Page 86 of South of Nowhere

Charlie of course didn’t answer. He was as inanimate as inanimate objects could be.

Charlie.

For the letterC.

As in C-4.

Or Composition 4, which was the classic high explosive everybody who watched TV or followed the news knew about. The substance was made mostly of RDX, standing for Royal Demolition eXplosive, which the Brits had developed eons ago. You could use his friend Ralphie—yes, RDX—by itself but usually it was better mixed with other substances. C-4 was the most common variation.

For other jobs he might choose Doreen—dynamite, which was based on Nancy (nitroglycerin). Sally (Semtex, from the Czech Republic) was dependable, but like an aging aunt, she had moved into a retirement home, as younger and more efficient descendants took over.

If he had a favorite, it was Bob.

Black powder—old-time gunpowder—was alow, not a high, explosive but it produced a very respectable bang when in a tightly enclosed pipe or container. And the smoke was impressive and, to Hire’s sensitive nostrils, pleasantly aromatic.

He began lifting blocks of Charlie out of the bag. He was, as always, amused that C-4 came with a warning label. Which wasnotthat one should take care because it exploded at twenty-eight-thousand feet per second and could turn a human body into molecules in not much more time than that. No, the admonishment on the C-4 wrapper was:Do not burn—Toxic Fumes.

Kind of the least of your worries when playing with Charlie.

He put the blocks in a backpack, along with detonators and cellular receivers, which had two levels of arming systems. The first used one cell phone call to arm the second, which detonated the explosives whenitgot a call. There was a one in a hundred thousand chance that a signal matching the detonation receiver would trip the circuit while you happened to be working the detonating stick into Charlie’s tummy.

But that was chance enough to use what he called two-step authentication.

Just like his bank and Facebook and Instagram.

“Okay, let’s get to work, my friend…”

He slung the backpack over his shoulder and started back to the Never Summer. As always, before a job he felt a bit of sadness, preparing to send Charlie into oblivion.

But on the other hand, Hire Denton was also moved by nearly tearful pride and satisfaction that his dear friend was headed for the fate he’d been born to.

37.

Never be without at least two hundred feet of rope when you go into the wilderness.

His father had meant primarily rope for abseiling or rappelling off cliffs. Ashton Shaw loved his mountaineering, though it was a mountain that killed him (to be accurate, it was one of hisenemiesresponsible for his demise, though the means of death was a fight ending in the man’s tumbling over the flinty edge of a hundred-foot cliff near the Compound).

Rope would not have saved him.

But he insisted the children carry with them a coil, or ideally two. One camo colored and the other bright and easy to spot.

It was an orange nylon braided model Colter now ripped from the backpack. He ran to the cliff the car had tumbled over.

He couldn’t reach Millwood, now clinging to a rock ten feet from the shore, and he was uncertain if the man could keep a grip and grab a line without losing ahold of both. And so Shaw kicked off his shoes and socks and flung aside his jacket, the 5.11 tactical garment falling, coincidentally, upon the Italian designer’s. He left his blue work shirt and black undershirt on. Slacks too. Every bit of insulation helped. The popular idea that open-ocean swimmers usedgrease or other fat as insulation—and one should do the same in a survival mode—was wrong. The fat was merely to prevent chafing. Serious extreme swimmers wore wet suits or acclimated their bodies to the cold slowly.

Neither of which was feasible at the moment.

He tied a bowline around his waist—the preferred knot for this task—and looped it around a smooth-barked birch. Paying out line, he descended. Colter Shaw was not unaccustomed to cold water. The first half of his daily shower in the Winnebago’s tiny stall was searingly hot, the second nothing but the coldest in the tank. And so the initial shock was not unexpected. The body is a powerful furnace, and his heart began its frantic revving, forcing warming blood to every square inch of skin. The breath vanished from his lungs.

The worst, as anybody braving chill water knows, is when the shoulders dip below the surface.

Now, just do it.

An audible gasp and the shock and pain.

The water, after all, had recently been mountaintop snow.

Shaw considered his priorities.

---