Root of Unity (12 page)

“There isn’t time,” I said. “This place is going up in just under five minutes.”

“Stop it!” cried the woman. “Turn it the fuck off, or you’re not getting out, either!”

“What? It’s not my bomb!” I protested. “I told you, I’m not with these guys—it was rigged before I got here!” I turned slightly so I could see the partner. He still had his sidearm aimed vaguely in my direction, though now he kept glancing down at his feet, and sweat had popped out all over his pasty face. He was young. Not even thirty, I thought. The junior partner, maybe even a rookie.

And he was standing on some sort of pressure plate. I scanned the tangle of wires and equipment and explosive material at his feet—I wasn’t sure, but as far as I could tell this was not only live, it was liable to go up if its unhappy victim so much as shifted his weight.

He was lucky. Most floor triggers didn’t
arm
the instant you stepped on them; they
detonated.
This type of device—well, it was all very Hollywood. I recalled my fleeting thought from before, that these bad guys had “cool” as their top priority.

The female agent was babbling something at me about putting my hands on my head, her weapon still targeting me as she dug out a cell phone.

“No time,” I said again, suiting my own actions to my words and tucking my Colt back into my belt as the mathematical puzzle crystallized. Weight, pressure—I knew what to do. “And put that away; a cell signal might trigger a detonation in here. Go to the armory—down the hall that way a hundred and twenty-three feet, turn left, and it’s on the right. Bring back as much ammunition as you can carry.”

Without waiting for a reply I scanned the long lab tables for raw materials. Most of what was left was connected up in ways I didn’t want to disturb, but I spotted an orange brick of Semtex on the floor that had been overlooked in the hasty clear out. I dashed to grab that and a detonator.

The DHS agent hesitated for much too long and then turned and sprinted through the double doors. I followed suit, slicing at the Semtex with a knife as I ran. I swung through the empty computer lab and back into the inner office, where I mashed a little slice of my plastic explosive onto the large bolt on the squat, heavy floor safe, the kinetic energy and fracture strength overlapping in a fast back-of-the-envelope estimate.

I pressed the detonator in, got behind the desk, and pushed the button.

The
bang
shot bits of metal and flooring and debris against the walls of the office. I came back around to the safe, kicked the remains of the bolt away, and heaved the thing in my arms, the open door banging against my hip. I staggered and almost dropped it—holy crap, the thing was heavy. One hundred and three point eight pounds. Perfect.

Three minutes and fourteen seconds.

I shambled down the hallway as fast as my shuffling feet would go without unbalancing the safe. The burn on my left hand felt like I was putting a knife through it where the corner of the thing dug into my palm.

I made it back to the explosives lab and thunked the safe to the floor as gently as I could, open side up. The DHS woman was only a few seconds after me, pushing a wheeled cart stacked with ammo cans and cases. Good. I’d been afraid they hadn’t left enough behind. Eight grams for a round of 7.62—and multiply—

“A hundred and seventy-three pounds, right?” I said to the man on the pressure plate, who was sweating so much he looked like he was boiling from the inside. A hundred and seventy-three point…four, I thought, including his gear.

“Something like that,” he got out. “This won’t work. It’s not as simple as—”

“Then you have nothing to lose,” I said, starting to tear the ammo cases open.

Two and a half minutes.

“I saw some blast shields back there,” I tossed to his partner without stopping what I was doing. “Go grab some.” This time she didn’t hesitate before sprinting away.

The math here wouldn’t be difficult. Just simple division: weight and volume. And then watch like a hawk to see where my darling victim was putting his weight so I could match it. The massively hard part would be the juggling act itself. And fuck, I’d probably pull a muscle.

Whatever. Man’s life, and all that. Arthur was a bad influence.

I heaved over the first ammo case. The dimensions of the fire safe gave it a volume of just over five gallons, which would be enough, barely. I poured the cardboard box of ammunition inside, my senses alert to double-check the weight and keep track of where I was at. The rounds tinkled over each other as they filled the bottom of the safe.

“I’m telling you, this won’t work,” the male agent said again, his young voice hoarse and dry. “Go. Just go.”

