by John Lutz
Oh no! he thought. Oh Jesus!
Turning his head he yelled, “Fahey!”
Fahey had reached the turn in the corridor where they had left their gear. He spun around.
“It’s unstable. The gelignite.”
Fahey took a step back toward him. Hesitated.
He didn’t need an explanation. The explosive had been stored far too long in whatever warehouse the kid had stolen it from. It was chemically unstable. The kid was lucky it hadn’t blown up on him.
Harper might not be so lucky.
He leaned closer. Now the sticky-sweet smell was even stronger, and he could see the beads of moisture on the tacky gray surface of the stick of gelignite.
“Will!” Fahey called out to him. “Get your helmet on!”
Christ—how could he forget that? Harper sat back and reached for the helmet.
“Get away from it,” Fahey said. “They can bring up a robot to transfer it to the containment box.”
Harper hesitated with the helmet in his hands. It would take hours to move the robot into position. “Jimmy, we have to get the stick away from the gasoline.”
Fahey stood stock-still, fifty feet away. Slowly he began to shake his head. “Will, don’t.”
But there was no other way. To reach the gasoline can, he would have to move the stick. It was better just to pick up the stick. Harper secured the helmet and bent forward. He reached into the box. His hands were bare; he didn’t have any gloves. His fingers closed on the stick. It felt clammy. He cut the wire that connected it to the battery and gently lifted it out. Then, very slowly, he rose to a standing position. Will, “throw it!” Fahey yelled. “Just throw the goddamn thing as far as you can.”
But it would go off for sure then. And the windows would blow out. And glass fragments would fly into the building opposite and down to the street below.
Harper stood there motionless, holding the stick of gelignite in the palm of his band. He called, “Bring me the blanket.”
Fahey looked down. The bulky blast suppression blanket lay folded at his feet. It would effectively smother the explosion of a single stick of gelignite. All they had to do was put the stick down on the floor and cover it with the blanket.
“Come on, Jimmy,” Harper said.
But Fahey didn’t move. He was still looking down. Harper held his breath. After a long moment, Fahey looked up—but not at Harper’s face. He looked at the stick of gelignite in his outstretched hand.
He was paralyzed with fear. Five minutes ago Fahey had been able to go to work on the bomb, knowing that a mistake could mean his death. He’d been willing to bet his life on his skill. But this was different. The situation was out of his control now. Out of anyone’s control. It was sheer chance whether he and Harper would survive the next few minutes.
Harper spoke just loudly enough to make himself heard. “Jimmy, I need you to bring me the blanket. Now.”
Fahey wrested his gaze away from the gelignite. Stooping, he gathered the blanket in his arms. Then, with halting steps, he began to move down the corridor toward Harper.
For Christ’s sake, run! Harper wanted to scream at him. But the kid was doing his best. The closer he got, the more clearly Harper could see the terror clenching his features. With his white face and unsteady steps, he was like an invalid who might collapse at any moment. But he kept coming.
The only sound in the corridor was the scrape of his shoes on the linoleum.
Harper stood absolutely still with the stick of gelignite in his hand. He tried not to look at it. If the stick went off, the helmet and armor plates should protect his head and torso, but what about his limbs? His right arm would be blown off, that was certain. Would the paramedics get to him before he bled to death?
He stopped himself from thinking. Fahey was getting close now. His eyes were locked on to Harper’s. It was as if only the older man’s steady gaze could pull him over the last few paces.
When he was close enough, Harper said, “That’s good, Jimmy. Now just drop the blanket.”
He allowed himself to think they were going to get out of this. He’d be seeing his wife Laura at home in a few hours. He’d feel like shouting for joy and throwing his arms around her, but he mustn’t do that. He wouldn’t want to have to explain to her how much danger he’d been in. All he’d say was that it had been a hairy job, but Jimmy had done fine.
Fahey stiffly opened his arms and the blanket fell. It lay at Harper’s feet. Harper slowly sank down on one knee. With his free hand he lifted a fold of the blanket. He began to lower his right hand, taking care to keep it perfectly level. He was going to tuck the stick of gelignite in as gently as if it were his baby.
