“I was convicted, Haley. They stripped me of my rank and put me in the stockade for six months, then kicked me out of the Marines with a dishonorable discharge.”
“All right. But tell me you didn’t do it.” She looked at me, searching my face.
The agony within her eyes was more than I could bear. I broke a vow. I said, “I did not.”
She moved against me, snuggling her cheek against my chest. She said, “Tell me the rest.”
“I can’t.”
“You have to.”
“I know, but I can’t. I’ve already said too much.”
“Why? Is it some kind of military secret?”
“No.”
She looked up at me. “But you made some kind of promise?”
It shocked me that she could get there so fast. Haley simply knew things. She wasn’t psychic; she was just that smart. But I couldn’t acknowledge it. I could only stare into the fire.
She said, “You gave your word to someone.”
I said nothing.
“And you let them do that to you, knowing you were innocent.”
I said nothing.
“And you think this is a reason not to marry me?”
“You know about my father. You know how I grew up, what everybody thought. It’s a terrible thing to live with that kind of shame. I won’t… I can’t let them say the things they’ll say about you if you marry me.”
She pressed her cheek against my chest again and stared into the flames and said, “Oh, my dear, sweet, idiotic man… how I do adore you.”
Then there was a crash. It brought me back. I might have lain awake all night, torturing myself with sweet memories of Haley except for that crash, which was the sound of breaking glass.
Sitting up in bed, I saw a red light blinking on the floor. I got out of bed and crossed the room. On the floor in the moonlight, I could just make out the shape of a brick. I knelt to look it over. I thought it must be from the planter edging outside the guesthouse. I assumed it was what had shattered the window. In the darkness beside the brick was a blinking, red light. I went back across the room and switched on the overhead lights. The floor was littered with shards of glass, and I was bare-footed, but that wasn’t important. I quickly went back to kneel beside the bomb.
It took about one second too long for me to realize someone had attached a digital timer and a booster battery to a blasting cap, which was inserted into a small block of C-4, just about enough to level the guesthouse. It took one more second to realize I didn’t have enough time to do anything about it. I didn’t even have time to throw it back out through the window. I knelt there watching the red numbers as the timer counted 2, and then 1, and then I closed my eyes to die.
14
The timer beeped. That was all. After another second or so, I opened my eyes and saw the 0 on the display. Gently and slowly, I reached down and disconnected the battery. I carefully pulled the blasting cap out of the plastic explosive. I carried the thing into the kitchen, where the light was better. I did my best to only touch the bomb at the corners in case they had left fingerprints.
Whoever made the bomb hadn’t bothered to remove the plastic wrap from the C-4. The black printing on the plastic indicated US military issue. The blasting cap was an M6 electric type, also something I had seen in the Marines.
I left the bomb on the counter, slipped on a pair of shorts and running shoes, grabbed a flashlight, and went outside to look around. Walking to the back of the guesthouse, where my bedroom window was, I saw no sign of anything out of the ordinary. I scanned the ground in front of the window. Nothing. I went to the eight-foot-tall stucco wall that ran along the road beside the property and walked its entire length. Again, I saw nothing of interest. I wasn’t surprised. Based on the quality of the ordnance, I hadn’t expected them to leave evidence.
Back inside the guesthouse, I carried the bomb into the living room, put it on the coffee table, and sat down on the sofa to stare at it and think.
The C-4 plastic explosive and the M6 detonator weren’t readily available to civilians. The whole assembly was compact and efficient, obviously assembled by someone who had been well trained, probably by US military munitions experts.
One place a person might learn how to build such a bomb was the WHINSEC, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, at Fort Benning. It used to be called the School of the Americas when it was still in Panama, where US military specialists had provided counterinsurgency training for thousands of personnel sent by Latin American allies of the United States, like Guatemala.
The thing was, there had been no need to throw the bomb into my bedroom. It could have been attached to the wall outside, and I would have been just as dead. So I thought it had probably been a warning rather than an actual attempt to kill me. But a warning from whom?
Castro was the first to come to mind, but I dismissed him almost immediately. For one thing, he carried a Glock 26 handgun, not a US military issue M9 semiautomatic, or an M11. If he had access to US military explosives, it seemed likely he would favor US military sidearms. For another, he had an air about him that didn’t line up with the kind of training they gave at Fort Benning. It wasn’t something I could explain, but I knew it when I saw it.
On the other hand, there was the classically trained way the two men from the Suburban had stood when it looked as if I might attack. I thought about the holstered M9 I had seen on one of them, and the fact that the curriculum at WHINSEC included its proper use. I thought about the fact that our Central American allies in training there almost certainly had their minds fixed on current and former insurgents like Vega and Castro when they aimed at targets on the Fort Benning firing range.
With the power source disconnected, the bomb no longer worried me. I leaned back against the sofa, put my feet up on the table beside the plastic explosive, and thought about friends and enemies. I tried to keep an open mind. I tried to think of everyone. I thought and thought, and sometime in the night, I finally fell asleep.
The next thing I knew, the rising sun had angled through a window and fallen on my face, awaking me. I went into the kitchen, and made a pot of coffee. I sipped the first cup of the day. Always a treat. I decided I had insufficient information. It would be helpful to have the bomb checked for fingerprints and DNA evidence. I dialed 9-1-1.
The first squad car showed up in about five minutes. Within the hour there were five other squad cars and a panel truck for command and control. I was impressed to learn that the Newport Beach Police Department also had an explosives disposal vehicle, which they drove onto the lawn to get as close as possible to the guesthouse. It was a black Ford van with armor plating between the front seats and the cargo bay. In back was a large steel box with a heavy-hinged door facing the rear.
Teru wouldn’t be pleased with the damage it did to the lawn.
My assurances that the bomb wasn’t operational and my offer to carry it out for them were both ignored. They sent in a guy wearing a disposal suit. He hobbled into the house like a sumo wrestler in body armor, pushing a small cart that had oversized rubber tires and an elaborate shock-absorbing suspension. The bomb was on the cart when he came out. At the rear of the explosives disposal vehicle, he lifted the bomb and put it in the steel container. Then he closed the heavy interior door and the two exterior doors and began removing his body armor.
Around noon the police were finally done with their work. They told me their lab had confirmed that the C-4 and the detonator were both real, but the timer was faulty. I asked if the timer had been purposely modified. They said it appeared the defect had been caused when it was manufactured. So it seemed more likely that the bomb was no mere warning. Maybe they had thrown it through the window just to make double sure. Or maybe they wanted me awake when it happened. Maybe they wanted me to know I was about to die.