Cherry Bomb

by J. A. Konrath

Phin, saying he loved me.

  Looks like you’ll outlive me after all.

  Alex, laughing at all the pain she’s caused.

  Not my problem anymore.

  Latham, his kind, sad, beautiful face, telling me I had to be strong.

  Why? Why do I have to be strong all the goddamn time? Where has it gotten me?

  Alan, his eyes rolled up in his head…

  Enough. I’m done.

  I want out.

  I opened my mouth, brought up the gun, my hand shaking so much I had problems getting the barrel between my lips.

  Lieutenant Jacqueline Daniels vs. the world.

  The world wins.

  It always does.

  I flicked off the safety, put my thumb on the trigger, and opened my eyes so I could watch myself do it in the bureau mirror. I wanted the last thing I ever saw to be how pathetic I looked.

  Movement, peripherally, to my right.

  My gun pointed reflexively, and I pulled the trigger on instinct.

  Rat. Big one in the corner.

  Deader than hell now, without a head.

  I laughed, once, but it sounded more like a strangled cough.

  In a way, that’s all I was good for. Killing rats.

  But I was good. I was very good.

  And there was still one rat left to kill. The biggest one of all.

  I put the gun back in the pack, got dressed, and called a cab to take me to a better motel, all thoughts of suicide momentarily replaced by thoughts of murder.

  CHAPTER 48

  THE MORNING AND EARLY AFTERNOON are going to be uneventful. Alex orders room ser vice and spends some time familiarizing herself with a M18A1 she’s taken from Lance’s boss, the bomb squad lieut. It’s a serious piece of hardware, appropriate for the job, and comes with det wire and a spring trigger. On the green plastic cover are three words.

  FRONT TOWARD ENEMY.

  Alex runs her fingers over the embossed letters and smiles her half smile. God love the military.

  Next she shapes a good-sized hunk of PENO into a cone and sets up the blasting cap, sun cord, and sparker.

  Then it’s a pay-per-view action film, charged to the room. A cop thriller, with a hard-nosed veteran chasing a wily serial killer. Alex liked it up until the end, when the cop predictably shot the villain down. Why can’t there be a movie where the killer beats the cop and gets away? Wouldn’t that be cool?

  Alex blames the writers. None of them have the balls to let the bad guy win.

  But the bad guys do win sometimes. People have to learn to accept that.

  Lunch is room ser vice, again, and the food is so bland and mediocre, and the room so run-down, that Alex wonders how this place can even stay open, especially since it isn’t really cheap. Maybe they have a lot of conventions here.

  The hotel has a tiny workout room with a dearth of decent equipment. Alex makes use of the StairMaster for an hour, a towel wrapped around her neck and hiding her face should anyone else come in. No one does. Then it’s back to her room for a shower and another movie—this one a romantic comedy starring Sarah Jessica Parker, who is cute and dresses great but can’t make up for a lackluster script.

  Finally, the clock zeroes in on three p.m. She grabs her gear, fights awful traffic, and makes it to downtown Chicago and the corner she’d staked out yesterday. Alex parks in a pay lot, sets up her laptop, finds a free WiFi connection—Chicago abounds with hot spots—and accesses the phone taped to Herb’s tree. She watches the live feed.

  The house looks normal, no unusual activity, but Alex can guess that there are a bunch of cops inside, as well as throughout the neighborhood. All waiting for her.

  Won’t they be surprised when she doesn’t show up?

  Alex keeps her cell phone handy—when things happen, they’ll happen fast. Then she settles in to watch the show.

  CHAPTER 49

  IT WAS ALL I COULD DO not to tear out my hair in frustration.

  Two calls to Detective Tom Mankowski confirmed that Herb was being closely guarded. He was still home—something he insisted upon because he wanted to be bait—but he had three cops and two Feebies in there with him. In neighboring houses were ten more cops and just as many Feds. There were three SRT snipers on nearby rooftops. Air support was standing by. As Mankowski said, a squirrel couldn’t fart within a block of the area without having six guns drawn on it.

