Demolition Angel (41 page)

“Jack.”

Pell turned.

She forced her breathing to even out. When you work the bomb, you stay calm. Panic kills.

“Jack, quick now, okay? Turn toward my voice.”

“This is pathetic.”

But he did it.

6:07.06.05.

“Straight ahead of you is twelve o’clock. Fowles is at eight o’clock, right? Just across the room. Maybe fourteen feet. He’s on a couch behind the coffee table, and I think he’s dead. The keys might be in his pockets.”

She could see the hope flicker on his face.

“MOVE, damnit!”

He crawled, two knees and a hand, the other feeling ahead for the table.

“That’s it, Jack. Almost at the table and he’s right behind it.”

When Pell reached the table, he shoved it aside. He found the couch before Fowles’s leg, then walked his hands up the legs to the pockets. Fowles’s shirt was wet, and the blood had soaked down along his thighs. Pell’s hands grew red as he worked.

4:59.58.57.

“Find it, Jack! GET THE DAMNED KEYS!”

“They’re not here! They’re not in his pockets!”

“You missed them!”

“THEY’RE NOT HERE!”

She watched him dig in both pants pockets and the back pockets, then run his fingers around Fowles’s waist just as he’d frisk a suspect.

“The socks! Check his socks and shoes!”

She searched the room with her eyes, thinking maybe Fowles had tossed the keys. You didn’t need keys to lock handcuffs; only to remove them. He had never intended to remove them. She didn’t see them, and it would only be wasting time for him to feel his way around the room searching for something so small.

“I CAN’T FIND THEM!”

Fowles moaned once, and shifted.

“He’s still alive!”

3:53.52.51.

Her eyes went back to the flashing timer and watched the seconds trickle away.

“Is he armed? Does he have a gun?”

“No, no gun.”

“Then forget him! Five o’clock now. Come around to five o’clock.”

Pell continued ripping at Fowles’s clothes.

“JACK GODDAMNIT DO IT! FIVE O’CLOCK!”

Pell turned toward her voice.

3:30.29.28.

“The door’s at five o’clock. Get out of here.”

“No.”

“Romantic, Jack. Very romantic.”

“I’M NOT LEAVING YOU!”

He crawled toward her, covering the ground without concern for obstacles, veering far to the right —

“Here.”

Changing course to find her foot, barely missing the device, then walking his hands up her legs.

“Talk to me, Carol. You’re handcuffed to what?”

“An iron fire grate. The frame is set into the bricks.”

His hands slid across her body, jumped to her arms and found her right hand, felt over the cuffs and her wrist to the iron frame. He gripped the frame with both hands and pulled, his face going red. He swung around and wedged his feet against the wall and pulled even harder until the veins bulged huge and swollen in his face.

“It’s solid, Jack. The bolts are set deep.”

He grabbed across her and tried the other bar. She found herself, strangely, growing calm. She wondered what Dana would say about that. Acceptance? Resignation.

Pell’s voice was frantic.

“A lever. Maybe I can pry it out. There’s gotta be something I can use.”

“The Asp.”

The Asp had rolled against the far wall. They lost almost a minute as she directed him to it, then back. He wedged it behind the rail and pulled.

The Asp bent at its joint, useless, and fell free.

“It broke.”

Pell threw it aside.

“Something stronger, then! A fireplace poker! A log!”

“I DON’T HAVE ANY OF THAT, PELL!! THERE’S NOTHING IN MY GODDAMNED HOUSE!!! I’M A ROTTEN HOMEMAKER!! NOW GET OUT OF HERE!”

He stopped then, and looked toward her face with eyes so gentle and open that she felt sure he could see.

“Where’s the door, Carol?”

She didn’t hesitate, and loved him for going, loved him for sparing her the final three minutes of guilt that she had caused his death, too.

“Behind you, seven o’clock.”

He touched her face, and let his fingers linger.

“I did you wrong, Carol. I’m sorry about that.”

“Forget it, Jack. I absolve you. Hell, I friggin’ love you. Now please go.”

He followed her leg down to the device, cradled it under his arm, and began navigating toward the door.

Starkey realized what he was doing and screamed in a rage.

“GODDAMNIT, NO!!! PELL, DON’T YOU DO THAT!!! DON’T YOU KILL YOURSELF FOR ME!!”

