After the Rain

connected by wires. A flat, dark plastic wafer in a taped plastic bag.

Holly gently scraped at the clay with a fingernail, brought it to his nose, sniffed, then put it to his tongue. He said, “Semtex. Military-grade blasting cap wired to a telephone pager.” He turned to the manager.

“Wait a minute…” the plant official said. His face was going dreamy and dissociative. His eyes seemed to recede into his head.

“There’s another hole like this on the other side. They’re angled,” Yeager said. “We talked to the guy who milled out the channels for Dale.”

“What’s on the other side of that wall?” Holly demanded in a steely voice.

“That wall’s five feet of steel-reinforced concrete,” the manager said, drawing himself up.

“Are there tunnels, subterranean rooms? Goddamn it, how much of the pool is below ground?” Holly shouted.

“Most of it,” the manager said, starting to tremble.

“Yeah, right! There’s water on the other side of that wall. Fucking water. Get it out of here,” Holly yelled. “Get the ass end pointed in the river, anywhere, just get it away from this wall.”

Fuller scrambled up the step into the cab, sat down, leaned into the controls. Nothing happened. He stuck his head out and yelled, “She’s dead.”

One of the workmen started checking the engine. He yelled, “Irv, battery wires cut. And the gas line.”

Fuller jumped down from the cab, visibly shaken. “This is a fucking boat anchor. Without power the hydraulics are dead, no steering.”

“It’s a bomb,” the security guard said under his breath. He started backing up. The sudden way he moved reminded Broker of something. Then he placed it. The movie Jaws, when people in the water thought they saw the shark and started backpedaling, in panic, trampling people. As he backed up, he started talking with barely controlled panic into his mobile radio:

“We have a level-one event. Activate the Emergency Notification System. Yes, goddammit. Now! Call the city of Red Wing, Goodhue County, the State Office of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and the governor. And call the St. Paul bomb squad. We may have a bomb next to the spent-fuel pool. Evacuate all nonessential personnel. We have to shut down.”

“Shut down?” the manager yelled. “You idiot! WE CAN’T SHUT DOWN THE COOLING POOL!” His knees buckled.

It was starting.

“IT’S A BOMB!” yelled the nearest construction worker, as he started to walk rapidly toward the gate. Broker and Holly stared at each other.

“We gotta move this thing,” they both said at the same time.

Fuller gritted his teeth. “Dale was here to check this machine because the wheels felt a little stiff…”

“Shit,” Holly said. He and Broker stared at each other. “The wheels…”

They went to one of the wheel wells and struck at the twist valve cover with a hammer and a wrench. After several strikes it loosened. Straining, manic, they forced the cover to turn on its threads and removed it. The wheel was filled with congealed vinyl-like material. Broker fumbled in the toolbox, found a heavy screwdriver, and probed into the opening.

“Something in here,” he said, grimacing, fumbling. Blood ran as he skinned his hand. But he managed to snag a loop of…hose. Embedded in the hardened foam. Pulled it out. He peeled away the gunk.

Very lightweight garden hose wrapped in tape. Yeager snapped open a Buck knife and handed it to Broker. He slit the tape and peeled open the bulge of hose. Broker reflexively stood up and backed away-a phobic, reflex firing of muscles. The hose was packed with red Semtex.

“Christ, could be all four wheels.” Holly’s voice sounded like a dead bolt sliding into place. “That could be…”

“A ton,” Broker said in a controlled, hollow voice.

“Right,” Holly said. He spun on the manager. “You ain’t gonna have a hole in your pool, buddy. You ain’t gonna have a pool.”

The plant manager started to tremble. Broker watched his face turn clammy, then he ceased to sweat. His eyeballs enlarged and his pupils contracted. “Wait a minute. What are you saying?” he whispered. “How could that get in here?”

Holly shook his head. “I’m sure you vetted the construction crew, And you checked the bottoms of the trucks these machines came in on. But you didn’t disassemble the machines themselves. And even trained sniffer dogs miss Semtex-that’s how good those smart Czech bastards made it.

“So basically what we got here is a directional charge of the world’s best explosives, maybe four hundred pounds of it aimed directly at the foundation of your cooling pool.” Holly clicked his teeth, looked around. “Plus the wheels. This fucker will crater big enough to hold a couple three Olympic pools. And it’s rigged for remote detonation with pagers…”

“One phone call,” Broker said, barely recognizing his own voice.

“Yeah,” Holly said. “Question is, how big is his comfort zone? How far upwind is he going to travel before he punches in the numbers?”

“We’ll…just…take it apart,” the manager said carefully. “We’ll disconnect the wires.”

“That call is beyond my training,” Holly said. “And we can’t wait for the bomb squad.”

“This can’t happen.” Slowly the manager lowered himself to the ground as his knees failed. He put his hands in his lap, swallowed, and recited, “An attack on the cooling pool is not a credible event.”

Broker and Holly turned their backs on the confused manager. “So let’s move this thing,” Broker said.

“What if it’s booby-trapped to blow if it’s tampered with?” Holly gritted his teeth.

“We got no choice,” Broker said.

“Agreed. Clear everybody out,” Holly said.

Then the siren started. The high-pitched wail galvanized the numb gawkers still standing around the machine. Instinctively, they started to move away.

“Everybody get back,” Fuller yelled. His knees had begun to shake and he started to fade away. The plant manger was crawling on all fours. One of the guards helped him to his feet and he joined the exodus, breaking into a jerky run. All over the plant grounds people were starting to walk rapidly toward the gate. The beginnings of an orderly evacuation.

A drill.

Then one of them started to run.

And they all began to run.

“IT’S A BOMB! IT’S A BOMB!” the running workers carried the cry into the parking lot.

Broker took a breath. The air had turned to mush; the old hot and cold fight-or-flight willies ran up and down his spine. It was a strange moment. Broker, Holly, and Yeager were caught up in the momentum and they, too, stepped back, as if swept up in a powerful undertow that sucked them toward the warmth and comfort of the other fleeing bodies.

Hundreds of people in motion now. They watched a guard drop his rifle and run. Not a good omen.

Broker located Fuller a hundred yards away at the edge of the fenced area. Fuller had his hand to his forehead, stooped over like he had a lot of weight on his back. He was talking to three, four of his crew, men in hard hats. They were straining in the bad body language of men caught in a riptide.

Further out, it looked like a big neon sign had crashed down on the parking lot. Horns blared and brake lights sputtered in a snarl of traffic, a building wail of approaching sirens and flashers added to the melee, coming off the highway.

“Yeager, get Fuller over here. We need some of his crew to help us. Gotta rig some chains, fire up those machines, something.” Broker flung his arm at the line of tractors and bulldozers.

Holly was dancing back and forth, looking over the area. “Where do we put it?”

“We need Fuller,” Broker yelled.

So they watched as Yeager sprinted across the wide lot and started an animated discussion with Fuller and his men. After precious seconds of arm waving, Fuller and the other men retreated. One man joined Yeager in a dash back toward the machine. They made a lonely sight, just the two of them doubling back while hundreds ran the other way.