Free Gideon's War/Hard Target by Howard Gordon

he was told, hoping they would hear the fear in his voice and come anyway.
    “Drag his body into that closet,” the man said calmly, indicating a storage locker.
    Omar felt sick. But he couldn’t move. His brain still couldn’t quite process what was happening.
    “Now,” the man said, lowering his voice.
    Omar didn’t want to die. So he lifted Abdul’s feet and dragged his dead boss toward the closet. Abdul had somehow broken his left leg as he fell, and the bones made a grinding noise as Omar dragged him. Stuffing the dead man into the tiny closet was a messy, horrible, and slow process. After Omar was finished, he turned to find the bearded man setting an object beside the computer. It was gray, roughly the size and shape of an egg. The bearded man stuck the twin prongs of some small mechanism into the soft material.
    “Come here, Omar,” the bearded man said. “Put your finger on this.” He pointed to the device he’d stuck into the egg, which was ovular and concave.
    “How do you know my name?”
    “Don’t make me ask you twice.”
    Omar did as he was told.
    “Now, Omar, from the retinal scanner over there, I can see that you know something about biometrics. Facial recognition, retinal scans, fingerprints, blah blah blah—turning biology into data. You understand what I’m saying, right?”
    &¡€em">Omar nodded.
    “Outstanding,” he said. “This device you’ve got your finger on? It’s a biometric trigger. If it senses any interruption in your pulse, say from taking your finger off the device and breaking contact, it will detonate this.” He pointed to the egg-shaped object. “It’s a military-grade explosive called Semtex,” the man said. “Enough to make your entire body look like your friend’s head. Do you want that to happen to you?”
    Omar shook his head.
    The bearded man pressed a button on the device, and a small red light started blinking.
    “So I have a mission for you. It’s called Operation Omar-Doesn’t-Blow-His-Own-Ass-Up. The way it works is this: you sit here for the rest of your shift, keep your finger on the button, and smile at every asshole who walks through that door. Anybody asks you about Cole Ransom, you just shrug and act stupid. If anybody asks where your buddy went, you shrug and act stupid. I imagine you’ll be good at that.”
    Omar was tempted to explain how a lack of finances was all that had prevented him from going to university, but he realized it was pointless at this particular moment.
    “If you complete your mission, I’ll call you later and tell you how to disconnect the bomb. But if I get arrested or shot or the chopper gets called back or if I get spooked for any reason—obviously, I won’t be coming back. And whatever bomb squad you’re thinking of getting over here? Trust me, they’ll never figure out how to disarm this bomb.”
    Omar felt a drop of sweat trickling down his neck.
    “Operation Omar-Doesn’t-Blow-His-Own-Ass-Up.” The bearded man gave him a cynical smile. “You and me. We’re on the same team now, right?”
    Omar nodded.
    “You gonna screw up your mission?”
    “No, sir. I want to live.”
    “Outstanding!” The bearded man pulled out his cell phone, dialed a number, and spoke to someone on the other end of the line as he walked back out the door toward the waiting chopper, in no particular hurry. His voice was too low to hear, but Omar had managed to hear the man on the other side of the line greet the bearded man. Abu Nasir.
    As soon as the bearded man boarded the chopper, it lifted off. Omar watched the chopper until it disappeared from view. Was it possible that he was really Abu Nasir?
    Omar sat trembling for what seemed like an hour. He looked at the clock. Barely a minute had passed. Was the bomb really rigged the way the bearded man had said it was? Probably. Would Abu Nasir ever tell him how to defuse the bomb? Probably not.
    Omar’s hand was already beginning to hurt. He began thinking about his