The McClane Apocalypse Book Three (10 page)

Reagan huffs beside him.

"No, I'm not going to bed. I want to learn
this. You seem to be good at getting yourself stabbed and shot a
lot, so somebody else around here should know how to do this," she
teases with a smirk, glancing up at him through her long
lashes.

John chuckles and would like to snatch her
into his arms for a disciplinary kiss but checks that idea for fear
of the .45 on her thigh. He hates to admit it, but strapped to her
muscular, tan thigh it's actually sexy as hell. Combine that with
the tight black V-neck, matching shorts and a pair of flip flops on
her bare feet and it's almost too much for him to withstand tossing
her down in the hay. He just wishes she'd dress a little more like
Hannah while the visitors are here, and it's a topic that he's
planning on broaching with her. He does not, however, anticipate it
going well.

"Wow, thanks," John says to her, to which
she shrugs playfully. He definitely likes tired Reagan better than
ready for a fight and alert Reagan. This version is more relaxed,
less on edge.

"How are the patients doing anyways? You and
Doc didn't bring it up at dinner. Everyone was too busy asking
about everything you found out today about the hadji," John
inquires as he inspects one of the switches on the table.

"They are about the same, no better. What
the heck is hadji?" she asks.

"Remember hadj? Hadji, hadj—same thing. It's
just what we called the Muslim terrorists all over the world that
we were after. During the Vietnam War the soldiers would call the
enemy Charlies, and during the first and second Iraq wars they
called the enemy hadjis or just hadj. It sounds better than targets
one through five. Don't you agree? I don't think Grams or Hannah
wants to hear us talking about target one or target two, but to us
that's what they are," John explains knowing that if this was any
other woman, he'd never have explained even that much. But Reagan
isn't like any other woman he knows or has ever known. She can
handle a good dose of violence.

"Oh, as far as I'm concerned you can call
them targets."

John shouts laughter to the empty barn. She
is so tempestuous. And she makes him laugh a lot, even though she
doesn't necessarily mean to be funny.

"Yeah, I'm sure you would be ok with it,
boss," he agrees with her, and she grins crookedly at him.

"Well they're just deadbeats, most of them.
And I think they're going to end up being more trouble in the end
than they're worth," Reagan concludes wisely.

John couldn't agree more. But this is
Grams's brother they are also contemplating.

"Yeah, I'd say you're right about that," he
concurs again.

"I'm always right," she mocks with a cocky
shake of her head.

"Yeah, I'm getting that," he says with a
smile, which makes Reagan look away.

"Ok, what do we do first?" she asks.

She's rearing to go of course.

"Patience, woman," John jokes, holding up
his hands to her, and she slugs his arm. Ok, maybe she isn't quite
tired enough yet. "I need to lay this all out and see what I've
got. This was so much easier in the Army. We had all the good toys
then," John says with an ornery grin.

"I bet," she agrees.

She gives him a small grin. It's
progress.

Then she adds, "How come you didn't steal, I
mean borrow, some Army loot like grenades and crap when you
left?"

"Uh… we did. How do you think we got home?"
John asks her, and Reagan nods with a frown as it dawns on her what
he's saying. Out of pure habit, he takes a pack of cigarettes out
of his cargo pocket and lights one up.

"What the hell? You're smoking in a barn
full of hay?" she complains loudly.

"Worried about my health? Did you see all my
bullet holes and wound scars?"

"No, I'm worried about you burning down the
barn!" she argues and sets her hands on her hips.

John pauses a long moment to examine those
curvy hips and inhales a long draw. A slow smile of appreciation
spreads across his features.

"Hm," he drawls as he considers her, mostly
her figure, though she probably doesn't realize it.

"What? Why are you looking at me like that?
Are you even listening to me, John?" she demands impatiently.

The toe tapping commences.

"Sure, barn burning, nagging, the usual," he
jokes, and she predictably frowns hard when he laughs.

He turns back to the table and holds his
cigarette with his lips while he picks up different objects to
explain them, ignoring her roll of the eyes move.

