The Drifter (Peter Ash #1)(74)

When he cracked the seal, a petroleum stink rose like poison perfume.

He bumped the drum with his toe and watched the languid ripples in the heavy black liquid. “Fuel oil,” he said. “Ten drums of fuel oil.”

He thought of several reasons somebody would stockpile partial drums of fuel oil in an abandoned warehouse.

None of those reasons were good.

Lewis had his light pointing down. “Look at the floor,” he said, his voice pitched low but still carrying in the hush of the room. Peter shifted his own light.

The trail of footprints joined with many more, following the twin trails of what could only be a hand truck, through the roll-up door to the plastic drums and back again. And another traffic pattern, footprints and the same twin trails. But a lot more of them.

A scattering of fine white pellets, half ground to powder underfoot, led from the roll-up door to a fourth chamber. But this one was closed off with a plank partition, curved at the top to fit the arched brick opening. Peter could tell by the dimensions of the planks and the rough saw marks that the work was at least thirty to forty years old. But the heavy commercial security door set into the partition was new. With a steel jamb and a serious lock.

Lewis put the light on Peter’s face and leaned in.

“Hey. You okay?”

Peter held up a hand to keep the light from his eyes. “I’m fine. We need to get into that next room.”

“You not fine. It forty degrees in here and you sweating like a pig.”

“Don’t worry about it.” His chest felt wrapped in metal, and his breath came hard. The static wanted to fill his head, but he kept it down, pushed it down. There was work to do now. Breathe in, breathe out.

Lewis looked at him for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “Calm your shit. Gonna go get the tools.”

Peter closed his eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. It helped. He listened to the silence of Lewis walking away, then the silence of his return. The soft clank of the tool bag set on the hard plank floor. When Peter opened his eyes, Lewis was bent, examining the deadbolt.

He gave a low whistle. “That one serious. Can’t open that with the electric pick. Time for the sledgehammer.”

Peter shook his head. “They can’t know we were here,” he said. “Let me look in that bag. I have an idea.”

“They gonna know we here, anyway,” said Lewis, nodding at their bootprints in the dust. “Might as well get it done.”

“You think they’re Indian scouts, can tell a man by his bootprints?”

“You saying you wouldn’t notice the extra prints?”

“Of course I’d notice,” said Peter. “So would you. But I think there’s a few of these guys, and they’re not all brain surgeons. Now let me see that bag.”

“No chain saw, if that what you looking for.”

“Shut up and hold the light.”

Lewis kept his tool bag neat and orderly, and Peter quickly found what he wanted.

There were certain conventions when installing doors. Usually, the hinges went on the inside, the side you were trying to protect, because the hinges were a weak point. Remove the pins, and the hinge side of the door was no longer connected to the jamb.

But whoever had installed this security door had put the hinges on the side where Peter and Lewis stood. Which meant either the installer was trying to keep someone on the other side from getting out, or he didn’t really know what he was doing. Either one was fine with Peter, as long as the guy hadn’t used NRP hinges. NRPs had a threaded steel insert that kept the pins from being removed when the door was closed. But they weren’t standard with every security door.

So Peter took a claw hammer and a punch and tapped on the hinge pins from below, trying to get them to lift.

They did. First the bottom, then the middle, then the top. The work helped him keep the static down. Breathe in, breathe out.

“Here,” he said, holding out the slightly greasy pins. Lewis took them.

Then, with a small cat’s paw on the bottom of the door, Peter slowly and carefully levered the hinge side of the door outward. The deadbolt stayed put, but when the hinge side was completely free, Peter just lifted the door away from the jamb.

Lewis stepped past him, the 10-gauge at the ready.

There was nobody in the room. It was another big chamber, maybe forty feet on a side, with the same spalling brick walls and timbered ceiling.

The floor had been swept, and a cheap folding banquet table and two plastic chairs were set up in the far corner.

Neatly stacked on four wooden pallets were large white bags in heavy-duty plastic.

Bag after bag after bag.

Lewis stepped closer and read the label.

“Fertilizer,” he said. Then looked at Peter. “Ammonium nitrate. Fifty-pound bags.”

Peter scanned a pallet. Breathe in, breathe out.

Counted the bags.

Did the math.

Looked back up at Lewis.

“Ten thousand pounds,” he said.

The white static screamed. Peter felt himself begin to shake in the cold, dark space.

Lewis’s air of detached amusement was gone. “How big was Oklahoma City? The federal building?”

“Five thousand pounds of fertilizer,” said Peter. “And two drums of racing fuel. But fuel oil does the job just fine. And those ten partial drums out there probably add up to four full ones.”