Harold's walkie-talkie bomb

Harold Lauder's walkie-talkie bomb is the improvised explosive device that nearly wiped out the entire Free Zone Committee on September 2, 1990. Constructed from a Realistic walkie-talkie handset, eight sticks of dynamite, and a timer circuit, it was planted in the closet of Ralph Brentner and Nick Andros's house by Nadine Cross and detonated by Harold from Sunrise Amphitheater. The blast killed Nick Andros, Susan Stern, Chad Norris, and four others, wounded twenty more, and marked the dark man's most devastating single strike against the Boulder community.

Construction and Assembly

Harold built the device in the basement of his house on Arapahoe Street, working from a diagram in a book called 65 National Science Fair Prize Winners. The core was a Realistic walkie-talkie handset with its back removed, wired to eight sticks of dynamite. He used the walkie-talkie as a remote trigger: when the SEND button was pressed at the other end, the signal would complete a circuit and detonate the blasting caps. The finished bomb was small enough to fit inside a Hush Puppies shoebox. Harold worked on it in secret, telling Nadine that old dynamite could "sweat" pure nitroglycerin and that the project might blow them both to the Land of Oz. He kept the shoebox on the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard until it was time to plant it.

Planting and Detonation

On the afternoon of September 1, Nadine Cross carried the shoebox to Ralph and Nick's house on Baseline Road, hidden under a layer of groceries in a shopping bag. She slipped it into the back of a deep closet in the living room, pushing it behind boots, scarves, and winter woolens. The house was the site of the Free Zone Committee's next meeting, scheduled for the following evening. Harold and Nadine then fled Boulder, hiding in Sunrise Amphitheater on Flagstaff Mountain. At 8:25 P.M. on September 2, as the committee and several subcommittee heads gathered in the living room, Harold pressed the SEND button on the matching walkie-talkie and spoke: "This is Harold Emery Lauder speaking. I do this of my own free will." The bomb detonated on the word "This."

Consequences

The explosion killed Nick Andros, Susan Stern, Chad Norris, Andrea Terminello, Dean Wykoff, Dale Pedersen, and Patsy Stone. Teddy Weizak died later of his wounds. Twenty others were injured, including Ralph Brentner, who lost two fingers, and Fran Goldsmith, who suffered a broken foot and a sprained back. The house was largely destroyed. The blast would have killed the entire committee and all their guests if Mother Abagail had not returned to Boulder at that exact moment, drawing most of them outside to greet her. Nick Andros, who had sensed something wrong and stayed behind to search the closet, died with his hands on the shoebox. The bomb was the dark man's most successful single act of sabotage against the Free Zone, but it failed to destroy the committee entirely.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The walkie-talkie bomb is the culmination of Harold's long arc from rejected outsider to would-be assassin. It is the physical embodiment of his ledger's murderous fantasies, the weapon he built to "kill Mr. Stuart Dog-Cock Redman" and the rest of the committee. The device also represents the dark man's method: using human tools—Harold's resentment, Nadine's desperation—to do his work. The bomb's failure to kill everyone was a direct result of Mother Abagail's providential return, setting up the final confrontation. The device's construction from a child's science-fair project and a common toy underscores the theme that the tools of destruction are always lying around, waiting to be picked up.