Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

Now they thrust me into the cold, dark dankness of the tiny stone building, putrid with the high, ripe odor of rotting garbage. I heard rustling. There was another smell, too, something acrid, like kerosene or gasoline.

“They removed the trash yesterday,” the elder said, “so they’re quite hungry.”

More rustling.

The crinkle of plastic; more rustling, this time more frantic-sounding. Yes; gasoline or kerosene.

They set me down, my feet bound. The only light in the tiny, awful chamber came in from the door, against which I could see silhouetted two of the false carabinieri.

“What the hell do you want ?” I croaked.

“Just tell us where it is, and we will take you out.” It was the raspy, deep voice of the one in charge. “It’s that simple.”

“Oh, God,” I couldn’t help saying aloud. Never let them see your fear, but it was uncontainable now. A scratching, more rustling. There had to be dozens of them.

“Your personnel file,” he went on, “tells us you’re extremely phobic of rats. Please, help us out, and this will all be over.”

“I told you, he didn’t know!”

“ Lock it, Frank,” the one in charge barked out.

The door to the stone house was slammed shut and bolted. For an instant, all was pitch-black, and then, as my eyes acclimated to the dark, everything took on a doleful amber cast. From all around there was scurrying, rustling. Several large, dark shapes moved on either side of me. My skin prickled.

“When you’re ready to talk,” I heard from outside the stone house, “we’ll be here.”

“No!” I yelled. “I’ve told you everything I know!”

Something ran across my feet.

“Jesus...”

From outside I heard a hoarse voice addressing me: “Did you know that rats are what you might call ‘legally blind’? They operate almost entirely by sense of smell. Your face, with its blood and its coating of sweet liquid, will be irresistible to them. They will gnaw at you out of desperation.”

“I don’t know anything more,” I bellowed.

“Then I feel very sorry for you,” the hoarse voice came again.

I felt something large and warm and dry and leathery brush against my face, against my lips, several of them, then many of them, and I couldn’t open my eyes, and I felt sharp incisions along my cheeks, sharp, unbearable jabs, a papery whisk-whisk sound, a tail whipping against my ear, moist feet against my neck.

Only the knowledge that my captors were standing outside, waiting for me to succumb, kept me from bellowing in terrible, indescribable fear.

Somehow — somehow — I was able to keep my mind focused.

I managed to wriggle upright, hurling off the rats as I did so, brushing them off my face and neck with my hands. In a few minutes I had the nylon restraints off, but little good that would do me, as the men waiting outside no doubt figured: the only way out of this massive stone structure was the door, which was securely bolted.

I felt around for a gun until I realized that of course they had taken both of them. I had a few rounds of ammunition strapped to my ankles, beneath my socks, but they were useless without something to fire them.

As my eyes grew used to the dark, I made out the source of the fuel odor. Several gallon cans of gasoline were stacked against one wall, beside an assortment of farm equipment. The “rat house,” as my Italian friend had called it, may have been for storing garbage, but it also stored materials used in repairing Orlov’s land — paper sacks of cement, plastic bags of fertilizer, rakes, fertilizer spreaders, mortar tools, scattered two-by-fours.

As the rats bustled about me — I kept my limbs in constant motion to discourage them from attempting to crawl on me — I surveyed the meager assortment of tools for a way out. A rake, I calculated, would hardly survive an assault on the steel-reinforced door, nor would any of the other farm tools. Gasoline seemed the most obvious means of assault — but assault on what? And what could I ignite it with? I had no matches. And what if I did spill out the gasoline and manage somehow to set it afire? Then what? I would burn alive. That would benefit no one but my captors. Utter foolishness. There had to be a way.

I felt the dry whisk of a rat’s tail against my neck, and I shuddered.

From outside, a deep voice intoned: “All we need is the information.”

The obvious thing to do was to make up information, pretend to break down and blurt it out.

But that would never wash. They would expect that; they would be too well briefed. I had to get out of there.

It was impossible; I was no Houdini; but I had to get out of there. The rats, fat brown little creatures with long, scaly tails, scurried around my feet, making little grunting noises. There were dozens of them. A few had climbed up the walls; two of them, crouched atop a fifty-pound bag of fertilizer, leapt toward me, scenting the blood that was congealing on my cheeks. Horrified, I flung out my hands to brush them away. One bit my neck. I thrashed wildly, managing to stomp a few to death.

I knew I would not survive here much longer.

It was the fertilizer bag that first caught my eye. In the dimness I was able to make out a label:

A yellow, diamond-shaped label proclaimed it to be an “oxidizer.” The stuff was used on grass, usually. Thirty-three percent total nitrogen content, the label stated. I moved closer, squinted. Derived of equal parts of ammonium nitrate and sodium nitrate.

Fertilizer.

Was it possible...?

It was an idea. The likelihood of its working was not especially high, but it was worth it. There was simply no other way out.

I reached down and removed the Colt .45 magazine from the strap underneath my left sock. They had taken the gun but overlooked the slim magazine.

It was full: it contained seven rounds. Not much, but it might do. I extracted all seven rounds from the clip.

A voice from outside the rat house: “Enjoy the rest of the day, Ellison. And the night, too.”

Containing my horror, I made my way across the rat-crowded stone floor to one wall. One by one I jammed each cartridge into a narrow crack in the mortar. Now there was a row of them, their blunt gray tips sticking out.

With a rusty old pair of pliers I’d found, I whacked the nose of each bullet to loosen the tight friction fit between bullet and cartridge case. Carefully, I closed the jaw of the pliers over each bullet tip, pulling at it, wiggling back and forth, until the bullet came out of its casing. This part of the cartridge was the projectile, the business part, the part that was propelled into a target. But I had no need of it. I needed, instead, what remained in each cartridge: the propellant and the primer.

A trio of rats squirmed over my feet, one scampering over my knee, clawing at the fabric of my shirt, trying to make its unspeakable way up to my face. I gasped in terror, shuddered, slapped at the rats, knocked them to the stone floor.

Now, barely recovering, I removed each brass cartridge casing from the crack in the wall and slowly dumped the small amount of propellant from each one onto a scrap of paper I’d torn from one of the cement sacks. The six cartridges yielded a good little pile of propellant, a dark gray substance made of tiny irregular spheres of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin.

By far the riskiest step was next: removing the primers. These are the small nickel cups, situated at the base of each cartridge, that contain a small quantity of the high-explosive tetracene. They are also extremely sensitive to percussive force. And, struggling as I was in the dark, surrounded by scurrying rats, my concentration was not at its height. Yet this had to be done with great caution.