A gaggle of firefighters was headed their way, shouting. Nicholas waved them off. They were fine, no reason to waste resources. Jimbo still had Nicholas’s wadded-up handkerchief pressed to his nose, was using his other hand to brush the dirt off his uniform.
Nicholas said, “Thanks for spotting the bag, Jimbo. You saved our lives.”
Jimbo Jones grinned, showing a mouth and teeth rimmed in blood. “Buy me a beer sometime, guys. Now, you two need to get out of here, to safety. Really, I’m okay now. You can leave the rest to us.” He started to hand Nicholas back the handkerchief, shook his head at himself, and jogged off in a drunken zigzag pattern to rejoin his company.
More fire trucks were arriving, a parade of red and white lights, sirens shrieking.
“How many fire companies do you think have been called, Mike?”
“I don’t know. Of course Bayway has their own resources for this type of emergency, but they need all the help they can get tonight. This explosion was certainly much bigger than anything Bayway’s people could handle alone.”
“Has an explosion on this massive a scale ever happened before here at Bayway?”
“There was a major explosion in 1970. For a while, everyone believed it was the work of revolutionaries, since the FBI received a call from a man who claimed to be a member of the United Socialist Revolutionary Front. His demand: release of political prisoners. The FBI dug deep, but it turned out to be an accident, not a bomb. Then a smaller explosion ripped through the refinery in ’79. Again, a suspected bomb, but it turned out to be another accident.” Mike looked around her. “But this wasn’t an accident. This was a huge purposeful hit.”
Nicholas tried to wipe off her face, but it didn’t do much good since his hands were black with soot. “COE designed this hit for maximum damage and disruption, and they didn’t give a crap about innocent lives.”
Her hand tightened on his arm. “We’ve done all we can, Nicholas. Let’s regroup and find these bastards.”
6
BISHOP TO G7
They made their way toward the car, feeling like salmon swimming upstream with all the rescue personnel and cops and firefighters rushing toward the scene.
Nicholas said, “I wonder how COE managed to pull this off—a bombing in our own backyard, at one of the most secure refineries in the country, under close scrutiny and additional security.”
Mike was feeling pain in every inch of her body, screaming at her for aspirin or something much stronger, but she ignored it, no choice. “That first bomb was so powerful, why bother with the small secondary bomb? And no deaths before, but now I’m afraid to know how many people died tonight. Why have they done this? Nicholas, we need to track down Larry Reeves right away, open him up like a can, find out who paid him the big bucks.”
The farther they were from the blast site, the better the air became. She stopped, sucked in deeply. “I hadn’t realized—Nicholas, if Mr. Hodges hadn’t called us—”
“Then more people would have died, so we did some good, Mike. You know, it strikes me as odd—sneaking someone into this facility is certainly doable, if one were properly motivated, but still very risky for Reeves. How could a man so drunk he staggered out of the bar manage to pull it off?”
“Well, it doesn’t sound like he was faking being drunk—I mean, flapping his mouth like that—sounds like he gave his COE contact access before his little celebration party with his buddy.” She shook her head. “Still, what a moron, shooting off his mouth for anyone to hear. Good for us, though.”
Nicholas looked up at the video cameras on the light poles. Several had been blown off their mountings and were hanging by their wires. “Ah, there are a couple of good ones, thank the good Lord.” He pointed them out to Mike. “Here’s hoping they still function after the blast and we’ll have enough footage to recover.”
“Good eyes, Nicholas. I’ll get Gray Wharton on it. Digits crossed the blast didn’t knock out the connections.”
She put her phone to her ear as she walked. Nicholas paused for a moment, looking back, and he sent up a prayer of thanks that he and Mike were both unharmed, a prayer for the health and happiness of Mr. Hodges, and a prayer to mourn the men who hadn’t made it.
At the car, Mike reached in for her bag, drew out a wad of hand wipes, started scrubbing at her face, making comical streaks in the black. Nicholas took one from her, swiped it over his own face, felt the grit and dirt and whatever else pebble beneath the wipe. He breathed in the scent of antiseptic mingled with blood and death and acrid smoke. A nightmare, and they’d been in the middle of it, playing with death. Too late—they’d been too late to stop it.
He leaned against the car and watched the orange flames funnel into the night sky, still ferocious and lethal, and he wondered when the firemen would manage to finally kill it. He hoped by morning. Then all the experts could get closer, find the ignition point, find the elements that could lead them to the bomb maker.
“Too bad we can’t summon a bloody hard rain to come down and help.”
Mike said, “With all the oil on fire now, it wouldn’t help much.”
“Have I ever told you about the fire in Farrow-on-Grey?”
“You haven’t. When was it? Was anyone hurt? I can’t imagine your lovely home damaged. Breaks my heart.”
“It was the town itself, not Old Farrow Hall. It happened in 1765, nearly one hundred years after the great fire destroyed London. Our fire damaged many of the buildings, but the town was spared because of several quick-thinking young lads who’d been playing whist in The Drunken Goose. There used to be a large lake on the grounds of Old Farrow Hall, where the gardens are today. Family lore says they emptied the lake to save the town.”
“I assume one of the quick thinkers was the Baron de Vesci at the time?”
He smiled. “The third Baron, yes. Colin Drummond. He quickly organized the whole town—women and children, too—into a fire brigade. They saved the church and the pub, and the lower two-thirds of the town.”