"Ok, see these pressure switches? We need to
get them wired to the nine volt batteries that will connect to the
squib that will be the explosive to complete the circuit. The
circuit is like a big circle that needs completed," he explains and
Reagan nods, completely tuned into him. "Pressure switches sense
when there is weight on them. So it will click to complete the
circuit when weight hits them either from a car or a person… and
boom. The Iraqi terrorists used them to make improvised explosive
devices, IED's. Utilizing their cell phones, they could detonate
them. They made roadside bombs during the second war we had with
them. Pussies. Hid behind their women and blew up our caravans.
Real tough guys. These explosives are simple, probably why even
they
could figure them out. It's amateur hour stuff really.
But they can be effective in diverting people away from the farm if
we need them to," John explains.

"I think we should actually put them
on
the driveway after these assholes leave, not beside it,"
Reagan says with her usual lust for violence and bedlam.

John cocks his head to the side and gives a
firm disapproving look. He's given the same look to Arianna a few
times when she's fighting with her brother, who is way too nice to
just haul off and tackle her when she's being bratty.

"Boss, how do you think Grams would like
that?" he asks as Reagan looks away and shrugs. "Or Hannah? She's
not like us. She'd be pretty darn upset if we went blasting away at
every person that came down the drive. Trust me, if it was just us
men on this farm, that's exactly how we'd handle it. But we have to
think of Grams and Hannah and the kids. And most importantly we
need to consider your grandpa. This is his farm, after all."

"Maybe they just need to toughen up. It's
not like we have the luxury of making new friends and being all
welcoming and shit anymore. Peace and love and happy-joy bullshit
kinda' went out the window when the neighbors got attacked and lost
half of their family in one night. Anyone that comes down that lane
should be treated like a threat," she argues.

"We will, but we still need to be diplomatic
about it, boss. Plus we might accidentally blow up your boyfriend,"
John hints and takes the cigarette out of his mouth for a
moment.

"What? What boyfriend?" Reagan asks
testily.

She's glaring at his cigarette.

"Mr. Reynolds?" John refers to his arch
nemesis Chet, the neighbor who is too good-looking to be sniffing
around here.

"Chet Reynolds is not my boyfriend. I told
you that before," she counters and picks up a switch to inspect
it.

He can only wonder what is whirring through
her little super brain. He'd been amazed by her this morning when
she'd saved that kid with Doc and then diagnosed the sickness.
Later, he'd heard Doc discussing it with Sue, and he'd told her how
he thought Reagan was probably right and how brilliant she was
about medicine. Sue had countered with a joke about Reagan not
knowing shit for dealing with people, just their illnesses. Doc had
laughed heartily and agreed.

"Am I?" John asks playfully and gets a nasty
glare, one of her many.

"Are you what?" she asks in her usual
clueless, guileless demeanor.

"Am I your boyfriend, woman?" John presses
further, earning a snort.

"Can we just get on with this? You're
getting on my nerves, as usual."

John stares at her another minute before
continuing. "Ok, have it your way. You always do," he remarks and
gets a saucy smirk in return. Then she gestures toward the table of
materials. "Fine. Then we'll pack fertilizer and diesel fuel and
the squibs all inside of those old coffee cans. We'll do that out
in the field, though, once we've got the switches and batteries
rigged. We can work on those tomorrow. The last thing we do is wire
in the squib so that static electricity or anything doesn't set it
off. That's the final phase—arming it. And we'll use those pipes
over there to also make some other similar explosives. The pressure
wave or shock wave will be what kills people, not the actual
explosive. Or we can put some shrapnel in for kicks if you'd like.
Kind of makes a big mess, though," he tells her, and she smiles
ruefully.

"Cool, so what were the rubber bands for? I
saw you grab a ton of them in that craft store. Are we gonna shoot
them at the bad-guys if we run out of bullets?" she inquires in her
smartass tone.

John laughs loudly again, though he is
actually trying to be quiet so as not to draw attention to them
from the visitors' camp.

"Reagan McClane, somebody shoulda' spanked
you a lot more growing up," he jokes with her, and she actually
laughs once.

"Feel free to try if you feel lucky, punk,"
she quotes the classic Clint Eastwood movie line.

