Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(109)

He could feel the guy’s bones crackle, seeming to recede and bounce back. The man’s air escaped him in a thick whoosh as his backpack went flying. Hit the ground and scattered college textbooks in all directions.

The man’s terrified eyes met Dylan’s as he struggled for breath. Dylan backed off, hands in the air.

“Sorry, man. Sorry.”

Plenty of people watching him, trying to ascertain what had just happened, though keeping their distance. Among them, Dylan spotted a kid about his age silhouetted against the glow off a Wendy’s sign, clutching a backpack before him as if it were a baby.

*

Getting away from the cops in the tunnels was easy; Cort Wesley ducked into a stairwell that led up into a big office tower and let them slip right past him The problem was the last terrorist he’d taken out, slammed into a bathroom wall, had seen Cort Wesley coming in time to backpedal for that door. Plenty of time to trigger his explosives, but he hadn’t.

Because he couldn’t.

Because there must be a single trigger man, the others remaining in place until the very last possible moment to insure the bomb-laden backpacks they’d hidden remained undetected. Or maybe their intention was to all die down here, become martyrs to their cause.

Then his cell phone rang and he realized he’d neglected to silence it.

“We’ve got clearance to land in Sam Houston Park, Cort Wesley,” Caitlin informed him over a helicopter’s engine and rotor sounds.

“How long?”

“We’ll be on the ground in five.”

“Not soon enough. I’m in the tunnels. This is going down now.”

“Dylan with you?” she asked, after a pause.

“Somewhere.”

“Then get out of there, both of you.”

“You know I can’t do that, Ranger,” he said, and ended the call.

Then he spun through the door back into the tunnels, heading for the location of the next red X on the map.

*

Dylan had his father’s Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter drawn, steadied on the kid cradling his backpack, before he could rethink the action.

“Drop it!” Dylan said to him, the gun held in a trembling hand by his hip now. “Drop it now!”

The kid looked at him as people backed off, the bustling food court gone eerily quiet. It felt as if they were the only two people there, centered amid the benches and tables, the leaves of a pair of big plants shifting, as if brushed by the breeze.

“He’s got a bomb!” Dylan yelled to all of them. “Everybody, run!” All his focus trained back on the kid now, imagining what his father or Caitlin would do or say, as a flood of commuters stampeded from the retail area. “Drop it! You hear me? Drop the backpack or I’ll drop you!”

Much to Dylan’s surprise, the kid before him let the backpack fall and raised his hands in the air. He was surprised, because it couldn’t be this easy.

And it wasn’t.

Because the kid was holding something black and flat in his hand. A smartphone.

The trigger. Why else would he be down here, so far away from the others standing in the shadow of an exit?

Shoot him! Dylan heard in his head.

But could he shoot a kid no older than him, no older than Ela? And could he really be sure—like, a hundred percent?

That thought formed just as the kid was maneuvering the phone in his grasp, getting his thumb into position. A single tap of a key was all it would take to trigger the explosives.

Dylan fired the Smith & Wesson, and kept firing. Not at the kid but above him. Into the big-ass sprinkler head, cream-colored to render it all but indistinguishable from the ceiling dotted with recessed fixtures spilling dim light downward. The sprinkler featured a closed head, with water in the pipe held back by a fusible link that would be triggered at maybe 150 or so degrees.

The bullets ruptured the head and punctured the link, releasing a steady stream of water directly over the kid maneuvering the phone in his hand. It slipped from his grasp and clacked to the floor, the kid lurching to retrieve it, when Dylan launched himself into motion.

He crashed into the kid, tackling him to the floor and preventing him from reaching the phone. A nearby table toppled over, spilling food to the polished floor. Dylan felt the air forced out of the kid, his whole sternum rattling on impact. He was still groping and flailing for the phone, Dylan watching big red letters counting down below the one-minute mark. He jammed his left elbow under the kid’s chin to hold him in place and stretched his own right hand for the phone.

49, 48, 47 …

Almost there, the kid flailing at him, thrashing with his legs to no avail. Dylan grazed the phone casing with one finger, then another, feeling for the screen.

37, 36, 35 …

The kid was biting his other hand now, sinking his teeth in deep. Dylan gutted through the pain, kept stretching his fingers outward, aiming for the PAUSE button on the screen.

30, 29, 28 …

The kid kept biting. Dylan kept stretching, jerking himself sideways as the kid bit down harder. His index finger was over the glass now and lowering, finding PAUSE. Watching the screen freeze at 22 after he touched it with his finger. Then he managed to get the whole phone in his grasp and slammed it again and again into the floor, spitting pies of glass and metal in all directions until the thing was barely recognizable as a phone at all.