Chapter Five
In which Wallace does what he does best.
Wallace…
Tonight’s the night.
While security is heavy at the family’s cannabis warehouses, there’s only one middle-aged guy making his rounds in the office building. The big parking lot is empty, as are the ones surrounding the buildings nearby.
I watched the guard’s rotation for the last two nights.
He circles the top floor, then the bottom.
He goes to the security desk in the lobby and checks the camera feed from the offices and hallways, and the parking lot.
Then, a circuit around the outside of the building with his huge flashlight.
He eats his lunch in the staff break room, and then does it all over again.
As he moves through his paces tonight, I move through mine.
Charges set on all four corners of the building’s exterior. Check.
Disabling the building’s extremely inadequate sprinkler system. Check.
Getting through a ground floor window and looping the security footage for a fifteen-minute period. Check.
The charges set outside are the final, “feck you.” The accelerants inside do the real work, creating a conflagration that will demolish the building within fifteen minutes.
First, I set the largest canister of fuel in the HVAC room. Climbing the back staircase to the second floor, I stop at the door.
Was that a whistle?
I stand utterly still, waiting for another sound, but there’s nothing.
The night guard should be in the northwest corner of the first floor if he’s keeping to his schedule.
I’m about to step into the hall when my phone buzzes in my jacket.
Stifling a groan, I move into the recessed stairwell where the light from the phone won’t be visible.
It’s Uncle Cormac.
I bang the back of my head lightly against the wall.
Well, feck. Uncle Cormac may be a genius at warfare, but he knows shite about arson. Once the process has started, it canna be undone without a huge risk of discovery. If I miss something and they catch it, security’s bound to be tripled for this building by tomorrow night.
My phone buzzes again, it’s a complicated-looking download from the MacTavish tech team.
What the hell.
Eleven minutes is a goddamn lifetime when it comes to building the level of heat I’ll need to incinerate this place properly. I’ll have to elongate the fuse on the…
Footsteps echo in the stairwell and I grit my teeth. The security guard is early on his rounds and now, I’m late.
Two doors down on the left side of the hall is the janitor’s closet. I step over the bucket and mop, closing the door. The guard is passing by as his phone rings.
“Hey, honey. I thought you’d be in bed.”
How sweet, a call from the missus. Fecking move, you arse!
“I’ve been bragging about Zeb’s good news to anyone who will listen,” he chuckles. “How are the kids?”
Resting my forehead against the wood, I focus on the blaze trying to burst free inside my chest.
Not now. It’s not time.
Fortunately, the man is a multi-tasker because he conducts his perfunctory second-floor rounds with commendable speed before heading back down the stairs.
Kyle’s office is at the end of the hall.
I check my watch. Eleven and a half minutes left on the loop on the security camera feed.
It takes seconds to bypass his pathetic key card lock and another second wasted to roll my eyes at the decor, which is Big Game Hunter Chic.
Several mounted animal heads stare down at me blankly, some of them endangered and none of them shot by this bawbag.
He wouldn’t even know which was the business end of a rifle that would be powerful enough to take these poor beasts down. Is his tadger really that tiny?
There’s another wisp of sound.
Humming? Something through the vent?
I waste another precious thirty seconds listening to the silence before seating myself behind Kyle’s enormous desk.
I dinnae have a thumb drive, but I do have a high-tech MacTavish phone that can hold incalculable amounts of data and a charging cord.
Plugging it in, I sit back and enjoy the show.
I’m not a tech man. This, though, it’s elegant, a torrent of symbols and code, tearing through the computer’s files until “Frostbite” is highlighted and the download begins.
It’s almost magical.
Most of the documents are in Russian. Surprising.
Checking my watch, I see I have eight minutes left.
I’m going to have to deviate from my accelerants pattern and set one in Kyle’s office, rather than Marlena’s down the hall.
Her office is the least structurally sound and would have created the flashpoint more quickly…
but it’s important to know when to pivot.
While the hacker program on my phone downloads the rest of the Frostbite files, I set up the canister of my own potent cocktail of heavy fuel next to the door.
This canister will ignite at a mere 200 degrees, so the first hint of vapor from the blaze on the first floor will light this office up like an acetylene torch.
That will set off the third canister I’ll set in the drop ceiling in the meeting room across the hall, which then ignites the roof.
My phone vibrates, letting me know the download is finished. I pull the cord free, tuck away my phone and I’m across the hall and planting the last of the accelerants with three minutes and twenty seconds to spare.
Last step. Empty the building.
Blue Oyster Cult’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” blasts from the corner of the parking lot when I press a button on my phone to remote start the MP3 player nestled in a planter there. The guard should be heading out the back door to investigate in…
“Hey! You asshole kids! We don’t have any weed here!” The guard is storming out the door and heading to that corner of the parking lot. I’m guessing this isn’t the first time he’s had this issue.
Good. He’s nearly at a safe distance from the blast. I’m taking the steps three at a time down the back stairs to get to my first malignant creation on the ground floor, just waiting to come to life when I spark the fuse. I’m back on schedule.
The blaze inside me is swirling into an inferno as the first canister erupts, sending a reverse waterfall of flame up the wall and covering the ceiling.
Humming along with the music, I stroll down the hall. Opening the front doors will send in the next surge of oxygen to propel the blaze through the first floor.
I can feel the eager surge of the wind as it pushes past me as I throw the glass doors open wide, soaring toward an embrace with the blaze racing down the hall. Goosebumps form on my skin even as I feel the first blast of heat on my back.
And then I hear it.
“SCARLETT! Fire it’s on fire oh god, Scarlett get out!”
Tadger – Scottish slang for a penis.