  But the waiting was still torture. Herb was my partner. I should be there. Instead, I was pacing in a Wisconsin hotel room, my fingernails chewed down to blood, waiting for something to happen. Hopefully, the something would be of the good variety, involving Alex getting gunned down. But I had a feeling that Herb wasn’t as safe as everyone wanted to believe.

  What were they missing? What was I missing? How do you get to a guy who is heavily protected?

  A long-range weapon? That had been anticipated. A mail bomb? The mail for Herb’s route had been checked out and cleared back at the post office, and FedEx, UPS, and DHL had nothing for Herb or for his address. Hidden explosives? Earlier in the day, two bomb-sniffing dogs had covered every inch of Herb’s property.

  He was safer than the Pope. But we had to be forgetting something.

  Unless Alex was lying. Unless Herb wasn’t the target at all.

  She couldn’t get to my parents. Phin was unreachable. Harry?

  I called him, using the hotel room phone.

  “Hi, sis. I forgive you for acting like a jerk yesterday. I found the Milwaukee cell phone. Motel lobby, at the Old Stone Inn, behind the ice machine. Weren’t you just there?”

  “Where are you now?”

  “On my way to Chicago. That’s where the next one is. You wouldn’t believe how much gas I’ve gone through the last few days. I think I’m getting about three hundred yards per gallon.”

  “Harry, Alex might have been lying about Herb. You might be the next target.”

  “Let her try for me. Slappy will take care of her.”

  “I’m being serious.”

  “I am too. After you left, I gave the monkey some pills, to calm him down.”

  I shook my head, amazed. “You gave the monkey Vicodin?”

  “I thought it was. But the wrong pills were in the bottle. I actually gave him Viagra. He’s been a little, uh, aggressive since then.”

  “I bet.”

  “I got him back in his cage by throwing in a cashmere sweater he’s taken a serious liking to. He and the sweater have been going at it non-stop for about eight hours. But if I open the cage, he’ll pounce on Alex like a starving man after a donut.”

  “Be careful, McGlade.”

  “I’ll be okay. If he jumps on me, I’ll be wearing earplugs and nose-plugs and keep my mouth closed tight.”

  “I meant with Alex.”

  “Slappy and I are ready. Does Mom like cashmere?”

  “That’s disgusting.”

  “Not this sweater. A new sweater. I was going to give this one to Herb.”

  “Stay in touch,” I told him.

  “Does this mean we’re partners again?”

  “Just stay in touch.”

  I hung up, did some more pacing, tried to eat a room ser vice turkey club, failed, did more pacing, tried to watch a movie, failed, called Tom again for an update when none was needed, did push-ups until my arms wouldn’t work anymore, paced, and finally around four p.m. Alex’s phone rang.

  I picked up, expecting to see a text message. But instead I saw a photo, of Herb’s house, a red car parked in the driveway.

  No, it wasn’t a photo. This picture moved, the car door opening.

  This was a live feed.

  I got on the phone, my phone, and hit the speed dial for Herb.

  One ring.

  A man was getting out of the car. Big, muscular, wearing a tight shirt.

  Two rings.

  The shirt had a logo on the back, large enough for me to read even on the small LCD phone screen.

  1-800-MEATS4U.

  Three ring
s.

  But this couldn’t be the meat I ordered for Herb. That was being sent UPS, and not for another few days.

  Alex. Somehow Alex knew about it.

  The man reached into the passenger seat, removed a large white foam box.

  Why weren’t the cops taking him down?

  “Hello?”

  “Bernice! It’s Jack!”

  The big guy walked up to the front door. Two figures with FBI on their jackets rushed at him from both sides.

  “Jack, the Turduckinlux is here.”

  “I didn’t send the—”

  Herb’s front door opened, and then an explosion shook the camera. I heard a shocking BOOM through the tiny speaker of my cell, so startling I dropped my phone.

  My other hand clenched Alex’s phone, the screen fuzzy and gray. I watched, horrified, as the smoke cleared.

  Herb’s front porch, and a large chunk of his house, were gone.

