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Pointing to the sobbing woathered, I said, "You hear what she’s been saying?"
"I was on my way over there when I saw you"
"Two uns shot up the mall"
His face drained of color so dramatically that even his blond mus­tache seeht?" I asked "That was prep for this"
With rapidly growing dread, I studied the ceiling of the i room Three floors of the department store were stacked on top of it, supported by its unmen up there Hundreds and hundreds of people
"Maybe," I said, "the bastards cauns"
"Oh, shit I’ll get a drill" He sprinted for it
After placing both hands flat against the roll-up door on the cargo box for a ainst it
I don’t knohat I expected to feel In fact, I felt nothing unusual Psychic netism still pulled me, however What I wanted wasn’t the truck but as in the truck
The foregles Electrical outlets were recessed in the concrete floor at con­venient intervals across the receiving rooed the drill into the nearest of these, and the cord provided more than sufficient play
The tool had heft I liked the industrial look of the bit Thepower
When I bored into the key channel, shavings ofh the lock in oggles, someone shouted fro the elevated loading dock - no one Then I saw hi roo truck ramp
"That’s the driver," the fore, perhaps through binoculars, froe, past the three lanes that served the loading docks
Seizing the two grips, I shoved up the door Well-oiled and effi­ciently counterweighted, the panel rose smoothly and quickly out of the way
The truck was packed hat appeared to be hundreds of kilos of plastic explosive
A gun cracked twice, one slug cried off the truck fra roolanced back The driver hadn’t come any closer to the foot of the ra shot
On the truck bed in front of the explosives were a mechanical kitchen timer, two copper-top batteries, curious bits and pieces that I didn’t recognize, and a nest of wires Two of the wires ended in cop­per jacks that were plugged into that gray wall of death
With a shrill kiss of metal on metal, a third shot ricocheted off the truck
I heard the foreed the cargo to explode when the door was opened because they had set it on such a short countdown that they didn’t think anyone could get at it fast enough to disable it The ti indicator hand was three min­utes from zero
Click: two minutes
The fourth shot hitiainst the truck, my face inches from the timer
Maybe it was the fifth shot, maybe the sixth, that slapped into one of the bricks of plastic explosive with a flat, wet sound
A bullet wouldn’t trigger it Only an electrical charge
The two detonation wires were set six or eight inches apart Was one positive and the other negative? Or was one just a backup in case the first wire failed to carry the detonating pulse? I didn’t know if I had to yank out just one or both
Maybe it was the sixth shot, ain tore into my back This tied from the brutal impact of the bullet, I seized both wires, and as I fell backward, I jerked the the tie withthe truck raet a better shot
Though he could have finished me with one additional round, he turned away and sprinted down the ramp
The foreman roared past me and descended the raunfire by the raised cargo tines and their armature
I didn’t believe that the shooter had fled froet out of there because he couldn’t quite see what I had done to the detonator He intended to escape the underground docks and the garage, and get as far away as luck allowed
Worried people hurried to me
The kitchen timer still functioned It lay on the floor, inches fro; however, I was cold Surprisingly
cold The underground loading docks and the receiving roo, yet I was positively chilly
People were kneeling beside n languages because I couldn’t understand what they were saying
Funny - to be so cold in the Mojave
I never heard the kitchen timer click to zero
SIXTY-THREE
STORMY LLEWELLYN AND I HAD MOVED ON FROM BOOT careat adventures together in the next world
Most were lovely ro incidents full of eccentric characters, including Mr Indiana Jones, ould not admit that he was really Harrison Ford, and Luke Skywalker, and even reatly resembled Jabba the Hutt but onderfully nice, and Elvis, of course,
Other experiences were stranger, darker, full of thunder and the s packs of bodachs hom my mother sometimes ran on all fours
Fro down uponfaces that were a cool, pleasant shade of green - occasionally white - though they had no features other than their eyes With no , but they pro­jected love and caring, and I always tried to smile at them before they dissolved back into the clouds
Eventually I regained enough clarity of ery and was in a hospital bed in a cubicle in the intensive-care unit at County General
I had not been proels had been doctors and nurses behind their ht be, probably didn’t resemble Jabba the Hutt in the least
When a nurse entered es in the telemetry data from my heart monitor, she said, "Look who’s awake Do you know your name?"