Page 112 of Balls to the Walls

Sasha quickly snatched the baby right as I shoved the stroller into the hole. I barely had time to turn when the bomb exploded, sending flames shooting straight up into the air. I glanced around, seeing Sasha laying right on top of the baby. I scrambled to my feet and rushed over to him, hauling him off the kid.

“Is he breathing?” Ivan shouted.

I quickly shed the blankets from around his body, then stared in disbelief.

“What? What is it?” Ivan yelled as he scrambled to my side.

“It’s…heroin. With a baby head.” I picked up the doll’s head and showed it to Ivan. “I guess this means I won’t be getting my name in the paper.”

44

IRIS

“Areyou positive there’s another bomb?” Slider asked. “We’ve been searching for hours without a single clue.”

I pulled the door open to the control room in the fifth building we were searching. This was our last hope at finding the bomb. Other teams had searched the other buildings, and if we didn’t find anything here, I wasn’t sure how we were going to proceed.

“It could have been a distraction,” I admitted. “The bomber could have placed the secondary trigger to throw us off, but what would be the point?”

“To waste our time?” Slider suggested. “Maybe he just wanted to fuck with our heads and let the time run out for you to dispose of the bomb.”

“If he really wanted to do that, why wouldn’t he have just built a more sophisticated bomb? It doesn’t make sense.”

“He’s a bomber. Nothing about him makes sense.”

I scanned the room, carefully removing the control panels one by one to search the insides. I thought for sure the room was going to come up empty. Then I removed the final panel and stared at the masterpiece in front of me. It wasn’t a bomb at all. Wires were fed out of a central device going to all different circuits throughout the panel.

“Cash, I’m gonna need whoever’s in charge of this building to get their ass inside and down to the control room. Stat.”

“On it.”

“What is this?” Slider asked.

“This is the job. The first bomb was meant to go off, and when it did, it would trigger this one, cutting off all the power in the building, and disabling everything inside the building. We need to know what’s in here that someone would want to get their hands on.”

“Wait, I thought you said the first device was there as a distraction— that it was a simple device that could easily be dismantled.”

“That’s what I thought too. I’m guessing if I had attempted to dismantle the device, it would have been more complicated than it appeared. And that would have set this one off. It’s perfect, really. With the explosion, everyone would be investigating that building. No one would even realize someone tampered with something in this building until days after the fact.”

“So…what happens when we disable this?” he pointed at the control panel. “Is the other bomb gonna go off?”

“Shit.” I hadn’t considered that yet. There were too many variables to consider. And if that bomb was more complex than I originally imagined, then there was no way Thumper or FNG could handle it. “Thumper, do you copy?”

“Loud and clear. I don’t suppose you have good news for us.”

“Sure.”

Silence lingered for a moment. “Your voice dropped when you said sure. What are you hiding from me?”

“No, it was a sure, like I have good news for you.”

“Then why didn’t your voice go high? Sure,” he said, pitching his voice higher. “See the difference? That was a positive sure.”

I rolled my eyes. “Is FNG telling you to say that?”

“Maybe,” he said after a moment.

“Regardless of how I said ‘sure’, we have bigger fish to fry.”

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