Blown Away

by G. M. Ford

  “I don’t understand,” Hildreth said. “Do they want money? I can…”

  Corso cut him off. “If this were about money, they’d have sent her to a bank.”

  Corso closed his eyes for a moment, for long enough to imagine what it would be like to have a loved one in this kind of peril…in a situation where nothing in his previous existence mattered…a moment in time where neither intention nor means mattered a whit to the people holding the cards. He imagined…

  “Coming,” somebody yelled from over by the door.

  They hurried over in time to see the driver’s door taking the last rhythmic bounces on its hinges before coming to rest. They sorted themselves out among the columns and waited for her to appear, but nothing happened—only the tic tic of the van’s engine and the distant roar of traffic…until…the van rocked slightly on its springs, causing those beneath the portico to press forward…to hold their collective breath until…until nothing—and then a woman’s foot stepped out onto the ground, white tennis shoe, from the five red stripes it looked like K SWISS, baggy baby blue sweatpants, and then a second shoe, until a pair of legs, visible only from the shins down, appeared beneath the bottom of the front door.

  They watched as the toes turned back toward the van as she reached inside for something…something she was having difficulty getting past the steering wheel…something that caused her to raise up on her toes for a moment before settling back to the ground and shutting the driver’s door with her hip.

  She’d inherited her father’s slim build and thick blond hair. She wore a baby blue sweat suit with letters UCLA emblazoned down each sleeve. The university logo was also printed on the front of the sweatshirt. Or at least it looked that way. Hard to tell with the explosive device hanging from her neck, the oversized steel handcuff reflecting the rays of the sun, the ominous black steel box hanging down over her chest, resting uneasily on the bulge of her distended middle. She stood for a moment with her left hand folded beneath her prodigious belly for support, as she swiveled her neck to take in her surroundings, looking this way and that as if committing the scene to memory.

  Corso watched as she suddenly cocked her head, listening to the electronic voice in her ear. She hiccupped out an answer and began sidestepping away from the vehicle, one step, two steps, and then three before she raised a battery-operated megaphone to her lips. Her hand shook. Her finger had difficulty finding the trigger and then difficulty pulling it. She said something that didn’t get amplified, checked her hand and then tried again. “Daddy,” she croaked. “Help me.”

  It took three cops to keep Hildreth from rushing toward his daughter. “Patty,” he bellowed, “Patty,” as they dragged him back behind the big brass doors, back into the foyer, where his plaintive cries were barely audible to those outside.

  Short motored out past the columns, until the front wheels of his chair were scant inches from the top step. She raised her megaphone again. “They say my father…”

  Short waved her off. He brought his good hand to his lips, raised a single finger and made the “be quiet” sign. She began to sob. “Please,” she pleaded. “If I don’t do what they say…”

  Warren peeked out from behind a granite column. “Let the Bureau handle it, Short,” he growled. “This isn’t our end.”

  “The longer this goes on, the less chance she’s got,” Short said without ever moving his eyes from the young woman at the bottom of the stairs.

  Down below, Patricia Fritchey pulled the protective arm from beneath her belly and used her index finger to push the microphone deeper into her ear. “I’m trying,” she wailed. “Can’t you hear me, I’m trying.”

  She listened again. Everyone watched, horrified as her face dissolved into a puddle of fear. “Please,” she begged. “I’m trying,” she blubbered, bringing the bullhorn up to her mouth once again. “Daddy.” She was screaming now, over and over, until the effort brought her to her knees. She sat on the bottom step, weeping and moaning, and calling for her daddy to come and rescue her.

  Morales looked over at Warren. “Maybe we gotta let him go to her,” he said.

  “The minute that happens they’re both dead,” said Short.

  “If we don’t, she and that baby are dead.”

  “There’s nothing…” Warren started.

  His disclaimer was too late. By the time the words covered the distance to where Short had been sitting, the wheelchair was already over the edge, two steps down, rocking ungracefully from side to side, as Short manipulated both the joystick and the brake with great dexterity, maneuvering the chair down over each successive riser without losing the constant battle with gravity.

