The Detonator Read online

  “But Henry,” she says.

  “Just do what I say…I’m begging you.”

  She nods.

  Reaching out, I give her hand a squeeze. “Nothing’s going to happen to me.” I’m not sure how she’s going to react to my touching her, showing her my love. But she doesn’t pull away. It’s a good sign. A hopeful sign.

  “How about them apples, Patty Cakes?” I say internally, seeing her face in my head, and her mussed up hair.

  “Promise me,” Ellen presses.

  “I promise.”

  But in the back and front of my mind, I know that my wife no longer trusts me like she did once upon a time. She can’t possibly trust me after discovering the truth about Patty and me. After discovering that I kept the truth from her for so very long. Because of one bad decision, I’ve placed the lives of my family at risk. The inevitable conflict that is sure to come is, for now, placed on hold, like a fuse cut off in the middle of its burn. But soon, the fuse will be relit, and the resulting explosiveness will cause a firestorm that will be difficult if not impossible to extinguish. That is, if we live through this night.

  If Henry lives.

  I open the door, slip out of the vehicle, step down gently onto the gravel road. Leaving the door open, I take a few steps forward, careful not to step onto any portion of the drive where the gravel appears paler or recently disturbed.

  It takes maybe a full half minute for me to cover just a few feet where the officer lies on his side, his legs nearly blown off, his arms stretched over his head, his eyes still wide open, as though staring directly into the eyes of his maker. Any food that’s in my system comes up on me then and, bending at the waist, I retch a throat-stinging mixture of bile and half-digested pizza.

  When it’s finished, I wipe my mouth. For a brief moment, I consider reaching for the officer’s neck, placing two fingers against his jugular. But let’s face it, he’s dead. Poor, poor bastard never knew what hit him. The power unleashed directly underneath him.

  I steal the service weapon and the two extra magazines attached to his utility belt, shove the former into my pant waist and the latter into my right-hand pocket. Then, straightening myself up, I back away from the body with all the trepidation of a man who’s looking at his own death.

  Bathed in the white LED headlights, I peer into the cruiser. Although the odor is that of smoldering plastic and metal, the explosion did not cause a fire. As if the explosion caused the air to be robbed of its oxygen for enough time to prevent a fire from kindling.

  Super thermite bomb. Nano-scale. Something Alison would have access to. Something unstable in the wrong hands, but also something that in the right hands…her hands…can be manipulated entirely.

  I look for anything useful. Something defensive. Something to give us an edge against a maniac like Alison. I spot the riot shotgun, still fixed to the center console, six buckshot shells attached to a stock-mounted carrier. I pull it out. Then, yanking the key from the ignition, I search for the button that will unlock the trunk. I thumb it, and the trunk opens. Thank Christ the front end took the brunt of the blast.

  I go around the cruiser to the now open trunk, peek inside. Two black ballistic body armor vests laid out beside two black riot helmets. Pay dirt. Leaving the trunk open, I carry the vests, the helmets, and the shotgun with me back over the section of open driveway leading to the Suburban. Before getting in, I set the shotgun and the two helmets onto the seat, along with the service weapon and the extra mags.

  “Take this,” I say, handing Ellen the first ballistic jacket. “Put it on, same way you would a down vest.”

  She takes hold of it.

  “It’s heavy,” she says.

  “It will protect you from shrapnel if there’s a blast.” Handing her a helmet. “This too, El.”

  “My God,” she says, “I feel like we’re in a war.”

  “We are in a war. Henry is the prisoner-of-war and the enemy executes its prisoners.”

  Slip on my ballistic vest. Put on the helmet, adjust the chin strap. Picking up the 9mm off the seat, I pull back the slide, chamber a round, thumb the safety on. I set the pistol barrel-first into the console cup holder along with the two extra mags. Grabbing hold of the shotgun from off the seat, I load it with the rounds, hand it to Ellen.

  She grips it with all the enthusiasm of my handing over a live snake.

  “What the hell do you want me to do with this, Singer?”

