To Darkness And To Death

chemist?”

“It’s not difficult,” Clare said. “It’s not much different from an old-fashioned Molotov cocktail.” She kicked the wine crate. Bottles clinked in emphasis. “You put the accelerant in a container, add some sort of basic fuse, and…”

She looked down at the crate.

She looked up at Russ.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered.

Russ lunged for the crate, prying and yanking at the top until the slender nails holding it together groaned out of their holes and he toppled backward. A musky petroleum smell bloomed in the cold night air. Clare reached for one of the bottles. “Wait,” Russ said. Climbing to his feet, he yanked his handkerchief out of his pocket. “Don’t touch them directly. You may get some on you.” Working quickly but carefully, he removed the dozen bottles and set them on the pavement.

Clare looked into the bare box. “Where’s the fuse?” She dropped to her hands and knees beside the wooden crate. “I think the bottom on the inside of this box is higher than the bottom on the outside.” Russ patted his jacket pockets. “I need something to pry it open.” Clare rose from the pavement, turned toward her car, and reached inside. He heard the pop of a glove compartment, and then she was handing him a Swiss army knife. He slid the knife blade between the boards and pressed it up and in. The false bottom tilted up smoothly. Beneath it, twisted wires, a stripped-down cell phone, and an even layer of blasting caps had been composed into the arts-and-crafts project from Hell.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God,” Clare said. He wasn’t sure if she was praying or not.

“What’s going on?” Hugh’s voice was tight with fear. “What the bloody hell is going on?”

“These are bombs,” Russ said. “The wine crates are bombs.” He looked into Clare’s eyes and saw his own horror there. She got it. First there would be the explosion. Then, in a moment too quick for human reckoning, a spray of shrapnel, deadly splinters embedding in unprotected flesh, and finally the sticky, liquid flame clinging to everything it touched.

“We have to clear the ballroom,” he said, amazed, as he always was, at how matter-of-fact his voice could be despite his fear.

She nodded.

“We have to get this thing out of your car,” Hugh said, turning to the backseat.

“Leave it,” Clare said.

“But Clare, if it goes off-”

“Leave it!”

Hugh reared back. Unlike Russ, he had evidently never heard Clare unleash her command voice.

“The car can be replaced. You can’t.” She turned, snatched up her skirts, and ran for the entrance to the resort.

Russ pounded alongside her, trying to hit the speed dial for Harlene with his arm jerking up and down. “Harlene,” he gasped, when he finally made the connection, “IEDs here at the resort.” Improvised explosive devices. “We need fire, we need emergency, we need every unit in the county turning out for this.”

“Copy that, Chief,” Harlene said. “Do you have casualties?”

“They haven’t blown yet, but when they do it’s gonna be bad.” Ahead of him, Clare flung open a door and leaned against it to let him run through.

“Bomb squad?”

“Hell, yeah,” he said, knowing it would be futile. The nearest explosive ordinance team was in Troop G, an hour away in Loudonville. Clare had skidded to a stop in front of the registration desk and was trying to juice an obviously skeptical clerk. “Chief out,” he said to Harlene. Pocketing his phone, he reached inside his jacket and pulled out his badge. He hung it in front of the desk clerk’s face. “This is a police emergency. You listen to what this lady says and do what she tells you to do. Got it?” He glanced at Clare without waiting for confirmation from the wide-eyed bell clerk. “I’m going to evacuate the ballroom.”

She jerked her chin down.

He ran to the entryway. At the head of the huge room, dwarfed by the moonlit mountains looming behind him, a tall, balding, academic sort was at the podium. He was talking about the preservation of the Adirondack wilderness, his amplified voice underscored by the clinking of dessert forks and coffee spoons.

“… and so we want to recognize those for whom preserving the natural world has become a calling…”

Russ paused at his own table. He put one hand on Linda’s shoulder and the other as close to the centerpiece as he could. “I want you all to get up right now,” he said in a low voice. “Get your coats and go to your cars. Go home immediately.”

“Russ!” Linda tipped her head back to look at him. “Honey, whatever on earth are you saying?”

“Bomb threat.” He decided to underplay it. The words “There’s a bomb in the room” tended to produce running and screaming. The only way they were going to clear this ballroom without someone getting hurt was to keep it lowkey. Seriously low-key. Urgently low-key.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” Robert Corlew reached for his after-dinner coffee. “These things are always complete smoke. Some bored teenagers with nothing to do on a Saturday night.”

Or maybe not so low-key. “Linda,” he said, taking her by both arms. “Your life is in danger. If you love me, you’ll leave. Now.”

He looked into her big blue eyes. Please, honey, he thought. Please.

She rose from her seat and kissed his cheek. “I’ll see you at home, then.” Without a single look behind her, she walked out of the ballroom.

The table was dead silent. “Jim,” Russ said, “I’m going to make an evacuation announcement. Will you come with me? Having the mayor there may make people a little less skeptical.”

Cameron nodded. He took his wife’s hand and kissed it. “Better go, alsking.”

She nodded, pale-faced. “I’ll wait for you in the car.”

He glanced up at Russ, who shook his head, then back to her. “Don’t,” he said. “I’ll find my own way home.”

Robert Corlew abruptly shoved his chair back and bolted from the table. His wife looked to where he was disappearing out the entryway. “Excuse me,” she said in her hesitant voice, and followed him.

Russ and Jim Cameron skirted the edge of the room. “What’s the story?” Cameron asked quietly.

“See those wine crates stacked up by the head table?”

“Yeah.”

“Their bottles are full of a home-brewed fire accelerant that works sort of like napalm. The timers are inside a false bottom.”

Cameron’s face drained of color, but he kept walking toward the front of the room. Toward the bombs. Russ’s respect for the man went up a good five notches. “How do you know?”

“I took one apart a few minutes ago out in the parking lot.”

“When’s it set to go off?”

“I don’t know. I can recognize the basic ingredients of an improvised explosive device, but I’m no expert at figuring out the mechanics.” A waiter trundled out the kitchen doors, a silver coffeepot in each hand. Russ stopped him and showed him his badge. “There’s a bomb threat,” he said in a low voice. “We’re clearing the building. Get back in the kitchen and tell everyone. Then leave.”

The waiter peered at Russ’s badge. “And you are?”

“Millers Kill chief of police.”

The waiter’s mouth formed the word “Oh.” He turned and went back into the kitchen.

Russ and Cameron crossed the empty stretch of dance floor. The head of the ACC, who was still talking, saw them and made discreet shooing motions to clear them out of the audience’s line of sight.

“… of course, this great work cannot continue without the sort of support tha-What do you think you’re doing?”

Russ crowded the man from the podium. “Good evening, folks. I’m the chief of police here in Millers Kill, and this is our mayor, Jim Cameron.” Somewhere in the middle of the room, someone started to clap. The sound stopped immediately. “We’ve received a credible threat that bombs have been placed in this location. We are taking