Chapter 19
Ihad slept in and gotten a decent night’s sleep. I fixed a fabulous breakfast, and we all chowed down on a smorgasbord of pancakes, waffles, French toast, hash browns, scrambled eggs, and crispy bacon. I made a little of everything.
“Good morning, Deputy Wild,” the bomber said. “I trust you had a good night’s sleep?”
The sound of the scumbag’s voice sent a spike of adrenaline through my body.
“Did you have a good victory celebration last night?”
“What do you want?” I asked, tired of his nonsense.
“I want to continue our game.”
I had a feeling he was going to say that. "What’s your ultimate goal? What's your endgame?"
"In due time, Deputy. In due time."
I dreaded what was coming. This wasn’t a social call.
There was a long, awkward silence, and I suspected the bomber was playing it out for dramatic effect.
"I'm sure you can guess what's next,” he said.
"Where is it?" I asked in a dry tone, so over this nonsense.
"Why would I tell you that? There's no challenge in that. No fun." After a pause, he said, "I can tell you when. That's much more interesting, isn't it? Knowing that a devastating explosion will take place in 12 hours if you fail to deactivate the device."
"Same type of device?”
"Similar. But not the same. This one won't be so easy. The yield will be bigger. More damage. More devastation.”
"Some people create. Some people destroy."
"I choose to create.”
I scoffed. "How do you figure?”
"I'm creating a great many things. An opportunity for you to rise to the challenge, to say the least.”
I huffed again.
“You disagree?”
“You’re creating death and destruction.”
“No one has died yet. And if you do your job, no one will.”
“You’ve proven your point. You can build an advanced bomb. How about we stop there and call it a day? You’ve got the satisfaction of knowing what you can do. True power comes from withholding might. The discipline not to destroy.”
He laughed. “Nice try, Deputy. But you’re not going to be able to play to my ego like that. Besides, it’s out of my hands. The bomb has already been placed, and it is set to detonate. You’re wasting time.”
“How do I find it?”
“Maybe it will find you,” he said in an ominous tone. “Good luck.”
He ended the call before I could reply.
I shared a grave look with JD and filled him in on the situation.
“A bomb?” Henrik said. “Now that is concerning.”
I called the sheriff and gave him an update, then texted the audio clip of the call to Special Agent Thompson and Isabella. I set a timer on my phone for 12 hours from the time of the call.
The countdown had begun.
Thompson called. “You got any idea what he meant by the bomb finding you? Is he talking about a smart bomb? A drone?” He paused. “What did you do to this guy? Fuck his wife? Kick his dog?”
Neither of those was my style. But JD and I had made a lot of enemies.
“Every bomber we’ve put away is still serving time, and none have been this sophisticated.
” My mind raced, deep in thought. An idea popped into my head.
“The boat. Maybe he planted the bomb aboard the boat while we were out last night.”
“That’s right, you live on a boat,” he said with annoyance.
“I’m sure you know everything about me. I bet your team has done a deep dive.”
“They couldn’t find anything. Otherwise, I’d think you were on the take.” After a pause, he said, “I can send a detection team to your location.”
“I don’t think it’s going to do any good. Oblivium is a non-radioactive, non-thermal, silent material. Geiger counters, vapor detectors, sniffer dogs, EMF sensors won’t pick it up.”
Thompson sighed. "This is a real problem. If this technology spreads or becomes commonplace, we'd be flying blind.”
"I'll call Emily. Maybe she's got some method of identifying the isotope.”
I told him I'd be in touch and ended the call.
"Isotope?" Henrik asked. "What isotope?”
I gave him the background on the bomb.
His eyes sparkled with intrigue. "Now you're talking my language.” He thought about it for a moment.
“If Oblivium is in a metastable quantum state before detonation, it will likely distort quantum field coherence.
It's possible that a device that uses entangled photon pairs or perhaps superconducting quantum interference could detect wave function instability. "
JD and I looked at him like he was speaking a foreign language. Either this was a rare moment of clarity, or Henrik was as sharp as ever.
Off our dumb looks, he clarified, “Think of it as a device that scans for quantum phase jitter."
"Whatever that means,” Jack said.
I called Emily. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we've got another problem.
" I left out the bit about her boyfriend and told her about the new threat.
Then, in an effort to sound intelligent, I said, "I was thinking it might be possible to detect the device if we had something that could scan for quantum phase jitter.
You know, something that could detect distortions in quantum field coherence.
" I said it casually, like it was something I thought about when bored.
Emily paused for a long, impressed moment, not sure how to respond. "Yes, I suppose that would work.”
"Do you have anything like that?”
"No. Detection is something we haven't worked on yet.”
"How quickly can you throw something together?”
"When do you need it?”
"In less than 12 hours.”