The Detonator Read online

  She releases a shriek that sounds as if it can cut through rock, but continues with the job unabated, raising up his feet and shoving them in also. She considers herself fortunate that he’s so little, so lightweight, so fragile. Once again, she presses her hand to her side, feels the pain that is now beginning to build in direct proportion to the shock that’s wearing off.

  “I should have blown him up at the designated hour,” she mumbles. That would have taught Ike a lesson. I should have blown him up and put him out of his misery. But then the revenge would be over, and all that would be left of the detonation game is to kill off Ike and Ellen. It all would be too soon, too easy. The Big Bad Wolf didn’t just attack Little Red Riding Hood in the woods when he had every opportunity. He played her big time. Played her to get to the little girl’s sickly grandmother first. Only then, when he’d begun digesting the old lady, was he ready to go to work on Little Red Riding Hood. For the Big Bad Wolf, the fun and excitement was in the challenge, the quest, the payoff.

  She goes to the bomb, picks it up, carries it back to the van. Opening the driver’s side door, she opens up the center console, sets it inside. Gripping the steering wheel, she pulls herself up, the electric jolts of pain shooting through her torso at lightning speed.

  Sometimes the best-laid plans call for change.

  Now that she knows Albany is burning, and along with it, the attention of every law enforcement official within a radius of fifty miles, including Detective Miller, she will finish this particular vengeance in a manner befitting the many years of anger she’s been forced to swallow.

  She will finish it all with a true implosion.

  Chapter 65

  We run as fast as our damaged legs will take us. Our bodies are battered, but we move with renewed confidence, knowing that Alison might be injured or even dead. I can’t be sure, but it seems apparent she didn’t detonate Henry’s bomb. We would have seen the explosion, heard the big bang. We would have felt Henry’s death in our hearts.

  But then I make out a scream and a few beats later, the sound of a vehicle engine being fired up. I see two headlamps burning holes through the thick dark veil. The vehicle then disappears into a cluster of trees, until moments later, the headlights are once again visible as it climbs the winding Thatcher Mountain road up into the park. Once it gets to the top of the cliff, Alison drives a ways in until she comes to a stop.

  “What does she think she’s doing?” Ellen says. “I thought you shot her.”

  “Must be she’s only wounded.”

  There’s a slight commotion coming from up on the cliff. A door opening, the shadowy figure getting out, and the hatchback opening. In my mind, I see her doing something to Henry. But I can’t see what.

  My pulse pounds.

  “Shouldn’t we be going after her, Singer? Going after Henry?”

  “Give a rabbit a chase, a rabbit runs. But in the end, what happens to the rabbit?”

  “So we go then?” A question.

  “I don’t think we have much of a choice,” I say, knowing that another trap could be set for us.

  The shadowy figure moving once more, her silhouette visible in the moon glow. She comes to the edge of the cliff, extending both her arms, bringing them together at the wrist. There’s something gripped in her hands. It can only be one thing.

  “Oh shit.” I swallow. “Run. Go. Run.”

  The linear white streak shoots out of her hands a split second before the gunfire. The thermite charge hits the earth a few feet away, explodes. Our bones rattle. Heads ring like bells. Gravel and dirt rain down on us.

  “Go for the road!” I shout, not able to hear my own words inside my ringing skull. “Down here we’re fish in a barrel.”

  We run for the safety of the trees.

  Even the moonlight is hidden inside this patch of thick woods bookended on one side by a dirt road that leads to the main Thatcher Mountain road, and on the other side, the base of the cliff. Ellen presses up against me. So close I can feel her heart beating.

  “Maybe it’s time we just called the police,” she says, her words weak and strained. The night and the thermite rounds are killing her. “Maybe Henry is already gone.”

  A wave of anger flashes through me.

  “Don’t say that. We don’t know that.”

