Читать книгу Explosive Alliance - Susan Sleeman - Страница 10

TWO

Rent-a-cop duty.

Could Cash sink any lower on the boredom scale? He didn’t usually go in for security duty, but his buddy’s wife was having a baby and his buddy needed someone to cover at the last minute. Ninety minutes into the job, he was regretting his decision to help.

He glanced at his solid titanium watch he’d worn on countless Delta Force missions.

Now that was an exciting job.

There was nothing more thrilling than serving on the army’s elite tier-one Special Ops team. Fast-roping down to free a hostage. Night jumps and rock climbs to raid insurgent groups in Afghanistan. Diving into dark, murky waters.

Man, he missed it. Missed it all. The team. The camaraderie. Working with guys who really got him. His life hadn’t been the same since a friendly bomb had gone astray, taking out his whole team. Why he’d survived, he had no idea, even after eighteen months.

Stop, he warned himself. Standing here brooding wouldn’t help him figure it out. He needed to keep busy.

He searched the crowd, looking for someone whose chops he could bust. He spotted the woman who’d brushed past him a few minutes ago to retrieve a cup of water charging down the steps.

Good. Just the distraction he was looking for. A particularly beautiful one at that. He loved the way she’d blushed when he’d flirted with her. Wasn’t often these days that he ran into a woman exhibiting such innocence.

She hit the landing and ran toward him, skidding to a stop in front of him. Eyes the color of his army dress blues were dark with worry, sending a curl of apprehension into his gut.

“I need your help.” She panted to catch her breath. “There’s a...” She paused to look around, then drew him away from a man standing nearby.

She leaned close to Cash’s ear. He caught a faint whiff of vanilla and another appealing spice he couldn’t identify.

“There’s a bomb,” she whispered, her breath warm on his skin.

He pulled back. “Don’t even kid about that, ma’am.”

“I’m not kidding.” Full lips drew down in a scowl as her gaze continued to dart around.

“What’s your name, ma’am?”

“Krista Curry.”

“Well, Krista, why don’t you tell me what you saw?” It was very unlikely she’d actually seen a bomb, but whatever she’d witnessed had clearly upset her and he needed to take it seriously.

“It’s by my seat,” she said. “A guy got up and left his backpack. There’s a cell phone inside with a timer attached to a bunch of red bricks. It’s counting down. It had twenty-five minutes on it. Now it must be closer to twenty.” She grabbed his arm in a viselike grip. “Please, we can’t waste any time.”

Something in her desperate plea made him believe her enough to agree to check out the so-called device. “Show me.”

She led him toward the aisle and gestured at the upper section. “See the older man seated in the second row from the top? That’s my grandfather. The backpack is six seats to his left. By that big girder.”

He looked at the upper section, saw a gray-haired man sitting at the aisle, intent on the game.

“Wait. That woman.” Krista wiggled her finger at a stick-thin woman climbing over a seat. “Looks like she’s spotted the backpack. She’s going to open it just like I did. She might... Oh, no.”

He saw the woman, but he couldn’t see the backpack. Krista grabbed his arm again. “We need to get up there before she does something stupid.”

The woman fumbled around at her feet. She looked up, her gaze wild and unfocused.

“Bomb!” she screamed and charged for the aisle. “There’s a bomb in that backpack. Only fifteen minutes on the timer. Run! Everybody run!” She catapulted over the old man’s legs, nearly lost her balance but recovered to run down the steps, waving her arms and inciting the crowd. “Bomb! There’s a bomb! Go!”

People fled toward the exits in a stampede. Cash had to restore order before they trampled each other. At least attendance was down due to the rain, and he had a chance of calming them down.

“C’mon, people!” He held up his hands. “This is someone’s bad idea of a joke, but just to be safe, let’s clear the area in an orderly fashion.”

“It’s no joke—I saw it,” the woman shouted, her eyes so terrified Cash figured she wasn’t making it up, but the device could still be a dummy left to cause a riot.

“I’ve got to get to Opa!” Krista darted toward the steps.

Cash ran after her and jerked her into an empty aisle moments before the fleeing mob reached them. “You can’t go up there. They’ll trample you.”

She tried to wrench free. “But my grandfather needs me. I can’t leave him alone.”

The last thing Cash wanted was for another person to lose their life on his watch so he tightened his hold while he reported the situation over his radio. He ordered the security team to cease use of their radios from this point forward. He’d take no chance of the radio signal setting off the bomb if it was real. He’d make one more call to the team leader for the First Response Squad—the tactical team Cash served on. The six-person squad was created to deal with emergency situations just like this one and would be the first to respond. Once he notified them, he’d go radio silent, too.

“Let. Me. Go!” Krista’s volume escalated with each word.

“I can’t.”

“Please.” Her eyes darted around as if she might lose it any second. “I have to help him. I have to.”

She jerked harder. Cash let go of his radio to catch her chin, forcing her to make eye contact. “Calm down, Krista. If you promise to stay right here, I’ll take care of your gramps.”

She stopped thrashing and eyed him suspiciously. “Really? You’ll get him out of here?”

After I get a look at that bomb and, if it’s legit, disarm it if I can. Thankfully, he was on duty tonight. His buddy Neil was a great guy, but he wasn’t a bomb expert. Cash had years of experience disarming explosives in the military and another year as the FRS bomb tech.

He looked around for another officer to hand Krista off to but found no one. “I’ll go, but you have to stay here. Right here on this spot. No moving at all. Promise?”

She nodded unreservedly.

He hoped she was sincere and wasn’t playing him. “I mean it. If I look back down here and see you’ve moved at all, I won’t follow through.”

“You’d leave him?”

No, but you don’t need to know that. “If you force me to.”

“I won’t move. I promise. Just go. Now! Hurry!”

Cash released her arm and surveyed the chaos as he formed a quick game plan. With crazed people flooding down the aisle, he’d have to climb over seats to reach the top, then hope the crowd had thinned enough, allowing him to shoot across the aisle to the bomb.

He started over the seats. One by one. Up. Higher. Toward the bomb.

“Be careful, Deputy,” Krista called out.

He felt his stride falter. Not for long. The briefest of moments, really, but long enough for the memory of his fallen teammates to come rushing back.

Stow it, man. Or these people could pay the price for your distraction. Keep calm. In control. Step by step. Work through it.

He could do this. He had to do this. If the bomb was real, it was up to him—him alone—to disarm the device. With fifteen minutes on the timer, neither his squad nor the Metropolitan Explosives Disposal Unit could arrive on time.

If he even had the fifteen minutes to get this done.

More likely he had less.

Putting a cell phone on the bomb said the bomber planned to detonate via a phone call and the timer was likely a fallback. A simple ring of the phone and the bomb could go off in a split second, killing everyone in the blast radius.

He upped his speed, reaching the top tier. He looked for a break in the crowd. A cold bead of sweat dampening his forehead, he shot across the aisle, found the backpack and gently opened it. The sight that greeted him sent his heart plummeting.

He shone his flashlight into the pack, following the detonator wire from the timer now at twelve minutes to demolition blocks stacked neatly inside.

He let out a low whistle, and a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach followed.

There was nothing fake about this bomb. Nothing at all.