Harper almost made it.
That was the thought that was to haunt him in the months and years to come. He would never know what went wrong. Maybe he got overeager, moved his hand too quickly at the last second. Or maybe he hadn’t made a mistake and the gelignite was simply ready to blow.
There was a roar in his ears and Harper went tumbling and spinning to the floor.
Stunned, he stared at a splash of red on the wall. It was his blood. He felt no pain in his hand, only in his ears. He looked down at his arm, at the shredded nylon, the burned and blackened skin.
Fahey was kneeling beside him. “Oh God!” he said. “Hang on, Will! Just hang on!”
Slowly, disbelievingly, Harper raised his arm and stared at what had been his hand.
1
This was all too new to him.
Will Harper exited the highway and coasted down the ramp to the stop sign. There was no one behind him, so he paused to look around. He’d never been in this part of the country before.
He was in northwest Florida, just outside Pensacola. The landscape was different from what he’d seen in other parts of Florida. He liked it. The road in front of him had curves and hills and was lined with tall pine trees. The occasional palm tree still surprised him. He switched off the air conditioner and rolled down the window. Then he grasped the gear stick and shifted into first.
To be exact, he didn’t grasp it. He pinched it. Harper’s grasping days were over, at least with his right hand. The little finger and ring finger were gone, along with the top joint of the middle finger. The surgeons had done their best with that hand: It worked, it didn’t hurt anymore, and apart from the missing fingers it looked normal. Harper complained sometimes that because of the extensive skin grafts, the hair on the back of his hand and forearm had grown back in a strange pattern, but Laura said not to worry, no one would notice. This was true, Harper thought, because most people never got over staring at the fingers that weren’t there. But he kept this thought to himself.
As he accelerated down the road, he took a quick look at his map. It was only a couple more miles. Harper shifted his weight, a little nervously. He wasn’t looking forward to the end of this trip. He didn’t know what kind of reception he’d receive from Jimmy Fahey.
He and Fahey hadn’t seen each other in the two and a half years since the explosion in the high school corridor. Harper was still in the hospital when he heard that Fahey had quit the NYPD and left the city. No one knew where he’d gone.
For the next few weeks, the operations and therapy were all Harper could cope with. After he got out of the hospital, though, he started to think about Fahey again. He wrote to him, explaining that he’d retired from the Department with full disability and pension and was recovering quickly. He wanted to know how Fahey was.
It was a short letter, but hard to write. There were so many things he wanted to say but couldn’t put into words. And the physical act of writing was difficult for him. His right hand could still hold a pen, but the weak, wavering writing no longer looked like his own. Looking at the finished letter, he wondered about the effect his handwriting would have on Fahey. He copied the letter on a computer, laboriously hunting and pecking. Then he sent it in care of Fahey’s parents. Almost a year passed, and he had supposed Fahey had never gotten the letter, or
decided not to reply.
Then a postcard arrived from Pensacola. The hurried scrawl said that Fahey had a cushy job running security on a millionaire’s estate. He was living in paradise and had plenty of leisure time. Harper ought to drop by if he was ever in the Panhandle. That was all it said.
Harper told his wife Laura that maybe he’d better leave well enough alone. She replied that this didn’t look like “well enough” to her.
So when they came on vacation to visit her parents, who lived a few hours’ drive north of Pensacola, he called the number on the postcard.
After Harper identified himself, Fahey said nothing for a long moment. Then he turned on the easy good humor that had always been his specialty. It would be great to see Will. The estate was fabulous and there were all sorts of fun things to do. Harper had put down the phone thinking the initial moment of shocked silence after he’d identified himself had been the only honest part of the conversation.