He laughs again and chucks her under the
chin. His thumb stays there, though. Darn that top lip and its
beckoning fullness. John looks at her sensual mouth and takes a
meaningful step toward her. Even though they'd shared one,
fatigue-ridden kiss in her closet when they'd returned from the
city doesn't mean that she'll ever condone it again.

"I thought I smelled a cigarette…"

A woman's voice comes from around the
corner, interrupting his plan of kissing Reagan. A second later the
bleach blonde from the visitors' group appears, and Reagan
tenses.

"Smokin' and neckin' in the barn? Boy this
brings back some memories."

"You aren't supposed to be in here," John
says coldly, hoping she'll go away. Not surprisingly, she doesn't
leave but ambles closer.

She has four inches of black roots showing
and what might be considered a rather pretty face by some men. Her
shirt is cut off, barely concealing her braless breasts which are
an obvious enhancement job due to the size and perkiness. She's
thin, sexual and moves like a feline, and she's about five or six
inches taller than Reagan. Minus the bad hair, she might have been
the type of woman that John probably would've had a one night stand
with on one of his leave weekends before this all happened. And the
way she is looking at him, he's pretty sure he could do so again.
Subtlety is not this woman's forte.

"I don't mean any harm. I was just getting
water again and smelled the smoke. Got an extra?" she asks with no
pretenses at being shy.

John doesn't want to be the world's biggest
ass, so he takes out another cigarette and lights it for her,
holding his hand near her mouth so the flame can catch.

"Thanks. Oh man, is that great or what? I
haven't had a smoke in like two months."

John just nods and gives her a pained but
brief grin.

"Watcha' two doing out here?" she asks
peering around them.

"Making bombs to blow shit… and people up,"
Reagan says tersely.

She really doesn't like this chic. Well, in
this woman's defense, Reagan doesn't really like most people. The
boss is glaring daggers.

"That's just lovely," the woman remarks.

She speaks with slow intonations as if she
has been drinking and arches an eyebrow toward John. She extends a
hand to him. There is a rose tattooed on the base of her thumb, the
vines twining down toward the tip.

"I'm Jasmine."

"Is that your stage name?" Reagan cuts in
rudely.

John begrudgingly shakes Jasmine's hand. He
is taken aback by Reagan's crass accusation but not completely
surprised.

"Actually it wasn't," the woman returns.

She hits Reagan with a glare of her own, but
it disappears from her face as quickly as it had appeared.

"My stage name was Kitten if you have to
know."

"Shocker," Reagan returns and rolls her
eyes.

"What about you? You ever do a little
dancing?"

"What?" Reagan asks on a shocked gasp and
half-chuckle.

"You've got a hot bod for it. You're a
little short, but nothing a good pair of pumps couldn't have fixed.
Bet you could've made a lot of money," Jasmine says kindly, too
kindly.

She's literally checking Reagan out with
more than a little interest in her gaze. Maybe he's guessed this
one wrong. Perhaps she isn't interested in him, after all.

"No."

Reagan is grinding her teeth. John can
actually hear it.

"She's a doctor," John defends her and leans
a hip against the table and fiddles with the wiring he's still
holding.

"A doctor? Aren't you a little young to be a
doctor? You can't be more than eighteen" Jasmine-Kitten asks in
disbelief and steps closer to John.

"She's twenty-two and she's a super genius,
whiz kid," John boasts proudly, and Reagan looks astonished by
this. Does she not understand his esteem of her? Well, she does
now.

"Oh really? Hm, such a waste," the stripper
answers on a frown.

She's starting to show her Kitten side.
Being a genius doctor is a waste and being a stripper would've been
a more life-affirming career choice? She puffs her cigarette and
strums her fingers idly against her bare thigh below her denim
micro-shorts. She's wearing blue and red cowboy boots, and John
just bets that this was her former work uniform.

"You can go now," Reagan suggests
coldly.

"And what about you, handsome?" Jasmine asks
without acknowledging Reagan's dismissal. "What did you do before
all hell broke loose? Were you a male model or an actor or an
entertainer
like me?"