Field smiled, more easily this time, and did a palms-up.
"See the problem, Mr. Loomis? The first thing any sane cop would do is develop the film in the camera. They'll probably be expecting some kind of picture-message from the thief. Won't it be a pleasant surprise when they find—"
"No,” Loomis said, shaking his head. “No. That can't happen.” He focused on Field as if seeing him for the first time, then waved the gunbarrel toward one of the chairs. “Sit down. Now."
When Field was seated, Ed Loomis began to stomp back and forth across the room, his eyes glazed and dreamy. The money, forgotten now, lay scattered on the coffeetable, half in and half out of the briefcase. Loomis looked like a drugged wolf pacing a cage.
"I could take you with me,” he said, his voice low. “I could take you now, and bring you back tomorrow night to open it. If you refused, I'd shoot off your kneecaps, and then your elbows, and then—"
"If you kidnap me now, Loomis, you can forget coming back. I'll be missed tonight at home, not to mention here at the office tomorrow. The place'll be swarming with cops, and it's my guess they'll have my people open the safe as soon as the timer allows it, at 10:01 tomorrow morning. After they find the camera they'll process the film, and when they see the film your face'll be on every police station's fax machine from here to Atlanta.” Field shook his head. “Not a good plan."
Loomis swallowed, then wiped a palm across his forehead. “Then I'll ... hell, I'll burn the place down.” He continued pacing, nodding. “That's what I'll do. I'll burn it to the ground—"
"That won't work,” Field said.
Loomis stopped in his tracks. “What?"
"Fireproof, remember? The safe's fireproof."
"Then I'll ... I'll...” Loomis's eyes drifted to the west window. Twenty yards away, backlit by the last rays of the sun, was the grassy hump of the old storm cellar. A tiny square window in its side stared back, like the filmy eye of a subterranean monster. He looked at it for a long time, then turned to face Martin Field.
"I'll blow it up,” he said.
* * * *
Field felt a new flutter in his stomach. “What did you say?"
"The safe. I'll blow it to pieces.” Loomis was nodding slowly.
"How would you do that?"
"How would I do it? How would you climb up a cliff if you saw a rope hanging there in front of you?” He seemed to be growing more excited with every word. “You said yourself there's plenty of explosives out there in that bunker of yours. Want me to draw you a picture?"
Martin Field leaned forward in his chair, pinning the other man with his gaze. “I don't doubt you could draw me a picture, Mr. Loomis. What I doubt is that you could wire an explosive charge."
His visitor smiled. “I won't have to."
The statement lingered there in the air between them.
"What do you mean by that?"
Loomis shrugged. “You can wire a charge. Right?"
"I can, sure. The question is, why should I?"
"I'll tell you why: I'll kill you if you don't."
"You'll kill me if I do! I'm no fool, Loomis. That camera inside my safe is all that's keeping me alive right now. If I blow it up, we're back where we started."
"No,” Loomis said, shaking his head again.
"No what?"
"No I won't kill you. Not if you help me, I won't.” His face hardened. “I need you, you can see that. No more threats of bullets in the knees or elbows, not now. I need you. And if you wire a blast that destroys that safe ... or even if it just messes up the clock enough so you can open it, say, and get the camera out—"
"Yes?"
"Then I'll let you go. I'll vanish."
"You'll vanish,” Field said.
"Into thin air. I swear it. Ed Loomis, as you've probably figured out, isn't my real name. I'll leave and you'll never see me again."
"If I help you, you mean."
"That's right."
Field studied him for a long moment. “And if I don't?"
"Then I will kill you.” The man calling himself Loomis approached the engineer slowly, then reached forward and touched the cold muzzle of the gun to the center of his forehead. “I'll shoot you dead as Custer's last bugler, just like I started out to do."
Field shrank back in his seat. “You don't understand. If you let me live and the cops find the camera, you're guilty of burglary. If you kill me and the cops find the camera, you're guilty of burglary and murder. You're not making sense."
