A few moments later his eyelids began to flutter, and he was back with them. “Wh-what’s happening?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Nicholas said as he pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket, amazingly still snowy white. “Here, your nose is bleeding.”
Mike sat back on her knees, watched Jones take a swipe at the blood. She said, “Hey, way to get out of the way, dude.”
He gave a ghost of a laugh. “Do I look as bad as you guys?”
“Probably worse,” Mike said. “You have blood smeared all over your face.”
“Feels like I busted my nose again. Weird, but it doesn’t hurt like the first time. You guys all right?” He sounded like he had a bad cold.
“Bumps and bruises,” Nicholas said. “Can you stand?”
They hauled him to his feet, all three clinging to one another for balance. Mike said, “You know the drill, keep pressure on your nose. What’s your name?”
That took him a minute, then he grinned. “Jimbo, everyone calls me Jimbo.”
“Okay, Jimbo,” Nicholas said. “I’m Nicholas and this is Mike. Let’s get you back to the EMTs.”
The scene behind them hadn’t worsened after the second blast. Since they’d been closest, and they were alive and nearly walking, it hadn’t been a very strong bomb. Nicholas thought back to the placement—the backpack had been lying on the ground out in the open, almost as if it had fallen off the wearer’s back. Perhaps it was the bomber’s and he’d been running away from the first blast.
Nicholas said, “This is curious. I mean, a second bomb—that’s the MO normally used by terrorist organizations to achieve maximum death tolls by taking out the first responders. What’s going on? COE has never pulled this trick before.”
“No, they haven’t.” Mike looked around at the devastation. “This makes no sense. If it’s COE and not a new wild-hair come to the party, they’ve changed their ways. Up until now, that second smaller bomb should have been the one and only one detonated, not that big honker first bomb. This is scary, Nicholas, really scary.”
A gaggle of firefighters was headed their way, shouting. Nicholas waved them off. They were fine, no reason to waste resources. Jimbo still had Nicholas’s wadded-up handkerchief pressed to his nose, was using his other hand to brush the dirt off his uniform.
Nicholas said, “Thanks for spotting the bag, Jimbo. You saved our lives.”
Jimbo Jones grinned, showing a mouth and teeth rimmed in blood. “Buy me a beer sometime, guys. Now, you two need to get out of here, to safety. Really, I’m okay now. You can leave the rest to us.” He started to hand Nicholas back the handkerchief, shook his head at himself, and jogged off in a drunken zigzag pattern to rejoin his company.
More fire trucks were arriving, a parade of red and white lights, sirens shrieking.
“How many fire companies do you think have been called, Mike?”
“I don’t know. Of course Bayway has their own resources for this type of emergency, but they need all the help they can get tonight. This explosion was certainly much bigger than anything Bayway’s people could handle alone.”
“Has an explosion on this massive a scale ever happened before here at Bayway?”
“There was a major explosion in 1970. For a while, everyone believed it was the work of revolutionaries, since the FBI received a call from a man who claimed to be a member of the United Socialist Revolutionary Front. His demand: release of political prisoners. The FBI dug deep, but it turned out to be an accident, not a bomb. Then a smaller explosion ripped through the refinery in ’79. Again, a suspected bomb, but it turned out to be another accident.” Mike looked around her. “But this wasn’t an accident. This was a huge purposeful hit.”
Nicholas tried to wipe off her face, but it didn’t do much good since his hands were black with soot. “COE designed this hit for maximum damage and disruption, and they didn’t give a crap about innocent lives.”
Her hand tightened on his arm. “We’ve done all we can, Nicholas. Let’s regroup and find these bastards.”
6