'It was only after he got off the air that he realized he'd just kissed goodbye to the patrol retirement fund. I don't know what he's like now, but back in 'ninety-three he looked as if his lottery numbers had come up and he'd just realized he'd forgotten to buy a ticket.'
She smiled.
There was a pause I was aching to fill as I watched her place her index fingers under her glasses and give each eye a wipe. But I'd done the damage I'd wanted to: I'd broken the spell.
I pointed at the weapon still across her lap as I got to my feet.
'Coming back to three hundred?'
'Why not?'
I waited as she got up. Her dark lenses zeroed in on me again.
'The other stuff getting too close for you, Nick?'
I turned and started counting off another two hundred paces in my head, with her at my side. Twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight.
I filled the space with business.
'I've been thinking. I need to be back at Charlie's by four tomorrow morning, so I'll have to leave here at ten tonight and we're going to need to work out how I can return this.' I held up the weapon.
'I presume you'll want it back?'
Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one.
'Sure do, it's the only present my father ever gave me that had any use. We'll work it out.'
I realized I'd lost the count. I started at forty-five as Carrie's f sunglasses turned to me.
'Do you know how you're going to do it yet you know, give him a reminder?' Fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty- four.
'I've had one or two thoughts ...'
Fifty-six, fifty-seven, fifty-eight. I looked out at the clearing, then had another.
'You got any explosive left?
I saw the pictures, on the cork board.' Seventy-three, seventy-four, seventy-five.
'You are nosy, aren't you?'
She pointed towards the far treeline that faced the rear of the house. There's a stash of the stuff down there in the shack.'
I was amazed.
'You mean you've just left it there? In a shed?'
'Hey, come on. Where are we? There's more to worry about round here than a few cans of explosives. What do you want it ' for, anyway?'
'I need to make a lot of noise to remind him.'
I couldn't see any outbuildings, just greenery: because of the downhill slope the bottom third of the treeline was in dead ground.
'Do you know how to use it? Oh, of course stupid.'
'What kind is it?'
She pulled a face.
'It goes bang and blows up trees, that kind. George and some of the local guys played with it.'
I'd lost count again. I was guessing eighty-nine, ninety, ninety-one, then Carrie stopped to announce: 'First one hundred.'
She pointed towards the dead ground.
'I'll take you down there after we've-' 'Mom! Mom! Grandpa wants to talk!' Luz was yelling for her from the rear of the house.
Carrie put her hands to her mouth.
'OK, baby.' She sounded quite concerned as she put down the bottle and ammo box.
'I've got to go.'
She emptied her pockets of the tobacco tin and Zippo then threw them into the ammo box. She turned to me and smiled.
'She'd ground me.'
Jogging out into the sun to cover the two hundred metres or so to the house, she pointed once more towards the invisible hut in the treeline.
'You can't miss it.
Later.'
I left everything where it was and headed for the trees at the bottom of the cleared patch, keeping in the shade of the lot I was under. The hut didn't come into view for a while, and even when it did I couldn't face walking out into the sun to cut the corner. The heat haze that shimmered above the ground wasn't exactly inviting: I was a sweaty mess already.
I scratched away at my back and followed the shade of the tree-line round two sides of the square, eventually getting to what looked like a wooden outdoor privy. The door hung precariously on the lower rusty hinge and grass grew high right up against the door. Spiders' webs were spun all over the hut as if forming a protective screen. I looked through the gap in the broken door, but didn't see a toilet. Instead I saw two square, dull metal boxes with red and black stencilling.
This was a gift from heaven: four tin boxes, eight kilos in each. I couldn't understand the Spanish, but made out what was important: it contained 55 per cent nitroglycerine, a high proportion. The higher the amount of nitro, the more sensitive it is; a high-velocity round would easily detonate this stuff as it passed through, which wouldn't have been the case with military standard high explosive, which is shockproof.
I wrenched open the door and stepped inside. Pulling off the opening key from the side of the top box, I saw the date on the pasted-on label, 01/99, which I presumed was its Best Blown-up-by date. This stuff must be old enough to have been used when Noriega was in nappies.
I got to work, peeling the sealing strip of metal just below the lid exactly as if I was opening a giant can of corned beef.
A plan was already forming in my mind to leave a device by Charlie's gates. If I couldn't drop the target as he moved outside the house, I could take him out while his vehicle waited for the gates to open by getting a round into this shit, instead of him. My fire position would have to be in the same area I'd been in yesterday to ensure a good view of the pool and the front of the house, as well as the road going down towards the gate. I'd have to rig the device so it was in line of sight of the fire position, but I couldn't see that as a problem.
Sweat was gathering on my eyebrows. I wiped it as it was about to drip into my eyes and pulled back the lid of the tin container to reveal the inner wooden box liner. I cut the string banding with my Leatherman and lifted that too. I found five sticks of commercial dynamite, wrapped in dark yellow grease proof paper, some stained by the nitro, which had been sweating in this heat for years. A heavy smell of marzipan filled the air and I was glad I was going to work with this stuff outdoors. Nitroglycerine can damage your health, and not just when it's detonated. It won't kill you when you handle it, but you're guaranteed the mother of all fearsome headaches if you work with it in a confined space, or if you get it into a cut or it's otherwise absorbed into the bloodstream.
I took three of the eight-inch sticks and wandered back to the firing point, following the shade of the treeline once more, pulling back the grease proof paper as I walked to reveal sticks of light green Plasticine-type material.
Minute grey crystals of dried-out nitro coated the surface. Passing the weapon and ammo box, I continued the other two hundred paces to the target area, where I placed them side by side at the trunk of the thickest tree I could find near my paper targets. Then, back at the two-hundred point, I got into my firing position and took a slow, deliberate shot at the black circle.
The zero was good: it went in directly above the one-shot zero round I'd fired just as it should.
Now came the acid test, both for the zero and HE (high explosive). Picking up the ammo, weapon and bottle, I took another hundred paces to roughly the 300yard mark, lay down, checked the area to make sure Carrie or Luz hadn't decided to take a wander from the house towards the target area, then aimed at the sternum-sized target of green dynamite.
When I was sure my position and hold were correct, I had one last check around the area.
'Firing, firing!' The warning shout wasn't necessary, since no one else was about, but it had become a
