Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

So I searched the small stone house quickly for something like a drill bit, but there was nothing even approximating it. A thorough search of every dark corner of the small structure might have yielded me something usable, but I simply could not bring myself to plunge my naked hands into a dark, squirming niche. I am not proud of my terror of rats, but we all have our phobias, and this one was, as I’m sure you agree, not entirely irrational. I would have to make do with the ballpoint pen in my pocket. It would do adequately. I removed its ink cartridge.

Very, very carefully, I inserted the tip of the ink cartridge into the flash hole at the base of the casing and nudged the first percussion cap out. The second one went much more easily, and in a matter of minutes I had extracted each of the primer cups from six of the cartridges, leaving one intact.

I felt something dry and scaly brush against the back of my neck, and I shivered. My stomach knotted instantly.

As dexterously as I could, I slipped each primer into the intact cartridge, stacking them up, one atop the other. Into the remaining space I poured the entire pile of propellant, then packed it down tight with a forefinger.

I had, now, a tiny bomb.

Next, I located a suitable length of two-by-four, a (rusty) length of pipe, a discarded soft-drink bottle, a cloth rag, a large rock, and an almost-straight long nail. This search took several minutes, an eternity it seemed, with the rats writhing across the ground, an ineffably horrifying moving carpet, it seemed to me. My stomach remained knotted, a tight, sore muscle of tension. I found myself shivering almost constantly.

With the rock I hammered the nail into the lumber until its point had just emerged from the other side. Now the fertilizer. Of the several fifty-pound bags, two had a nitrogen content that ranged from eighteen to twenty-nine. One had a total nitrogen content of thirty-three percent. That was the one I selected. I tore open the bag and scooped out a handful, sprinkling it onto another large scrap of cement-bag paper. A small claque of rats wriggled their way up to the pile, their whiskers twitching with curiosity and greed. With the soda bottle I knocked them away. Their bodies were far more solid and muscular than I had anticipated. If I had to speak, I could not have done so, I was so paralyzed with fright, but somehow my autonomic nervous system kept me working away robotically.

Rolling the soda bottle over the smooth, rounded prills of fertilizer yielded a fine powder. Repeating this process several times, I obtained a large pile of well-powdered fertilizer. In ideal conditions this step wouldn’t have been necessary, but these were hardly ideal conditions. For one thing, the sensitizing agent should have been something like nitromethane, the blue fluid used by hot-rod enthusiasts to increase the octane in fuel. But there was nothing of the sort around. There was only gasoline, which would have to do, though it was far less effective. So powdering the nitrogenous fertilizer, thereby decreasing the diameter of the prills, increasing the surface area of the stuff and making it more reactive, was the least I could do.

I uncapped the can of gasoline and gently poured it over the fertilizer powder. There was a great rustling among the teeming rats; sensing danger, they scurried away, turned ghastly little pirouettes, backed up into the recesses of the chamber.

Gingerly, I packed the sensitized fertilizer into the rusty length of pipe, which I’d capped off by dropping in a stone just large enough to block off the end entirely. The pipe was about a half inch in diameter, which was about right. Into the nitrate I wedged the cartridge that I’d prepared.

I surveyed my handiwork and felt a sudden desperate, sinking feeling that the jerry-rigged bomb would not go off. The basic ingredients were there, but it was wildly unpredictable, especially given how hastily I had assembled the thing.

Now, with as much force as I could muster, I wedged the pipe into a crack in the ancient mortar between two stones of the wall.

The fit was extremely tight.

Yes. It might work.

If it did not work... If it deflagrated instead of detonated , it would fail miserably, filling this minuscule space with toxic fumes that would overwhelm me, probably kill me. There was a possibility, too, that a misfire of the pipe bomb would maim or blind me, or worse.

I placed the long two-by-four atop the protruding pipe bomb, the nail point just touching the base of the cartridge. Holding my breath, my heart thudding rapidly, I wrapped the filthy rag around my eyes, lifted the rock I’d used as a hammer a few moments before.

Held it in my right hand directly over the nail in the two-by-four.

And, pulling the rock back two feet or so, I hurled it with enormous force at the nail head.

The explosion was immense, unbelievably loud, a thunderclap, and suddenly everything around me was a nightmarish glaring orange visible even through the dirty rag tied tightly over my eyes, a vicious hailstorm of rocks and fire, a cataract of shrapnel, and my entire world was a ball of crimson fire, and this was the last thing I remembered.

Europe no longer has to fear the return of Nazism, as voters in the economically ravaged Germany voted overwhelmingly to...

White, the softest, palest linen-white: I became aware of the color white, not the absence of color, but a full and rich and creamy white that soothed me with its stillness and radiance.

And I became aware of soft murmurings from somewhere far off.

I felt as if I were floating on a cloud, turning upside down, then right-side up, but I didn’t know which way was upside down, and I didn’t care.

More murmurings.

I had just opened my eyes, which seemed to have been glued shut for an eternity.

I tried to focus on the murmuring shapes before me.

“He’s with us,” I heard.

“His eyes are open.”

Slowly, slowly, my surroundings came into focus.

I was in a room that was all white; I was covered with white, coarse white muslin sheets, white bandages on my arms, which were the only part of my body I could see.

As my eyes focused, I saw that the room I was in was a simple room with walls of whitewashed stone. Was I in a farmhouse, or something like that? Where was I? An intravenous line fed into my left arm, but this didn’t look like a hospital.

I heard an accented male voice: “Mr. Ellison?”

I tried to grunt, but nothing seemed to come out.

“Mr. Ellison?”

I attempted another grunt. Again nothing emerged, I thought, but perhaps I was wrong. I must have made some sort of noise, because the accented voice now said, “Ah. Good.”

Now I could see the speaker, a small, narrow-faced man with a neatly trimmed beard and warm brown eyes. He was wearing a thick, coarsely knit gray sweater and gray woolen slacks, a pair of worn leather shoes. He was thick around the middle, in early middle age. He thrust a soft, plump hand toward me, and we shook hands.

“My name is Boldoni,” he said. “Massimo Boldoni.”

With great effort I said: “Where...?”

“I’m a physician, Mr. Ellison, although I know I don’t look like one.” He spoke English with a mellifluous Italian accent. “I don’t have my doctor’s costume on because I don’t normally work on Sunday. In answer to your question, you are in my house. We have several vacant rooms, unfortunately.”