  She’s right. Maybe Alison is just trying to lure us up onto the cliff top so she can finish us off once and for all. Enact some kind of grand finale. Everything up until now has been the prep work. The demolition of the bearing beams, the load-bearing walls, the glass and the windows. She’s set the fuses, strung out the det cord and the charges. And now she’s looking to take down the big tower. It will be the dramatic finish to the game of revenge she’s been planning for me…for us…for so very long. It will be her perfect, true implosion.

  Still, do we take the bait? Or do we cut bait and call in Miller?

  I pull out my cell phone. The face is shattered, the interior waterlogged. I thumb the screen anyway. For a moment, it lights up, but then it quickly dies, as if having exhaled its final breath.

  Another flash of rage coursing through veins and capillaries, and I toss the phone against a tree. It shatters into a dozen pieces.

  “You didn’t happen to bring your phone, Ellen?”

  She shakes her head. “Can you believe it kind of slipped my mind?”

  In my head, I picture that second explosion coming from downtown. I know that Miller will be up to his eyeballs in death and devastation. Who knows how many people died in the blasts?

  So what’s left for us to do?

  Stand here under a canopy of foliage and hope she goes away? Or do something about her? Maybe she’s killed Henry or maybe she hasn’t. But as the Albany Police Department’s single bomb disposal specialist, there is one thing I, and Ellen, can do not only for him and ourselves, but for the entire city. We can apprehend Alison, bring her in.

  Alive.

  It’s exactly how I relay the plan to Ellen.

  She looks up at me. Even though the moonlight is almost entirely blocked by the trees, I know she is biting down on her bottom lip. Something she does when in deep thought, or when nervous, or both.

  “I couldn’t agree more,” she says.

  I pull her into me, hold her tightly.

  “Will you ever forgive me, El?”

  I can feel her tears against the skin on my neck.

  “Do I have a choice?” She sniffles.

  “Nope. No choice.”

  I release her.

  “Let’s go catch that psycho bitch,” she says, swallowing her tears.

  We slip on out of the woods, head for the dirt road and the mountain.

  Chapter 66

  The night vision scope poised before her eye socket, she watches the Singers begin the climb along the Thatcher Mountain road. The blood is draining from her wound, running down her leg, warm and wet. But she’s still strong enough to finish the job she started. The terror she’s unleashed. The pain worsens with every passing second. It throbs, electric currents shooting up and down her body. But she’s stronger than the pain. Stronger than the wound and the blood loss.

  Now, from out of the distance, the sounds of helicopter rotors chopping through the air. She knows that the Department of Homeland Security will be scouring the area for terrorists. The National Guard, the New York State Police, the FBI…all of them will be after her. With the damage she’s managed to unleash in the city, they will not be looking for one individual, but an entire terrorist cell. What she’s accomplished is a masterpiece, and pales anything that’s come before it. Those two creepy kids who blew up the Boston Marathon with pressure cooker bombs was just child’s play. The Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh was all about the quantity with that truckload of fertilizer bombs, not quality. No class, no finesse. What she’s done will go down in history as magnificen
t. It will be considered the explosive event they’ve been waiting for ever since 9/11. They knew it was coming. It was just a matter of when. And months from now, when they discover that she was the bomber and has since disappeared without a trace, she will be remembered throughout history for this specific defining moment in time. People will ask, where were you on the night Albany imploded? What were you doing? It will be as if they were asking what you were doing when John Lennon was assassinated, or when those planes crashed into the Twin Towers in New York. A moment in time that changes history forever.

  Searching the sky through the powerful lens, she spots the chopper coming right for her. It’s a gunship. What she recognizes from her military training as a Cobra attack helicopter, probably commandeered from the National Guard base at the Albany International Airport.

  Even from a distance of two to three miles out, she’s able to make out the two-man crew seated inside the chopper, their bodies glowing green in the night vision along with the eerie green outline of the helicopter fuselage. Maybe she should be afraid. Maybe she should be running…hopping into the van and speeding away. But she knows that it’s far too late for that. If she’s spotted them, then certainly they’ve made a positive ID on her.

