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covers the cost of ink and paper. If the money gets burned, it doesn’t really count against the bottom line. All the bank loses is paper. They just order more from the printer and a few smaller banks have to make do with older bills for a while. Meanwhile, if the money gets stolen and the guys get away with it, every single dollar lost in that shipment is inflation. Sure, a couple billion dollars isn’t all that much compared to the total GDP, but even the smallest bit of inflation harms the credibility of the whole U.S. monetary system. Word of the heist would get out from Boston to Bangladesh in ten hours. Once there’s word that there’s a hole in the system, every crew in the country would try to take down the Federal Reserve. One slipup, and Uncle Sam would have a whole other thing coming.
    So that’s where the federal payload comes in.
    The federal payload is essentially an ink bomb placed in all the money that comes out of Washington. Every couple hundred bills, there’s a very thin, almost undetectable, explosive device. This device has three parts. There is a packet of indelible ink, a battery that doublesas an explosive charge and a GPS locator that acts as a trigger. While the Feds are trucking the money around the country to and from the banks on the backbone of the system, they keep these big cellophane-covered wads on an electromagnetic plate. The plate’s a wireless battery charger, like those things they have now for cell phones. As soon as the cash is removed from the plate, the batteries on the explosive devices hidden in the bills start to drain. If the batteries run out, the cash blows up. If the cellophane gets cut open prematurely, the cash blows up. If the GPS locator hooks up with the wrong satellite, the cash blows up.
    Department stores often put tags on their expensive clothing, right? If some dumb kid tries to sneak a Vera Wang out the front door of Nordstrom, a signal gets sent to the little radio frequency identification marker on the dress. You know, those circular little plastic things. The klaxons go off on the door, because the RFID bars can sense when a dress that hasn’t been bought yet is moving. If that doesn’t bust the kid, then there’s a packet of indelible ink attached to the bottom of the dress that’ll blow up a couple of feet out the door. When it does, the clothing is ruined and the kid gets caught. The department stores do this because if a piece of clothing gets ruined this way, they can claim a loss of full retail price, plus legal fees and punitive damages from the shoplifter. Also, the prospect of exploding clothing is a strong deterrent. It’s the same principle with the federal payload. If the money gets stolen, it’s on a timer. Unless a qualified vault manager scans it with a very particular receiving code within a certain amount of time, usually just a few days, the money goes bye-bye. Federal payload is the kiss of death.
    Regular banks use the same sort of technology, just without the GPS. If you walk into a bank and ask for all the money, as I have a few dozen times, sometimes there’ll be ink packs hidden in that loot too. They’re usually set to go off after about two minutes, so once you walk outside, the cash explodes and the police know to look for the guy covered in indelible ink. Those kinds of ink packs can be beaten by segregating the money into different thick plastic bags, so if one ink pack goes off, it doesn’t ruin the whole load. But Fed packs are different. TheFed packs are all bound together. Imagine if the truck broke down, or the electromagnetic plate stopped working. Think about all the time that Fed money spends in the depot, sitting on a big pallet roller while someone finishes the paperwork. Think about how long it must take for a couple of strong guys to load a hundred million dollars off one truck and into another. The system is slow. The Fed timer’s set for forty-eight hours, partly because of inefficiencies in the system,