The Burning Men: A Nathaniel Cade Story by Christopher Farnsworth Read Free Book Online Page A

see,” Cade said.
    Zach couldn’t argue with that. He stood aside. “At least put in your earpiece. Maintain contact.”
    “Of course,” Cade said. He turned to the ERT commander. “Be ready to lock down the terminal if I fail.”
    The ERT commander looked unhappy, but nodded. He was a good soldier. He followed orders.
    Cade left the room. In a moment, Zach saw him on the monitors, which had resumed their scanning. He was out among the crowds, cutting effortlessly through them. People got out of his way, some deep instinct telling them not to approach the young man in the black suit.
    A wolf among the sheep.
     
    
     
    Adam Thompson watched Ty head to the doors marked DELTA from the shuttle bus. He was going to the next stop. They would try to time it as closely as possi ble. Get past the TSA checkpoints, and then trigger the big bang.
    Adam had to admit none of this was anything like he planned . He wanted to go to Washington, and blow themselves up on the floor of the House of the Representatives, or during a White House tour. But those things were too hard to get into now. They all had arrest records from several demonstrations, and there was no way they’d get anywhere really important.
    Besides, he told himself, this was better. The leaders only lead when the people force them to follow. They had to put the fear back into the general population. Get people to stop buying, stop consuming, stop blindly eating the shit that the government fed them.
    And the best way to do that was fear.
    If the people realized the government couldn’t protect them, then they’d start to doubt the whole system. They’d pull it down eventually.
    The few deaths they caused now would save billions of lives eventually.
    At least, that’s what Adam told himself.
    But in the night, when he couldn’t sleep, he felt a growing suspicion that it wasn’t anything like that at all. Like the fire the old man had taught him to bring inside, he was anxious to get out, to do something, to do some damage. He just wanted a target, and he found he was less inclined to wait for the right one. The thing inside him was always pushing, always testing his resolve. While waiting in line at the shuttle bus stop this morning, he felt a sudden, crazy impulse to just let it go, right then and there. All those people standing around, all those mouth-breathing morons, with no idea that they were about to suck down oxygen for the very last time.
    He looked at Ty, who seemed to feel it, too. And they’d smiled at each other, and tamped it down.
    Marc had pushed them into this. He had forced them by going off-script and blowing up too soon, but now, Adam realized, he couldn’t really blame him.
    He could hardly wait. He wanted to see everything burn.
    The airport would have to be enough.
     
    
     
    Cade saw the young man, Novak, in the middle of the security line. He removed his shoes and belt, took his wallet and phone from his pockets, and showed his boarding pass to the man standing in front of the wavefront scanner.
    Then Novak raised his arm s and stood still.
    He would have looked like any one of a few hundred students traveling that day, except for one thing: he was smiling brightly, as if hearing a joke only he understood. He was the only person in the entire security line who actually looked happy to be there.
    Cade forced himself to wait. He was certain that Novak would wait until he was through security.
    What he didn’t know was how much control Novak had over the demon he’d invited inside.
    Novak recovered his shoes, his phone, and his belt, and tucked his boarding pass into a pocket. He got himself back in order, and began walking away from the security point.
    His smile never faded.
    Cade walked after him.
     
    
     
    Zach and the ERT commander stood in the office, watching Cade on one of the monitors. Zach had, with a few moments’ fiddling, learned how to force one of the screens to stick to one