The Detonator Read online

  “Run!” I scream.

  We run to Ellen, but the caps attached to the roof structure directly above us blow, and we go down again. Hard. Onto our sides. My head hits the concrete, knocks me out for a brief second or two. Or maybe it’s a full minute. But then, this hotel won’t exist one minute from now. Maybe I’m dead and this is a postmortem nightmare. A dream about trying desperately to escape a high rise that’s in the early stage of implosion, the floors about to collapse onto themselves like vertical dominoes. A dream created in hell. I can’t move. I can’t do anything other than feel the crush of tons of cement coming down on me.

  But this is no dream. I’m awake and this is reality.

  Once more, I push myself up, the pain in my wrist so intense, so immediate and pervasive, I might consider allowing myself to die if not for the instinctual need to save my family.

  “Ellen!” I shout, but the explosions drown out my voice entirely.

  I pull Henry along by his collar. Somehow he manages to get back onto his feet. We come to Ellen, fall to our knees. As I slice through her tape, Henry pulls the layers away, like peeling an onion. He is a different young man from the one I’ve come to know. He is no longer fragile or sickly. But instead, strong and determined. He strips the piece off his mother’s mouth. She screams. But her scream can’t be heard above the apocalypse of explosive charges. Sweat pouring off my brow into my eyes, I slice through the tape wrapped around her wrists and ankles.

  I point at the stairwell with the knife.

  Henry and I lift Ellen up by her shoulders, and together we make for the stairwell opening, as the blasting caps directly behind us begin their detonation cycle, one by one.

  Chapter 73

  The stairwell interior vibrates like a severe earthquake. Lucky for us, it’s the strongest part of the structure.

  “Hold onto the banisters!” I scream, my voice more audible inside the enclosed space. “Go like hell! Down! Down! Down! Don’t look back!”

  Ellen goes first, Henry follows. He’s having trouble keeping his footing. Having overexerted himself while freeing his mother, he’s now too weak to make it on his own. We come to the first landing, and I cut in front of him, lean down, pick him up, torso-over-shoulder in a classic fireman’s hold.

  A blast occurs on the top floor. A blast big enough to rattle my back teeth. It’s the first of the major charges.

  The building sways so relentlessly, we’re thrust against the stairwell walls.

  “Keep going!” I shout, Henry on my shoulder, my bad arm now almost useless, like an appendage that requires amputation.

  “We’re not going to make it!” Ellen wails.

  “We have to make it! Just go!”

  We’re descending the stairs two at a time. The top of the stairwell disintegrates, the shredded concrete pouring down on us like a lethal rain. Peering down between the rails I see we only have five, maybe six stories to go. But the blasts are coming faster now, taking out the top floor beams, weakening the upper superstructure. I know what’s coming next, because I spent most of my adult life trying to imagine it happening.

  The true implosion.

  In just a matter of seconds, the bearing beams on all floors will blow rapidly, one after the other. Then will come a moment of silence. A moment so profound, it will seem like God has issued the order, and the entire world will be aware of it.

  The thought barely passes through my head when the last of the blasts are detonated. We are thrust against the old cinderblock walls. It’s all I can do to hold onto Henry while Ellen clings to the metal rail like she’s about to drop into a black bottomless pit. The oxygen is sucked out of the air and the world around us flashes with red and white heat, stinging our eyes, piercing our flesh, battering our brains, rattling our bones.

  Then, just like that, the blasting stops. In its place comes the silence. The dreaded silence. The stillness. The most peaceful, most quiet, most serene nano-moment in time. The precise moment before the big bang.

  “Here’s it comes.” I swallow. “The final stage.”

  The thunder begins from the top down, as the rooftop slab drops onto the floor below it, and the floor below that, and the floor below that, and the Wellington Hotel proceeds to undergo a feat of remarkable engineering and pyrotechnics.

  Its total inward collapse. Its true implosion.

