The Distant Echo of a Bright Sunny Day Read online

  The Distant

  Echo of a

  Bright Sunny

  Day

  Pat O’Brien

  Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.

  Copyright 2011

  All rights reserved — Pat O’Brien

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, from the publisher.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is a coincidence.

  Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.

  12620 FM 1960, Suite A4-507

  Houston, TX 77065

  www.sbpra.com

  ISBN: 978-1-61204-508-5

  Typography and page composition by J. K. Eckert & Company, Inc.

  Dedicated to Professor Charles T. Burnham

  (In Memoriam)

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  1

  In the trade, it was known as a “dirty job” or a “random shoot,” as opposed to a “clean job” or a “clean shoot,” and no expert worthy of the name would want to be associated with such sloppiness. But Rick didn’t have the luxury of concerning himself with how it reflected on his expertise. He had agreed to take on the job under the table and out of the limelight, and no one who knew anything about such matters would ever know the difference, beyond the fact that it had been pulled off by someone with at least a smattering of technical knowhow. The circumstances themselves did not allow for a display of his real skills and experience, and the deed would have to go unsung. The only acknowledgment he would ever receive would be from the group itself, though none of them knew beans from structural and material considerations, strategic placement, or any of the other factors usually involved. In a general way, they only knew that he was qualified to produce the result they wanted.

  With the limitations imposed by the secretive nature of the job, then, he had set about improvising as best he could. Working with a roto hammer, a generator, and a carbon-tipped one-inch drill, he had bored a series of holes directly under the tower itself and into each of the two huge concrete slabs holding it up. To muffle the noise of the drill grinding into cement that had been curing for at least a hundred years, he had set up a makeshift “closet” consisting of several quilted moving pads hung over a wooden framework. Within this confined space, wearing only a headlamp for lighting, goggles, and a dust mask, he had drilled out placements for each of the twenty sticks of dynamite he had estimated he would need to blow the two slabs apart in diametrical opposition to each other, and thus drop the tower in upon itself. Based on experience, his calculations had a degree of certainty. But the same experience told him that absent the usual groundwork—weakening the structure by exposing some of the underlying rebar or a better assessment of the amount of explosives needed—the tower could topple in any of several different directions. Fortunately, out here, on a windblown, undeveloped stretch of land along the river, the only other buildings were relics in the same category as the tower, and most of them were all off at a distance, anyway.

  Working from around eleven until four or five in the morning, and because weeknights were out (industrial activity virtually shut down over the weekend, thus enhancing the clandestine aspect of their undertaking), the task had taken all of three nights, from Friday through Sunday. Early Monday morning, if all went as planned, it would culminate in the “Big Event,” as they had come to refer to it. After planting the dynamite and stringing the wire, with everyone looking on, Rick would pull off what Heidi and the others hoped would propel them into national recognition: a recognition tantamount to that given to the Earth Liberation Front, PETA, or any other organization dedicated to safeguarding the health of the planet and its biodiversity. A “statement” would have been made, the seriousness of their intentions validated, and one more outdated symbol of a bygone era unceremoniously dumped into oblivion. Afterwards, amidst a self-congratulatory round of shoulder slapping and high-fives, they could depart for home with the heady feeling of having achieved a victory over the bugaboo of self-doubt and all its attendant fears.

  Having bored the last hole the night before, Rick had set about the second stage of the operation. He had filled each hole with a charge of dynamite about the size of three pepperoni sticks tightly bound together. Each charge had been primed with a small detonating cap from which a short length of copper wire extruded. A longer strand of wire had been crimped to the shorter wire and from there run out to a yellow relay device laid down between the set of railroad tracks running into the cavernous under-dome of the cooling tower. This device, though a bit longer and narrower, approximated the size and shape of a carton of cigarettes. Once individual strands of wire were attached to it, he connected it to wire he intended to unspool across several hundred yards of open ground and affix to the detonator. The detonator represented the final stage of the operation.

  “I’m gonna need more sandbags,” he said. While he had tended to the technical part, the others had filled gunnysacks with gravel and dirt and had placed them up against the dynamite holes to concentrate and thus magnify the outward force of the explosion within the concrete. “And watch your step—don’t go trippin’ over the wires and bustin’ things loose.”

  Smoking a cigarette, he watched from the entrance as Carlos and Ralph carried a gunnysack between them and brought it in from outside, where they had used a shovel to fill it with dirt and gravel. Misty, Ralph’s girlfriend, stood nearby, holding a flashlight so the two men could see where they were going.

  The two men paused, and Carlos asked Rick where exactly he wanted it.

  “Down at the end, where the two buddies got lazy.”

