"That wasn't a request. Neither was mine." Ranata, standing 8 ft away with Okafor's hand on her arm, watched this exchange with the focused attention of someone running a calculation. Her jaw was set, her breathing was controlled, but something moved behind her eyes. A recognition, a recalibration of exactly how far this was going to go before it stopped.
Calhoun reached for the module. "Captain." Nadia's voice cut through cleanly. That device contains encrypted federal records. If you remove or damage it, you will have destroyed federal property under active evidentiary seal.
Calhoun's hand paused. His hand paused for exactly 4 seconds. Then he reached in and wrenched the module free. It came out with a sound of torn wire and cracked housing. A small indicator light, green until that moment, went red, then dark.
Calhoun held it up and turned it in the light. The casing had split along one seam. "Federal records," he said. "Sure." He set it on the car roof.
Then he picked up the crowbar that Sharp had been using on the door panel, and he brought it down on the module. Once, twice, on the third swing, the housing shattered. What Calhoun did not know, what he could not have known because he had destroyed the only visible evidence of it was that the module had completed its encrypted transmission at 4:19 a.m. The data it carried had been received by a secure federal server in Quantico, Virginia, timestamped, logged, and assigned a case reference number. The destruction of the module had accomplished nothing except to add one more item to a list that was already very long. Nadia looked at the broken module on the roof of her car.
"The data already transmitted," she said. Calhoun looked at her. "What did you say?" "Four hours ago." He stared at her for a long moment.
Then he turned to Sharp. "Find the case." The locked case was in the forward storage compartment. A slim matte black hard-sided unit, the kind used by field agents for document transport. It had a combination lock and a secondary tamper-evident seal.
Ranata had set it there that morning before they left the hotel. She had logged his placement as she always did with a timestamp notation in her portfolio. Sharp carried it to Calhoun. Ranata said, "That case is sealed under active federal authority. Opening it without a federal warrant constitutes obstruction under Okafor's hand closed on her shoulder and turned her not gently away from the conversation.
She was repositioned, physically moved three feet to the left, her back now partially to the scene. Her portfolio was taken from under her arm. She watched Okafor hold it. She did not fight him for it. Calhoun cracked the lock with a bolt cutter sharp produced from the patrol unit.