Cherry Adair - T-flac 06 (38 page)

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He crouched to see what he had to deal with.

Right arm useless, he used his left hand as best he could; he undid the screws in each corner of the outer casing, then carefully laid it on the floor beside him. Ignored, blood ran down his arm as he tried to figure out what was where inside.
Ah, shit
…

22:02:01

Derek wiped his bloody palm on his pants as he angled his head so he could see better. The wires jumped and blurred as he turned and tried to focus sideways.

21:48:06

Then—

21:01:35

Jesus. He tightened the tourniquet again with his teeth. It didn't help. Blood welled, saturated the cloth, then dripped on the floor between his spread knees in an ever-widening pool. The fingers on his right hand went numb.

And goddamn it! He couldn't
see
well enough to do a damn thing.

20:56:54

He reached for the tangle of colored wires again. They blurred. He withdrew his left hand.

Defeated, Derek stared at the red numbers inextricably ticking off the seconds on the computer monitor.

He could see
those
just fine.

But he needed two eyes.

And God help him, two hands. His heart thumped arrhythmically.

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He was screwed.

20:04:21

Lily…

"Jesus.
No way
—" Despair pressed icy fingers against his rib cage as his brain scrabbled for alternatives.
Please God. Don't make me need Lily here. Not Lily. Please
.

"Focus, goddamn it! Focus. I can fucking
do
this!" He tried reaching for the wire again. His vision blurred and jumped. He saw double out of his good eye. Blood pulsed out of his arm.

He wanted to yell. Kick something. Shoot something. Kill——

20:00:00

No. No way in hell was he bringing her down here…

No choice. No freaking choice. He couldn't do it alone. Bile rose up the back of his throat. "Goddamn it." He keyed the mic. "Lily!"

"What? What happened?" He'd clearly woken her.

"I need you, sweetheart; hell, hate to sound like a cliché here, but your country needs you. Are you in the plane?"

"Yes, you sa—"

"Get out now. Run like hell down the side of the airstrip, keeping to the trees. I'll meet you halfway.

Take your gun and your rifle and keep an eye out for—Shit! Just be careful, you hear me? And, Lily?

Run like you've never run before."

"I'm on my way.
Stay
," she instructed the dogs. He heard Dingbat cough, the snick of the door, then the rustle of various materials as she climbed out of the plane.

19:58:08

"Keep the mic open," he told her grimly, as he ran full speed up six flights of stairs.

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Nineteen minutes, two seconds.

Eighteen minutes, thirty-one seconds-—

Jump sheet of ice on the top three stairs. Grab coat. Slam through door. Haul ass.

He checked his watch.

Fourteen minutes, fifty-nine seconds—

The snow had stopped, he noticed absently. He pushed his arms through the sleeves, and followed the fog of his breath as he ran flat out toward the landing strip, his strides long and deep in the snow as he made a sharp left and practically flew. The pain kept him focused.

Reminded him there was more at stake than a bloodied arm. He glanced down to make sure there was no dripping through the thick sleeve of his coat to leave a trail. Seepage, yes. Dripping, not yet. He melted into the trees, and saw the shadow of her coming toward him, recognized the long legs churning up the snow.

Glanced around. Snipers? Gun man? Tango?

Nothing. No one. All clear.

Less than fourteen minutes
—

"What?" she asked, not quite out of breath. She'd made good time.

"Need your eyes."
And your steady doctor's hands
. Derek grasped her arm with his bad hand. Pain, like freaking fire, consumed his arm. Teeth clenched, he turned on a dime, taking her with him. "Run."

Eighteen

She ran. No more questions.

Thirteen minutes
—

Back into the small structure. "Wait," he said, vaulting over the icy steps and landing. He held out his arms.

She jumped.

A leap of faith.

His heart soared and his arm screamed. He grabbed her hand in his left, and half pulled her down. Flight one. Flight two. Three, four, she was starting to pant. Five.

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Eleven minutes, two seconds.

They smelled death before they hit the bottom floor.

"Oh my God." Staring at the bodies, she looked at him with part horror, part ferocity. She yanked off her coat and tossed it over a computer monitor. Looked around again and shook her head. "Where the hell do I start?"

He grabbed up her hand again. Pulled her. "They're all beyond help. This way."

She followed, only because he was dragging her by the hand like a reluctant child on the first day of school. She was a healer. Blood and body parts splattered floor and furniture and she couldn't tear her eyes away from the carnage.

9:57:04

"Then what am I doing here?" Lily demanded, turning to face him at last.

