by John Lutz
A place the bomber might have turned into a death trap. Harper swallowed and started toward it.
He’d only taken one stride before Duke surged past him, dragging his handler. He went straight to the cardiac monitor, stopping only when his nose touched the metal doors of the cabinet that supported the screen. He sat down. The three men froze. Duke turned to look up at their faces, confused because they failed to understand that here was what they sought.
Harper’s throat closed up. His heart was pounding adrenaline into his bloodstream. It was the fight-or-flight reflex that a Bomb Disposer had to learn to ignore. He swallowed and said, “Better get your EOD team up here, Captain. And give orders to clear the—”
But Alberghetti wasn’t listening. Dropping into a crouch in front of the heart monitor, he opened the metal doors. Harper’s heart lurched. It was a stupid risk to take when there was a possibility of a booby trap.
But they were in luck: nothing happened.
The cabinet was bigger than it needed to be to contain the tubes and circuits of the monitor.
There was plenty of room on its metal floor for the bomb—a simple detonator apparatus and a hunk of C-4 the size of a brick.
“Jesus Christ!” said Alberghetti. “That’s enough to take out this whole side of the floor. And the floors above and below.”
“Get your people up here, Captain,” Harper said. “Tell them to bring their equipment. This’ll need to be disarmed in place.”
Alberghetti pulled a portable radio out of his pocket.
This time Harper was ready. His left hand darted out to grasp the arm that held the radio. “Let’s not take chances, okay?” he said levelly. “This is a radio-controlled detonator. Use the phone at the nurses’ station.”
Alberghetti didn’t argue. He was happy to have an excuse to get away from the bomb. Another Captain Brand, all right.
Duke whined and butted his handler in the thigh. Having done his job, he wanted his Milk-Bone.
Harper said to the corporal, “Maybe you ought to get the dog away from here. Go to the head of the corridor. Keep people back.”
“Yes, sir!”
The corporal trotted off, the triumphant dog beside him.
Duke was wagging his tail again.
45
Now Harper was alone with the bomb. Again his mind flashed back to that other quiet corridor in the Queens high school, and again he pushed the thought, the crippling emotions, away from him.
He had to clear his mind. Think what to do.
The helmet was still under his arm. He started to put it on, but changed his mind. The bomb suit was no protection. Standing this close to an explosive so powerful, he might as well be wearing Bermuda shorts.
It would go off whenever Markman pushed the button on his radio transmitter. And he could do that anytime.
But would he?
If he was close enough to observe the scene, or if he was watching television in a hotel, he’d know Delilah was still waiting in her limo. So Markman would wait too. He wouldn’t panic and push the button. That wasn’t his style. So Harper told himself.
If he was right, they were safe for the moment and all they had to do was wait for the EOD team to get here. And there was no reason for Harper to wait where he was. He could turn and walk away, join Alberghetti at the nurses’ station.
He turned his head and looked into the room, where a blond girl of five or so lay unconscious on the bed, an IV in one arm. She wouldn’t be going anywhere. Nor would the patients in all the rooms up and down the corridor.
Harper found that he couldn’t walk away. It was partly a reluctance to abandon the children, even though he couldn’t do anything for them. But more than that, it was irresistible curiosity. In his long pursuit of Tony Markman, this was the first time he’d come face-to-face with one of Markman’s bombs. He couldn’t resist the temptation to examine the Celebrity Bomber’s handiwork.
He went down on his knees and looked closely at the device lying on the floor of the metal cabinet. It was a clean, simple job—what was needed for the purpose and no more: block of C-4, detonator, radio receiver, and battery. He noticed that the coating with the maker’s name had been painstakingly scraped off the battery, leaving the metal casing bare and gleaming. Even on his last job, when it didn’t matter anymore, Markman kept to his fastidious habits, eliminating any potential clue. Every piece of plastic and metal looked new and clean, and the wires were no longer than they had to be. No untidy loops. This was a labor of love, like all of Markman’s bombs.
Harper frowned. His eyes narrowed. There was one wire too many. Odd. It led off into a corner of the cabinet that Harper couldn’t see because Captain Alberghetti hadn’t opened the left-hand door all the way.
Instinct told Harper not to pull the door open. Instead he moved closer, being careful to touch nothing, and peered around the edge.
Yes, there it was. The wire ended in exposed copper next to the hinge of the door. Another wire came out of a battery fastened to the inside of the door. The ends of the two wires were half an inch apart. If Alberghetti had opened the door all the way, the two ends would have met, completing the circuit.
Exploding the bomb.
They’d escaped by half an inch.
Harper put out his hand. His first reaction was to shut the door, separating the wire ends still farther, putting everything back the way it had been before Alberghetti disturbed it. But how did he know there wasn’t some other booby trap he couldn’t see and might trigger?
He withdrew his hand and slowly stood up. Harper knew a lot about fear. It went with his work, just the way fatigue went with nursing. Laura had told him she knew when she was simply too tired to go on. Right now Harper was too scared to go on.
