Warning Signs

CHAPTER 60

My instinct was to turn my head to follow the trajectory of the missile as it lifted from the back of the truck. But Sam held my face firmly with both his hands, forcing me to stare into his eyes. As the roar of the newly launched tank diminished, he said, "I'm going to shoot him, then I'm going to compress the switch on his foot. You're going to press the button on his hand every five seconds until the bomb squad tells you to stop. You are not going to hold it down. Every five seconds. You got it?"

I nodded.

"You're sure?"

I nodded again.

He moved around to the passenger side of the truck. I followed him.

Ramp turned just as Sam was leveling his weapon. Ramp's eyes were soft and inviting, at once disbelieving and trusting. I sensed that he knew what was about to happen, and that he welcomed it. My ears were so overwhelmed by the hissing gases and the fomenting chaos that I'm not sure I even heard the explosion from Sam's handgun. But I think I saw a dark hole emerge three inches below the collar line and two inches left of center on Ramp's chest.

Ramp's face registered no surprise before he fell.

Sam screamed, "Alan, now! Every five seconds. Count out loud so I can hear you."

Ramp had collapsed into an awkward heap in the confined space between the steel rack that had been full of tanks and the big metal equipment box. Sam and I were bumping into each other, clawing at Ramp's limbs, desperate to find the correct hand and the correct foot.

Sam yelled, "I got his foot! I have the switch."

Ramp's right hand was pinned beneath his body, which seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. I yanked at his elbow. It didn't free his hand.

"You got it?" cried Sam.

I didn't answer. I put all my weight into another tug on Ramp's elbow. In my head I was counting to ten and was already at eleven.

Ramp's hand came free.

I traced down his wrist, turned his hand palm up, and pressed maniacally with my thumb.

The red button was gone.

"It's gone."

"What do you mean it's gone?"

"It's gone."

"Get Lucy and get out of here. Do it! Now!"

Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen.

I crawled backward off of Ramp's body and almost fell before I ripped open the door to the truck. Lucy was huddled in the footwell on the passenger side. Her eyes were streaked red and tears stained her cheeks. As she saw me, she pushed herself up onto the seat. I raised her over my shoulder in a fireman's carry and ran north on Broadway, waiting for an explosion to sever Lucy's body and end my life.

I screamed, "Bomb squad! Bomb squad! Over here! Bomb squad!" until Lucy and I were just inside the taped perimeter near Fourteenth Street. But when I arrived at that spot and looked around, I realized we were alone.

The aftermath of the impact of the last few tanks that Ramp had launched and the destruction caused by the exploding patrol car had created enough carnage and confusion to occupy all the emergency personnel on the scene.

I stood Lucy on the sidewalk at Fourteenth and Broadway and stared at her restraints. She was yelling something at me as I tugged at her gag.

She coughed. "That's a shaped charge on my chest. It's not wired to me. It takes a radio signal to set it off. Get it off of me!"

I examined the bulky pack on her chest.

She implored me, "It's just taped on. Take it off! Take it off of me!"

I looked around once again for someone wearing a windbreaker that said "Bomb Squad." No one was coming to help us.

I thought of Sam, contorted in the truck, firmly maintaining pressure on the button on the bottom of Ramp's boot.

Then I began to unwrap the duct tape that secured the package on Lucy's chest. Of course, my fingers shook. Of course, the tape tore where it shouldn't. Of course, I heard ticking even though my head knew that this device wasn't timed.

I could barely see through the images of Grace that were flooding my consciousness and the sweat that was dripping into my eyes.

Finally I had the thing in my hands. It was heavy for its size. My instinct was to twirl into a discus thrower's motion and throw the thing as far away as I could. Instead, I sat it gingerly onto the concrete as though it were a sleeping baby. Then I lifted Lucy into my arms and ran north down Broadway. I put her down in the shadows of the Veteran's Memorial and sprinted back toward Sam, making a wide arc around the shaped charge on the sidewalk.

A hundred feet from him, I yelled, "She's safe, Sam! The bomb is off her chest."

"I can let go?"

"Yeah. The device is back there, on the far corner. But stay down. It's a big thing."

"That's it? There?"

"Yes."

"Nobody's near it?"

"No."

He held his hands high in the air so I could see that he'd released the switch on Ramp's boot.

I counted to ten. When I got to fourteen, the charge on the corner exploded.