The Detonator Page 21

  If not for the vests and helmets, we’d be dead.

  I reach out to touch Ellen. “You okay, El? You all right?”

  Turning to look at her, I see that her face has turned pale white. A trickle of blood is running out of her nostril, onto her lips, just like I imagined Patty’s post–boiler explosion corpse. Sensing the blood on her mouth…tasting it…she wipes it away with her hand.

  “Are we dead?” she asks.

  “Not exactly. Alison is saving the best for last.”

  “Why not just kill us all now? Get it over with?”

  “Because revenge is a dish better served cold.”

  “What?” she whispers. “What’s that even mean?”

  “You don’t exact your revenge while you’re angry. While you’re hot. You give it its own sweet time, stretch it out.”

  She looks up at me, her face a mask of pain, confusion, and desperation beneath the oversized black helmet.

  “I feel it,” she says. “I feel it. Alison’s vengeance. Her fucking psychosis. It’s so cold it makes me shiver.”

  Another glance at my watch. Twenty minutes until four. At least my watch is still working. You can always trust a Timex. How did the old commercial go? It takes a licking, and keeps on ticking. Just like the Singer family.

  I turn the engine over, tap the gas. It starts.

  I’ll be damned.

  I pull out, the two front tires now flat, but able to gain traction from the chains still attached to the damaged wheels. Up ahead is the bridge. If only we can get beyond the bridge and the Vly Kill, we can ditch the vehicle altogether and proceed on foot under the cover of darkness. I’m not sure if that’s a good plan, but it’s as good a plan as any.

  One hand on the wheel, the other gripping the automatic, I drive, knowing full well that we’re not out of the damned woods yet, and that another thermite blast awaits us.

  Chapter 58

  The Suburban creaks and strains, the engine spewing black smoke, the interior filling with a toxic gas that smells like a combination burning rubber and oil. But still, she runs.

  Up ahead, the wood bridge that spans a river, or kill, that flows heavily in the recent summer afternoon storm-driven downpours running off the mountain. Driving up onto the one-hundred-foot-long bridge, I feel the give of the wood planks beneath us and the sway of the less than solid timber supports. Driving slowly or else risk running the less-than-stable damaged vehicle off the bridge altogether, I concentrate only on the end of its wood span and the flat farmland that awaits us.

  “Hurry,” Ellen says, her voice slow and slurred, as though she suffered a concussion. “Hurry…Hurry.”

  “It’s all about the control right now, babe,” I say, the flat front tires feeling more like metal tank tracks as the chains gouge the wood.

  The water runs fast beneath us, the spray rising up and entering the truck through the broken windows, coating our faces, combining with our sweat. I feel the constant bucking of the bridge against the current, and I feel the strain of the overstressed engine as much as I hear it. Shooting a glance at Ellen, I see that her face is still pale, her lower jaw locked tightly against the upper jaw, the stress taking its own special toll on her. No choice but to concentrate on getting across this bridge and onto the flat land and from there, the Thatcher Mountain cliff face where we’ll find our boy, Henry. Find him alive.

  I make it to the center of the bridge when the supports beneath us ignite.

  Chapter 59

  The blasts are muffled by the heavy stream current, but their effect on the pilasters is immediately felt loud and all too clear.

  “She had them rigged the whole time!” I shout. “She must have gambled on our taking the Suburban into the woods. She knew we’d have no choice but to head for the bridge.”

  The Suburban spins a full ninety degrees in the two separate blasts, its front end hanging off a bridge that is now swaying from the damaged piers, and the white water that’s pounding against them.

  “Oh, sweet Jesus!” Ellen shrieks. “We’re going over!”

  I try to speak, but my throat has closed up on itself. Quickly, I store the semiautomatic in my pant waist. I’m reach for the smartphone, but not before the piers snap in two and the bridge collapses out from under us.

  Chapter 60

  We hit the water hard, the jolt shooting up my spine and into my head.

