The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(86)

“Take him to the truck,” said Lipsky. “Cuff him to a cargo ring.”

Peter walked through the warehouse door, Midden two careful steps behind him. The loading dock door was rolled up, and the translucent roof panel gave him enough light to see the white plastic oil drums arranged in the Mitsubishi’s cargo box.

They were cinched together with webbing, which was strapped to the cargo rings on the sides of the truck, so the load wouldn’t shift during travel. Each drum now had a small plastic junction box stuck to its lid, with the flexible electrical conduit leading to a central point like a spider’s web in the making. From the end of each piece of conduit came those blue and white wires, with a quick connector on each end.

He stepped into the back of the truck and the smell of fuel oil hit him like a wall. The space was much smaller than the warehouse room, and mostly full of bomb. The white static was tired of waiting. Peter kept breathing, in and out. But it was harder and harder, and his chest felt tighter and tighter. The static began to spark up, heating his brain. Breathe in, breathe out. He could still look through the loading dock door, though, and into the open warehouse. When that truck door rolled down, things would get very bad.

Come on, Lewis. Do it.

“Take this,” said Midden, looking at him with a mild curiosity. He held out another plastic handcuff.

Breathe in, breathe out. “You’re really doing this,” Peter said, turning to face him. Midden backed automatically, the coiled mechanism inside him keeping Peter at an optimal distance. “A truck bomb. Hundreds of people.”

“Put one end of the cuff on you,” said Midden. “Run the other end through the top cargo ring, so your hands are over your head.”

Peter looked the man in the eye, but it was like staring down the barrel of a sniper rifle. “Why?” he asked. “Why are you involved with these jokers? Why are you doing this?”

“Take the cuffs,” said Midden. But maybe there was something else in his eyes.

“Or else you’re just riding the fastest road to hell,” said Peter, and took the cuffs. He wrapped one strap around the midpoint of the cuffs already on him and tightened it with his teeth. “Trying to find something, finally, that you can’t live with. Is that it?”

“Shut the fuck up,” said Boomer, pushing past Midden with his detonator box. “He’s gettin’ paid. We’re all gettin’ paid. Then we’ll live like kings. Like captains of fuckin’ industry.”

“Sure,” said Peter. “And you only had to murder a few hundred people to do it. Or maybe it will be a few thousand.”

That same look flashed across Midden’s face, clearer now. As if something hiding beneath the mechanism was peering out, just for a moment. But he just pointed at the side of the truck. “Now the cargo ring,” he said.

So Peter slipped the loop through the metal ring at head level and cuffed himself to the truck. Hoping like hell that Lewis was out there somewhere and paying attention.

Boomer took ten golf-ball-sized lumps of plastic explosive and stuck one into the bottom of each junction box epoxied to the lid of each drum. Then he jammed an electric blasting cap, a silver tube like half a shiny pencil, into each lump of C-4. Out of the end of each blasting cap came two wires, one blue and one white, with quick connectors on their ends. Boomer connected the blasting cap wires to the conduit wires inside each junction box, then screwed on the box covers, his face rapt.

With the junction boxes secured, Boomer gathered the free ends of the conduit and began to attach their threaded ends to the central detonator box with plastic nuts, methodically snapping the quick connectors together, like any electrician getting the job done. The ordinariness of it made Peter’s skin crawl and the harsh white sparks sizzle in his skull.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Then Boomer picked up the cover to the detonator box and screwed that on, too. He took a double syringe from his pocket and snapped off the twin tips. On the box lid he squeezed out double pools of gel, then used the syringe noses to mix the two gels together.

“There was one guy in Sadr City liked to do this,” said Boomer, and waved the double syringe. “Five-minute epoxy.” He dipped the noses in the mixture and dabbed it over the screw heads on the central detonator box. “Makes this shit really hard to take apart.” He reached over the spiderweb of conduit to the smaller junction boxes and dabbed more epoxy on their cover screws, too. “I always figured he wanted more time. If someone found his IED and called us to defuse, he had a few more minutes to get there. I figured he liked to watch.”

“And you like to watch,” said Peter.

“Oh, yeah,” said Boomer, eyes gleaming. “The best is when you’re close enough for the pressure wave to just about knock you on your ass.”

“Oh,” said Peter. “That’s where your brain damage came from.”

“That’s enough.” Lipsky stood in the loading dock door. “Midden, you’re riding in the back until we get to the site.” He jerked his head at Peter. “I want to make sure this guy stays put.”

“What about Dinah and the boy?” said Peter, the clamps on his chest getting tighter and tighter.

“Don’t worry about them,” said Lipsky. “Don’t worry about anything. In less than an hour you’ll be dead.” He nodded at Midden. “Unless you mess with this guy, in which case you’ll die whenever he wants you to.”