Drago #6: And the City Burned

By Art Spinella

Only eight hours tip doom.

Nick and Sal are faced with a madman who wants nothing more than to burn Bandon to the ground -- for the second time since 1936.

It's a race against the clock. Unravel clues leading to the arsonist's plan. Call on truckers to battle the inferno. Capture the crazed pyromaniac in a mad-dash train chase.

And save a town from an impending firestorm that could kill hundreds and leave Bandon once again in smoldering rubble.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456617288

Book preview

Spinella

PROLOGUE

Sal and I sat across from each other at McFarlin’s, a pizza and pitcher of Hef between us.

You ready for a round of Name Links?

One, two or five seconds.

Two.

Sal and I reached into our respective pockets and pulled out quarters. We always carry quarters. Donuts are sold in increments of 25 cents.

Since it was my idea, I start.

Sal nodded agreement, leaned forward, steely eyes staring at me. Tree-trunk arms on the restaurant table, hands wrapped around a frosty mug of brew. Ready to pounce.

I looked him in the eyes, squinted hard, looking mean and said, George Washington.

I pushed a quarter to the center of the table.

He fired back, George Bush, his quarter clinked on mine.

My return, Herbert W. Bush.

Another quarter.

The volley had begun with 25 cents going to the pot with each response.

Herbert Hoover.

J. Edgar Hoover.

Edgar Allan Poe.

George Allen.

George Foreman.

George Foreman, the son.

George Foreman the second son.

George Foreman the third son.

King George.

Martin Luther King.

Luther Andros.

Lex Luthor.

Martin Luther, the preacher.

Mary Martin.

Martin Sheen.

Bishop Sheen.

Joey Bishop.

Joey Badass.

Sal slapped the table. Challenge.

Hip hop artist. Hah! Look it up.

Sal Googled it. How’d you know that?

I am a musical genius. I swiped the pot of quarters toward me.

Ready?

Sal nodded.

Little Abner.

Abner Doubleday.

One-thousand and one, one-thousand and two. My mind was blank.

I got nothin’.

Sal laughed. Well, there’s Abner Cotto, the boxer. Abner Mares Martinez, another boxer.

Sal slid the small pot to his side of the table.

My bearded buddy took a long draught of beer, leaned back and in a quiet voice said, Tom Cruise.

CHAPTER ONE

EIGHT HOURS, EIGHT MINUTES

It perched in the center of Forte’s desk looking as out of place as a cow on a Beverly Hills driveway.

The Bandon police chief crooked a finger at me and pointed to the backside of the five gallon propane tank.

Sal and I walked to the side of his desk. Duct taped to the rear of the tank were three sticks of dynamite sprouting a pair of black wires running to a small electronic timer like those used to turn a house lamp on and off at set hours.

Holy Mother of God! I backed away from the desk. Is that thing live?

Forte nodded, casually tipped back in his chair. Living and breathing.

Well, crap, should you have it on your desk? I backed away another couple of feet.

Probably not, Nick.

Sal walked to the propane tank, gripped both black wires in his huge hand and tugged.

"Don’t do that!" I was now across the room, next to the door. I’m smart enough to know I can’t outrun an explosion, but there is a piece of everyone’s brain that in conditions like this says, "Get the hell out of here!"

Sal held the two strands of wire and tugged again, this time pulling them free of the dynamite cap.

All fixed, he said.

"Are you nuts?"

Sal grinned. Some say I am. Balling the wire and tossing it to Forte, But this is so crude and easy to deactivate, it’s almost a joke. The big man plopped into a guest chair next to Forte’s desk.

The smell of burnt cop-house coffee filled the room.

The Chief didn’t smile, but he calmly leaned forward, put his elbows on his desk’s gnarled wood top and stared at the timer. Now for the reason I called. See what the timer says?

Moving closer, I stared at the display. The amber LEDs read the current time and date. A small blinking number in the corner of the screen indicated when the lights were set to go on.

8:22 a.m. Timer goes off at 4:30 p.m. Eight hours and change. Touching the propane tank, Where’d this come from?

Hennick’s Hardware.

They have a bomb department?

Blue Rhino. Those replacement propane tanks? Bring in an empty; exchange it for a full one. Forte began picking at the edge of the duct tape. Someone cut the chain and stole a dozen of these things.

