“Are you sure you should be doing this?” I asked.
Keller kept poking and prodding while answering me, as if to make his point. “This C-4 stuff is as stable as it comes. You could shoot it with a gun and it wouldn’t explode.”
You learn something new every day. Even when it could be your last.
“So, what does make it explode?” I asked.
“A shock wave combined with extreme heat,” said Keller, “created by triggering these wires connected to the detonators imbedded in C-4.”
“Couldn’t we just slip everything off her? Right up over her head?”
“That’s what I’m checking to see,” he said as he continued to poke and prod. “The way whoever built this has it configured, though, I’m not sure -”
Keller suddenly stopped cold, and he looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
“What is it?” I asked. “Tell me.”
Instead, he showed me. He pulled me closer and pointed at it, clear as could be.
It was worse than a ghost, actually.
It was a timer – ticking backwards.
Chapter 99
“UNCLE NICK? WHAT’S happening? What’s going on? Why aren’t either of you talking?”
Elizabeth reached out for me, her pale, slender hands waving helplessly in the air. She started to move toward me but Keller held her back.
“Nick, come hold Elizabeth,” he said. “Can you do that? Keep her hands up.”
I swung around behind Elizabeth, doing exactly as Keller said. “Don’t move,” I whispered in her ear. “I’m right here with you.”
Over her shoulder I could still see the timer, a cheap plastic stopwatch that was taped to the cell phone behind one of the blocks of C-4.
Fifty-four seconds!
And heading in the wrong direction…
Keller had no time to think. He was winging it, fast and furious. Then, like a switchboard operator on speed, he began pulling out the detonator wires one by one.
“How much time?” he asked.
“Forty seconds!” I said.
He pulled out another wire. There were three to go. Then two. My eyes were pinballing back and forth between the timer and his hands.
“Talk to me,” he said.
“Thirty seconds!”
Keller was down to the last wire. “Just one more,” he said under his breath. “C’mon, now…”
He gripped the C-4 to hold it steady. All he had to do now was pull on the wire and ease it out like he’d done with all the others.
“Shit!” said Keller.
The wire wasn’t moving.
“Pull harder!” I yelled.
“I am!” he yelled back. “He must have glued it.”
Twenty-five seconds!
Keller looked at me and then out the door of the train. I saw the spark of an idea light his face. A last-gasp idea? Probably.
“Wait! Where are you going?” I said.
He was already sprinting toward the front of the car, heading for the engineer’s cabin. Seconds later, the train jerked and sputtered. It was moving along the track again.
“Pick her up!” he barked, running back toward us.
“What?”
“Lift her off the ground! Do it! Right now!”
“Please do it!” Elizabeth joined in.
I grabbed Elizabeth by the elbows and hoisted her up. Suddenly Keller pulled the bomb over her waist and down her legs, sliding it off her feet.
Damn it! I couldn’t see the timer anymore. All I could see was Keller pointing out the door of the train at the green of trees. The train was gaining speed.
“Jump!” he yelled. “Jump now!”
I scooped up Elizabeth, cradling her in my arms as I turned toward the door – and then leaped through the air after him.
There was no tuck and roll, only a thud – my feet barely hitting the ground before I fell onto my back to shield Elizabeth. The snap! I heard was another one of my ribs, the pain shooting through my body like an angry rocket.
Still cradling Elizabeth in my arms, I turned to watch the train zoom by us, the head car that was carrying the bomb getting smaller and smaller. But not small enough.
“Get up!” barked Keller. “Run!”
I scrambled to my feet with Elizabeth as Keller grabbed my arm to lead the way. We raced along the tracks, putting as much distance as we could between us and the -
BOOM!
Chapter 100
“DARK SIDE OF the Moon or Wish You Were Here?” asked Anne Gram, one of the two surgical technologists prepping the OR at Jacobi Medical Center. She was cueing up the iPod of Dr. Al Sassoon, the attending surgeon – and massive Pink Floyd fan – who was still scrubbing.
Ruth Kreindler, the frick to Anne’s frack, looked up from the sterile surgical drape she was laying over Joseph D’zorio’s groin area. It was the only part of the guy that wasn’t broken, punctured, lacerated, or ruptured.
“The way this is shaping up,” said Ruth, shaking her head, “we’ll hear both albums and some of The Wall as well. Al and his Pink Floyd.”
“Hey – he’s good, and he’s fun to work with.”
The two women, both in their early forties, were done with their pre-op checklist, even twice testing the suction machines as they’d been clogging as of late. All in all, it was business as usual, although they both knew that the man on the table, unconscious and breathing oxygen, was no ordinary patient.
“Do you believe all people deserve to be saved?” Anne finally asked.
Ruth looked over her shoulder to make sure the two of them were still alone with the infamous mob boss. They were. “Are you speaking medically or spiritually?” she asked. “It might make a difference in my answer.”
Anne shrugged. “Medically, I suppose.”
“I know what you’re saying, but a hospital isn’t a court-room. Know what I mean?”
“I do. Still.”
Ruth glanced down at D’zorio. “I’ll put it to you this way,” she said. “A guy like this puts my faith to the test. It’s righteous anger versus forgiveness.”
“Who wins?” asked Anne.
“Forgiveness, I suppose. Spiritually, all people can be saved.”
Anne nodded but there was little belief in her eyes. She could never say it out loud, but she was secretly hoping that Dr. Sassoon would have an off day, or at least not bring his “A” game to the table.
“What did you say?” asked Ruth.
Anne hadn’t said anything. She was too busy envisioning Dr. Sassoon “accidentally” leaving a sponge in D’zorio’s chest.
But she’d heard it, too. Someone had said something in the operating room.
Simultaneously, they both looked down at D’zorio on the table. His thin, bluish lips were moving. He was mumbling.
“What did he say?” asked Anne.
“I’m not sure,” said Ruth, leaning down toward his mouth. Anne joined her.
“Sorr -” said D’zorio, his voice barely above a whisper. “Sorry.”
At least, that’s what the two heard.
“He’s confessing his sins,” said Anne.
“Or trying to,” said Ruth, walking over to the phone on the wall.
She called down to the staff chaplain’s office to see if D’zorio’s priest had arrived yet. They had been told he was on his way to administer the anointing of the sick, otherwise known as the mob boss’s last rites.
Apparently, D’zorio was starting without him.
Ruth was still waiting for someone in the chaplain’s office to pick up when the heart monitor alarm sounded.
“Oh, Christ!” said Anne, back at the table with D’zorio. “He’s flatlining!”
Ruth hung up the phone and ran out to where Dr. Sassoon had just finished scrubbing.
But it was too late. There would be no Pink Floyd played in the OR that afternoon. Joseph D’zorio had receded into death.
Like a distant ship’s smoke on the horizon.
Chapter 101
BRUNO TORENZI WAS steamrolling his way through the brush and branches, his hands clearing the way forward while his ears listened for anyone coming up behind him.