He crawled for the door, carrying the device under his left arm, moving well right of the door as he’d lost his bearings.

“You’re doing me a favor, Starkey. I get to go out a hero. I get to die for the woman I love. That’s the most a guy like me can ever hope to do.”

He bumped into the nester tables, lost his balance, and dropped the bomb. She could see the lights in the timer blurring.

As he fumbled to pick it up, Starkey knew that he was going to do it. He was going to carry the damned thing outside and blow himself to hell and leave her in here to carry the weight of it just as she’d done with Sugar, and then, only then, her eyes filled and the only possible way to save them both came to her.

“Pell, listen.”

He had the bomb again and was feeling for the door.

“Pell, LISTEN! We can de-arm the bomb. I know how to de-arm the fuckin’ bomb!”

He paused, and looked at her.

“How much time?”

“I can’t see it. Turn it to the right and put it on its side.”

2:44.13.12.

“Bring it over here, Jack. Let me look close at it, and I’ll tell you what to do.”

“That’s bullshit, Starkey. You just want to die.”

“I want to live, Pell! Goddamn you, I want to live and I want you to live, too, and you’re wasting time! We can do this!”

“I CAN’T SEE!”

“I CAN TALK YOU THROUGH IT! Pell, I’m serious. We’ve still got a little time, but we’re losing it. Bring it over here.”

“Shit!”

Pell followed her directions until he was next to her, breathing hard and sweating so much that his shirt was wet.

“Put it on the floor. Next to me. A little farther away.”

He did as she said.

“Now rotate it. C’mon. I want to see the time.”

1:56.55.54.

“How long?”

“We’re doing great.”

She once more forced herself to hold her breath. It reminded her of the first time she had walked a bomb, and then she remembered that it had been Buck Daggett who’d been her supervisor that day, and who had told her the trick of holding her breath as they had buttoned her into the suit.

“Okay. Now turn it over. Lemme look at the bottom.”

“I got no clippers. I got no pliers. I think I have a knife.”

“Shut up and let me think.”

You make choices. The choices can haunt you forever, or they can set you free
.

“Tell me what you see, Carol. Describe it.”

“We’ve got a black Radio Shack timer fastened on top of a transluscent Tupperware food storage container. Looks like he melted holes in the lid to drop the leg wires. Typical Mr. Red … the works are hidden.”

“Battery pack?”

“Gotta be inside with everything else. The top isn’t taped. It’s just snapped on.”

She watched his fingers feel lightly over the timer, then around the edges of the lid. She knew that he would be thinking exactly what she was thinking: that Red could’ve built a contact connection into the lid that would automatically trigger the explosive if the lid were removed.

You make choices. The choices can haunt you forever, or they can set you free
.

“Open it, Jack. From the corners. Just pop up the corners. Slow.”

She could feel the sweat creep down from her hair.

Pell was blinking at the Tupperware, trying to see it, but then he wet his lips and nodded. He was thinking it, too. Thinking that this could be it, but that, if it were, neither of them would know it. A ten-thousandth of a second was too fast to know much of anything.

1:51.50.49.

Pell opened the lid.

“Loose all four corners, but don’t lift the lid away from the container. I want you to lift it just enough to test the tension on the wires.”

She watched him do as she instructed, sweat now running into her own eyes so that she had to twist her face into her shoulders to wipe it away. She was blinking almost as much as Pell.

“I can feel the wires pull against whatever’s inside.”

“That’s the explosive and the initiator. Is there play in the wire?”

He lifted the top a few inches away from the container.

“Yeah.”

“Lift the top until you feel the wire pull.”

He did.

1:26.25.24.

“Okay. Now tilt the container toward me. I want to see inside.”

When Pell tilted the Tupperware, she saw the contents slide, which was good. That meant it wasn’t fastened to the container and could be removed.

A squat, quart-sized metal cylinder that looked like a paint can sat inside with the end plug of an electric detonator sticking up through the top. Red and white leg wires ran from the
end plug to a shunt, from which another set of wires sprouted up through the lid to the timer, and off to the left to a couple of AA batteries that were taped to the side of the can. A purple wire ran directly from the batteries to the timer, bypassing the shunt, but connecting through a small red box that sprouted yet another wire that led back to the detonator. She didn’t like that part. Everything else was simple and direct and she’d seen it a hundred times before … but not the red box, not the white wire leading back to the detonator. She found herself staring at these things. She found herself scared.