I ignored him. I was too busy updating the calculations and staying alert for any weight irregularities in the ammunition as it streamed in.

The other agent returned with a couple of blast shields. “What can I do?”

“Leave one of those here and get out,” I said, without looking up.

“Like hell. Cliff—”

“Do it,” said her partner. “You’re not going to die here too.”

“Noble of you,” I said, then snapped at her, “Ninety seconds,
go.”
She drew back and then hoofed it, thank Christ. I concentrated on Cliff, tossing the last few rounds into the safe one by one.
Tink. Tink. Tink.
“Okay, here’s how it’s going to work. When I say go, you’re going to start transferring your weight off the plate very, very slowly. As smoothly as you can. Got it?”

“Got it,” Cliff croaked. He slid his weapon into his holster and worked his hands at his sides, opening and closing sweaty fists.

I gathered my legs under me and heaved the ammo-filled safe. It was too heavy for me. My muscles protested, and my left hand screamed. “Go now,” I grunted.

Cliff lifted one boot as if he were pushing through molasses.

“Faster,” I gasped. “Just do it smooth.”

His foot touched the ground.

The balance blazed through my senses as I let the bottom edge of the safe graze the plate, releasing the slightest bit of weight, then more and more and more and—shit,
less
as he wobbled, gathering the heavy metal box back into me—I levered the ammo-filled safe onto the plate ever so carefully, matching him bit by bit, releasing or lifting back tiny increments of the weight as he teetered, the ammo clinking softly as it shifted. My tendons strained, muscle fibers beginning to tear, the vertebrae in my lower back crunching and stabbing, and pain raced up my left arm until I couldn’t feel my hand anymore…
fuck…

And then Cliff was off the plate and the safe was on it, and we had twenty-one seconds left. “Go,” I choked out, and scooped up the blast shield to follow him at a stumbling sprint, my body shaking, my muscles not responding correctly to the neurons firing against them. But that was all right, because all I had to do was run, run, stagger, run—

I was counting down in my head as we rounded into the garage. Eleven—ten—

We pounded across the cement, the open door filling my vision like a mirage, the promise of survival. Eight—seven—six—

We hit the door.

Four—three—

Still in the blast zone, still very much in the blast zone. Two—

I launched myself and tackled the DHS guy, taking us both to the ground and covering with the shield at an angle.

The concussion slammed into us like we’d been hit by a train. Flattening. Deafening. Turning the world inside out. Debris battered the shield, as if the building had been cheated and was reaching out vindictively to bury us.

When it finally all stopped it felt as if my surroundings had gone to mute after the sensory overload. The dust, the debris, the street, the blast shield I still clung to, the man I was hunched over—everything was deadened and dulled.

Someone pulled at us. The other agent. Mouthing words at Cliff.

I rolled away and forced myself up to stand, annoyed it had taken me a moment. The female agent, covered in dust but otherwise unharmed, was helping her partner to his feet. He almost fell. His hands shook where he clutched at her for support.

I left them to it and loped away.

“Hey!” the woman shouted, the audio muffled like she was calling from very far away, but I didn’t turn. They weren’t going to shoot me in the back. At least I didn’t think so. They did yell after me, but I couldn’t hear what they said, which was just as well.

Chapter 12

I turned
the corner to find a black SUV with police lights still flashing. I’d fucked my car when I’d broken in here, so I stole theirs. Served them right for almost getting me blown up.

I was just ditching the government car in favor of a more anonymous one when my phone buzzed with Arthur’s number. “Speak loud,” I said. “I found their old base, but they blew…”

Arthur was talking.

From a ways away, and goddamned hard to hear. I turned the volume on the phone all the way up, but the ringing in my ears was still too bad for me to focus past it.

I needed an amplifier. I spotted a coffee cup in the detritus on the floor of the passenger side of my new ride and picked it up. A few rips and a twist and I had something that would bounce my sound waves into constructive interference. I tore a slot in the base and slid it over the phone’s speaker, then held the mouth of my makeshift amplifier up to my ear.