  “Listen very carefully, Ellen. If we happen to come upon Alison, I want you to shoot her in the face. Do not hesitate. Do you understand me?”

  She looks like she’s going to be sick.

  I get in, feeling the extra weight of the vest and helmet.

  “Seatbelts,” I say, strapping myself in.

  “Safety first and last, Master Blaster,” Ellen says, her voice laced with sarcasm, the shotgun now placed between her legs, barrel facing up at heaven. She straps herself in as best she can considering the bulkiness of the body armor vest.

  Taking it inch by inch, foot by foot, I manage to turn the long Suburban around, head back in the direction we came, following precisely the two almost indiscernible tire tracks we created in the dusty gravel-covered road.

  What remains of the burning barn is in our sights when the distant eruption rattles the vehicle.

  Chapter 54

  Fuck the landmines.

  I floor it. To the top of the driveway, then slam on the brakes. Opening the door, I jump out, focus my gaze in the direction of the city. When Ellen does the same, something besides the obvious captures my attention. Staring into her eyes, I see the reflection of the red-orange ball in stereo, as it rises up to the dark heavens. Stepping forward, I turn to it, as if drawn to the light of a sun that’s suddenly appeared in the middle of the night. And it has.

  It’s not a nuclear detonation. But that’s precisely what it reminds me of.

  “There goes an entire downtown city block,” I whisper, gravel in my throat. “Maybe more.”

  Glancing down at my watch. “Three o’clock. On the money.”

  “Alison,” Ellen says.

  “Alison.” Exhaling, stomach tightening, eyes filling.

  I think, You’re on your own, Albany. I cannot help you now. Not when Henry is out there all alone, a bomb strapped to his chest. You are without your one-man bomb disposal unit.

  About-facing, I look beyond what’s left of the barn, into the darkness made all the darker by the trees, and beyond that the orchard, and beyond that the river, and beyond that, the long, tall cliff face of Thatcher Mountain. Where the Indians punished their sinners by tossing them over the side to their deaths onto the rocks below. My boy Henry is out there somewhere, and Alison Darling, who is anything but, wants us to come after him.

  If it’s war she wants, it’s war she’s gonna get. Nuclear war.

  “Ellen,” I say. “Get in.”

  I slip back behind the wheel, buckle in. My wife does the same. Taking hold of the riot shotgun, she pumps a round into the chamber. Throwing the transmission into drive, I motor across the back lawn, and into the trees.

  Chapter 55

  Once more she pulls the smartphone from her belt, opens the app that allows her access to the CCTV cameras mounted to numerous telephone poles around the perimeter grounds of the Family Court building. The poles that surround the blast site, that is. The fire trucks are just arriving, along with a police van out of which emerges a SWAT team, their frames suited from head to toe in black tactical clothing, AR15s gripped at the ready, night vision goggles masking their faces. Behind them comes the regular APD, who also don tactical vests and helmets. Behind them the state troopers, and behind them, Department of Homeland Security.

  The action never wanes tonight in sleepy old Albany while the first third of the marble Family Court building now sits in ruins. While severed live
electrical wires spark uncontrollably like snakes cut in half but somehow still alive. Still slithering. While broken water pipes spew hot and cold water, and natural gas lines leak enough gas to spark another explosion perhaps even larger than the one just detonated by remote device.

  No one is really prepared for a bomb, much less believes in the presence and the possibility and the power of a bomb, until it goes boom, right in front of their faces. Even those e-cigarette devices have been known to blow up in the faces of the nicotine starved now and again, without being armed with explosives. But when a bomb does go off, there is plenty of blame to go around, along with many severed limbs and smeared brain matter. In Albany’s case, the man who would be in charge of defusing the bombs before they detonate is presently indisposed while he attempts to rescue his very old boy.

  It’s all going according to plan.

  One last glance at the digital screen. Another car pulls up. This one an unmarked police cruiser. A tall, plainclothes cop whom she recognizes as the very same detective who assisted Ike Singer earlier in the evening. A lonely middle-aged officer whom she knows as Miller.

  Nick Miller.

