The Coffin Dancer

Contact’s completed. The bomb goes off.”
    “But this bomb was detonated by a timer.”
    “They’re just telling me about the latex.”
    Rhyme looked at the plastic bags containing components of the bomb. His eyes fell to the timer, and he thought: Why’s it in such perfect shape?
    Because it had been mounted behind the overhanging lip of steel.
    But the Dancer could have mounted it anywhere, pressed it into the plastic explosive itself, which would have reduced it to microscopic pieces. Leaving the timer intact had seemed careless at first. But now he wondered.
    “Tell him that the plane exploded as it was descending,” Sachs said.
    Cooper relayed the comment, then listened. The tech reported, “He says it could just be a point-of-construction variation. As the plane climbs, the expanding balloon trips a switch that arms the bomb; when the plane descends the balloon shrinks and closes the circuit. That detonates it.”
    Rhyme whispered, “The timer’s a fake! He mounted it behind the piece of metal so it wouldn’t be destroyed. So we’d think it was a time bomb, not an altitude bomb. How high was Carney’s plane when it exploded?”
    Sellitto raced through the report. “It was just descending through five thousand feet.”
    “So it armed when they climbed through five thousand outside of Mamaroneck and detonated when he went below it near Chicago,” Rhyme said.
    “Why on descent?” the detective asked.
    “So the plane would be farther away?” Sachs suggested.
    “Right,” Rhyme said. “It’d give the Dancer a betterchance to get away from the airport before it blew.”
    “But,” Cooper asked, “why go to all the trouble to fool us into thinking it was one kind of bomb and not another?”
    Rhyme saw that Sachs figured it out just as fast as he did. “Oh, no!” she cried.
    Sellitto still didn’t get it. “What?”
    “Because,” she said, “the bomb squad was looking for a time bomb when they searched Percey’s plane tonight. Listening for the timer.”
    “Which means,” Rhyme spat out, “Percey and Bell’ve got an altitude bomb on board too.”

    “Sink rate twelve hundred feet per minute,” Brad sang out.
    Percey gentled the yoke of the Lear back slightly, slowing the descent. They passed through fifty-five hundred feet.
    Then she heard it.
    A strange chirping sound. She’d never heard any sound like it, not in a Lear 35A. It sounded like a warning buzzer of some kind, but distant. Percey scanned the panels but could see no red lights. It chirped again.
    “Five three hundred feet,” Brad called. “What’s that noise?”
    It stopped abruptly.
    Percey shrugged.
    An instant later, she heard a voice shouting beside her, “Pull up! Go higher! Now!”
    Roland Bell’s hot breath was on her cheek. He was beside her, in a crouch, brandishing his cell phone.
    “What?”
    “There’s a bomb on! Altitude bomb. It goes off when we hit five thousand feet.”
    “But we’re above—”
    “I know! Pull up! Up!”
    Percey shouted, “Set power, ninety-eight percent. Call out altitude.”
    Without a second’s hesitation, Brad shoved the throttles forward. Percey pulled the Lear into a ten-degree rotation. Bell stumbled backward and landed with a crash on the floor.
    Brad said, “Five thousand two, five one five . . . five two, five thousand three, five four . . . five eight. Six thousand feet.”
    Percey Clay had never declared an emergency in all her years flying. Once, she’d declared a “pan-pan”—indicating an urgency situation—when an unfortunate flock of pelicans decided to commit suicide in her number two engine and clog up her pitot tube to boot. But now, for the first time in her career, she said, “May-day, may-day, Lear Six Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo.”
    “Go ahead, Foxtrot Bravo.”
    “Be advised, Chicago Approach. We have reports of a bomb on board. Need immediate clearance to one zero thousand feet and a heading for holding pattern over unpopulated area.”
    “Roger, Niner Five Foxtrot Bravo,” the ATC controller said calmly. “Uhm, maintain present heading of two four zero. Cleared to ten thousand feet. We arevectoring all aircraft around you . . . Change transponder code to seven seven zero zero and squawk.”
    Brad glanced uneasily at Percey as he changed the transponder setting—to the code that automatically sent a warning signal to all radar facilities in the area that Foxtrot Bravo was in trouble. Squawking meant sending out a signal from