made. Healy didn't know what the choices were, though, and he was stalling. He left it to Cheryl but she wasn't much help, either. She sat with her hands together, looking out the window she'd cleaned a thousand times at the yard he'd mowed a hundred.
Healy finally said, 'Honey, you know, I was thinking-'
The phone rang.
He wondered if it would be Rune and how to handle it.
It wasn't.
'Sam?' the ops coordinator from the squad asked. 'We got a live one.'
'Tell me.'
'A call from those Sword of Jesus assholes. The device is in a bag on a houseboat in the Hudson-'
'Houseboat? Where?' His heart thudded.
'Around Christopher. Maybe Eleventh.'
'That's my friend's,' he whispered.
'What? That girl who was in here?'
'Yeah.'
'Well, don't panic. We've got a clean frozen zone and the boat's empty. She's not there.'
'Where is she?'
'I don't know but we searched the boat.'
'What's the device?'
'Different this time. The portable got a look at it before he called us. Looks like it's a bit of C-3 or C-4 embedded with ball bearings. Not much charge. Only a few ounces.'
'So, antipersonnel.' Ball bearings or coins were added to explosive to cause the most damage to human flesh.
'Right.'
'Can the robot get it?'
'Nope. It's on the deck. Too narrow.'
Healy pictured Rune's boat. Knew it would have to be a hand entry.
'Hell, get a bomb blanket over it and let it detonate.'
'Only one problem. Your girlfriend didn't realize it, I assume, but she's docked right next to a barge that's filled with five thousand cubic yards of propane. That bomb goes and takes out the barge-that'll ignite three square blocks of the West Side.'
'Hell, tow it out there.'
'I made a call and it'll take two hours to get a tug there and get the barge rigged to move. It's bolted to off- loading pumps on shore. You can't just move the damn thing.'
'And how much time do we have till the device goes?'
'Forty-five minutes.'
'I'll be right there.'
'One thing, Sam. It's weird.'
'What's that?'
'The Sword of Jesus… they didn't just call in a threat. They said, 'Get the Bomb Squad over to this houseboat in the Hudson at Christopher.' It's like that was the most important thing, getting somebody from the detail there.'
'That's why it's antipersonnel, you think?'
'Yep. I think it's directed at us.'
'Noted,' Healy said. He hung up. Turned to Cheryl, who'd heard the conversation.
He wondered if she was going to give him one of her exasperated looks. The Here-he-goes-again look. The shield against his stubbornness and selfishness. But, no, Cheryl was standing up, letting her white patent-leather purse fall to the floor, then walking straight to him. She eased her arms around him. 'Be careful.' He was surprised at how tightly he found he was holding her.
Breathing hard, in the bomb suit.
Walking up the gangplank onto Rune's houseboat. Trying not to think about the last time he was here. About them lying in bed together. About the stuffed toy, Persephone, falling to the floor.
He saw the bag, peeked inside.
Okay. Problems.
It was one of the most sophisticated bombs he'd ever seen. There was an infrared proximity panel so that if a hand got close it would detonate. And it had a cluster shunt-twenty or thirty fine wires running from a shielded power source to the detonator. With a typical two-wire shunt, if you cut them simultaneously, you might be able to disarm. But it was impossible to cut this many shunt wires. The timer was digital, so there was no way to physically gum up the mechanism.
And to top it off, there was a mercury rocker switch in the middle of the shuts.
Great, a rocker switch in a bomb on a houseboat…
Healy gave these details to the ops coordinator, who along with Rubin and several other members of the squad huddled behind sandbags at the end of the pier. They'd made the decision to bring only a few officers here; if the propane barge went up, whoever was within two blocks would be killed, and they couldn't risk losing the majority of the squad.
'I could cut the rocker switch,' he said, breathing heavily. It wasn't shunted. 'But I can't get into the bag. The proximity plate'll set it off.'
'How sensitive's the rocker?' Rubin asked through the radio.
'Pretty,' he replied. 'Looks like anything over three or four degrees'll close the switch.'
'Could you freeze the mercury?'
'I can't get anything into the bag. The prox switch.'
'Oh, right.'
'I'll just have to move it out slowly.'
Healy surveyed the scenario. He'd move the bomb to the gap in the houseboat railing where the gangplank was. That would be all right; the bag would stay relatively flat. But then he'd have to pick it up and carry it, by hand, down the gangplank and then to the TCV, which had been driven out onto the pier, ten feet from the houseboat.
That'll be the longest ten feet of my life.
He glanced at the timer. Seventeen minutes left.
'I need some oil.'
'What kind?' Rubin asked.
'Any kind.'
'Hold up…'
Fifteen minutes…
He was startled when Rubin appeared beside him with a can of 3-In-One oil.
Healy shook his head in thanks-Rubin wasn't wired into the radio any longer-and poured the oil on the painted deck of the houseboat, to minimize the friction when he moved the bag. He tossed the can aside and then reached out and gripped a corner of the canvas. Thought of Adam, thought of Cheryl, thought of Rune. He started to pull it toward him.
Rune watched Warren Hathaway walk down the path to the beach, where she was sunning on a large towel.
'I've just been on the phone with some investors. Here's what I've arranged. Not great but, considering you don't have a track record making films, I think you'll be happy.'
