Betrayal (27 page)

Wary now, Odi rolled slowly over, trying to get a better look around. As his hands rolled beneath him, he heard a soft metallic click. A shiver shot up his spine as he froze. Nothing focuses an explosive ordnance disposal technician’s attention more acutely than an unexpected mechanical sound. Either he had just rolled onto something metallic that Ayden had placed on the middle of the tiled floor, or a device of some kind was strapped to his arms. Both possibilities yielded the same horrifying conclusion. The room was a gas-fueled bomb, and he was the trigger.

Filtering out the hissing of gas overhead, Odi tried to replay the sound in his mind. He had heard a hollow clack followed by a metal-on-tile scrape. It was mysterious, but mysterious was better than the all-too-familiar arming click of a pressure switch—probably.

He considered screaming for help, but given the hissing jets that might be the worst thing he could do. If Ayden had rigged him to be a trigger, he had probably rigged the door as well. If anyone barged in responding to his call before Odi evacuated the gas, both he and the Good Samaritan would go up in flames.

Odi summarized his situation. If he moved or called out for help, the gas would ignite and he would suffer an excruciating death. If he did nothing, he would suffocate once the gas filled the room. It was not going to be a feel-good day.

He raised his legs slowly until they were perpendicular with the floor. Then, clamping his eyes shut in a grimace, he brought his legs down so that their momentum sat him up without the use of his hands.

No Boom.

He looked over his shoulder to inspect the floor. He saw nothing but tile. That narrowed down the possibilities. Slowly Odi worked his feet beneath himself and stood up, being careful all the while not to move his hands. He tiptoed over to the wall mirror beside the chemical shower. He found the smell of gas much more intense while standing and his head began to swim. He knew he did not have much time before succumbing to the fumes.

The mirror revealed that Ayden had not strapped a bomb between his arms. He had, however, done the next best thing. Ayden had duct taped one arm of a gas-igniting sparker to each of Odi’s wrists and used a third strip of tape to bind his wrists together, leaving the sparker cocked. If Odi pulled his hands free, he would release the tension holding the sparker’s arms together. Then the flint would scrape back across the scratchpad and emit a deadly shower of sparks. Odi pictured his life ending with a sucking whoosh and a searing boom.

Perhaps that would be for the best, he thought. Poetic justice. Just what he deserved for releasing two gallons of Creamer into the world, endangering innocents and disgracing his family. A surge of emotion swept over him. He had allowed himself to be used, and in so doing he had betrayed everyone he knew. A fiery death was too good for him after that. Besides, how many times had he cheated Prometheus while working EOD? A dozen? Fifty? A hundred?

Staring into the mirror, his suicidal thoughts disappeared as quickly as they came. He was not one to take the coward’s way out. Speaking of which, now that he understood his predicament, his first impulse was to open the door and run, to get the detonator strapped between his wrists well beyond the reach of the gas. But years on the bomb squad had conditioned him not to yield to rash impulses. He turned his eyes to the exit and spotted the redundant detonator at once. As predicted, Ayden had rigged another sparker over the door. Fortunately, disabling it would be simple—once Odi had the use of his hands.

His mind raced to find a solution, aware that it was competing with a hissing clock. If he passed out now he would never awake. Did he have seconds? Minutes? One? Two? Five? Ten? There was no way to tell. One moment his head would start to spin and the next he would fall. Whoosh-boom.

Although he had disarmed hundreds of bombs, Odi had never been trapped inside one before. Being part of the mechanism brought him a whole new perspective, but it did not help.

He tried to take a mental step outside the box, to approach this bomb like any other EOD problem. The objective was the same. He had to prevent the detonator, the sparker, from exploding the ordnance, the gas. The question was how. He had only very limited use of his hands, and the gas was everywhere. He could not clip a wire or divert a circuit or place a circuit breaker between the sparker and the gas.

Or could he?

Careful not to put pressure on his arms, Odi walked to the nearest lab station and squirmed onto the countertop. The noxious smell was strongest here, and he felt his dizziness begin to spike. He bit down hard on his tongue in an effort to stay awake while arching his back and lowering his hands into the sink in an attempt to engage the stopper. As he reached for the faucet, he tasted blood and his vision began to blur. The solution was in his grasp, but he was already too late.

To buy a few seconds more he pressed his leg against the nozzle of the closest jet, plugging the deadly flow. This was like playing a demented game of Twister—without the girl. Keeping pressure on his leg, he strained forward so that his bound hands could reach the faucet and turned on the cold water.

The wait for the sink to fill seemed the longest of Odi’s life. His shoulder burned, his head pounded, his tongue bled, his arms cramped, and oblivion was just a spasm or twitch away. He used the time to slowly, deliberately shut off the nozzle he had been blocking with his leg. Now he only had nineteen gas jets to go.

Once the water was sufficiently deep, Odi leaned back and plunged his hands to the bottom of the sink. He yanked his wrists apart the instant the sparker was submerged. As the tape ripped, he heard the sparker’s flint scrape across the scratch pad but the water rendered it impotent. It was the first time he had used that word with a smile.

With a sigh of relief contrary to the physical pain he was feeling, he rolled his wrists to peel off the tape, losing the hair on his forearms in the process. God, what was he going to look like when this was all over? He wondered. Then he laughed at himself. Anything but a cinder would do.

