Wake Me When It's Over

by Cheryl A Head

  “I think it would be a good use of our time, to identify the affected containers,” Don said.

  “I agree,” Charlie said, returning her attention to the room.

  “With our facilities uniforms, Don and I can just blend in with the other staff,” Gil said.

  Don, Gil, and Charlie had received cursory training in bomb disposal at DHS; Mandy and Hoyt had similar training from their police departments. Using the mobile detectors would save time for ATF.

  “Okay. It’s Don and Gil on the lead, with Hoyt, Mandy, and me as backup,” Charlie said.

  “And me,” the ATF supervisor said.

  Tony overruled the idea. “When your agents arrive, you’ll need to give them directions and get them coordinated. You can pull my two people from the patrols and put them on this,” Tony said to Charlie.

  “Good idea, Tony.”

  Judy sensed the end of the meeting and asked the question she was holding. “Are we still planning on coaxing Dudiyn out of hiding?”

  “No. Not anymore,” Charlie answered. “Wherever he is, we want him to stay put. If he figures out we know the location of the bombs, he might detonate them early. We’ll smoke him out after the devices are secured.”

  “Okay, but what do you want me to do?” Judy asked.

  “You’ve done a whole lot already. After all, you were the one who located the bombs.”

  “Charlie’s right, Judy,” Mandy added.

  “But I can’t just sit around now,” Judy argued.

  “Okay, here’s your assignment. Go to Spectrum now and work with Carter and Lin. Have them shift their attention to footage that shows the recyclable boxes near the restaurants. Also, make sure they’re watching the live cameras for Dudiyn. We need to know if, and when, he’s on the move.”

  “Judy, you can ride with me,” Cynthia said, standing. “I’ll get the detectors unpacked and make sure they’re charged and ready to go.”

  Don and Gil would team up on level two, the two DHS agents would check level three, and Charlie and Mandy would scan the boxes on Cobo’s first level. Teamwork and guts would be the drivers of this “Hail Mary” operation.

  Chairs scraped as the players stood to take on their tasks, and when the office emptied, only Mathers, Hartwell, and Tyson were left. Mathers was still visibly disturbed.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Mike,” Hartwell said. “It’s nothing like the business decisions we have to make every day. The whole thing is too organic; there’s no playbook or procedures manual.”

  Mathers nodded.

  “But what you should know is I believe that team is scrappy, unorthodox, and brave enough to pull it off.”

  Mathers looked at Tyson. The young man had been around Cobo for two decades, and loved the place and its people more than most.

  “What do you think, Ty? Can they save us?”

  “I’m betting my life on it.”

  Amy had been secured in Cynthia’s office for the last hour. In the Spectrum glass office, she could see Lin sitting before one of the security consoles. When Cynthia was called away, Amy waited fifteen minutes before leaving, unnoticed. She knocked on the outer door of Guí Motors, and when there was no answer used her key to enter the office. The room was dark except for the ceremonial candles that had been lit last night when the bosses arrived from the airport. Amy turned on her desk lamp and crossed the room to extinguish the candles. The tall glass containers were hot to the touch, and the air swiftly filled with the smell of smoky jasmine.

  Amy tapped at the interior door several times before Kwong’s raspy voice replied, and she opened the door.

  “Is that you, Amy?”

  “Yes, Mr. Kwong.”

  “Why have you returned?”

  “They have found explosive devices inside of Cobo. Maybe you should leave.”

  “Where would I go?”

  “You could come to my home. My parents would welcome you.”

  Kwong stared at Amy only a moment before he shook his head no. Then he buried his face in his palms and sobbed.

  “I’ll make you a cup of tea, Mr. Kwong. And there are also some almond biscuits left over from the party.”

  Judy peered at her laptop screen. Dudiyn, dressed as a janitor, had been pushing a mop cart all around Cobo. The 360-degree security cameras were programmed to videotape for three minutes in one direction before switching views. In two of the tape sequences, Dudiyn could be seen busying himself near the recyclable containers in the middle concourse of level two.

