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She ran to the window and drew her hand back to smash through the glass with her palm.
Suddenly the window went black and she gave a soft whimper as Hathaway began nailing the thick plywood sheet over the glass.
"No, no," she was crying, afraid the huge booming of the hammering would set off the bomb.
Ten minutes.
The canvas bag was at the gap by the gangplank.
Sam Healy took a deep breath. Looked at the containment vehicle.
The longest ten feet…
"How you doing, buddy?" the ops coordinator asked through the radio headset.
"Never been better," Healy replied.
"You got all the time in the world."
Breathing. In, out: In, out.
He bent over the canvas bag and carefully closed the top. He couldn't keep it level holding it by the strap so he'd have to grip the base with both hands and pick it up.
He backed down the gangplank, then went down on one knee.
Breathe, breathe, breathe.
Steadiest hands in the business, someone had once said about Healy. Well, he needed that skill now. Fucking rocker switches.
He bent forward.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," came the staticky voice in the radio.
Healy froze, looked back.
The ops coordinator, Rubin and the other men from the squad were gesturing into the river, waving madly. Healy looked where their attention was focused. Shit! A speedboat, doing thirty knots, was racing along, close to the shore, churning up a huge wake. The boater and his passenger-a blonde in sunglasses-saw the Bomb Squad crew's gesturing and waved back, smiling.
In ten seconds the huge wake would hit the boat, jostle it and set off the rocker switch.
"Sam, get the fuck outa there. Just run."
But Healy was frozen, staring at the registration number of the speedboat. The last two numbers were a one and a five.
Fifteen.
Oh, Christ.
"Run!"
But he knew it would be pointless. You can't run in a bomb suit. And besides, the whole dock would vanish in the fiery hurricane of burning propane.
The wake was twenty feet away.
He bent, picked up the bag with both hands, and started down the gangplank.
Ten feet from the houseboat.
Halfway down the gangplank.
Five feet.
"Go, Sam!"
Two steps and he'd be on the pier.
But he didn't make it.
Just as he was about to step onto the wood of the pier the wake hit the houseboat. And it hit so violently that when the boat rocked, the gangplank unhooked and fell two feet to the pier. Healy was caught off balance and pitched forward, still clutching the bomb.
"Sam!"
He twisted to the side, to get his body between the bag and the propane barge, thinking: I'm dead but maybe the suit'll stop the shrapnel.
With a thud he landed on the pier. Eyes closed, waiting to die, wondering how much pain he'd feel.
It was a moment before he realized that nothing had happened. And a moment after that before he realized he could vaguely hear music.
He sat up, glanced at the sandbags, behind which the squad stood immobilized with shock.
Healy unzipped the bag and looked inside. The rocker switch had closed the circuit. What it had set off, though, wasn't the detonator but apparently a small radio. He pulled the helmet off the bomb suit.
"Sam, what're you doing?"
He ignored them.
Yeah, it was definitely music. Some kind of easy listening. He stared at it, unable to move, feeling completely weak. More static. Then he could hear the disc jockey. "This is WJES, your home for the sweetest sounds of Christian music…"
He looked at the explosive. Pulled off the glove and dug some out with his fingernail. Smelled it. He'd have recognized that smell anywhere-though not from his bomb disposal training. From Adam. The explosive was Play-Doh.
Rune didn't waste any time trying to break through the walls. She dropped to her knees and retrieved what she'd seen under the bed when he'd first dragged her into the room.
A telephone.
When Hathaway had seen her ease forward on the bed, it wasn't because she was about to leap. It was because she'd seen an old, black rotary dial phone on the floor. With her feet she pushed it back into the shadows under the bed.
She now pulled it out and lifted the receiver. Silence.
No!
It wasn't working. Then her eyes followed the cord.
Hathaway, or somebody, had ripped the wire from the wall.
She dropped down to the floor and, with her teeth, chewed off the insulation, revealing four small wires inside: white, yellow, blue, green.
For five minutes she stripped the four tiny wires down to their thin copper cores. Against the wall was a telephone input box with four holes in it. Rune began shoving the wires into the holes in different order. She was huddled, cramped on the floor, the receiver shoved under her chin.
Finally, with the last possible combination, she got a dial tone.
The timer on the bomb showed twelve minutes.
She pressed 911.
And what the hell good is that going to do? Did they evenhave a fire department on Fire Island? And how could she even tell them where she was?
Shit!
She depressed the button and dialed Healy's home number.
No answer. She started to slam it down, then caught herself and cautiously pressed the button again-feeling as if she had only a few dial tones left and didn't want to waste them. This time she called the operator and told her in a breathy voice that it was an emergency and asked for the 6th Precinct in Manhattan. She was astonished. In five seconds, she was co
"It's an emergency. I need to speak to Sam Healy, Bomb Squad."
Static, someone near the switchboard telling a Polish joke, more static.
"Patch it through," Rune heard. More static. The punch line of the joke.
Static.
Oh, please…
Then, Healy's voice.
The operator was saying, "Central to Two-five-five. I've got a landline patch for you. Emergency, she says. You available?"
"I'm in the field. Who is it, what does she want?"
"Sam!" she shouted.
But he didn't hear.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
"Tell him Rune," she shouted to the dispatcher.
"Hurry!"
A moment later the condition of the line improved, though it was still filled with static.
"Sam." She was crying. "He's got me in a room with a bomb. The Sword of Jesus bomber."
"Where are you?"
"A house on Fire Island. Fair Harbor, I think. He's put a bomb here."
Seven minutes.
"Where's the guy who set it?"
"He left. It's that Warren Hathaway… the witness in the first bombing. He's going back to Bay Shore on the ferry."
"Okay, I'll get a copter on its way. Describe the house." She did. Healy broke the line for a terrifyingly long twenty seconds.
"Okay, what've we got?"
"A big handful of-what is it?-C-3. There's a timer. It's set to go off in about six minutes."
"Christ, Rune, get the hell out-"
"He's nailed me in."
A pause for a moment. Was he sighing? When he spoke, his voice was soothing as a Valium. "Okay, we're going to get through this just fine. Listen up. Okay?"
"What do I do?"
"Tell me about it." Rune told him what Hathaway had said about the bomb. It seemed he whistled when she explained it, but that may have been just static.
Fiveminutes.
"How big is the room?"
"Maybe twenty by fifteen."
A pause.
"All right, here's the deal. You get far enough away and cover yourself up with mattresses or cushions, you'll probably live."
"But he said it'll make me deaf and blind."