The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(94)

She thought of the road ahead. There were four more bridges before they came to the left for the tall, white bank building. All had been repaired or rebuilt in recent years, but one bridge had a block-long approach and open space to one side. She thought she could get up some speed and put the truck through the fence, over the bank, and into the water. She pressed the gas down.

“It’s okay, Miles, honey,” she said. “Everything’s going to be okay. I love you very much.”

She pushed the truck down the hill and around the curve where the road changed to four lanes, picking up as much speed as she could handle. Four blocks ahead was the Cherry Street Bridge. She was going almost fifty. The traffic was thin on this Veterans Day afternoon.

It wouldn’t snow for another month at least, she thought.

She had always loved the first snow.

The bridge came into view. She could see her path. She took her hand off the gearshift and put it across her son’s body, as much to simply touch his small, vulnerable body as anything like a hope that she might protect him from what came next.

“Go straight, slow down,” said the man with the spooky eyes. “Slow down and go straight or I shoot the boy!” He jabbed the gun hard into Miles’s side and the boy cried out in pain.

Her foot moved instinctively to the brake.

But before she could press down, a tan SUV with a big tubular bumper came up fast on her left, pulled even, then swerved hard right into the Mitsubishi’s left front tire. Right at her feet.

She couldn’t see the driver, but she recognized the Yukon.

There was a crunch and something gave way, something important. The steering wheel jerked and spun in her hand. She began to fight it automatically but forced herself to let go of the wheel, pivot her foot to the gas, and stomp down.

By the time the truck began to tilt, she was turned in her seat with her strong right arm pressing her son’s chest hard into the back of his seat, and her left hand on the barrel of the spooky man’s pistol.





54





Peter


In the cargo box, the plastic drums shifted in their webbing as the truck lurched hard to one side. Peter dug his toes into the lines of rugged conduit to hold himself, the white static powering his muscles to lock himself in place while he hacked the plastic cover off the central control box. It came off in sharp chunks, but it came off. Inside was the cell-phone-turned-detonator and the twelve-volt battery tucked under the neat bundles of colored wires that led to the blasting caps and the C-4. It was almost beautiful in its elegance.

It was possible that Boomer had built in a false circuit to kill anyone trying to disable the bomb, but Peter didn’t have time to even contemplate that. He had to take this apart now or die in the attempt. He could clearly envision the scarred man with his phone in his hand. Beginning to make the call that would complete the circuit and set off the bomb.

He traced the wires with his finger, thinking that the battery was the key to everything. Without the battery, the blasting caps would not explode. Without the blasting caps, the C-4 wouldn’t go, or the rest of it.

The truck tilted beneath him. The static flared as Peter’s muscles responded. He dropped to his belly and wedged his feet farther under the conduit. Then reached into the control box, through the wires, to the big battery. Grabbed it hard and maneuvered it out from beneath the bundled wires.

Boomer had actually soldered the power wires to the battery’s terminals in great greasy conductive lumps. The white static burned cold as he wrapped the wires in his fist and pulled.

Trying to free them from the big battery.

Hoping to hell there wasn’t anything else he should have done instead.





55





Lewis


Here we go, kid. Hang on to that dog. Remember, do what I tell you.”

Mingus growled over the roar of the engine as Lewis turned the wheel and punched the Yukon’s front end hard into the Mitsubishi’s driver’s-side tire. He saw Dinah’s face in her window, her eyes wide. Metal shrieked and the seat belt bit into him.

The Yukon’s nose dropped as the bigger truck crushed its front suspension, then pushed it hard away. But something had broken or bent at that side of the Mitsubishi, the tie rod or axle, forcing it into an abrupt turn. The right-side tires left the ground as the truck began to tilt.

“Charlie, you okay? Charlie?”

No answer from the backseat. The Yukon sputtered and died.

Lewis looked through his cracked windshield to see Dinah in the cab of the Mitsubishi, wrestling with the skinny guy in the uniform for the gun. The big truck heaved across two lanes of traffic and up a curb to smash its passenger side into a lamppost.

“Charlie, get out right now and run away as fast as you can.”

Lewis slipped off his seat belt and climbed out of the ruined Yukon to help Dinah. He looked over his shoulder as he ran and saw the black Ford pull up a block away.

The scarred man had something in his hand that looked like a cell phone.

Even at that distance, Lewis could see the look of rapture on the scarred man’s face as his thumb stabbed down on the keypad.

Lewis sprinted around the front of the Mitsubishi and hauled open the passenger door.





56





Peter


The detonator phone’s screen flashed white as an incoming call activated the vibrator.