The reaction was swift and violent. Before he knew what was happening, Martin Field was grabbed by the shirtfront, snatched out of his chair, and thrown backward against the wall. Stunned, he stared into the wildest pair of eyes he'd ever seen. The two men's noses were two inches apart.
"Don't you tell me,” Loomis said, his face fiery red, “what makes sense."
Field swallowed.
"What doesn't make sense is me letting you get the jump on me the way you did. Don't get me wrong, I'm not convinced you took that picture, Field. I'm not even convinced there's any film in the camera. But I can't take the chance, and both of us know it. And now that you've put me in this spot, you're gonna pull me out of it."
He fell silent then. It was so quiet Field thought he could hear the crickets in the woods behind the house.
"So you get yourself out there to that cellar,” Loomis said, tipping his head toward the window, “and you fetch some dynamite or whatever you use, and you wire this safe to blow sky-high. It better split like a ripe watermelon. You understand me?"
"You're the one who doesn't understand.” Field drew a breath, tried in vain to pull away from Loomis's iron grip. “A charge big enough to destroy the safe—it'd also destroy the building. The blast would be heard halfway to Little Rock."
"So? I'm not planning to linger, afterward.” Loomis tightened his hold on Field's collar. “I'm telling you once more: Blow that safe to pieces, and do it fast. If you do that, you win your life. If you don't, or won't, or try to trick me ... I'll kill you. I swear I'll kill you, Field, pure and simple. Logic doesn't have a thing to do with it.” He paused, and the engineer could feel the other man's hot breath on his face. “You got that?"
Field made himself nod.
"Say it."
"I got it."
Loomis seemed to unwind a little, though his eyes still had a mad glint to them. “You have what you need to do it with? You have it here?"
"Yes. It's all locked in the powder room."
"Then do it."
With that, Field was shoved away from the wall and toward the center of the office, where he stood dazed and wobbling. Finally he asked, “How do you want it done?"
"What do you mean? You're the expert."
"There are a dozen ways,” Field said, rubbing his bruised throat. “A remote, a fuse, a timer—"
"No timers. It has to be something I can control myself. No remotes either. I want wires, so I can see where they're going.” Loomis frowned. “And a plunger, that's what I want. A box with an old-fashioned, T-shaped, bicycle-pump plunger, like in the movies."
Martin Field shook his head, then stopped when he found that it made him dizzy. “They don't make those anymore. I have a variation, though. It's wired, like you said, and has a handle you twist to set off the charge."
Loomis nodded. “I've seen ‘em. That'll do fine.” He glanced once more around the room, then took a minute to scoop the rest of the money into the briefcase and snap it shut. Case in one hand and pistol in the other, he motioned Field toward the outside door. “Walk slow,” he said.
In the fading light they marched around the house to the driveway and climbed into Loomis's car. With Field held at gunpoint, Loomis drove a quarter mile down the road and parked. They trudged back to the house without a word.
At the door to the bunker Field flipped a switch that lit up the long stretch of yard between the office and where they now stood. Loomis nodded his approval. His pistol remained steady.
"
Get to work,” Loomis said.
* * * *
It took forty minutes to rig the charges. The crickets were in full chorus by the time it was done, and a fat summer moon floated above the treeline to the south. Only twice had Martin Field been allowed to get more than a few feet away from his captor, and that had been the two times Field had entered through the steel door of the former storm cellar he called the powder room, to prepare and retrieve the explosives and set up the wiring and the triggering device. During those times, about ten minutes each, Loomis had kept the door key and posted himself outside the inch-thick Lexan window in the east wall of the bunker. He remembered what Field had told him, he said, about everything outside the bunker being safe from accidents inside (and vice versa) and didn't want to be too close while Field was poking around in there, for fear a blunder might vaporize them both.
