by Cherry Adair
The safe house, a boxy, bright blue two-story, was nondescript, crammed as it was between hundreds of similarly brightly painted hill homes and up a winding alley. The beat-up-looking SUV, which hid a fine-tuned, souped-up engine, screamed to a halt in front. It was well-choreographed madness as everyone piled out.
Maza was carried inside almost before Gideon opened his car door. In the chaos, all he could think of was: Maza would die. And so would Riva.
With an arm around her waist, and surrounded by the rest of her team, he ran for the open front door behind the others. “Where’s the fucking bomb squad?”
A guy met them just inside. “You’re looking at it. Navarro,” he said by way of introduction to Gideon, eyes fixed on Riva’s upheld wrist. “This it? Come on, Rimaldi. I have a place set up for you in back.” Navarro glanced at Gideon. “You. Stay put.”
“You. Fuck off. Where she goes, I go.”
“Suit yourself.”
At least the guy didn’t say “your funeral” Gideon thought, following Riva and Bomb Guy down a long narrow hallway and into a sunny, all yellow 1950s-style kitchen. A guy stood at the antiquated stove, stirring something in a large saucepan. Another leaned against the counter nearby drinking from a mug. The kitchen smelled of strong Colombian coffee and spicy lomo saltado, a beef stir-fry, heavy on the aji amarillo chilis. Gideon’s stomach responded to the savory smell of food. Shit, how could he even think about food now, when potentially they were all going to end up in a crater the moment Maza’s heart gave out?
“You two, out,” Navarro ordered. “That goes for anyone else on-site who’s unnecessary.”
The guy at the stove wiped his hands on a flowered dish towel, and smiled as he removed the pan from the burner. “We’re all necessary, Navarro. Hey, Rimaldi.”
“Yeah. Good point. Just give everyone the heads-up. You two,” he said, pointing at Riva and Gideon. “In here.”
“In here” was a tiny room, which Gideon guessed was originally a pantry. Now, the walls, ceiling, and floor were thickly padded with what he presumed were bomb blankets, all covered with a thin black fabric similar to a wetsuit. A couple of ladder-backed kitchen chairs faced each other, and a large black toolbox took up a big chunk of the limited floor space.
“Change,” he ordered Riva, indicating a limp black garment slung over the back of one of the chairs. A couple of bulky bomb suits, with helmets, were tossed on the floor nearby.
“I’ll find LockOut for your friend, but for the record, I don’t want him in here with us.”
“For the record,” Gideon told him tightly, “he doesn’t give a flying fuck what you want.”
Navarro gave him an assessing look. “Fair enough. Be right back.”
A triangle of sunlight fell across the black floor. Annoyingly cheerful, all fucking things considered. Feeling caged, scared shitless, and hopeful, Gideon prowled the small room. Took all of thirty seconds. “You trust this guy?”
Riva sat on the chair to take off her boots. The light glinted sapphire and amber off the liquid beneath the glass on the wrist device as she placed one foot over her knee to undo the laces. “Rafe’s one of our best bomb disposal guys.”
Gideon wanted to know where their number one guy was. He’s the one he wanted on the job right now. “Then he’ll figure out how to get that thing off,” he said with a shitload more conviction than he felt.
Riva tossed her boots through the open pantry door, onto the linoleum floor of the kitchen with a thud thud. “Here,” she said, removing her earpiece and handing it to him. “You can hear what’s happening in real time. I just want to concentrate on not getting blown to smithereens.”
Gideon inserted the comm. “…multiple GSW. Lungs, colon—the bullets had a party in his cavities. Yeah, I hear it. Slap some of that Saran wrap on here. How do we get that device off Ri-Graciela, prickwad?” A man’s unsympathetic voice was backed by several muted conversations, and the clink of instruments and the harsh hissing wheeze of labored breathing.
Suffer long, asshole. Know your death is coming. That you’re going to hell, you son of a bitch. “You’re not getting blown to smithereens,” Gideon told Riva, distracted by what was going on with Maza. “Fucker is too fucking evil to die just yet. Your efficient buddy will remove that, then I’ll go and finish the bastard off personally.”