  “See, there,” Judy said to Cynthia, Carter and Lin, pointing. “He puts the bomb in just before he ties down the bag.”

  Cynthia had moved the three to Heinrich’s office where they could monitor the taped security footage and tie into the live cameras from their laptops. The presence of outsiders in the boss’s office, especially Lin Fong, who had been fired from Spectrum, caused a few raised eyebrows among the staff. To those who asked, Cynthia explained that it was Heinrich’s orders.

  “I think the most efficient way to backtrack his movements is for each of us to take a floor and look at the corridor footage,” Carter suggested.

  “Starting about 11 p.m.?” Judy asked.

  “That sounds right,” Carter said

  “Why eleven?” Lin asked.

  “It’s the time of death the coroner gave us for Heinrich,” Judy said.

  “Wait a minute. Mr. Heinrich is dead?”

  Cynthia, Judy, and Carter reacted with embarrassment. Lin was trying to recover from his second shock of the night.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you knew,” Judy said.

  Cynthia picked up the apology. “Lin, things are moving so fast now, it’s hard to remember who knows what. There are still so many uncertainties. Some information is being shared and some not.”

  Lin was still trying to make sense of the news and the explanation. He bent his head from side to side to release the tension in his neck.

  “Heinrich was found on the loading dock last night, shot, and we believe Dudiyn killed him.”

  “Okay,” Carter said, wasting no more time. “Judy, why don’t you take level three; I’ll take the second level; and Lin, you concentrate on level one. We’re focusing on vendor areas, and let’s use the floor plans to mark every location where this guy went.”

  Carter was the first to strike gold. He rewound the footage to 12:05 a.m. on the time code. Dudiyn could be seen planting one of the white tubes in the recyclable box in front of a beverage vendor station. He circled the area on his map and continued his review of the videotape at double speed. Dudiyn stopped again at a restroom in the south concourse, and Carter marked the spot. He went on like this for a half hour and marked nine places. So far Judy and Lin hadn’t had a single sighting of the man.

  “It looks like he may have started on level two,” Carter said.

  Lin had been scanning the footage from the north atrium camera on level one. His first sighting of Dudiyn came at 11:30 p.m. when he emerged from the level one restroom near the Larned Street garage with his janitor’s cart and disguise. Lin shifted to the camera facing south on that corridor and watched from the opposite perspective as Dudiyn shuffled down the hall and turned the corner.

  “I’m starting back even earlier on this camera,” Lin announced.

  The on-screen time code read 8:44 p.m. when a cleaning lady entered the atrium from the meeting rooms and stopped outside the restroom before entering. Five minutes later, Dudiyn pushed his cart along the atrium corridor and entered the same restroom. After another five minutes, Dudiyn pulled the two carts into the restroom and reappeared briefly as he placed a sign on the door.

  Lin sat back in his chair.

  “What is it, Lin?” Judy asked

  “At nine o’clock, Baldy went into that restroom by the parking garage and didn’t come out until two and a half hours later.”

  “That’s information we should get to Ms. Mack,” Carter said.

  Judy nodded her head in agreement. �
�Maybe that’s his hiding place.”

  “But I saw him in the garage around two-thirty,” Lin said.

  “Right. But nobody’s seen him since,” Judy said. She punched Charlie’s number into the BlackBerry.

  “Oh, and tell Ms. Mack a cleaning woman went in the restroom too, but she never came out,” Lin announced gravely.

  Judy’s call drew Tony, members of the bomb squad, Cynthia, and Charlie and Mandy to the first-level men’s room. It was 4 a.m. The armed ATF supervisor was the first to enter the restroom, gun drawn, holding the Mack team, Tony, Cynthia and a half-dozen curious Cobo staff at a safe distance. He returned to the hallway to signal the restroom was empty and began to suit up in the bomb disposal gear that the rest of his team wore.

  “What’s the protocol now?” Charlie asked Tony.

  “That’s ATF’s explosive ordnance disposal team, EOD for short. They’ve been disarming the devices your patrols have located. They have handheld equipment to determine the degree of danger each bomb presents.”

