the locations as Sal spoke, it seemed like a daunting task to keep Bandon safe.
The Chief’s phone interrupted. He picked up the receiver and abruptly announced, “Forte.” Listened for a few seconds. “Where?” His face changed color. Like he’d been baked by the Arizona sun. “Anyone hurt?” The “tan” turned beet red. Rage-induced. “I’m sorry, Ben. My condolences to the family.” Another moment listening. “I understand. Let me know if we can do anything.”
He slammed the phone into its base, rattling the coffee mugs. “One of those damn bombs went off in that old abandoned motel on the south side of Coos Bay. A tip came in that the bomb was in one of the rooms. The CB cop who responded to the call opened the door and set it off.”
“Killed him?”
“Yeah. And the building is burning like a son of a bitch.” Forte scrubbed the sides of his head with both hands. “They won’t be sending any reinforcements down our way. Can’t blame Ben. He has his own city to worry about.”
Sal leaned forward, “So it was a booby trap.”
“Yes.”
“Diversion,” I said. “Keep Bandon isolated.”
“Seems so, Nick.” Forte straightened up in his chair. “Damn. What do these bastards want?”
1936
With a bit too much “touch of the spirits,” a man whose name has been lost to history, began yelping for help from the second story window of one of Bandon’s riverside hotels. Flames were consuming the town and the hotel guest assumed, rightfully, that the inferno would soon reach his building, reducing it, and him, to dust and ash.
Hearing the cries, Lighthouse Tender Rose Lead Seaman, named Davis, pushed through the deck crowded shoulder to shoulder with refugees already saved from the blaze, and snatched a ladder from the foredeck. Joined by the Rose’s cook, a Swede named Johannsen, the two men ran to the hotel amidst the showering embers under a targeted spray of water from the ship’s fire hoses.
Tipping the wood ladder to the exterior hotel wall, it fell some four feet shy of the window. With the bitter taste of scorched smoke on his tongue, undeterred, Johanssen lifted it above his shoulders, adrenalin surging through his body, until the top rung reached the windowsill. Davis, not unfamiliar with climbing the Rose’s rigging, scrambled up Johanssen’s back and climbed to the window.
But the drunken hotel guest – who in his intoxicated state had assumed he started the fire because he had been smoking in bed – demanded to come out of the room head first.
Having none of it, and feeling the heat at his back from the encroaching inferno, Davis clocked the man on his “jib boom” as Rose Commander J. H. Jensen aptly described it, making the inebriated man see things Davis’s way. He came out of the window feet first.
Johanssen lowered the ladder to the ground, collected his two charges and still under the spray of the fire hoses returned to the Rose.
CHAPTER FOUR
FIVE HOURS, THIRTEEN MINUTES
Too nervous to sit, Sal and I silently stood in Forte’s office. There was little to say. The map behind his desk now marked areas where we thought were possible locations for the bombs; red, yellow and green indicating high, medium and low probability. But those were merely guesses meant to provide a focus rather than a true course of action.
“What do you want us to do?” I asked the Chief.
He never had a chance to answer.
Beth barged into the office, hyperventilating. “Shooting in Old Town, Chief.”
Forte stared at her as if she had leprosy.
“When?”
“Now.”
“Where?”
“Continuum Center.”
Forte stood and looked at us. “You are now officially deputies of the BPD.” He reached into a bottom desk drawer and pulled out two leather cases, tossing one to me the other to Sal. In a single splurge of words, Forte said, “You’ll uphold the law, constitution and whatever else I say, so help you God. Say ‘I do.’”
We did.
The three of us raced from the Chief’s office to the parking lot. Sal and I climbed into the Crown Vic and followed Forte’s black cruiser onto Highway 101, lights and siren bringing traffic to a halt. He skidded onto Chicago Street under the Welcome arch and left onto Second.
We barreled the half block to the Center and skittered to a stop. People were backing away from the building. Those in shorts and short sleeve shirts clearly tourists. Locals in jeans and untucked Ts.
Forte jumped from his cruiser, unholstered his Glock and began yelling at gawkers to get back. Sal climbed from his seat, pulling his ever-present Colt and racing to Forte’s side.
I threw the Crown Vic into reverse and slammed the gas pedal, leaving black stripes on the pavement, the high revving and loud exhaust my version of a siren.
At Chicago, I twisted the wheel and the Vic drifted the corner, tires billowing smoke. I slammed open the door, threw the Vic into Park and in a single motion was out of the car with my Taurus Magnum in hand.
The Continuum Center has a back entrance along a narrow, short but classy little promenade. Racing up the brick to cover the rear entrance, a family stood in front of the entry about to go in.
“Get away from there! Now!”
Their eyes grew to saucers, frozen by the sight of a six-foot-five crazy man with a honkin’ big gun running at them.
“NOW!”
They complied, the father grabbing his wife’s and young son’s hands and hustled toward Chicago Street.
I heard two gunshots.
The glass panel on the entry door shattered, the two slugs slamming into the wooden fence on the opposite side of the pedway.
Back to the building’s wall, left of the doorway, I twisted for a quick peek into the Center. On the left, a small raven-haired man in black jeans and a striped pullover shirt held what looked like a Beretta. He was pointing it toward the front of the building where Sal and Forte would have entered.
Further along the mostly glass hallway, behind a corner, a hand popped out, a dull silver revolver spitting big caliber slugs. Big enough to catch the guy in black jeans in the gut causing an ugly large hole. He looked down at his wound as if to ask what had just happened? Then crumpled. The man with the silver revolver sprinted down the hallway to the fallen guy, gun still aimed at his adversary. Tall, muscular. Someone I’d have expected to be carrying a .45 or .357 or a nine-mil. Instead, the weapon was old, with an octagonal barrel.
“Stand where you are!” I yelled through the shattered door glass. Rather than putting the gun down, he swung it toward me, pulling the trigger twice.
The heat of the bullets passing my ear pissed me off. I fired