  Pulling the oversized pistol from its custom holster, she loads the five super-thermite charges into the cylinder, closes the breach just like she’s closing the cylinder on a six-shooter straight out of the Old West. She will wait for the chopper to close in on her before raising the weapon, taking aim, unleashing hell.

  Chapter 67

  We come to the top of the Thatcher Mountain road, where it curves off to the right to follow the edge of the cliff and to connect with several parking lots that double as observation areas, complete with heavy-duty binocular devices that look like big silver heads shining bright in the light of the moon. For two quarters, the viewer gets a brilliant panoramic view of the valley and the city beyond it.

  We spot Alison standing on the edge of the cliff, a black minivan parked behind her. She is no longer searching for us. Instead, she’s using both hands to grip what looks to me like a very large pistol, or a delivery device for her super nano-thermite rounds. The pistol is aimed at the sky and a military chopper that’s now honing in on her.

  Holding out my hand, I signal to Ellen to squat down.

  She does.

  “They’ve sent in the cavalry,” I whisper. “That’s a gunship. Most likely National Guard.”

  “Are they going to kill her?”

  “I’m guessing they suspect she’s not acting alone. They’ll want to flush her out, take her alive. Just like we want to take her alive.”

  “How? They’re flying a helicopter.”

  I feel a tinge of sudden optimism. “My guess is there’s a ground assault team on their way out here now.”

  “How did they even know where to look?”

  “They might have spotted the thermite explosives. The bursts and flashes will have registered on a satellite feed. A security or weather satellite maybe. Plus there was the cruiser that was blown up at the end of our driveway, and those massive explosions in the city. Put three and three together and you get a terrorist cell that’s operating out here in the state park and inside Albany.”

  “It’s a one-woman terrorist cell, Singer. But I guess they have no way of knowing that. No way of imagining it either. Alison would never fit the profile.”

  The chopper approaches.

  “Here’s the plan. They’re likely to fire a few rounds over her bow, so to speak. Just to scare her. When that happens, she’ll hit the dirt. That will be our cue to jump her.”

  “That’s it? That’s the plan?”

  I look her in the eye. “You got something better, I’m all ears. What’s left of them, that is.”

  A flash captures my attention. I gaze back out over the cliff and into the valley. The flash is now accompanied by a crack.

  “Incoming!” I bark under my breath, pulling Ellen and myself face down in the dirt.

  The chopper’s rockets strike the cliff side. When I look up, I can see that Alison is still standing her ground, unharmed by the missile’s blast.

  “Correction,” I say. “Maybe they are trying to take her out.”

  The chopper is only about a half mile away at most. In a few seconds it will be directly overhead. She’s got that oversized hand cannon aimed at the chopper. She’s going to blow it out of the sky.

  “Now’s our chance, El. While she’s not looking. I’ll take care of her. You take care of Henry.”

  “If he’s alive,” she says, her voice trembling.

  “He’s alive. I can feel it.”

  Leaning into Ellen, I kiss her on the cheek.

  She bounds up onto her knees, then onto her feet.

  “No one dies,” she says. “That’s all I ask.”

  “Ask and you shall receive,” I say, imaginary fingers crossed behind my back.

  Chapter 68

  Making like a linebacker who’s got an unobstructed free shot at the quarterback, I lower my shoulders, take aim for the lower center of Alison’s back. While I’m coming up on her from behind, the chopper is approaching her from the front. She’s got the gun poised at the chopper as the noise from its rotors and turbine engine shoots across the valley and the cliff top. I’m so close I can make out the crease in her spine when she triggers the nano-thermite round on the oversized revolver. The round shoots across the sky at a sixty-five-degree angle, connecting with the chopper’s tail, shattering it in a burst of oxygen-fed charges.

  But I don’t break stride.