"Could you please stop playing with the explosives?"

Forte quit his picking. Yeah, probably a good idea. May have fingerprints on the tape.

The Chief climbed from his chair, picked up the tank and moved it to a corner behind his desk. He then went to the small table under his dusty window and poured a cup. Dowsed it with sugar and a full packet of Cremora.

Gag-o-roonie.

The State Mounties are coming to get it. They’ll do an analysis of the darn thing. Don’t expect they’ll find much, though. Each of those tanks must be handled by a dozen people a month. The only hope is finding fingerprints on the dynamite or the tape, but bad guys have gotten smarter. Wear gloves. I don’t hold out much hope.

Stretching my legs and swinging them up on Forte’s desk, which he quickly swiped off, You didn’t answer the question. Where’d you find it?

Sipping the coffee and making a sour expression, I didn’t. A kid came running into the station yelling he’d found a bomb. Bill went with him and they brought it back. Was in the gorse behind the station. Maybe 50 yards away. The Chief glanced over his shoulder at the cylinder, Like idiots they brought it back with them and plopped it on my desk.

Sal climbed from his chair to the coffee maker and poured two cups. Cop-house coffee is bad, but sitting five feet from an explosive device ignites a craving for caffeine.

Putting the coffee mugs in front of each of us, Sal asked, Strange to leave it so close to the station and, obviously, pretty much where it could be found. Intentional?

Forte nodded. That’s my guess. Also, it was pretty easy to figure out that it would be a snap to deactivate. Pulling from his mug, This is the worst coffee in all of Oregon.

Think there are more of them?

Sure, Nick. Why steal a dozen Blue Rhinos if you’re only going to make one bomb?

Beth, the BPD’s receptionist and dispatcher, scurried into the office. Make that 40, Chief. She held out a piece of paper which Forte took. North Bend, Coquille, Langlois, and Coos Bay PDs say they also have reports of propane tanks being stolen.

Forte took the paper, scanned his dispatcher’s scribbles. Well, guess that makes it officially worrisome.

But why? I asked. Forty propane tanks with three sticks of dynamite each is a hell of a lot of fire power. I was feeling a little nervous. What would you do with 40 home-made bombs?

Forte slid Beth’s note to the top left of his desk where it wouldn’t get covered by other papers. Don’t know, but for sure we have to find them all and we’ve got eight hours to do it. Suggestions, anyone?

Sal bobbed his head. Call up the local map in Google.

Forte punched a couple of buttons on his Mac, zoomed in on the part of town we were in then pressed Print. The map spit out of the printer on the credenza behind the Chief’s desk. Sal grabbed a felt-tip pen and marked the police department with a black diamond.

Forte ran his finger over the diamond. The tank was found about where the right-hand point of the diamond is.

What’s back there? I asked.

Gorse-choked gully, mostly. Pretty thick.

He put the coffee mug down and pushed it away.

So if the tank exploded, it would have started a pretty decent fire as well as an explosion.

Sure would have. And with the weather as hot as it’s been, it’s pretty dry. The gorse would have gone up in a flash.

Bandon weather is fairly mild all year ‘round. Summers are temperate with a strong wind out of the north, but rarely above 80 degrees. This year had been one of those odd ones. Near triple digits for three days running. Phoenix may be set up for that kind of heat, but Bandon dries out like parchment paper. The ground gets hard, the trees become brittle, potted plants haven’t a chance in hell, so to speak.

Beth cleared her throat.

Forte looked up from the map. Got a thought?

You know what day this is, don’t you?

The Chief looked at his desk calendar. September 26. Why?

Beth’s voice hitched. It’s the anniversary of the 1936 fire.

1936

Other cities had suffered disastrous fires. Chicago. San Francisco. Atlanta. But those were major cities. Important cities to the country. Economic powerhouses with hundreds of thousands of inhabitants and hundreds of millions in commerce.

In 1936, Bandon – abutting the Coquille River – had fewer than 3,000 residents. In the wilderness of the country. An eyedropper of wealth compared to the others.

When the scorching heat of an out of control forest and gorse fire touched the two-story elementary school, the aged, dry wood exploded. In minutes, Bandon became a town of raging flames. Pavement melted. Sand turned to pebbles of glass. Windowpanes slumped into molten pools. Air so blistering and saturated with smoke, breathing became impossible.