He tossed the sparker back into the water and sprang to the floor. He closed the remaining gas jets in less than a minute and enabled the smashed ventilation switch in a few seconds more. The noise of the overhead vent sucking gas into space was the sweetest sound he had ever heard.

After thirty seconds of breath-catching, oxygen-sucking rest, Odi sprayed the second sparker with the fire extinguisher. Then he removed it from atop the door and tossed it into the water beside its twin. He grabbed his jacket from the stool on which it was draped and was further relieved to feel some extra weight. He checked the pocket and felt a further surge of relief. The Dasani bottle full of Creamer was still there. As the sight of it registered, so did the outline of his next moves.

Chapter 47

The Grand Hyatt, Washington, D.C.

A
S
A
YDEN
WATCHED
the crowd of young men growing around him, filling the suite, he felt a warm glow percolating inside. These martyrs were nothing like the barbaric, deranged, ignorant thugs the manipulating politicians and sensation-seeking press liked to finger with upturned noses. These were clean-cut, crystal-eyed, educated leaders, soberly making the ultimate sacrifice for a charitable cause. Tomorrow, the establishment’s propaganda tricks would backfire. Homeland Security would never see his soldiers coming.

Before they disbursed, however, Ayden knew that such a quantity of Middle-Easterners was apt to draw attention from a wary populace. To counteract any suspicions that might arise, He had let it slip that he was auditioning to fill a dozen minor roles in a new Tom Clancy movie. The bellboy’s eyes lit up as they strayed from the platter of sandwiches to the videotaping equipment. “How exciting. You know, I was once in a—”

“Well, now that I’ve taken you into our confidence,” Ayden interrupted, brandishing a crisp Benjamin, “I’d appreciate your keeping our presence quiet. These days everyone thinks they can act, and the last thing we need is a line of Tom Cruise wannabes at our door.”

The bellboy made the c-note vanish faster than a chameleon’s lunch. Then he bowed and offered an obsequious “But of course.”

Ayden looked out at the crowd and nodded. Arvin’s twenty-four volunteers had arrived at odd intervals over the previous two hours and now they filled the two-thousand-dollar-a-night Hyatt suite. Their air was more jovial than somber, but Ayden could sense the tension percolating just below the surface. Suppressing that tension was half of today’s job. The other half was locking in their resolve.

As he took a seat atop the granite counter of the sitting room bar, the chatter trailed off and the room grew silent. He rolled his shoulders once and began. “We are strangers united by our mutual commitment to a great cause. That makes us friends. Friends, please listen to me now, for I have much to reveal.

“To my left you see a stack of envelopes, to my right,” he ceremoniously lifted a black cloth, “one hundred mini-bar beverage bottles. Four for each of you.” Ayden held up one of the fine linen envelopes and withdrew a 3-ounce bottle of Baileys Irish Cream from the case. “These are your mission and your means. I will begin by explaining precisely how and when the Irish Cream is to be used. Then after lunch, each of you is going to make a video, a video that will make your family proud for countless generations to come …”

Chapter 48

Asgard Island, Chesapeake Bay

A
S
THE
N
ORSE
Wind approached Asgard across a choppy bay, Cassi walked out to stand by the rail. She caught some spray on her face. It tasted bitterly cold and very salty—not unlike her present predicament.
 

She traced the yacht’s heading to the coastline ahead. She had not studied Wiley’s tiny marina on her previous visits. There had been no need. For the next twenty-four hours, however, Wiley’s island was going to be her battleground. She began to study it as such. “Tell me about the marina,” she shouted into the cabin.

“It can handle yachts up to 120 feet in length.” Wiley yelled back, his voice buffeted by the wind. “The two central lifts are powerful enough to raise sixty footers completely out of the water. That isn’t usually necessary, but it’s nice to have when seas get rough.”

Cassi knew that they would not be using a lift now. Per their agreement, Wiley was not even going to cut the motor. He was just dropping her off.

“Is something wrong?” Wiley asked. “You seem to be staring.”
 

“No. I’m just getting a tactical perspective. Is this the only place a boat can safely land?”

“Sure is. The rocks will shred your hull if you try to tie-up anywhere else.”

Cassi realized that she had never seen the island from the eastern side. They always approached from Virginia. “So the whole circumference looks like this—rocky cliffs rising from water?”

“Yep. Geologically speaking, Asgard is a rocky mountaintop protruding from the bay. The average drop is over thirty feet, and nowhere is it less than twenty.”

“So why did you build the dock here? Why not closer to the house?”

“This is the best-protected spot on the leeward side of the island.”

Cassi nodded and studied the scraggly cliffs. “When I look at it from a tactical perspective, it kind of reminds me of Alcatraz.”

“My grandfather would have banished you forever if he heard you say that. We Proffitts prefer to think of our island as Valhalla.”
 

Their banter was growing lighter as each tried to cover the growing awkwardness of their situation—the nervousness, the guilt, and yes, the sexual tension. They were not taking the familiar trip to make love in the clover on the bluff or to walk through the sculpted gardens kissing and holding hands. They were colleagues on a mission, nothing more, she realized. It hurt. “What’s the circumference of your earthly heaven?” She asked.

“Just over two miles. The island covers roughly one square kilometer, although it’s not square. As my grandmother used to say, Asgard is shaped like an open-mouthed smile.”