frozen.
If you’d expect to find several red sticks of dynamite strapped together with an alarm clock taped to it, you’d be disappointed. Instead, I was staring at an innocuous form about the size of a one-pound box of Arm amp; Hammer Pure Baking Soda. It was wrapped in some kind of thin cellophane like Saran Wrap and attached to the axle near the gas tank with several turns of duct tape. I didn’t slide away. I didn’t breathe.
After some time, I actually had a fleeting thought about the heat from the light that I couldn’t seem to move off the object. Don’t be stupid, I thought: Heat doesn’t set off explosives; electricity or a fuse does. That made me focus. I searched the brick of plastic for some form of detonator. If someone wanted to kill me with a remote detonator, wouldn’t he have done it by now while my head was under the car? Nice logic, Max. Feel better? No.
I squirmed and shifted my body to get a look at the other side of the package. It wasn’t wired as far as I could tell. Only then did I worm my way back out. I stood and took a deep breath-was that the first breath I’d taken since I saw the block of explosive? Then I walked back to the ranger station where I’d asked Luz Carmen to stay.
“We need to get you under federal protection,” I said.
She just nodded, as if had asked her to go to the corner grocery for bread. Dan was looking at the side of my face when I turned to him.
“You need to call the sheriff and tell them to get a bomb squad out here,” I said, trying to sound calm. “Somebody strapped the car with an explosive, but it doesn’t look like they had the chance to put a detonator on it. But we can’t take a chance.”
If there was a bomber still waiting out there for Luz to get into the vicinity of the car, he wasn’t going to get much satisfaction. Maybe Dan had scared the guy off before he had the chance to finish rigging the thing. The way the explosive was taped to the rocker arm, it wouldn’t have been a matter of just grabbing the thing and running when the flashlight beam hit him. So he left it behind and ran. But an attempt had been made. It might even be an easy task to simply remove the package, but I wasn’t going to do it.
Dan turned to the phone on his desk without hesitation. But after dialing the number, I caught him looking at me with wide eyes as he tried to process what I’d just told him so he could reword it to the dispatcher. Bomb. Explosive. This was not a skill set he’d learned in park ranger school. While he was waiting for the connection, I went out onto the porch and called Billy.
“I’ll call the bomb squad immediately,” was Billy’s first response.
“Being done.”
“And Ms. Carmen?”
“Sitting right here. Quiet.”
“I’m calling the feds as soon as we hang up,” Billy said with anger in his voice, which is rare but was becoming more prevalent. He is not a man who likes to be put off; yet he usually reacts by requesting higher-ups, and then dropping the names of prominent executives, judges, and politicians. Though Billy isn’t the type to get mad, he does get things done.
After we hung up, I stood looking out onto the wide river in front of me, the flat water ruffled by an eastern breeze. You could tell by the subtle brush back of the ripples that the bulk of the water was moving one way, while the opposing wind nipped at it in futility. The tide was going out. We were close enough now to the ocean that the pull of gravity was working its wonder. Nature does not give up her pull, despite what piddling man, even Al Gore himself, does. We will not destroy the world. The world will go on even after we’ve destroyed ourselves.
People won’t stop doing what they do, either. It’s inside us. Someone out there housed a predator inside, and it was leaking out. He wasn’t a pro. But this time, his work wasn’t going to look like an accident, as it had at the mobile home. The signature of explosive would be distinctive, if that was indeed what was in the package. Our assassin was running out of ideas, or was just plain getting anxious and sloppy.
Who was he-an amateur? A wannabe-an ambitious young one? But who gives the ambitious amateur the targets? Motivation is all, Max. Who wants to kill you or Luz Carmen, or both?
From a distance, I heard the sound of sirens, then the distinctive deep honk! honk! of a rescue or fire vehicle coming from the direction of the park entrance to the north. I knew there wasn’t much use for the display, but when the bomb squad gets a call out, the bells and whistles come with it.
A sheriff’s car was the first one into the parking lot, followed by the bomb squad’s utility truck, and sure enough, a fire engine-and lastly, a paramedic unit. People who question what they see as an overreaction would also be the first ones to bitch and second-guess if there wasn’t enough backup to handle their own emergency.
Dan and Luz Carmen joined me on the porch. The deputy from the cop car went straight to Dan, given that he was the guy in the ranger uniform. Dan explained the situation again, a bit better now that he’d had time to edit himself. When he used the phrase Mr. Freeman’s car, he nodded at me. Now I drew the spotlight and the scrutiny.
Since we were looking at the Gran Fury from a distance as we spoke, the officer in charge of bomb unit figured it out pretty quickly and began unloading equipment. After spelling out for the deputy that I’d been told someone suspicious was seen near the car in early darkness, I explained that I’d carefully checked out the periphery of the car without touching it and had indeed looked underneath and observed the package, but no obvious triggering device.
The deputy wasn’t stupid. When he caught me using the words periphery and observed, he interjected.
“Are you in law enforcement, Mr. Freeman?”
“Was.”
He looked into my eyes, waiting.
“I was a cop in Philadelphia. I’m a PI now, working for an attorney in West Palm Beach.”
“I see,” he said, not bothering to elaborate on what exactly he was now thinking. “And you, ma’am?”
Luz Carmen looked at him with the blank expression that both legal and illegal aliens have honed to perfection in South Florida.
“She is a client,” I said. “You might want to get in touch with a Sergeant Lynch concerning a trailer fire two days ago. I think this could all tie in together.”
The deputy nodded. “One thing at a time, Mr. Freeman,” he said, and then turned to the bomb squad sergeant who had joined our group. “Can you explain again, in as much detail as possible, what you’ve already observed around and under the car to Sergeant Peters here? I’ll make some calls.”
I did my best for the sergeant and two of his men, and then watched as the entire gang got together, working out their plan of approach. The fire engine was repositioned, its hoses placed at the ready. The paramedics turned their ambulance around, either to have the back doors ready for any emergency admission, or to haul ass if something went boom. Then everyone on the four-man bomb and arson unit pulled on the ubiquitous surgical gloves and began to circle around the Gran Fury. They started some fifteen yards out, and in time I could see them tightening the grid.
It was a probe-and-poke routine, not unlike what I had done myself two hours ago. At one point, a member raised his hand. He was about ten yards from the car, waist-high in grasses. When he called out something, the sergeant joined him. They were behind the Gran Fury, in the direction Dan had told them the prowler had fled. They bent and disappeared under my sightline.
When he finally stood, the sergeant called out an order I couldn’t hear, and the entire team moved in on the car, this time less tactically, more aggressively. Within thirty minutes, Sergeant Peters came back to the porch, the loosened package of explosive in one gloved hand. In the other, he carefully held what looked like a dismantled garage door opener; his thumb tip at one corner, his index finger at the other.
He did not look me in the face when he said: “I’m not sure it would have worked, but there’s no reason why not. But it seems our bomber didn’t have the time to plant the detonator and use this as a remote switch.” He held up the garage door opener. “All you need is a current to pass between two contacts.”
Then he looked up. “You were still damn lucky, Mr. Freeman.”
I agreed without saying so.
“If you don’t mind my asking, Sergeant,” I said, “what kind of expertise does it take to hook up something like this?”
“Tough part is getting the explosives. They’re still near impossible to get even on the black market. But the
