Page 96 of Shadow Redemption
“How did he take you down?” Sam wouldn’t have been easy to subdue.
“Sleeper hold. When I woke up, I was in this closet, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey with this vest on.”
“You’ll be fine.” Joe knelt beside his wife. “If anyone can dismantle this thing in time, it’s Ben.”
“Piece of cake.” Ben winked at the medic. “It’s the least I can do since you sewed me up today.”
Trace carried in Ben’s equipment bag. “What else do you need?”
“Help Nico clear the ballroom.”
“Don’t mess up, Martin.”
“If I do, you’ll be the first to know.”
With a quick salute, Trace left.
“Anything I can do?” Joe asked.
“I’ll need an extra pair of hands. Mirror my moves exactly, Joe. If we’re not in synch, we’ll trigger the device.”
“Let’s do this. I need to hold my wife in my arms.”
Ben understood that. He wanted to hold Ruth, but his woman was in the hands of a thug who worked for Ben’s worst nightmare. He shoved that aside behind a mental wall for the moment. Once he freed Sam, Ben and his teammates would go after Davidson and his merry band of thugs.
He dug out the tools he and Joe needed, grateful that he’d been training Joe in the fine art of EOD. Nico’s orders for each member of Shadow to double up on skills would pay off in spades today.
After handing Joe a set of tools, he and the spotter went to work. Keeping an eye on the timer, he gave Joe instructions for handling each stage as they mirrored each other’s movements.
Wiping sweat from his forehead with his forearm, Ben looked at Joe. “Here’s the tricky part. We have to clip six wires in order with no more than two seconds between snips to stop the timer.”
“What’s the order?”
“Blue, red, green, white, black, red. We still have to mirror. If we’re out of synch or get the order wrong, you can’t name your firstborn child after me.”
A quick grin from Joe. “Wasn’t planning to do that anyway.” He sobered and glanced at Sam. “I love you, baby.”
“I love you, too. Don’t screw this up. I have long-term plans with you.”
Joe nodded at Ben. “Let’s do this.”
They each gripped a pair of wire cutters and hovered near the blue wire. “Ready?” When Joe nodded, Ben said, “Just like we’ve done in practice sessions, buddy. I’ll call out the colors and we snip together.”
With a silent prayer for all of them, he called the wire colors and matched his cutting motion to Joe’s. When they snipped the final red wire, the timer froze at five seconds to detonation.
Ben blew out a breath and braced himself with a hand on the floor. Thank God.
“That was close,” Nico said from the doorway. “Good job, both of you. You all right, Sam?”
“Get this thing off me,” Sam said.
Joe grabbed a Ka-Bar from Ben’s bag and sliced through the tape securing his wife’s hands, then started cutting the rest of the tape securing the vest to Sam’s body. “Good thing you’re wearing long sleeves. Otherwise, you’d lose a layer of skin.”
“Just get it off.”
Nico crouched on the other side of Sam while Ben collected his tools and stored them in his equipment bag. Between Nico and Joe, they peeled tape from Sam’s arms. Removing the tape from her wrists left several raw places.
Once the vest was removed, Joe gathered Sam into his arms. “Gorman is a dead man,” he muttered, his expression fierce.