“Are you bomb disposal?”

“No, ma’am, I’m the guy who drew the short straw. I enjoyed your talking fish movie.” Oven-baked air stuffed E.J.’s throat with hot, fine dust rising from the combination of red clay and sugar sand. His head twisted, spitting out the thick grit.

Gazing beyond the movie star, he caught sight above the tracks through the thick glass windows and doors of the cab. E.J. had been around the oil field enough to learn operators called the rotating compartment above the tracks, the house. Like an object materialized from an alien world, a crude bomb stood out from behind the tall, transparent door. The device appeared primitive, like sticks of dynamite out of an old Western movie.

“Ma’am?” She shrieked like someone had stabbed her. Her athletic body pulled against the logging chains. The bonds fastened her through the massive track around an interior steel wheel. She slung her head back, ending the futile battle against the enormous dirt mover.

E.J. jumped across a deep vein the mechanical leviathan had cut into the earth. His arthritic knee buckled, causing him to regret the leap. Seventy feet of dried red dirt separated him from the green-needled pine trees standing arrow straight under a blazing sky.

Behind him lay the expanse of an unbroken pipeline easement parting a pine curtain. Raising his arms and lifting the leg eased his suffering.

“Hey, idiot,” yelled the woman. “I call nine one one and they send me a geriatric cowboy with attention deficit disorder.”

Pain permeated E.J.’s bones, stabbing into one another. Like brittle spindles threatening to snap the kneecap backward, his legs faltered.

E.J. gritted his teeth, self-conscious he must look like a modern Moses separating a vast sea of pine timber. Scent from an ocean of dry evergreens diffused throughout the scorched air, despite the lack of a breeze.

By placing his boots on the steps of the enormous industrial machine, he gained the ability to analyze the explosive device closely. The bomb looked old-school except for a plastic two-by-two-inch box and a modern blasting cap wrapped atop the red sticks with duct tape.

“Well?” she wailed.

“Can’t rightly say,” said E.J.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” said E.J.

“You don’t know? You don’t know? Why did they send you?” Her right hand struggled to lift a cell phone to her ear.

“No. We don’t know what sets it off. Might be the radio waves. No way of knowing,” said E.J.

“I’m going to die, and they send me the village idiot from inbred redneckland to diffuse a bomb who thinks mermaids are talking fish. Why didn’t I ask Siri how to disarm the stupid thing?”

E.J. turned back to her. Googling the question didn’t sound like a bad idea except for using a cell phone in proximity to the device. If he walked back some distance, he could ask a search engine. Surely there is some artificial intelligence floating in the ether of cyberspace that has the capability to formulate an answer.

Human intelligence had evidently concluded a person strapped to a colossal mechanical contraption topped by an incendiary device amounted to reason. One had the ability to only match the absurdity of the foolishness with the arrogance of giving credit to such boundless ignorance as scientific thought.

Reason dictated finding an alternative to such purported wisdom. Yet this woman acted as if he were the one acting stupid. She had put E.J. in a bad spot—worse, she put herself in extreme danger for nothing.

Still, her face drew his gaze back. He saw why she starred in movies. Even middle-aged, without makeup, and adorned in a white tee shirt with denim overalls, the woman exuded a brightness he could feel on his skin like the sunshine beating down.

Why couldn’t he keep his mind on the task before him? Did death call a siren song audible only to him, or did others hear the tune?

Forcing himself back to the moment, he erupted. “Lady, I’m head of security for Devekon Energy, the company overseeing this pipeline project. I got sent to stop your little protest. Don’t know anything about a nine-one-one call or a bomb.” He drew a deep breath, then continued. “I’m all the cavalry you got.”

She rolled her eyes, catching herself before speaking.

E.J. gritted his teeth. Who knew how you get rid of a bomb? Maybe he shouldn’t have admitted the fact to a person already upset?

Sweat matted her blonde hair over her forehead. She looked down at her arms, then forced her chest against the chains, to no avail. “Cowboy, we need a plan.”

E.J.’s head swung back from the force of her roar. “Got a plan. We get you out of here and let this behemoth blow up. What Devekon pays insurance for.”

“I got no key.” A shrill quality conveyed urgency.

“It’s what you told the crew, but nobody locks themselves to a half-million-dollar piece of equipment without an exit strategy. Only a total idiot would do that.”

“I’m the idiot? Chains symbolize our addiction to fossil fuels, so I don’t have a key. Can’t you see, humanity doesn’t have a key? You idiot, humanity is throwing our key away literally every minute.” She peered intently at him.

E.J. returned the puzzled stare. Was she so deep into this environmental cause, she couldn’t see the glaring stupidity of this scheme?

“You don’t see any of it, do you? Why I had to go to these lengths to get people like you to understand? The plan was the pipeline company would have to find some way to cut through the chains. It was meant to take time. News crews would come from everywhere, publicizing my plight as a concrete symbol for the murder of Mother Earth.”

E.J. peered into her dark eyes. She was as mentally unsettled as the crowd of pipeline workers over a quarter mile distant had claimed. However, the oil field workers had proclaimed their psychological assessment in the more graphic and vulgar language of the oil field. Would explosives sheering her flesh into a million concrete symbols save the planet?

