Page 87 of Into the Fire

His face snapped over to Evan. Already Evan had the sodden gauze pads in his palm. With his other hand, he hit REDIAL on the RoamZone.

There was a half-second delay as the call routed through to the Nokia in the dumpster outside. The flashbang’s effect, compounded within the metal walls, literally vibrated the building, the boom loud enough to send a passing officer airborne. Coffee rose from his cup in a brown fountain. The detective to Evan’s side hit the floor, hands laced over the back of his head.

Evan was up beside O’Malley in an instant, cupping his hand over the detective’s mouth and nose, steadying him and pretending to lean over the desk in an improvised duck-and-cover.

Desflurane was Evan’s preferred halogenated ether. Its TV-trendy cousin, chloroform, was nearly useless, taking a solid five minutes to be effective and requiring ongoing inhalation to keep the target unconscious. In Evan’s experience the onset of action for Desflurane hovered around two minutes, but a lightweight individual like the unfortunate Detective O’Malley would be functionally incapacitated at the thirty-second mark.

The drug was also much safer than chloroform, a key consideration if you were planning to knock out an innocent cop.

Over the furor in the lobby, the desk officer shouted, “Everyone please evacuate in a calm and orderly fashion!”

As the bullpen cleared, Evan caged O’Malley’s head with his arm, tilting him forward at the big monitor to hide his face and the soaked gauze from view. O’Malley whipped his head back to crack into Evan’s, and Evan pulled away just in time so it thudded ineffectively into his chest. A heartbeat slower and Evan would’ve been laid out on the floor with second-impact syndrome, a second concussion ballooning the first, leaving him unconscious or dead.

Exhaling with relief, he held his grip firm. O’Malley’s knees rattled against the underside of his desk, but already they were losing steam. His eyes rolled up to Evan, showing white, and Evan whispered, “Don’t worry. It’s harmless. I’m not going to hurt you.”

At last the detective slumped, but Evan maintained the seal over his nose and mouth.

By now the detectives and cops had grabbed their weapons and were streaming toward the front, herding the citizens with them. Evan held Detective O’Malley in place in his chair and spoke to his unconscious face loudly, “Okay, okay. I’m coming. It just hurts if I move too fast.”

The exodus from the bullpen was nearly complete, the last of the cops filing through the door to the lobby.

Evan lowered O’Malley gently to the desk, resting his forehead on the mouse pad. Then he unclipped the key card from the detective’s belt and crossed the bullpen.

He had no weapon. But he had no time either.

With a tap of the key card against the pad, the security door clicked open. The corridor beyond had three doors on either side. Except for one, all stood open, likely left ajar in the explosion’s aftermath.

If Nuñez and Brust had taken Max to a back room as Evan anticipated, they’d have good reason to remain behind during an evacuation. They’d require the privacy.

Evan gritted his teeth. He had to enter the fray unarmed and face whatever came at him. But he could not afford to take another blow to his head. It would put him out, maybe for good.

The closed door was locked, so Evan stepped back and kicked it in.

It smashed the wall, the doorknob sticking through the drywall.

“Hurry up and—” Nuñez cut off his words to his partner, his eyes lighting with alarm at Evan’s bandage-wrapped face, his hand already reaching for his sidearm.

At the center of the room, Brust stood facing Max over the table, one arm extended, his Glock aimed at Max’s head. An executioner’s pose.

Before Evan could move, Brust fired.

36

Deadweight

Evan filled the open doorway of the interrogation room, the echo of the gunshot ringing within the reinforced walls.

Max was gone, knocked clear out of his chair by the head shot, lost somewhere beneath the table, bleeding out.

Adrenaline surged at the reins, threatening to break free and bolt through Evan’s bloodstream, but he tightened his hold. If Max was dead, he’d still be dead three seconds from now.

Evan couldn’t waste a split second. He was in close quarters with two homicidal cops. They had Glock 22 Gen4s, each with fifteen .40s stacked in the magazine.

Evan had an ACE bandage wrapped around his head and a lingering concussion.

But he’d been trained to slow down time in a firefight, to assess the freeze-frame progression of movement and angles.

Brust remained in side profile, having just fired across the table at Max. A slow-motion ripple spread through the cheap cotton of his shirt behind the right shoulder, stirred into existence by the recoil. He was pivoting toward Evan, his head leading the turn.