  Mike and Tony, the “two buddies,” had taken a shortcut to their assigned task by filling the gunnysacks half full so they wouldn’t have to work as hard. When Rick had checked to see that the sacks had been placed properly, he had noticed the difference.

  “What the fuck is this?” he had said, giving one of the loosely filled gunnysacks a kick and spotlighting the two men with his flashlight.

  Mike and Tony had looked at each other.

  “We thought that’s what you wanted,” Mike said.

  “Yeah, that’s what we thought.”

  “Well, you thought wrong. I wanted you to fill the goddamn things up.”

  “Do you want us to do them over?”

  “Forget it. Why don’t you just go somewhere and play. I’ll have Carlos and Ralph take care of it.”

  “You don’t have to be insulting about it,�
�� Mike protested. “We were doing what we thought you wanted us to do.”

  “Yeah, we thought we were doing what you wanted.”

  “Well, you weren’t. And now you’re just in the way.”

  The two men hesitated, then turned and walked off.

  “Watch those wires—you fuck them up and you will be in trouble.”

  Mike switched on his flashlight. Over his shoulder, he said, “We’ve got eyes.”

  “Good—make sure you use them.”

  Rick watched them leave the tunnel, then went back to checking the sacks.

  Carlos and Ralph came up.

  “What was that all about?” Carlos asked.

  “They thought they could get by on the short end. I called them on it.”

  “What’d they say?”

  “Nothin.’”

  “You gonna need more?”

  “Three more, anyway.”

  “You want us to do it?” Carlos asked.

  “If you wouldn’t mind?”

  Thirty minutes later, Heidi and Jody drove up and parked their car out of sight of the road. They wanted to know how things were going; Rick told them.

  “We’re just about ready. One more sack, then I’ll run the spool.”

  “Will you need some help?” Heidi asked, offering to help.

  “It’s not heavy. But if two people pull and one manages the flow, it’ll lay better. You gotta watch for snags, especially over distance and uneven ground.”

  “Jody and I can do it.”

  “I’d rather you keep an eye on the crew, Heidi, especially our two buddies. I don’t want anyone wandering off…once it’s over, we’ll have to move fast.”

  “Tony wanted to take some pictures; that’s why he came along. Will he have time?”

  “That’s up to him. But once it blows, we’re outta here. You understand? Speaking of which, it’ll be light in another hour, so let’s start.”

  Carlos and Ralph had seen to the placement of the last sack and joined Rick and the three women.

  “You think that’ll do it, then, huh, Rick?”

  “You two guys lookin’ to do more?”

  Carlos shook his head. “No way, hombre.”

  Tall and bearish in a shambling, overgrown, size-thirteen-shoe sort of way, Ralph chuckled.

  “That’s gonna do me for a while,” he said.

  “Sitting behind a desk is more his style.” Misty laughed, putting her arm around Ralph’s waist and giving him a squeeze.

  Rick clapped him on the shoulder. “You did good, Ralph. You and Carlos got her done. That’s all that matters. But now we gotta move. How ’bout you and Jody comin’ with me, and everybody else meet us across the way?”

  “That’ll work,” Carlos said. “I’ll drive my car, and Heidi can take the van. Okay?”

  “Inform our two buddies so they don’t get left behind.”

  “I’ll let them know,” Heidi said. “Where are they, anyway?”

  “Exactly what I was talking about, Heidi. But, if you ask me, they probably walked down to the river. That’d be the most romantic spot around.”

  “Really, Rick…”

  “Jus’ let them know, Heidi, okay?”

  “Here they are now,” Jody said.

  The two men came around the corner of the structure and crossed the tracks, to where the others were. Seeing everyone standing there, they stopped.

  “You weren’t waiting for us, were you?”

  “Something like that, Mike. We thought maybe you decided to go for a walk or something.” Rick was trying to keep his impatience to a minimum but resented having to make the effort.

  “Well—so are we ready, then?”

  “If it doesn’t interfere with your timetable, we are, yeah.”

  “What about the group picture?” Tony asked.

  Heidi looked at Rick. “We’ve got time, don’t we?”

  “We would’ve had time, if everybody had done their job right. As it is, we’re gonna have to hustle. I still have to get the line strung. That takes precedence, because that’s why we’re here, right?”

  “But…”

  “Go ahead and get set up over there—if we have time, we can do it.”

  “So, we meet over there, right?” Mike asked.

  “That’s the general idea, boys. So how about we all get moving? Okay?”