He needed to end the ignorance now before this true believer got herself killed over nothing. “There is a little plastic rectangle near the blasting cap. An electronic device, a counter, or a clock are all possibilities. Understand? Time might be ticking down to detonation right now. Give me the key,” demanded E.J. in his sternest voice.

“I’m telling you. Somebody overdid it. They changed the plan without including me. There wasn’t supposed to be a bomb,” she screamed.

The dramatic artist threw her head back, slinging her perspiration-soaked blonde locks. “I see the message. The perfect imagery. The perfect message. We’re all facing the ticking time bomb of climate change.” A strange laughter exhaled from the woman. “It’s genius. Total genius, but I wasn’t in on it. I swear, no one told me.”

E.J. saw no intelligent thought in any of it. Was she talking out of her head? More than once, he had witnessed the moment people came to terms with their own mortality. The experience taught him there was no one-size-fits-all response.

The fact she hadn’t panicked to this point didn’t mean she wouldn’t lose it, making a difficult situation impossible. Panic equaled death. Such was the only mathematical certainty universally true in crisis management. Her mind shouldn’t focus on imminent death. “You sound like my daughter,” said E.J.

“And any other rational human being,” snapped the thespian.

So odd, how she prided herself on her rationalism. However, she obviously put herself in an absurd situation, even if she didn’t know about the explosives. What thinking person would chain herself to an enormous excavator without a way out? It was worth one more shot. “Give me the key.” E.J. barked the words at the top of his lungs.

The woman’s responding shriek rivaled in volume any screech of victim or monster ever appearing on the silver screen. “I threw the key away at the hotel.”

“Kind of dramatic, isn’t it?”

She rolled her eyes.

It hit him. A celebrity christened a modern-day saint by her Hollywood peers wouldn’t have a good understanding of how strange she seemed to a group of Texas pipeliners. “You see that gaggle of welders and dirt movers about a half mile down the line? Tried convincing one of them to drive a welding truck down here and cut you out with a torch,” said E.J.

“Cowards.”

E.J. shook his head. “Ordinarily pretty brave lot. Suppose they think this is poetic justice. Tree hugger trying to take their livelihood does herself in.”

“Shut up and come up with something.” The sharp tone rose to an even higher level.

“Seems like dynamite would be like gunpowder. We get it wet, and it won’t go off. Makes sense, right?” said E.J.

She stared at her phone, thumbs oscillating.

“I told you I’m worried phone signals will set it off,” said E.J.

She shook her head in disgust mixed with fear. “Yous people know nothing.”

“Yous people, like New York or New Jersey?” E.J. grinned, emphasizing the last syllable in jersey.

“Cincinnati by way of Philly parents. Congratulations, one trip to hick-land has undone thirty years of speech classes. Nitroglycerin can build up and explode unexpectedly when dynamite gets wet according to Wikipedia,” she said.

“Wikipedia can be wrong,” said E.J.

Waving her head in disbelief, the movie star screamed at him. “Wikipedia wrong? It’s a better gamble than some cowboy flunky for big oil.”

The only other person capable of dressing him down in such a witty fashion had been his ex-wife, Rebecca. E.J. looked at the ring he couldn’t bring himself to keep off his finger. The celebrity’s gaze jerked him back to the explosive device. Why did his mind wander?

He fumbled thumb to index finger on his phone’s screen, sending a photo and calling the contact. Locking gazes with the actor, E.J. nodded to her, attempting to express assurance in the latest plan. “Calling the best munitions guy there is. Fellow was a firearms analyst for the DPS lab. Jay? Jay?”

The voice came through the speakerphone feature. “Ranger Kane?”

“I need some help. Did you get the picture I just texted?”

“This is real?” asked Jay.

“What I’m asking you?”

“Drop me a pin and get out of there. I’ll have a bomb squad en route.”

“Not an option. I’m on a pipeline location in the middle of nowhere. Crazy situation. Movie star has chained herself to a huge track hoe trying to stop a big pipeline project. Chain thicker than a set of bolt cutters can cut.” E.J. waited out an uncomfortable pause.

“You know people in the FBI. Why call me and not Quantico? I’m just an old toolmark analyst.”

“Not gonna trust our lives to a stranger. You know more about munitions than anybody. Might soak it with water, right?”

“No. Go with diesel, but I wouldn’t touch it. Probably a hoax. The bomb has more of a Wile E. Coyote look to it, though I wouldn’t touch it. Get your movie star out of there,” pleaded Jay.

E.J. looked downcast at the woman, then spoke into his phone. “Not gonna happen.”

“Figure it out. Send me a pin. I’m estimating a bomb squad is two hours out, but I’m going to get one your way.”

E.J. ended the call. He had smelled diesel and the lesser odor of hydraulic fluid since he got there. A bucket of diesel wouldn’t be hard to find.

“Two hours. I need to call my kids and tell them I died in Ignorantville, Texas, killed by an incompetent, inbred buffoon.”

E.J. pointed along the massive thoroughfare, holding back both sides of a piney wood to a group of pipeline constructors. “Welding trucks have oxyacetylene cutting rigs and diesel tanks. I’ll be back.”

Her tears streamed dirty checks. “Really? Really?”

“Really,” said E.J.

“You’re not coming back.”

E.J. turned back. He saw what must have been a daughter on the lady’s phone screen. Every moment he wasted might make the difference. He looked deep into her dark orbs until, satisfied she had provided her full attention. “Lady, I don’t lie.”