covered with brown butcher paper, so very little light came in or escaped, and a passerby would not see Varney unless he put his eye to the uncovered edge. The back window had been boarded even though it had bars on it. Only the single side window was functional, and it was covered with blinds.
He decided there really was no reason he had to work in complete darkness. He reached into the backpack and took out his Mag-lite, adjusted the beam so it was narrow and bright, and let it play along the floorboards and the baseboards and the suspended acoustic ceiling tiles, then over the desk itself. It was perfect: one room, twelve feet by fifteen feet, with only the desk and chair in it. Even better, there was only one entrance. Varney rigged the pipe bombs very carefully. There was one taped under the center of the desk, with the switch set against the back of the top center drawer, and the drawer a little bit open. If Prescott sat in the chair to listen to his phone messages, he would push in the top drawer of the desk, complete the circuit, and the bomb would cut him in half.
Varney armed the bomb, then went to work on the main charge. This one was set at the edge of the floor, covered only by a paper wrapper left over from the already installed wallboard. He ran the wire around the room, pushed it into the space below the baseboard, where it was covered by the new industrial carpeting and could not be tripped over. Then he set the end of it to a pair of magnetic sensors made for a burglar-alarm system. One would go on the door and the other on the jamb. When the door opened, the magnetic contact between them would break. That would permit a magnetic switch to trip, giving the electrical current a path down the wire. A less thoughtful man would have wired the blasting cap right into the circuit, but Varney had imagined the entire sequence. He had put the blasting cap into a parallel circuit with a time-delay relay. The door would open, five seconds would pass while Prescott stepped inside, closed it, took a couple of steps toward the desk, and then the cap would initiate the bomb. The narrow room would be filled with flying bits of the metal pipe, mixed with a pound of nails.
As he thought about it, Varney wondered if five seconds were enough. Maybe he should set the relay to ten. That way, Prescott could get all the way to the desk and close the drawer to set off that bomb first. Most likely, the main charge would go off after Prescott was dead, but that would be fine. He decided against the change. Prescott was not a stupid man. In ten seconds, he might have time to see that something had changed, and maybe even to disarm the charge.
Varney took his backpack, ran his light around the room one last time to be sure he had not left anything showing, then walked to the door to pull the two wires under the lower hinge. That way, he could connect the two wires to arm the circuit only after he was outside. He brought them to the spot, then reached up to put his hand on the knob, and knew there was a problem. The knob was a simple brass one, with no inner lock button or keyhole. It turned, but when it did, there was a spongy, unchanging resistance, not a spring pushing it back to its original position. He rotated it a full turn without feeling any effect. He switched on his flashlight again. The knob was a dummy. It was mounted on a steel plate that was welded to the steel door.
He stood and tugged, but it had no effect. The front door had been rigged so that it would not open from the inside. Varney felt a growing sense of alarm, but he knew what to do. He would take the pins out of the hinges and get out of here. He shone his light on the center one. The head of the pin was welded into the top bracket. He moved the flashlight. They were all dummies, welded in place. The real hinges were invisible and beyond his reach, built into the jamb.
Varney examined the parts of the front window that were not covered with butcher paper. He looked at it from an angle, then shone his flashlight along the edge. The glass wasn’t the regular kind. It looked about three quarters of an inch thick, and the edge was set deep into the steel frame. The outside had the same steel grating across it that the windows of the other storefronts had. He moved quickly to the smaller window at the side of the building. It was the same.
Prescott’s little office was not an office at all. It was a trap. Once a man was inside it, there was no way out. He would have to sit in here until Prescott came for him and opened the front door. Varney’s eyes went narrow with anger and hatred. His breaths came in short, rough rasps that dried his mouth. He felt as though the veins in his arms were swelling with the blood surging into them. He wanted to tear his way out of here, punch and kick his way through the wall, but he had to think. Prescott might already be on the way. Whatever Varney did, it had to be now, and it had to work.
