The Bomb

“Yes, and then he started to yell at me, demanding to know where I’d gotten the tape. I told him the truth and he punched me in the face, knocked me down. Then he stood over me yelling. I just lay there curled up in a ball till he stormed out of the house. After that I packed up my important stuff and some clothes and came here.”

“Wow.”

“I didn’t know were else to go”, she pleaded.

“You did the right thing”, I said pulling her close.

“Can I stay here? I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“I would love to have you stay here. I’ll sleep on the couch and you can have my bed.”

She looked at me, her face wet and swollen, shaking her head softly, no. “I couldn’t do that I’ll take the couch.”

“No way”

“We’ll talk later”, she said brushing past me and into my condo.

“I’m going out to get some food from the store. Do you want anything?” I asked.

“No, thanks”, she said with a cute smile.

I came home with the food and cooked her a nice dinner of pasta and then we sat on the leather couch with her.

“Let me look at your face”, I said taking her face in my hand and gently turning her head.

The redness had left her cheek. It looked like the bruise would not be that bad after all. Her shoulders were up around her ears.

“You’re very tense. Would you like a back rub?”

“That sounds wonderful.”

I went to the bathroom and came back with a couple of thick beach towels with tropical fish prints. I laid them out, one on top of the other. Then I microwaved the lotion. It smelled of lavender.

“Do you want me to take my clothes off?” she asked from the living room.

“Just take off the top”, I said “and could you turn up the heat in there. I don’t want you getting cold.”

When I came back out, she was lying on her stomach; socks, C sized tan bra and white tea shirt in a neat pile by the couch. Her long black hair twisted into a ball on her head with two red chopsticks stuck through it. The skin of her back had no tan but was still a rich olive.

“Here, let me get a pillow for you”, I said handing her one from the couch, getting her ready for her massage. Kneeling down at her head facing her feet, I poured warm lotion into my hands and rubbed it in long strokes down the center of her back and up the edges, letting my fingers slide over her sides and then out over her shoulders and back to her neck.

”I want you to take deep breaths into your belly and imagine that you are laying on a warm tropical beach,” I said softly.

I repeated the stroke over and over until her jaw became slack, the muscles of her whole body totally relaxing. As I continued to work on her with hypnotic strokes, I went deeper taking out all the little knots of tension, her body relaxing under my fingers.

“Would you like me to work on your legs too?” I inquired, knowing that in her totally relaxed state she would say yes.

“Um”, was all she responded.

“I can’t do it with your pants on.”

She rolled leisurely onto her side reaching down to her crotch to undo the zipper. “Give me a hand?” she asked her voice deep and sexy with relaxation. Her hands working the tight jeans and underwear down her waist and over her butt, her tight, black, curly pubic hair forming a triangle about her groin.

“Sure”, I lustfully agreed, grabbing her pants cuffs and pulling. From my vantage point, I could see everything; her butt in the air, the black hair between. I inhaled her aroma mixed with lavender. She smelled sexy.

Wasting no time, I grabbed the bottle of lotion, rubbing it into her thighs and butt. I ran my hands all over her legs, even picking them up and working the fronts too. After that, I moved back to her upper thighs, letting my fingers work the outer edges first and then working my way in. Reaching the inner thighs, I began to concentrate my attentions higher and tighter, letting my fingers softly glide over her labia, continuing this stroke over and over. I could see her labia begin to swell, the sent of her arousal flooding my senses.

As I worked her, my fingers brushing through her pubic hair, her ass lifting up, legs spreading a bit. My fingers used their newfound access, sliding over her wet folds of soft flesh, her breathing deepening. I reached down and up under her towards her stomach which was on the towels, my finger finding that small electric knob of bliss, lightly teasing it. Then with my full flat hand gently pulling back towards her ass, sliding my fingers over her opening causing her breathing to stutter with intense pleasure. With each stroke, her swollen mound ground harder against my hand, small whimpers escaping her throat.

Getting large and stiff in my pants, my own erection felt wet and trapped. I inhaled deeply of her sent again. The deep musky aroma raced straight to my cock. I needed to fuck her soon.

Crouching over her and taking her hand in mine, I rolled her over. She lay there, her eyes locked on mine, her breasts splayed out, moving with her rapid breathing. Her perked up dark brown nipples, ready to be sucked, beckoned me.

