by David Archer
“Yeah, I’m just about half a mile from the school. Tell me when you’re ready and I’ll go into my act.”
“All right,” Noah yelled, “I’ve been circling the school. Give me two minutes to get lined up, and then go for it.”
“Two minutes, got it,” she yelled back. She started driving toward the school, going slowly to give Noah the two minutes he asked for.
Just as she got close enough to think about turning into the parking lot, Noah yelled, “Now!”
Sarah made the turn and immediately noticed several policemen standing around the doors that led into the auditorium. She smiled and waved, then suddenly floored the accelerator and started driving in circles in the parking lot. The tires were screaming as they tried to hold onto the tarmac, but the power of the engine was too much for them. The car was doing doughnuts, with all four wheels.
The officers shouted at her, and then they all started running in her direction. She gave them another wave, and then cut the wheel hard to the right and zipped right around them. She spun the car around so that she was behind them, and then floored it again.
They scattered like bowling pins, and a couple of them even fell down. She flew through the gap they created and whipped the wheel around to circle them once again. All of them were yelling at her, and she suddenly saw more officers coming out of the building. One of them jumped into a Ford patrol car and started it up, but Sarah wasn’t through having fun. As the car launched itself in her direction, she cranked the steering wheel the opposite way and threw herself into a skid that took her completely around the police car. As she came out from behind it on its opposite side, she punched the accelerator again and then started running circles around it.
The officer behind the wheel slammed on his brakes, completely shocked at her behavior. The rest of them were standing around the perimeter of the action, jumping up and down and screaming at her to stop, and Sarah suddenly found it all absolutely hilarious.
She could hear a droning sound, and realize that it had to be the airplane. That meant she needed to keep their attention on her for at least another few moments, so she whipped the wheel the other way and broke out of the circle of policemen, now doing laps all the way around the parking lot. The officers were turning in place so rapidly, trying to keep track of where she was at, but at least a couple of them were starting to show signs of dizziness.
Another patrol car started up and started her way, the officer’s intent obviously being to try to ram her and bring her to a stop. She waited until he was close enough that she could see his face, then shoved the accelerator to the floor and shot past him. He was so surprised that he kept his eyes trained on her, and ended up crashing into the first patrol car.
Sarah ran a couple more rings around them, squealing her tires as she did so, but then a glance showed her the blinking lights of the airplane flying away. She made two more complete circuits, deliberately aiming herself at clusters of policemen and then dodging around them at the last second, then shot out the parking lot exit and onto the road. The speedometer was reading 160 when she straightened out, which put her at nearly 100 miles an hour.
Three more patrol cars came out of the parking lot in pursuit, and she could see flashing lights off in the distance as reinforcements were headed her way. Her hours of map study would pay off, as she began whipping the little car around corners faster than the patrol cars could ever hope to take them.
She was still laughing, and it suddenly dawned on her that she hadn’t had so much fun since the last time she had run blocker for her dad. Some things, she figured, must be in your blood.
It took her about fifteen minutes to lose her pursuit, and then she managed to drive sedately and quietly into another part of the city. She parked the car in a recessed loading dock, where it couldn’t be seen from any street, then locked it up with the keys inside. She walked about a mile through back streets and alleys before she started looking for a taxi.
* * * * *
Noah, Moose and Neil caught a brief glimpse of Sarah’s shenanigans, but they were too busy to pay much attention. Moose had carefully judged the winds and chosen the direction he wanted Noah to approached the school from, and he and Neil were already strapped together and kneeling just inside the open jumper’s door. Noah kept the plane steady, and Moose watched through the windscreen.
Suddenly Moose tapped Noah on the leg, and Noah cut the throttle. The engine dropped to an idle as Moose grabbed hold of Noah and flung them sideways out of the plane. As soon as they were out, Noah pulled the throttle out again and gave the little airplane all the power it had.
Noah flew off into the countryside, and ten minutes later he landed the plane in a field. He got out quickly and started jogging toward the road he had seen on his approach, then kept jogging back toward the city.
* * * * *
Neil managed not to scream, but it took all his self-control to do it. Moose had warned him that this was a low-altitude jump, so he was prepared when the parachute snapped open right after they left the plane. Still, the whole thing was quite a shock and Neil kept his eyes closed until Moose warned him that they were about to land.
They hit the roof of the auditorium almost dead center, and Moose began frantically pulling the parachute down and gathering it up. “We’ve got to bunch it up now,” he said, “or it could catch the wind and drag us right off.” Neil grabbed some of the lines and began helping immediately.
A minute and a half later, Moose had the parachute gathered into a wad and tied it all together with its own cords. He released Neil from the harness, and then shrugged the rest of it off himself. They carried the harness and parachute to one of the remaining air conditioner units, and Moose secured it there with another piece of cord.
“Okay,” Moose said. “Let’s get inside.”
