Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)

*

Cort Wesley had left four downed ISIS fighters in his wake, their cell phone timers now deactivated. The second fighter had been even easier to spot than the first, their eyes meeting briefly before Cort Wesley pounced, shoving him through a nearby stairwell door, where he launched a series of blows that dropped the kid in a heap. The few witnesses about kept their distance, and Cort Wesley didn’t care whether they called the cops, response time being what it was. He’d be long gone from this area before anyone in uniform showed up.

A third fighter was huddled in a shadowy corner, and the fourth was close enough to a men’s room to force him through the door and smash his head against a wall with enough force to drive fracture lines through the tile.

That man’s timer had ticked below the five-minute mark, leaving him that long to reach the remaining six terrorists.

“Hey, you!” a voice blared, when Cort Wesley emerged from the men’s room. “Stop right there!”

A beat cop assigned to the tunnels, Cort Wesley saw; no, two of them. Both coming his way, giving chase when he ran.

*

Dylan approached the bearded man, pretending to be checking his cell phone, although never really taking his eyes off the man’s backpack. At that point he was unsure of his own intentions, was still unsure when the man unslung the backpack from his shoulder and brought it around before him.

The man seemed ready to deposit the backpack in the nearest concrete trash container, when Dylan pounced. Dylan slammed into the guy as if he were a tackling dummy back at the football practice Dylan should’ve been attending right now. The impact drove both of them into a logjam of pedestrian traffic, Dylan using his shoulder to ram the man against the concrete wall.

He could feel the guy’s bones crackle, seeming to recede and bounce back. The man’s air escaped him in a thick whoosh as his backpack went flying. Hit the ground and scattered college textbooks in all directions.

The man’s terrified eyes met Dylan’s as he struggled for breath. Dylan backed off, hands in the air.

“Sorry, man. Sorry.”

Plenty of people watching him, trying to ascertain what had just happened, though keeping their distance. Among them, Dylan spotted a kid about his age silhouetted against the glow off a Wendy’s sign, clutching a backpack before him as if it were a baby.

*

Getting away from the cops in the tunnels was easy; Cort Wesley ducked into a stairwell that led up into a big office tower and let them slip right past him The problem was the last terrorist he’d taken out, slammed into a bathroom wall, had seen Cort Wesley coming in time to backpedal for that door. Plenty of time to trigger his explosives, but he hadn’t.

Because he couldn’t.

Because there must be a single trigger man, the others remaining in place until the very last possible moment to insure the bomb-laden backpacks they’d hidden remained undetected. Or maybe their intention was to all die down here, become martyrs to their cause.

Then his cell phone rang and he realized he’d neglected to silence it.

“We’ve got clearance to land in Sam Houston Park, Cort Wesley,” Caitlin informed him over a helicopter’s engine and rotor sounds.

“How long?”

“We’ll be on the ground in five.”

“Not soon enough. I’m in the tunnels. This is going down now.”

“Dylan with you?” she asked, after a pause.

“Somewhere.”

“Then get out of there, both of you.”

“You know I can’t do that, Ranger,” he said, and ended the call.

Then he spun through the door back into the tunnels, heading for the location of the next red X on the map.

*

Dylan had his father’s Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter drawn, steadied on the kid cradling his backpack, before he could rethink the action.

“Drop it!” Dylan said to him, the gun held in a trembling hand by his hip now. “Drop it now!”

The kid looked at him as people backed off, the bustling food court gone eerily quiet. It felt as if they were the only two people there, centered amid the benches and tables, the leaves of a pair of big plants shifting, as if brushed by the breeze.

“He’s got a bomb!” Dylan yelled to all of them. “Everybody, run!” All his focus trained back on the kid now, imagining what his father or Caitlin would do or say, as a flood of commuters stampeded from the retail area. “Drop it! You hear me? Drop the backpack or I’ll drop you!”

Much to Dylan’s surprise, the kid before him let the backpack fall and raised his hands in the air. He was surprised, because it couldn’t be this easy.

And it wasn’t.

Because the kid was holding something black and flat in his hand. A smartphone.

The trigger. Why else would he be down here, so far away from the others standing in the shadow of an exit?

Shoot him! Dylan heard in his head.

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