  The whine of the powerful engine pulled Patty Fritchey’s eyes upward. It took her several seconds to process what she found herself looking at. She blinked twice at the gruesome figure moving her way, then opened her mouth and screamed.

  Having no way to stop the chair’s downward momentum in the middle of a flight of stairs, Short kept coming, ignoring her cries. Bouncing from side to side like a scarecrow in the wind, he descended stair after stair after stair, until he was no more than a dozen risers above the hysterical young woman who lay sprawled and spent on the chiseled stones below.

  The voice in her ear brought her head up in time for her to see Paul Short bounce down onto her level. Her eyes opened wide in terror. She screamed again. Over and over until her voice began to give out.

  “That motherfucker’s crazy,” somebody to Corso’s right said.

  “Either got real big balls or a real small brain,” somebody else countered.

  “Or both,” added a third.

  On the flat now, Short wheeled the chair in a one-eighty. Patricia Fritchey was wailing and trying to inch away from the horror in the wheelchair, pushing herself along on her hip, the steel fingers surrounding her neck swinging back and forth as she moved, snaillike, across the face of the stairway.

  Short opened one of the several tool compartments built into the side of his chair. Everyone held their breath and waited for him to come out with a tool of some sort, wire cutters or a screwdriver, something like that. Instead he produced a small yellow pad and a tiny pencil. He wrote something on the pad and turned it her way.

  Her mouth hung open as she read the message. She started to speak, but he cut her off with a slash of the steel hook. He flipped a page and wrote something else. Again she read the message. This time she nodded in silent understanding. She ran a hand over her face and then said something inaudible to whoever was listening.

  Short was nodding his head now. Writing again. She read the note, cleared her throat and spoke. “They say he’s coming. He’s on his way.”

  “No. No. He’s coming, I swear. He’s…”

  She looked down at the box covering the top of her belly. Short had a screwdriver in his good hand and was removing the numerical keypad from the front of the device. Moving with greater speed than would have seemed possible for a man with two hands, he removed the fasteners and dropped the screwdriver into his lap.

  They watched as he spoke to her. As she shook her head and began to blubber.

  “I can’t,” she said. “Oh really, I can’t.”

  Short again signaled for her to be quiet. She began to weep again. After a moment, her spine seemed to stiffen. She sat up straight on the stair. Gave Paul Short a long resolute look and then took the box in both hands.

  At the top of the stairs breathing was again suspended as Patricia Fritchey worked her nails between the face plate and the box and then slowly, ever so slowly, began to pull the inner mechanism out into the light of day, moving it upward and out of the box until a rainbow of wires became visible.

  Short wasted no time. He leaned forward until his nose was very nearly in her lap. From a compartment on the right side of the chair, he produced a small pair of wire cutters. The sight of the tool flushed whatever resolve she might have mustered. She began to sob again, her breath a series of audible gasps. The voice in her e
ar said something. “He’s coming,” she said and then plastered a hand over her mouth.

  As Paul Short poked the cutters among the maze of wires lying across the top of her stomach, he made eye contact with Patricia Fritchey. They gazed into each other’s eyes for longer than was polite. Almost as if they formed some sort of pact, some sort of mutual recognition, in the elongated seconds before he lowered his ruined head and snipped a wire.

  31

  C orso pulled his head back behind the pillar, rested his cheek against the cool stone and counted to ten. When nothing exploded, he leaned out far enough to refocus one eye on the pair at the bottom of the stairs. Short was poking around inside the mechanism, using the steel hook to separate wires. Patricia Fritchey couldn’t watch. She had her head turned to the side and, if the knots along her jawline were any indication, appeared to be grinding her molars to dust.

