The Detonator Read online

  The blood runs fast through your veins, your pulse pounds in your head, because what you’re about to do is so insanely cool, so incredibly destructive and explosive, so fucking radical, you can feel the anticipation in the pit of your stomach. It must be what it’s like just before you have sex with some hot girl, or so you tell yourself. Sex with the older girls with real boobs, like from the seventh or eighth grade.

  In the box you hauled up from the basement are stored the dozen Revell plastic model kits you’ve spent the better part of a year constructing. There’s six German World War II–era planes. Two Stukas and four Messerschmitt ME-109s. The six tanks consist of three Tiger tanks, an American Half-track, and a Sherman tank.

  In your pocket is a fresh pack of firecrackers and three M-80s, or what collectively amounts to three-quarters of a stick of dynamite, all of which were acquired rather illegally from your best pal in the sixth grade, the red-haired and freckled Patrick Daly, who spends his summer down south where recreational explosives are legal. Amazing how much firepower five bucks and an old dog-eared copy of Penthouse can buy.

  You spend the better part of a half hour fixing the explosives to the planes with black electrical tape you stole from the kitchen junk drawer. Going for realism, you then hang the planes on the clothesline with fishing line. When the planes are airborne, you proceed to get started on the ground war. You tape the three M-80s to the three Tiger tanks while the remaining tanks get firecrackers. For the final touch, you position three dozen green plastic toy soldiers all around the tanks.

  With everything wired to blow and the foot soldiers in position, you stand back and admire your handiwork. The planes appear to be flying above the tanks. The German armament appears to be honing in on the Allied tanks. It’s like a scene out of one of your History of World War Two magazines set on the nightstand beside your bed, or even something out of Patton, the CBS Saturday Night Late Movie you watched in your bedroom on your black-and-white Sylvania portable just two weeks ago.

  “So…fucking…radical,” you whisper to yourself.

  You reach into your pocket, pull out the Bic lighter you lifted from your mom’s purse. You look one way, then the other. You peer up at a blue sky and you gaze down at the dry, mid-summer brown grass.

  “Sit rep perfect, HQ,” you say aloud in your best GI Joe commando voice. “Proceeding with the operation.”

  Bending at the knees, you begin lighting the fuses. You start with the tank-mounted M-80s first since they have the longest fuses, and then move on to the firecrackers. Standing up straight, you light the firecrackers attached to the bellies of the planes. You hear the alive, crackling hiss of the burning fuses and you feel the urgency in your body telling you to run.

  Run very far away.

  But for some odd reason, you feel like you’re at home with the explosives. You feel almost calm in the brief moments leading up to what will surely be the first in a sequence of spectacular explosions and blasts. In a word, you feel happier than you’ve ever felt in your short life.

  A smile beaming on your face, you see the first of the M-80 fuses disappear as the sliding glass door opens and your father comes storming out of the house…

  The rapid-fire explosions were spectacular enough to blow the model tanks and planes to tiny bits. It blew the toy soldiers into the neighbors’ yards. They were also violent enough to instinctively send your Korean War veteran dad down on his belly, as if the Chinese were finally bombing upstate New York.

  The grass caught on fire, engulfing the two wood, cross-like clothesline posts, the scene reminiscent of a KKK rally gone bad. A fusillade of sparks landed in your thick black hair, burning a hockey puck–sized patch all the way down to your scalp. The fire department came, put out the grass and clothesline fire with their hoses, and lectured your parents on the evils of unsupervised adolescents who have a penchant for pyrotechnics.

  You were grounded, of course, for the rest of the summer, while you worked off the $500 Albany Police Department fine by mowing as many lawns as you possibly could fit in.

  But it was all worth it.

  The radicalness of those M-80s and firecrackers was worth every blade of grass you had no choice but to cut. You had found something near and dear to your heart. That summer was the summer you discovered explosives. That was the summer you became the detonator.

