Shock Wave (20 page)

IN AN INFINITESIMALLY SHORT SPACE
of time, the bomb in the trailer blew up and the world lurched and Virgil found himself on the street, crawling away from the truck, with the sense of blood in his nose and mouth, though when he wiped his face with his hand, there wasn't any. He rolled onto his butt and looked back. The boat had been cut in half, but the truck itself seemed untouched; gasoline was pouring onto the street, and he thought,
Fire
.

He turned and continued crawling, then got to his feet and staggered away. He thought,
How did I get in the street
. . .
?

He could hear sirens, then, and two people ran out of the Holiday Inn's front door; he saw a window had blown out. The smell of gasoline was intense.... He pulled himself together and realized that when the bomb went off, he'd instinctively jammed the truck's gear shift into park, and had rolled out the door.... Hadn't thought about it—nothing had gone through his mind at all—he'd just done it.

More people were running toward him, and the truck and trailer, and he pointed at the two closest, the ones who'd come out of the Holiday Inn, and said, “Keep everybody away. Keep everybody back. There's gasoline all over the place. One of you, get inside and call nine-one-one and tell them we need a fire truck here now. Go.”

A minute later, when the first deputy arrived, Virgil was already on the phone to Barlow: “The guy came after me. He blew up my boat.”

“I'm coming,” Barlow said.

THE DEPUTY RAN UP
and asked, “You okay?”

“Well, I'm scared shitless,” Virgil said.

“Man: you're lucky to be alive. Anybody hurt inside?” He went running into the Holiday Inn.

Virgil let him go: he was feeling a little distant from events.

 

 

GAS HAD STOPPED POURING
out of the boat, but was still trickling out. He had a twenty-gallon tank that ran under the floor, and it had been a miracle, he thought, that the gas hadn't started burning. Staying well back, Virgil made a wide circle, checking the damage. The boat was gone: totaled. The blast had ripped the boat in half, right at the midsection. The bomb must have been in one of the rod-storage lockers down the right side of the boat, he thought.

He worked through it. The bomb would have been more certainly deadly, he thought, if it had been placed under the driver's door of the truck. That would have done him for sure. But he'd parked the truck right out front, where it could be seen from both the Holiday Inn and the highway. Too much traffic to take the risk . . .

The boat, on the other hand, had been in the overflow lot, where Virgil had parked it to get it out of the way. There were lights, but it'd still be dim back there; and depending on how the bomb was rigged, it wouldn't have taken more than a few seconds to put it down inside the rod locker.

At least, he thought—still feeling a little distant—they hadn't gotten his muskie rods. He hadn't had them out yet. He'd lost a couple walleye rigs, and a nice little ultralight bass rod and reel....

More deputies came in, and rubberneckers, and then the fire truck, and Virgil stood on a curb and watched them foam the gasoline. Barlow arrived, and came trotting over, followed by one of the crime-scene technicians. He put a hand on Virgil's shoulder and asked, “You okay?”

“More or less,” Virgil said. “I'd like to get the truck away from there, so I can stay mobile. I didn't want to do anything until you got here.”

“Give us a few minutes to look at it,” Barlow said. Then, “I wonder why he didn't put it under the truck . . . ?”

Virgil told him his theory on that, and the ATF man nodded and said, “You're probably right.” They'd been drifting down the line of the wrecked boat, still well away, as the firemen finished up. Barlow said, “I bet it was another mousetrap and it was set to go off when you opened that locker. It would have taken you apart. It would have been like somebody stuffed a hand grenade down your shirt. You were lucky.”

Ahlquist showed up, red-faced and angry: “Man, he's going after us now. He's completely off the goldarned rails. You okay? Man . . .”

 

 

VIRGIL WANDERED OFF
and took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Davenport. “Did I mention to you that I brought my boat along, you know, in case an after-hours fishing opportunity came up?”

“Tell me something surprising,” Davenport said.

“Okay. This fuckin' bomber just blew it up.”

“It's gone, man. Cut in half. Truck's okay.”

“Are
you
okay?”

“I'm a little freaked. He set it to kill me, no question. Goddamnit, Lucas, I'm shakin' like a shaved Chihuahua.”

“You want some guys? I could get Shrake and Jenkins and be up there in a couple hours, help you tear the ass off the place.”

“Nothing to tear up right now. Maybe tomorrow—I'll let you know. I just gotta get organized here, I gotta get the truck and get going.”

“Hey, Virg—go get a beer, or a cheeseburger, or something. Sit down for a while. That's what I do when some shit happens. Man . . .”

 

 

VIRGIL RANG OFF
and walked back to where Ahlquist was standing, talking to Barlow, and asked, “Anybody hurt inside?”

“Two windows got knocked out, that big one on the front, and then there's a small one, upstairs, in an empty room,” Ahlquist said. “So . . . no. Nobody hurt.”

“But he was trying his best,” Barlow said. “When he put the bomb in that rod locker, he did you a favor—there are about six aluminum walls between the bomb and the truck, and they soaked up the blast going forward. Didn't even knock the windows out of the truck. But if somebody had been standing on the sidewalk when it went, they'd be dead.”