The outer walls of the building were brick. But maybe the wall that separated this small room from the grocery store was just the usual frame of two-by-fours covered with wallboard. He took out his knife, selected a spot a yard from the corner of the room, and carved away a bit of wallboard. He worked in a circular motion, making a little pile of gypsum and plaster at his feet. Finally, the blade went through. He worked the knife around to make a bigger hole, his heart beginning to beat with anticipation. All he had to do was cut away a foot and a half between a pair of studs and the same size hole in the wallboard nailed on from the other side, and he would fit through. He could arm the circuit of the main bomb without the bother of connecting the last wires from outside. He would slither into the grocery store, go out the rear door to the parking lot, and he would be gone. Then Varney’s blade hit something that made a
He turned on the flashlight, shone it into the hole in the wall, and saw the rough, reddish surface. It was brick. The little office was not just a walled-off section of the grocery store; it was an addition. The brick had once been the outer wall of the building, and it was still there.
Varney stood still. He was surrounded by brick on four sides. He looked up at the suspended layer of acoustic tiles. Whatever was up there, it couldn’t be brick. He glanced at his watch. He had been in here for twenty-five minutes already. Prescott could be here at any moment—might already be out there waiting in the dark for him— and he was wasting time. He reached gingerly under the desk behind the center drawer and disconnected the wires, then pulled the pipe bomb out.
He felt as though Prescott had his arm clenched around his throat, choking off the air, making him flail around desperately, tiring himself with futile struggling. He could picture Prescott, not as just the tall, thin, middle-aged man he had seen slouching in the car in the California parking lot, but as he really was: the cold eyes watching him with sadistic amusement, the thin lips curled just a little at the corners in a mocking smile.
Varney pushed the desk toward the corner of the room. He bent at the knees, tipped it up on its end, and prepared to climb up on it to reach the ceiling, then stopped. Prescott had selected this place. He had chosen everything in it, and modified whatever wasn’t suited to his purpose. Prescott was cunning, calculating in a way that nobody Varney had ever met had been. He was perfectly capable of seeing that the desk could be tipped up on its end and used to climb to the ceiling.
Varney looked around him. Prescott had made sure the room had four brick walls. Varney could tell by the feel of the floor under his feet that the addition had been built on a concrete slab. Could Prescott have neglected the roof? He had probably had a layer of corrugated steel laid in, covered with tar paper and asphalt. He had thought of everything else. What had Prescott not known?
Varney looked down at the floor. The only thing that Prescott had not known was what Varney would do, what Varney would bring with him. Varney tipped the desk again and brought it back down.
He stood on it to reach the back window, then used his knife to loosen the screws in the plywood that covered the glass. He removed the square, opened the window, and examined the steel bars. He could tell by feel that the bars were in a frame anchored in the brick by four bolts at the corners.
He lifted his two pipe bombs from the floor and set one in the frame at each of the two lower corners outside under the windowsill. He opened his backpack and took out the third pipe charge he had brought but not installed, and used duct tape to secure it to the frame at the third bolt. Then he set himself to rewiring the three bombs in three parallel circuits, so the electrical current would reach all three at the same instant. He spliced the three entry wires and the three exit wires into two little twists. He took the insulated cord from the answering machine, cut it, stripped an inch of it, separated the two wires, and spliced one to each of his two twists.
Varney brought the window down, leaving only enough space for his cord. He used the rest of his duct tape to cover the glass, then screwed the plywood back over the window. He pushed the desk into the rear corner of the room near the electrical outlet, and crawled under it with his backpack. He used his knife to cut two small squares of cloth from the bottom of his shirt, rolled them into balls, and stuck them into his ears, took off his jacket and wound it around his head so it covered his face, ears, and neck. He curled into a ball under the desk and felt for the plastic plate of the electrical outlet. He opened his mouth to keep his eardrums from blowing out, took three deep breaths to calm himself, then inserted the plug.
The noise was so loud the air seemed to turn solid. The concrete foundation under him jumped to slap
