Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

The mad bomber strikes again!

“Wait! The Mad Bomber. Of course!” I cried. “It isn’t a terrorist act, Emily. The bombings are copycats, too. There actually was a Mad Bomber who terrorized New York in the forties or fifties, I think.”

“Hold up, Mike. I’m at a computer,” Emily said.

I could hear her typing.

“My God, Mike, you’re right. It’s right here on Wikipedia. The guy’s name was George Metesky. He was known as the Mad Bomber, and it says here that in the forties and fifties, he planted bombs at New York landmarks. Wait! It says he planted bombs at the Public Library and Grand Central Terminal.”

I shook my head.

“Is that what this is?” I said. “Someone or more than one person is copycatting two famous crime sprees at once?”

“But how?” Emily said, sounding astounded. “Think about the logistics. How could it be coordinated? Four bombings and a double murder in a little over twenty-four hours?”

“Well, from the sophistication of the bombs, we’re not dealing with dummies,” I said as I fumbled my grip on my phone. I was just able to catch it against my chest.

When I looked back up, I immediately stopped thinking about the case. In fact, my entire brain stopped functioning. Then my lungs.

Because around a curve in the expressway, being approached at roughly the speed of light, were three packed lanes of dead-stopped traffic.

Chapter 31

FOR A FEW PRECIOUS FRACTIONS OF A SECOND, I did nothing but gape at the frozen red wall of brake lights.

Then I did four things pretty much simultaneously. I screamed, released the phone, let off the gas, and slammed on the brakes.

Nothing happened. In fact, the brakes felt suddenly looser than normal. Were they broken? I thought, pissed. Or possibly cut? I knew the car had ABS. It was perhaps the only thing on my shock-scrambled mind as I hurtled toward the rapidly approaching rear of a Peter Pan tour bus.

I wondered in my panic if I was doing it right. Was I supposed to pump or hold the brakes? I couldn’t remember. My fear-locked leg decided for me, keeping the pedal down as far as it would go.

The brake pedal gave a couple of hard jerks under my foot and then felt even looser. The line had snapped under the strain, I decided. The massive steel wall of bus in my windshield got larger and closer by the millisecond.

It was over, I decided. I was going to hit it head-on, and it was going to be very bad.

That’s when a slow-motion, life-flashing-before-your-eyes sensation kicked in. I glanced to my right as I lasered past a white Volkswagen Jetta. The pretty young brunette behind the wheel was putting on mascara. Turning back toward the rear of the bus that I was about to become part of, I wondered if she was the last human face I would ever see.

My last thought as I braced my arms against the steering wheel was of my kids. How hard and royally shitty it was going to be for them to lose not just their biological parents, not just their adoptive mother, but now their careless adoptive father as well.

I closed my eyes.

And the car just stopped.

No skidding. No warning. There was a brief scream of rubber, and it was like God slipped his hand between my car and the bus, and I went from sixty to zero in zero point zero seconds.

Too bad I was still moving. My sternum felt like it was hit with an ax handle as I chest-bumped my locked shoulder belt. My dropped BlackBerry catapulted off the passenger seat like an F-14 off a carrier. It ricocheted off the glove box and whizzed past my ear like a bullet.

Guess I should have bought that merchandise insurance after all, I thought, as I sat blinking and shuddering behind the wheel.

Was I still alive?

I decided to check. I took a sweet drink of oxygen and, like magic, turned it into carbon dioxide. Then I did it again. My heart was still beating, too. Actually, it felt like it was trying to tear itself out of my chest, but that was neither here nor there. Being alive was fun, I decided.

Chapter 32

I WAITED A FEW MORE SECONDS to see if St. Peter was going to show. When he didn’t, I backed away from the rear of the idling bus. Ignoring the dumbstruck looks from my fellow motorists in the other lanes, I reached into the back of the car and retrieved my phone. The battery cover was shot, but the phone was actually still working. Miracles were abounding this morning.

Since traffic was at a standstill, I decided to call Emily back.