Blake doused the door hinges with lubricant spray. A test tug gave off a faint squeak, so he lowered the door and sprayed more. On his second try, the door opened silently.
Apart from the wind, the compound was deathly still.
In the bunker, only the glimmer of scattered LEDs broke inky darkness.
Dana crept down the stairs, clutching the handrail. Still not putting much weight on her left leg, he noticed, before she disappeared into shadow. Again, Blake cursed his big, dumb feet.
At Blake’s shove, Carlos followed her down.
When Blake lowered the massive door from inside, Dana was ready with her flashlight. Not trusting an old gasket to be light-tight, he taped over the gap between the two doors. Only then did he pat the top-of-the-stairs wall sensor and activate the bunker’s ceiling lamps.
Two blinking packages, just as Rikki had described, were bound to support beams high overhead. The timers showed almost twenty hours remaining till a reset would be needed.
One way or another, matters would be resolved before then.
“Safe to talk?” he whispered.
“Should be,” Dana said. “You know, having Carlos here changes things. Li didn’t build these bombs.”
Doubtless Carlos had built the devices. Under other circumstances, he might have been the right person to disarm them. Not at gunpoint, shaking as he was. Not with his nostrils flared wide, his eyes round, and a tic. No way would Blake risk that man messing with detonators.
“If I have questions, he’s here,” Blake said. “But Carlos is no more an explosives expert than I am. The controls he devised will be simple, like in the land mine I took apart. We agreed upfront to that.”
But had that agreement reflected sound logic, or only shared wishful thinking? Believing anything else, they could never have dared this raid.
“It’s your call,” Dana said. “Let’s get him out of the way.”
“I’ll handle it. And I’m sorry about your foot.”
“Sprained ankle, I think. I’ll live.”
Blake pushed Carlos toward a mound of seed sacks. “Sit. Do not make a sound.”
Carlos nodded. Hands still bound behind him, he dropped to his knees. From there he swiveled, toppled awkwardly, and squirmed into a sitting position, his back against a couple of sacks.
The day of Li’s coup, Rikki had seen a folded stepladder leaning against a bunker wall. Too bad the ladder wasn’t still here. Blake found the chain hoist’s remote control and lowered the steel hook. Too small to accommodate his foot, alas. Catching the hook in a link of the sturdy chain, he fashioned a simple loop. When the bunker was new, he had moved cargo far heavier than himself using this hoist.
With the loop positioned in the notch between the heel and sole of a boot, the chain snug in the crook of an arm, Blake told Dana, “I’m ready. Raise me up.”
43
I’m going to die.
It scared Carlos, just a bit, how little that prospect scared him.
Death could come in many ways. Blake might blow up the three of them, together with the future of mankind. Or Li could happen upon them and—by accident or in a rage—do the same. Or someone might slit his throat while he sat trussed up, helpless.
While Blake examined the bombs up close and Dana’s attention was on him, Carlos began inching bound hands to his side.
The left-hand pant pocket was where he kept his cigar-trimming penknife.
*
Li had no idea what, but something was off.
She raised her head from the pillow, listening. Fussing newborns, to the extent noise cancellation failed to negate their babbling. The children on duty, crooning and shushing. Outside the window, the wail of the wind.
None of that would have awakened her.
Quickly, quietly, she dressed. She buckled on her holster, tucked the remote detonator in a pocket, and went outside.
*
“What is taking so long?” Rikki asked.
Antonio, his face a featureless, pale oval, might have shrugged. In the unlit garage, it was hard to know. He said, “No news is…no news.”
True but not helpful, she thought.
Outside the garage, by the glow of newly risen Euripides, the compound appeared normal. For all she knew, Blake and Dana hadn’t even managed to make the attempt. She could only wait and worry. About them. About two young children left home unsupervised.
About all the children, most as yet unborn, their futures hanging in the balance tonight.
*
Slowly, straining to reach, and entirely by feel, Carlos worked the penknife from his pocket. The way he slumped against a seed bag, his captors couldn’t see. He froze whenever Dana started to turn.
On the hoist, muttering to himself, Blake must have bypassed the circuits on one bomb. Its counter had gone dark without blowing them all to pieces. Blake had been right, of course. The circuits were as simple as Carlos knew how, as straightforward as he and Marvin together could devise, the better not to blow himself up.
Tearing one fingernail after another, trying to pry out the blade of the penknife—without crying out, wincing at the pain, or in any way attracting attention—Carlos tried to imagine how the others had gotten their hands on a land mine.
The blade, finally, had pivoted enough for him to grasp between finger and thumb. Muffled by his body and the seed sacks, he barely heard soft click as the blade snapped into its locked-open position. His captors were across the bunker and otherwise distracted. They couldn’t have heard—but he watched and waited anyway before moving.
Then, with slow, precise motions, Carlos began sawing at his restraint.
*
The digital display on the second bomb went dark, with Blake still alive to notice. None too soon, he thought, his left leg trembling with the strain. He could no longer feel that foot, mashed through his boot by his weight pressing on the chain.
“Got it,” he announced with relief.
“Never doubted it,” Dana answered.
Blake worked the metal hook of a bungee cord beneath the strap fastening one of the inert bombs to its