  The pyrotechnic excitement hasn’t waned in the years and decades since I blew up those models. It’s only grown more intense. I might not be blowing anything up right now (quite the opposite in fact), but I feel the intensity in the pit of my stomach as I position my thumbs on the video game–like controller’s double joysticks. Taking it slow and easy, I maneuver the small tracked robot into the center of the now abandoned street.

  Keeping a distance of maybe twenty feet between myself and the mobile disposal machine, I can both hear and feel the anxiety coming from the crowd that’s built up behind me. Or, what I can only hope is a safe enough distance behind and away from me.

  I’m not going to lie. I feed off the energy of it all. Like knowing that my every step is being recorded for several live news feeds. Maybe even a national news feed. Maybe my brain is filled with adrenaline right now, but I can’t help picturing Ellen and Henry watching me from the couch, their eyes wide, white knuckles stuffed between their teeth. Maybe, just maybe, even Alison is somehow watching.

  Bomb disposal doesn’t have the same rush as blowing a massive building up, but it comes close, let me tell you. As Robot Rob closes in on the mailbox and Judge Bescher, I follow, maintaining what I estimate to be a safe enough distance while protected in my blast suit.

  When the crowd issues a collective gasp, I know for certain the show is about to begin.

  Positioning Rob’s arm directly underneath the mailbox, I extend it so that the combination video cam and claw can easily access the narrow opening. The controller comes equipped with a small, smartphone-sized live video feed. My eyes are focused on the feed as the claw’s LED lamp shines into the box.

  “Take it easy, Judge,” I say, my voice amplified electronically by a device installed inside the big bulky helmet. “I’ll have you out of here and back in your bed in just a few minutes. I promise.”

  I can’t help but wonder if he has any clue whatsoever as to the identity of the man disguised in the bulky blast suit. I must admit, despite the dog, and his built-in-no-bullshit-explosive-detecting nose, I nonetheless half expect to see a dummy bomb or no bomb at all when the door opens. Just a bunch of rocks or something like that. But what I see dissolves every bit of moisture from my mouth.

  It’s a pipe bomb.

  But a pipe bomb like no other I’ve witnessed in my time training for bomb disposal. What I’m looking at is a shiny, metallic e-cig device. Most pipe bombs are anywhere from ten inches to sixteen inches in length, the aluminum or metal tubing being about one inch in diameter. But this device is only about four inches long, and maybe several centimeters wide. What do the kids call them? E-Go cigs? It’s similar to what Alison was smoking at the outside bar in the Cape.

  Alison, is this your handiwork?

  The e-cig devices are about the size of your average adult male index finger. I’m guessing there’s no need for an external battery because e-cigs contain an internal battery and the low-voltage wiring to go with it. But the small metal capsule, if you want to call it that, is wired to a timer, making it an official timed-improvised explosive device. A Timex watch head. And from what I can see via the red-numeral digital display, there’s only two minutes left on the watch.

  Why the hell not trigger it remotely with a cell phone like the roadside bombs you commonly find in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan? Because I can bet the farmhouse mortgage that Alison, if she is indeed responsible for this, is not to be found within a radius of one mile.

  Pressing the monitor on my chest-mounted radio.

  “IED,” I whisper into
the radio. “Miniature pipe bomb. A bomb stuffed into an e-cigarette. An e-Go.” In my mind, visions of the explosive that took out my tire, warped the tire rim, shattered the brake drum. “Experimental explosive, I’m guessing. Maybe enough to vaporize the judge and blow a six-foot-deep hole in the driveway. Maybe enough to take out the house and the whole block. I won’t really know until we detonate it. Make sure nobody gets through, understand?”

  “Roger that,” comes Ted’s tinny voice over the speaker. “Jesus, an e-cig? Never heard of that before.”

  “This is a first for me too, Ted.”

  Thumbing the controllers, I open Rob’s claw and extend the arm just enough so that the first of two wires is caught in the center of the now V-like claw. That’s when I finger the command for the claw to close and for the wire to be cut by the attachment’s interior blades.