  The collision with Alison sends us both onto the gravelly floor. The heavy, chrome-plated pistol is knocked out of her hand, sending it sliding only inches away from the cliff edge. Above us, the chopper is now spinning out of control, the rotors and turbo engine screaming like a wounded bird of prey.

  I grab hold of her legs while she claws at the ground, trying desperately to reach for the gun. Her legs are never still, but the wiry strength in them is too much for my grip. She squirms and kicks until free of my hold. I go to grab her again, but all I see is her boot heel coming at my face. When it connects, my world goes in and out of blackness. Until I realize I’m on my back and staring up at a burning, spinning, screaming machine that is about to drop on me.

  Rolling onto my side I see her grabbing hold of the revolver where it rests on the cliff edge. I can’t help but see the trail of blood she’s leaving on the dirt with her every movement. Grabbing hold of a rock, I bring it down hard on her ankle. She screams and, pistol in hand, turns to me, aiming the long barrel for my head.

  There’s fire in her eyes, and the anger painted on her face is as explosive as the thermite rounds in her gun. I can’t see the chopper right now, but I can hear it coming down, hear it falling, its wounded engine straining, and I know that in a matter of a second or two, I am about to be crushed. Either I die by Alison’s bullet or I die when the chopper falls on my head. Either way, I am twice dead.

  I have nothing to lose. If I’m going to die, I’m going to take her with me.

  “You hear that, Patty Cakes?” I scream inside my head. “Your daughter is coming to see you!”

  Springing up to my knees, planting my feet, I lunge, landing directly on top of her. I reach out, grab hold of the hand that grips the gun. That’s when the chopper crashes to the earth in an eruption of metal, glass, and ignitable gasoline. And that’s when Alison and I go over the side.

  Chapter 69

  I drop onto a pine tree that’s growing horizontally from out the cliff face, only a few feet down from its cliff edge.

  Alison is saved by the same tree.

  Together we hold tight to the extended tree branches with one hand, while clawing at one another with our free hands. But her free hand isn’t exactly free since it’s still gripping the pistol. She’s
whipping me with it, slapping it at my face, my consciousness once more coming and going, like a light bulb filament that’s in the process of burning out.

  We fight for control of the gun, she trying to aim the barrel at my head, as if the explosion from a round coming into contact with my skull won’t also result in her own instant death. But maybe that’s what she wants. Maybe this is a suicide mission. Maybe this is her scripted ending. An end that doesn’t come with a whimper, but a series of big bangs.

  We lock eyes, her gray/blue orbs gazing into mine with a hatred that is both pure and frightening. How could I have wronged someone that badly? Or perhaps, my wronging her is just an excuse. Perhaps she was just born angry. Born psychotic. Maybe my family and I are simply the targets of a psycho, and nothing more.

  “Knock knock,” she says.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”

  The tree branch cracks, bends. I feel my body about to slip off, tumble the two hundred feet to the rocks below.

  “Knock knock,” she repeats, our hands still struggling for control of the gun, the other hands holding on to a pine tree that’s collapsing under our collective weight.

  “Who’s…there?”

  “Ima.”

  “Ima who?”

  “Ima gonna kill you now, you home-wrecking son of a bitch!”

  She puts everything into shifting the pistol barrel toward my face. This isn’t brute strength, but something far deeper, far more primal. She is channeling an evil I can’t possibly comprehend, and all I can think about is trying to save my life so I can get back to Henry and Ellen. Get them back home. Safe and sound and very much alive.

  Sweat drips into my eyes. I feel the welts rising up on my skull and forehead from the pistol whipping. I taste blood on my tongue. I suck in a deep breath as the branch cracks once more, and the muscles in my weight-room-trained arms grow taut, the veins popping out of the skin. Our balancing act becomes near impossible. But the shock I feel in my pounding heart makes me all the more enraged, all the more determined. Pushing back the barrel, I slowly make it shift toward her own face. I see her eyes bulge, like she knows full well her head is about to evaporate.