  Ellen screams, both her hands gripping the Jeez bar mounted to the vehicle’s frame above her head. In a word, she is petrified.

  The truck begins to speed down the rapids toward the rocks. At the same time, it takes on cold water. We slam into a boulder and my forehead pounds the steering column while Ellen is thrust forward. My head spins. I know that if I close my eyes, the world around me will go black, and I may never wake up again. We will all die.

  But I do my best to stay alert, to make a decisive move that will save us.

  This is what I know from fly fishing the river: two hundred feet due north is a series of falls. One big falls of about fifty vertical feet and beyond those, two shorter falls of maybe twenty feet apiece. I also know this: Ellen and I don’t stand a chance if we take on those falls in the wrecked Suburban that will surely fill with water.

  Here’s what I do: I unbuckle my seatbelt. Then, reaching around her, I unbuckle hers.

  “What are you doing?” she shouts, the water splashing in through the busted windshield and passenger windows.

  “We’re getting out of this thing while we can. Remember, you’ve got to swim for the Thatcher Park side bank on our left. Don’t forget that.”

  Up ahead, I can make out the drop-off of the first big fall. We’re approaching it far faster than I anticipated. I look at the floor. My feet are covered in water. In a matter of seconds it will be up to my shins. We hit another boulder, careen off of it, while I struggle to open the center console. Inside it, I find another Maglite. I shove that into my pants pocket, along with my cell phone.

  The drop-off is coming closer.

  We have maybe one minute, at best, to exit this vehicle. But we need to ditch the vests and the helmets. It’s exactly what I shout out to Ellen.

  “Why?” she asks, the anxiety painting her pale face. “If we do that the rocks will break our ribs and crush our skulls.”

  The drop-off is maybe sixty feet away.

  She’s got a hell of a point. Only problem is, will the extra weight hold us down like anchors in the swift-moving river? Only one way to find out.

  “On three, Ellen. Out the windows!”

  Lifting my legs up, I grab onto my Jeez bar and set my feet flat on the seat, thrust my torso out the open window. Ellen pulls her feet up, sticks her head and shoulders out the opening, makes ready to jump.

  “Two!”

  The mist from the waterfall only a few feet ahead of us coats our faces, clouds our vision.

  “Three!”

  We jump, the water shockingly cold and frighteningly deep. I turn, search desperately for Ellen. She’s swimming as hard as she can in my direction…the direction of the bank we must aim for if we’re going to locate Henry. But I can tell that she’s losing against the swift current.

  Goddamned body armor is too heavy…

  My ears fill with two things: the roar of the falls and Ellen’s screams. Screams muted by the water that invades her open mouth. Choking her. Drowning her.

  My eyes capture what could be her final moments. My wife sinking in the river, her arms slapping at the water, feet kicking. No matter how hard she tries, she can’t prevent the current from pulling her toward the edge of the falls.

  No other option but to go to her, try and pull her to the bank.

  I swim back into the center of the stream. Reaching out, I grab hold of her vest.

  “Swim, Ellen!” I shout above the roar of the falls. “Swim! Swim for He
nry!”

  But the current is too damn fast. Too damn heavy. Too strong for us both.

  I pull her into me as tightly as I can.

  “Hold your breath!” I scream, as we arrive at the edge of the falls.

  Chapter 61

  How does one describe what it’s like to go over a waterfall?

  I could tell you about free-floating in space and time. How my life…surely Ellen’s life…passes right before my eyes. From birth to my final breath, which no doubt awaits me on the rocky bottom of this violent waterfall. I could tell you that all fear gives way to a sedate kind of peace. The kind of peace that accompanies realization. When you know for certain these moments are your last and you can rest easy in the solace that you’re wrapped in the arms of someone you love very much and very soon you will both be in a far better place for all eternity.

  But that’s the stuff for television movies and romance novels.

