“I'm in the field. Who is it, what does she want?”

“Sam!” she shouted.

But he didn't hear.

Death of a Blue Movie Star

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“Tell him Rune,” she shouted to the dispatcher.

“Hurry!”

A moment later the condition of the line improved, though it was still filled with static.

“Sam.” She was crying. “He's got me in a room with a bomb. The Sword of Jesus bomber.”

“Where are you?”

“A house on Fire Island. Fair Harbor, I think. He's put a bomb here.”

Seven minutes.

“Where's the guy who set it?”

“He left. It's that Warren Hathaway... the witness in the first bombing. He's going back to Bay Shore on the ferry.”

“Okay, I'll get a copter on its way. Describe the house.” She did. Healy broke the line for a terrifyingly long twenty seconds.

“Okay, what've we got?”

“A big handful of — what is it? — C-3. There's a timer. It's set to go off in about six minutes.”

“Christ, Rune, get the hell out —”

“He's nailed me in.”

A pause for a moment. Was he sighing? When he spoke, his voice was soothing as a Valium. “Okay, we're going to get through this just fine. Listen up. Okay?”

“What do I do?”

“Tell me about it.” Rune told him what Hathaway had said about the bomb. It seemed he whistled when she explained it, but that may have been just static.

Five minutes.

“How big is the room?”

“Maybe twenty by fifteen.”

A pause.

“All right, here's the deal. You get far enough away and cover yourself up with mattresses or cushions, you'll probably live.”

“But he said it'll make me deaf and blind.”

There was silence. “Yeah,” he said. “It may.”

Four minutes, twenty seconds.

“The thing is, you try to disarm it yourself, and it goes, it'll kill you.”

“Sam, I'm going to do it. How? Tell me how.”

He was hesitating. Finally he said, “Don't pull the detonator out of the explosive. There's a pressure switch in it. You'll have to bypass the shunt and cut the battery cord. You need enough electricity to keep the galvanometer fooled into thinking the cord isn't cut.”

“I don't know what that means!”

“Listen carefully. Look at the bomb. There'll be a little box near the battery.”

“It's gray. I see it.”

“With two metal posts on it.”

“Right.”

Healy said, “You have to run a piece of wire that's very narrow gauge —”

“What's gauge?” She was crying.

“Sorry... I mean, it's got to be real thin. Run a piece from one lead of that box to the main terminal connecting the battery to the cable. See what I'm saying?”

“Right.”

“Then you cut the wires to the timer.”

Three minutes, thirty.

“Okay,” she said.