When all the preparations were finished, the two of them stood together just outside the open steel door of the shelter, the gun still pointed at Field's chest. Wires ran past them from the crank-style detonating device on the bunker's concrete floor and wound snakelike across the lawn to the side door of Field's private office, where eighty pounds of high explosives were sitting primed and waiting on the bookshelves beside the vault.
"You sure we'll be safe, in here?” Loomis asked.
"In the bunker? Yes."
"That little window, inside,” Loomis said, pointing with the money-filled briefcase. “We can watch the explosion, from there?"
"Well, we can watch up until the moment I twist the handle on the device. Then we'll have to duck. With that big a charge, that close to us, the window'll blow inward, blastproof glass or not."
"Okay."
"Anytime you're ready,” Field said dully. Despite the constant tension—or maybe because of it—he was exhausted.
Loomis took in some air, held it, blew out a sigh. Then he squinted hard at the house, and the lighted window of Martin Field's office.
"My employer—your enemy—tells me you're a genius, Field. One of the brightest minds of our time.” He kept his eyes on the house as he spoke. “Tell me, as a genius, what would you think the hardest thing is about killing somebody?"
Field blinked. His mouth felt dry. “I don't know."
"Take a guess."
"Pulling the trigger, I suppose."
Loomis snorted. “That's the easiest thing. The hardest—well, two things are the hardest. The first is making it look like something other than foul play, and the second's the disposing of the body."
Field didn't reply. Somewhere in the woods south of the house an owl hooted.
"And now and then,” Loomis said, “not often, but now and then ... you find you can do both at the same time."
Another silence.
"So,” Field said. “You're going to kill me after all."
Slowly Loomis turned to look at him.
"You told me you'd let me go,” Field said.
"Lying isn't my most serious character flaw,” Loomis admitted, “but it's a flaw nonetheless.” He tucked the briefcase under his arm, pulled the bunker's door open, and used the gun to point with. “Walk to the house, Mr. Field. I think I can handle things myself from here on out."
Field studied the killer's face in the moonlight. He could feel his heart hammering in his chest.
"But ... if you blow me up along with the house—"
"And the safe,” Loomis corrected.
"If you blow me up along with the house and the safe ... how's that going to look like an accident? I don't normally keep bombs in my office."
"Not an accident,” Loomis said. “Suicide."
"Suicide."
"I hear the rich guys like to go out with a bang."
Another silence, longer this time.
"Walk to the house, Mr. Field. Go inside and stand at your office window. I want to be able to see your face until the very last second."
"What if I run?” Field said.
"Then I'd catch you, and shoot you outside and drag you into the house. Unnecessary effort, for both of us. By the way, I made sure the inside door—the one from your office to the rest of the house—is blocked.” Loomis took a step backward into the bunker and pointed again with the revolver. “Get moving."
Field said nothing more. There was nothing left to say.
He turned and crossed the twenty yards of floodlit lawn, following the trail of black wires on the ground, to his office door.
* * * *
Field turned the knob, stepped through the door, and closed it behind him. He paused a minute and looked around. On the other side of the room, sitting on the bookshelves like stacks of wrapped gray hotdogs, was enough explosive power to blow this office and most of the headquarters of Field Engineering into pieces the size of a gnat's toothpick.
He moved to the west window and looked out at Ed Loomis, who had entered the converted storm-cellar and was staring back at him through the foot-square Lexan window in its side. Grinning, Loomis held the triggering device up so Field could see it, and raised a hand in farewell.
At that moment, as the two men stared one last time into each other's eyes, Martin Field felt a rush of profound sorrow at what was about to happen. In his mind he pictured the scene afterward, and the army of policemen who would descend on the site tomorrow morning—or later tonight, maybe—when the neighbors reported hearing the explosion.
He had known, of course, that Loomis would lie to him, and doublecross him. That was a given. And the fact that Loomis had acted exactly as expected gave Field no sense of triumph or satisfaction.
It was all so needless, he thought. So unnecessary. But he'd had no choice.