  Here’s what it’s really like to go over a fifty-foot section of waterfall: As soon as you go over the side, your stomach flies up into your mouth, and you drop hard into a deep pool of white water that’s churning so rapidly, you have trouble telling which way is up or down. By sheer luck, the stream is still moving swiftly toward a second section of smaller falls, so the pool spits you out all on its own and before you know it, both your helmeted heads are above water, and you’re sucking in fresh air like it’s the sweet breath of baby Jesus.

  By some miracle, you’re able to shift yourself toward the riverbank. You’re still holding onto one another, but you paddle like hell with your free arms while kicking with all four legs and feet.

  Within twenty or thirty seconds of going over the falls, you’re hugging the bank, crawling up onto the rocky dry ground and lying on your back while sucking in precious oxygen. You stare up at a night sky filled with brilliant stars and a full moon. You think to yourself, maybe I have died and gone to heaven after all.

  But then you realize the time is approaching three o’clock and you’re no closer to locating your sick son than you were two hours ago, and you know the bloody horrible truth: I’m alive. I’m on earth. And if I don’t do something and do it fast, my son is going to die.

  I stand.

  Holding my hand out for Ellen, she takes hold of it, and I pull her up.

  “You all right, El?” I say. But it’s a stupid question. I might as well ask her if she’s happy.

  “Time,” she says.

  Hesitantly, I look at my watch. My insides drop.

  “One minute until three.”

  As if on cue, we both gaze at the incline we must climb in order to get back up to level ground. Level ground that extends all the way to the cliff side where we’ll find Henry. Without another word, we begin the climb. I’m two or three steps away from the top when the earth quakes beneath our feet and the distant Albany skyline lights up like it’s midday. Like it’s Hiroshima, August 6, 1945.

  Chapter 62

  The radiant red/orange light from the powerful detonation inside downtown Albany reflects against her face and inside the glass on her night vision scope. She smiles at its brilliance, its thunderous noise and concussive reverberation.

  He’s a funny man, she thinks, while pulling the quad up to the black Nissan Quest SV minivan. For a man who was all about the control…control of the time-delayed explosion, control of the building collapse, control of the amount of dust and debris that would result from the demolition…he’s entirely out of control now. But then, he was out of control the moment his son, Henry, was born. That’s when he officially lost it. His pride and joy turned out to be old and gray even before his little head left the birth canal.

  Total, fucking, bummer.

  The men and women in the explosive demolition business must rely on their sons and daughters to carry the family name on and on and on. They alone teach the children. Not some college or university. Used to be, there was no master’s degree in blasting. Academic degrees in explosives did not exist until very, very recently, and even then, there’s nothing to match on-the-job experience.

  So what are you left with in the end?

  There’s only the explosive detonator, a fuse, and the men and women who pull the trigger and hope…and she’s stressing the HOPE here…that the concrete and steel tower not only falls the way it’s supposed to, but that no one gets killed or maimed in the process. Explosives, after all, are like lovers. Beautiful, powerful, but oh so unpredictable.

  Approaching the boy who is now lying on his side, fetal position, hands and ankles bound behind his back, eyes bright and wet in the bright light of the fireball that’s rising up into the sky like Armageddon, she senses real fear oozing from his pores. But not fear for his life. His life is just about over, after all. The fear he is presently experiencing is for his mom and dad. The boy, who is not really a boy, is more like the parent in this situation. He was born older and he will remain older than his own parents until the moment he breathes his last. No doubt he worries about them, the way a mother and a father worry about their children. He worries for their safety, their well-being, and the last thing he wants is to bury them before they have the chance to bury him.

  “Poor, poor Henry,” she says, bending at the knees, running her fingers gently through his very fine, thinning hair. “Your short life is one big bitter irony.”

  The deep, traumatic thunder of the explosion, which has surely taken out most if not all of her intended target, reverberates across the valley, bounces against the rocky cliff face. She stands, folds the night vision scope down over her left eye, spots Ike and Ellen making their way on foot in her direction. They are guided not by maps or GPS, but by instinct and, of course, love. They are determined people who are so desperately out of control.