  “Why not use robots?”

  “This is faster.”

  “How many bombs have been found?”

  “ATF has retrieved thirty IEDs from levels one, two, and three, all from the recyclable boxes you alerted us to.”

  “You think that’s all of them?” Mandy asked.

  “There’s no way to be sure,” Tony said. “But we’ve been very lucky so far; all the bombs have been set up for remote phone detonation. Apparently Dudiyn’s not aware we’ve found them.”

  The supervisor walked over to the group, removing his head gear. “We’ve looked in and around each urinal, behind the sinks and towel dispensers, and in each stall. This is one of the restrooms that had an “out of order” sign on the door. We hadn’t gotten around to it yet,” the man said, embarrassed for the second time that night.

  “That’s not important now,” Charlie said. “Did you find anything?”

  “We have a locked door in there. A closet or something. We need another key.”

  “I have a set of master keys,” Cynthia said.

  “Is it safe to open?” Tony asked.

  “We’ll know shortly. You can come and watch if you like.”

  Charlie and Tony watched from the restroom’s exterior door as the EOD used handheld detectors, which looked like cordless drills, to determine whether it was safe to unlock the storage door. The detector maintained a green light, indicating the door wasn’t booby-trapped. They applied a portable x-ray unit to the door, then paused in their work.

  “We’re going to open the door now,” the head agent said over his shoulder, “but based on our analysis of the devices we’ve already retrieved, there’s not much danger from a detonation in an enclosed space like this closet. That’s why this guy has been placing the pipe bombs out in the open. When it blows, it’ll blow front and back.”

  Tony and Charlie watched the bomb squad members, holding thick plastic shields in front of them, slowly unlock the door. When it was open, two of the agents turned on high-powered lights affixed to their helmets and stepped into the closet.

  “We’ve got a red light sensor. Everybody move back.”

  Tony and Charlie rejoined those gathered behind the ATF tape marking the fifty-foot safety perimeter.

  “What is it?” Mandy asked.

  “They found something,” Charlie replied.

  Ten minutes passed while everyone waited, staring at the open restroom door, on edge for the sound of a blast. The ATF chief finally came to the door, waving Tony and Charlie over.

  “We found another IED, just like the others. We’ve already deactivated it by cutting the copper fuse, and we’re taking it to the containment chamber we’ve set up behind the loading dock,” the ATF agent reported. “But we also found a woman’s body. From the uniform, I’d say she’s one of the janitors. A rag was stuffed in her mouth, and she was in the same plastic bag as the bomb. We also found two more bags with men’s clothes and this.” The agent held up a green Spectrum jacket.

  Charlie, Cynthia, Mandy, Tony, and Scott Hartwell assembled around the stainless-steel coffee table in Heinrich’s office. Judy, Lin, and Carter worked on the other side of the room, doing the tedious work of scanning the last six hours of activity in Cobo’s public areas for any other signs of mischief.

  “Using a Spectrum ID, Dudiyn accessed the rear lobby at 7:08 p.m. from the Larned Street garage,” Cynthia reported. “He’s been at Cobo all night.”

  “And we know from the security footage that he hid out in that men’s room a couple of times tonight,” Charlie said.

  “But where is he now?” Hartwell asked.

  “He had to have a vehicle to transport the IEDs. Did he scan his badge to get into the garage?” Tony asked.

  Cynthia shook her head. “I don’t know. There’s an attendant at that garage until 8 p.m. and you only have to show your ID, but there are cameras in the garage. Maybe we can spot him coming in.”

  Lin cued up the security footage from the garage and began the search. In the Larned Street garage, three rotating cameras recorded in fifteen-minute intervals. It took about ten minutes before Lin saw a scene that got his attention. He looked at it twice before nudging Judy to take a look. Nearly ten hours earlier a blue van drove to the Larned garage gate, and the driver flashed an ID to the guard. The gate opened, and the van circled the garage before backing into a spot against the wall near the restaurant food trucks. Judy and Lin watched the van for ten minutes at fast speed, but the driver never got out. Lin toggled the footage forward at triple speed for almost ten minutes. A few security patrols whizzed through the scene, but there was no activity around the van until a man wearing a green jacket emerged from the shadows. Lin slowed the video to normal speed, and they watched him walk to the employee entrance, carrying two bags. At the door a bearded Bernard Dudiyn reached into the pocket of his jacket, swiped his badge against the keypad, and disappeared inside Cobo.