  But something’s wrong. The claw isn’t closing.

  I finger the controller, shifting the joystick back and forth, thumbing the action triggers. But there’s no response. It’s as if Rob suddenly ran out of batteries.

  “How much we pay for this junk, Ted? Over.”

  “It was a secondhand model, remember? Over.”

  “Fucking garage sale.”

  “It’s Albany, Ike. Money’s tight. So they tell me.”

  Time check. One minute, forty seconds. Pressing the radio transmitter.

  “No time,” I transmit. “I’m going in on my own.”

  “I don’t have to tell you to be careful. Over.”

  And I don’t have to see Ted’s hands to know they’re shaking.

  My breath warm and stale inside the oversized helmet, my soundtrack is the thump, thump, thump of pulse pulsating, drumming. Some blast suits are equipped with a digitally enhanced sight device which allows for a close-up examination of an IED from a relatively long distance. But due to the aforementioned APD budget constraints, I must rely only on my eyes. The APD paid me for my six months of Improvised Explosive Device Disposal (IEDD) and Public Safety Bomb Disposal (PSBD) which resulted in my being fully certified for both. But in terms of equipment, I’m a hurting unit. I don’t have access to portable X-ray systems, projected water disrupters, or a laser ordinance neutralization system. I do, however, enjoy the use of one slightly used and therefore inexpensive portable bomb containment chamber, numerous disruption charges which I prefer not to utilize (what’s the point of planting an unstable bomb on top of another unstable bomb?), and even the use of a good old-fashioned shotgun if worse comes to worst.

  I pull the pliers from my utility belt and, despite the cumbersome suit, speed-walk my way across the street to the mailbox. The judge is looking up at me, his eyes bloodshot and full of panic. He’s shouting but the gag is doing its job, making his words indiscernible. I could remove it, but better that he’s not screaming in my ear while I try to defuse this bomb before we run out of time.

  Maybe the bomb material itself is something new, if not out of this world. But the setup is a classic timed IED. There are two wires connecting the timer to the fuse, which in turn is connected to the interior of the little pipe. Inside the pipe you’ll more than likely find a detonator, a battery, and an explosive that may turn out to be of the thermite or super nano-thermite variety. Something I and Rob the Robot have never before encountered. Unlike my previous occupation, the problem with bomb disposal is this: if at first I don’t succeed and this sucker detonates in my face, I don’t get to try, try again.

  I examine the two wires leading into the e-Go pipe bomb.

  This isn’t like the movies. The wires are not color coded. There’s no red wire and blue wire. The wires are both coated with black plastic and one of them is connected to the battery, the other to the detonator. The odds here are not fifty/fifty. There is no right or wrong wire to cut. They are both the wrong wires. But then, they are also the right wires. What I mean is, I will either blow the place sky high…and myself and the judge along with it…by cutting one of the wires. Or nothing will happen at all.

  One thing is for certain. If I do nothing, this bomb explodes in less than twenty seconds. I could try to remove the bomb itself from the mailbox. But there’s too much tape. It connects the bomb to the mailbox, and the judge is connected to the mailbox. That means the judge is connected directly to the bomb, which I suppose is the point. No choice but to attempt a disarming on the spot. Attempt it now.

  The pliers gripped in my dominant hand, I open them, bring them to the wire closest to me, press the cutters against the wire.

  I stare into the judge’s eyes. A drop of warm sweat drips into my eye. I feel the burn. It tells me I’m still alive. That this thing hasn’t yet detonated and I’m now dreaming or living some sort of grand illusion.

  “Here goes nothing, Judge.”

  I press the pliers tight.

  The wire cuts.

  We’re still here.

  I look at the Timex watch timer. Fucker is still ticking. I bring the pliers to the second wire, inhale a breath, hold it.

  I cut the wire.

  The clock stops.

