10:49 a.m
Matt thought about trying to navigate the water pipe, as Shelly had, and following her out that way, but the pipe had bowed under her weight and he was fairly certain it would break under his. Mr. Dark smiled down at him.
“You should have killed her when you had the chance.”
For a moment, Matt feared that the son of a bitch could read his mind.
Because the thought had occurred to him.
Matt had killed before, but only when there was no other choice. When not killing would have meant more deaths. He wasn’t a murderer.
Not yet.
The voice in his head was his own… but it sounded eerily close to Mr. Dark’s.
Matt got off the forklift, limped behind the tanks, found Terri, and once again removed the duct tape from her mouth.
“Why did you leave me here like this?” she said.
“I didn’t want you to walk around with me and maybe get your head blown off.”
“Oh. Well, thanks. I guess.”
Matt switched on the flashlight from Hubbs’s office, put it in his mouth, and started unwrapping the tape binding Terri’s hands. He wanted her to raise him to the vent fan with the forklift so he could go after Shelly.
Then he saw the red glare.
He stopped what he was doing and scooted one of the bags of chemicals out of the way. A cavity had been created underneath it, and in the center of the cavity was a red metal gas can, the kind people use to fill lawn tractors. But this was no ordinary gas can. Two holes had been drilled through the lid, and a pair of electrical wires snaked from the holes to a black metal box the size of a deck of cards. The box was secured to the top of the can with duct tape.
Matt looked at the bags of chemicals stacked from one end of the tanks to the other. He shined the light on one of the bags and saw the words ammonium nitrate printed in bold black letters.
He didn’t know much about chemistry, but he knew that ammonium nitrate was one of the ingredients terrorists used to make bombs. Timothy McVeigh had used 108 fifty-pound bags of the stuff to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.
There were easily ten times that many stacked behind the Fire and Ice tanks.
Matt figured the explosion would not only destroy the plant-it would wipe out a couple of square blocks of nearby residences and businesses as well.
You know, I’m tempted to let you stick around until eleven and see the show. It’s going to be fabulous.
Matt had wondered what K-Rad was talking about, and now he knew.
“What are you doing?” Terri said. “Untie me!”
Matt frantically unwound the tape from her wrists and then started on her ankles. “I don’t want to scare you,” he said, “but if we don’t move really, really fast, we’re going to be blown to smithereens.”
“What are you talking about?”
“There’s a bomb about eighteen inches to your right.”
Terri jumped to her feet and almost fell back down. “Oh my God. What are we going to do?”
“I have an idea, but my leg’s messed up. So you’re going to have to do most of the work.”
“Just tell me what to do.”
They hurried to the front of the tanks.
“Grab some two-and-a-half-inch hoses off that rack over there,” Matt said. “Get three of the twelve-footers. We’re going to need a three-way connector and a reducer and a twenty-foot section of one-inch hose.”
While Terri ran for the hose rack, Matt positioned a pneumatic pump a few feet from the valves in front of the tanks. By the time he ran an air hose from its reel on the wall and secured it close to the base of the pump, Terri had gathered the supplies and it was
10:56 a.m
Matt instructed Terri to connect one of the fat hoses to the valve on the Fire tank and another to the valve on the Ice tank. The loose ends of those two hoses then went to the cross on the three-way connector. One end of the third two-and-a-half-inch hose was connected to the stem of the three-way, and the other to the pump’s input port. The reducer and the long one-inch hose were connected to the pump’s output. Matt fed the smaller hose between the tanks and let it rest on top of the ammonium nitrate bags.
“I want you to open the valves to the tanks when I give the word,” Matt said.
The exact formulas for Fire and Ice were a tightly kept corporate secret, but Matt knew the pH of Fire was 1 and that of Ice was 14. Shelly had told him that much before his first day on the job. Fire was an acid, and Ice a base. The solutions were highly caustic, and the blenders and packagers were required to wear special suits and gloves and respirators and goggles while performing their duties. A drop of either on bare skin would cause an instant blister, a splash in the face lifelong disfigurement or even death.
But what would happen if the two skin-scalding liquids were mixed together? If Matt remembered correctly from high school chemistry, they would neutralize each other and essentially become water. That’s what he wanted to happen.
Matt looked at his watch. It was thirty-four seconds to the top of the hour-thirty-four seconds until a ball of fire consumed the entire neighborhood.
… 33… 32… 31…
The valves on the tanks were positioned at an angle, and Terri was able to stand between them and reach both levers. Matt jammed the end of the air hose onto the pneumatic pump and said, “Do it!”
Terri opened the valves simultaneously, and within seconds the mixture of Fire and Ice came spewing from the one-inch hose and started flooding the area behind the tanks.
5… 4… 3… 2…
11:00 a.m
K-Rad walked into the Retro and took a stool at the bar. The place had just opened, and the lunch crowd hadn’t started sifting in yet. K-Rad was the only customer. He’d stuffed his gas mask and other goodies into his backpack, and he’d left the Kevlar vest and the Berettas in his car. The bartender, a chick named Tami with full- sleeve tats on her arms and quarter-inch gauges in her earlobes, slapped a napkin in front of him and said, “What’s up, K?”
“Not much. Let me get a Shiner Bock, okay?”
“Sure.”
She brought the longneck brown bottle and popped the top with an opener. The television was tuned to an infomercial about an herbal supplement called Zark-O. It was supposed to make you live to be around two hundred years old or something.
“Can you turn it on Channel Four?” K-Rad said. Channel 4 was one of the local network affiliates, and K-Rad knew the boneheads on the news team there would have the big story before it went national. Those motherfuckers thrived on human misery. They went after it like vultures went after roadkill.
Tami wiped her hands with a towel. “I heard that stuff really works.”
“Zark-O?”
