On top of it was a tablet computer, like an iPad, but slightly smaller. This was somehow hardwired onto the top of the barrel, a mess of cabling that Ben wasn’t about to try and fiddle with.
He stared at the cold metal object, wondering what to do next.
I don’t really have a plan for this part, he realized. He’d just assumed he’d find the bomb, take it back up with him, and throw it in the lake.
Or, he had secretly hoped it would be like an old western — a single fuse, lit and burning its way down the cable until it reached the payload. A simple snip with a knife or a deadeye shot with a six-shooter would have taken care of that.
But it wasn’t the wild west, and Ben stood motionless for another few seconds. What now, genius?
He stepped closer to examine the cables. All of them were black — no guessing “blue” or “red” and pulling one of them out. They were wrapped in a thick bundle with electrical tape after protruding from two sides of the tablet, and spread out again at the other end, before heading into the large metal canister.
As he examined the device, a plan began to form. It was primitive, but it was something.
The bomb is cylindrical. Which means it can be rolled.
He had no idea how heavy it was, or how delicate. But he was beyond waiting around for something else to happen — it was just him, a bomb, and not much time left.
He gently grasped the top lip of the barrel-like container and rocked it back and forth. It seemed heavy, which made sense, but not completely stationary. This might work.
He rocked a little harder, testing both for weight and, as he suddenly realized, to simply see if it would explode.
If I get out of this, there’s no way anyone’s ever hiring me to be part of a bomb squad.
Trial and error didn’t seem to be a factor in examining an explosive device, but then again, there was nothing else he could do.
Thankfully, he didn’t explode. No fiery balls of fire ripped him to shreds as he played with the bomb-keg, so he continued with the plan.
Rock gently. Rock a little harder. A little harder… harder —
He lost his grip on the barrel, and the whole mess crashed to the floor. It clanged as it bumped on the hard rock and began to roll down the slightly sloping cavern until it smashed into the wall at the bottom of the chamber.
Ben was irritated that he’d cowered away from it when it fell, as if hiding a few inches back would have saved him from a deadly explosion.
But it hadn’t exploded, and though he wouldn’t purposefully repeat the experiment, he now knew that a little tumbling around wouldn’t be enough to detonate it.
He breathed in and out a few times and stepped up to the bomb, noticing a dim bluish light emanating from the barrel’s top. He pointed the flashlight away and saw that the dim light remained.
What the —
The top of the barrel, now on its side, faced away from him. The light was casting shadows in the room, fighting with the beam of his flashlight. He walked around the device and saw the cause of the blue glow.
The screen.
The tablet computer was on, with nothing but a blue screen and white text scrolling around. It was code, no doubt some sort of computer program that the creators of this device had installed on it.
But at the top right of the little screen appeared a few strings of numbers as well, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what they represented.
A countdown.
Ben read the numbers, almost scared to finally learn the truth. There were four two-digit spaces, and he assumed what each meant. Days, hours, minutes, seconds.
He felt a chill run down his spine as he saw that the first two places held only zeroes.
00:00:52:37.
52 minutes, 37 seconds.
Chapter Fifty-Five
If he was tired crawling out of the first cave he’d traveled down that day, he was now utterly exhausted.
Rolling the device up the shallow parts of the cave floor had been hard enough, but the steep sections were nearly impossible. Ben was sweating, the slipperiness of his hands only adding to the challenge.
He’d made it up and out of the manmade portion of the tunnel and back into the natural cave section. Each slight bend or change in grade was exacerbated by his companion, the hundred-plus-pound explosive device. Ben couldn’t help but wish that he’d taken someone — anyone — with him.
Why was I trying to be such a hero?
He knew it had been the smart thing to do at the time. Mitigate risk, spread out, stretch their resources to their capacity, and get as many people away from ground zero as possible.
But now, struggling to roll a metal can up a cave floor with wet hands, all while running out of energy and time, he was having second thoughts.
Maybe I can leave it here, call for help, and then wait for someone to come by.
He shook his head, reminding himself of his dead radio. Even his cellphone was worthless. He’d never had great service in the park, and certainly not in this area. The closest tower was near the ranger station and base areas, a small pocket of civilization in an otherwise vast — and remote — wilderness.
So he kept pushing, rolling the device up and over sticks and rocks. Many of them were small enough that he could push the object over them without hesitating. Larger rocks forced him to hold the bomb still with a knee while he grabbed the obstacle and threw it to the side.
In this way, he’d covered most of the ascent. It was slow going, but he was making decent time.
Until he reached the step.
He’d forgotten about the step — the rock stair that jutted out from the cave floor that he’d almost tripped over when he first entered the cave.
The first thought he had was that he was close to the exit. But that wasn’t what mattered to him right now.
The cylinder bumped into the rock, and Ben crouched behind it, stuck, both supporting himself and trying to hold the weight of the rolling explosive device from plummeting back down the cavern.
So far he’d been able to work in the dark, keeping the flashlight in his back pocket. But now he needed a better plan. He reached around and grabbed the light, flicking it on and examining his predicament.
The ledge wasn’t large, just as he remembered it, but it presented an extremely frustrating problem — the bomb would need to be lifted completely up and over the ledge, then set back down on the cave floor above it, all without losing control of it.
There was no way around it, literally or figuratively.
Ben stuck his knee behind the bomb and flashed the light in a full circle around him just in case he’d missed something, his heavy breathing calming slightly as his body took advantage of the short break.
As he brought the flashlight back to his right hand and prepared to put it away, he felt his knee sliding sideways.
“Nononono—”
He began yelling at the metal cylinder, but it was still coming backwards. He fell on his rear, then on his side, panic suddenly setting in. His hands were no use, covered in sweat and sliding as easily on the smooth cave floor as they did on the metal surface of the bomb’s casing.
This is not good.
The bomb began to roll faster, and Ben knew it was going to roll right past him.
It gained speed, and he did the only thing he could think of.
He stuck his left leg out and shoved it in front of the runaway cylinder. As it approached, Ben slid his upper body around quickly so that it was downhill, right in the path of the bomb’s getaway.