Worst Case - James Patterson [69]
“Relax. It’s C-four,” the veteran cop said with a dismissive wave. “Well, actually, I’m pretty sure it’s PE-four, the very similar British version of the plastic explosive. It’s totally stable. You could play stickball with it. Hell, you could light it on fire and nothing would happen. Nothing happens unless you wire it to . . .”
He paused while he showed me the other box, which contained a reel of what looked like thick green clothesline.
“A detonator. This one here is called Cordtex. It looks like rope, acts like rope, but it has an explosive core that makes it one long mother of a blasting cap. You can fell a tree with six feet of it. Or a building if you connect it with enough of the PE-four from box number one.”
The bomb cop stroked his mustache and sighed in a way that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
“What?” I said.
“The problem is the box,” he said.
“The box?” I said.
“The PE-four came in a twenty-five-pound box. There’s only six or seven pounds here. Also, I’d say about half the reel of det cord is missing.”
I didn’t have a mustache, so I rubbed my temples instead as I turned and took in the 360-degree city vista of buildings and buses and pedestrians. Targets as far as the eye could see. Mooney could be anywhere at all.
“Shit,” I said.
“You said it,” the bomb cop said.
Chapter 79
FRANCIS ADJUSTED THE St. Edward’s ball cap that he had taken from the dead coach as he walked quickly through the school’s empty corridors. He smiled as he passed his old chem lab. How the rest of them had hated him for always wrecking the curve with his near-perfect scores.
He opened a door into the empty lower school’s practice gym. It still smelled like sweat and Bengay. He gazed at the thick patina of paint on the walls, the battered gates on the tall windows. How many layups had he made across its parquet? How many laps around the dusty loft track above? Passing across, he unscrewed the silencer from the Beretta and hook-shot it at the hoop from the top of the key. It fell short by at least three feet.
“Air ball. What else is new?” he grumbled, pocketing the pistol.
The roar of the crowd hit him like a smack as he came through a door into the cavernous upper-school gym. The stands were filled with the all-boy student body. In their blazers and khakis, they looked somewhat similar to his class, though their long hair and loose ties would have earned them a detention in his oppressive day. There were a lot more brown faces now, though, so at least some progress had been made.
“Let’s go, St. Ed’s!” the headmaster was chanting through a bullhorn. “Here we go, St. Ed’s!” Beside him, kids with baseball jerseys over their ties were pumping their fists and waving their arms upward for more noise.
The sound reminded him of the all-city semifinal. The heat and cheers and the smash of the ball against the parquet. He hadn’t played a minute in it, despite what the coach had promised. Webb had won it for them at the buzzer. He’d left as they were raising that shit heel on their shoulders. He’d certainly received a terrific education at St. Edward’s, though. It was here where he first learned how entirely shitty humanity could be.
People were staring at him as he came along the stands.
He pointed at his hat and waved at them vigorously.
“Here we go, St. Ed’s!” he yelled along with the crowd as he approached the stage.
The headmaster was jumping up and down, letting off an air horn, when Francis jumped on the stage beside him. His face scrunched in surprise as Mooney put the gun to his temple.
“I am a good person,” Francis said to him as he ripped the bullhorn from his hands.
Chapter 80
BRANDISHING THE UGLY black pistol high above his head, Mooney looked out at the students. The team members had splayed themselves flat alongside the padded wall to the gym’s rear. In the stands directly beneath the newly hung baseball championship banner, a male teacher was leaning to the side, selflessly trying to shield as many students as he could.
Mooney took a measured