Ice Cold (35 page)

“I tell you
nothing
.” He pulled his shirt apart, buttons scattering. “If you kill me, you will have nothing. Whatever you do, the girl dies. Shoot me for your own pleasure, it does not matter. I have followed my instructions to the letter. I have made peace with my God.”

“Your god enjoys the death and dismemberment of innocent people?”

“For a just and righteous cause.”

Stuyvesant joined him when the Ukrainian was down to his graying underwear and black socks. Rafe had checked the clothing as it was removed. If there was a detonator on him, it was up his ass. “Tie, gag, check orifices,” Rafael instructed. “Go through his clothing.”

He didn’t hang around as Stuyvesant securely tied Andriy Kobevko. He ran to Honey’s side to assess the situation.

Weber had done what she could with Kobevko’s coat and the LockOut, spreading three suits carefully over Honey’s prone body. It wasn’t enough. Her lips were blue, her skin pale and waxy. Until they ascertained if there was a weight sensor trigger beneath her, they couldn’t risk piling any more clothing on top of her. They were taking chances as it was.

He met Weber’s eyes. She gave a small nod, keeping track of Honey’s vitals.

Frost coated strands of her pale hair. He brushed his hand over the frosted filaments, surprised to see his hand shake. Not something a bomb disposal tech wanted to see when standing where he stood. “How’re you doing, Winston?”

Slightly glazed, big blue eyes swiveled to his side of the table. “I love my j-job and thrive on-on adversity.”

“Oh, yeah. Me too,” he said dryly. “Thriving, right here.” It wasn’t just cold causing her voice to break. He felt the same bone-deep fear. More so, probably because he knew what lay beneath the table. She didn’t. Or perhaps her imagination had gone all the way. Whatever it was, she had to be afraid for both of them. He didn’t have the luxury.

Reality wasn’t like in the movies. The tempo wasn’t the same, no flashy, big, LED timer with red digits and seconds left on the clock, no curly red, yellow, and blue wires.
Hey, man. Cut the blue wire!
All the wires here were identical. Black. There wasn’t even a God damn timer indicating how much time he had left. He counted off seconds in his head anyway.

As if reading his mind, she said through chattering teeth, “Are you s-scared?”

No point bullshitting. “God, yes.”

“I’m not. I h-have the best bomb whisperer in the world. If anyone can diffuse this thing, it’s you. Am I a-about to see the b-omb whisperer in action, Navarro?”

He brushed his fingers across her icy cheek. “You know I’m the best at what I do, right?”

Her smile ripped open his heart. “I won’t be able to tell anyone if you’re
not
.”

He leaned to brush his mouth over hers. Her lips clung, and he straightened reluctantly. “You’ll tell your grandchildren about your exciting night, and how the bomb whisperer swooped in to rescue you and save the day. Close your eyes and think tropical beach and umbrella drink.”

He’d give both nuts to be on that tropical beach with her right now. His right nut to have her at a safe distance or at least the wherewithal to drape her in Kevlar and armor plate.

“I s-say, if in doubt, c-cut the red wire.”

Simply cutting one wire would redirect current to another detonator or firing system hidden in the main explosive. Sometimes, there was one wire, like in a flashlight. There were ways to build an undefeatable bomb with layers and techniques that Kobevko had perfected, especially in cases where the bomb assembling was on site and not transported. Like this one.

“Under n-normal circumstances,” she told him. “I can rescue my-myself. But I must admit, you
are
a handy guy t-to have around at a time l-like this.”

“You’re in excellent hands.”

“I’m perfectly aware . . .”

Crouching beside the table, he inspected the complex and multi-wired device underneath and did as detailed a threat assessment as he could under the circumstances. He had no diagnostic tools, no X-rays to analyses images to trace wires, no diagnostic equipment to isolate all these fucking wires and tell him which had voltage. He couldn’t even expedite the problem by relocating the damn thing somewhere isolated.

His experience had better be good enough.

The triggers were behind a sealed glass container, hidden among the dense labyrinth of wiring. He used a fingertip to separate the wires with the least amount of disturbance so he could see what he had to deal with.

He tried to work out whether he was dealing with a time-initiated, radio-controlled, or booby-trapped bomb, and from there, what kind of switching mechanism it might be within those three groups of devices.

His assessment: Not good. Not good at all.

For a sophisticated device like this, he should be utilizing a robot. Protective gear. The right tools. He had only the few tools he’d been able to grab from the hotel, and a few from the back of the van. Not enough.

“How bad is it?”

“As bad as it gets,” he answered honestly. He had to make split-second decisions. And hers wasn’t the only life that would be lost if he was wrong.

Rafael realized with a start that this was the first time in the seventeen years with T-FLAC he doubted his own ability. There was always a physiological reaction when faced with a bomb, especially one of this magnitude. That was especially evident now, with Honey right on top of it.

Even though he was experienced and felt confident about his understanding of the device and his ability to neutralize it, his body reacted more strongly than usual. The tremor in his hand was unacceptable. He had to reach the state in which his brain cut out all extraneous noises and visuals. He had to forget Honey and focus on the device and the approach, along with any other secondary and tertiary threats. He had to trust - Weber and Stuyvesant would handle external threats.

He could not afford to doubt himself. Not for a nanosecond.

All he had to do was neutralize the bomb and figure out its design function.
Piece of cake, Navarro.

Adrenaline coursed through his veins, and his heart rate elevated. Everything looked crystal clear as he concentrated. He followed several wires from the Semtex up to the table. Then did the same with half a dozen more. Cut the wrong ones and it would be all over.

