The Edge of Armageddon

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

Drake raced to the phone and snatched it away from the woman. “What are you playing at?”

Marsh giggled down the line. “Have you checked under the other two tables?”

Then the line went dead. Drake felt everything inside him collapse as his soul and his heart froze, but he didn’t stop moving. “The tables!” he cried out and broke into a sprint, dropping and sliding on his knees under the closest one.

Alicia screamed at the staff and the patrons to get out, to evacuate. Beau collapsed under the other table. Drake no doubt saw an exact copy of what the Frenchman locked eyes upon, a small explosive device stuck to the underside of the table with duct tape. About the size and shape of a water bottle, it was crudely covered in old Christmas wrapping paper. The message Ho Ho Ho! was not lost on Drake.

Alicia fell in beside him. “How do we defuse the sucker? And more importantly, can we defuse the sucker?”

“You know what I know, Myles. In the Army we usually blew one bomb up with another. It’s the safest way, mostly. But this guy knew what he was doing. Wrapped well in an innocuous package. See the wires? They’re all the same color. Blasting cap. Remote detonator. Not sophisticated but dammed dangerous.”

“So grow a set and stop the bloody blasting cap from going off.”

“Grow a set? Shit, we’re totally winging it here.” Drake looked up, and saw with unbelieving eyes a crowd of people with their faces pressed to the café windows. Some were even trying to get through the open door. The customary android phones were recording what might be their owners’ own deaths in only a few minutes time.

“Get out!” he shouted, and Alicia joined him. “Evacuate this building now!”

At last, scared faces turned away and started to get the message. Drake remembered the size and scale of the main hall and the mass of people inside and gritted his teeth until the roots hurt.

“How long do you think?” Alicia hunkered down beside him again.

“Minutes, if that.”

Drake stared at the device. Truth be told it didn’t look sophisticated, just a simple bomb designed to scare rather than maim. He’d seen firework bombs of this size and probably with the same rudimentary detonation device. His army experience might be a little rusty, but faced with a red-wire-blue-wire situation it soon came flooding back.

Except all the wires are the same color.

Mayhem washed all around his self-imposed cocoon. Like a tell-tale whisper, word of a bomb swept through the great halls, and one man’s flight to freedom infected the next and the next until all except the hardiest — or stupidest — of commuters were heading for the exit. The noise was tremendous, washing up to the high rafters and right back down the walls. Men and women fell in the rush and were helped up by passersby. Some panicked and others stayed calm. Bosses tried to keep their staff in place but were justifiably fighting a losing battle. Crowds streamed out of the exits and began to fill up 42nd Street.

Drake hesitated, sweat beginning to pool along his brow. One wrong move here might lead to the loss of a limb, or more. And worse, it would put him out of the battle to take Marsh down. If the Pythian succeeded in thinning them out then he had a far better chance of achieving his ultimate goal — whatever the twisted hell that might be.

Then Beauregard squatted at his side. “Are you okay?”

Drake stared. “What the hell… I mean, aren’t you sorting out the other—”

Beau held out the other device he’d already disarmed. “It is a simple mechanism and took but a few seconds. Would you like some help?”

Drake stared at the inner workings dangling before him, the slight smugness of the Frenchman’s face, and said, “Shit. Nobody better tell the Swede this happened.”

Then he pulled out the blasting cap.

Everything remained the same. A sense of relief flooded through him and he took a moment to pause and breathe. Another crisis diverted, one more small victory for the good guys. Then Alicia, her eyes on the café’s counter, spoke five very distinct words.

“The fucking phone’s ringing again.”

And all around Grand Central, all around New York, in trash cans and under trees — even strapped to railings and finally thrown by motorcyclists — the bombs began to explode.