  Corso watched in morbid fascination as Short reached into the maze of color-coded wires, hesitated briefly, then snipped something. And then again and again. Apparently satisfied, he wiped his brow with his sleeve and sat back in his chair, chest heaving from the emotional effort. Sensing a sudden lack of movement, Patricia opened one eye.

  Short pressed his index finger to his lips and used the same finger to indicate he wanted her to turn her back to him. She did as bidden, scooting around on one hip until she faced in the other direction. The trembling in her shoulders was visible from the top of the stairs. Short reached out and put the hook on her shoulder.

  He waited for her shaking to subside, then reached out and took hold of the steel fingers encircling her neck. For the third time in the past ten minutes, breathing became optional as Paul Short slowly…ever so slowly…pulled the metal locking mechanism apart. He spread the tines as far as they’d go, allowing her to bend forward and free herself of its metallic grip. She sat in stunned silence for a moment, then reached up and ran her hands around her unencumbered throat. Stifling a cry of joy, she struggled first to her knees, then to her feet.

  Short placed the device gingerly on the landing. Before she could move away, he reached out with his good hand and pulled her down into his lap. A forward thrust of the joystick sent them rocketing across the walkway at warp speed. Patricia Fritchey locked her arms around Paul Short’s neck and hung on for dear life as the speedy wheelchair put distance between themselves and the bomb.

  The pair got half a dozen planters up the walkway when the control keys on the bomb began to blink red and green…red and green.

  “Watch out,” someone shouted.

  And bang…first a small yellow flame, followed by a puff of white smoke. Then the bomb went off, the sharp sound tearing the fabric of the morning, the concussion rocking the blue van on its springs, sending the official assemblage cowering behind their columns once more, as bits of stone and metal rained back to earth in a rush.

  Anguished cries rang out from within the capitol building and then, just as quickly, subsided. A moment later, the great brass door banged open and Brian Hildreth staggered out. His eyes followed the cloud of smoke and dust as it rose toward the heavens, then locked on the unlikely pair sharing a high-tech wheelchair.

  “Oh God,” Brian Hildreth cried. “Thank God.”

  He rushed down the stairs at a loose-jointed lope, shouting his daughter’s name as he moved along. He was watching his own feet on the stairs, so he didn’t see Paul Short stiffen in the wheelchair. Didn’t see Short raise his good hand to the sky in alarm. Didn’t hear the broken voice shout out the single hoarse syllable. “No.”

  In some nonverbal way, Corso immediately understood. Without willing it so, he dashed out from behind the pillar and began descending the stairs three at a time, closing the distance between him and Brian Hildreth with every maniacal stride.

  The sound of Corso’s boots slapping on the stone stairs brought Hildreth to a sudden stop. He turned his head in wonder, just in time for Corso to grab him in a bear hug, to lift him from his feet and then catapult both of them sideways, up and over the beautifully carved balustrade, four feet and four legs pointing straight up in the air, as the pair somersaulted off of the staircase, down into the flower bed below.

  The collection of state and federal employees at the top of the stairs bolted forward, fanning down over the stairs with Warren at the forefront as they rushed toward the spot where Hildreth and Corso had disappeared. Security cameras covering the front of the capitol building recorded what happened next.

  Experts who analyzed the tape would later agree that the van must surely have contained somewhere in the vicinity of one hundred pounds of plastic explosive in order for it to have caused the degree of damage and destruction visited upon the both the building and the brave law enforcement officers whose lives were forfeit.

  Of those who survived, several were able to describe the moment of detonation with sufficient clarity as to create a consensus. They shared a general agreement that the blue Dodge Caravan levitated no less than four feet off the ground at the crack of the first explosion, the sound of which froze everyone in their respective tracks. Of the second explosion, even the survivors remained a bit fuzzy. Suffice it to say the van went off with sufficient force as to register a 3.7 on the University of California seismograph, nearly five miles distant.