  Miller suspects her in the earlier bombings and he will no doubt suspect her in the Capitol bombing. He will attempt to contact Ike Singer but he will get nowhere. Nor will he be able to leave the scene of the Family Court bombing and the many homicides that surely litter the smoldering ruins. Not yet anyway. By the time he does, he will once more find himself occupied with more explosiveness. More death.

  She holsters the phone, brings the scope to her left eye.

  Out there, in the near distance, headlights.

  Just like Foster Father David came after her through the woods, Ike is coming for her. Only this time, she is the Big Bad Wolf, and Ike Singer is Little Red Riding Hood.

  She peers up at the bright white moon, and she hears David’s gun once more, shooting round after round that speed past her head or land near her feet, embedding themselves into the soft dirt. Shooting live rounds at his foster child. It’s how David has fun.

  But he doesn’t want to shoot her. He wants to touch her where touching is forbidden. Do unspeakable things to her. Do things that would not have been possible if Ike Singer hadn’t raped her mother inside that lonely motel room.

  She’s watching the light of the moon, but in her mind, she sees the rock coming down on Foster Father’s skull, the bone cracking open, the blood spilling out, but somehow, his eyes wide and alive as he looked up at her from down on the forest floor. She remembers the feel of the gun as she took hold of it, pressed the barrel right between his eyes, just like they do in the movies. She can still hear the sound of his words, exiting his mouth.

  “Don’t. Please. Don’t.”

  To this day she feels the pull of the trigger, the kick of the pistol, the louder than loud crack of the round as the bullet left the chamber and buried itself into David’s brains. That was a good day. A day for awakenings. The day her universe was created. Her own personal big bang.

  Chapter 56

  Plowing through the thick woods that surround the back of my property, the going is slow. But at the same time, the Suburban is also a tank, and the chains on the tires help with cutting through the wet, soft, slippery soil. The truck bucks and bounces over ruts and roots, some of the natural obstacles slamming against the metal Bilco doors, the noise abrupt and deafening.

  My heart stops when Ellen shrieks at a deer that jumps out of nowhere, leaping across a berm, its six-point rack extending outward and defensively, almost like a bull in the bullring. Instinctually I tap the brakes, but then realizing what I’m doing and where I’m doing it, and that there’s the possibility of my sinking into the muck, I hit the gas once more. I continue to bushwhack through the swampy woods, knowing that on the other side is the more navigable apple orchard, and beyond that, the open valley that extends all the way beyond the Vly Kill and its rushing white water, to the cliff wall.

  It takes maybe another five minutes of stop and go, up and down, side to side driving until we break out of the woods onto the relatively smooth terra firma of the orchard.

  Cell phone chimes, vibrates. Shifting myself in my seat, I yank up the tactical vest, pull it out of my pants pocket.

  Knock Knock

  I should have known she’d be out there watching us. Watching our every move. Now typing with the thumb on my dominant hand. Not able to make it grammatically correct. But who gives a fuck at this point?

  Who there? I text.

  Ima

  Ima who asshole

  Ima your worst nightmare

  It comes at us like a flare from the direction of the cliff face. A red-white streak that shoots across the black sky and slams into the earth only inches before the front grille. The explosion that follows doesn’t just send dirt and gravel up against the windshield, it blows the glass out, sucks the oxygen from our lungs, and leaves us punch drunk for what seems to be hours, but for what I quickly realize is only a minute or so.

  The phone chimes again. It’s fallen between my legs onto the seat. I pick it up, thumb what is a surly text from Alison.

  I purposely missed

  Reaching out, I take hold of Ellen’s forearm.

  “You okay, El?”

  “Yes, I think so.” She shakes her head under the too big black helmet. “What the hell was that?”

  “I can’t be entirely sure, but I think it was a very small nano-thermite charge. Probably a super-thermite round.”

  “A round,” she repeats, disbelieving. “As in a bullet. Like from a gun.”

