“Wait… aww, fuck. We can’t remove it all at once. We’re going to have to do it brick by brick.” He pointed to a second circuit hidden in the pouches under the shrapnel.
Hunter resisted the urge to grind his teeth. Instead of being able to take the vest off the boy intact, they’d have to take each piece of C4 off by itself, then break the circuit connecting it to the mass of the vest. It was as though there were ten separate bombs instead of only one.
Grimly they set to work, removing each block of C4 one at a time and placing it in the protective box before going on to the next. By the third brick, Hunter was panting, but he’d learned to work through stress before, and he kept his focus on what he was doing, making each movement precise.
After the ninth brick had been removed, Stack looked at what was left, then drew in a deep breath. “Good. I think we took out all the redundancy,” he said. “Now we can remove it like a regular one.”
“Got it,” Hunter said. They carefully loosened the last of the wires and lifted the vest off over the kid’s head. As he was freed, the boy cried out in relief, and Hunter had to grab his hand. “Don’t release it yet! We’re not done.”
The boy nodded, trembling where he stood, as Stack disabled the detonator circuit. Hunter took the trigger from the boy, and the boy dropped to the ground, sobbing as he wrapped his arms around his knees and pressed his forehead against them.
Stack put the vest on the ground, then popped open his helmet. “Hey, kid, it’ll be okay,” he said, patting the boy on the back.
Hunter opened his helmet as well, drawing in a deep breath of desert air that felt cool in comparison to the inside of his helmet. And that was when he heard it — a soft beeping. Coming from the vest.
“It’s hot!” He cried out, instinctively pushing the kid back, as though an extra few inches would do anything to protect him from the live bomb in their midst. Then time slowed down, as Hunter was pushed, a hard hand ramming into the center of his chest and knocking him off-balance. He’d still been on his knees, and he twisted as he fell, unable to believe Stack had pushed him away. But Stack was turning away, too — in the direction of the bomb.
“No!” Hunter cried out, but he was too late. As Stack fell across the vest, the C4 detonated. A brilliant flash enveloped Hunter’s world, a sharp, burning pain sliced along one side of his head, and then everything faded to black, as Hunter’s soul screamed in horror that his last sight was his best friend being blown to bits right before his eyes.
