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“Shh,” Coleman warned. “I’ve come to get you out of here.”
“There’s a bomb,” the other said. “They’ve attached it to us.”
“I understand.” The former SEAL crouched in front of them. “Don’t talk and don’t move. Let me have a look.”
Sadly for him, it was actually a pretty workmanlike job. Wires snaked everywhere and, unlike in the movies, they were all the same color. The weakness in the system was a couple of simple combination padlocks that secured the vest to one man and the triggers to the other.Each lock was wound with wires that appeared to be glued in place. He had a set of bolt cutters with him, but there was no way to get through the shackle without also cutting through the wires—something that wasn’t going to end well.
Instead, he pulled out a satphone and selected a number from the list of people he had on call that night. Despite the cold desert air, he started to sweat when it got to the fifth ring. After the sixth, a male voice came on.
“Hang on a sec.”
“Hang on?” Coleman whispered incredulously. “I’m in the fucking Hindu Kush staring at a bomb.”
“Don’t get your panties wadded up, man. I was just pausing my game.”
Coleman could picture the man sitting in his basement, holding a game controller, surrounded by empty beer cans and Doritos bags. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything he could do about it. The puffy little prick was the best in the business. And not by a little.
“Whatcha got?”
“Sending it now.”
The phone had an excellent camera, but still demanded a dim flash. The hope was that whatever light filtered through the ill-fitting door would go unnoticed or be taken for the lighting of another cigarette.
There was an excruciatingly long pause over the line, but finally Coleman got some positive news.
“That’s a Fortress 1850D combination lock. I had basically the same thing on my locker when I was in high school. Did you bring a padlock shim?”
“A what?”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll just do this the old-fashioned way. Turn the wheel three times to the right.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve got two of them. How long is this going to take?”
“Stop busting my balls. I’m not the one who forgot my padlock shim.”
Coleman swore quietly. The truth was that Rapp didn’t have much more than thirty seconds of charm on his best day. The chances of getting these locks open before he got irritated and shot someone was right around zero. He could barely get in and out of a Walmart without shooting someone. And if that happened, Coleman was going to end his life as a flaming chunk of meat soaring over the desert.
“All right. Three turns. Done.”
“Now pull up kind of gently on the shackle and keep going right until you hear a click.”
“Okay. I got a click.”
“Now turn it two more numbers.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Like, if it’s on thirty, turn it to twenty-eight.”
“You’re killing me, man. You’re literally killing me.”
“I didn’t build the thing. Quit being an asshole.”
“This isn’t a video game, you know? There’s no reset button on my life.”
Coleman’s heart was pounding uncomfortably in his chest and his palms were sweating enough that the dial was getting slick. The fact that one of the hostages was whimpering like a recently kicked puppy didn’t help, either. He hated this claustrophobic, stressful shit. Give him some open terrain and a bunch of flying bullets any day. Precise fiddling in the dark while waiting to get blown into the next zip code sucked.
Having said that, in less than three minutes, both locks were open and he was gently extricating the men from their respective booby traps.
