Page 61 of Play the Game

“Long enough to get your girl out,” Pasco said, “and maybe find a way to disarm it.”

That made me remember his presence, and now I knew why he was here.

“I’ll talk Tam through it,” I told Alder. I called across the van. “TJ, I need Pasco on the computer.”

Our boss must have read the terror on my face because he nodded without asking a single question. Then he calmly transitioned Tam over to me. My first order of business was to try to convince her to run. I wasn’t surprised she refused, since she’d run toward a literal time bomb like a fucking superhero. A superhero I loved and was going to save.

“I have to try,” she was saying about disarming the bomb. “We took an oath when we joined HEAT, remember? One life in exchange for many.”

“No one asked you to make that sacrifice today, Tam. No one gave the order for you to do this.”

“Nowyou want to do things by the book?”

Smart-ass. God, I loved that, and a million other things, about her. “Touché. Okay, bestie, I’m getting you out of there. I’m going to walk you through some steps, and I need you to listen very carefully.”

I walked her through cutting the wires. As soon as the bomb timer paused, Alder added fifteen minutes to our countdown clock. Then I had the shitty task of breaking the news to Tam that we hadn’t disarmed the bomb; we’d only delayed it. Understanding that this might be the day she died, she asked to talk to me on a private channel. I refused. She was not going out like this. Not if I could help it, and not without me.

“Pasco,” I whispered.

He nodded. “Maybe.”

Maybe he’d found the information we needed to disable the bomb’s control panel. I would have hugged him—hell, I might have even kissed him with tongue—if it wouldn’t have interrupted her progress.

“Got it!” he shouted. “I need a phone with specs—”

I shoved a phone at him. “We’re not idiots.”

He grinned as he connected the phone and computer with a high-data-capacity throughput. “Should take less than a minute.”

While Pasco had been doing what was normally my job, I’d been keeping Tam calm. Now I signaled to Alder to be ready to switch the comms. “Tam, we’re working on something, so I’m handing you over to Hart and Li, but I’ll be back soon.”

“Okay. I trust you.”

It was as close to sayingI love youon an open channel as either of us was willing to go, at least for now. All of that might change if things went sideways.

Hart and Li stepped out of the van and started chatting with Tam as if they were hanging out over drinks. It was what she needed to stay calm.

“I’m going in,” I told TJ.

“What?” He looked ready to pummel me.

I pointed to the phone Pasco was loading. “That’s a pirated program we can use to take out the bomb’s control panel, but to use it, I’ll need to be in the room with it.”

Bond grabbed a bag and started loading it with supplies. She was already on my side. I owed her. She held up a large syringe sealed inside a canister. “Atropine.” She threw a few more of them into the bag.

I nodded. If we were exposed to a nerve agent, it would be the most likely antidote.

“You’re not going, Jensen,” Kessler said. “This is a tactical op. I’ll go.”

“Technically, it’s an extraction, which makes it a logistics op,” Penn said.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Pasco and I said at the same time. He looked at me. “Tell me they’re kidding.”

I shook my head. “They don’t get it. I have to go,” I started to explain to my team, “because—”

“Because this isn’t point-and-shoot, like a fucking camera!” Pasco, not being trained to hide his panic, tugged at his hair.

“You can teach me what I need to know,” Kessler said.

---