The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(93)

But he ignored that urge and channeled it. He leaped up onto the plastic drums for better leverage, and crept across the ordered conduit like a fly testing a spiderweb for weaknesses, and all the while the heaving truck tried to throw him to the floor. He had to get to Boomer’s ignition system, the big central control box. If he could get only one box open, it had to be that one, where the cell-phone igniter connected the twelve-volt battery to the wires for the blasting caps. That way he could essentially pull all the wires at once.

The control box was at the center of the bomb. This plastic lid also was epoxied in place, but there was a little overhang, a thin lip where Peter might get a grip. Peter caught one edge of the loosened handcuff strap under the lip, and again set himself. Using his back and legs for leverage, he put the white static to work, roaring aloud as he pulled until his muscles screamed. Then he pulled harder. But the epoxy was stronger than the handcuffs had been. Stronger than Peter.

He kicked at the plastic box with his bare foot, hoping the box would crack and he could gain purchase there, but Boomer had used exterior-rated boxes, with thicker walls and stronger corners. Peter’s foot did nothing.

He looked down from his perch on the drums at Midden, who still hung on to the cargo strap while the truck leaped and lurched under his feet. Peter saw the steel clip at his front pants pocket.

“Your knife,” said Peter, barely recognizing his own voice. “Give me your knife.”

The man seemed lost in his head, banished to whatever purgatory or hell he was making for himself there. He didn’t seem to notice that Peter had spoken.

“Hey,” said Peter, the white static roaring fully through him now. “HEY! Make yourself useful. Give me your knife.”

The man didn’t respond for a long moment.

The chemical fumes of the fuel oil mixed with the thumping of the truck over the potholes to give everything a terrible urgency. Every moment of travel that much closer to the time when the world would turn to fire.

Then the man’s dark, dead eyes rose to meet Peter’s while his right hand went to his pocket and took out the knife.

He opened it with his thumb, revealing the wide, wicked blade. The serrations designed for nothing other than opening up the flesh of a man.

He looked at Peter for a long moment.

Then swung his arm and lofted the knife underhand in a gentle pitch devoid of spin, one workman tossing a tool to another.

Peter smiled as it came, plucked it easily from the air, and in the next movement plunged the knife into the lid of the central control box.





53





Dinah


Dinah crossed North Avenue at the top of the hill, looking down toward the bridge where she hoped to put the truck into the river.

Miles clutched her waist and whimpered softly in the seat beside her. She wanted to put her arms around him, but the skinny man with the spooky eyes had his own arm wrapped around her son’s neck, and she needed both hands to drive anyway. She’d take her son back soon.

Halfway down and picking up speed, she realized that she’d forgotten about the rebuilt bridge with its thick concrete guardrails. If she wanted to put the truck in the river, she’d have to turn a hard right at mid-bridge and jump the curb.

But she couldn’t see it working now. She couldn’t see this truck breaking through the thick concrete to make it to the river, not at an angle, not already slowed by the high curb, and the river only a few dozen yards across. If she made the turn at high speed, she’d flip the truck. She could see it happening in her mind.

They wouldn’t make it to the water. She’d likely just flip the truck.

With the hundreds of car accident victims she’d seen at the hospital, she could see clearly the trauma of the accident, to her and to Miles. They had their seat belts on, but Miles was only eight. The seat belts wouldn’t do enough.

It would break his neck.

And the man with the scars was behind them somewhere with his triggering device.

So the truck would explode anyway, with them both still in it.

But at least the blast would be in an open area, with only a few big residential buildings around them. Hopefully, most of the people would still be at work.

Thinking all this with her foot pressing harder on the gas and the bridge getting closer and closer.

Then they were at the river and Miles was crying, “Mommy, I’m scared.” And the curb and guardrail were so high. She couldn’t make her arms turn the wheel, she just couldn’t. For a brief moment she saw the river shimmering below them, stretching toward the business district.

Then the bridge was past and the road ran uphill again.

As if on its own, the truck slowed for the light.

“Go right here,” said the man with the spooky eyes. His gun still pressed into her son’s side. “We’re going downtown.”

She turned right down the narrow corridor between the tall new condominiums where the tanneries had once stood, seeing the river in tantalizing steel-gray glimpses between the buildings, bounded now by concrete banks on both sides. Sometimes she drove to work this way, liking the vitality of it, the big buildings and storefronts, the way the city was always making itself new again.

Then she caught her first glimpse of the tall white tower at the edge of downtown, the tallest building in the state. She knew their destination.

And how many people would die.