In an hour, 600 homes and businesses were nothing but hell-hot skeletons; roofs and walls and contents mere memories.

Those seeking refuge on the beach discovered they were pinned to the ocean surf by mounds of once sun-bleached driftwood igniting from the ravaging heat. The sky, blue and clear just hours before, transformed into a kaleidoscope of orange, red and yellow seemingly itself ablaze. A tornado of wind, fed by the inferno, launched a 500-foot high firestorm of coal-hot embers. A volcano of searing wood, small and large; like lava and ash, it rained onto boats and mills and businesses and homes.

And frantic people desperately trying to escape the blaze with nowhere to run.

Hephaestus, the Greek god of fire, son of Zeus, swept his hand across the coastal town and left it barren.

CHAPTER TWO

SEVEN HOURS, FORTY-TWO MINUTES

Climbing from my chair, my shirt’s back stuck to the vinyl from perspiration. The humidity was maybe 7 percent. Nowhere near the usual 30 percent. But the temperature was already in the low 80s in the Chief’s office. My comfort zone is between 70 and 73 degrees.

Show me where this one was found.

Forte led Sal and me to the gully behind the police department. Even this early in the morning, the sun was giving its full face and force. The four-foot tall mix of gorse, wild blackberries and other scrub crackled under our feet. The heat had taken the last bits of moisture out of the plants and ground. We scrambled down the short incline and picked our way into the brush.

About 30 feet into the field Forte stopped and pointed to a small patch of tamped down scrub.

Sal pushed through the scrub to the north side of the patch. I did the same to the south, eyeballing the ground, figuring it was about three feet square. Bitter dry bushes had been trampled a bit, broken stems and dry leaves clumped into a non-descript pattern as if someone had simply walked to the spot and dropped the propane tank.

No foot prints, Sal said, bending down to inspect the thatch.

I pulled back some of the overgrowth hoping to find at least something that would provide a clue. Nothing except a circular indentation from the bottom ring of the propane tank. Someone had placed it on the ground and given it a twist to keep it upright. The hardpan lived up to its name.

Forte looked around the field to its edges. If the bomb had gone off, this stuff would have turned into a nice brush fire. With this heat and the usual afternoon wind, it would have taken all the fire fighting resources of Bandon to put it out.

Sweeping an arm around, What is this, about 200 acres? The houses up there nodding toward the east, would have torched in a matter of minutes. Turning toward the PD, Our building would have gone up in just a few more minutes. This is scary, Nick.

Especially since there are presumably 39 other tanks somewhere.

We pushed our way through the scrub back to the low-slung police station and Forte’s office. As the seriousness of the potential fire began to take hold, Forte said, I’ll let the surrounding PDs know what we’re facing. Ditto the mayor and the fire departments. If someone is truly interested in reenacting the ’36 fire, I’m not sure we have the resources to deal with it. Even on a county basis.

Sal sniffed his coffee mug and dropped it on a tray next to the coffee urn.

But why do this, guys? Sal asked. What’s in it for someone to burn Bandon to the ground again?

I shook my head. Doesn’t matter right now. We have 39 potential explosions that are set to go off today.

You think they’re all set to go off at 4:30?

Sure do. Let’s play bad guys for a second. How do you get the most bang for your buck? How do you get total chaos and beheaded chicken confusion? You could set off the bombs one at a time over eight hours and have resources scrambling from one place to another, but you run the risk of having each of those fires put out quickly and the full force of the responders able to move on to the next fire. Light them all off at once, and there’s no way there are enough people to combat that many brush fires, especially if the afternoon wind kicks up, which it undoubtedly will.

Forte fell into his office chair, picked up the phone, ready to dial. Look, what I would like you two to do is give me a plan for ending this. As our semi-official detective bureau, I need you to do what you do and fast.

He began dialing, head down but still talking to us.

I’m going to be coordinating our guys and the responses from the other PDs and fire departments. I’ll call in everyone in the department. Set them to looking for these tanks. I’m not sure we’ll have support from other towns like Coquille. They may feel it necessary to do their own searches in their own backyards. Nothing says this is a Bandon-only problem. Ditto the fire departments. If these damn things go off and we’re eyeball deep in brush fires we can’t handle, most of the other towns are going to hesitate leaving themselves naked.

