Chase: Roman

second before she began to open hers. In that split second, he knew that something was terribly wrong…
        He had left the car locked. She should not have been able to open her door until he had reached across and pushed up the latch stem.
        ‘Don't move!’ he shouted across the roof of the Mustang.
        She responded much better than he could have hoped. She did not continue instinctively to open the door, as most would have, thinking the danger behind her. If she had opened the door any wider, she would have been dead a moment later.
        ‘What is it?’ she asked.
        ‘He's been in the car.’
        ‘Judge?’
        ‘Yes.’ He cleared his throat. His mouth was dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of it when he tried to speak. ‘Don't open your door any wider. Let it go slowly back into place, but don't slam it or shut it tightly.’
        ‘Why?’
        ‘I believe he's wired explosives to your door.’
        She was silent for a long moment, and when she finally spoke, she was genuinely frightened for the first time. ‘How can you tell?’
        ‘When I opened my door, the overhead light came on. From here, I can see a single strand of heavy-duty wire leading from the window knob on your door into the glove compartment. The explosives must be in there, for he's taken out the bulb in the glove-compartment door and left the door open.’
        ‘But how in the world did you-?’
        ‘We used to check a car in Nam before we got in. The Cong used the routine on us regularly.’
        She had been slowly releasing the door as they conversed, and now she let go of it as it came to rest against the frame.
        ‘Now walk away from the car and get back by the building.’
        ‘What are you going to do?’
        ‘Disarm it,’ Chase said.
        ‘I won't let you-’
        ‘I've done it a dozen times before,’ he said. ‘Now do as I told you.’
        When she was far enough back to be safe from any accidental explosion, Chase opened his door the rest of the way and sat down in the driver's seat.
        A white panel delivery truck roared by, leaving a wake of sealike echoes that shushed back and forth between the brick walls of the apartment houses.
        Chase leaned over the console between the bucket seats and peered into the open glove compartment. Even in the weak light, he could see the pebbled curve of the grenade. It had been taped securely to the shelf the glove-compartment door made when it lay open, then further bound by lengths of heavy-gauge wire that encompassed the width and breadth of the small door. The wire knotted around the window knob on the passenger's door led directly to the steel arming ring at the top of the grenade and was twisted around that bright loop many times.
        Chase got out of the car and went to the apartment house steps where Glenda was waiting. ‘Do you have any household tools? A pair of pliers would be the thing.’
        ‘Needlenose pliers?’ she asked. ‘I have a pair of those that came with my Christmas tree lights.’
        ‘Good enough,’ he said.
        While she was gone, he stood by the steps with his hands in his pockets, trying not to think what the grenade would have done to her. He might have been hurt himself, but she would have been literally torn apart as the sheet metal of the Mustang door shattered like glass.
        She came back with the pliers. ‘How long?’ she asked.
        ‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘Wait right here. I don't think we have to worry about Judge for the moment. He'll have been confident the explosion would finish us off.’
        In the car again, he leaned over the console and caught the trigger wire in the back jaws of the pliers, squeezed the handles shut and began to twist back and forth as rapidly as he could manage. There was actually little danger of exploding the hand grenade now, though he would not feel safe until the trigger wire had been severed. Judge had given the lead at least ten inches of slack, a generous safety margin for all the work that Chase had to do.
        Judge had not intended to make the disarming process easier by providing the slack, of course. His purpose had been to insure that Glenda had partly opened the door before the grenade could go off, so that the full force of the explosion would strike her more directly. Indeed, with that much slack, and the seven seconds between the pin-pull and the detonation, she might