Time to walk away, he thought. This wasn’t his problem. Alberghetti’s team was coming. They had the best tools and the most exhaustive training. They had five fingers on each hand. And they had their nerve because they didn’t know what it was like when a bomb went off and threw you around like scrap paper and splashed your blood on the walls.
Harper started backing slowly away.
“Hey!”
He turned to see a bespectacled black doctor striding toward him. “Are you in charge here? This man says there’s a bomb—”
He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder at the corporal, who was peering nervously around the corner.
“There is,” Harper said. “Stay back.”
The doctor halted. Light glinted off his glasses and Harper couldn’t see his eyes.
More people in white coats or multicolored scrubs were coming around the corner—nurses, orderlies, other doctors. Harper stood in front of the bomb and spread his arms. “Please, everyone stay back!” he shouted. “A team will be here soon to disarm the bomb. Right now we have to be very careful we don’t disturb it.”
“You mean it could go off anytime?” asked the black doctor, dubiously yet with the faintest hint of alarm.
“It could.”
The medical people stayed stock-still for a moment, exchanging startled looks. Then, without a word, they moved.
But they didn’t retreat around the corner, as Harper hoped. They broke in all directions, heading into the rooms.
“No!” Harper yelled. “You can’t evacuate the patients now! You’ve got to—”
He broke off, seeing that it was pointless. No one was paying attention to him.
A nurse ran by him, passing within a foot of the cardiac monitor. All it would take was one brush, one jar, and the door would swing all the way open and the bomb would explode.
A nurse and a big red-headed guy in what looked like a paramedic uniform brushed past Harper as they went into the room of the girl who was hooked up to the cardiac monitor. They began to unhook the IV and raise the railings. They were planning to roll the whole bed out.
Only there wasn’t room with the heart monitor in the doorway.
Harper looked down the hall. Already medical people were emerging f
rom the rooms, some of them carrying children in their arms, others pushing wheelchairs. One orderly was pushing a chair with each hand, taking up almost the full width of the corridor.
Harper looked down at the metal door hanging precariously half open on its hinges, and decided.
He stepped into the room, where the paramedic was locking the railings of the bed in place. He’d noticed the gleaming handle of a pair of small scissors in a sort of holster on the man’s belt. “I need your scissors,” be said.
“These are for cutting stitches—nothing else,” the man replied irritably. He was in a hurry and didn’t glance at Harper.
Harper blinked slowly, trying to control himself. Long ago Jimmy Fahey had said admiringly that Harper had a tone of voice that made people do what he said. He could only hope he still had it.
“Give me the scissors now,” he said.
The paramedic froze for a second, then his hand went to his belt and he handed the scissors over.
Harper swung around and went down on one knee before the metal cabinet. He couldn’t use the scissors with his crippled hand so it would have to be the left. Since the accident, Harper must have regretted ten thousand times that he was right-handed. He’d never regretted it more keenly than now.
He had to lean far to the right and twist his entire body to angle his arm into the cabinet the way it had to go, and look over his left shoulder to watch what he was doing. His elbow was uncomfortably close to the edge of the booby-trapped door. The stiff, heavy sleeve of the bomb suit was another hindrance.
With his right middle finger he lifted the wire that led from the transmitter to the detonator. He couldn’t grasp it because he didn’t have enough fingers. He needed the forefinger and thumb to pinch the booby trap wire and lift it so he could cut it. This was like some hellish game of cat’s cradle.
There was tumult all around him, shouts and the rattling of gurneys and wheelchairs and the crying of children. He shut it all out.
Nothing mattered but the booby trap wire. His finger and thumb reached for it, and he could feel the strain throughout his awkwardly twisted body, feel the weight shifting and the soles of his shoes starting to pivot on the floor. Too far and he’d topple over, taking the cabinet with him.
There! He had the wire. He lifted it and fitted it between the jaws of the scissors. He squeezed and felt the blades cut through the plastic casing.
But not the copper wire itself.
Christ! Harper thought—these were made for cutting stitches, what if they wouldn’t cut through metal? Flexing every muscle from his shoulder down he squeezed on the scissors.
The wire parted.
Even over all the noise in the corridor Harper could hear his own sigh of relief. He looked at the detonator wire draped over his middle finger and thought a little giddily, why not? He snipped that one too.
Then he sat back on his haunches, staring at the block of C-4. A moment ago, a minute pulse of electricity reaching it would have released the destructive force of a tornado and a forest fire.
Now it was merely a lump of Silly Putty.
46
Markman was in the parking garage opposite the hospital. Crouching in the narrow open area between two parked cars, he peered over the concrete parapet at the hospital entrance below. In one hand be held the transmitter he’d intended to use to trigger the bomb, in the other a radio that scanned police frequencies.
What he was hearing was a confused jumble of static and excited voices, but it was clear that the bomb he’d placed in the cardiac monitor had been found and disarmed.
By Harper.
Markman was almost overwhelmed by anger and dejection. He wanted to scream, to beat the useless transmitter against the concrete until the plastic shattered into a thousand pieces.
But, as always, he managed to control himself. With a slow, deliberate movement, he placed the transmitter on the gritty, oil-stained floor.