Makes sense to me. If someone is really looking only at Bandon, setting one or two of these things off in Coquille or Myrtle Point – even near Coos Bay – could be a nice diversion.

Beads of sweat were beginning to trickle down the Chief’s face. It was hot, but he’d seen worse so I wrote it off to anxiety. True. Which is why we have to act like we’ll have to handle this on our own. That said, I’ll be stuck to this chair until the end of the day, hoping the whole thing is nothing more than a bad joke.

As Sal and I walked from the office, Forte called after us.

Listen, Drago. Act fast. No stopping for donuts.

On the way out of the PD, I asked Beth for a county map. She opened her desk drawer and pulled one out handing it to me.

Is this for real, Nick?

Gotta treat it like it is, sweetie.

Back in the parking lot, I unfolded the map and spread it across the hood of the Crown Vic.

Okay, you want to torch Bandon. Where do you put the bombs?

Sal dug his fingernails into his beard, stared at the map.

Man, there’s a lot of scrub and gorse around here.

Bandon itself is slightly more than three-square miles, most of which is landmass and heavily treed. At barely 20 feet above sea level, the area was formed 4.5 million years ago during a massive land deformation as the tectonic plates shifted. The Jurassic rocks can be seen in the sea cliffs, sea stacks and large islands along the shore near the Coquille River. Most of the land is greywacke sandstone, greenstone and chert, and ultra-hard blueschist. The last could be found in sufficient amounts that construction engineers blasted Tupper Rock to bits in order to build the all-important jetty.

Yeah, but how would you take down Bandon? I pointed to the east of Filmore Ave. Big area here. Tracing my finger down to Rosa Road. And tons of open scrub here.

Sal pointed to the south of town. Along the backside of City Park, near the softball and little league ball fields.

I marked each of those areas and a few more where thick brush choked the ground.

Add a few of these old abandoned buildings and houses, Nick, and you’ve got a ring of fire that spells inferno.

Should we take a quick cruise around and see if we ID some of the more likely spots?

It really wasn’t a question. Sal climbed into the passenger seat and we headed up 101 to Old Town. That, it seemed to me, would be a good place to start because Bandon is identified by its historic district and would most likely be the target.

We idled along First Street, the river and boardwalk on our right, a series of stores on the left. At First and Oregon Avenue we turned up the bluff to Third then back down Bandon Ave. to Second to the old Coast Guard Coquille River Patrol building. Lots of brush with older wooden houses spotted in the shore pine.

Sal marked the spots as we returned to First, moved up Edison and circled behind town toward the high school on Ninth.

Holy Joseph and crackers, Sal. There are more places to put explosives than M&Ms in Hersey, Pennsylvania. I speed dialed Forte who picked up on the first ring. Chief, I’d send as many of your guys into the areas behind First and Second streets as you’ve got. With the heat and dry weather, there must be a hundred places to hide one of those bombs.

I’ve sent a couple out toward Rosa Road, but hell, Nick, what do I tell them to look for? I’m having them find a big patch of scrub and walk it. It’s hit and miss, at best.

Tell me about the kid who brought the bomb to you.

Name’s Timothy Dornan. Senior at Bandon High. Why?

Where’s he live?

Up on Chicago Avenue Southeast, behind the PD. He shuffled through his desk-top papers and provided an address. Have something in mind?

I’ll let you know.

Dialing off, to Sal, We gotta talk to Dornan. Should be in school about now, but first let’s take a quick side trip. Back up 101 to Tenth, left onto Baltimore Ave. SE and a few quick turns to Chicago SE.

Remember Della Haye?

Sal’s eyes twinkled. Oh, yeah.

She lived up on Chicago.

Hotty.

You dated her, didn’t you?

Sal grinned. Oh, yeah.

Shaking my head. Letch. Reflected back to those high school days. Sal and Della were a hot item for about a week.

You two seemed pretty good. Why’d you break up?

Sauerkraut.

Sauerkraut.

Her family ate it all the time. I think they put it on their Fruit Loops for breakfast.

Foul smelling stuff.

You ever eat sauerkraut?

That made me laugh. "Are you kidding? You know me.