NYPD Red

Chapter 79

“Get me a sledgehammer,” I said.

“I don’t have a sledge-no, I have something. Give me a second,” she said, running back to her apartment.

“I can give you seventy-two seconds,” I yelled back after her. “And then we’re toast.”

I watched the timer count down to 1:00, 0:59, 0:58, and I wondered how much C4 Benoit could stuff into the guts of a toaster oven. From what I knew about his style, he wouldn’t skimp on the ingredients.

Kylie came back carrying a twenty-pound dumbbell. “Best I can do,” she said. “Hold the door open.”

I’m pretty sure I’m stronger than Kylie, but I wasn’t about to debate which one of us should be wielding the dumbbell. We had only thirty-seven seconds, and I figured whatever she lacked in brute strength, she would make up for with pure adrenaline.

I set the toaster oven on the floor, pulled down the chute door as far as the hinge would go, then grabbed the handle to hold the door in place.

“I’m hoping you’re as accurate with a dumbbell as you are with a Glock,” I said. “Try not to hit me. We’ve got thirty seconds. When we get down to ten, we should run like hell for your apartment.”

So we can die in there with Spence, because as sure as shit, when this blows, the blast radius is going to go a lot farther than your living room.

Kylie brought the dumbbell down hard. The force reverberated up my arm, but the door didn’t budge.

“Twenty-five seconds,” I said.

She swung it again.

The door hung on tight.

“Hit it again,” I said. “Third time’s the charm.”

I was right. The door gave. Not a lot, but it gave.

“It’s loose,” I yelled. “Again.”

She lowered the boom, and this time chunks of cinder block fell to the floor.

“One more time. Eighteen seconds.”

Kylie raised the dumbbell high and brought it down with a loud grunt worthy of Serena Williams.

The steel door hit the floor with a clatter.

I picked up the toaster oven as Kylie lashed out at the cinder block wall again and again.

It crumbled, leaving a gaping hole where the door had been. I could see the garbage chute. It was round. And wide.

“Out of the way!” I yelled.

I took one last look at the clock and dropped Kylie and Spence’s ultrachic, stainless-steel, countertop toaster-bomb into the abyss.

The window of time for us to get out of the incinerator room had passed.

“Seven seconds!” I yelled. “Hit the dirt.”

She dropped to the floor.

“Six.”

The irony of it all hit me in an instant. If Kylie and I had been able to run back to her apartment, we probably would have had a chance. But here in the incinerator room, we were directly above ground zero.

“Five.”

The bomb would explode in the basement, a fireball would travel up the chute like a cannon shot, and we would both be engulfed in flames. But maybe it didn’t have to be both of us.

“Four.”

We all die sooner or later. I always figured I had till much later, but if it had to be today, there was no place else I’d rather be, and no one else I’d rather be with.

I threw myself on top of her and covered her body with mine.

“Three. Two. One.”