“You’ll have to get in line.” Navarro stood in the open doorway and handed him a black garment. “Come out here to put this on, not enough room to swing a cat in there. Almost ready, Rimaldi?”
“Just about.”
“Adrenaline’s keeping this guy alive. BP is crap. Heart rate’s spiking. He’s losing a lot of blood.” The voice in Gideon’s ear was remarkably calm.
Navarro pointed to the comm that was set in his ear and told Gideon, “That’s our answer to a doctor on this op. Dr. Kyle Wright, meet Gideon Stark.”
“Tech genius Gideon Stark, of ZAG fame, is the guy Rimaldi picked up on her travels? Thought you looked familiar back at the hotel. Holy fuck.”
“Yeah, that one,” he said dryly. “Get rid of the boots,” Navarro instructed Gideon. “This can go over your clothes. It’ll be a bit of a job to get into it, but the LockOut will protect you.” He crossed the kitchen and held up the coffeepot. “Then get into the bomb suit.”
Gideon was so hyped up already, he doubted the coffee would have any impact. “Yeah, thanks.” It was more than a “bit of a job” getting into the skintight wetsuit-like onesie. He almost gave himself a hernia tugging and stretching it over his clothes.
“Now the bomb suit. You can leave off the mask for a bit.”
Gideon pulled on the hundred-pound bomb suit, feeling exactly like a sausage in a too-tight casing. If he was this scared, how did Riva feel?
“Okay,” Navarro said, handing him a large steaming mug when he was covered. He entered the pantry with the other. “Ready, Rimaldi?” He handed her the mug and pulled up the second chair.
Gideon shuffled in behind him, then closed the door. His heart pounded uncomfortably when he saw Riva sitting in the chair. She turned around so Navarro could fasten the heavily padded suit up the back.
He knew she was terrified, knew it, but couldn’t see it. His girl had fucking nerves of steel. Her skin was a little sweaty, a little pale. But she wasn’t shaking. Not on the outside anyway, and her hands were steady.
Only when she sent him a quick glance, did he see fear and doubt reflected in her eyes.
He had enough fucking terror and doubt for both of them. His stomach was in a tight knot and his pulse trip-hammered as Navarro fastened his suit next. The T-FLAC operative pointed to the corner, out of his way. By all of three fucking steps. Jesus…
“No suit for you?” Gideon asked the other man, who only wore the black wetsuit.
“Nah. Nothing’s gonna explode here today. I just like to make my potential bombees feel safe.” He shot Riva a small, intimate smile, which she returned, as she drew in an unsteady breath.
She watched Navarro’s hands as he slipped a thin piece of LockOut fabric between her wrist and the device, then picked up a handheld water saw. “I’m going to cut here, and here. “ He told her, indicating the cuts, two inches apart. “Just enough room to slip your wrist free. Two cuts, Rimaldi, and you’re golden.”
Awesome, they were upbeat and confident, and relaxed enough to smile at each other. Gideon felt helpless. He chugged half his hot coffee. It burned like hell going down. Good. Gave him something concrete to focus on. “The cuts will break the circuit? Render the fucker inactive? Or just let her get her arm out before it detonates?”
Navarro didn’t glance up at him. “Remains to be seen.”
Great, just fucking great. Gideon’s heart lodged in his throat and his eyes burned because he was damned if he’d miss anything.
“Where’d you put the big bomb, prickass?” the doctor demanded in Gideon’s ear. “He says he’s happy to die, Navarro. No? Then tell us how to get that demon piece of jewelry off Graci
ela. Tell us now. No? He says no, Navarro.”
Navarro grunted his response to that as he rolled over a small, high table and Riva laid her arm across it. Then he opened the toolkit with a loud, metallic snap. “Okay, here’s what we have. The room is well insulated with blast mitigation blankets, and an added layer of protection with LockOut. That’s for everyone else in the house if this all turns to shit. Nothing is going to shit on my watch, got that, Rimaldi? The headgear’s right here if we get the one-minute warning.”
“Just get it over with so I can get out there and do my job.”
“BP dropping. 110/75. 100 beats a minute. Stay with me prickamigo, stay with me.”
“Quit sweet-talking him and let him know that if he dies we’ll stick his ass on a machine to keep his body going long enough to get this off of her. So dying won’t achieve anything.”
