closer, I stared at the display. The amber LEDs read the current time and date. A small blinking number in the corner of the screen indicated when the “lights” were set to go on.
“8:22 a.m. Timer goes off at 4:30 p.m. Eight hours and change.” Touching the propane tank, “Where’d this come from?”
“Hennick’s Hardware.”
“They have a bomb department?”
“Blue Rhino. Those replacement propane tanks? Bring in an empty; exchange it for a full one.” Forte began picking at the edge of the duct tape. “Someone cut the chain and stole a dozen of these things.”
“Could you please stop playing with the explosives?”
Forte quit his picking. “Yeah, probably a good idea. May have fingerprints on the tape.”
The Chief climbed from his chair, picked up the tank and moved it to a corner behind his desk. He then went to the small table under his dusty window and poured a cup. Dowsed it with sugar and a full packet of Cremora.
Gag-o-roonie.
“The State Mounties are coming to get it. They’ll do an analysis of the darn thing. Don’t expect they’ll find much, though. Each of those tanks must be handled by a dozen people a month. The only hope is finding fingerprints on the dynamite or the tape, but bad guys have gotten smarter. Wear gloves. I don’t hold out much hope.”
Stretching my legs and swinging them up on Forte’s desk, which he quickly swiped off, “You didn’t answer the question. Where’d you find it?”
Sipping the coffee and making a sour expression, “I didn’t. A kid came running into the station yelling he’d found a bomb. Bill went with him and they brought it back. Was in the gorse behind the station. Maybe 50 yards away.” The Chief glanced over his shoulder at the cylinder, “Like idiots they brought it back with them and plopped it on my desk.”
Sal climbed from his chair to the coffee maker and poured two cups. Cop-house coffee is bad, but sitting five feet from an explosive device ignites a craving for caffeine.
Putting the coffee mugs in front of each of us, Sal asked, “Strange to leave it so close to the station and, obviously, pretty much where it could be found. Intentional?”
Forte nodded. “That’s my guess. Also, it was pretty easy to figure out that it would be a snap to deactivate.” Pulling from his mug, “This is the worst coffee in all of Oregon.”
“Think there are more of them?”
“Sure, Nick. Why steal a dozen Blue Rhinos if you’re only going to make one bomb?”
Beth, the BPD’s receptionist and dispatcher, scurried into the office. “Make that 40, Chief.” She held out a piece of paper which Forte took. “North Bend, Coquille, Langlois, and Coos Bay PDs say they also have reports of propane tanks being stolen.”
Forte took the paper, scanned his dispatcher’s scribbles. “Well, guess that makes it officially worrisome.”
“But why?” I asked. “Forty propane tanks with three sticks of dynamite each is a hell of a lot of fire power.” I was feeling a little nervous. “What would you do with 40 home-made bombs?”
Forte slid Beth’s note to the top left of his desk where it wouldn’t get covered by other papers. “Don’t know, but for sure we have to find them all and we’ve got eight hours to do it. Suggestions, anyone?”
Sal bobbed his head. “Call up the local map in Google.”
Forte punched a couple of buttons on his Mac, zoomed in on the part of town we were in then pressed “Print.” The map spit out of the printer on the credenza behind the Chief’s desk. Sal grabbed a felt-tip pen and marked the police department with a black diamond.
Forte ran his finger over the diamond. “The tank was found about where the right-hand point of the diamond is.”
“What’s back there?” I asked.
“Gorse-choked gully, mostly. Pretty thick.”
He put the coffee mug down and pushed it away.
“So if the tank exploded, it would have started a pretty decent fire as well as an explosion.”
“Sure would have. And with the weather as hot as it’s been, it’s pretty dry. The gorse would have gone up in a flash.”
Bandon weather is fairly mild all year ‘round. Summers are temperate with a strong wind out of the north, but rarely above 80 degrees. This year had been one of those odd ones. Near triple digits for three days running. Phoenix may be set up for that kind of heat, but Bandon dries out like parchment paper. The ground gets hard, the trees become brittle, potted plants haven’t a chance in hell, so to speak.
Beth cleared her throat.
Forte looked up from the map. “Got a thought?”
“You know what day this is, don’t you?”
The Chief looked at his desk calendar. “September 26. Why?”
Beth’s voice hitched. “It’s the anniversary of the 1936 fire.”
1936
Other cities had suffered disastrous fires. Chicago. San Francisco. Atlanta. But those were major cities. Important cities to the country. Economic powerhouses with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of millions in commerce.
In 1936, Bandon – abutting the Coquille River – had fewer than 3,000 residents. In the wilderness of the country. An eyedropper of wealth compared to the others.
When the scorching heat of an out of control forest and gorse fire touched the two-story elementary school, the aged, dry wood exploded. In minutes, Bandon became a town of raging flames. Pavement melted. Sand turned to pebbles of glass. Windowpanes slumped into molten pools. Air so blistering and saturated with smoke, breathing became impossible.
In an hour, 600 homes and businesses were nothing but hell-hot skeletons; roofs and walls and contents mere memories.
Those seeking refuge on the beach discovered they were pinned to the ocean surf by mounds of once sun-bleached driftwood igniting from the ravaging heat. The sky, blue and clear just hours before, transformed into a kaleidoscope of orange, red and yellow seemingly itself ablaze. A tornado of wind, fed by the inferno, launched a 500-foot high firestorm of coal-hot embers. A volcano of searing wood, small and large; like lava and ash, it rained onto boats and mills and businesses and homes.
And frantic people desperately trying to escape the blaze with nowhere to run.
Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire, son of Zeus, swept his hand across the coastal town and left it barren.
CHAPTER TWO
SEVEN HOURS, FORTY-TWO MINUTES
Climbing
