The Burning Wire

Barzan turned, he was aware of Galt reaching down fast and lifting something from beside him.
    Barzan started to run but Galt was even faster and, glancing back, Barzan had only a brief image ofa lineman’s heavy fiberglass hot stick, swinging in an arc into his hard hat. The blow stunned him and sent him tumbling to the filthy floor.
    He was focused on a line carrying 138,000v, six inches from his face, when the stick slammed into him once more.

Chapter 35
    AMELIA SACHS WAS doing what she did best.
    Perhaps not best.
    But doing what she loved most. What made her feel the most alive.
    Driving.
    Pushing metal and flesh to its limits, speeding fast along city streets, seemingly impossible routes, considering the dense traffic, human and vehicular. Weaving, skidding. When you drove fast, you didn’t ease the vehicle along the course, you didn’t dance; you pounded the car through its moves, you slammed and jerked and slugged.
    These were called muscle cars for a reason.
    The 1970 model year 428 Ford Torino Cobra, heir to the Fairlane, pushed out 405 horsepower with a nifty 447 foot pounds of torque. Sachs had the optional four-speed transmission, of course, which she needed for her heavy foot. The shifter was tough and sticky and if you didn’t get it right you’d have adjustments aplenty, which might include flushing gear teeth out of the reservoir. It wasn’t like today’sforgiving six-speed syncromeshes made for midlife-crisis businessmen with Bluetooths stuck into their ear and dinner reservations on their mind.
    The Cobra wheezed, growled, whined; it had many voices.
    Sachs tensed. She gave a touch of horn but before the sound waves made it to the lazy driver about to change lanes without looking, she was past him.
    Sachs admitted that she missed her most recent car, a Chevy Camaro SS, the one she and her father had worked on together. It had been a victim of the perp in a recent case. But her father had reminded her it wasn’t wise to put too much person into your car. It was part of you, but it wasn’t you. And it wasn’t your child or your best friend. The rods, wheels, the cylinders, the drums, the tricky electronics could turn indifferent or lazy and strand you. They could also betray and kill you, and if you thought the conglomeration of steel and plastic and copper and aluminum cared, you were wrong.
    Amie, a car has only the soul you put into it. No more and no less. And never forget that .
    So, yes, she regretted the loss of her Camaro and always would. But she now drove a fine vehicle that suited her. And that, incongruously, sported as a steering wheel ornament the Camaro’s insignia, a present from Pammy, who’d removed it reverently from the Chevy’s corpse for Sachs to mount on the Ford.
    Pound on the brake for the intersection, heel-toe downshift to rev match, check left, check right, clutch out and rip up through the gears. The speedometer hit fifty. Then kissed sixty, seventy. The blue light on the dashboard, which she hardly even saw, flashed as fast as a pounding heart.
    Sachs was presently on the West Side Highway,venerable Route 9A, having made the transition from the Henry Hudson several miles behind her. Heading south, she streaked past familiar sights, the helipad, Hudson River Park, the yacht docks and the tangled entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Then with the financial center buildings on her right, she hurried on past the massive construction site where the towers had been, aware even at this frantic time that if ever a void could cast a shadow it was here.
    A controlled skid angled the Cobra onto Battery Place, and Sachs flew east into the warren of lower Manhattan.
    She had the tip of the ear bud inserted and a crackling sound interrupted her concentration as she deftly skidded around two cabs, noting the shocked expression below the Sikh’s turban.
    “Sachs!”
    “What, Rhyme?”
    “Where are you?”
    “Almost there.”
    She lost rubber on all four tires as she made a ninety-degree turn and inserted the Ford between curb and car, one needle never below 45, the other never below 5,000.
    She was making for Whitehall Street. Near Stone. Rhyme had had a conversation with Charlie Sommers, and it had yielded unexpected results. The Special Projects man had speculated that Galt might try something other than an arc flash; Sommers was betting the man would simply try to electrify a public area with enough voltage to kill passersby. He’d turn them into part of the circuit