Severe Clear (Stone Barrington 24)

Mike Freeman flagged a bellman with a cart and began looking for Stone, Dino, and Rifkin.

“Will they be in a cart, sir?” the bellman asked.

“Very probably.”

“I gave my pass card to a Secret Service agent at cottage 202. Is that who you’re looking for?”

“It is. Hurry, please.”

The man put his foot down.

—

Stone watched the clock count down. His mouth was dry, and his hands were sweating. Thirty-seven, thirty-six . . .

“Can you stop it?” Rifkin asked the bomb crew chief.

“Unlikely,” the man said, “but I can try.” He found a screwdriver and began removing screws from the panel.

“This isn’t going to happen fast enough,” Dino said under his breath.

Twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three . . . “Give me the jimmy,” the chief said. He accepted the crowbar, placed its edge under the rim of the front panel, and with great force, pried it open. He took hold of the top edge of the panel and put all his weight into bending it down to the perpendicular. Now some of the inner workings were exposed, including the wiring. The chief began sorting through a bundle of wires. “Most of these do nothing,” he said. “They’re camouflage for the active wires.”

Ten, nine, eight . . .

Stone was salivating, now, and he swallowed hard. He thought of his son, Hattie, and Ben. Everyone he loved would die in six seconds. “Dino,” he said, “give me your gun.”

Dino handed over a snub-nosed .38. “If you’re going to shoot yourself, shoot me first.”

Stone raised the revolver. “Out of the way, Chief,” he said, and cocked it for emphasis.

The chief turned and stared at him. “You can’t—”

Stone fired twice at the rapidly changing numbers.

“—do that,” the chief continued. The clock stopped at four seconds. “It might still blow.”

Then a voice came from the doorway. “I’ve got the key.”

Mike shoved the chief out of the way, inserted the T-shaped key he had taken from Rick into the slot, and turned i

t left, ninety degrees.

Three seconds remained on the clock. The numbers went dark.

“Okay,” the chief said, “one of those actions worked—I’m not sure which one.”

Stone handed Dino’s revolver back to him. “Thanks.” He looked around the room for a wastebasket, found one and threw up into it.

Kelli Keane’s knees gave way, and she fell onto the carpet, out.

—

A few minutes later the chief had disconnected everything inside the trunk, and he began to give his audience a tutorial on the device:

“There’s maybe three kilos of fissionable material,” he was saying. “That would have caused an explosion that would have leveled everything and killed everyone within a two- or three-mile radius. It would also probably have brought the Stone Canyon reservoirs above us down the canyon.”

“How many dead?” Steve Rifkin asked.