Chapter Thirteen
Chapter
Thirteen
“IED,” Sam whispered, and
Nick froze, looking toward the ground where Sam was pointing. Sure
enough, there were signs of someone digging along the path, and the
slight glint of metal just beside it confirmed the presence of an
explosive device.
Nick pulled the Aiden’s Leatherman
from his back pocket and moved slowly towards the device. “This
would be a hell of a lot easier if I wasn’t thinking about him
having a remote for this damn thing.”
Sam huffed a quiet laugh as he dropped
to one knee, his rifle lifted to his shoulder, and his gaze
continuously sweeping the terrain around them. “And where would the
fun be in that?”
The night was relatively dark, but the
moon was high and full and definitely shed some light on the
subject. The only problem was the subject could just as easily jump
up and blow them both in half.
Nick gently shifted the dirt around
the object until he had cleared as much as he dared. The device was
bullet shaped, but the size of a torch. It was black and had copper
wiring wrapped around one end. There was black tape wrapped around
the middle and a series of three wires that ran from beneath it,
and a fourth wire that seemed to be attached to the black wire by a
metal clip.
As they had decided when leaving the
property, Nick described the device in detail in the hopes that
someone would be able to help with defusing the damn thing. Hell,
Finn was even sitting there with a laptop prepared to Google that
shit for help.
“Any ideas?”
Sam stared at the device for a moment
before shaking his head and returning his gaze to the land around
them.
“What color are the
wires?” Finn asked over the comms, and Nick risked a short brief
shot of torch light to investigate.
“They’re all black.” When
there was no answer Nick asked, “Why?”
“Because Wikipedia says to
cut the blue wire,” Finn replied, and Nick closed his eyes.
Apparently, they were beyond even the help of Google.
“The metal clip has to
complete a circuit right?” Nick said trying desperately to think
logically. “I mean that’s what they use metal for so that the
current can flow. I reckon we cut this one.”
Sam shot him a nervous look. “Although
I have no idea what to do, and can’t think of a better course of
action, I am scared shitless.”
“Me, too,” Nick said as he
took the Leatherman, opened the scissor implement and placed it
around the wire in question. He took a deep breath and with a quick
prayer he began to apply pressure to cut the wire.
“Wait!” Nick gasped and
almost cut the wire out of shock at the voice in his ear. “Don’t
fucking cut that wire, babe. You do and it’ll set off a chain
reaction that will not end well for any of us.”
“Fuck,” Nick breathed, his
heart hammering in his chest.
“Aiden?” Sam’s voice was
at least an octave higher than usual. “How the fuck are you on the
end of this line?”
“Your LT came out of
nowhere and slipped the damn thing in my ear. That man is a fucking
shadow. I have no idea how he managed to do that, but I am fucking
beyond impressed.” Nick looked over at Sam and could see from the
look on Sam’s face that he wasn’t surprised by his LT’s stealth
skills.
“Yeah, that sounds like
him.”
“Okay, so I caught your
description, but need to wait until I’d turned my back on Muir, who
incidentally is our tormentor today and has absolutely no
connection to Duncan whatsoever.”
Nick frowned. “Then why the need to
fuck with us?”
“He heard us talking in
the bar that night Sam decided to take a chance on us.” Aiden’s
reply had Nick struggling to remember the conversations that
weren’t centered around their selfish need for Sam to commit to
trying with them. “Apparently someone said I was the best in the
business, and Muir, the narcissistic twat, took umbrage with that.
But enough of that. You cut that wire, the connection will break
and the device will explode. The copper wire is what is completing
the circuit between that device and the other three that line the
walkway to me.”
Nick’s heart stuttered. Four devices?
Five if he counted the vest strapped to his lover, and Nick very
much counted that vest.
“We are running out of
time for us to worry about each individual device,” Aiden
continued. “We need to defuse the circuit piece by piece that
connects all of that to me, and we need to do it quick. We only
have about twenty minutes left, and I am going to need some time to
defuse this vest.”
“Tell me what to do,” Nick
said with determination. This was not how they were supposed to
end.
“You have to fool the
circuit into thinking it hasn’t been broken. Find something metal,
and it has to be thin and malleable. You need to slide it under
that copper conduit and then wrap it around it
securely.”
Nick looked around. “Where the hell
would we find something like that out here, Aiden? This is the
woods, not fucking Home Depot!”
“This might work,” Sam
said as he handed Nick a long thin silver object. On closer
inspection, Nick could see it was a stick of Doublemint gum still
in its wrapper.
