“Yeah.” The reply sounded heavy, forced. “Here.”
He marched his prisoner into the dining room. The wounded shooter flopped on the floor, pushing down against his thigh with cuffed hands. “Jesus Christ, oh Christ.”
Cooper ignored him, looked at his partner, who leaned against a wall, one hand holding his sidearm, the other hugging his chest. “The vest catch everything?”
“Yeah.” Quinn forced the word through clenched teeth. “Broke at least one rib, though.”
“Messed up your suit, too.”
His partner barked a laugh and then winced in pain. “Shit, Coop, don’t.”
The adrenaline was beginning to fade, leaving Cooper with that rubbery-limbed feeling. He holstered the Beretta, then flexed his fingers, took a deep breath. “You check the house?”
Quinn nodded. “Clear.”
Cooper took another deep breath and a look around. The place had a dorm room feel, everything cheap and secondhand. The couch was Salvation Army. There were no pictures on the wall. Shelves of cinderblocks and boards were packed with books, mostly politics, some memoirs, a row of electronics manuals. The tri-d was the only expensive thing in the place; a recent model, its hologram field was sharp and unwavering, the colors vivid. It was tuned to CNN, tickers and ribbons hanging in midair, the head and shoulders of an anchor ghostly as she talked about the grand opening of the new stock exchange. An open bag of Doritos sat on the coffee table, along with half a dozen beer bottles.
Cooper turned to his prisoners. “You guys having a party?”
“You have a warrant?” Evans glared. “Some ID?”
“We’re not cops, Dusty. We’re gas men. We don’t need warrants. We don’t need a judge or jury, either.”
Evans tried to lock down his expression, but fear flashed across it like a spotlight.
Quinn said, “Still think this lead is thin, boss?”
Cooper laughed and pulled out his phone. They’d need to let the cops know what the gunfire was about before some local got twitchy and rolled in. And Director Peters would want to know that they had their targets. Not only that, but the first credible recording of John Smith’s voice in three years.
Of course, the bad news was that meant an attack was likely to happen today—
Wait a second.
The beer. The Doritos. The tri-d tuned to CNN.
Oh shit.
A horn blared. Cooper yanked the Escalade hard right, the tires popping up the curb shoulder, gravel spitting behind them, clearing the pole of a streetlight by inches. The man in the passenger seat screamed. They’d tied a kitchen towel around his thigh, but the blue-checked terrycloth was crimson now. He was trying to keep pressure on it, his hands still bound, fingers and handcuffs covered in gore. In the backseat, Quinn grunted, but said nothing. Beside him, Dusty Evans had recovered his screw-you face.
Cooper jammed down on the gas, cleared the van in front of them, and then bounced back into his lane. He had both the siren and the flashers going, but he also had the accelerator nearly to the floor, and it seemed like they were outrunning the sound.
The clock on the dashboard read 1:32. He glanced at the GPS. A thirty-minute drive, and they didn’t have thirty minutes. He pushed the accelerator a little farther down, the speedometer breaking a hundred now, Highway 1 a blur of concrete barriers and low warehouses. Airplanes bound for Newark International cut crosses from gray skies.
“Hey,” Cooper said. “What’s your name?”
“I need a doctor, man, I need a doctor bad.”
“We’ll get you a doctor soon. I promise. What’s your name?”
“Gary Nie—”
“Don’t tell them nothing,” Dusty Evans said from the backseat. “This is Gestapo bullshit. This is what we’re fighting against.”
“Listen, Gary,” Cooper said, ignoring the outburst, “we don’t have a lot of time.” The back of a semi loomed, brake lights flaring as the trucker tried to pull over, but Cooper was going too fast, had to skim between the lanes, the left mirror inches from the concrete barrier, the right almost touching the truck panels. He was good at driving fast, enjoyed the dance of hurtling steel, but the circumstances were making it tricky, the chaos of sirens and lights and horns and screams and blood, not to mention the stakes, a vision of what he feared was about to happen. “I need you to answer some questions. First, where exactly is the bomb?”
“How do you know about the—”
“Don’t say anything, you hear?” Evans again. “You hear me?”
There was the snick of metal against leather. Cooper spared a quarter second to glance in the rearview. Evans had turned into a statue, his eyes rolling but muscles locked. Bobby Quinn didn’t look away from the pistol he held to the man’s temple. “Go ahead, Coop. I think the backseat is out of opinions.”
“Thank you.” Cooper put on his best mild grin. “Now. We know you planted the bomb.” They hadn’t, of course, until Gary confirmed it a moment ago, but there was no point saying that. He pulled past a sedan, saw a patch of blessedly empty straightaway and floored it. “These are the things I need to know. Where exactly is it? What kind of bomb? How powerful? How is it detonated? When?”
Gary moaned and rocked forward, his hands clenched over his left thigh. The backs of his hands were caked in dried blood. His features were pale. “Jesusgod this hurts. I need a doctor.”
“Elevate it.”
The man looked at him, and Cooper nodded. “Go ahead.”
Gary fumbled to undo his seatbelt, then spun so that he was leaning against the side door. He raised the leg awkwardly, bracing a boot against the console and moaning as he did.
“Better? Good. Now listen. Where exactly is the bomb? What kind is it? How powerful? How is it detonated? When?”
“I don’t.” He gasped as the Escalade hit a pothole at 112 miles an hour, bouncing on the heavy shocks as they blew past a tour bus. “Goddamn it! Take me to a hospital.”
Cooper glanced over. Gary Nie-whatever’s long hair was scraggly and matted with sweat. His body was broadcasting agony, all of his muscles tensed, and trying to read the subtleties beneath that was dicey at best. One thing was for sure, though, the man looked smaller when he wasn’t holding a shotgun.
Slowly and carefully, he asked again. “Where is the bomb? What kind is it? How powerful? How is it detonated? When?”
Gary looked over, his eyes glossy with tears. His lips quivered, and then he whispered something.
“What?”
“I said.” The man fought a breath in. “Screw you, Gas Man. I am John Smith.”
The road was two lanes of blacktop in each direction under steel-gray skies. Half a mile ahead a bridge stretched across the listless brown of the Passaic River. Cooper checked the side mirror. Clear.
He leaned across Gary Nie-whatever’s chest and yanked the door handle at the same time as he jerked the steering wheel left. Centripetal force and the weight of the man’s body threw the door open.
For a fraction of a second, Gary hung weightless as a balloon, his mouth open, arms in front of him, the chain of the handcuffs still swinging between them as a roar of wind filled the world.
Then Cooper jerked the wheel to the right, narrowly dodging the lane divider. The door slammed shut. In the rearview mirror Gary’s body hit the pavement at a hundred miles an hour, smearing and bouncing. There was a squeal of air brakes as the tour bus behind them fought to stop, and then his body vanished beneath its wheels.
Quinn said, “Jesus Christ! Cooper—”
“Shut up.” Cooper looked in the rearview. Dusty Evans had both hands to his mouth, the muscles of his throat twitching. His eyes stared, unbelieving. Cooper waited until he turned back to the front, locked gazes. “Now. Where exactly is the bomb? What kind is it? How powerful? How is it detonated? When?”