I moped around to the passenger seat. “I’m going to be really mad at you if I get arrested.”
“It could be worse,” Diesel said. “You could be Gail Scanlon.”
I looked at the ignition. No key.
“There’s no key in the ignition,” I said. “How did you start the van?”
Diesel held his finger up.
“You started the car with your finger?”
“Yep. And that’s nothing. You should see what this finger can do on a G-?spot.”
“Good grief.”
Diesel backed out of the parking space and took the exit to Route 1. “Put the hood up on the sweatshirt and pull the drawstring tight so no one can see your face.”
“What about you?”
“I don’t photograph.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know. It’s just one of those weird things.”
“Like your finger?”
“Sweetie, my finger isn’t weird. It’s magic.”
BRYTLIN OCCUPIES A seven-?acre campus just off Route 1 and is centrally located in a sprawling corridor of technology companies. Diesel wound his way through the parking lots, looking at the redbrick buildings, scoping it all out.
“Ordnance wouldn’t be kept in the main office building,” he said. “They have two buildings on the perimeter of their campus that look to me like maintenance facilities. I’m guessing our rockets are kept in one of them.”
Both buildings had a regular door in the front and garage doors in the rear. Diesel backed the van up to one of the garage doors.
“Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
“Are you insane? You can’t just walk in and steal rockets during business hours!”
“No one’s over here.”
“Yeah, but there could be someone inside.”
“Then I’ll deal with it.”
He opened a garage door, slipped into the building, and minutes later, he reappeared with an armful of rockets. I jumped out of the van and opened the back door for him. He slid the rockets into the van and ran back for more. He loaded a total of twelve rockets into the van and closed the garage door.
“That’s all they had,” he said. “Get in the van. I’m going to check out the other building.” Diesel drove to the other building, parked, ran inside, and instantly returned. “Just lawn mowers and snowblowers in there.”
We returned to Route 1, and Diesel called Flash.
“I’m looking for eleven X-12 King rockets. See if any of the research labs on the tech corridor bordering Princeton have anything. If you can’t find any there, try north Jersey.”
Diesel drove the van back to the mall, and immediately we saw the flashing lights. A single cop car was parked in the lane behind Diesel’s Subaru. We were two lanes over, and we could see a scruffy young guy talking to a cop, gesturing to the empty parking space where his van used to be parked.
Diesel slid from behind the wheel. “Drive the van to the other side of the mall by the food court. I’ll get the Subaru and meet you there.”
I climbed behind the wheel and drove to the food court entrance. I found a parking spot with an empty space next to it and parked the van but left it at idle. If I turned it off, I wouldn’t be able to get it back on without Diesel. I tied the hood tighter around my face and gripped the wheel. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that at any moment I might throw up. I was sitting in a hot van with twelve stolen rockets.