“Genius!” Nick said as he
plucked the gum from Sam’s fingers, unwrapped the gum, and shoved
it into his mouth. “Sam has Doublemint gum. The metal wrapper
should conduct the current, yes?”
Aiden was silent for a moment. “Yeah,
it should. Give it a go.”
Not the most stellar endorsement, but
Nick figured they had nothing to lose. Chewing on the gum he folded
the wrapper then began to slide it under the copper wiring. At
first, it refused to slide and buckled instead, but Nick was
insistent. A few seconds later, it slid beneath the wire and Nick
worked it further under until he was able to pull it completely out
the other side. When he had the wrapper wrapped completely around
the wire, he secured it to itself with the gum.
“Hey, look at you,” Sam
said. “Getting your Boy Scout vibe on, huh?”
Nick looked up with a
grin. “What, you’ve never watched Beverly
Hills Cop 2?”
A soft laugh came from the comms
device. “I fucking loved that movie.” Dev’s voice came this time,
and the rest of Bravo team all talked about their favorite parts of
the movie as Nick and Sam continued up the path. The second device
was larger and looked like it was packed into some kind of pot, but
the process for disarming the circuit that connected it to Aiden
was the same. As was the third device.
“Fuck,” Nick cursed when
they got to the fourth device, and all chatter on the line ceased.
This one was a lot harder than the first three. There were no
copper wires that Nick could see. It was simply a medium sized
black box. No wires going into it, none coming out of
it.
“Talk to me, Nick,” Aiden
asked calmly.
“I can’t see how to block
this circuit,” Nick said after describing what he saw in detail.
“There’s nothing to cut, or wrap or anything.”
Aiden’s curse came over the line.
“Fucker’s probably using a mercury switch internal and a pressure
plate beneath that damn thing. There is no way to disarm that,
Nick, so don’t even fucking try.”
Nick shared a panicked look with Sam.
“What the hell are you saying, Aiden?”
“I’m saying exactly what
you think I am saying,” Aiden said, his voice still completely
calm. “You, Sam, and the rest of Bravo team need to leave. Once
that device and this vest go off, the shockwave may very well
trigger the other three devices.”
“Fuck that,” Sam snapped,
and Nick had to agree.
“We aren’t leaving you,
Aiden, so shut the fuck up,” Nick growled.
“If you don’t leave then
you will die with me, you stubborn son of a bitch,” Aiden snapped
back, his earlier calm facade gone.
“Then we fucking die
together,” Sam said, his anger clear in his tone. “I love you,
Aiden. You and Nick, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave
either one of you. This fucker takes you out he takes us all
out.”
“Reaper.” Dev’s voice came
over the line almost drowning out the sound of frustration Aiden
made.
“LT?” Glenn
replied.
“You got a
shot?”
There was a pause. “Negative. He’s on
the ridge, I’m sure of it, but I can’t find him to get a shot. I
need a spotter to—” Reaper’s voice cut off. “I can’t see him,
Dev.”
Dev was silent for a moment. “Recon by
fire, Reaper.”
Nick frowned and looked at Sam, who
was grinning. “A sniper will take random shots into a location he
is sure there is a target, but he doesn’t have him in his
crosshairs. He’ll keep taking shots along that area in a methodical
fashion until his enemy fires back, effectively marking his own
location.”
“What will stop Muir from
taking a shot at Aiden?” Nick asked.
“Give me a minute,” Aiden
murmured, and there was the sound of grunting and scraping for a
moment.
“Aiden’s moving behind a
tree. Not an easy task while tied to a chair I’ll bet. He’ll have
adequate cover,” Reaper said.
“I’m clear, and yes,
Glenn, that wasn’t exactly easy,” Aiden said breathlessly. A few
moments later, a shot rang out. Five seconds later another. Then
another. Nick counted the time down in his head. On the fifth shot,
another shot sounded immediately after it.”
“On target.” Reaper’s tone
rang with smug satisfaction.
“A kill shot or a wound
shot?”
“Both. I could hit the
T-zone or drop him with a gut shot from my position.”
Nick knew that the T-zone was the area
that ran from the outside of one eye socket, across the face to the
other side, and down the bridge of the nose. A shot anywhere along
those two lines would put a bullet directly into a person’s medulla
oblongata, paralyzing the victim instantly and of course they were
dead before they hit the ground.
“You can’t kill him,” Nick
reminded them all. “His heart stops then Aiden’s vest goes
up.”
“He armed, Reaper?” Dev
asked.
“Affirmative. He has an
M16 to his shoulder, scope locked on Aiden, and he’s moved back a
little and braced himself against a tree on the ridge about eight
hundred feet from me.”
Nick blinked at that. Glenn was