Free Full Ratchet: A Silas Cade Thriller Hardcover by Mike Cooper

should call 911 right now. Give them a head start.”
    “Don’t worry about it. Brendt knows what he’s doing.”
    “I don’t see any company bosses standing around.”
    “It’s Saturday.”
    Oh, yeah, I’d lost track. No doubt a weekend was all the better for slipshod, regulation-violating, totally illegal demolition jobs.
    “I’m going to watch from over there.”
    “Okay.” He shrugged and raised the camera to his eye, shielding the lens from a gust of light rain. “Won’t be more’n another few seconds though.”
    Sure enough, a loud shout came from the base of the furnace.
    “Go!”
    I looked over in time to see the hammers all swing simultaneously. They struck the furnace walls in silence—the sharp cracks arrived a second later, while the five men were leaping and stumbling and sprinting away.
    Fuck. I jumped to land behind the slag car, covering my head with both arms and crouching in the shelter of the iron vat.
    BO-O-O-O-M-M-MMM!
    The explosion was a deep, roaring blast. I glanced out, peering past the railcar’s frame, to see the base of the tower balloon outward in a cloud of dust and smoke.
    The chimney swayed and collapsed in on itself. The noise deafened, a long thundering crash of masonry and metal. Our view was cut off as a debris cloud engulfed the entire area. Before everything disappeared into the maelstrom I saw the very top of the furnace fall and the conveyor’s heavy scaffold start to collapse.
    I hunched down again, trying to press my ears shut with my fingers while keeping my forearms crossed over my face. Video Guy laughed and shouted, barely audible over the roar. Standing unprotected, his video might end up like one of those avalanche films, a sudden rushing tumble then black.
    It was over in a minute, maybe more. The noise eased and the smoke began to clear. I stood slowly, blinking at the sharp dust in my eyes.
    “Whoo-
hoooo
!” The other lunatics emerged from different places around the furnace. Or where the furnace used to be, rather. Now it was a huge smoking pile of rubble.
    Dave came over. “How about
that,
little brother!” Everyone seemed overadrenalized, slapping each other on the arms, pointing, laughing. Video Guy had his camera on review, watching the screen. They all looked grimier than five minutes ago, dust in their hair and black dirt on their clothes. In the mist the smudges turned to muddy smears.
    “Everyone lived,” I said, surprised.
    “Well, yeah.”
    “Now what happens?”
    “Now?”
    “If the idea was to clear the site, you actually haven’t made much progress.”
    Brendt walked up. “Now the slag can cool, that’s all,” he said. “Stopped up inside, it would of taken months. This way they start hauling it away next week.”
    Cleaning up and collecting tools shouldn’t have taken long, but somehow they stretched it out an hour. Three sledgehammers were lost, abandoned and buried under the falling masonry. Dave still had his bucket, though. When we finally finished up, he dropped his gloves in.
    “Here, take these,” said Brendt. He held out two more sticks of dynamite. They looked just like the cartoons—not much shorter than a paper-towel tube, wrapped in red paper. Splotches on the paper suggested that nitroglycerine had begun to destabilize and leak out. I stepped back.
    “You don’t need them?”
    “Naw. You can use them to take out that stump you was talking about.”
    “Thanks.” Dave added them to the bucket.
    “When we gonna get paid?” Video Guy asked.
    “Monday.” Brendt brushed grit from his beard. “I’ll collect from the office.”
    “Hope they don’t decide to fuck around—sixty-day terms, that kinda bullshit.” All of them had probably done 1099 work and knew how slow big companies could be.
    “Nuh-uh.” He flipped his sledgehammer in his left hand, like it was a juggling club. “They’ll see right here what we can do. I don’t think they’ll want us
angry
with them.”
    He threw the hammer twice