They crouched low and waddled over to the hatch, where the older air handler had been removed. Neil had been right, and it was secured with screws. They took out a pair of screwdrivers and had all but one of them out within a couple of minutes. They slowly twisted the hatch and peeked through the gap, but after a moment Moose said he was certain there was no one inside the auditorium to see them. He swung the hatch further open, then moved over to another air handler and looped a rope around it, then let both ends fall down through the opening.
“Okay,” he said to Neil. “Climb onto my back and hold on as tight as you can without choking me to death, okay? You hang on, and I’ll climb down the rope.”
“O–okay,” Neil said. “You know, I can’t believe this was my stupid idea.”
“I can,” Moose said with a straight face. “Climb on, and like I said, hold on tight.”
Moose was kneeling beside the opening, and Neil climbed onto his back, wrapping both arms and both legs around him. Moose scooted the rest of the way to the opening and slid into it, causing Neil to panic for just a moment before he caught their descent on the rope. “Ow,” Moose hissed. “I said hold on, not break my neck.”
Moose hung on to the rope just below the opening, and reached up with one hand to push the hatch back over the hole. He had left a couple of screws partly in the lower edge, and they caught in the holes in the roof. As soon as that was done, he scrambled down the ropes, hand over hand, keeping a grip on both strands so that they wouldn’t fall. As soon as they touched down onto the floor, Neil slid off his back and Moose pulled on one of the ropes. By tugging on it steadily, he pulled down on one side while the other side went up and around the air handler. When he pulled it back through the open hatch, the hatch itself dropped perfectly back into place. No one looking up from inside would ever know it had been removed.
Five minutes later, both they and the rope were up under the stage. Neil produced a flashlight and began looking around, trying to find any sign of bombs strapped to the supports, but he started to think they were on the wrong track when he didn’t find any.
“Moose,” he said. “Remember what I said about being a genius? Maybe I’m
not all that smart, after all. Do you see any bombs?”
Moose had his own flashlight out and was looking just as thoroughly. “Can’t say I do,” he said. “Got any other bright ideas?”
Neil was sitting on the subfloor under the stage, shaking his head. “It’s got to be here,” he said. “We looked at it from every possible angle, and this is the only answer. There has to be a bomb under here, somewhere.”
“I understand that,” Moose said, “but there isn’t one. You see it for yourself, there’s...” He suddenly stopped talking and began crawling forward, his light shining ahead of him. He paused, looking at one of the structural supports under the stage, and then turned to look back at me. “Come take a look at this,” he said.
Neil crawled over to where he was crouched and looked at the support. It looked like a solid block of wood, roughly eight inches square and three feet tall, holding up a section of the stage floor. When Neil looked where Moose was pointing, though, his eyes suddenly went wide. There was a quarter-inch hole drilled into the side of the post, and a thin wire was sticking out of it. The wire was uninsulated, and simply stuck out about two inches to the side.
“What do you make of that?” Moose asked.
“Holy crap,” Neil said. “That’s an antenna. The bomb is inside this solid block of wood, and it’s designed to be detonated by a radio signal. The antenna is sticking out so that it can pick up the signal without interference from the wood around it.”
Neil suddenly began scrambling all around, and found three more identical posts with wires sticking out. “Four bombs,” he said. “There are just four of them, but the way they’re placed, there won’t be anything left of the stage or anyone on it once they go off.”
“Okay, I get that,” Moose said. “The question is, how are you going to defuse them when they’re inside solid blocks of wood?”
“Oh, that’s the easy part,” Neil said. He pointed at the framework of the stage, just beside the post they were looking at. “Put your back against that for a moment and push.”
Moose looked up at the framework and shrugged, then put his shoulders against it and gathered his legs underneath him. He pushed upward, straining a bit, and then watched as Neil simply pulled the post over and laid it on its side.
“Okay, you can relax for a minute,” Neil said. He was shining a light at the top of the post, where they could now see a six-inch diameter hole. He reached inside and carefully withdrew a metal canister with a nine-volt battery and a small circuit board on top. The antenna wire that had protruding through the hole was attached to that circuit board.
Neil pointed at the battery. “This is a pretty simple design,” he said. “All I have to do is disconnect the battery, and this thing is harmless.” He reached out and took hold of the battery, then looked at Moose. “Or it may go off when I pull it. I guess there’s only one way to find out, though.”
Moose’s eyes went wide as Neil yanked the battery free, but then Neil started snickering. “Gotcha,” he said. “Lift the floor again so I can put the post back in place, okay?”
Moose shook his head and glared at the kid, but then he pushed up with his shoulders again while Neil replaced the support. Fifteen minutes later, they had all of the bombs out and disarmed.
Now all they had to do was wait.
THIRTY
Adrian had been busy, and a great deal of it had involved thinking. Someone had managed to find out where his base was and tipped off MI6, that was obvious. That told him that at least one of his contacts in London had betrayed him, but which one? As far as he knew, none of them was aware of the flat he used as a base of operations. The only thing he could imagine was that someone had followed him, but he’d never seen any sign that he was being tailed.