Gideon heard Wright convey the message to Maza as Navarro picked up a jeweler’s loupe visor and put it over his head, then leaned in to look at Riva’s wrist up close and personal. “We have full tac teams out there, Rimaldi. Everyone with one goal. Figure out what Maza is up to. You’ve been benched until we liberate this pretty wrist. Sit back and enjoy your coffee. Let me do my job.”
“Do not upchuck on m—” the medic warned. “Shit, yeah. Bring that bucket over here. Puking up blood, Navarro. What’s your ultimate target, prickpuke? Save your soul and tell us or your ass will burn in hell for eternity.”
If Maza died and if Riva, God help him, died and whatever the fuck Maza had planned happened, then what the hell good had the last few days been, Gideon wondered. He looked at the smooth, brave face of Riva and knew. Their time together had been short, but he had had the most amazing, sensuous, daring, fun woman in his life. And he’d be damned if she was taken from him.
“Talk me through it, Navarro.” Riva’s tone was light. And only someone who knew her well would be able to detect the faint undercurrent of fear.
Heart skipping beats, Gideon let his weight rest against the wall. Did she see what was going down in the next hour? See her own death? No. She’d said she didn’t get visions for herself. But what of the two she’d had at Maza’s camp? Were those looking at her own future? Was that why she’d seen colors, and had intense feelings, but not “seen” a vision of herself?
Gideon’s blood moved like icy sludge through his veins.
“Bracelet made from a titanium alloy. Extremely high strength-to-weight ratio,” Navarro told everyone listening, but directed the words at Riva. “The problem with a titanium alloy is that they’re poor thermal conductors. Heat during cutting doesn’t dissipate. Okay. It’s tough to cut through it. Not impossible, but tough. I have tools. I’ve done this before, will do it again. But be warned, it’s slow going.”
He set the blade of a small micrograin carbide substrate blade saw against the bracelet. The sound was music to Gideon’s ears.
“That’s the good news.” Riva sounded shockingly calm. “I trust you to save the day, Navarro.”
Jesus, she had cojones. What Navarro did not add, though, was that cutting temperatures could get so high that titanium chips sometimes burst into flames. Gideon had no idea how he knew that, he just did.
If the wrong tool was used, instead of cutting, it would push and strain the material. Which would then increase the material’s strength, so that cuts that were possible at the start would become progressively harder.
“Good enough,” Navarro assured her. “Educated guess. Yellowish liquid right here is probably 974CH3. Extremely sensitive. Blue over here could be LT9. Put the two together, even in these tiny amounts—Big bang. Not that that’s going to happen on my watch, Rimaldi. So relax. This fine particulate in between is a catalyst used to create a void to aid in the initiation of the detonator.”
“BP dropping. Yeah, prickface, I know you’re having a hard time breathing, we can hear your life-sucking chest wound loud and clear,” the doctor told Maza, not a trace of sympathy in his voice. “That’s why we slapped this plastic over the gaping hole. Temporary measure at best. Tell us what we need to know, and I’ll call in a priest and he can pray your way into hell. Tell me how this thing comes off.”
“Is sharing all the details really necessary?” Gideon snapped at Navarro, then said to Riva. “We already know the two chemicals mix and blow the hell up.”
Shit. He shouldn’t have lost his cool. Everyone else around him was under far more pressure than he was. Except to everyfuckingone else Riva was a colleague.
To him she was… Everything.
Gideon reached across the small space, picked up her free hand, and brought it to his lips. Her fingers felt like ice against his mouth. Still holding her hand, he looked directly into her eyes. “Not. Gonna. Fucking. Happen.”
Her smile was strained as her fingers curled around his. “Okay.” Pulling her hand free, she returned it to the table where Navarro was sawing, at agonizingly slow speed, due to the need for heavy, constant pressure on the blade. Sparks glittered and danced over her wrist.
“Got it,” she said softly, her eyes searching his face. “Can you give me a sec alone with Navarro?”
Fuck fuck fuck. What did she want to tell Navarro? Her last will and testament? Her last wishes? Lock the door so he couldn’t get back in to be there if… When.
