A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1

by J. E. Fishman

  She didn’t answer. He went and shot the plates for the first time. “There. You see? Nothing to it.” She remained silent as he shifted the panels. He’d need multiple shots. There was nothing more important than understanding exactly what was under that mattress, exactly where every part of the device rested.

  As he worked, he asked, “You say you heard it click?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He told me it was armed.”

  It could all be a bluff, but Diaz knew he’d be a fool to assume that a guy who’d already built three real bombs would turn to bluffing. He wished he could climb under the bed and make an assessment from that angle, but the box spring was too low to the ground.

  “I’m just going over here into the kitchen to study these pictures.”

  “Don’t leave the apartment. If you do I’ll start squirming. I can’t stand it.”

  “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

  “I hate you,” she said. “You’re enjoying this.”

  “Believe me. I’m not.”

  “Can I get a blanket, at least? I’m cold.”

  Diaz thought for a second. “That isn’t advisable. Just sit tight.”

  “Can you turn up the heat?”

  “Okay.” As he went to the thermostat, his mind worked. He needed to reach Kahn in the staging area, but he’d left his radio and cell phone behind, not wanting anything to distract him. All communications he must initiate himself.

  “I’m gonna use the apartment phone and call outside to my partner.” She didn’t say anything.

  Kahn picked up on one ring. “What do you got, Diaz?”

  “Looks like a flat shoebox—or a small cigar box. Two wires coming out, but I can’t risk cutting them. The charges are densely packed and I can see the switch and the blasting cap, but the way it’s wired—” He shook his head, although no one could see. “Could be a magnet in there or something. I do see a spring and a detonation plate.”

  His mind ran through his options. He thought again of the PAN, but he couldn’t use it on a hand-entry situation, even if he could line up a clean shot, which was doubtful.

  “What’re you gonna do, Detective?”

  Diaz perceived that Kahn struggled to keep his voice on an even keel. He found himself wondering whether an accidental detonation would also kill Kahn in the staging area. No point in them all dying.

  “Why don’t you back off, Sandy?”

  “Back off?”

  “Abandon the staging area.”

  “What are you talking about, Diaz?”

  “All this C4… It ain’t safe there, that’s what.”

  “Nonsense. I’m not going anywhere. This is how we do it. Procedure. And you’re not going to take any action that endangers me, are you, Detective?”

  “Tell you the truth, I—I don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

  Crap, he thought. Shouldn’t have let the civilian hear that. He lifted his gaze from the x-ray images, suppressed a sigh of frustration, put his hands on his hips, and looked around. His eyes settled on the bookcase. A new thought drifted in.

  “Hey, Sallye. What do you weigh?”

  “A hundred pounds soaking wet. And I may’ve lost five pounds lying here being gawked at by you and your comrades.”

  “Remember, I’m not the one who took your clothes off. I got an idea, though.”

  “Anything. Just get me the hell out of here. I’ve had enough.”

  “By the way, did Manis say where he was going?”

  “Sure. He forwarded his travel documents to me so you could catch him.”

  “Okay. Settle down. Is there a scale in the bathroom?”

  “A scale?”

  “I’m wondering how much Manis’s books weigh.”

  “What time do you think he strapped you to that bed?” Diaz asked, eyeing the bookcases further.

  “I have no idea.”

  He looked at his watch. A few minutes past five. Early February darkness out the window.

  “Do you remember the nature of the light outside when you came here and saw him? It was a sunny day today. Do you recall where the sun was?”

  She thought about it. “It was well past noon, I think. The sun was low in the sky, but it hadn’t disappeared behind the building across the street yet.”

  He didn’t find that information very helpful, but he kept silent about it. He’d been on the scene nearly two hours himself. If her description of the battery decay had been accurate—and if Manis hadn’t lied to her about it—they might have another three hours or they might have much less. If it was much less, they were doomed anyway, so he’d presume two hours to go. He picked up the phone and called Kahn again.

  “I have a plan, Sandy. I need some kind of board five or six feet long, thin as possible, not too wide.”

  “Like finish plywood?”

  “No. It has to be much smoother than that. I’m going to displace the weight.”

  A pause. Diaz didn’t want to get too specific. He didn’t want the nurse to anticipate too soon. It might make her restless.

  “Like a surfboard maybe,” Kahn said. “Without the fin, of course.”

  “Roger. And several gallons of baby oil. You think you can find those things on short notice?”

  “We’ll get on the horn immediately, Diaz. It’s New York, thank God, the place that has everything. You want me to call you back?”

  He thought of a ringing phone breaking the silence and Sallye flinching. “Negative. I’ll call you.”

  “How much time do you think we have?”

  “Two hours tops, but I’ll need an hour, I figure, just to be safe. I’ll make what preparations I can.”

  As soon as he hung up, he went and stood by the side of the bed. “They’re getting me some supplies. It will take awhile.”

  She swallowed. Her breathing was shallow, which might indicate that she’d begun to panic.

  “Would you like some water?”

  “Yes.”