“I want you”, I breathed.

“Kind of hard with all your clothes on”, she teased with a laugh. “Let me help you with that.” She stood up, pulling me up with her. Reaching down she undid my belt and pants. Then she grabbed my shirt pulling it up and over my head, the buttons painfully scrapping my face. Taking my pants in her hands, she pulled them off, my hard on before her face.

As I stepped out of my pants, she grabbed me, hungrily sucking half of my hard-on into her mouth. The pleasure was intense; I moaned with passion. Grabbing the knot of black hair on her head, I drove her mouth deeper onto my shaft, my hips bucking. I wanted it deeper but her hand blocked me. She kept bobbing her head on my cock and slurping until I could stand it no more.

I pulled her head back, taking her sucking mouth off me. She looked up at me with a face of pure lust. I pushed her head backwards making her land on her butt, legs curled and spread. Surging forward, I lowered my self over her, pressing her down onto the soft towels with my heavy muscular body.

She reached up grabbing my ass with her nails, driving me against her, my cock landing in her soaking wet pubic hair. She humped me, futilely trying to get me into her. I reached between us and rubbed my cock up and down her crack getting even wetter, the heat driving me to fuck her.

My thumb and index finger round the shaft I guided my cock into her. First just the head, her opening spasming around me, our voices grunting with lust.

“In me, I want you in me”, she exuded, a lustful spasm rippling over her body. I pulled partly out and then pressed back in, getting more of myself within her. Her hands clawed at my butt, pulling me desperately deeper. I could feel the head of my cock hitting her cervix.

“Oh, yes”, she cried out.

I started a steady rhythm, in and out, using the whole length of my cock. Wantonly, she matched my rhythm, rocking her hips against mine.

“Baby, you feel so good”, I breathed. I could feel the whole length of my cock stroking her, her body pressed against mine. “I’m getting close,” the tension in my balls ached as they contracted against my body. I could feel her swollen channel tensely closing down around me.

“Me too, I want to feel you cum in me!” Her sweaty body was going ridged, breathed mewing turning into a rhythmic chant of passion. Her hands grabbed me in spasm, her ridged body convulsing, arching. Waves of pleasure coursed through her sweaty body.

Jewel’s cries in my ear, her teeth on my neck, my cock pulsing into her rigid pulsing hole, I let my body go, spasming, releasing all my tension in waves of pure bliss. I kept pumping and pumping until the passion spent, I refocused on her. This poor flower, in need of my protection, she was sobbing. Holding her gently against me I asked, ”What’s wrong?”

“It’s him. He said he’s going to kill you and me.”

“Oh, don’t worry. He’s just talking shit because you left him.”

“No, that’s not it. Before you, he said that he was going to do other things.”

“What other things?

“I can’t tell you. He told me that he would have me and all my family killed if I talked”

“Babe, get dressed. I know someone we can go see right now that fixes stuff like this.”

“I can’t!” She yelled, sobbing.

“Yes, you can and you will! I’m not dieing because you’re being stupid. The sooner the better. Lets go!” I said with power and command.

“Ok, you promise that he can help?” She said, sobbing coming to an end. She showed no real trust, but was giving in to my pressure and self-righteousness. She felt safer under my apparent control and protection.

Jewels and I got dressed, went out to my BMW and drove downtown to the local FBI office; I having called ahead and set up an interrogation team when she was out of the room cleaning up.

We walked into the building with me almost having to drag her in. As we walked in, two big mean looking officers took her from me, as planned. With fear in her eyes, they grabbed her hands and hand cuffed her. Then they dragged her down the hall, telling me to follow them.

They brought her to a standard holding cell with the typical yellow walls, single bench and a video camera encased in silver reflective plastic in the corner. The door to the room was thick steel with a square bulletproof glass panel in the center and a large lock.

Going into the room, the meanest looking one told me to wait in the hall. Jewels looked at me with pleading eyes as they propelled her into the room. I walked behind the desks, where the video monitor was and watched.

From the room, I could hear them yelling at her. “This is going to be very bad for you, if you don’t tell us every detail of what you know, you will go to prison for 30 years! Other women will rape you; they’ll make you eat shit. They’ll beat you till your black and blue. Tell us what you know!”

