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Then he slipped on a pair of rubber surgical gloves under the table and slid the bo

It looked exactly like an Apple MacBook seventeen-inch laptop except that there was a hollowed-out space where the keyboard, uts had once been In their place now sat two kilograms of T4, the Italian version of the plastic explosive RDX On top of the pale vanilla-colored plastic explosive sat another two-inch-thick layer of barbed stainless-steel roofing nails, like a double helping of silver sprinkles on the devil’s ice-cream cone

There was a gel-like adhesive already attached to the device’s botto it securely to the library desk

The detonator cap had already been inserted into the explosive and now e, which would occur when so the cover Tied just inside the cover with a snug lanyard knot enious little ther-machine alarms When the lid was closed, you could play Frisbee with the IED Once the lid rose two inches, however, the liquid mercury would spill to the switch’s bottom, cover its electrical leads, and initiate instant detonation

Mr Berger ih the crowded Rose Reading Roo and everyone within forty feet and sending a killing wall of shrapnel in every direction at four times the speed of sound

He peeled off his gloves and stood with the now-e He crossed the roo back

It was begun, he thought with a feeling of nificent relief as he found theA race against the clock, so to speak

On your mark

Get set

“Blow,” Mr Berger whispered happily to hian to take the stairs doo at a time

Book One

DOWN BY THE SEA

Chapter 1

“UNDER THE BOARDWALK, down by the sea,” I crooned in a high voice, really getting into it withfat babies is where I’ll be”

It see a sandy dirt road beside the blue-gray Atlantic Unfortunately, I was the only one who thought so A split second

later, a fusillade of groans and boos and Bronx cheers sailed back from all ten of my kids

Still I bowed, displaying race under pressure Never let them see you sweat, even on summer vacation, which is really hard when you think about it

My name is Mike Bennett, and as far as I know, I’ in his own private TLC show Some of my more jovial coworkers like to call me Detective Mike Plus Ten It’s actually Detective Mike Plus Eleven if you include ible than all ether

It was the beginning of week two of ous family’s much-needed vacation out in Breezy Point, Queens, and I was definitely in full goof-off hteen-hundred-square-foot saltbox out here on the “Irish Riviera,” as all the cops and firemen who summer here call it, had been in eneration It was more crowded than a rabbit’s warren, but it was also nonstop swiaht

No e-mail No electronics No modern implements of any kind except for the temperamental A/C and a saltwater-rusted bicycle I watched as Chrissy, the baby of the bunch, chased a tern, orplover, on the shoulder of the road

The Bennett summer White House was open for business

Ti the it kids,