“Tell me what to do, Carol.”

“Just hang on, Pell. I’m thinking. Lift it out, okay? It looks like everything is taped together in there, so you don’t have to worry about it falling apart. Just cup it with your hands, support it from the bottom, and lift it out. Put it on the floor.”

He did as she instructed, handling it as gently as a lace egg.

“Can you see it okay?”

“Fine.”

1:01.00.

0:59.

“How’re we doing with the time?”

“All the time in the world, Pell.”

“Are we going to be able to do this?”

“No sweat.”

“You don’t lie worth shit, Starkey.”

With the bomb sitting openly on the floor, she could see the connections and wiring more clearly, but she still did not know the purpose of the tiny red box. She thought it might be a surge monitor, and that scared her. A surge monitor would sense if the batteries had been disconnected or the wiring cut and bypass the shunt and the timer. It would be a built-in defense trigger to prevent de-arming the bomb. If they cut the wires or pulled the timer, the shunt would automatically fire the detonator.

Her heart rate increased. She had to twist her head again to wipe away the sweat.

“Is there a problem, Carol?”

She could hear the strain in his voice.

“No way, Pell. I live for this stuff.”

Pell laughed.

“Jesus Christ.”

“Wish He was here, pal.”

Pell laughed again, but then the laugh faded.

“What do I do, Carol? Don’t lose it on me, babe.”

She guessed that he could hear the strain in her, too.

“Okay, Pell, here’s what we’re looking at. I think there’s a surge monitor cut into the circuit. You know what that is?”

“Yeah. Auto-destruct.”

“We try to disconnect anything, it’ll sense a change in something called the impedance and detonate the bomb. The timer won’t matter.”

“So what do we do?”

“Take a big chance, buddy. Put your fingers on the timer, then find the wires that lead down through the lid. I want you to be on the bottom side of the lid, okay, so you’re closest to the device.”

He did it.

“Okay.”

“There are five wires coming through the lid. Take one. Any one.”

He took the red wire.

“Okay, that’s not the one we want, so separate it from the others, and take another.”

Purely by chance, he took the purple.

“That’s it, babe. That’s the one. Now follow it and you’ll come to a little box.”

She watched the gentle way his fingers moved along the wire, and thought that he would have been equally gentle as his fingers moved along her scars.

“I’m there. Two wires lead out the other side.”

“Right, but don’t worry about it. Before we can de-arm the timer, we’ve got to de-arm this thing, and I don’t know how to do that. I’m telling you the truth now, Jack. I don’t know what we’re dealing with, so all I can do is guess.”

He nodded without saying anything.

“Real easy now, because I don’t want you to accidentally pull loose a wire, I want you to separate the surge monitor from the rest of the device. Just kinda pull the wires to the side so that the box is off by itself and put it on the floor.”

“What do you want me to do with it?”

“You’re going to stomp on it.”

He didn’t bat an eye or tell her she was crazy.

“Okay.”

As he did that, she said, “It could detonate, Jack. I’m sorry, but it could just fucking let go.”

“It’s going to go anyway.”

“Yes.”

“We’ve both been through it before, Carol.”

“Sure, Pell. No sweat to people like us.”

When he had the monitor on the floor away from the other wires, he kept one hand on the surge monitor, then crabbed around into a squat to position his heel over the monitor.

“Am I lined up over the damned thing?”

“Do it, Pell.”

One ten-thousandth of a second.

Pell brought his heel down hard.

Starkey felt her breath hiss out as if her chest had been wrapped in iron bands.

Nothing happened.

When Pell lifted his foot, the plastic square was in pieces. And they were still alive.

“I crushed it, right, Starkey? Did I get it?”

She stared at the broken pieces. A set of small silver keys
were in the debris. The handcuff keys. That bastard had put the keys in the bomb.

“Starkey?”

She glanced at the timer.

O:36.35.34.

Something inside her screamed for him to scoop up the keys, unhook her, and let them both run. But she knew he couldn’t. He could never find the keys and fumble to the cuffs and unlock her in time. There wasn’t nearly enough time.