The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(85)

Lipsky put a hand on Boomer’s shoulder, pulling him away. “Now finish the goddamned detonator.”

“All right, all right.” Boomer emptied the plastic bin onto the table and raked through the bomb parts. A twelve-volt battery. A gray plastic junction box. A cell phone. And a neatly coiled group of wires connected by a plastic wiring harness. To Peter, he said, “You ever get blown up, asshole? They say suicide bombers don’t feel a thing, but how would they know? I’m pretty sure it’s gonna hurt like hell.”

The wiring harness looked like something you’d find under the hood of a car. There were ten short wire pigtails made up of two color-coded wires, blue and white. One end of each pigtail came together in the long, narrow harness. The free ends each ended in a quick connector.

Ten pigtails, Peter thought, for ten sets of conduit. For ten plastic oil drums.

On the far end of the wiring harness, a single pair of wires came out, again blue and white, again with quick connectors. Humming happily, Boomer plugged the single blue wire to one of two blue wires soldered into the open back of the cell phone, then plugged the second blue wire from the phone to a third blue wire soldered to one terminal of the twelve-volt battery.

The cell phone would be the trigger. A remote switch that worked by connecting the phone’s vibrator to a set of wires. When the vibrator was set off with a call or text, the circuit would close and the battery would send power to the detonator.

“Was this how you got blown up, making bombs?” said Peter. “Nasty scars. Lost part of an ear. And you were ugly to begin with. Must be hard to get a date with a face like that.”

Boomer smiled at the wires, his hands busy with his work. “You kidding? I’m a war hero, motherfucker. I get all the pussy.”

“But they feel sorry for you,” said Peter. “That’s a pity fuck. That’s a hand job from your sister.” Peter didn’t know what he had to gain by provoking the man, but he was tied to a chair and hating it. And he wasn’t built to wait.

He saw the muscles work in Boomer’s jaw for a moment, but he still didn’t lift his eyes from his work. “Boy, it don’t matter what you say anymore.” Boomer reached for the free white wire, and plugged its quick connect to a second white wire soldered to the battery’s second terminal. “Because in less than an hour, I’m gonna make a phone call. This here switch gonna close, and ten blasting caps gonna pop, setting off ten beautiful chunks of plastic. The plastic will light up the fuel oil. The oil will light up the fertilizer. All in about half a second. And there will be one big-ass explosion. Take down a tall building.”

He looked up at Peter, his ruined face shining with the thought of it. Seduced by the fire blossoms of Iraq.

And all the while, his busy hands were arranging the assembled device neatly in the gray plastic junction box.

—

Peter’s shirt was wet with sweat in the cold room. His whole body was trembling, maybe with the cold. He hoped it was with the cold.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Felix came in with the hand truck for another load of fertilizer.

Come on, Lewis. Anytime now.





42





Midden


In the back of the truck, Midden slit open another fertilizer bag from the shrinking stack and dumped it into the last white plastic drum. The pellets slid beneath the dark surface of the fuel oil, raising its level slightly.

The smell was dense and cloying. It reminded him of the long fight through the Iraqi oil fields, always with the stink of the ruptured pipeline and the ferocious heat of the burning wells.

Stay focused, he thought. Although loading the drums required nothing of him other than the strength of his back and the blade of his knife. It was surreal, like before any operation. He had a pre-mission ritual in the bad old days, a system of checking his equipment that distracted him from the fact that they were about to step outside the boundaries of civilization and go kill people.

Although it was different in the war. In those days, they were fighting the enemy. People who were doing their best to kill Midden and his friends.

This was not like those days.

This was killing for money.

But it was what he had agreed to do.

No matter how he felt about it.

Stay focused.

He slit the last bag and poured it into the last drum. It disappeared below the surface of the black ooze without a trace. The drum lid with its junction box and flexible conduit screwed down snug with a slithering sound.

He left Cas to tie down the load and walked back to tell Lipsky.

One last time.





43





Peter


Lipsky took a gun out of his coat pocket and pointed it at Miles.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” he told Peter. “Midden is going to cut the cuffs off the arms of the chair, then cuff your hands to each other. If you sneeze, if you so much as fucking blink, I’m going to shoot the kid. Do you understand me?”

Peter nodded.

“Then he’ll cut the leg cuffs and stand you up.”

Peter knew that Lipsky planned to kill them all, anyway. Himself, Dinah, and little Miles, too. But he was no longer willing to allow it to start early. He was counting on Lewis. So he nodded.

It happened just like Lipsky wanted. Midden had a wicked folding knife with a serrated blade that cut through the yellow plastic cuffs like they weren’t even there. Peter held out his hands to be cuffed like a good prisoner. Once the new cuffs were tight on his wrists, Midden cut the leg cuffs from behind the chair, so Peter couldn’t get him with his feet. Then he backed away while Peter stood, leaving no opportunity for a quick strike.