP is ammonium perchlorate composite propellant, an oxidizing agent that helps burn the fuel. BlueBec rockets are sounding rockets. They’re about eigh teen feet in length, and they carry instruments designed to take mea sure ments and perform experiments in the suborbital area of the Earth’s atmosphere. They’re Canadian made, and they’ve been around a long time. It would be fairly easy for Wulf to get his hands on some.”
“Do you think this is what made the rocket tails we saw when we were in the Barrens?”
“No. I think we saw something smaller.”
Diesel punched a number into his cell phone.
“I need a favor,” he said to whoever was on the other end. “Eugene Scanlon was project manager at a research lab in Trenton, Brytlin Technologies. I need the names and addresses of everyone on his team.”
Diesel shut down the computer and went to the kitchen for fresh coffee. “Your rat is awake,” he said.
“He’s a hamster.”
“Whatever.”
I gave Rex fresh water and dropped half a walnut and a baby carrot into his bowl.
“How will your contact get the names and addresses?”
“I don’t know. He has ways. I imagine he’ll hack into the company computer.”
“That’s illegal.”
“You have a problem with that?”
“Just saying. Where will Wulf go to get the rocket fuel?”
“I’d guess whoever had the barium also had the ability to get the fuel components.”
“Yeah, but Wulf blew one of those guys to smithereens.”
Diesel answered his phone and wrote three names and addresses on the back of Munch’s shopping list. He hung up and shoved the list into his pocket.
“I want to talk to these people.”
“It would go faster if we divided them up. It’s Sunday, and Gail has been missing since Thursday. We have no idea what Wulf intended to do with her, but it can’t be good. Maybe we should bring the police in.”
“Give me one more day. If Wulf learns the police are combing the Barrens, he’ll pack up and leave. And he’ll take Munch and Gail Scanlon with him … or worse. There were two other people working under Scanlon. Lu Kim Rule and Vladimir Strunchek. The third name I have is his supervisor. Barry Berman. Berman lives in north Trenton, Rule lives not far from here on Becker, and Strunchek was Eugene Scanlon’s neighbor. You take Rule, I’ll talk to Berman, and we’ll meet back here and do Strunchek together.”
The Subaru was in the parking lot, but the Jeep that Ranger had loaned me was with Hal in the Barrens.
“Drive me to my parents’ house,” I said to Diesel. “I can borrow my Great-?Uncle Sandor’s car.”