John Sandford - Shock Wave

He turned and continued crawling, then got to his feet and staggered away. He thought, How did I get in the street…?

He could hear sirens, then, and two people ran out of the Holiday Inn’s front door; he saw a window had blown out. The smell of gasoline was intense… He pulled himself together and realized that when the bomb went off, he’d instinctively jammed the truck’s gear shift into park, and had rolled out the door… Hadn’t thought about it-nothing had gone through his mind at all-he’d just done it.

More people were running toward him, and the truck and trailer, and he pointed at the two closest, the ones who’d come out of the Holiday Inn, and said, “Keep everybody away. Keep everybody back. There’s gasoline all over the place. One of you, get inside and call nine-one-one and tell them we need a fire truck here now. Go.”

A minute later, when the first deputy arrived, Virgil was already on the phone to Barlow: “The guy came after me. He blew up my boat.”

“I’m coming,” Barlow said.

The Deputy ran up and asked, “You okay?”

“Well, I’m scared shitless,” Virgil said.

“Man: you’re lucky to be alive. Anybody hurt inside?” He went running into the Holiday Inn.

Virgil let him go: he was feeling a little distant from events.

Gas had stopped pouring out of the boat, but was still trickling out. He had a twenty-gallon tank that ran under the floor, and it had been a miracle, he thought, that the gas hadn’t started burning. Staying well back, Virgil made a wide circle, checking the damage. The boat was gone: totaled. The blast had ripped the boat in half, right at the midsection. The bomb must have been in one of the rod-storage lockers down the right side of the boat, he thought.

He worked through it. The bomb would have been more certainly deadly, he thought, if it had been placed under the driver’s door of the truck. That would have done him for sure. But he’d parked the truck right out front, where it could be seen from both the Holiday Inn and the highway. Too much traffic to take the risk…

The boat, on the other hand, had been in the overflow lot, where Virgil had parked it to get it out of the way. There were lights, but it’d still be dim back there; and depending on how the bomb was rigged, it wouldn’t have taken more than a few seconds to put it down inside the rod locker.

At least, he thought-still feeling a little distant-they hadn’t gotten his muskie rods. He hadn’t had them out yet. He’d lost a couple walleye rigs, and a nice little ultralight bass rod and reel…

More deputies came in, and rubberneckers, and then the fire truck, and Virgil stood on a curb and watched them foam the gasoline. Barlow arrived, and came trotting over, followed by one of the crime-scene technicians. He put a hand on Virgil’s shoulder and asked, “You okay?”

“More or less,” Virgil said. “I’d like to get the truck away from there, so I can stay mobile. I didn’t want to do anything until you got here.”

“Give us a few minutes to look at it,” Barlow said. Then, “I wonder why he didn’t put it under the truck…?”

Virgil told him his theory on that, and the ATF man nodded and said, “You’re probably right.” They’d been drifting down the line of the wrecked boat, still well away, as the firemen finished up. Barlow said, “I bet it was another mousetrap and it was set to go off when you opened that locker. It would have taken you apart. It would have been like somebody stuffed a hand grenade down your shirt. You were lucky.”

Ahlquist showed up, red-faced and angry: “Man, he’s going after us now. He’s completely off the goldarned rails. You okay? Man…”

Virgil wandered off and took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Davenport. “Did I mention to you that I brought my boat along, you know, in case an after-hours fishing opportunity came up?”

“Tell me something surprising,” Davenport said.

“Okay. This fuckin’ bomber just blew it up.”

“What?”

“It’s gone, man. Cut in half. Truck’s okay.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m a little freaked. He set it to kill me, no question. Goddamnit, Lucas, I’m shakin’ like a shaved Chihuahua.”

“You want some guys? I could get Shrake and Jenkins and be up there in a couple hours, help you tear the ass off the place.”

“Nothing to tear up right now. Maybe tomorrow-I’ll let you know. I just gotta get organized here, I gotta get the truck and get going.”

“Hey, Virg-go get a beer, or a cheeseburger, or something. Sit down for a while. That’s what I do when some shit happens. Man…”

Virgil rang off and walked back to where Ahlquist was standing, talking to Barlow, and asked, “Anybody hurt inside?”

“Two windows got knocked out, that big one on the front, and then there’s a small one, upstairs, in an empty room,” Ahlquist said. “So. .. no. Nobody hurt.”

“But he was trying his best,” Barlow said. “When he put the bomb in that rod locker, he did you a favor-there are about six aluminum walls between the bomb and the truck, and they soaked up the blast going forward. Didn’t even knock the windows out of the truck. But if somebody had been standing on the sidewalk when it went, they’d be dead.”

“It’s been sheer luck that he hasn’t killed a whole bunch of people,” Ahlquist said.

“We can move the truck, if you want it,” Barlow said. “We’re not going to get much out of this bomb-all that gasoline and foam would have taken out most of the evidence.”

Ahlquist: “I wonder why the gas didn’t blow?”

“Not much fire involved,” Barlow said. “That’s why most cars don’t burn when they’re hit.”

“I’ll take the truck,” Virgil said. “I gotta get some breakfast. I’m just, uh… I gotta get some food.”

“Sure you’re okay?” Ahlquist asked. “You’re sorta mumbling at us.”

“I was scared,” Virgil said. “But now, I’m getting pissed. Really, really, royally… I gotta get some food.”

He ate what he thought was about a three-thousand-calorie breakfast at Country Kitchen: French toast with hash browns, eggs over easy, regular toast, and two orders of link sausage, gobbling it down like somebody was going to take it away from him. When he was done, he felt a little sick from the grease, but his head was clearing out.

The bomb wasn’t the first time somebody had tried to kill him, but this one had shaken him. He hadn’t been kept alive by skill, or by reflexes, or by fast thinking; he was alive because he got lucky. If he hadn’t driven over a curb, he’d have died sometime during the day.

Simple as that. The coldness of the fact shook him. He was finishing the third of his three Diet Cokes when Davenport called him.

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Except for the fact that I just swallowed about a pint of grease, I’m okay.”

“ ’Cause I just talked to Hendrix, and he said if you’re too close to an explosion, the atmospheric pressure overload can screw you up, all by itself. Even if you don’t get hit by any of the shrapnel. They’re seeing that with guys coming back from Afghanistan.”

“I’ll take my pulse three times a day,” Virgil said.

“Seriously, keep it in mind,” Davenport said. “They say that what happens is, the next time you’re under a lot of stress, a vein pops in your brain. Usually, when you’re having sex. You get really worked up, and your blood pressure goes up, and just when you’re, you know, getting there, pop, there goes the vein, and you’re dead.”

“Now you’re lying,” Virgil said.

“I did make up that last part, about the sex,” Davenport said. “But seriously, if you start getting funky, talk to someone. It’s called ‘blastrelated traumatic brain injury’ or ‘blast syndrome.’ You can look it up on the Net. They see it even in people with no obvious physical injury.”