  Chapter 74

  The house of concrete and steel cards falls. The ten-story Wellington Hotel collapses under its own weight. Each steel-reinforced concrete floor, starting at the top, falling one on top of the other, in perfect succession.

  The dust cloud blinds us, the cacophony of colliding materials and blasted main charges stings eardrums. Dust chokes lungs. We don’t run down the remaining stairs but instead jump, Henry atop my left shoulder, my hand gripping Ellen’s right arm, as we come to the first floor, the exit door already having been removed, the light from the morning sun shining through it not like we are escaping the implosion onto solid ground, but instead sprinting through a thick, acrid, dust-filled fog into heaven on earth.

  We make it through the door, but don’t dare stop running as the building collapses to mid-level, then a half second later to three-quarter level, and a half second beyond that to the bottom and basement floors.

  The shockwave produced by the tons and tons of solid, now demolished building coming into contact with the earth blows us out through the storm fence and into a street filled with fire trucks, cop cruisers, EMT vans, and crowds of people.

  I lose my grip on my family. Feel my body flipping head over heels until I find myself lying on my back in the middle of the city road, dazed, confused, nauseous, the world spinning in slow motion all around me. I look over one shoulder until I see Henry, then the other until I see Ellen, both of them lying on their backs. Honestly, I can’t say whether they are dead or alive. I only know they are with me. That the building and its implosion hasn’t buried them.

  It’s then, and only then, that I close my eyes and pass out.

  Final Stage

  Chapter 75

  Opening my eyes, I’m blinded by the light. It comes from an artificial source installed in a collapsible fixture mounted to the ceiling of an EMT van. Already my left wrist is being tightly bandaged and placed in a stainless steel splint. I’m just glad I wasn’t wide awake for the removal of the duct tape.

  The blue-uniformed woman applying the temporary cast to my arm isn’t alone. Seated beside her is Nick Miller, who, despite the dirt and dust cloud from the Wellington Hotel’s implosion, and what no doubt has been a full twenty-four hours without sleep, looks dapper in his pressed shirt and blue and white Repp tie. Ball knot tied perfectly, of course.

  “Are you God?” I say, through the thick dust paste that coats the interior of my mouth.

  “Depends on who’s asking.”

  “Not the answer I’m looking for.” A wave of pain shoots up and down my arm. It serves not only to remind me that I’m still alive, but also that Ellen and Henry are still out there. “What about my family?”

  I try and raise myself up.

  “Easy,” says the woman working on my arm. “This is temporary. You need surgery for that arm. Right now. You understand?”

  “Your family is fine, Ike,” Miller says. “A little banged up like you. But no worse for wear.” He purses his lips. “How in the hell you outran that blast, I’ll never know.”

  “One day I’ll tell you about it, if you’re buying the beers. But take it from a Master Blaster. It’s all in the timing.”

  In my head I see the “Hot Shot” computerized detonation device gripped in Alison’s one good hand. Under normal circumstances, the timed detonations would have fired far too rapidly for us to escape their wrath. My educated guess is that a badly bleeding and confused Alison unknowingly slowed the pace of the detonation sequence just enough to afford us the time we n
eeded to make our escape. It’s the only logical explanation. The only possible explanation.

  “Beer sounds good,” he says. “And bourbon.”

  “Alison Darling?”

  “Dead.”

  “You sure about that? There isn’t going to be one of those Fatal Attraction dead-babe-jumps-out-of-the-bathtub moments?”

  He shifts his attention to the EMT.

  “He about ready?” he says.

  She nods, pulls a pair of medical scissors from the tray, cuts away the excess surgical bandage.

  “Done,” she says. “Until you get to a hospital.” Turning to Miller. “You will personally see to it that Mr. Singer gets himself to a hospital, pronto, Detective?”

  “We’ll get him there, mucho pronto,” Miller says. “But first, we need to make sure we have a secure city.” He turns to me. “No more boom boom, isn’t that right, Ike?”

  “Boom boom,” I say. “Out go the lights.”