“…ain’t gonna let you go,”
came Arthur’s voice, quiet and inexorable.

“You’re fucked up, man. You’re fucked in the head. You really wanna die for this?”

“I ain’t walking away.”

I dropped the cup and texted as fast as my fingers could move:

Helicopter and Arthur’s location

NOW

Checker was prone to asking far too many questions, but he knew an emergency when he saw one. Thirteen seconds later I had the freeway exit for a nearby hospital.

Hospital security is effectively nonexistent. At least when it comes to someone like me. I was lifting away from the roof helipad into a darkening sky before anyone registered I was stealing from them.

By that time, I had another text from Checker with an address and a pair of coordinates. The latter were what I needed—thank God for smart people and their forethought. I steered the helicopter west into the blood-colored sunset, pushing it to its breaking point until it tried to shake itself apart around me. It bucked and fought, but I held it on the edge.

I couldn’t hear the murmur of voices from the still-open cell phone call over the roar of the blades, but I kept it on and in my pocket, my side of the conversation muted. The pessimism of the math pressed me to urgency—Arthur was back in the city, and my top speed was only a little less than a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Even though I’d skip traffic and go the crow-flies route, I’d still need almost half an hour to get to the location Checker had sent.

A lot could happen in half an hour. Too much.

The ’copter ride gave me too much time to think. Maybe I should have called the cops, or told Checker to. Get the fucking DHS in there. But no, wouldn’t Arthur have dialed them in the first place if he’d wanted police?

Unless he’d only called me because I was the last person who’d texted him. Unless I was the first contact he’d hit when he’d tried to be surreptitious. Unless he’d only called me because it was
convenient.

The helicopter shuddered beneath me, the blades catching on the pressure differentials and almost sending it into a roll. I manhandled it back on course.

Night crept across the sky as I flew, the city springing into illumination beneath me, a quilt of yellow and white crisscrossed by whizzing red taillights. The location Checker had sent was on the northern reaches of the city. I let the latitude and longitude lines net the globe beneath me, a finer and finer mesh, until I zeroed in on the building: a broad, flat-roofed place with an acre of cars gleaming like beetles in the floodlights behind it. Right, Arthur had gone to find the SUV. This had to be a vehicle processing center and impound lot.

I dropped the helicopter toward the broad roof of the main building, looking for the best place to land, when the whole roof folded in on itself beneath me in a thunderous collapse.

The helicopter bucked against my hands, fighting the air as the concussion grabbed and buffeted us. For one sick instant I thought it would twist against the blast and dive headfirst into the implosion. I fought the controls, correcting for every variable I could, but I ran head first into Navier-Stokes and in that moment I sincerely thought I was about to die.

But a split second later the numbers collapsed into solvability, and the skids glanced off tumbling cement blocks and flying rubble as I got clear.

I was only twenty feet up, and landing smoothly was out of the question: the best I could do was fall rather than crash. The skids hit the asphalt at an angle, jarring me to the teeth as the machine dropped the rest of itself down and jolted to a stop even as the outside world continued to blow up, the collapse finishing itself with an earth-grinding rumble. The rotors wound down in an ugly
whop whop whop
above me.

Whop. Whop. Whop.

My joints felt locked up. Brittle. I wanted very badly to cough but to cough I would have to breathe, and breathing was going to hurt.

I had to get out—do something—

Arthur.

My left hand was fused to the collective. I pried the fingers apart. It felt like I was peeling the flesh off and leaving my skin stuck there, as if I’d touched a frozen lamppost. I dug my right hand clumsily into my pocket for the phone as I did so.

Arthur’s call had ended less than a minute ago.

I half-fell out of the helicopter and onto the blacktop. Dust clogged the air, drifting down to settle across the lot. I coughed. It hurt.

I punched the buttons on my phone to call Arthur back, my hands shaking. It went to voicemail.

My brain was blanking out. I forced it to think. The coordinates Checker had sent me went out to five decimal places. An error of half a hundred thousandth of a degree of latitude would be less than two feet—which gave me a four-by-four square. Sixteen square feet Arthur could have been standing in.