As he watched, he saw Ed Loomis place his right hand on the handle of the device, and give it a sharp twist.
Then Loomis's face ducked out of sight. Field could picture him on the bunker floor with his head down and his eyes squeezed shut—
But nothing happened.
Seconds later Loomis's face reappeared in the window. It showed surprise, then puzzlement, then realization, then rage. His teeth were clenched, his eyes blazing.
Before he could act, Field took something from his pocket and held it up to the window so Loomis could see it. Almost casually Martin Field put his thumb on top of the little remote transmitter, paused a moment, and pressed the button. Then he closed his eyes and dropped to one knee below the window. He never really heard the blast, thanks to the steel bunker walls and the earplugs he had put in a moment ago when he came through the office door—but he felt it. For an instant his brain seemed to compress inside his skull, and the house quivered, and the earth itself heaved and shifted underneath him.
* * * *
As it turned out, the losses were considerable. The entire contents of the bunker were of course obliterated, along with Ed Loomis and the money-filled briefcase he'd been holding at the time. By contrast, most everything outside the bunker was fine, including Martin Field and his office and the explosives piled on the bookshelves and the house itself, except for the west windows and the exterior on the that side of the building.
The safe was of course untouched and intact, as was the camera inside it. The film in the camera might have been a surprise to Ed Loomis, though, if he had lived to hear about it.
It was a twelve-exposure roll of Kodak 200, the only kind Mrs. Field liked to use. Every print, when the roll was developed, came out sharp and clear.
All twelve were photos of wildflowers, taken in the forests and meadows of western Arkansas.
Copyright © 2009 John M. Floyd
[Back to Table of Contents]
Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
For those who enjoy escapist reading on their summer vacations, this month's authors are prepared to whisk you into the dangerous worlds of their heroes, where the deadly enemies are as likely to work for our own government as for foreign foes. Grim contemporary buzzwords pepper these thrilling plots: suicide bombers, kidnappings, foreign interests, a
ssassins, and torture. Given our recent world events, these books seem an ominous portent of a loss of trust that may be difficult to regain.
* * * *
* * * *
In Lee Child's Gone Tomorrow (Delacorte, $27), Jack Reacher confronts a suspected suicide bomber on a New York subway and finds himself embroiled in legal and extralegal complications. Reacher has starred in a baker's dozen novels that began with the Anthony and Barry-award winning Killing Floor in 1997.
Born in Britain and now a New Yorker, Child has a knack for placing Reacher, an ex-military policeman, in situations where trouble can easily find him. Child's last five Reacher novels have hit the New York Timesbest-seller lists, and Gone Tomorrow is a cinch to make it six.
From the moment Reacher notices a fellow passenger on a two a.m. subway train until the story's conclusion more than four hundred pages later, the reader is whipped along on a journey full of puzzles, punctuated by action, and filled with characters whose ultimate loyalties are frequently in doubt. Reacher's training spurs him to take note of a particular passenger, a woman. He has studied a twelve-point list developed by the Israelis and used for spotting male suicide bombers. Eleven of those points apply to female bombers, and the woman he is observing appears to match them perfectly.
Inevitably, Reacher acts on his suspicions, but his efforts succeed only in making him a target. He lands in a tangle that begins with the NYPD and rapidly expands to include nameless agents from nameless agencies, a shadowy protection agency, a New Jersey cop, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, and a mysterious woman with an equally mysterious agenda. A bewildering array of forces are convinced that he now holds the key to whatever it is that they are seeking, and they are willing to use whatever it takes to obtain that key, including seductive inducements, imprisonment, or torture.
Reacher maintains his cool as he alternately plays along, resists, or, when prompted, responds with deadly force. His steadiness doesn't break as he tries to determine what is at stake and what he could possibly know or have that these others are so desperate to obtain. One of the most disturbing aspects of Reacher's perilous journey to the truth is that both the bad guys and the good guys are willing to use the same methods to achieve results.
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