  _ _ _

  First thing I do after climbing out of the van is find Henry and Ellen. Both of them are seated on the back bumper of another EMT van, silver blankets wrapped around their shoulders. Ellen is drinking something from a white Styrofoam cup, and Henry is drinking a Pepsi from out of the can. Both their faces are still pale from the concrete dust that showered them after the blasts.

  I hug them both as tightly as my muscles will allow, my eyes welling with tears, my throat constricting so much I find it impossible to form the simple words, I love you. But I think by now they know exactly how I feel. No matter what comes at you in life, in the end, it’s all about family.

  “You did good, Dad,” Henry says after a time, his face full of wrinkles and more than a few age spots. But it also bears a smile. An almost youthful smile. A smile that says, I just saw death and lived to tell about it.

  “And you, my brave son,” I say. “You saved our lives.”

  Ellen isn’t smiling, but I can almost feel the relief on her. It’s as palpable as her beating heart. I know how much she loves me, but I also know that as soon as things calm down, we will have some talking to do. Talk about the past. About trust. About where we go from here.

  But I don’t focus on the thought for too long. Because when Ted Pendergast approaches me, his gloved hand slapping my shoulder, I sense he’s got some news for me. For Miller.

  “Nemo’s found something,” he says, half out of breath.

  “Explosive?” Miller says, his face growing taut, as if to say, Not again. Please, not again.

  Rookie Cop shakes his head.

  “Human,” he says. “Human remains.”

  Miller turns to me.

  “Alison Darling is confirmed dead,” he says, exhaling every bit of oxygen from his lungs. “Sometimes I just love it when I’m right.”

  Chapter 76

  She lies at the bottom of a pile of rubble, some five hundred tons in total weight. Her eyes remain wide open, despite her skull being crushed, her limbs and torso mutilated to the point of unrecognizable to anything other than God and the devil.

  But there is something that has not been harmed. Something that remains untouched by either explosive or the crush of heavy rubble.

  Her smile.

  It’s as if she died happy, regardless of the pain, the struggle, the fear, the violence…the vengeance in her cold heart. Having exacted her revenge on Ike Singer, on God, on Albany itself, she appears to have died happy. And that’s something most people will never know.

  The black chopper scheduled to retrieve her up on the site of the imploded building under the cover of a dust cloud is not coming for her, both the pilot and her Chinese contact having recognized the situation for what it is.

  A complete failure.

  No choice but to abort before the Department of Homeland Security and/or the National Guard hone in on their position and either force them to land, or worse, attempt to blow them out of the sky.

  Now the chopper races east for the Massachusetts border, and beyond that the Atlantic Ocean, where in a matter of an hour it will find its landing pad atop an ocean-going yacht owned by BigBlast, Inc. Soon, company executives will find another researcher at the Albany University of Nanoscale Science and Engineering who will be willing to share information for the right price. There is never any shortage of individuals willing to take a risk for considerable funds in return. Never any shortage of blasting engineers willing to smuggle both information and product. Never any end to the thirst for good old American ingenuity and blasting high-tech know-how.

  Chapter 77

  Henry and Ellen are settled in a hotel located on nearby lower State Street, courtesy of my employers, the Albany Police Department. Detective Miller and I proceed to examine the sites of the two massive remote-controlled detonated explosions that Alison Darling set inside downtown Albany. The first one occurred at the Albany Family Court Building. According to Miller, luck was on our side since only three people died in a blast that tore away most of the front marble steps, along with the stately building’s colonnade and front façade.

  Making a cursory examination of the now fenced off structure from inside Miller’s cruiser, I am at once shocked by the extent of the damage and humbled by the power of the nano-thermite charge she utilized. As I study what by now Homeland Security considers the detonation device utilized in the blast—a simple retrofitted, medium-sized e-cig device that in my estimation contained mere ounces of liquid thermite explosive—I shake my head and feel my heart sink at the potential destructive forces that have been unleashed by nanoscience.