  “Try to lengthen your breathing and relax.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  He went to the pantry closet and found a water bottle. “I’m going to drip some of this into your mouth, room temperature. Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  He crouched beside the bed and reached out his arm with the open bottle until it was extended completely. Careful not to shift his weight, he tilted the bottle gently. She relished the first few swallows, then turned her head away and some spilled on her cheek. She flinched, but not dramatically. Still, it was enough to make Diaz freeze.

  The explosion, if it came, would not be something heard or felt. It would happen faster than the speed of sound. He wondered, as he had many times, whether he would perceive a bright flash or blackness before the end.

  He took a sip of the water himself and rolled away from the bed, not wanting even to rise from his crouch in its proximity, lest he fall forward by accident. As he stood up near the wall, he thought of his walk on the shoulder of the parkway, of how the vacuum created by a passing car might suck you into the path of the next one. He felt the same now. Life meant not giving in to the gravitational pull, resisting the force that drew you.

  Jennifer’s face flashed in his mind, her beautiful smooth skin and her smile, arms folded, leaning against the doorjamb. He didn’t think of her in relation to the woman lying here on the bed. This woman was just a job, the mechanism of his possible undoing or the means by which he would defeat a criminal. He saw her flesh only as something that needed to be saved in order to accomplish the mission. And his own flesh—that was only a limitation that nature had imposed on him.

  “A hundred pounds?” he asked Sallye. “That’s what you said you weigh?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You’re sure? It’s important for me to know as precisely as possible.”

  “I weigh myself every week in the hospital. Last time maybe it was one-oh-one with my clothes on.”

  “Okay.”

  He went into the bathroom and to
ok out the scale, placing it on the floor in the center of the living room. He weighed himself—212—then began to gather books, weighing each armful and doing the subtraction. When he had a hundred pounds of books in a stack near the bed, he went to the kitchen phone and called Kahn. It was 5:38.

  “We found a skateboard manufacturer,” Kahn said, “not two miles from here in the Navy Yard complex. They use waxed polyurethane, and they got a big sheet of it that they’re cutting special for us.”

  Diaz pictured what he had to do. “Have them bevel and polish the edges if they can.”

  “Step ahead of you.”

  “And the oil?”

  “Got it here in the staging area. We wiped out three drugstores.”

  “How long for the board?”

  “I’d say another half hour tops. We got two guys waiting there already, and the people doing the work are on site.”

  Diaz walked to the alcove and sat on the floor by the bed with his back against the wall. He thought about whether it would help to sedate the woman, but you never knew how a person would react to drugs. If they made her squirm for a brief moment before she went out, nothing else would matter.

  “IF I LIVE,” SALLYE ASKED, “am I going to jail for this?”

  “Well, what’d you do?” Diaz said.

  “Made some bad choices.”

  “Did you participate in the killing of those men?”

  “Not at all.”

  He picked at a floorboard splinter. “How long have you known it was Manis?”

  “Only for sure since this morning.”

  “Then I doubt it. Were you telling me the truth when we first met, that the bombings were news to you?”

  “Yes, I was. I swear.”

  He almost laughed to himself at that. In her current position, he couldn’t see her lying. She was practically strapped to a cross.

  “An abused woman,” he said seriously, “and accessory after the fact at worst. The court will have sympathy for you. You may get probation, nothing more.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I regret what I did with those men in the hospital. I was damaged early on, you know.”

  If it’s any consolation? Diaz didn’t think he was the one who needed consoling, not unless he got his head blown off. He wasn’t going to ask what the rest was about, for fear of stirring her up with memories. “You want more water?”

  “No.”

  “You warm enough now?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  He took a deep breath. Her calmness was beginning to scare him. In his experience, when a crazy person becomes calm, it could be a sign that they were about to crack. He’d known three suicides in his life, and two of them he’d seen on the day of their final act. Both had been calm and cheerful, all of their burdens lifted by their fatal decision.

  Sallye Ritchie’s chest went up and down on the bed above him. She seemed almost in a trance.

  Diaz stood up, using the wall, and his knees nearly buckled, wanting to propel him into a run. He almost had to restrain himself physically, knowing his job remained unfinished. And, besides, he couldn’t outrun the detonation of high explosives.

  He walked as slowly as he could to the kitchen phone, wondering for the first time in a month what might have possessed him to long for this kind of danger, what might have possessed him to tempt the gods of destruction. But then it occurred to him that he already knew. Like the interlocking stresses that caused Sallye and Warren to drive each other crazy, Diaz was doing something similar to himself. He’d become addicted to a negative feedback loop, and—like these two maniacs—it would drive him to self-immolation if he allowed that to happen, if he allowed himself to be drawn further into the vacuum, into the absence of love.

  The apartment was dead quiet, just Sallye’s breathing.

  “You awake?” he called.

  “Absolutely.”

  “Don’t fall asleep. I’m phoning my partner now.”

  He picked up the receiver.

  “We’re ready for you,” Kahn said.

  “Pass the stuff through the door. Don’t come in.”

  He warned the nurse, so the sound of the door opening wouldn’t startle her. A draft came through. He met Kahn’s eyes and shivered.

