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“Hell if I know,” Koch replied, opening the door.
They got out and went to the front of the truck. Koch raised the hood. The engine had oil seeping at nearly every seam, and the oil itself had mixed with dirt to create a thin coat of oily, black cake.
Koch located the battery. It appeared to have the same oily dirt coating—how oil got on it, he had no idea—and there was a plume of gray-white corrosive growth on the battery’s positive lead post.
“Nice,” Bayer said. “More than enough corrosion to make it lose contact. I thought I saw a wrench in the toolbox. I’ll get it.”
Cremer had made his way with the flow of the crowd along the passenger boarding ramp. He saw that the end of each track had its own white stone train bumper—a big block about four by four by four—with the bold, black track number painted on it. In keeping with the landscape design scheme of rows of palm trees outside the station, each bumper was topped with a potted, four-foot-tall palm, creating a similar row inside.
Cremer came to the palm-topped, white stone train bumper with its black-painted 20. The passenger train there—its cars had ORANGE BLOSSOM SPECIAL lettered on them—appeared to be a very nice one.
He got in line to board behind a well-dressed older man in a dark two-piece suit and hat.
The man looked back at him, smiled, then stepped to the side.
“After you, soldier,” the man said to Cremer, appearing pleased to offer Cremer the courtesy of going ahead of him.
Cremer thought he must have looked confused to the man because the man attempted to clarify by nodding at the olive drab duffel on Cremer’s shoulder.
Now Cremer understood.
“Thank you, sir,” he replied. “But I insist, you first.”
That seemed to please the older man even more. He nodded and went ahead.
As Cremer boarded behind the man, he saw Grossman farther down the ramp, looking like another soldier boarding at another doorway.
It took Kurt Bayer longer than he expected to find the right-sized wrench in the toolbox, then more than a little effort to loosen the nut on the clamp that attached the electrical cable to the battery. He took his time, knowing that the corrosion had weakened metal and that if he broke the clamp they were really screwed.
A train whistle blew and Bayer checked his watch. Seventeen minutes had passed since he bought the tickets to Birmingham.
“Must be their train leaving,” Koch said.
Bayer nodded and went back to working on the clamp. After a few minutes of painstakingly unscrewing the clamp nut, he finally had it loose of the lead post.
Richard Koch reached in and grabbed the cable. As he began tapping the clamp against the truck’s framework, dislodging some corrosion in the process, there came a horrific explosion from behind the terminal building.
The sound from the concussion was such that it caused Bayer and Koch to jump. Richard hit his head on the underside of the truck hood.
They exchanged wide-eyed glances, then looked toward the building.
A black cloud of smoke was rising above the terminal, where the passenger-boarding-ramp area met the main building.
People came running and screaming out of the building. Some were bleeding. A few—all of them men—had their clothes on fire.
“Whatever that is,” Koch said, “it’s not good for us.”
Bayer quickly put the clamp back on the battery post, then tightened it as best he could with the wrench.
The parking lot was becoming chaotic as people raced to their cars to get away from the explosion while others ran from their cars to try to find loved ones inside the terminal.
Bayer wasn’t sure but he thought he’d just seen one woman, hysterical, bolt from her car and run to the terminal, leaving the car there with its door wide open and its engine still running.
Koch got behind the wheel of the pickup and tried to start it.
Nothing.
“Dammit!” he said, slamming his fist on the dash.
