Flashpoint by Suzanne Brockmann Page B

Super Bowl and breaking into “Burning Love.” No, if Elvis came back, he’d definitely start the gig with “Heartbreak Hotel.”
    “We’ll wait for him to get off the bus first,” Jimmy told Tess. “Most people are always in a hurry.”
    “And we’re not?”
    He knew she was thinking about that laptop computer, potentially filled with all that information about impending terrorist attacks, sitting somewhere in the rubble.
    “Sometimes you get farther by watching and waiting.” Jimmy laughed. It was funny—that was usually what Decker said to him. But really, the last thing they wanted was a reporter—
this
reporter—figuring out why they were here. And it wasn’t as if they could just make Will Schroeder disappear.
    Well, actually, they could.
He
could. Quite easily, in fact.
Too
easily.
    Tess once again was quiet, as if she’d picked up on his sudden change in mood, and the bus bounced its way toward Kazabek. It seemed impossible that anyone could sleep on this thing, but her silence stretched on and on for five minutes, ten minutes, fifteen.
    But then Jimmy realized she wasn’t asleep. She was looking out the window. The sun hung in the brilliant blue sky, making the desolate, rocky hillside strikingly beautiful. Of course, not everyone saw it that way.
    “You love it here, don’t you?” Tess said softly, and he looked down to see that she was watching him now instead of the scenery.
    “Yeah,” he admitted. He was only answering a simple question. He wasn’t sure why it felt as if he were giving her a piece of his soul.
    The bus swayed hard to the right as the driver swerved to avoid a deep hole in the dirt road.
    “Hold on,” Jimmy said as his arms tightened around Tess, as he held her even closer to keep her from hitting her head on the hard back of the seat.
    She braced herself, too, her hand briefly on his thigh again, before she grabbed the seat in front of them.
    “Careful,” he said, the warning as much for himself as it was for her.
    K AZABEK , K AZBEKISTAN
    Jesus.
    Jesus.
As Decker stared out the bus window, he could feel Murphy leaning closer to look over his shoulder.
    Up toward the front of the bus, Will Schroeder from the
Boston Globe
had put his book down.
    After interminable hours on the road, even the five relief workers from Hamburg had stopped their relentless singing of German folk songs as they, too, gazed out at the devastation.
    Kazabek—at least this northernmost part of the city—had become piles of rocks and crumbling mortar.
    The streets were barely passable, and the bus had to slow almost to a crawl.
    Grimy children stared at them from perches atop the ruined buildings, while their parents dug through the rubble that had once been their homes.
    In a former marketplace, bodies were laid out, lined up row after row after row.
    Another open square had been turned into a temporary hospital, with tents set up to protect the wounded from the hot sun. But there were nowhere near enough tents or medical personnel, and people sat or even lay right on the hard ground, dazed and disoriented, some still covered with blood.
    And then there was nothing but block after endless block of devastation.
    Murphy saw it at the exact second Deck did—four men running from a side street, shouting and gesturing toward the bus.
    Murph got to his feet, already opening the bag that held the arsenal of weapons he’d somehow acquired in Ikrimah, readying to repel an attack.
    Dave Malkoff, too, was up and over by the bus driver, prepared to launch out the door, if necessary. Decker hadn’t even seen the man move.
    “Don’t slow down,” he heard Dave instruct the driver, who kicked it into a higher gear.
    But then Nash stood up from his seat in the back. “Stop the bus!” he called out both in English and the local K-stani dialect. “They’re saying they’ve uncovered a school!” He was by an open window and had no doubt been able to make out the words that the men had been shouting as