“What is it, Fish?”
Charlie patted his rucksack’s side pocket. “Maybe we could try one of mine?”
He sighed. “Put me in, Coach. Something like that?”
“For fun,” Charlie said. “For the whole crew.”
The site boss opened and closed his giant hands. “You seem like a nice kid, Fish. Probably all your life, you’ve been a guy who did a good job, who stood out. But I don’t think you understand the situation here on The Hill. I don’t think you realize what standing out can lead to.”
Charlie felt he was in another of those moments when he had no idea what someone was talking about, and the best approach was to say nothing. He watched as the boys hauled equipment up the incline to the road.
“All right,” the site boss sighed. “Give us a three-way charge.”
“Yes, sir,” Charlie said, lifting his batteries again. “Thanks so much.”
“But if it leads to other things, remember. You asked for it.”
Charlie was already running to the trucks. The crew piled in back for the half mile to the concrete bowl. Charlie rode in Monroe’s passenger seat, urging him to drive slowly for once so he could choose the right device.
“Relax,” Monroe said. “Worst that can happen is we all get killed.”
Rounding the bend above the bowl, they saw deer in the clearing. Monroe sighted down one finger. “If I had my twenty-two right now, damn but we’d have a fine dinner.”
The bowl was a circle two hundred feet around, made of concrete a foot thick. It was concave to help in recovering exploded materials. Safety dictated that observers stand well back, making remote switches the only way to detonate.
By the time they parked, the does were long gone. The crew’s enthusiasm remained high as they unloaded matériel, arranged explosives in three piles, helped Charlie set his wires. The site boss stood on a rise above the bowl.
Monroe picked two fellows to help him carry down the bed, placing the mattress precisely. The metal frame spanned only inches above the explosives. He savored the moment with a grin. “Now, Brunder,” he said. “Don’t you wish you’d got with that gal like you bet me, instead of it coming to this?”
As Charlie unspooled wires, walking backward, Monroe brought a handful of sticks to the crown of the ridge. The site boss watched him stab the sticks into the ground, adjusting their height with a tape measure.
“What are you up to now?”
“Angles, sir.” Monroe pushed the last stick a fraction of an inch deeper. “I can sight down these sticks, and see which matches the peak of the bed’s flight. A little geometry and we’ll know right off how many feet high it went.”
The site boss tried to suppress a smirk. “You’re measuring the yield.”
“Exactly, sir.” He adjusted a stick. “See, and all them other fellas said you was a stiff know-nothing, but I always disagreed with them.”
Now the site boss smiled openly. “No matter how often they insisted.”
Also grinning, Monroe shook his head. “All day long, it seems sometimes.”
“Okay,” Charlie said, arriving on the ridge. “Almost there.” He attached wires to the battery’s positive and negative bolts, then to a switch he’d pulled from the rucksack.
The site boss’s smile faded. “How much powder did you boys set there?”
“Whatever all we had left, sir.” Monroe shrugged. “I don’t rightly know that anyone weighed it.”
“Well, damn,” he said. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth. “You boys take better cover. Move it back.” He waved the crew farther into the trees.
Charlie checked the last connection. “Ready, sir.”
The site boss pursed his lips. “We ought to be back by now. It’s Saturday night.”
“All due respect, sir,” Monroe said. “But we done a good week’s work. It’d make our whole weekend to blow a little harmless steam off here.”
“It won’t be harmless if someone gets hurt.”
“Sir?” Charlie squatted beside the switch. “I am ready to make a detonation with my trigger, my very first.”
“Oh hell,” he conceded. “Probably be a dud anyway.” Raising the air horn up with a straight arm, the site boss gave a long blast. Charlie unlocked the switch, then paused.
Monroe dropped to his belly, behind the row of sticks. “Nighty-night, Adolf.”
At that, Charlie drove the switch closed with his full weight.
The explosion shot dirt and debris in all directions, a blast of gravel and dust. It roared, too, louder than the air horn and with greater percussion, its echo returning from the cliffs behind them.
But the true surprise was the bed: It soared higher than anyone had expected, end over end with a balletic poise, mattress stuffing flung every which way like a pillow burst in barracks horseplay. The frame pieces landed on the concrete bowl with a clang that made the boys’ ears ring.
Charlie stood over his device. In the excitement he had bent the firing arm. But it had worked. He couldn’t wait to tell Brenda. Smoke lingered at eye level, acrid and gray.
The boys were laughing, applauding. Someone lifted the bed frame, its slats curled like a handlebar mustache, and threw it in the air. It landed with another clang.
Only then did Charlie notice the truck inching down the rough trail behind them. It was not a battered rig like their crew used. It was new, rust-free, and a yellow light on the roof circled as if it were some kind of police car.
The effect was immediately sobering. The crew tightened into a cluster on the bowl, except for the three men still on the ridge.
Monroe rubbed his chin. “We’re gonna catch it now.”
“Don’t you do any talking,” the site boss said. “Not one word.”
The truck swayed as it crossed the open scrub, not hurrying, its pace conveying a regal kind of power, as if to say of course the subjects will wait, while that yellow roof light turned steadily like a slow alarm. When the vehicle reached the ridge, the driver halted, and they could hear the hand brake drawing tight.
The passenger door opened and a man in black shoes emerged. Slender, his hair brushed hard back from his face, he had a forward lean, as if he were in the middle of an argument. He wore a gray suit, and stepped with care to keep his shoes clean.
The site boss squared his shoulders. “Good afternoon.”
“Hello,” the new arrival said, though to Charlie it sounded like hail-lo, with a click in the middle. The diversity of nations represented on The Hill—Germany, Denmark, Norway—had turned everyone into an expert in accents. This man, Charlie would have bet a Russian, rubbed his hands together, then clasped them tight. “I am Bronsky.”
“Good to meet you, sir,” the site boss said. “How can I help you today?”
“You are authorize? For this just now detonation?”
“Not exactly, sir. We’d finished our assignments for the day—”
“Your boys will cleans up mess.”
“Of course, sir.”
“You betcha, right quick we will,” Monroe interjected, which brought a silencing scowl from the site boss.
“I observe this detonation has three-part device. How you did trigger it?”