Split Second (Sean King & Michelle Maxwell 1)

This was no turban toting a subgun. It was a white man like him with a .357, its hammer already pulled back.

He rolled down the window. “Is there a problem?” he said.

“Not for us,” said the man, who was heavyset and jowly and looked closer to forty than thirty.

“Us?”

The man looked around and saw other white guys creeping out of the shadows. They were all armed and every gun they had was pointing at him.

“This is not part of the plan,” the man said.

The other man held out a cred pack. “There’s been a change in plan.”

The driver studied the ID card and badge and said, “If we’re on the same side, why the gun in my face?”

“In this part of the world I’ve learned not to trust anybody. Out, now!”

The driver slung his fully loaded knapsack over his shoulder and stepped down onto the dirt floor holding two things.

One was his Glock, which was useless with a dozen guns centered on him.

The second item was the black box. That was entirely useful. In fact, it was the only real bargaining chip he had.

He held it up to the cred man.

“Fail-safe,” he said. “Red button goes down, we all get vaporized. Truck is wired all the way around with cakes of Semtex. Enough to make this just a hole in the ground.”

“Bullshit!” yelled the cred man.

“Look under the wheel wells.”

The cred man nodded at one of the other men, who drew a flashlight and ducked under the truck’s right rear wheel well.

He backed out and turned. His expression said it all.

The dozen armed men looked back at the man with the box. Their superior numbers had just been rendered irrelevant.

He knew it, but he also knew this advantage was precarious. A game of chicken could have, at best, only one winner. But it could likely also have two losers. And he was running out of time. He could sense that in the fingers gliding to triggers, in the backward steps the men were trying to make surreptitiously. He could read their minds in every movement: Get out of the Semtex’s explosive radius and either let him detonate and kill himself or take him out with a kill shot and hopefully save the cargo. Either way they would live, which would be their primary objective. There would be other cargo to hijack, but they could not conjure additional lives.

“Unless you can run a lot faster than Usain Bolt, that won’t be happening,” he said. He held the box up higher, so everyone could see how close his finger was to the trigger. “You shoot, my finger is going to involuntarily punch this thing and then we all get to have an eternity to think about our sins.”

The cred man said, “We want what’s in the truck. You give us that, you go free.”

“I’m not sure how that would work,” said the man.

The cred man licked his lips and eyed the box. “There’s a pickup truck over there, fully fueled with extra in the back and a GPS. You take it.”

“And where exactly do I take it?” he asked.

“Wherever you want to go. I’m assuming out of this shithole.”

“I had a job to do.”

“That job has changed.”

“Why don’t we just end this.” He moved his index finger closer to the button; barely any space existed between it and his flesh.

“Wait,” said the cred man. “Wait.” He held up his hand.