“There are several tanks on the island, some of them hold fuel and others water, so it’s har-” He stopped and swung around, then peered into the fog in the direction of the smokestack. “Wait a minute. There is a diesel tank.” He walked to the furthest edge of the landing pad, then held out an index finger and settled on a location. “There.”
Carondolet took off along the left side of the helicopter, leading them toward the water tower. Just before they hit its stanchion, he hung a left down a series of cement stairs. The steps ended at a lengthy, deeply sloping sidewalk that paralleled the cistern where the chopper had set down.
As they ran along the path, to their right, the Powerhouse and Quartermaster warehouse rose from below the adjacent East Road.
Carondolet led them up East Road and through a cyclone fence sally port, just past the end of the Powerhouse building. A chain-link gate, its lock forced open, blocked the entrance to a steeply sloped steel gangplank that spanned a gully below. The metal footway led down to a sizable cement slab that contained pipes of varying sizes and stainless steel hatches. A white, black and red warning sign stood sentry where the bridge ended:
DANGER
COMBUSTIBLE LIQUIDS
DIESEL FUEL
A large cylindrical tank the color of a fire engine and marked Diesel Fuel stood on wide rails at the far edge of the concrete base, seemingly at the edge of the island. Barely visible beyond the red tank was…nothingness. Regardless of the fog, Vail still heard it: crashing waves of the ocean.
“There,” Carondolet said.
Vail pulled open the gate and grabbed the railings of the narrow gangway, then headed down, followed by Burden and Dixon.
She stood in front of the massive tank, hands on her hips. “Now what?” She pulled her phone to make sure she had not missed a text from the offender. Nothing-but with the crappy cell reception on the island, she wondered what he would do if his messages weren’t getting through. How would he react? Not well.
“Anything?” Yeung called out, standing watch with Carondolet at the gate, handguns at the ready.
Dixon jumped down to the ground about five feet below the concrete support base, which stood beside the Powerhouse’s exterior wall. A moment later, she called up to Vail from the other side of the tank. “You wanted to find Scheer, right?”
Vail looked down in Dixon’s direction, though she couldn’t see her. “Uh, that’d be affirmative.”
“Well, we found him.”
Vail and Burden jumped off the foundation, then climbed over a series of yellow pipes that protruded from the cement base. Dixon was standing on the other side of the tank…where Stephen Scheer was seated.
“Is he-”
“No,” Dixon said. “He’s alive. Unconscious, but breathing. Drugged, maybe.”
Burden craned his neck and reached across the top of the base. “He’s chained to the tank.” He leaned in closer, then said, “And not to dampen the spirit, but we’ve got another problem.” He leaned against the edge of the foundation and pointed at a box to Scheer’s left.
“Yeung,” Vail yelled. “We’ve got an IED!” A bomb. A goddamn bomb-
Yeung, standing behind the cyclone fencing thirty feet away, pulled his phone and began dialing.
Vail climbed atop the cement base and knelt next to the device. “Timer-set for…holy Jesus-three minutes.”
“Active?”
“Two minutes fifty-eight seconds. Yeah, it’s active.”
Carondolet ran halfway down the gangplank. “Get out, we need to get away from here!”
“Can you raise EOD-maybe they can talk us through deactiv-”
“Karen, that’s a bomb attached to a diesel tank. And the slab you’re standing on? It’s a storage receptacle filled with fuel. Not only that, see that yellow piping?” Carondolet gestured at the tubes that snaked up the side of the Powerhouse building. “It runs the entire length of the island. All the way to the dock. This bomb goes off, it’ll take half the island with it.”
And that’s the offender’s plan. Kill all the former guards and cons. Vail rose and, among the many valves protruding from the back of the tank, chose one that was perched above a coupling pipe.
“What are you doing?” Dixon asked. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”
Vail began turning the burled knob. “Burden-try to reach someone on the dock, have ’em find a valve on the yellow pipe and open it full bore.”
Burden pulled his phone and ran up the metal bridge with Carondolet.
“Karen,” Dixon said. “We’ve gotta go.”
“We leave, Scheer dies-”
“If we don’t leave, we all die.” Dixon grabbed Vail’s arm, but she shrugged it off.
“See if you can get him free,” Vail said as she continued cranking the knobbed wheel atop the valve. “We’ve still got time.”
Dixon moved to Scheer’s body and began inspecting the bindings. “I can’t-chain’s tight. We need a hacksaw or bolt cutter-”
A loud hiss, indicating tremendous pressure-blew back at Vail. She yanked her hand away at the instant a thick stream of diesel fuel blasted outwards, cascading out of the mouth of the coupling pipe in a downward arc toward the ocean below.
The acrid odor constricted her throat. She twisted away and buried her nose in the crook of her elbow.
Dixon, her face likewise shielded, asked, “What good is that?”
“Emptying the tank,” Vail shouted. “Concrete slab might dampen the explosion. Maybe it won’t ignite the fuel underneath us.”
“Now can we leave?” She leaned in close. “Ninety seconds left.”
“What about Scheer?”
“Not happening. He’s chained down. Unless you have a bolt cutter in your back pocket, there’s nothing we can do.”
Shit.
“Karen,” Burden yelled from above. “Let’s go- now!”
Dropping her arm and holding her breath, Vail climbed around the