  I picked up my cell, whispered into it, “Bernice.”

  She didn’t answer. But in the background, I heard screaming.

  CHAPTER 50

  PERFECT. ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. The male stripper Laugh-O-Gram showed up with the package right at the scheduled time, and wore the meat shop T-shirt Alex had made for him, using the inkjet printer and an iron-on silk-screen design. She hopes the guy spent the five hundred bucks she paid him yesterday to make the trip from Milwaukee, because he certainly wouldn’t be spending it now.

  Quite a lot of damage a few pounds of plastic explosive can cause. The house is trashed, and Alex can see several dead bodies inside. It would be fun to sit and watch the ambulances come, the corpses removed, but Alex has business to take care of.

  Big business. The original plan. The real reason she’s in Chicago.

  She tucks away her cell phone, checks her watch, then grabs her gear, which is resting on the dead body in the backseat. A few police cars whiz by, sirens blazing. Perfect. The authorities, and the media, will be going crazy over the bombing. Which means they’ll pay less attention to what she’s going to do in about sixty seconds.

  Alex pulls up her hood, dons her movie star sunglasses, gets out of the car, and removes the M18A1. She holds it and the cord in one hand, the plastic trigger in the other, and waits for the truck to arrive.

  It’s a minute late. Understandable, given all of the police traffic. There are other cars on the road, but Alex doesn’t give them any unneeded attention. She’s got tunnel vision, focusing on one thing and one thing only: the armored money truck, heading her way.

  When it’s within twenty yards, Alex steps out in front of it, raising her hand up. The truck slows. Alex walks forward, waits for it to stop, then drops the M18A1 down onto the street and kicks it under the truck’s front end, directly beneath the engine.

  She backpedals, playing out line, and then hits the detonator while the truck is shifting into reverse.

  The M18A1 Claymore mine does what it was made to do: fire seven hundred steel balls in a sixty-degree outward pattern at 1,200 meters per second.

  Not enough to seriously damage the truck, or hurt its occupants. Not even enough to crack the engine block or sever the drive train. But enough to shred the armored vehicle’s electronics under the hood.

  It won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

  Moving quickly without rushing, Alex heads to the rear of the truck, sticking her cone of PENO onto the back door lock. She unwinds some cord, stands clear, and hits the sparker.

  The armor is thick, tough. But so is a Sherman tank’s, and the plastic explosive makes easy work of the door, blowing it open so it hangs outward on its hinges. Alex waits alongside the truck, out of the line of sight, for the hopper to come out. A trained professional, one with enough experience to follow this training while in combat situations, would take cover and wait inside for Alex to enter. But an average guy with average training would want to get the hell out of there.

  This guy is average. He fires twice, then comes jumping out of the cargo hold and racing down the street. Alex shoots him in the back. She approaches the truck low, on an angle, and makes sure there are no other guards. The driver wisely stays in the front cab. He’s protected as long as he doesn’t come out.

  Alex isn’t concerned about him for the time being. If he wants to try to be a hero, she’ll deal with it. What has her attention are the canvas money bags on the floor of the cargo area. She has extra PENO and detonators with her, in case she had to deal with safes, and also an extra Claymore in case this truck turned out to be a bust and she needed to find another.

  Alex uses her folder knife to cut open the first bag, and one look confirms that a second robbery won’t be necessary. The bag is loaded with banded stacks of twenties. Maybe ten thousand dollars’ worth.

  And Alex counts twelve bags in the back of the truck.

  She opens up the army duffel, begins stuffing in bags. She fits five, and can sling five more over her shoulders. The last two she has to leave behind—she doesn’t have time to make two trips. The driver has already called it in, and even with all the commotion the bombing has caused, the cops will be here soon.

  Alex heads for the alley, following it through to the parking garage, waddling up a flight of concrete steps, and loading everything into the Prius. Almost home.

