Death of a Blue Movie Star

that may have been just static.
    Five minutes
.
    “How big is the room?”
    “Maybe twenty by fifteen.”
    A pause.
    “All right, here’s the deal. You get far enough away and cover yourself up with mattresses or cushions, you’ll probably live.”
    “But he said it’ll make me deaf and blind.”
    There was silence.
    “Yeah,” he said. “It may.”
    Four minutes, twenty seconds
.
    “The thing is, you try to disarm it yourself, and it goes, it’ll kill you.”
    “Sam, I’m going to do it. How? Tell me how.”
    He was hesitating. Finally he said, “Don’t pull the detonator out of the explosive. There’s a pressure switch in it. You’ll have to bypass the shunt and cut the battery cord. You need enough electricity to keep the galvanometer fooled into thinking the cord isn’t cut.”
    “I don’t know what that means!”
    “Listen carefully. Look at the bomb. There’ll be a little box near the battery.”
    “It’s gray. I see it.”
    “With two metal posts on it.”
    “Right.”
    Healy said, “You have to run a piece of wire that’s very narrow gauge—”
    “What’s
gauge?
” She was crying.
    “Sorry … I mean, it’s got to be real thin. Run a piece from one lead of that box to the main terminal connecting the battery to the cable. See what I’m saying?”
    “Right.”
    “Then you cut the wires to the timer.”
    Three minutes, thirty
.
    “Okay,” she said.
    “Find a piece of wire, strip the insulation off, and wrap one strand—not all of them, just one strand—around the terminal of the gray box and then the other around the terminal on the timer. Then cut the other wires from the timer.”
    “Okay, I’ll do it.” She stared at the plastic components. Picturing it.
    Healy said, “Remember, you can’t override the rocker switch. So don’t move the bomb itself.”
    Through her tears she said, “They’re called IEDs, Sam. Not bombs.”
    “The helicopter’s on its way. There’ll be county police meeting the ferry in Bay Shore. And we’ll send one out to Fair Harbor.”
    “Oh, Sam. Should I just hide under the mattress?”
    He paused. The static rose up like a storm between them. Then he said, “‘Believe in what isn’t as if it were until it becomes.’”
    Two minutes
.
    “I’ll see you soon, Sam.” Rune yanked the wires from the phone. Then, with her teeth, stripped the insulation off one of them—the white wire—and wound one strand around the two terminals, the way Healy had told her.
    Ninety seconds
.
    Now cut through the battery cables. She bent to the bomb, smelled the oily scent of the explosive, just inches from her face, and took one of the black wires in her teeth. She began chewing. Tears fell on the plastic.
    It was thicker than she thought.
    Fifty seconds
.
    A tooth chipped and she felt an electric jolt of pain and surprise. Her breath hissed inward.
    Forty
.
    Thirty
…
    The wire snapped.
    No time for the other one. Had he said to do both of them? She thought he had. Shit. She backed away from the bomb, pulled the mattress and springs off the bed and lay down on the floor in the corner the way Hathaway had told her. Blind and deaf …
    Thirty twenty-nine twenty-eight twenty-seven
…
    She prayed—to a God she hoped was a lot different from the one the Sword of Jesus claimed as theirs.
    Fourteen thirteen twelve eleven
…
    Rune tucked her head against her chest.

     
    Warren Hathaway was proud of his precision. When not building bombs he was in fact a bookkeeper—though not a CPA—and he enjoyed the sensuality of the act of filling in the numbers on the pale green paper with a fountain pen or a fine-tipped marker—one that did not leave indentations on the sheet. He enjoyed the exactness and detail.
    He also enjoyed watching big explosions.
    So when the windows of the beach house did not disintegrate in a volley of shards and the sandy earth did not jerk beneath him from the huge jolt of the bomb he felt his stomach twist in horror. He didn’t swear—the thought never would have entered his mind. What he did was pick up the hammer and walk the hundred yards back into the house.
    The trials of Job …
    He knew he’d set the system properly. There was no doubt that he knew his equipment. The cap was buried in just the right thickness of plastic. The C-3 was in good condition. The battery was charged.
    The little whore had ruined his handiwork.
    He walked inside and then slammed the hammer down on the wooden boards barring the door. He struck