After 20 minutes of constant yelling and abuse, they had me go in. My job was to be the nice guy, the guy you could trust. I had to go in there and take advantage of what they had done to her. I hated it; made me sick.

Entering the room, I saw her sitting on the bench. She was shaking, with dark, wet makeup smudges running down her cheeks. I walked over to her and held her, sobs quaking her body. I wanted to cry looking at her; she looked so small and fragile. I held her until her shuttering quieted down.

“Officer, can you at least come in here and take off these cuffs?” I yelled.

They came in and removed them with a frightening scowl. Leaving, they made a big show of slamming the big door with a deep metallic thud and locking it.

“I called up my friend. He’s their boss,” I said, gently. “He said I can get rid of those two goons and keep you out of trouble. All you have to do is tell me what happened. What did your boyfriend tell you? Please don’t leave out any details or we are both going to get it from those two.”

It was the old bad cop, good cop with a twist. I was the good cop they were the bad ones.

I always hated this game. It made me feel like the most morally decrepit asshole in the universe. If this was good, what was bad?

She looked at me, misplaced trust in her wet eyes. “What do you need?”

“First, what does your boyfriend plan to do?” I asked.

“He said that he had a huge shape bomb. I didn’t know what that was. He told me, it could punch a hole through anything. He vowed that he would get revenge for what the airplanes had done to his family.”

“He must have been talking about a shape charge. It blows up with a huge directed spike of force instead of a sphere shape like most explosives. People use it to punch holes it metal or to cut it. Did he say what the target was?”

“He didn’t, but he did say it was on New Years Eve. You know he works at the airport.”

After asking many more detailed questions and getting little more, I told her I would go out and talk to the officers. She held my hand and warmly thanked me. I could taste bile in the back of my throat. I felt nothing but remorse for my dishonesty and treachery. I needed to repent for what I had done to her and to my wife. I couldn’t face thinking about my wife yet.

On the way home, I wondered what I would do next. I had a date and time of the mass killing but that was all. I still didn’t know what the target was. Arriving at the condo with Jewels I got out of the car and opened the door for her. Next thing I new I was at the hospital with my head of surveillance, Eric, looking at me, my head a dull stabbing pain.

“What happened?” I asked. The spinning room’s lights hurting my eyes as it glared on Eric’s blonde hair and the shiny bald spot.

“Bronson, you were hit in the head and kicked a bit. We found you after we called a few times and there was no answer. I traced the phone signal.”

“Where’s Jewels?”

“We’ve not seen her and we lost her boyfriend right before we lost you.”

”Great! Now what are we going to do. Do you have any ideas?”

“Bronson, the doctors say you have at least a day more in bed. No broken ribs but they want to check your CT before they let you out. My team is out looking for clues as we speak. I’ll let you know as soon as we find something.”

I couldn’t take lying around in bed, hospitals made me sick. I’d even read statistics that said they make everyone sick. I got out of bed and dressed with great pain. I had bruises everywhere. It must have been Alexander, pissed that I had Jewels. That meant that if I found Alexander, I saved Jewels too. I needed out.

I tried leaving but the nurses firmly sent me back to my room. After a few more hours the doctor came in and said, ”You can go. You only have some bruises and a mild concussion. You’ll be fine in a few days.” I didn’t have that long, the first was coming up fast.

Once I was outside of the nasty UW hospital, I called Eric for a ride. He picked me up in his standard nondescript gray four-door Ford sedan.

“Bronson, we have looked everywhere for Alexander. He’s gone to ground. We did find a ransom note in your mailbox however. It has no address and no fingerprints or anything else that could help. I’m not even sure how he got it there, as we were watching your place. It says to go to the foot of the Space Needle on December 31 at 10pm with $1,000,000 and put it in an ambulance that will be there. No cops. It says, if you do not comply Jewels will be killed,”

“Ok, lets go with it. You have the standard briefcase with transmitter and I can get the good fake cash. We will get Jewels back and bag this puke, Alexander, at the same time! The one thing I don’t like about this is that it will pull us away from whatever he’s got going with the airplane. We need to stop that too.”

“I’ll keep a team hunting for him at the airport and a second making sure security is tight there. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find him before we have to make the exchange here.”

“Lets Hope”

After days of boredom, nothing had been found, no sign of Alexander or Jewels. I had hoped that Jewels would find some way to signal us, but no such luck. We were running out of time.

