Jones gave her a closer look.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because, captain, we built it.”

“You built the bomb?” He didn’t understand. This hadn’t been in his briefing.

“It was built as a fusion reactor,” Fox said, keeping his voice low. “The first of its kind. Bane turned the core into a bomb, then disconnected it from the reactor.”

“And here’s the important part,” Blake prompted.

“As the device’s fuel cells decay,” Fox said, “it’s becoming increasingly unstable, until the point of detonation.”

Blake spelled it out.

“The bomb’s a time bomb.”

“And it will go off,” Fox stated gravely. “In twenty-three days.”

Jones couldn’t believe his ears. An already hellish situation had just gotten infinitely worse. He reeled at the news.

“Bane’s revolution’s a sham,” Blake explained. “He’s watching Gotham rearrange its deck chairs while the whole ship’s going down. Your appeasement plan might not be as practical as you thought.”

Jones scowled at Blake. The young cop was right, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. He looked again at Fox.

“Could you disarm it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Fox said. “But I could reconnect it to the reactor. Stabilize it.”

That was something, at least. Jones considered his next move, adapting to this distressing new intel.

“We have to let the Pentagon know.”

“They’ll be monitoring our frequencies,” one of his men cautioned.

“We have no choice,” Jones said. Washington had to know that there was a ticking clock in this scenario. “Let’s move away from this location, then call it in.”

Blake didn’t disagree. Taking leave of Fox and Miss Tate, he escorted Jones and his men back to the elevator. Jones wanted to put at least four or five blocks between them and the bank before he broke radio silence. He waited impatiently for the elevator to reach the ground floor. All of a sudden, every moment counted.

A chime sounded. The elevator door slid open and Jones led his team out into the vacant lobby. They were halfway across the floor when all hell broke loose.

Mercenaries sprang up from behind desks and counters, wielding machine guns, opening fire on the ambushed soldiers. Bullets tore apart the lobby’s ornate walls and furnishings. Caught in a crossfire, the soldiers cried out and jerked like malfunctioning marionettes before dropping to the floor. Blood spilled across the polished tiles.

Dammit! Jones thought. How’d they find us already?

He swung his assault rifle toward their attackers, but the enemy already had the drop on them. Hot lead tore through his meat and bones. Pain exploded like miniature neutron bombs all over his body.

Crap!

Blake dived back into the elevator. Bullets blew through the door as it slid shut behind him, and he flattened himself against the wall. He waited a second to see if any of Jones’s men had survived the ambush long enough to join him, then he hit the button for the top floor.

Gunfire, and the cries of dying soldiers, rang out from below.