  Corso had pulled Brian Hildreth over onto his back and had just loosened his tie when the van went suborbital. Although the concrete frame of the stairway prevented the force of the blast from reaching them directly, the explosion sucked the air from Corso’s lungs and filled his mouth with dust. Hildreth had landed on his back with Corso on top of him and had the wind driven from his lungs. He gagged and gasped for air that wasn’t there, his mouth hanging open, his arms flailing. And then it began to rain bits of van, and they could both breathe again as the air was filled with the sound of broken glass, falling piece by shattered piece to the ground. Then the cacophony of calls and curses and cries coming from above.

  Corso helped Hildreth to his feet. Through the smoke and dust they could see that the force of the blast had bowled Short’s wheelchair over backward. Patty Fritchey had regained her feet and was helping Paul Short extricate himself from the chair. Her father was panting like a miler as he went lumbering across the littered grass to her side.

  Corso went the other way. Through the flowers and the bushes, where the height of the wall lessened with every step. Until he could climb up onto the stairs…the whoop whoop of nearby sirens ringing in his ears and the sight before his eyes wrenching his innards into a knot.

  Half a dozen men lay unmoving on the debris-covered stairway. Another dozen were still on their feet. From the look of it, everybody was wounded to one degree or another. The nearest victim…the one who’d been closest to the van when it went off…he lay sprawled at Corso’s feet, his head twisted at an impossible angle…one of his legs bent in a direction it had never been intended to bend. What was left of him seemed afloat in a pool of blood. Corso looked away for a moment and dropped to one knee beside the body. He lifted a hand and felt for a pulse. Nothing. David Warren was never going to see Antigua.

  Where the van had been sitting was nothing more than an eighteen-inch hole in the concrete. Bits and pieces of debris littered the ground for nearly as far as the eye could see. Sirens approached from all directions at once. Back over his shoulder Brian Hildreth and his daughter were locked in an embrace. Short was back on his wheels and moving Corso’s way.

  Corso sat down on the step next to David Warren. He was still holding Warren’s hand in his. Seemed silly, but he couldn’t bring himself to put it down.

  32

  M orales circled his former desk, slipping personal items into a cardboard box he held against his chest with one arm. Corso sat in a red leather chair beneath the window, his long legs stretched out before him, his fingers laced behind his head.

  “It was the woman,” Morales said as he moved. “I was so damned worried about the woman and her baby…I never…” He tried to stop himse
lf before he could begin making excuses again. “Think it was probably because I’ve got two daughters of my own. You know…maybe I was extrasensitive or something. I…”

  “How old?” Corso asked.

  “Nine and eleven.” Morales stopped, dug around in the bottom of the box until he found what he was looking for. A gold-hinged frame. He flipped it open. Two beautiful girls. The younger of the two was missing both front teeth. The older looked a lot like Morales. Same strong chin and wide-set eyes. “I kept picturing myself…you know in that guy Hildreth’s position. Like it was my daughter out there with a bomb around her neck.” He looked to Corso for understanding. “I don’t know, man,” he said finally.

  “What now?”

  Morales sighed. “The bottom line is we lost three federal officers this morning. Probably another ten who’ll end up on restricted duty.” He waved a disgusted hand. “We’re all over the TV. CNN and everybody else is camped out down in the lobby.” He threw a commemorative pen set into the box.

  “What now for you?” Corso asked.

  Morales emitted a dry bark of a laugh. “I was the officer in charge man. What do you think? You think the Bureau likes this kind of ink?” He laughed again. “The party’s over for me. As of tomorrow I’m on paid administrative leave. The Bureau will keep me in limbo until everything gets sorted out, then they’ll send me someplace where they don’t have to look at me anymore.”

  “Sounds kinda harsh.”

  “SOP,” Morales shot back. “The Bureau is an unforgiving mistress.”

  Corso watched as Morales went inside himself.

  “Any word on the Hildreth woman and her baby?” he asked.

  “Resting comfortably at home.”

  “What about Short?”

  Morales smiled. “There’s talk of a presidential medal.”

  Corso shook his head. “He sure as hell saved the day.”