Tod's single word expressed his dismay but also functioned as an unintentional prayer. "Christ."
Balenger ran to the next room, groped for a switch, and flicked it. Another overhead light assaulted his eyes. Blinking, he saw an array of electronic equipment and monitors.
"Ronnie's surveillance system," Amanda explained.
"Turn everything on." Along the wall to his left, Balenger noticed that a metal shutter was smaller than those he'd seen elsewhere in the hotel. But what he concentrated on was a trapdoor in the floor below it. The door was bolted shut. It, too, had a lever with wires attached to a metal box.
The next room's door took him in a new direction. Balenger had a sudden mental image of the penthouse divided into four quadrants, two rooms per quadrant. The interior of each quadrant faced a wall that separated it from the hotel's center column, where the grand staircase had been.
When he flicked the light switch, he saw a library: floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves, countless leather-bound books, two Victorian reading chairs, another locked trapdoor, another lever with wires to a metal box. His unease intensified. A row of shelves along the inside wall had no books. In their place, the eyepieces of small telescopes projected from holes in the wall, another way Carlisle used to monitor what happened in the hotel, a primitive version of Ronnie's surveillance system.
The next room transported Balenger from 1901 to more than a century later. It was a modern media room, with a flat-screen TV, a surround-sound system, a DVD player, a VHS player, racks of DVDs and videotapes, and a sofa on which to enjoy them. Again, wires led from a bolted hatch to a metal box.
The subsequent door led to another quadrant. Balenger faced a kitchen in a 1960s style, the refrigerator and stove the avocado-green color popular during that era. Sure, he thought. Ronnie could carry video and audio equipment in here by himself and not be noticed, but getting a new fridge and stove in here, not to mention the equipment to remodel the kitchen, would have attracted a lot of attention. Even the sink was green. But a gourmet's array of copper pots and pans hung from hooks in the ceiling.
A hatch, the same as the others.
The schizoid pattern continued in the next room, for when Balenger flicked the light switch, he was again in 1901, looking at a Victorian dining room.
Another hatch, no different from the others. More eyepieces in the wall.
Now a door to the right, another quadrant. An overhead light revealed primitive exercise equipment, an early version of a treadmill and a stationary bicycle. Balenger imagined Carlisle laboring on them, trying to build the muscle tone and stamina that, along with steroids and vitamin supplements, helped him combat his bleeding. But the heavy weights in the corner had to be Ronnie's, not Carlisle's. The strain of the weights on Carlisle's body would have caused bleeding in his muscles rather than have helped prevent it.
Where Balenger expected to find a bolted, wired hatch and a small metal shutter, he saw a compartment with a door. A button was next to the door. An elevator. Aiming, he opened the door, finding a brass gate and dark shaft.
He closed the door and pushed several weights against it. Then he hurried to the final quadrant, where Vinnie stood, looking troubled, having come through a door in the bedroom and turned on the light. As Cora, Amanda, and Tod caught up to Balenger, he saw another bolted, wired hatch. But this time, what made him frown was a primitive medical clinic. A glass cabinet filled with medicines. Hypodermics. A doctor's examining table. Stainless-steel poles with hooks from which bottles containing blood transfusions would have been linked to a needle in Carlisle's bruised arm. The desperation was insane. How do you stop a hemophiliac from bleeding after you've stuck a needle in his arm to give him medication to try to prevent him from bleeding?
"All the trapdoors are secured," Balenger said.
"We bought some time," Vinnie said, "but we'd better find a way to disconnect those explosives in case Ronnie has a way of setting them off by remote control."
Everyone looked at Balenger for guidance.
He felt helpless. "In the Rangers, explosives weren't my specialty."
"But you must have had some training in them," Amanda said.
"Not enough." Balenger crossed toward the metal box.
Behind him, he heard Tod ask, "How come the shutters on the windows are so small?"
"We told you Carlisle was agoraphobic," Vinnie said. "Open spaces terrified him. He never left the hotel."
Except once, Balenger thought, remembering that the old man shot himself on the beach.
"The only views he could have tolerated," Cora said, "were through small windows."
"What a nutjob." Tod shifted several vials, examining them. "Never heard of some of this stuff."
"They're blood-clotting agents," Vinnie said.
"Not this one. It's morphine. Did he like to shoot up?"
"Carlisle needed it for the pain when blood seeped into his joints."
"Into his joints? Now I've heard everything. The label on the morphine's from 1971." Tod looked tempted to put it in his pocket, then thought better. "Stuff probably doesn't work anymore. It's probably poison by now."
Balenger unzipped his Windbreaker and shoved the pistol into his shoulder holster. Kneeling, he studied the wires connected to the lever hooked over the trapdoor. "You might want to be in another room while I do this."
They didn't move.
Except Tod. "Guess I'm the only one with the brains to take cover." He went into the bedroom.
"If that thing blows up, I have a feeling it won't make a difference where we are," Cora said.
Vinnie knelt beside him. "Besides, how can we help if we don't see what you're doing?"
Balenger gave them a look of respect, then held his breath and pulled the wires from plugs on the lever. He exhaled and gently lifted the box's lid.
They peered over his shoulder.
"Plastic explosive." Balenger managed to keep his voice calm. "The detonator's pushed into a block of the stuff."
"The thing that looks like a short pencil, is that the detonator?" Cora asked.
"Yes. There's some kind of electronic device hooked to it. When the trapdoor rises, it flips the lever and brings these wires in contact with another pair of wires. That closes a battery-driven circuit and triggers the detonator."
"Can the electronic device be activated by remote control?" Vinnie asked.
"Don't know. It might also be programmed to blow up if anybody cuts the wires. The simplest tactic…" Balenger steadied himself. "… is to pull the detonator from the block of explosive."
"Maybe motion also sets it off," Vinnie said.
"Then we're back to where we started, and we wait to see if Ronnie can trigger these bombs from a distance."
"Damned if we do, damned if we don't," Vinnie said.
"We're damned, all right," Amanda said.
Balenger wiped sweat from his brow. He reached into the metal box, then hesitated and took off his gloves. Again, he reached into the box. Thunder made him flinch. Working to control his trembling fingers, he gently pulled the detonator out. He lifted the block of explosive from the box-it felt like putty-and set it a distance away.
Vinnie stepped back. "Isn't that dangerous to move?"
"You mean like nitroglycerin and the slightest jolt blows it up? No." Balenger dried his palms on his jeans. "Plastic explosive's stable. You can pound it with a hammer. You can throw it against a wall. You can hold a lit match against it. The stuff won't go off unless there's a preliminary explosion with enough heat to do the job." He pointed toward the block he'd put aside. "Right now, that's one of the least dangerous things in this hotel."