The pine trees gave way to a high wall overgrown with vines. This was the estate. Harper drove along it for several minutes before the gatehouse came into view. It was a low building in faded yellow stucco, with a sloping tile roof that projected over the drive. There was a permanent-looking painted sign at the mouth of the drive, red letters on a white background:
SOME THINGS HISS BEFORE THEY KILL
SOME THINGS RATTLE
SOME THINGS TICK
SOME THINGS ARE SILENT
WELCOME
The gates were open, so Harper, feeling less welcome than he had a minute ago, turned in. A guard in a khaki uniform was standing in the middle of the drive. He motioned for Harper to stop.
As the guard approached, Harper noticed the machine pistol strapped to his belt. It was an Ingram with a phenomenally rapid rate of fire, suitable for perforating brick walls or chopping down trees. The gun and the guard’s expression both meant business. Harper wondered who this millionaire client of Fahey’s was.
“Help you?”
“Yeah, I’m looking for Jimmy Fahey. My name’s Harper.”
The guard checked his clipboard. Evidently Harper’s name was there, because he said, “Please park your vehicle on the apron over there. I’ll take you up to the house in the golf cart.”
Harper parked and walked back. The guard was already sitting behind the wheel of a yellow golf cart with a canvas sunshade. A second guard had taken over his post in the driveway. Through a window in the gatehouse, Harper could see other uniformed men. This was quite a setup Fahey was running, and Harper couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer. As he got into the cart, he asked, “Who lives here, anyway?”
The guard blinked at the question, as if surprised that anyone could fail to know. “This is the estate of Mr. Rod Buckner.”
“Oh,” said Harper, suitably impressed, understanding the sign by the driveway now. Rod Buckner was a bestselling author of macho technothrillers. It seemed that every time Harper got on the subway, he saw somebody reading one of Buckner’s thick paperbacks. There had been hit movie adaptations, too. Harper had seen one. It was about a gung-ho CIA agent named Buck Reilly who was battling Iranian terrorists. Harper had liked it. He’d even bought Buckner’s latest. But the first chapter took place on a submarine and had so much technical detail that Harper bogged down. He hoped he wouldn’t be meeting Buckner today. He’d never met a novelist, but he figured the first question they’d ask you was whether you’d read their books. Harper wondered where Buckner got his ideas.
The driveway wound through beautifully landscaped grounds. They passed bank upon bank of azaleas, all blooming in brilliant and varied colors. Back home in New York, Harper reflected, the azaleas wouldn’t bloom for another three months. Back home, in fact, it was probably sleeting right now. On that postcard Fahey had said he was living in paradise. Maybe he’d meant it. Maybe he’d put the past behind him. Maybe this mission of Harper’s wasn’t necessary.
Harper put the questions out of his mind. He’d have the answers soon enough.
There was a distant, muffled boom. It sounded like thunder. Harper looked at the sky. It was overcast, but he saw no sign of a storm.
“Sonic boom,” the guard said, noticing his confusion. “We get a lot of ’em. There’s a naval air station just down the road.”
“Oh. Too bad. Must be a nuisance.”
“No,” said the guard. “Mr. Buckner likes sonic booms.”
Harper looked over at him, to see if this was a joke, but the guard kept a stony face.
The house gradually came into view through the trees. It was a sprawling villa in a vaguely Mediterranean style. Like the gatehouse, it had buff stucco walls and a tile roof. On a circle of grass before the front door stood a flagpole flying the American flag. At its base, where another proud owner might have placed an ornamental bench or a lawn jockey, Rod Buckner had set up a slim white missile—a SAM of some sort, Harper guessed.
As they came around the bend in the drive, a figure emerged from an archway at the side of the house. It was Jimmy Fahey. His uniform of short-sleeved bush jacket, Sam Browne belt, and khaki shorts struck Harper as something you’d expect to see on a doorman at a resort hotel, but it was just as immaculate and crisply pressed as Fahey’s NYPD blues used to be. He still liked to wear aviator shades, too. His mouth was smiling, but Harper wished he could see his eyes. He saw only his own reflection as he approached.
“Will, how you doing?”
“Just fine, Jimmy. You?”
“Fine.”
Harper was only a few strides away. In a second they would shake hands. But Fahey hadn’t even looked down at his hand yet, and at the last moment he turned away.
