Cherry Bomb

CHAPTER 50

PERFECT. ABSOLUTELY PERFECT. The male stripper Laugh-O-Gram showed up with the package right at the scheduled time, and wore the meat shop T-shirt Alex had made for him, using the inkjet printer and an iron-on silk-screen design. She hopes the guy spent the five hundred bucks she paid him yesterday to make the trip from Milwaukee, because he certainly wouldn’t be spending it now.

Quite a lot of damage a few pounds of plastic explosive can cause. The house is trashed, and Alex can see several dead bodies inside. It would be fun to sit and watch the ambulances come, the corpses removed, but Alex has business to take care of.

Big business. The original plan. The real reason she’s in Chicago.

She tucks away her cell phone, checks her watch, then grabs her gear, which is resting on the dead body in the backseat. A few police cars whiz by, sirens blazing. Perfect. The authorities, and the media, will be going crazy over the bombing. Which means they’ll pay less attention to what she’s going to do in about sixty seconds.

Alex pulls up her hood, dons her movie star sunglasses, gets out of the car, and removes the M18A1. She holds it and the cord in one hand, the plastic trigger in the other, and waits for the truck to arrive.

It’s a minute late. Understandable, given all of the police traffic. There are other cars on the road, but Alex doesn’t give them any unneeded attention. She’s got tunnel vision, focusing on one thing and one thing only: the armored money truck, heading her way.

When it’s within twenty yards, Alex steps out in front of it, raising her hand up. The truck slows. Alex walks forward, waits for it to stop, then drops the M18A1 down onto the street and kicks it under the truck’s front end, directly beneath the engine.

She backpedals, playing out line, and then hits the detonator while the truck is shifting into reverse.

The M18A1 Claymore mine does what it was made to do: fire seven hundred steel balls in a sixty-degree outward pattern at 1,200 meters per second.

Not enough to seriously damage the truck, or hurt its occupants. Not even enough to crack the engine block or sever the drive train. But enough to shred the armored vehicle’s electronics under the hood.

It won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

Moving quickly without rushing, Alex heads to the rear of the truck, sticking her cone of PENO onto the back door lock. She unwinds some cord, stands clear, and hits the sparker.

The armor is thick, tough. But so is a Sherman tank’s, and the plastic explosive makes easy work of the door, blowing it open so it hangs outward on its hinges. Alex waits alongside the truck, out of the line of sight, for the hopper to come out. A trained professional, one with enough experience to follow this training while in combat situations, would take cover and wait inside for Alex to enter. But an average guy with average training would want to get the hell out of there.

This guy is average. He fires twice, then comes jumping out of the cargo hold and racing down the street. Alex shoots him in the back. She approaches the truck low, on an angle, and makes sure there are no other guards. The driver wisely stays in the front cab. He’s protected as long as he doesn’t come out.

Alex isn’t concerned about him for the time being. If he wants to try to be a hero, she’ll deal with it. What has her attention are the canvas money bags on the floor of the cargo area. She has extra PENO and detonators with her, in case she had to deal with safes, and also an extra Claymore in case this truck turned out to be a bust and she needed to find another.

Alex uses her folder knife to cut open the first bag, and one look confirms that a second robbery won’t be necessary. The bag is loaded with banded stacks of twenties. Maybe ten thousand dollars’ worth.

And Alex counts twelve bags in the back of the truck.

She opens up the army duffel, begins stuffing in bags. She fits five, and can sling five more over her shoulders. The last two she has to leave behind-she doesn’t have time to make two trips. The driver has already called it in, and even with all the commotion the bombing has caused, the cops will be here soon.

Alex heads for the alley, following it through to the parking garage, waddling up a flight of concrete steps, and loading everything into the Prius. Almost home.

As she pulls down the circular driveway, heading for the exit, she hears police sirens. She stops at the exit gate, lowers her window, and sticks the parking stub into the slot. The automatic machine flashes twelve dollars-a ridiculous amount to have to pay for parking less than an hour. Alex reaches for her purse, but it isn’t on the passenger seat. She looks around the Prius, on the floor, in the back, and her purse is nowhere to be found.

The hotel. She left it back at the hotel.

“Is there a problem?”

The voice is coming through a speaker, attached to the gate machine. A parking lot attendant.

“No,” Alex says. “Just looking for my cash.”

Alex unclips her folder knife, cuts open the nearest bag of money. Something catches her eye, and she checks the rearview and sees the guard is coming up behind her, holding a walkie-talkie.

Alex considers killing the guard, but there’s the possibility he has a partner, and has already called in her license plate number. That could get linked to the armored car robbery, less than a block over, and Alex will be pulled over by the first cop who sees her.

She fishes out a wad of fifties, breaks the seal. The guard is getting closer. If he looks in the car, he’ll see the bags of money. If he looks really close, he’ll see the body still in the backseat.

Alex shoves a crisp fifty into the slot. It sucks up the cash, then spits it out. Alex tries again, with similar results. Then she notices the sign on the machine.

Only accepts $1, $5, $10, and $20 bills.

The guard is almost at her back bumper. Alex practically laughs at the absurdity of it. She’s got maybe a hundred grand in the car, but can’t find twelve lousy bucks.

She slits open another bag, and fate smiles on her-it exposed a sheaf of twenties. Alex peels one off, sticks it into the machine, and the gate rises.

Alex waits for the road spikes to go down, then hits the gas, pulling out of the parking lot, swerving to avoid an oncoming police car, and tearing down the street, driving as fast as the Prius can handle.