  “Like I said, I can’t be sure. But I think it’s what Alison was describing during lunch yesterday. She drew a diagram of it on a napkin, remember? A brand new kind of bullet that doesn’t just stop an enemy combatant, but annihilates him. Obliterates him. Erases him. Just pick an adjective. The bullet can stop an armored Humvee, or a Suburban four-by-four if the shooter so chooses.”

  “So we’re toast?”

  I throw the tranny into drive, hit the gas, pull out of the woods and onto the solid orchard ground.

  “Not if we keep moving,” I say, brushing away the window glass from my lap. “If we keep moving, we have a shot.”

  This time the phone rings instead of chiming.

  “Need you to get that,” I say, both hands on the wheel. “My hands are kinda full.”

  She picks it up, looks down at the digital face.

  “Miller,” she says.

  “I was expecting him. Something just blew sky-high in Albany. Judging from the size of the explosion, the casualties could be horrific. He needs me to do my job. To inspect the site, to determine if any more charges are set to explode. But I can’t do it. I need to find Henry. We have less than an hour to find him. Or she’ll kill him. That sick little bitch will kill him.”

  Ellen’s face goes pale under the black helmet.

  “What time it is, El?”

  Glancing at her watch. “Three twenty.”

  “Forty minutes to find Henry, to be precise.”

  I speed between the apple trees like a rocket ship between asteroids, the chains on the tires making a metal on metal racket. I push the engine to its breaking point, the RPMs going through the roof.

  “Where exactly are we going, Singer?” Ellen says, voice raised above the roar of the engine.

  “If I can get us over the bridge, we’ll be close to Henry.”

  “How do you know? He could be anywhere.”

  “Look at the pictures Alison sent. What I was confusing for the plain dark of night is actually a rock face. Dollars to donuts it’s the cliff.”

  She opens the pictures, runs through them. “I think I see it.” But she doesn’t sound convinced.

  I swerve to avoid another tree, turn the wheel sharply to avoid another one, then sideswipe a third. The humid ni
ght air pelts our face. We rock back and forth in our seats like rag dolls with helmets on. No choice but to press on.

  Up ahead is the Vly Kill, the Thatcher Mountain–fed river that runs through the state park and that also runs smack dab through the center of the orchard, providing the tree farm with its almost never-ending supply of fresh water. I’m inhaling its metallic smell. If I can get us through the trees and over the bridge, we’ll be that much closer to Henry. Once we retrieve him, we can then hook up with the road outside the state park and head directly for the city and Miller.

  I catch something scooting through the trees maybe ten or fifteen feet away. A quad 4X4. The rider is dressed in black.

  “What the hell is that?!” Ellen screams.

  “Shotgun!” I shout.

  She raises it up off her lap, presses the stock against the shoulder, short barrel poking out of the busted windshield. I grab hold of the semiautomatic with my shooting hand.

  “Wait till she makes another pass.”

  I make out the sound of the quad now coming at us from the opposite direction.

  “Get ready!”

  Alison speeds past, her image visible for only a split second at a time as she navigates between the thick apple trees. I squeeze off three rounds in between the trees. Ellen shoots.

  I hit the brakes. Breathing, I listen carefully.

  “Did we hit her?” Ellen asks.

  “Quiet,” I whisper. “Just listen.”

  There’s only the sound of the idling Suburban engine combined with the hum of cicadas and other insects. Is it possible we managed to kill Alison? I shift the vehicle back into drive, tap the gas, slowly pull forward. That’s when I hear the sound of a quad engine being kick-started only a beat before a white-hot beam shoots across the sky.

  “Incoming!” I cry, a half second before the round makes a direct hit on our tail end.

  Chapter 57

  The shock wave lifts the Suburban up like the hand of God, drops it back down onto its wheels. The oxygen is sucked out of my lungs. I struggle to regain my breath. My head rings, hands tremble. I try to speak. But the words come out like I’m talking through a tube. That’s when I realize my already fragile eardrums have once more been bruised. Bringing my hands up, I feel for my hearing aid. It’s still there, stuffed into the ear canal. If I didn’t know any better, I would say my brains dropped out of my ear canal along with it.