“Weber? Go check on Stuyvesant. Try tag-team questioning Kobevko, see if we can add anything to what we have about the bank bombings. Motivation. Future plans. Get names. If he has nothing on him and you get nothing out of him, dispose of him.”

“Consider it done. I’m leaving my coat here for when Winston needs it after.” The operative dropped her coat to the floor then walked off, booted heels echoing sharply on the cement floor.

“Do you like to t-talk while you work? Or would you prefer sil-silence? Because honestly, I’d like to assist you in any w-ay I can.” The table shook with Honey’s shivering, making hundreds of wires shiver with her.

Bracing a hand on the table’s edge above his head in an attempt to mitigate the movement, he said evenly, “I tend to have tunnel vision. Talk if you like, it won’t bother me.”

It was
not
a good strategy to attempt dismantling this beast by hand. And yet, he had no choice. What the fuck were his options? How fast could he decide on and implement one? The
right
one?

“Do you have a nice sharp p-pair of scissors?”

“Sharp knife.”

“There’re a
lot
of wires, right? How d-do you know which magic wire to c-cut?
Is
there a magic wire?”

“Sometimes there is—”

“And this time there—
isn’t
?”

It may as well have been glossy black spaghetti surrounding the device. Well ordered but incomprehensible
spaghetti
. Rafael’s heart sank. He was screwed, she was screwed . . .

TWENTY-SEVEN

 K 
obevko left an iPad at the casino so that we could have a ringside seat for your interrogation, the bastard,” Rafael told her evenly. “We got the video feed but not audio. Who were you talking to?” He visually tracked a group of wires from the device over the table’s edge to where they circled her left ankle. Tracked the wires from her right ankle back to the device. Wrists. Breasts . . . He kept going. Keeping track in his head of which wire went where.

“Savage. Smug b-bitch. C-claimed she was en route to Montana.”

“Yeah? What for?” he murmured absently, tracking the wires from her upper thigh down. “She gets to within a hundred miles from HQ, they’ll fast-track her execution. She won’t get another chance to vacation at a supermax.”

“She’s going after Pollack.”

“Seriously? What the hell for? Leverage of some kind? What did she want you to do? What the hell can Savage want at your house? The jewelry? Maybe to fund her terrorist activities?”

From what Honey had told him, there was certainly enough money to run a medium-sized country for a good long time.

“No. She took more money from the banks, even at a penny at a time, than she can spend in a lifetime. No, it’s not my money she wants.”

“Vengeance for some perceived slight? God only knows she’s psycho enough to kill someone for cutting her off at an intersection.”

Honey was quiet for so long, Rafael thought she’d passed out, and he reached for her wrist to check on her. But before he made it, she said flatly, “She planned to use Pollack to get me to give her access to the computer array at my ranch.”

“Computer array?”

“A giant, s-superfast, supercomputer. A data structure used by almost every program—”

“Why do you have a supercomputer at your house? Doesn’t that go a little beyond cyber techie hardware?”

“T-FLAC’s—everything—is backed up on it.
Everything
.”

“Jesus. Do
they
know about this?” It seemed inconceivable to Rafael that a counterterrorism organization with such far-reaching power would have an auxiliary backup at an operative’s fucking
home
.

“Jake Dolan s-suggested it, Marc Savin agreed. Dolan ass-assisted with security—How’s it going down there?”

It was going like crap down there. All the wiring was identical. Identical in every fucking way. It would take him a week to organize them and try to figure out what was what.

There were several options: dismantle, dispose, destroy it in place, move the bomb. None workable.

“What can we do to help?” Weber came up beside him and Stuyvesant positioned himself on the other side of the table.

Rafael got to his feet. “Where’s Kobevko?”

Weber gave him an inquiring look, asking what the chances were of getting Honey out of there alive. “Complaining about how cold it is and demanding his rights.”

“As soon a-as I’m outta here, I’ll call Amnesty International for him. How’s the plan for achieving that going?”

“I have a plan,” Rafael told them, grimly. “It’s a shit plan, quite frankly, but it’s the
only
plan. If either of you wants to leave now, I won’t blame you. This is going to require split-second timing, and the potential of blowing ourselves to hell and back is astronomical.”

“I’m in,” Weber said cheerfully. “I haven’t had an exciting op like this in three years.”

“I have nothing better to do,” Stuyvesant offered prosaically. “Tell us what you want us to do.”

“I’ll stick around to see the ending too,” Honey said sleepily, eyes closed. “I’m feeling much warmer now.”

Much warmer had little to do with being covered and everything to do with hypothermia.

“We’re going to loosen the wires binding her. Slowly,
carefully.
Hold them like this against the table then pull up underneath each group so they’re away from her body. Weber, take her left side, Stuyvesant her right. I’ll work on her ankles. As soon as all of the wires are loose enough, I’ll give the word. You two get the fuck out of here at the speed of light. I’ll pull Honey free and we’ll be right behind you.”

“Show me,” Weber demanded.

Rafael used the flat of his hand to hold the grouping of wires circling Honey’s left ankle, pressing them to the table. He paused, then used his other hand under the wires surrounding her ankle to gently ease them away from her skin.

“Oh, good.” Honey’s lips didn’t move. “N-nothing blew up. Yet.”

“Take your time,” he told the other two, making eye contact. They were all on the same fucked up page. There was such a small percent chance of this working that they may as well all kiss their asses goodbye. Each nodded. They were in.

“She has to be free of restraints before I can pull her out.”

“I have so-something to tell you when we leave,” Honey whispered, voice groggy. “Remind m . . .”