  So what’s it like to narrowly escape being plastered all over a serene neighborhood street? You might not believe this, but the sensation is not all bad. The adrenaline that pours into your blood and speeds throughout veins and capillaries is like a drug. A sedative. You feel euphoric, alive, and lighter than air, even if the blast suit is weighing you down like a suit of cement. In that slight moment of time when the final wire is cut and nothing happens, you are as happy as you will ever be.

  Pulling the knife from my utility belt, I proceed to cut the judge from the post. It takes a full two minutes for me to get through the bulk of the tape. As a final gesture, I pull the gag from his mouth. He never flinches at the pain that must surely come from having tape ripped from his mouth. He never lets on for a moment that he recognizes me. He just stands, wobbly, out of balance, makes a run in his underwear for the EMT van parked one thousand feet down Elmhurst Avenue.

  As for me, I’m left with a bomb to dispose of.

  I call for Ted over the radio. Tell him to dress himself in the second blast suit, and to bring the bomb container.

  “You want me to come to you, Ike? Over.”

  “Yes, I want you to come to me, kid.”

  “Don’t forget to say, over, Ike. Over.”

  “Yeah, over,” I say, annoyed. “Over and Roger Wilco and out.”

  He comes to me as soon as he’s dressed in the suit, the heavy, cumbersome container gripped in both his hands. We get to work right away. Ten minutes later, the container now houses the mini-IED which we have no choice but to explode in the middle of the street. Maybe the bomb is small. Tiny even. But the blast it produces is far more powerful than I anticipated. It not only lights up the darkness in a brilliant flash of white/red light, it nearly destroys the container. The crowd roars with enthusiasm, as if this were the pre-show to the big show tomorrow morning at the Wellington Hotel. They clap, as if bomb disposal were pure entertainment.

  That’s when Miller comes up on me from behind, grabs my arm.

  “You’re not going to fucking believe this,” he says. “But we got a second confirmed 10-89.”

  Chapter 30

  “Who is it this time?” I say, running my forearm over my sweat-soaked forehead. Now appearing in my brain, the agonized faces of my wife and sick child.

  The thoughts burning through my brain: Please God. I’m not much for praying. But please, if you’re out there and you can hear this, don’t let it be them.

  “It’s a priest,” he says, his face unusually pale in the white artificial light. “Same deal. But he’s not duct-taped to a mailbox. This one is taped to the altar inside his church.”

  I feel a sense of relief pour over me, knowing the next victim is not Ellen or Henry. But the realization is beginning to sink in. The mailbox bomb, the explosio
n that destroyed my back wheel, and Dr. Alison Darling, an explosives expert reentering my life is no coincidence.

  It’s exactly how I put it to Miller.

  “I hear you,” he says. “Maybe it’s time I paid a little visit to the doctor.” Then, looking over his shoulder at the bomb disposal van and the German shepherd pacing in circles inside its crate. “But I gotta tell you, there’s another note. Like the last one, it was stuck to priest’s forehead.”

  I might be sweating, but my body grows cold.

  “A note,” I repeat, as if saying it makes it more believable.

  He consults his smartphone. “It says, ‘Father, forgive me for I have sinned. I have fathered a child who is now lost forever to the angels.’ And it’s once more signed, if you wanna call it that, with Master Blasters.”

  The words haunt me…“I have fathered a child who is now lost forever to the angels…”

  Is it possible Patty truly was pregnant with my child after just one night together? Of course it’s possible. Biologically speaking. But if she was, then why not tell me about it? Why not at least give me the chance to be responsible? Because I refused to answer her calls. Refused to see her under any circumstances. That’s why.

  “We gotta get over to St. Patrick’s downtown,” Miller insists.

  “Listen,” I say, grabbing hold of his sleeve, “there was a timer on this device. Chances are this one will have one too.”

  “How long did we have for this one?”

  “Thirty minutes.”

  “The report came in five minutes ago.”

  “If the anonymous caller is also our bomber, he or she is staging the blast sequence. Tops we have twenty-five minutes.”

  “Let’s move,” he says.