  It’s the same story for the second explosion that smashed most of the concourse level at the Empire State Plaza, the modern, white marble-sided state worker office complex built by then Governor Nelson Rockefeller in 1968. A building constructed for the people, by the people. Very few deaths due to the time of the explosion (3 AM), and judging by the detonation device (what’s left of it), a relatively small amount of liquid thermite explosive, compared to the hundreds or even thousands of pounds of C-4 and/or dynamite that would have been required to cause the amount of damage I’m witnessing firsthand. For the first time in history, massive explosions are capable of being carried out by a single human being with a pipe bomb the size of your average vaping device.

  Back inside the cruiser, Miller slips the key into the dash-mounted starter.

  “We’ve got two choices here, the way I see it,” he says. “We can either comb the city for more explosives, in which case we would be busy for days or weeks. Or we can safely assume that Alison blew up everything she wished to blow up already.”

  “Excepting me and my family,” I say.

  “What exactly happened out there in the country?”

  “How much time do you have?”

  He shoots a glance at my bandaged wrist and arm. “You need to get to the hospital, pal. Like five minutes ago.”

  “I’ll be okay for a few more minutes.”

  “Whaddaya say we grab a couple coffees, talk it over, then get you to the emergency room?”

  “No arguments, Miller. You’re buying.”

  We grab the coffees and park down by the river at the old, now abandoned Port of Albany, amongst the old tin-sided warehouses, algae-encrusted piers, and rusting, dockside-mounted cranes. We sip our coffee and stare out at a gray-blue river that runs slow in the late summer, the gulls feeding off the occasional fish that breaks the surface in search of insects. Survival of the fittest.

  I am at once reminded of parking here in my pickup sixteen years ago, shoving the barrel of a gun in my mouth. But, at the same time, I remember making the decision to toss the gun into the drink. Making the decision to live.

  It takes the better part of a half hour and most of our coffees. But by the time I’m done, I’ve led Miller through the entire Alison Darling ordeal. From the barn explosion, to the first Alison knock-kno
ck joke text, to the piano explosion, to the kidnapping of Henry, to the assassination by landmine of the APD cop, to our being made to play a sadistic game of cat and mouse with Alison while trying our damndest to avoid being blasted to bits by one of the super nano-thermite rounds she was shooting from her special pistol.

  Miller takes a minute to soak it all in.

  “Nano-thermite rounds, huh?” he says, swirling the last inch or so of coffee left in his cup. “I thought that stuff was science fiction. At the very least, I’ve always been told there isn’t a gunmetal on earth to facilitate a bullet like that.”

  “It is sci-fi,” I say. “Or was, until now. I’ve known for a while that nanoscience engineers were working on the development of a thermite-tipped bullet, for obvious military purposes. But I had no idea the concept was in development until Alison herself spelled it out for me. They’re trying to develop a gun for it too. Makes sense. She got quite a few rounds off at us with the piece she was using, until it went bad on her and cost her half her hand.”

  “And Alison Darling was in charge of the project.” He exhales. “No wonder she was selling out to the Chinese.”

  I turn to him quick. “What do you mean the Chinese?”

  “That’s right. You wouldn’t know since you’ve had such a, let’s call it busy night.”

  I set my coffee cup into one of the free console cup holders. My left arm is resting on my thigh, so that I feel the throb, throb, throb, of the wound.

  “Body belonging to a security guard at the University Nanoscience building where Alison works, or worked, was discovered only hours ago. He was murdered. Assassinated. Executed. The e-cigarette he was inhaling from exploded in his face, destroying almost all if it. The e-cig was a booby trap. After everything that went down with those e-cig device bombs earlier, and your pointing the finger at Alison, I sent in a team to examine the place. What we discovered, besides missing nano-thermite explosive and ordinance from the facility’s secured basement area, were documents confirming that not only was she working for the Chinese company that was contracted to implode the old Wellington Hotel, she was providing their mother company in Shanghai with precious military information on nano-thermite explosive tech and other assorted corporate secrets.”