“It's been sheer luck that he hasn't killed a whole bunch of people,” Ahlquist said.

“We can move the truck, if you want it,” Barlow said. “We're not going to get much out of this bomb—all that gasoline and foam would have taken out most of the evidence.”

Ahlquist: “I wonder why the gas didn't blow?”

“Not much fire involved,” Barlow said. “That's why most cars don't burn when they're hit.”

“I'll take the truck,” Virgil said. “I gotta get some breakfast. I'm just, uh . . . I gotta get some food.”

“Sure you're okay?” Ahlquist asked. “You're sorta mumbling at us.”

“I was scared,” Virgil said. “But now, I'm getting pissed. Really, really, royally . . . I gotta get some food.”

 

 

HE ATE WHAT HE THOUGHT
was about a three-thousand-calorie breakfast at Country Kitchen: French toast with hash browns, eggs over easy, regular toast, and two orders of link sausage, gobbling it down like somebody was going to take it away from him. When he was done, he felt a little sick from the grease, but his head was clearing out.

The bomb wasn't the first time somebody had tried to kill him, but this one had shaken him. He hadn't been kept alive by skill, or by reflexes, or by fast thinking; he was alive because he got lucky. If he hadn't driven over a curb, he'd have died sometime during the day.

Simple as that. The coldness of the fact shook him. He was finishing the third of his three Diet Cokes when Davenport called him.

“You sure you're okay?”

“Except for the fact that I just swallowed about a pint of grease, I'm okay.”

“ 'Cause I just talked to Hendrix, and he said if you're too close to an explosion, the atmospheric pressure overload can screw you up, all by itself. Even if you don't get hit by any of the shrapnel. They're seeing that with guys coming back from Afghanistan.”

“I'll take my pulse three times a day,” Virgil said.

“Seriously, keep it in mind,” Davenport said. “They say that what happens is, the next time you're under a lot of stress, a vein pops in your brain. Usually, when you're having sex. You get really worked up, and your blood pressure goes up, and just when you're, you know,
getting there
, pop, there goes the vein, and you're dead.”

“Now you're lying,” Virgil said.

“I did make up that last part, about the sex,” Davenport said. “But seriously, if you start getting funky, talk to someone. It's called ‘blastrelated traumatic brain injury' or ‘blast syndrome.' You can look it up on the Net. They see it even in people with no obvious physical injury.”

“Lucas . . . thanks. I'm more pissed off than hurt. I'm so
mad
, I . . . Now it's personal.”

“Glad to hear it,” Davenport said. “Things move quicker that way.”

V
IRGIL WENT BACK TO THE SCENE
of destruction: because of the mess caused by fire suppression, preservation of the crime scene wasn't as important as it otherwise might have been, and the boat and trailer had been towed out of the street and parked at the far end of the Holiday Inn lot, where one of the ATF crime-scene techs was working through it.

“The guy's giving us a lot of business,” he said, when Virgil walked up.

“You find anything good?”

“Got one end of the pipe. It blew right through the front sidewall on that locker, and the wall of the next locker, but then the hull stopped it. Same pipe as before. The guy went into that college and cut it up, and he's using it one piece at a time. If we can find him, we can hang him with the rest of it.”

“We'll find him,” Virgil said.

“Sorry about your boat. I thought maybe you could salvage the engine, but some shrapnel went right through the cowling. The electronics are toast.”

“Wonderful.” Made him want to cry.

 

 

THE BOAT WAS AN OLDER
Alumacraft Classic single-console model with a fifty-horse Yamaha hung off the back; a decent boat, usable on big water only on calmer days, but fine for most smaller Minnesota lakes. Virgil had bought it used, with a state credit union loan, and had only just finished paying it off. He wasn't sure, but if he remembered correctly his insurance policy had some kind of caveat about payment in case of “war or civil insurrection.”

Was a bomb the same as war?

 

 

HE WAS STILL LOOKING
at the boat when he got a call from Ahlquist: “The paper got a crazy note, supposedly from the bomber. You need to come take a look at it. We've got it down at my office.”

“Are they sure it's from the bomber?”

“Yeah. They're sure. It mentions, I quote, ‘state Gestapo agents.' The state Gestapo agents would be you,” Ahlquist said.

“I'll be over,” Virgil said. “Listen, have you had anybody checking the motel and the other buildings around here for witnesses?”

“I got O'Hara organizing that,” Ahlquist said. “She and her crew are talking to everybody for a couple blocks around.”

“What about the letters?”

“We're delivering them right now. We should be done by noon.”

BEFORE HE WENT
to the sheriff 's office, he walked around the block and found O'Hara.

She jogged up, smiling, squeezed him on the upper arm, and said, “Man, you got bigger balls than anybody I ever heard of.”

“Huh?”

She stepped back and said, “I heard all about it. Your boat got blown up right behind you, and you got knocked out of your truck, and then, then,
you went out and got breakfast
. That is
cold
, dude.”

Virgil said, “That's not exactly . . . hmmm . . . Anybody see anything?”