Chapter 8 - Thirteen Minutes to Midnight
The men in the federal marshal jackets we saw on the television news at the airport weren't real federal agents at all—Julian Sterling staged that arrest video on a private tarmac in New Jersey and kidnapped Howard so he could cut off his thumbprint access and lure us away from Millbrook! Nathaniel roared, slamming the pickup truck into four-wheel drive and tearing out of the wooded logging trail onto the slick two-lane state highway at eighty-five miles an hour.
Clara gripped the dashboard with one hand while holding the tablet steady with the other, her eyes fixed in horror on the live basement feed where a ruptured natural gas line was hissing directly above the copper blasting caps taped to Howard's chair.
Look at the digital clock in the corner of the boiler room screen, Nate—the timer is set to detonate at exactly twelve-oh-one midnight! Clara cried out as the truck's tires screamed around a sharp curve in the pouring rain.
If Julian blows up the Maple Leaf Diner and the block around it tonight with Howard inside, the state fire marshal will rule it a catastrophic gas-main explosion, Howard's body will be blamed for the missing forty million dollars, and because my diner is destroyed before the midnight tax curation deadline, the twelve-billion-dollar subterranean corridor deed automatically defaults to Julian's shell company!
We are eleven miles out, and if Julian's men set that bomb, they will have lookouts watching the single traffic light on Main Street to make sure nobody gets near the diner before midnight, Nathaniel said grimly, pushing the old Ford engine until the temperature gauge climbed into the red.
How do we get into your basement without crossing Main Street?
Cut your headlights half a mile before the bridge and turn down the gravel embankment behind the Methodist church, Clara instructed fiercely, leaning forward over the steering wheel to point through the rain-streaked windshield.
When my great-grandfather built the diner during Prohibition in nineteen-twenty-eight, the town routed the storm-water brick culvert from the creek straight beneath the church parking lot into the old coal chute in our sub-basement!
Six minutes later, with only four minutes and forty seconds remaining on the red digital timer on the tablet screen, Nathaniel killed the headlights and slid the pickup truck silently down the muddy creek bank behind the dark church steeple.
Through the rain, two hundred yards up the slope at the rear alley of the Maple Leaf Diner, they could see a black Range Rover parked across the back door with two of Julian's armed mercenaries standing under the awning holding suppressed rifles.
Leave the tablet in the truck—stay right behind my boots in the water, Nathaniel whispered, grabbing a heavy thirty-inch iron tire wrench from behind the truck seat and plunging waist-deep into the rushing, ice-cold water of the brick storm culvert with Clara right on his heels.
Using the dim waterproof flashlight app on his burner phone, Nathaniel led her fifty yards up the echoing brick tunnel until they reached the rusted iron coal grate built into the foundation wall of the diner's sub-basement.
The iron bolts had been rusted shut for twenty years, and inside the boiler room on the other side of the grate, a third scarred mercenary in tactical gear was just zipping up his tool bag and checking the blinking red detonator strapped to a half-conscious Howard Ellis's chest—with ninety seconds left on the clock!
Nathaniel braced both boots against the wet brick wall, wedged the forged steel tire wrench beneath the iron latch of the coal grate, and pulled with every ounce of strength in his shoulders until the rusted cast-iron hinge snapped in half with a sharp metallic crack!
The mercenary spun around in the gas-filled basement and reached for the pistol at his hip, only for Nathaniel to launch himself through the open chute like a human battering ram, slamming the heavy iron wrench across the man's forearm to send the gun skittering across the concrete floor before knocking him out cold with a brutal right hook to the jaw!
Nate, the gas concentration is too high—if the timer sends a single electrical spark to that cap, the whole room goes up! Clara shouted, grabbing a heavy brass pipe wrench from the boiler rack and throwing all her weight onto the rusted main street gas shut-off valve until it groaned and sealed shut.
Fifty seconds!
forty seconds!
Howard tried to shout through the silver duct tape over his mouth, shaking his head violently and looking down at the triple-braided anti-tamper wires connecting the battery pack to the blasting gelatin beneath his chair—if Nathaniel cut the red or blue wire, a secondary mercury tilt switch tucked behind the pipe would detonate the charge instantly!
Wait, Nate, don't cut the wires! Clara gasped, dropping to her knees beside the boiler and shining the light behind the copper cap where a tiny brass thermal pressure fuse was wired straight into the diner's hot-water return pipe!
It isn't an electronic trigger—the timer opens a solenoid valve that releases superheated steam from the boiler onto a thermal percussion cap at twelve-oh-one!
With eleven seconds left on the digital display, Clara didn't panic: knowing every inch of her grandfather's plumbing by heart, she spun the emergency cold-well bypass wheel with both hands while Nathaniel wedged the solid steel shaft of his tire wrench straight into the mechanical gears of the solenoid valve—snapping the brass striker pin clean off two seconds before the clock hit zero!
As the timer flashed all zeros with a harmless click, Nathaniel ripped the tape off Howard's mouth and sliced through his bindings—only for the bleeding, exhausted Chief Operating Officer to grab Nathaniel's wet shirt collar with both hands in sheer terror!
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Nate, the forty-eight-hour solvency window doesn't expire tomorrow night—Evelyn and Julian bribed the Delaware clerk to backdate the court notice by twenty-four hours! Howard gasped out, coughing up blood and smoke.
The final emergency bankruptcy liquidation hearing starts at nine o'clock tomorrow morning in lower Manhattan, and if you aren't standing in front of that federal judge at nine-oh-one with the physical ledger and the deed, Julian Sterling legally owns every penny of Whitfield Holdings forever!
