Bruce parked his car at a meter and walked down the street to Maury’s Bar. It was, as usual, crowded and dimly lit, the noise coming from an old-fashioned jukebox playing actual 45s.
Maury’s catered to veterans. Soldiers drank half-price drafts, not just during happy hour, but right up until closing. It particularly catered to wounded vets. Purple Hearts got dollar drafts, and usually someone else would buy them.
PFC Jasper White was drinking for free at the end of the bar. Jasper wasn’t from his unit; Bruce had met him in the VA hospital. Jasper had a scar down the side of his face as a result of an explosion that caught him when a wayward rocket hit a munitions dump. The resultant traumatic brain injury sent Jasper home.
Bruce slid in next to him. “Fire in the hole.”
Jasper looked up and smiled. “Hey, D-man. How’s it going?” Jasper and Bruce were both demolition experts. Jasper referred to them as D-men. “What you drinkin’?”
“What you buyin’?”
“Me?” Jasper said. “You’re the one with the fancy girlfriend.”
“All right, what am I buying?”
“She’s really your girlfriend?”
“She’s really my girlfriend.”
Bruce and Jasper had this conversation every time they got together. Jasper could never believe the blonde goddess up on the screen was actually with Bruce. After all, Jasper had never seen the two of them together. It seemed like a tall tale. Something one soldier brags about to another.
“How come you’re not in any of the pictures?”
“I’m not an actor.”
Jasper waved it away. “I don’t mean in the movies. I mean in the magazines. The newspapers. There was that spread in People magazine. I didn’t see you.”
“They want her to be a sex symbol, like Marilyn Monroe. They think a steady boyfriend ruins the image.”
“Oh, go on.”
“They had meetings about it. Would it be good for her image to be dating a vet?”
“Wouldn’t it?”
“Better to be single.”
“Even a wounded vet?”
“Wounded wouldn’t cut it. For her to acknowledge me, I’d have to be killed in action.”
“Get out of here.”
Bruce signaled the bartender and ordered two more drafts.
Jasper’s PTSD was far worse than Bruce’s.
“So, do you miss it?” Bruce said.
“Miss what?”
“You know.”
“Being shot at and treated like shit? Not really.”
“That’s the bad part.”
“What’s the good part?”
“You know what I mean. Blowing shit up.”
Jasper looked at him. “Do you miss it?”
“Not enough to go back. But I was good at it. I liked that I was good at it, and that people counted on me. But, basically, I just like doing it. I like the thrill of seeing it go off. Nothing like it.”
“Amen, brother.”
“Yeah.” Bruce shook his head wistfully. “I’d give anything for that rush.”
Jasper drained his beer. He set the mug down on the counter and looked at Bruce.
“Got a car?”
Bruce turned down the side road. The sign read: NO THROUGH TRAFFIC.
“Isn’t the dump closed this time of night?”
“To civilians,” Jasper said.
“You can get in?”
“Please. You were in Iraq. You have to ask me that?”
“In Iraq you didn’t get in trouble for doing what we do. You were supposed to do it.”
“Hey, they taught us to blow things up. Did they really expect us to stop?”
They reached the town dump. As expected, the iron gate was closed and padlocked shut. Beyond it, in the background, Bruce could see the outlines of abandoned cars silhouetted against the night sky.
“Turn right,” Jasper said.
“There’s no road.”
“Wimp.” Jasper laughed
Bruce swung the car to the right and followed the steel mesh fence around. He prayed he wouldn’t drive over a jagged piece of metal or scrape the underside of the gas tank on some unseen rock. He gritted his teeth and guided the car along.
“Stop,” Jasper said.
Bruce was happy to comply.
Jasper hopped out of the car. “Pop the trunk.”
On the way to the junkyard they had stopped by Jasper’s apartment. He had run in and come back toting a canvas duffel bag. He pulled it out of the trunk, slung it over his shoulder. “Come on,” he said, and walked up to the fence.
He flopped the duffel on the ground, unzipped it, and took out a pair of heavy-duty wire cutters. He used them to cut a four-foot slit up the side of the fence. He folded it back like a flap.
“Think you could fit through that?”
“Just watch me,” Bruce said. He got down on his hands and knees and wriggled through the fence on his stomach.
He was getting filthy. He’d have to tell Viveca he got into a bar fight. She wouldn’t like that.
Jasper passed him the canvas duffel and wriggled through himself.
“All right,” Jasper said. “Choose your poison. I’d say a car, but it’s too much to hope for gas in the tank, and you’d want a secondary explosion. A microwave is surprisingly satisfying. You hear bits of it flying everywhere, like shrapnel.”
“What would you recommend?”
“I don’t know.” Jasper pulled a flashlight out of the duffel and switched it on. “Let’s see what we’ve got here. Oh, wow! Look at this. Half a Mini Cooper. Imagine what the driver looked like. The bumper’s in the front seat. But the passenger side is nearly intact. I bet we can blow that fucker off the ground.”
“Hell, yes,” Bruce said. “What are we going to use?”
Jasper reached into the duffel bag and pulled out a brick of plastic explosive. “An old favorite. C-four. Just like the good old days.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Homemade, my friend,” he said. Bruce had heard rumors that Jasper had access to explosives, but hadn’t realized the guy made his own. He hoped to hell it was as stable as the professionally manufactured stuff.
“All right, how many bricks you think?”
“It’s a Mini Cooper. One.”
Jasper grabbed two bricks, leaned in the door, and reached down beneath the seat. “We only get one shot, right? Might as well make sure it counts.” He positioned the plastic explosive, and straightened up. “That’ll do it. Give me a blasting cap.”
Bruce fumbled in the duffel and came out with a detonator. “Here you go.”
Jasper reached under the seat and embedded it into the plastic explosive. He took out a penlight and checked his work.
Apparently satisfied, Jasper led Bruce back through the fence. He stopped long enough to weave the flap closed with metal wire—a rudimentary patch, but better than a gaping hole.
“Gotta love a remote-control detonator. Don’t have to jury-rig something with a fuse, light it, and run like hell.”
“I’ve been there,” Bruce said.
“Turn the car around and leave it idling and ready to go. We’ll be gone before anyone reports the blast.”
Bruce turned the car and got out with the door still open.
“Okay, here goes nothing,” Jasper said. He pressed a button on his cell phone.
The noise was impressive. The blast was less so. There was no gas in the tank, so no secondary explosion. The little car flew to pieces, but it was hard to see.
“Hit it, hotshot!” Jasper said.
Bruce took off down the road.
He couldn’t wait to get home and check out the prize he’d appropriated while Jasper rigged the bomb.
Two slabs of C-4 and a detonator.