Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(108)

Cort Wesley reached the first concrete planter marked with an X on the map Ela had given Dylan. He held back, inspecting the area for the right face, the right bent of eyes, a still figure among all the moving ones.

He found a young man he first took to be a girl, thanks to hair clubbed back in a ponytail. The kid was pretending to push a broom, which he’d probably lifted from some maintenance closet. Cort Wesley headed in the kid’s general direction, appearing to look past him.

Cort Wesley’s eyes held there a moment too long, and the terrorist’s eyes met his, thoughts and intentions freezing as the kid reached into his pocket. Maybe for a phone, maybe for a detonator, maybe for a weapon.

Cort Wesley wasn’t about to wait any longer to find out. Before the kid’s hand had cleared his pocket, Cort Wesley was on him, slamming the kid’s head backwards until his skull cracked against one of the location markers. The glass lining it shattered, the impact strong enough to knock off all the interior lighting. The kid hung frozen there for an instant while Cort Wesley backed off as if nothing had happened. Then the kid slumped downward, leaving a wake of blood and glass above him.

Cort Wesley pretended to rush to his aid, perfect cover to check the kid’s pockets for a phone, something he would use to communicate and perhaps to set off the explosives. His hand closed around a smart phone and pulled it out. The home screen was dominated by a timer, just ticking down below the twenty-minute mark.

Cort Wesley clicked off the timer, watching it reset and freeze at 00:00. He hoped that meant this particular batch of the deadly cuitlacoche had been deactivated, hoped he could get to the rest of the terrorists before those twenty minutes clicked down, hoped ISIS didn’t have a backup plan in the form of a single operative who could trigger all the explosives at once.

Giving no further thought to the first man he’d downed, Cort Wesley moved on to the next red X on his map.

*

Dylan reached the food court, the tunnel widening to the size of a city block with restaurants crammed on both sides. He spotted a Wendy’s, a Whataburger, a Salata, a Subway, and Beck’s Prime, along with barbecue and sushi places he’d never heard of. Several jutted out at strange angles to conform to the spherical shape of this section of the tunnels. A collection of tables, benches, and thick plants lined the concourse before them. He figured the plants must be fake, given the soft, refractive hue of the lighting that made it seem somebody had turned the dimmer switch too far down. Various food smells flooded his nostrils, making him realize that the long, runway-like tunnel he’d taken here smelled of nothing at all, except for an industrial solvent in one patch where a slick spot and caution cones indicated a recent cleanup. He kept checking his watch as five o’clock approached, hoping to spot his father coming, as opposed to mass hysteria breaking out, in the upcoming minutes.

His dad had figured he’d be safe here, but that was wrong; he wouldn’t be safe anywhere—no one would. Those days were gone, especially for him, as long as he kept putting himself in situations like this. Ela Nocona wasn’t the first girl who’d manipulated him, but she had to be the last. Dylan promised himself that much, kind of a trade for him and his father getting out of this alive, along with everyone else currently occupying the tunnels of the Downtown Loop.

What was I thinking?

Walking away from school without a plan, missing spring football practice … for what exactly?

What was I thinking?

The more times Dylan asked himself that, the further he got from an answer. So he kept walking about the retail area, trying to sort it all out in his mind while he waited for his father.

Then Dylan spotted a bearded figure with a backpack slung over his shoulder, meandering around a concrete trash receptacle out in the open between a takeout sushi establishment and a Starbucks.

*

Cort Wesley had left four downed ISIS fighters in his wake, their cell phone timers now deactivated. The second fighter had been even easier to spot than the first, their eyes meeting briefly before Cort Wesley pounced, shoving him through a nearby stairwell door, where he launched a series of blows that dropped the kid in a heap. The few witnesses about kept their distance, and Cort Wesley didn’t care whether they called the cops, response time being what it was. He’d be long gone from this area before anyone in uniform showed up.

A third fighter was huddled in a shadowy corner, and the fourth was close enough to a men’s room to force him through the door and smash his head against a wall with enough force to drive fracture lines through the tile.

That man’s timer had ticked below the five-minute mark, leaving him that long to reach the remaining six terrorists.

“Hey, you!” a voice blared, when Cort Wesley emerged from the men’s room. “Stop right there!”

A beat cop assigned to the tunnels, Cort Wesley saw; no, two of them. Both coming his way, giving chase when he ran.

*

Dylan approached the bearded man, pretending to be checking his cell phone, although never really taking his eyes off the man’s backpack. At that point he was unsure of his own intentions, was still unsure when the man unslung the backpack from his shoulder and brought it around before him.

The man seemed ready to deposit the backpack in the nearest concrete trash container, when Dylan pounced. Dylan slammed into the guy as if he were a tackling dummy back at the football practice Dylan should’ve been attending right now. The impact drove both of them into a logjam of pedestrian traffic, Dylan using his shoulder to ram the man against the concrete wall.