The Circle of Eight (5 page)

She
nodded.

He
dropped to his knees to get a better look at the device. There was a pressure
cord around the two of them that if broken or stretched too far, would most
likely detonate the weapon. Both of their chests were heaving, stretching on
the cord, and Stucco put a hand on his wife’s shoulder.

“Now
listen to me very carefully. I need you to control your breathing, okay? It’s
very easy. Just close your eyes, take a deep breath in through your nose, all the
way into your stomach while counting to four, then hold it for four seconds,
then slowly let it out through your mouth, counting to four.” She sucked in a
breath, and he counted off with her. “Good. Now just keep doing that for me
until you feel your heart rate start to slow down. I’ll keep working.”

He
listened to the rhythmic breathing, and smiled as he heard little Christa
trying to do the same thing, and soon heaving chests were calmer and sobbing
had stopped.

Screeching
tires outside were ignored as he examined the device. It was advanced.
Very
advanced. It was out of his league, and the fact there was an antennae sticking
out the top of it made him think there might be a remote detonator involved.

There
was noise at the front door as it was pulled open.

And a
beep from the device.

“Stucco,
you in here?”

“Kitchen!”

Boots
hammered on the parquet flooring then came to a halt.

“Jesus!”

Stucco
looked over his shoulder and saw Dawson standing there in shock.

And
another beep from the device.

“Sit
rep.”

Stucco
pointed at the device.

“Enough
C4 to take out the block, pressure trigger joining the two of them, mercury
switches if they move too much, and probably more. Plus there’s this.” He
pointed at the antennae sticking out the top.

“Looks
cellular,” said Dawson.

“Agreed.”

“Okay,
I’m going outside to get a landline, I don’t want to risk using my cell here or
your phone again. I’m going to get the bomb disposal equipment, evacuate the
area, jam any cellphone signals and solve this problem.”

“Okay,
thanks BD. And BD?”

“Yeah?”

“You
know damned well who’s behind this.”

Dawson
nodded.

“It
wouldn’t surprise me one bit. I’ll get word out to Inspector Laviolette to warn
the other witnesses.”

“Make
sure Maria is safe.”

“Worry
about your family, let me worry about the rest.”

Dawson
left and Stucco heard the front door open then close.

And the
device beep each time.

Outside Stucco’s Residence, Maas Drive, Fort Bragg, North Carolina

Dawson strode across the street as Red and several of the others
arrived, most running on foot from their homes or nearby barracks. What he had
seen was disturbing. Innocent people, innocent children, terrified. His
friends, terrified. It was wrong, and if that bastard Lacroix was behind it, he
would pay.

Dearly.

Dawson
pointed at Danny “Casey” Martin. “Call the MP’s. No cellphones. Have them
cordon this entire area off and begin evacuations. Tell them we’ve got a large
amount of C4.”

Casey
nodded and ran up the steps of the nearest house, hammering on the door to use
their phone.

“Atlas, call
the Colonel, tell him Stucco’s wife and daughter have been bound to two chairs,
back to back, with a bomb strapped to his wife’s chest. The trigger looks
professional. Very well done.”

“Jesus
Christ,” muttered Atlas. “Is this because of what happened in Geneva?”

“We’ll
worry about that later,” said Dawson. “Just contact the Colonel, but let him
know that we think it might be connected, and that the other witnesses should
be contacted immediately so they can be taken into protective custody.”

Atlas
ran to the next house as the residents of the house Casey was borrowing the
phone from exited, jumping in their car and pulling out of their driveway. The
man driving who Dawson recognized but couldn’t remember the name of, rolled
down his window.

“You
need anything, you take it. Once I get my family out of here, I’ll come back
and give you guys a hand with whatever you need.”

“Thanks,”
said Dawson, turning to Niner.

“Niner,
contact the bomb squad, give them the rundown and tell them to get their asses
out here ASAP. We need cellphone jammers, the works.”