“Come meet my boss.”
Harper had to walk quickly to catch up with him. “You mean Rod Buckner?”
The fixed smile faltered. Fahey looked crestfallen. “Oh, somebody told you. I wanted it to be a surprise. So how about that? Me working for Rod Buckner.”
“Congratulations,” Harper said, since Fahey seemed to want him to.
“Thanks. He’s a great guy. Says he’ll put me in a book sometime.” Fahey was smiling again. “Of course, he’ll probably bump me off.”
The archway led to a patio shaded by mimosas. In the turquoise waters of a swimming pool, a couple of little girls were splashing and shouting. The novelist himself was sitting at a table under an umbrella. He had a laptop computer in front of him and was talking on a cell phone. As they approached, Harper was trying to remember the title of the novel whose first chapter he’d read.
Buckner put down the phone, which for some reason had two stubby, flexible antennae, and lit a cigarette.
“Rod,” said Fahey, “like you to meet my old partner at the NYPD, Will Harper.”
Harper didn’t say anything. It always threw him a little, meeting in the flesh somebody he’d seen on television. Their very familiarity was jarring, somehow.
Buckner didn’t speak either. He took a drag on his cigarette and studied Harper, who studied him back. The novelist was fiftyish and stocky, with a lined, jowly face. His eyes slitted as he exhaled, the way Duke Wayne’s used to do. He too was wearing a safari jacket with cutoff sleeves, and a blue baseball cap with U.S.S. NIMITZ stenciled across it in gold. He put the cigarette in an ashtray and stood.
“It’s Sergeant Harper, isn’t it?” he said, in the gravelly voice that was as familiar as his face.
Harper nodded.
“It was you who disarmed that bomb under Madison Square Garden—what was it, six, seven years ago?”
“That was me.” It had been seven years before, to be exact, and Harper had discovered just how exhilarating and fleeting fame could be. He was surprised that Buckner would remember.
“It was Egyptian fundamentalists, wasn’t it, and they got ’em?”
“They got ’em.”
Buckner hitched up his Bermuda shorts and put his hands on his hips. “I always wondered how come you didn’t use a remote control vehicle?”
The question t
hrew Harper for a moment.
“I mean, NYPD was deploying the Dollman EOD vehicle at the time, wasn’t it? Or did you use the Morfax Marauder Mk XII?”
“We had a robot,” Harper said, “but it wasn’t working.”
Buckner’s brow furrowed. “Sabotage?”
“No. It just wasn’t working.”
“So you went in there yourself. How’d you disarm the bomb?”
“Cut the wires, pulled out the detonator.”
Buckner’s frown grew some more wrinkles. “How come you didn’t use the BAS Developments BA93 Disruptor? It had just become available at the time. Used ultrasonic waves to neutralize a wide range of detonators. British Army had an eighty-seven percent success rate with it.”
“Well,” said Harper, “I had the wire cutters right there.”
Fahey stepped forward. “Excuse me, Rod, you mind if I take a little break now and show Will around?”
“Sure, Jim. Show him around. And while you’re at it, talk him into staying the night.” Buckner’s eyes shifted back to Harper. “See you at breakfast, Sergeant. We’ll talk more.”
He sat down and picked up his cigarette. But as Fahey and Harper started to turn away he said, “Jim? What are you carrying today?”
Fahey glanced down at the covered holster on his hip. “Sig Sauer nine-millimeter.”
Buckner nodded, like a wine waiter approving a customer’s choice of vintage. “What load?”
“Standard full-jacketed rounds.”
“We’ll be going down to the beach club for drinks this evening.” Buckner was looking at him, expecting something from him.
Fahey thought fast, just the way he used to in class at the NYPD, when Harper asked him a tough one. “I’ll reload before we go, Rod. Soft Points.”
Again Buckner nodded his approval. “That’d be good, Jim. If you have to open up, you don’t want the bullets penetrating, hitting innocent bystanders.”
“No, sir.”
“What about Homeland Security?” Harper asked Buckner. “Have you talked to them about your concerns?”