I HEARD HIS WORDS CLEARLY EVEN THROUGH THE GUNFIRE AND shouting that continued all around us. He stared down at me with that infuriating grin on his face. Once again he thought he’d outsmarted me. Used me to help him get exactly what he wanted.
But this time, he had actually played right into my hands.
So I smiled back.
“I’m glad you found me among the chaos,” I said, “since this is exactly what I wanted to happen.”
His smile twitched but didn’t go away. He removed the small device with the button from his pocket and held it up.
“Remember this?” he said. “Hand over the program, or I press the button. Agency headquarters will be no more.”
“I was hoping you’d say that,” I said.
Without waiting for any kind of reply, I calmly removed six large cherry bombs with shortened fuses from my pocket. They were taped together into a giant megacherry bomb. I sandwiched the USB drive between them quickly, more deftly than I’d suspected my shaking fingers could have moved.
“What are you doing?” Medlock asked, his smile finally gone. “I’ll press the button!”
I pulled out a small lighter and lit the shortened fuses, tossing the megabomb to my left almost immediately. Before it even hit the ground there was a relatively small pop. Had there not been a raging gun battle happening on the other side of the church, the whole thing probably would have been more dramatic. But as it was, the force was still strong enough to blow the USB drive into dozens of small pieces.
“No!” Medlock yelled. He pressed a button on his device. “You just destroyed the Agency, my little friend. It may take a few minutes for the reactor to overheat, but the explosion is inevitable now. The process is irreversible.”
“Good,” I said, and I meant it.
Medlock tossed aside the device and pulled out a handgun. He pointed it at my face and suddenly my joy at having the plan go about as well as could be hoped for evaporated in an instant.
“Now I will finally get to destroy you,” he said.
I closed my eyes and waited for the dark.