Then he reached in his pocket and took out the other transmitter.
For the other bomb.
The drive in front of the hospital was now even more tightly packed with people, but the police and security guards were getting the scene under control. A stir of excitement in the crowd made him look down. They were taking Delilah out of the limousine and conducting her into the hospital. They figured it was safe now. Wrongly.
Even from up here Markman could hear the sigh of the crowd as the door of the limo opened and she stood up. There was jostling and straining all along the police barricades. Idiots, he thought. How badly they needed to learn the lesson he had to teach. His backup plan wouldn’t spell out his message as clearly as the original plan would have, but it would do the job. Markman could rest satisfied.
He looked down at the blond head, the slim figure clad elegantly in pink. Oh, she was beautiful, he had to admit that. He had to stifle an urge to pick up his binoculars for one last look at her. It crossed his mind that if the high-powered rifle had been his weapon—
But it wasn’t. He had a very different weapon. Slower than a bullet, but just as sure.
Delilah and her cordon of guards went up the steps and into the hospital. Through the glass doors he could see her moving to the left. They were taking her to the waiting room off the entrance lobby, where Markman himself had waited before his own tour of the hospital two weeks ago.
Picking up the binoculars, he trained them on the window of the waiting room.
He couldn’t see Delilah herself. The room was filling up with the usual celebrity parasites—harried-looking people in suits and uniforms, milling around and talking on their cell phones and radios.
Markman could hear some of them on his scanner. It was a jumble of voices and static, but one word kept coming through: Harper. He was the man of the hour. The celebrity. Everybody wanted to talk to him, though Delilah, of course, took precedence. Even now Harper was being brought to her, straight from the third floor. They wouldn’t even give him time to change out of that stiff and ugly brown bomb suit Markman had watched him put on.
A knight in not-so-shining armor, being brought before the princess he’d served. A touching scene. A perfect photo-op. Anyone who’d studied Delilah the way Markman had would have known that this was what she would do.
Markman smiled bleakly and focused his binoculars on the glass doors of the hospital. He couldn’t see all the way to the bank of elevators, but he could see the crowd around the reception desk, and he’d know from their reaction when the hero arrived.
He was vaguely conscious of noises coming from the parking levels below him. The radio messages had made it clear that the police were finally recovering from the initial confusion and were setting about securing the area. They’d sealed off the entrances to the garage, and a SWAT team was working its way up, searching each level. It didn’t matter. Markman had no interest in getting away.
A few more minutes were all he needed. Time enough to complete his mission and his life.
He continued to gaze steadily through the binoculars, and in a moment his patience was rewarded. Harper had to be stepping off the elevator now. The signs were unmistakable. The glare of Minicam lights, the shimmer of still photographers’ flashes, could be seen through the glass doors. The jostling of the crowd intensified. Some people in back were actually jumping up and down to get a glimpse of the great man.
Markman switched off the scanner, then shut his ears to the shouts of the searching cops below him. He concentrated on watching the crowd through the thick glass doors. He ought to be able to see Harper for a moment as he passed them. Markman would start counting then. After Harper disappeared from view, Markman would give him three minutes to be conducted into the waiting room and up to Delilah. Then—
His finger poised over the detonate button.
When the doors of the elevator slid open on the lobby, Harper was bathed in light—the flicker of flashbulbs and the steady glare of the halogens the TV people used. Laura had commented that when he appeared in the papers Harper
was usually wincing and blinking, and it would probably happen again. Everyone was shouting questions at him, but he couldn’t make them out, didn’t care to answer. He was in no mood for dealing with questions.
When the scissors blades had bitten through the wire, Harper had gone into a sort of happy daze. He’d experienced the strange mood before. It was as if the intense concentration of disarming the bomb demanded a release of tension once the danger was past. Harper’s attention was scattered. He was only vaguely aware of the people surrounding him, talking to him, ushering him to Delilah. Mostly he was thinking about seeing Laura again. Reflecting on the wonderful prospect of years of being able to go on breathing. He’d never take that activity for granted again.
They were coming to a doorway. Beyond it he could see a smaller room, just as crowded as the lobby. He caught a glimpse of the superstar, sitting in the middle of the room and looking expectantly his way.
His wayward thoughts turned to Anthony Markman. Here was one of those happy endings the bomber so despised, of whose falsity he was so determined to convince the world. A true Hollywood fade-out, with the little people warming themselves before the glow of the stars, one of whom, incredibly enough, was Harper.
The feeling of happiness and ease drained away as Harper’s mind came alert. Markman was still at large—why should Harper assume he was through? Harper still sensed his nearness, just as he’d been sensing it ever since he came to Washington. The first time had been in the hotel lobby, the morning he’d arrived, and Captain Brand had presented him with the bomb suit—
Harper stopped dead. His sweat ran cold under the bulky body armor. What if his instincts had been right? The lobby had been crowded, so that the bomber would have had plenty of cover from which to watch the little presentation ceremony. And Harper had left the suit in his room all morning, giving Markman plenty of time—