  As she pulls down the circular driveway, heading for the exit, she hears police sirens. She stops at the exit gate, lowers her window, and sticks the parking stub into the slot. The automatic machine flashes twelve dollars—a ridiculous amount to have to pay for parking less than an hour. Alex reaches for her purse, but it isn’t on the passenger seat. She looks around the Prius, on the floor, in the back, and her purse is nowhere to be found.

  The hotel. She left it back at the hotel.

  “Is there a problem?”

  The voice is coming through a speaker, attached to the gate machine. A parking lot attendant.

  “No,” Alex says. “Just looking for my cash.”

  Alex unclips her folder knife, cuts open the nearest bag of money. Something catches her eye, and she checks the rearview and sees the guard is coming up behind her, holding a walkie-talkie.

  Alex considers killing the guard, but there’s the possibility he has a partner, and has already called in her license plate number. That could get linked to the armored car robbery, less than a block over, and Alex will be pulled over by the first cop who sees her.

  She fishes out a wad of fifties, breaks the seal. The guard is getting closer. If he looks in the car, he’ll see the bags of money. If he looks really close, he’ll see the body still in the backseat.

  Alex shoves a crisp fifty into the slot. It sucks up the cash, then spits it out. Alex tries again, with similar results. Then she notices the sign on the machine.

  Only accepts $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills.

  The guard is almost at her back bumper. Alex practically laughs at the absurdity of it. She’s got maybe a hundred grand in the car, but can’t find twelve lousy bucks.

  She slits open another bag, and fate smiles on her—it exposed a sheaf of twenties. Alex peels one off, sticks it into the machine, and the gate rises.

  Alex waits for the road spikes to go down, then hits the gas, pulling out of the parking lot, swerving to avoid an oncoming police car, and tearing down the street, driving as fast as the Prius can handle.

  CHAPTER 51

  THE FEEBIES ARRESTED ME AT THE HOSPITAL.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Special Agent Dailey as he put on the cuffs. In front of me, not behind. Professional courtesy. “Coursey was a good man.”

  Dailey looked positively haggard, the neutral expression he constantly wore replaced by a drawn-out, faraway look.

  “He’s the one who answered the door. He told Sergeant Benedict to stay back.”

  “Where is Herb?”

  “Intensive Care. He just got out of surgery.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “I have orders to bring you in.”

  “Please,” I sai
d.

  “I can’t. The SAC wants you in custody.”

  “He’s my partner. You know how important that is.”

  Dailey stared at me, then nodded. He took my elbow and escorted me down the hospital hallway. His grip was heavy, but I felt it had less to do with me running away, and more about giving him something to cling to.

  There were guards in front of Herb’s room. One of them was Tom Mankowski. He was in a rumpled, filthy suit, standing almost a head taller than me. His blue eyes appraised me kindly.

  “I was at the neighbors’. When the car pulled up, we were ready to move in. But Sergeant Benedict told us to hold off. He thought it was some steaks you were sending him. Actually, that saved a lot of lives. We lost three, but it would have been four or five more if he didn’t order us to stand down. Me included.”

  I nodded at him, turned my attention to the door.

  “Ten minutes,” Dailey told me.

  I went inside.

  Herb was under an oxygen tent, the clear plastic windows looking futuristic and strangely cheap. Ban dages were swathed around his chest. Two tubes were taped to his face, one going up his nose and the other jammed down his throat. Another tube—I guessed it to be a drain—snaked out through his ban dages, taped to the bed rail along with his IV. His eyes were closed, puffy. The steady beep beep beep of his vitals drilled into me, accusing, blaming.

  Bernice was slumped in a chair next to him, some gauze on her forehead, her hand under the tent and clutching her husband’s. When she saw me she stood up and threw her arms around my waist.

  I couldn’t hug her back because of the handcuffs, but I put my head on her shoulder.

  “How’s he doing?” I managed.

  “Critical. His chest is all messed up. The bomb—it was packed with roofing nails.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “They wouldn’t give me a clear answer. I had to scream at the head surgeon. He told me…” Bernice sobbed, her body shuddering. “Jack, his chances are fifty-fifty.”

  Fifty-fifty. The toss of a coin.