Death of a Blue Movie Star

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."

There was silence. "Yeah," he said. "It may."

Four minutes, twenty seconds.

"The thing is, you try to disarm it yourself, and it goes, it'll kill you."

"Sam, I'm going to do it. How? Tell me how."

He was hesitating. Finally he said, "Don't pull the detonator out of the explosive. There's a pressure switch in it. You'll have to bypass the shunt and cut the battery cord. You need enough electricity to keep the galvanometer fooled into thinking the cord isn't cut."

"I don't know what that means!"

"Listen carefully. Look at the bomb. There'll be a little box near the battery."

"It's gray. I see it."

"With two metal posts on it."

"Right."

Healy said, "You have to run a piece of wire that's very narrow gauge-"

"What's gauge?" She was crying.

"Sorry… I mean, it's got to be real thin. Run a piece from one lead of that box to the main terminal connecting the battery to the cable. See what I'm saying?"

"Right."

"Then you cut the wires to the timer."

Three minutes, thirty.

"Okay," she said.

"Find a piece of wire, strip the insulation off, and wrap one strand-not all of them, just one strand-around the terminal of the gray box and then the other around the terminal on the timer. Then cut the other wires from the timer."

"Okay, I'll do it." She stared at the plastic components. Picturing it.

Healy said, "Remember, you can't override the rocker switch. So don't move the bomb itself."

Through her tears she said, "They're called IEDs, Sam. Not bombs."

"The helicopter's on its way. There'll be county police meeting the ferry in Bay Shore. And we'll send one out to Fair Harbor."

"Oh, Sam. Should I just hide under the mattress?"

He paused. The static rose up like a storm between them. Then he said, " 'Believe in what isn't as if it were until it becomes.'" Two minutes.

"I'll see you soon, Sam." Rune yanked the wires from the phone. Then, with her teeth, stripped the insulation off one of them-the white wire-and wound one strand around the two terminals, the way Healy had told her. Ninety seconds.

Now cut through the battery cables. She bent to the bomb, smelled the oily scent of the explosive, just inches from her face, and took one of the black wires in her teeth. She began chewing. Tears fell on the plastic.

It was thicker than she thought.

Fifty seconds.

A tooth chipped and she felt an electric jolt of pain and surprise. Her breath hissed inward.

Forty.

Thirty…

The wire snapped.

No time for the other one. Had he said to do both of them? She thought he had. Shit. She backed away from the bomb, pulled the mattress and springs off the bed and lay down on the floor in the corner the way Hathaway had told her. Blind and deaf…

Thirty twenty-nine twenty-eight twenty-seven…

She prayed-to a God she hoped was a lot different from the one the Sword of Jesus claimed as theirs.

Fourteen thirteen twelve eleven…

Rune tucked her head against her chest.

Warren Hathaway was proud of his precision. When not building bombs he was in fact a bookkeeper-though not a CPA-and he enjoyed the sensuality of the act of filling in the numbers on the pale green paper with a fountain pen or a fine-tipped marker-one that did not leave indentations on the sheet. He enjoyed the exactness and detail.

He also enjoyed watching big explosions.

So when the windows of the beach house did not disintegrate in a volley of shards and the sandy earth did not jerk beneath him from the huge jolt of the bomb he felt his stomach twist in horror. He didn't swear-the thought never would have entered his mind. What he did was pick up the hammer and walk the hundred yards back into the house.

The trials of Job…

He knew he'd set the system properly. There was no doubt that he knew his equipment. The cap was buried in just the right thickness of plastic. The C-3 was in good condition. The battery was charged.

The little whore had ruined his handiwork.

He walked inside and then slammed the hammer down on the wooden boards barring the door. He struck them near the nails to lift their heads and then caught them in the claw. With a loud, haunted-house creak the nails began coming out.

With the first nail: He heard the girl's voice in a panic, asking who was there.

The second nail: She was screaming for help. How silly and desperate they were sometimes. Women. Whoring women.

The third nail: Silence.

He paused. Listening. He heard nothing.

Hathaway pulled the rest out. The door opened.

Rune stood inside the room, in front of the table, looking at him defiantly. Her hair was stuck to her face with sweat, her eyes were squinting. She drew the back of her hand across her mouth and swallowed. In her other hand was a leg wrenched from a table or chair.

He laughed at it, then frowned, looking past her at the bomb. He studied it with professional curiosity. She'd bypassed the shunt.

He was frowning. "You did that? How did you know-?"

She held up the club.

Hathaway said, "You whore. You think that's going to stop me?"

He stepped forward toward her. He got only six inches before he tripped over the taut strands of telephone wire Rune had strung across the bottom of the doorway.

Hathaway fell heavily. He caught himself but his wrist bone snapped with a loud crack as it struck the floor. He shouted in pain and struggled to his feet. As he did Rune brought the club down on his shoulders as she ran past him through the doorway. It hit hard and he fell forward on his bad hand with a cry.

Hathaway was trying again to stand, supported by one knee and one foot planted on the floor, reaching into his pocket with his good hand for the box cutter. Staring at her as if she were the Devil come to earth. He started to his feet.

Rune waited for just a moment, then flung the leg of the table past Hathaway.

After that, the images were just a blur.

Rune's diving fall as she threw herself to the floor against the baseboard in the living room.

Hathaway's awkward, panicked attempt to grab the leg before it hit its intended target.

Then-when he failed to stop it-the cascading flash and ball of flame as the leg struck the bomb and the rocker switch set off the C-3.

Then the whole earth joined in the blur. Sand, splinters, chunks of Sheetrock, smoke, metal-all tossed in a cyclone of motion.

Hathaway had been right about the walls. The outer one held; it was the interior walls that shattered and whistled around Rune like debris in a hurricane. The floor dropped six inches. There was no fire, though the smoke was as irritating as he'd promised. She lay curled up in a ball until her throat tightened and the coughing became too violent, then she rose to her feet-without looking into the bedroom-and staggered outside.

Deafened, eyes streaming, she dropped to her knees and crawled slowly to the beach, coughing and spitting out the bitter chemical smoke.

Fire Island was empty on weekdays; there was no one even to be enticed by the bang. The beach here was completely deserted.

Rune dropped to the sand and rolled onto her back, hoping that the surf would rise closer and closer and touch her feet. She kept urging it on, and didn't know why she felt an obsession for the touch of the water. Maybe it was primal therapeutics; maybe she needed to feel the motion of something that seemed to be alive.

At the first brush of the cold water Rune opened her eyes and scanned the horizon.

A helicopter!

She saw it coming in low, then another.

Then a dozen more! All cruising directly toward her, coming in for an urgent rescue. Then she was laughing, a deep laugh she couldn't hear but which ran through her whole body, as the helicopters turned miraculously into fat seagulls that didn't pay her the least attention as they cruised down for their ungainly landings on the firm sand.