“Heart rate going under forty, BP 70/50.” The doctor was giving them a sort of countdown to detonation. He sounded cool under pressure as the noises of an ER pumped, buzzed, and beeped in the background. Gideon heard it all under the hard thrumming beat of his heart.
He willed Navarro to communicate with him, but the man was focused entirely on gently examining the device with various tools. His bent head blocked Gideon’s view of what he was doing. “Whatever you have to say, can be said to me, too,” he told Riva.
“No. Leave,” she added urgently. She looked up at him, skin pale and clammy, eyes shadowed. “Please.”
Gideon’s chest ached. He could refuse her nothing. “I’ll be right outside.” He shambled out in the clumsy suit.
“Close the door.” Almost a whisper, as their eyes met.
Jesus. He died a bit as he tried not to look scared to death.
“Please, Gideon.”
With a nod, he shut the door. If push came to shove he’d kick the fucker in to get to her. Leaning against the kitchen counter he closed his eyes. “Please, God . . .”
“Tell me what you have planned, or I swear to God, I’ll make your last few minutes so painfully hideous you’ll spend your dying breath begging for fucking mercy,” the doctor said in Gideon’s ear. “Here’s my plan, prickdick. If we don’t have answers right fucking now, I’m going to slice off your goddamn hand. Slowly, with a dull blade, lo entiendes? Then I’ll start peeling the skin off your dick.”
“If I die,” Maza’s voice came through the comm. Wheezing, fighting for each breath, he pushed out, “you will never know my master plan. And Graciela dies with me.”
“Not if the device is immediately placed on someone who’s alive. You didn’t think of that as a solution, did you? Here’s a better plan, since you won’t tell us what we want to know. How about I knock your ass out for a while until we solve the jewelry issue. Then we can talk again.”
“All going to die any—” His breathing became more labored and uneven.
The sound of the bone saw caused the hair on the back of Gideon’s neck to lift. It was the sound of nightmares, but at that moment it felt like a fucking relief to Gideon. Could putting the device on someone else really save Riva?
Maza gave a gurgled, agonizing scream as the sound of saw met flesh. He sobbed, gasping for air. “Thermobaric. A thermobaric bomb. Big enough to wipe out Cosio. People are bidding on one of their own now. You can’t stop it unless you swear you’ll give me the surgery. Save me, I’ll tell you where.”
“You’ll tell me where now, prickface. Aw, shit on a shingle! He’s crashing. Don’t you dare die on me. We’re losing him! ETA, Navarro?”
; Blood on fire, heartbeat manic, Gideon jerked away from the counter and wrenched open the door to the pantry.
Navarro didn’t pause as sparks flickered over Riva’s wrist. “Five minutes.”
“We don’t have five minutes!”
“Figure it out. We’re close here.”
“I’m taking the fucker’s hand. Now!”
“Headgear on,” Navarro ordered, not looking up as he switched the saw for a handheld laser cutter.
Gideon had never moved so fast. He yanked Riva’s headgear up off the floor. Their eyes met. Her fear was palpable now. “When this is over, room service and a big bed, Rimaldi. That’s a promise.” He maneuvered the heavy helmet over her head.
He looked at the second helmet. Navarro was trying to keep that thing from going off, if anyone needed the second bomb helmet, he was the one. He started to put it on the other man. Navarro batted it away. “Won’t be able to see.”
The high-pitched buzz of bone saw, heard through the comm, was followed by an unholy scream. Then throbbing silence, which seemed to go on for an hour.
“Talk to me,” Navarro said grimly as the small saw sent up a shower of fine golden sparks. He’d made the first cut and was working on the second. The laser sealed the cut edge so liquid inside didn’t ooze out while he worked.
“Fuckit, we’re losing him. “
Incapable of blinking, Gideon’s eyes burned. Every drop of saliva dried up. Tightening his hand on Riva’s shoulder, he prayed like he’d never prayed before. His focus cleared at the sound of the saw much closer to home. Navarro’s attempt to make a second cut through the metal.
“Maza’s dead.”
Riva heard the voices of everyone speaking through the comm before she had the bomb helmet securely on her head. Only one was as crisp and clear as if it was in the room with her, like an executioner’s death sentence.
“Maza’s dead.”