Niner
sprinted to the next house without the usual wisecracks, concern for his friend
and his family the only thing apparently on his mind. In the distance the sound
of sirens could be heard as the base scrambled, police, fire and ambulance
services being deployed. Within minutes the place would be crawling with
people.

And if
Dawson were a bomber, that would be exactly when he would trigger the device.

Inside Stucco’s Residence, Maas Drive, Fort Bragg, North Carolina

“What’s this all about, honey? Who’s this Maria girl?”

Stucco
was lying on his back, looking at the bottom of the chair to see if there were
any triggers there, but it seemed clear. As he was about to push himself out
from the chair, he paused, noticing a strip of tape, white, the same color as
the legs of the kitchen chairs, running from the seat to the floor. He flipped
over on his stomach and examined the bottom of the leg but couldn’t see a
pressure trigger.

“Talk to
me!”

The
device beeped, and Stucco paused.

“You
have to calm down, babe, or this thing might go off.”

“Who’s
Maria?”

Is
she jealous?

Stucco
didn’t discuss his missions with his wife, and despite what had happened in
Geneva, hadn’t planned to now. But she did deserve a little tidbit since
Maria’s name had been mentioned.

“I can’t
talk about the mission—”

“Don’t
give me that, mister! I’m strapped to a bomb here!”

Another
beep.

It had
to mean something. It had beeped when Dawson had left. Twice. Was it hooked
into the front door somehow? It beeped when Sheila got excited, suggesting a
pressure trigger or a mercury switch being activated by her movements.

But if
things were being triggered, why wasn’t the device going off?

Maybe
they’re warnings?

That was
possible, but to what purpose?

Stucco
thought about it. Most bombs he dealt with were basic. They were meant to be
triggered and once triggered, detonated. That was the entire purpose of a bomb.
To go off. Why delay it then?

More
victims.

The
amount of explosives here would certainly wipe out the house, and the shrapnel
it would create could injure or kill those gathered outside. He could hear the
sirens in the distance and knew the homes would be evacuated, but he also knew
his team.

They’ll
stay until the end.

“Are you
going to tell me who Maria is?”

Another
beep.

Christ,
she
is
jealous.

“She was
the night manager at a hotel we were at. She got raped and we helped her. I
beat up the guy who did it, and now it’s going to court.”

He eyed
the floor. The linoleum had a cut in it. He followed it all the way to the
hallway where the flooring turned into parquet.

“Oh.”

Her
voice was subdued, almost embarrassed.

Yup,
she was jealous.

“Is she
okay?”

“Pretty
beat up, but she’ll live.”

Bingo!

There
was a wire running all the way to the front door, neatly tacked along the
baseboard. Something he wouldn’t notice in his rush from the door to the
kitchen.

It’s
wired to the door.

He stood
up and went to the back door at the rear of the kitchen. He immediately noticed
the wire coming up from under the linoleum and the pressure switch it was wired
to.

The
front door opened and the device beeped.

“Wait!”
he yelled, but it was too late, footsteps already stomping down the hall. He
rushed toward the hallway as the device beeped again with the closing of the
front door. He nearly ran headlong into two men in full bomb squad gear. He
noticed another man heading up the steps and Stucco yelled, running for the
front door. “Stop! It’s wired to the doors!”

The man
outside heard him and froze, backing up several steps. Stucco turned back to the
two new arrivals and realized it was Dawson and Casey.

“It’s
wired to both doors. I’m not sure what else. Each time a door opens or closes,
the device beeps.”

“Sounds
like an event countdown trigger,” said Casey.

Stucco’s
stomach flipped.

If it
were true, it most likely meant there were a built in number of warnings, then
the explosive would be detonated.

“How
many warnings have you heard?”

Stucco
shook his head.

“I-I
don’t know.”

“Take a
breath, and think,” said Dawson calmly.

Stucco
closed his eyes and began to tally everything in his head.

