Next Day of the Condor Read Online Free PDF Page A

he can.”
    The machinegun buzzed like a monster’s vibrating tongue.
    “Did you see his hearse?” said Condor.
    Malati started to rise—
    Got jerked down. “You don’t know where he’s looking! You got no diversion!”
    She shuddered in his grasp.
    Condor said: “Shiny metal where the coffin should ride. ‘Think they’re bins.”
    “Bins?”
    “The bus driver pulled black steel stars out of his tires. Caltrops. Tactical steel road tire spikes. State troopers and Army ambushers scatter them on the highway.”
    Somewhere in the parking lot a woman screamed like a fleeing banshee.
    Malati shook her head. “What does that have to do with bins and where would—”
    The machinegun roared.
    No more banshee screaming.
    “Maybe he got the spikes on Amazon,” said Condor. “Get lots, rig metal bins in the coffin space. Cut holes in the back of the hearse, driver-controllable lids on the bins. He drove every stretch of road every direction out of here, probably weaving lane to lane to cover all drivable asphalt, picking his release spots just past or just before the rest stop exits and entrances, dropping,
what
, couple thousand of those things. A few flat tires, cars crashing into each other, stopped, and it’s the mother of all backups every way in or out of here, walls of steel. He’s isolated his kill zone. Stalled any rescue or escape.”
    BOOM! The robot switched to his shotgun.
    Malati waved her arm: “When he’s shooting the other way we can make it across the parking lot toward the Turnpike! Short fence, hop it, run, hide—”
    She saw where Condor was looking.
    The empty school bus.
    She said: “All those kids.”
    He said: “All us everybody.”
    Machinegun bullets cut a line over their heads like the contrail of a jet on its way across this cool blue sky.
    Her spine tensed. Her mind pushed against her forehead.
    He said: “Cell phone!”
    Pressed against her ear. “911 is…
Due to a high volume
—”
    “Half the people here. Unless he’s got a jammer.”
    “You can buy those?”
    “You tell me, you’re the one from the real world.”
    Car windows shatter. Bullets whine.
    Why now? Why here? Why me?
    Why not.
    Her eyes were welded wide. “Where is he? Is he coming—Wait!”
    Malati swooped the screen of her cell phone. Eased her cell above the car.
    Camera app, the phone like a periscope lens scanning the sounds of gunfire.
    Like a movie.
    “He’s moving toward the main doors!”
    Standing tall,
man
, striding toward the funnel for the fools—
Whoops
: fat guy in parking lot,
where’d he pop up from
, pulling at the passenger door on that green car
bullets’ burst
and he’s dancing and spraying red and sliding down to
dead, motherfucker
.
    The side fire door of the rest stop facility flies open.
    Half a dozen people charge out.
    Crying tires
as a silver SUV lunges out of its parking lot space.
    Malati’s cell phone showed the shooter drop flat on the pavement.
    He fumbled with the book-sized computer thing lashed to his belt.
    Silver SUV slows for six people running to its—
    FLASH! by the green dumpsters
then
came the BOOM! of garage-mixed explosive gel shelled by ball bearings and old nails as the paper sack bomb exploded.
    Take that, Columbine motherfuckers!
The shooter keyboarded the tablet lashed to his waist so it was re-primed to send a wireless signal to any of his other planted bombs.
    Windshield blasted glass slivers blinded the silver SUV’s driver, an engaged office manager/volunteer at a Paterson , N.J. soup kitchen.
    Bomb shrapnel hit three of the runners, bodies crashed to the pavement. The other three runners staggered—
arm
, the blast blew off the arm of a mother of two lawyer on her way to a deposition, she crumpled, bled out.
    Like a cat person on TV, the shooter rocketed off the pavement.
    Saw two targets staggering beside a drifting silver SUV.
    Sprayed them with bullets. Nailed one, the other,
ah fuck him
, let him stagger away, maybe he’s hit, certain