  Raising up the night vision scope, she once more pulls the long-barreled revolver from the holster. Assuming a solid, balanced, modern combat shooter’s stance (both hands gripping the weapon), she takes aim.

  Chapter 63

  The laser light streaks across the valley like a white hot spark across a naked wire.

  “Down!” I scream, grabbing her vest, yanking her to the earth, face first.

  The explosion shatters the ground behind us, the rocky shrapnel slapping the bottoms of our boot soles, pitting our legs and torsos. My head rings from the noise of the concussion. Yanking on Ellen’s vest, I manage to climb back up onto my feet, pulling her up along with me. Her nosebleed has resumed, and she is a bit wobbly and out of balance.

  Another streak across the sky and this time we don’t have a chance to hit the dirt before the blast knocks us onto our backs. Coughing dirt from my mouth, I once more pull Ellen up off the ground and begin to run. Run as fast as possible across the open valley. She’s trying her best to keep up with me, and yet I’ve no choice but to drag her across the dirt while another round detonates to my left. The mini-fireball rises up from it and, at the same time, robs the oxygen from the night air.

  Somehow, I manage to maintain my balance while holding Ellen.

  “Keep going!” I shout, my voice hoarse, sounding like my throat is filled with mud and stone. “Keep moving!”

  Two more blasts, a bit further away, but enough to rattle our bones and slap us with two separate shockwaves. My eyes glued to the cliff side, I feel as if we’re two ghost soldiers reliving D-Day at Omaha Beach all over again, explosions raining down on us like hellfire.

  Three more streaks lead to three more powerful explosions that tear the ground up maybe a dozen feet in front of us, once more knocking us down, sucking the wind out of our lungs. I roll onto my back and scream into the night.

  “Just kill us now! Just kill us all now, you crazy bitch!”

  I recall the automatic stuffed in my pants and I pull it out, rolling onto my belly. Taking aim, I blink my eyes, attempt to refocus them. In the light of the moon, I make a quick estimation over w
hich direction the laser streaks came from, and like a soldier taking advantage of the enemy tracer rounds, I set the sights on the dark, humanlike silhouette located maybe two hundred feet ahead of me.

  I fire.

  Something very interesting happens then.

  The silhouette moves. I’m able to make out a figure moving in the pale moon glow that shines against the Thatcher Mountain cliff face. Not much movement, but enough to know that the bullet found its target.

  I finger off three more back-to-back rounds, the exchange echoing off the mountain and out across the valley. My eyes concentrated on my target, I see it dropping. I see her dropping.

  “Ike,” Ellen says, her voice groggy. “Don’t shoot. What if you hit Henry? What if you hit the bomb on his chest?”

  Her point is well taken.

  “I’m not sure I need to shoot at all anymore,” I say. Then, raising myself up. “Come on, Ellen. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “I think I’ve shot Alison. I think I nailed the bitch. Let’s go get Henry.”

  Chapter 64

  He was lucky.

  That’s all she can say about the bullet that has cleanly passed through her lower left side. He aimed for a shadow and somehow managed to hit flesh. Had he aimed just a little bit to the left and down a few inches, he would have nailed his son, and perhaps even hit the old boy in the chest. The heat from the bullet would have triggered the device and obliterated both him and her.

  Placing her gloved hand to her left side, she feels the warm blood slowly oozing out the wound. The pain hasn’t arrived yet, but it will soon. Knowing that time is tight, she approaches the minivan, activates the keyless entry on the hatchback, opens it. Once more approaching Henry, she pulls the fighting knife from its sheath and cuts away the nano-thermite IED, setting it gently to the side. She inhales a deep breath in order to collect her strength. Then, thrusting her hands and forearms under his arms, she drags him to the rear of the van. Fully aware of the agony she is about to cause herself, she exhales and inhales once more, and heaves the boy’s shoulders onto the van floor.