  “Everything all right?” Kahn asked.

  “You got a procedure for this, Sandy?”

  Kahn lifted one eyebrow and one corner of his mouth and shrugged, as if to apologize for being such a hard-ass all this while.

  “No matter,” Diaz promised him. “We’re all leaving here alive.”

  But he couldn’t be sure he believed that himself.

  WHAT LAY BEFORE HIM WAS uncharted territory, but he didn’t intend to tell Ritchie that. He explained to her what he planned to do. “It’ll be very important,” he said, “for you not to try to help me by shifting your weight.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  He wondered whether he should ask first if she really wanted to live, but events would soon force that decision upon her without further reflection. If the answer was no, it remained his job in any case to go down trying to save her. Just like the other three dozen guys in the squad, all of whom always ran toward the bomb when called upon, damn the consequences.

  The board that Kahn had passed through the door was smooth and shiny, painted in a sparkly russet color with a subtle waviness to the design. The dimensions were five feet long and two-and-a-half feet wide, Diaz estimated. It looked to be about a quarter-inch thick, and the edges were beveled and polished all around, as he’d requested.

  Diaz opened the first two bottles of baby oil and began slathering it on, using his hands.

  “I’m greasing the board now,” he said, “to minimize resistance.”

  She remained silent.

  When he was done, he lifted it up for her to see. He explained that a certain degree of added pressure wouldn’t set the bomb off, since it would only keep the switch depressed. But they must at all costs avoid the release of pressure. That was a nice theory, anyway. In truth, for all the x-rays he couldn’t know for sure what Manis had in store for them.

  “You’ll feel the poke of the edge of the board,” he explained. “Try not to react. Just keep breathing.”

  She nodded ever so slightly as he used both hands to suspend the board within an inch of the mattress. He tilted the tip and felt the resistance of her ribs. She reacted only with her breath, which caught for a second, but then she forced herself to exhale.

  It took Diaz twenty-five minutes to get the board under her, progressing by fractions of an inch, telling her how good she was doing with each sliver of progress. When, at long last, she was straddling the center of it with her back, he went and got the books. He piled them evenly on each end, until he had them arrayed in neat stacks.

  He was sweating profusely, feeling almost dizzy with dehydration, but raging adrenaline lent him steady hands. “I’m going to cut you free now, Sallye. Arms first, then feet. The arms I want you to bring to your sides as slowly as possible. When you’re ready, place your hands on your hips, palms up, so I can take them in a minute.”

  “A minute? Does it have to be that long?”

  “We’ve come this far. Let’s not screw it up. Your legs—” he thought about it—“keep them spread.”

  “You pig.” She laughed. She was becoming giddy. He hoped she could control herself.

  He washed his hands with soap in the kitchen sink to get the remains of the oil off. Then he extracted his Leatherman knife from the scabbard on his leg, released the blade, and cut the ropes with as little motion as possible.

  She moved her arms with such caution that Diaz had to bite his lip to keep from urging her on. He used the kitchen towel to wipe the sweat from his forehead, and stood at the foot of the bed, where he reached forward and took her hands.

  In one motion she came up off the mattress and into his arms.

  Then Diaz ran like he’d never run before. He knew he couldn’t outrun whatever an explosion sent flyin
g, but he thought he had a chance against a stack of teetering books.

  He was through the door in a matter of seconds. Kahn, still in the staging area, saw him burst out and took off running next him, both of them heading behind the response truck and around the corner of the building at a dead sprint.

  A moment later, Diaz collapsed to his knees as an EMT seized Sallye Ritchie from his arms. Crouched on the ground, he swallowed a deep gulp of cold night air and closed his eyes in ecstasy. He couldn’t recall the last time he’d taken so sweet a breath.

  TOCK

  14.

  DAY SEVEN—Dark

  THE FIRST REAL MEAL THAT Joseph Capobianco ate in eight days consisted of chicken with the skin roasted crispy, rosemary potatoes, broccoli casserole, and half a loaf of Italian bread. He topped it off with two pieces of store-bought banana cream pie.

  “Making up for lost time?” Jill asked.

  “Don’t start.” He paused with the last bite an inch from his mouth. “When’s Samantha coming home?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “She never called?”

  “Once or twice while you were sleeping.”

  “She missed all the excitement.”

  “Watching you sleep or watching you puke?”

  “C’mon. I meant the veteran bombings.”

  “Thank God she missed that. You said when we finished dinner you were going to tell me how the bomb went off.”

  “We don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “We may never know. Not much left of that bomb or anything else in the room. It was either the battery decay or the switch popped up. For my money, it’s the batteries. I don’t think Diaz could’ve outrun the switch.”

  “It happened right after?”

  Capobianco nodded. “Three minutes later. Fortunately, while Diaz was working, the guys had covered the windows with ballistic blankets. They’d just gotten the woman into the ambulance when the damn thing detonated.”

  “Did the building go down?”

  “No. That structure was built to industrial standards. But I’ll tell you, Jill, a few of us nearly jumped out of our shoes.”

  “You didn’t expect it?”