  2

  Roughly three hundred yards away, over an open field of scrub grass and stunted bushes, the remains of an ancient, three-story brick warehouse loomed in the darkness like a ship moored off the coast and silhouetted against a starlit sky. Long ago, like many abandoned structures in the area once an integral part of the steel-making industry, it had fallen into a state of disrepair and neglect marked by hollowed-out emptiness and rows of gaping, windowless holes. The few no-trespassing signs that had been posted were faded and tattered, and instead of the products of iron-ore foundries ready to be shipped to other parts of the country, it now housed rats, mice, pigeons, and the occasional hobo on a freight-hop to anywhere else. Eventually, under the massive onslaught of a wrecking ball, it would be demolished to make way for a business park or a distribution center for a trucking company. For now, as a last reminder of bygone industrial might, it stood silent and alone.

  Rick had checked it out earlier, on the first night he had begun work on the cooling tower. He wanted a vantage point, at a safe distance, from which to trigger and view the explosion. But he also wanted to make sure they could get away quickly afterwards. The remoteness of the area made it unlikely that their activity would be discovered prematurely, before they had finished, but the noise from the explosion was sure to be heard. It would carry across the city, in all directions; within minutes every security guard within a two-mile radius would converge upon the area. They could set off the explosion from a location farther down the river, near a decommissioned foundry, or even from a low-lying hill up from the warehouse. But neither spot was near enough to one of the roads leading back to the city, and the foundry itself sat on mudflats.

  “Just take your time,” Rick cautioned. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Stay with me.”

  While Jody and Ralph manned opposite ends of a broom handle and let the spool of insulated wire play out behind them, Rick followed at a distance to see that it didn’t crimp or catch on anything along the way. Before leaving the vicinity of the cooling tower, he had tied off a portion to a railroad-switching device so it wouldn’t pull on any of the wires he had rigged up inside the tower itself. Anchoring it to something stable prevented it from being dislodged en route, from the tower to the warehouse, and relieved any concern he had about anything going wrong with the attachments. In a certain sense, the operation required a delicate touch: in order to maximize the explosion, all the connections had to be maintained, and they could only be maintained if none of the wires came loose.

  Twenty minutes later, the trio had crossed the open stretch of ground that lay between the cooling tower and the warehouse. The others had already arrived and were there waiting. Tony had set up his tripod and camera and was adjusting the focus for darkness. His friend Mike stood nearby, smoking one of his Nat Sherman gold-filtered cigarettes, and Heidi, Misty, and Carlos sat on the edge of a loading dock along the backside of the warehouse. The van and the two cars had been lined up abreast of the loading dock and fronted the tower like vehicles at a drive-in movie. As though by a tacit understanding of the situation’s gravity, nobody said much or only spoke in low tones.

  Rick and the others came into view; Heidi jumped down and walked over.

  “It went okay, huh?”

  “Yeah, it went okay. Let’s just hope from here on out…”

  Rick had Jody and Ralph set the spool down and then he went over to the van and got a wooden detonator out of the back. He brought it over and set it down by the spool.

  “Somebody wanna give me a little light here,” he said, kneeling down.

  Jody turned on a mag light and stood there holding it. The
rest of the group had come up now and, as though they were medical students viewing an operating table procedure, watched intently while Rick set about preparing the last stage of their operation.

  First, he undid the two dynamo screws at the top of the detonator. Then he took out a clasp knife and cut the detonating wire free of the spool. He used the clasp knife to cut back a portion of the insulation and exposed two strands of bare wire. He separated the two strands and wound each one around one of the screws. As he snugged down the screws, he gave each wire a slight tug to test for tightness.

  “That oughta do it,” he said, looking up.

  “We’re all set, then, are we?” Heidi couldn’t quite believe they were on the verge of making their plan a reality, but here they were—moments away from its culmination.

  “My friends, this is it. And you are about to see what we came all this way for.”

  “I don’t know about anyone else,” Jody laughed, “but I’m pumped!”

  “Me, too!” Tony said gleefully, rubbing his hands together.

  The same sentiment found expression in an exuberant exchange of high-fives and exaggerated fist-pumps. Carlos let out a couple of whoop-whoops tantamount to an Indian war cry, and one or two of the others laughed out of sheer giddiness.

  Extemporaneously, in a gush of emotion, Heidi proclaimed they were about to cross the Rubicon and that they could all be deservedly proud of themselves.

  “This is only the beginning,” she said. “There’s still a lot of work ahead of us, but tonight we’ve demonstrated that we’re up to the task.”

  As though out of reverential acknowledgment, the heartfelt pronouncement evoked a moment of silence; then, looking at his watch, Rick said, “I hate to break up the party, but let’s get it done.”

  “Can we do a group picture first?” Tony asked.

  “I think you better hold off on that,” Rick said. “That’s one of those things you can do anytime.”

  “But—”

  “Rick’s right,” Heidi said. “We can do it afterwards, back at the motel. But you should be able to get a nice shot of it coming down, right?”

  “I suppose…”

  Heidi turned to Rick. “Where do you want us to be?”