nice quiet death at age eightyeight, with the family gathered around, not so much.
Heâd have to read Job again, he thought; not that Job seemed to have many answers.
Then he got up, peed, dropped on the bed, and was gone.
4
T HE BOMBER SAT in his basementâit had to be a basementâlooking at the stack of bombs. Heâd already packed the Pelex, which had a rather nice tang about it: like aftershave for seriously macho dudes. Heâd packed in the last of the blasting caps, which looked a bit like fat, metallic ballpoint pen refills, and heâd already wired up all the batteries except the last one, because he was afraid of that one: afraid heâd blow himself up.
Heâd given himself two missions this night: the first would be to take out the water and sewer pipe the city was planning to run out to the PyeMart, as well as the heavy equipment thatâd be used to lay the pipe.
The second one . . .
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FOR THE SECOND ATTACK, he needed a bomb that would blow with motionâand since he didnât have access to sophisticated detonators, heâd made do with an old mercury switch. To use it, heâd have to do the final wiring on-site, in awkward conditions, wearing gloves, with a flashlight in his mouth. Possible, but tricky.
The trickiness gave him a little buzz. If anything went wrong, of course, heâd never know it, with his face a foot from the bomb. When they identified him, wouldnât they be surprised? Wouldnât they wonder?
Made him smile to think about it.
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THE BOMBER WAS SLENDER and tough and smart. He worked out daily, ninety minutes at a time. He had a sense of humor, he often looked in a mirror and thought, Pretty damn good.
But pretty damn good wasnât enough. Time was passing; he wasnât old, but age would come, and then what? Twenty years on Social Security? There were very limited opportunities ahead, and he had to seize the ones that presented themselves.
And there was the competitive aspect to the challenge: Could he beat the cops and the federal government? He knew theyâd all come piling in when the bombs started going off.
He shook off the intrusive thought, and picked up the latest bomb, and turned it in his hands. Very, very simple; and deadly as a land mine.
Not particularly delicate, though. Heâd read that he could mold the Pelex into a ball and whack it with a golf club, with no effect. The blasting caps were a little more sensitive, but no more so than ordinary shotgun primers, which tens of thousands of people had sitting around in their housesâthere were whole racks of them at sporting goods stores.
No, the pieces were essentially inert, until they got put together. Then, watch out.
Heâd taken hours to make each of the first few bombs, until he got some traction. Heâd done his research on the Internet, and figured out his materials. Heâd cracked the supply shed at Segen Sand & Gravel in the middle of the night and removed the cases of Pelex and the boxes of blasting caps. Heâd been sweating blood when he did that, his first real crime, creeping around the countryside in camo and a mask. After all the planning and preparation, and after an aborted approach when a couple kids parked in the quarry entrance to neck, the break-in had been routine. The explosives shed had been secured with nothing more than a big padlock.
Heâd found the bomb pipe under a cabin at a lakeside resort, where it had been dumped years before, when the owner put in plastic pipe. He got that at night, too, and had taken it down to the college for the cut. That had taken a little gall, but he hadnât committed himself to anything at that point, and when the cutting went off without a hitch, he was good. If heâd been caught, he would have said he was making fence posts, and then started over....
His first bombs were small. He didnât need a big bang to know that they worked. When he finished
Xara X. Piper;Xanakas Vaughn