"I need your help to defuse that."

That
was a black metal box about the size of a Tourister suitcase, attached to a computer by a spaghetti of multicolored wires. The outer casing lay beside it like an overturned black turtle.

"Looks like something some kid made in shop," Lily said dryly. "Just unplug it."

"Remote-controlled detonation. Those wires have to be cut. In the correct order."

Her eyes went wide. "It's a bomb."

"Under normal circumstances," Derek told her grimly, his entire attention on the numbers changing slowly and inexorably on the black screen.
Seven minutes, nineteen seconds
. "There'd be an ordnance team here, which in turn would dispatch a robot with cameras. Then the ordnance expert would go in, in full body armor, and with extensive backup, and defuse the bomb."

His ordnance team was Lily.

Shit on a shingle
. He handed her the tweezers and a pair of wire cutters he'd scavenged from one of the desks, then pulled her down to crouch in front of the computer monitor. "I'll talk you through it. I can't see well enough. Here." He handed her the tools.

Christ. Tweezers and a pair of small wire cutters. And he prayed. Prayed as he never had in his life, that his T-FLAC counterparts were approaching right this second. That any nanosecond now he'd hear their footsteps racing down the stairs.

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6:02:57

Lily shot him a worried glance. "You've done this before. Right?"

"They're all different," he evaded. Bombs weren't his field of expertise. But they were both going to get a lesson in a hurry.

5:00:01

"Very gently," he instructed, "pick up the yellow wire. Yes. Just like that. Slowly… slowly. Hold it right there. Now carefully move the white one under it, and pull the white to the side out of the way… Good."

There was a loud crash and a scream from the stairwell as someone fell down the stairs. Then whispered voices carried down five stories. Reinforcements had arrived.

Not his guys. They would've checked for the ice.

Damn it to hell.

"Don't worry about them," he told Lily calmly. Her surgeon's hands, used to doing delicate surgery on her patients, were rock steady as she played pickup sticks with the wires.

Hurry. Hurry. Hurry
. "Okay, now take the top red wire—no, the one next to i—yeah, that one, and pull it through between the white and the yellow."

"Derek?" Lily said mildly, not looking at him, "could you just cut to the chase instead of giving me the blow-by-blow? There're a zillion wires here. We clearly don't have all day. Which wire am I trying to get to, and what do I do with it when I have it?"

The newcomers had reached the third-floor landing by the sound of them. Quiet they weren't. Derek hefted the Baer in his left hand, and half turned on his haunches. He couldn't watch the stairwell and Lily's hands at the same time. He tuned into the men approaching, and focused his eyes on her delicate hands.

"See the short black one right there on the left in back?"

"Cut it?"

Jesus. I think so
. "Yes."
Unless there's a sequence-delay firing relay
—He'd tried to see if there was a dual firing system. He hadn't detected it before but… hampered by his Cyclops vision, he looked again.

4:01:45

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How long would it take her to move each wire aside without triggering the firing mechanism to get to one, short, freaking wire near the back? More than—

Three minutes, forty seconds.

And, God help him, what if he was wrong?

"Okay. I'll do this," Lily told him as calmly as if she were cleaning one of her dogs' teeth. "You go check to see who's making all that noi—Holy crap!" A shot went directly over their heads, ricocheting off the wall and sending shards of cement in all directions.

3:08:32

"Are you su—"

"Go!"

He went. Guns blazing.

Blocking out the noise behind her, Lily focused on the mess of wires in front of her. She had nothing to draw on to help her, other than doing her own oil changes and tune-ups on her ancient truck twice a year. Somehow she didn't think that counted here. She took a moment to swipe both sweaty palms down the sides of her pants. She drew in a shuddering breath to calm her nerves, which were jumping like fleas on a barn cat.
Oh, God. Oh. God. One more breath. In. Out. In
.

The red numbers on the dark computer monitor beside her left knee blinked.

2:42:01

She used the tweezers to pick up and move another yellow wire. What would happen if she cut them all? It might work—if she could get them in one slice. She looked at the way-too-small wire cutters. Not a chance in hell.

Derek hadn't told her what kind of bomb this was. But any bomb was a bad bomb. She really,
really
didn't need the details.

"This," she whispered to herself, tuning out the grunts and thumps and flying bullets around her, "is a poor sick little puppy. If I don't immediately do this surgery, this sweet little guy is going to die, and the little girl who owns him will be heartbroken, and have to go into therapy for the rest of her life."

She took a breath.

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"All I have to do is cut that black artery, and this sweet little puppy will live to romp another day."