It didn’t really matter, anymore. In the past ten years, his activities had earned him nearly half a billion dollars, while his investments had almost doubled it. When he collected the final payment on these two contracts, it would put him over that mark. It was time for Adrian the assassin to retire, and he had already been making plans in that direction.
He wondered if Eddie and Georgie had enjoyed the bonus? Yes, there was an extra five thousand pounds in the envelope, but the real bonus was the chemical poison that he had soaked the money in. It would be absorbed through their fingertips as they counted out the money, something he knew they would both do. It would act fast, shutting down their nervous systems so that they would be paralyzed, unable to breathe. They would be dead within less than twenty minutes, hopefully fast enough that they wouldn’t even get a chance to spend any of the money. If they did, they’d be taking a few others with them.
What other loose ends did he have? He thought of Judy, and while he didn’t think she could possibly have been the one to give up his address, he still needed to put an end to her. Once this explosion went off, there would be an investigation like none other. He needed to have no one who could possibly mention him still be breathing at that point.
Of course, there was Broussard. Adrian had seen the news reports of the murders at Florentine Global, and suspected it might have been the work of the imposter. If they were the Council, then why was Broussard still alive? That was another loose and he would take care of before he left the city that afternoon.
There was the imposter, as well. Unfortunately, Adrian had missed his chance to eliminate that one, but at least there was nothing connecting the two of them. Perhaps later, after things died down, he might be able to track the imposter on his own and finalize that situation. He could be patient; patience was something you learned in his business.
He looked at the clock on his car radio and saw that it was already past nine. He had been forced to rush the day before to get new identification, but he was certain it would pass inspection. The forger who made it for him was one of the best, or at least she had been. He wondered if she realized what was happening before he put the bullet through her brain.
No loose ends.
His identification named him as Walter Smyth. The real Walter Smyth was now resting permanently in a landfill, thanks to the automated trash compactors on the new city trucks. They simply dumped the containers into the back, where everything was shredded and smashed into a block, to be shoved out the back and into a hole waiting to be filled. With his identification, however, naming him as a visiting professor from Cambridge, he had no trouble getting admitted to the day’s program.
He had no intention of remaining in the auditorium for the explosion, of course. He simply wanted to be certain that both of his targets were on the stage, and then he would push the button in his pocket as he exited the building. The detonator, disguised as a cheap old cell phone that didn’t even have a camera on it, would draw no suspicion even if it were discovered.
Yes, it was almost time.
* * * * *
Sarah had called Noah as soon as she got back to the truck and her purse, and he’d told her where to pick him up. It’d taken her a little while to get to him, but then they went back to the house and got some sleep.
They were up at seven, showered and got ready to face the day, then went out for breakfast. Noah called Allison while they were on the way and explained what was going on, and she put him on hold for a couple of moments. When she came back, she told him that she had pulled in a couple of favors owed to her by MI6, and gotten his and Sarah’s cover names added to the guest list at the Albemarle event. They were listed as diplomatic guests, which meant they would not be searched or subjected to any particular scrutiny. He thanked her and ended the call as they pulled into the parking lot of a restaurant.
By the time they finished eating, it was getting close to nine. Albemarle was some distance across the city from where they were, so they drove on out and got there early enough to find a parking place. A police officer stopped them as they were preparing to enter and asked for their identification.
“Oh, yes, Mr. Jamison,” he said after a moment. “Yes, you and Ms. Porter were added to the l
ist just a bit ago. I understand you are in diplomatic work?”
“Yes,” Noah said. “We work for an arm of the American State Department that handles land negotiations. We were sent over to help with some new property acquisition, and the ambassador suggested we might want to come and sit in on this presentation.”
“I’ve never actually gotten to see anyone who was royalty before,” Sarah gushed. “This is such an honor.”
The officer smiled at her and handed back their identifications, then gave them each a card on a lanyard that would identify them as diplomatic guests. “Just put these on,” he said, “and go on in and find a seat. There’s a section already reserved for diplomatic visitors. Someone inside will be happy to show you to it.”
The two of them walked inside and were escorted to the diplomatic seating area. They were very near the front of the auditorium, but at least they could see the entry doors. Noah kept an eye on them, certain that Adrian would be walking in wearing some sort of disguise. He intended to make sure the man didn’t get away this time.
“You think they’re still under there?” Sarah asked, indicating the stage with her eyes.
“I guarantee it,” Noah said. “If they’d been caught, we’d know about it, and if they found a way to slip out during the night, they would’ve called us. They’re still there. Let’s just hope they accomplished what they came for.”
“Yeah,” Sarah said. “No kidding.”
They sat in their seats as other guests entered and found their own sections, and Noah saw three or four men who could possibly have been Adrian. None of them acted particularly suspicious, so he tried to keep track of where each of them sat. Every once in a while he would look around, just keeping track of them. If he looked and saw one of them out of place, he would be almost certain that one was Adrian.
At a little before ten-thirty, the kids who made up the student body of the school were escorted in. There were about three hundred of them, and more than half the seats in the auditorium had been reserved for them. They filed in calmly and orderly, reminding Noah of little soldiers marching in step.