30 percent. But the temperature was already in the low 80s in the Chief’s office. My comfort zone is between 70 and 73 degrees.
“Show me where this one was found.”
Forte led Sal and me to the gully behind the police department. Even this early in the morning, the sun was giving its full face and force. The four-foot tall mix of gorse, wild blackberries and other scrub crackled under our feet. The heat had taken the last bits of moisture out of the plants and ground. We scrambled down the short incline and picked our way into the brush.
About 30 feet into the field Forte stopped and pointed to a small patch of tamped down scrub.
Sal pushed through the scrub to the north side of the patch. I did the same to the south, eyeballing the ground, figuring it was about three feet square. Bitter dry bushes had been trampled a bit, broken stems and dry leaves clumped into a non-descript pattern as if someone had simply walked to the spot and dropped the propane tank.
“No foot prints,” Sal said, bending down to inspect the thatch.
I pulled back some of the overgrowth hoping to find at least something that would provide a clue. Nothing except a circular indentation from the bottom ring of the propane tank. Someone had placed it on the ground and given it a twist to keep it upright. The hardpan lived up to its name.
Forte looked around the field to its edges. “If the bomb had gone off, this stuff would have turned into a nice brush fire. With this heat and the usual afternoon wind, it would have taken all the fire fighting resources of Bandon to put it out.”
Sweeping an arm around, “What is this, about 200 acres? The houses up there” nodding toward the east, “would have torched in a matter of minutes.” Turning toward the PD, “Our building would have gone up in just a few more minutes. This is scary, Nick.”
“Especially since there are presumably 39 other tanks somewhere.”
We pushed our way through the scrub back to the low-slung police station and Forte’s office. As the seriousness of the potential fire began to take hold, Forte said, “I’ll let the surrounding PDs know what we’re facing. Ditto the mayor and the fire departments. If someone is truly interested in reenacting the ’36 fire, I’m not sure we have the resources to deal with it. Even on a county basis.”
Sal sniffed his coffee mug and dropped it on a tray next to the coffee urn.
“But why do this, guys?” Sal asked. “What’s in it for someone to burn Bandon to the ground again?”
I shook my head. “Doesn’t matter right now. We have 39 potential explosions that are set to go off today.”
“You think they’re all set to go off at 4:30?”
“Sure do. Let’s play bad guys for a second. How do you get the most bang for your buck? How do you get total chaos and beheaded chicken confusion? You could set off the bombs one at a time over eight hours and have resources scrambling from one place to another, but you run the risk of having each of those fires put out quickly and the full force of the responders able to move on to the next fire. Light them all off at once, and there’s no way there are enough people to combat that many brush fires, especially if the afternoon wind kicks up, which it undoubtedly will.”
Forte fell into his office chair, picked up the phone, ready to dial. “Look, what I would like you two to do is give me a plan for ending this. As our semi-official detective bureau, I need you to do what you do and fast.”
He began dialing, head down but still talking to us.
“ I’m going to be coordinating our guys and the responses from the other PDs and fire departments. I’ll call in everyone in the department. Set them to looking for these tanks. I’m not sure we’ll have support from other towns like Coquille. They may feel it necessary to do their own searches in their own backyards. Nothing says this is a Bandon-only problem. Ditto the fire departments. If these damn things go off and we’re eyeball deep in brush fires we can’t handle, most of the other towns are going to hesitate leaving themselves naked.”
“Makes sense to me. If someone is really looking only at Bandon, setting one or two of these things off in Coquille or Myrtle Point – even near Coos Bay – could be a nice diversion.”
Beads of sweat were beginning to trickle down the Chief’s face. It was hot, but he’d seen worse so I wrote it off to anxiety. “True. Which is why we have to act like we’ll have to handle this on our own. That said, I’ll be stuck to this chair until the end of the day, hoping the whole thing is nothing more than a bad joke.”
As Sal and I walked from the office, Forte called after us.
“Listen, Drago. Act fast. No stopping for donuts.”
On the way out of the PD, I asked Beth for a county map. She opened her desk drawer and pulled one out handing it to me.
“Is this for real, Nick?”
“Gotta treat it like it is, sweetie.”
Back in the parking lot, I unfolded the map and spread it across the hood of the Crown Vic.
“Okay, you want to torch Bandon. Where do you put the bombs?”
Sal dug his fingernails into his beard, stared at the map.
“Man, there’s a lot of scrub and gorse around here.”
Bandon itself is slightly more than three-square miles, most of which is landmass and heavily treed. At barely 20 feet above sea level, the area was formed 4.5 million years ago during a massive land deformation as the tectonic plates shifted. The Jurassic rocks can be seen in the sea cliffs, sea stacks and large islands along the shore near the Coquille River. Most of the land is greywacke sandstone, greenstone and chert, and ultra-hard blueschist. The last could be found in sufficient amounts that construction engineers blasted Tupper Rock to bits in order to build the all-important jetty.
“Yeah, but how would you take down Bandon?” I pointed to the east of Filmore Ave. “Big area here.” Tracing my finger down to Rosa Road. “And tons of open scrub here.”
Sal pointed to the south of town. “Along the backside of City Park, near the softball and little league ball fields.”
I marked each of those areas and a few more where thick brush choked the ground.
“Add a few of these old abandoned buildings and houses, Nick, and you’ve got a ring of fire that spells inferno.”
“Should we take a quick cruise around and see if we ID some of the more likely spots?”
It really wasn’t a question. Sal climbed into the passenger seat and we headed up 101 to Old Town. That, it seemed to me, would be a good place to start because Bandon is identified by its historic district and would most likely be the target.
We idled along First Street, the river and boardwalk on our right, a series of stores on the left. At First and Oregon Avenue we turned up the bluff to Third then back down Bandon Ave. to Second to the old Coast Guard Coquille