“I came
in, then you did, BD. Then you left, then you guys came in. So that has to be
eight right there. I heard it go off three of four times when my wife was
talking, so maybe eleven or twelve.”

“It went
off once before you got here,” said Sheila. I tried moving and it beeped, so we froze.”

“Twelve,
maybe thirteen.”

“If I
were a gambling man…” began Casey.

“Which you
are…” continued Dawson.

“I’d be
betting on thirteen,” finished Stucco.

Dawson
and Casey nodded in agreement.

“Okay,
we can’t risk triggering any more warnings. We’ll have to wait until the
evacuation is complete, then we’ll start looking at this a little closer.”

“But
what if it’s on a timer?”

Casey
shook his head.

“I doubt
it. They had no way of knowing when you’d be home.”

Dawson
disagreed.

“No,
he’s right. The first time the door opened it might have started a timer. I
don’t think we can assume there isn’t one.”

Casey
sighed.

“You’re
right.” He shook his head. “This thing is deadly sick. Whoever designed it is
twisted. They want you to be here, they want the first responders to be
outside, but they also want the civilians in the area out. This is targeted at
you
.
They want
you
to be here,
you
to go through a delayed trauma,
then for
you
and your family to be killed when we try to deactivate it.”

Stucco’s
daughter whimpered.

“But
don’t you worry, little girl, we’ll get you out of this,” said Casey, patting
her head.

The two
men began taking pictures and video of the device.

“I’ll
transmit these to HQ and get some other eyes on it.”

“Is it
safe to transmit? I mean, there’s an antennae on that thing,” said Stucco,
pointing.

“There’s
so much cellphone traffic in this area, if it were one of the event triggers,
this would have gone off long ago. More likely this is a decoy,” replied Casey.

Stucco
sighed in relief. At least as long as they did nothing, and there was no timer,
they would be safe, but the question was whether or not there
was
a
timer.

“Jesus!”
muttered Casey.

“What?”
asked Stucco, looking over to see his friend had flipped what appeared to be
some sort of night vision gear down.

“I can
see through the tape. There’s two LED displays on the front of the unit. The
first, on the left, has the number ‘two’ displayed.”

“That’s
probably the event countdown. We were close on the thirteen guess, or we
counted wrong in the first place.”

“Yeah,
but the other one is a timer. Counting down.”

The room
became silent, even Sheila and Christa holding their breaths.

“How
much time do we have left?” asked Dawson.

Casey
looked up at him and shook his head.

“Not
enough.”

Palais de Justice, Geneva, Switzerland

Public Prosecutor Yves Benoit shook Maria Esposito’s hand, clasping it
tightly in both of his as they stood on the steps leading into the Palais de
Justice where the trial would be held.

“Thank
you very much for being so brave,” said Benoit. “We have been trying to put M.
Lacroix behind bars for years, to no avail. Your testimony, your courage, will
finally let us put this man where he belongs so he can no longer hurt anyone
else.”

Maria
smiled slightly, embarrassed at the man’s words. If truth be told, she was
terrified. Her courage, her bravery, were fronts. If she had been raised
differently she would have quit her job and disappeared into the mass of
humanity that was the European Union.

But
instead she had decided to stand up for what was right. To fight back against
this man, regardless of who he was. The prosecutor had assured her she would
be safe, and so had Inspector Laviolette. She would have a detail assigned to
her at all times once the charges were filed later today. At the moment she had
been assured that Lacroix had no way of knowing what was coming. And it was
that surprise they were counting on. Once the charges were filed, the press
would have a field day with it, and the media firestorm would be her
protection.

“He
won’t dare touch you once it’s in the press.”

She
hoped his words were prophetic.

“I hope
so,” she murmured as he let go of her hand. “I have to get to work.”

“Have a good
day, Mademoiselle.”

She
turned and took the stairs two at a time as she eyed her watch.

You’re
going to be late.