As the days ticked past, I thought about September 11 2001 and how deferent it had been from the movie 2001. No peace, no moon bases, nothing but death and war, just as it had always been. Now a few years later we had yet another terrorist with planes and bombs. I hoped to be the one to put and end to it. I hoped that one day we would spend our world efforts on the planets and not the pukes of earth.

At last, New Years Eve night arrived. I had the case with the money. I had my men with their nasty high-tech sniper’s rifles tucked away in the cracks of nowhere. I would make the exchange and my men would follow Alexander to whatever disaster he had planned and stop it. Then we would interrogate Alexander and find out about the next step up the ladder of cells of Laddin for Freedom. We were fighting cancer. We were the white blood cells out to kill all the micro-tumors of terror of the world. Carrying the case, I went into battle.

I walked through the park, filled elbow to elbow with people here to dance and watch the Needle explode in the next year in showers of sparks and the thuds of explosions. It was always a great show. Searching through the crows of people, I spotted the ambulance, parked at the base of one of the legs of the Needle. I walked up to it and looking in but could only see the drivers and passenger seats, the back was blocked from view. I circled round the ambulance looking for a clue as to what to do next. I didn’t know what to do with the cash and I saw no way to get Jewels back either.

Hunting round back, I found a second note. It said, “Put the case in the ambulance and I will send Jewels to you. I am watching you. One bad move and she’s dead!”

Something didn’t feel right. Crowds of people surrounded me with an ambulance. I stood there without a ground crew and a stupid note in my hand. What good did it do to put the case in an ambulance? It would be easy to see who came to pick it up. It was wrong. The ambulance needed closer inspection.

Taking out a small pen light I systematical went round the ambulance, looking into each window. He had blacked out most of the windows. The front doors looked unlocked. Grabbing the passenger door handle, I began to open it. “No stop,” I thought. If this were a trap, the doors would be the trigger. The front windshield was the way in.

I had no time. I had to get in fast. I called one of the sharp shooters. They had the kind of super weapons that would go unnoticed in this wild noisy crowd and the ability to shoot just the glass and not get the seat behind. It was a wonder that they could keep track of all the new kinds of bullets and guns that they had. “Shoot out the front window but nothing else,” I ordered.

The window exploded seconds latter. Using the briefcase, I cleared out more glass and climbed in. Alexander had wired both doors in a way that you couldn’t see the wires from outside the vehicle. The wires lead into the back. I looked into the back. The whole back of the ambulance was nothing but explosives with a small timer counting down. Five minutes left. If it blew, the whole needle would come down and it would take most of the crowd with it.

Acting quickly, I started disconnecting the leads to the primers. There were a lot of them and it was taking most of the time on the clock. It was an easy job. The bomb’s electronics were primitive and agents had many courses teaching us just how to handle this type of situation but it was still going very slowly. . .

My head was sweating, my fingers getting tired from breaking the strong wires. I only had one minute left and my hands were getting slippery with sweat. Just as I reached for the last primer, I heard Jewels voice.

“He let me go! Please come out of there, I need you.”

“Jewels run! This whole place is going to blow any second!”

“No, I need you.”

Swearing, I yanked the last wire out. It was safe, as long as no one did anything sudden. I knew primers exploded with very little initiative.

“Bronson, please come out,” she pleaded.

Crawling over explosives towards the front I could see her outline, she was backlit by bright streetlights over the crowd. I stood up once I reached the front of the ambulance just in time to see Jewels pull a 10mm Glock. Quickly she aimed it between by breasts, the red laser flickering of the broken glass about the cabin.

Next, two load thunderclaps and a soft splat.

Crawling back to reality, my chest feeling like I had been kicked by a Clydesdale horse, I looked around. The bullets had knocked me back into the compartment with the explosives, two large holes torn into my ballistics vest, my shirt ruined. I could hear a soft wheezing. I moved towards the sound. It was from outside.

Opening the passenger door, I stepped out, every move hurting, my ears ringing. I tenderly walked to the front of the ambulance and saw Jewels propped up against the bumper. She had what looked like a beard of bees hanging around her jaw and chest. I knelt closer to her; the metallic smell of blood permeated my world. Shot in the upper chest, Jewels lungs pumped air out mixed with blood making the bubbly beard. My backup shot her. Hydrostatic shock had ripped her guts apart.