  “We’ve got the vehicle,” Judy announced calmly.

  The conversation on the other side of the room stopped, and Charlie walked over to the conference table. Lin pointed to the screen.

  “He got out of that van right there. He drove in and stayed in the van at least three hours before he entered Cobo with some plastic bags.”

  The others came to peer over Lin’s shoulder. He pointed again at the video.

  “Lin, find the footage of him returning to the van,” Charlie said. “When you and Amy saw him.”

  Lin toggled the footage forward. At 2:26, Amy’s car could be seen entering and parking along the back wall of the garage. A few minutes later, Dudiyn came into view in his janitor garb. He was pushing a mop cart toward the rear of the garage and entered the space between the blue van and the deli truck.

  “Cynthia, can we feed the live camera of the Larned garage to the monitors in here?”

  “Of course,” Cynthia replied.

  “Wait, I’ll do it,” Carter said, leaving the room.

  In a few minutes, one of the screens over the seating area flickered, and the parking garage came into view. The van was still parked against the wall. Charlie sent a message on her BlackBerry and within minutes Don, Gil, and Hoyt entered Heinrich’s office.

  “What’s up, Mack?” Don asked.

  “Dudiyn may be in that blue van in the employee parking garage,” Charlie said, looking at the monitor. “It’s the one parked next to the deli truck. Lin found the footage of him driving the van into the garage.”

  All eyes shifted to the monitor. The room was eerily silent, as if Dudiyn might hear if someone spoke. Hartwell began pacing in front of the door. The calm he’d exhibited a few hours ago had given way to his usual edginess.

  “I remember seeing that van when we made rounds. I thought it was one of the restaurant vehicles,” Hoyt said.

  “What’s he doing in there?” Judy said.

  “I think he’s waiting until the show opens to the press,” Charlie answered. “He’s shown he’s
good at staying off the radar.”

  “What do we do next?” Don asked.

  “First, we need to verify whether or not he’s in the van, and do that without rousing his suspicion,” Charlie said.

  “Maybe this would be a good time to use ATF’s robots,” Tony said.

  The ATF readily agreed to put one of their robotics units to work, and within fifteen minutes two agents placed their smallest unit, a five-pound surveillance robot, at the gate of the parking garage and retreated. A technician at the ATF command truck used a gaming toggle to quietly advance the thin, flat, square robot toward the van. Equipped with three micro-cameras and x-ray capabilities, the unit rolled silently up to and under the truck to take pictures and readings.

  Gil and Don, still in their facilities uniforms, stepped out of the lobby door, chatted softly, and lit cigarettes. They had guns tucked against their backs and were prepared to take down Dudiyn if he exited the van. They watched as the robot reappeared from under the van and quietly rolled back through the parking gate to the waiting hands of the ATF agents.

  Dudiyn woke from a fitful sleep. He wasn’t sure what had awakened him, but he assumed it was the two guys taking a cigarette break outside of the employee entrance. Through the windshield he watched the men finish their smoking, drop the butts onto the sidewalk, and stub them with a twist of their boots. Then one of them swept up the butts into his handled trash pan while the other scanned the door, and they entered Cobo.

  Dudiyn pushed the backlight on his phone. Only a quarter of five. The hardest part of any offensive was the wait. He’d learned to sleep when he could. Mostly on the ground, wedged into a craggy rock, or in a bombed-out structure where both stars and rain poured through the opening of a jagged roof. He’d joined the rebel forces in the Chechen war because his brother was a guerilla fighter and because, after his mother was killed, he didn’t feel he belonged anywhere else. When his brother was captured and later executed, he had become one of the most ferocious fighters against Russia’s militia.