Boyd Morrison: The Midas Code

The cemetery was too open for an escape. Orr ran to the rear of the trailer and around the back. He peered around and saw Crenshaw lying on the street, cradling his leg. The backpack with the Midas hand lay next to him.

Orr raced for the pack, but another officer came charging up to Crenshaw and kicked his gun away. He spotted Orr and yelled, “Freeze! FBI! Drop your weapon!”

Orr fired two shots at the agent, who dropped to the pavement. Normally both his shots would have hit, but the lack of depth perception caused him to miss. With his damaged eye, he’d be at a severe disadvantage in a standing gun battle.

Orr abandoned the backpack and ran across the street into the deli, cursing Tyler Locke the whole way.

T he lightning-fast gun battle had been a blur to Tyler. Agent Immel went down with a shoulder wound. It wasn’t fatal, but she was out of action and stayed in the car to call for backup. Tyler circled around the truck to see Orr disappear into a deli.

He stooped to pick up the gun of Orr’s injured confederate, ready to give chase, but Riegert stopped him.

“I’ll get Orr!” He pointed at the man on the ground. “You make this guy tell you about the bomb.” Tyler nodded and tucked the pistol into his waistband. Riegert ran for the deli next to the bank being renovated into a restaurant. Tyler wanted to chase down Orr, but disarming the bomb had to be his first priority.

“What’s your name?” Grant said, nudging the man with his foot.

“Crenshaw,” the man said with a grimace, still holding his leg. “Peter Crenshaw. We have to get out of here.”

Tyler grabbed him by the collar. “Crenshaw, is the strontium bomb already set to detonate?”

Crenshaw looked surprised that Tyler would know about it.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Crenshaw said.

“The FBI found a lead hazmat suit at the warehouse you blew up. Half the building showed traces of radioactivity. That jog your memory?”

Crenshaw nodded slowly.

“Did you set it to go off?”

Crenshaw nodded again.

“When?”

Crenshaw held up his watch. It was counting down and just under the eight-minute mark. Even if the bomb squad were on-site now, that amount of time would be slicing it thin, but Tyler had no idea when they would get here. It would be up to him and Grant to secure the bomb.

Grant took the watch and put it on. “How do we disarm it?” he said, taking Crenshaw from Tyler and hauling him to his feet.

Crenshaw shook his head. “You can’t. I designed it so that no one could disable it once it was armed.”

“Where is it?” Tyler demanded.

“It’s in the center of the trailer, but I’m telling you we have to go.”

“Describe it. Now!”

Crenshaw hesitated until Grant increased the pressure of his grip. “Okay! Okay! It’s two separate parts, unconnected but both synchronized to identical timers. The black box is the lead shield for the strontium, and it’s packed with C4, so the shield gets blown apart one second before the main bomb explodes.”

“How big is the main bomb?” Grant asked.

“Five hundred pounds, plus three hundred gallons of gas to incinerate the sawdust.”

Holy God! Tyler thought. That was enough explosive to wipe out the entire block.

“How do we disarm it?” Grant said, shaking Crenshaw, who began to blubber.

“You can’t. No one can. I designed it with a collapsible circuit. Please! We need to leave.”

“I’ll get the Geiger counter,” Grant said, and dragged Crenshaw to the FBI vehicle so that Immel could keep an eye on him.

Tyler recognized Orr’s backpack lying on the ground. He unzipped it and saw that it still held Midas’s hand, the golden hand, and the Archimedes Codex. Tyler couldn’t let Orr get the Touch back, so he pulled the pack over his shoulders.

Armed with the Geiger counter, Grant was first up the trailer’s ladder, followed by Tyler. They trotted along the taut tarp stretched across the open trailer. Tyler sliced it open with his Leatherman. He and Grant pulled it back to reveal the pile of sawdust that filled the truck all the way up to the tarp. It had the consistency of mulch and supported their weight. Grant waved the Geiger counter over it until he found the strongest reading.

They dug, revealing a black metal box buried in the sawdust.

Tyler checked his watch. Seven minutes left.

“Which bomb do you want?” Grant asked. He was already on Tyler’s wavelength. They had to separate the bombs, or they’d have a radioactive cloud over the entire downtown area.

“You’re the better truck driver,” Tyler said. “Find someplace empty.”

Grant glared at him. “In Manhattan?”

“Just do your best. First, help me carry the strontium bomb. We’ll take it off the back of the truck.”

“And then what?”

Tyler remembered the new bank building and turned to look at it, but the bank renovation next to it caught his eye.

Wine and dine inside an actual turn-of-the-century bank vault.

“The old vault in the Safe Cracker restaurant,” Tyler said. “If I can put the bomb in there and close the door, it should contain the blast.” And he wouldn’t have to destroy the new bank’s vault in the process.

They heaved the black box up. Their combined strength was barely enough to lift the lead container. They got back onto the tarp and shuffled to the back of the truck, Tyler’s ribs howling all the way.

After they put the box down, Grant dropped over the side to open the rear doors. Tyler looked over the edge to see sawdust pour out, forming a pile on the asphalt.

“Okay!” Grant shouted.

Tyler sliced through the tarp and fell through the tear with the lead box next to him, guiding it as he slid down the avalanche of sawdust.

Grant met him at the bottom with a handcart.

“Courtesy of the delivery truck across the street,” he said.

They put the lead box on the cart.

“Go!” Tyler yelled as he dashed across the street with the cart.

By this time, four police cruisers had converged on the truck. Immel was directing them despite her injury. Running for the truck cab, Grant shouted at her.

“There’s a bomb in this truck and it’s about to go off! Where’s the bomb squad?”

“Jesus,” she said. “They’re five minutes out.”

“That’s too long. I need a police escort now!”

“All right, where do you need to go?”

Grant consulted his cell phone. “Albany Street. We’ve got five minutes.”

He started the truck and didn’t wait for the police cars to get out of the way. He gunned the engine and smashed two of them aside. The other two cruisers roared off in front of him.

“Agent Immel!” Tyler yelled before he went through the door where the Safe Cracker was being renovated. “This is the radioactive part of the bomb. Keep everyone out of here.”

“You got it.” She pointed at the two remaining officers. “You at the front entrance. You take the back entrance. Get everyone out, and make sure no one else goes in.”

As Tyler entered the old bank, he saw that the renovation was in its early stages. The floor had been stripped to the bare concrete, and the walls were prepped with white primer, ready for a coat of paint.

Many of the workers had already gone outside to see what the commotion was. One of the police officers ran past Tyler, herding the remaining workers out the back door at the far end of the building.

Tyler couldn’t miss the vault on the right. The immense circular door was ten feet in diameter and two feet thick. The bronze still held its luster after a hundred years of service, and the mechanism controlling the six-inch-diameter locking bolts was visible behind a new Plexiglas shield. The door’s massive weight would be more than enough to contain the blast of the bomb and shield the exterior from radioactive exposure.