Proximity: A Novel of the Navy's Elite Bomb Squad

by Stephen Phillips

“You guys see that?”

  “What?” said Ash.

  “See those doors?”

  In the side of the mountain were several metal doors set in concrete that appeared to be painted brown and green camouflage.

  “Yea, I see ‘em now,” said Ash. “Those things are all over the Med. So what?”

  Ironhorse turned around and faced Jazz and Ash. “Those are the magazines that the Albanians gave to us,” he said in a hushed tone as if telling a ghost story at camp. His eyes shifted back and forth nervously.

  “There are ten of ‘em along this ridgeline. We think the government gave them to us because they lost control of them. They figured that we’d move out the local junta and turn ‘em back over to the federales when we leave.

  “The current government tried to get into them after the coup. The ones that they tried to open were booby-trapped. One guy got killed, came from together as he opened the door. A couple of others got injured, fragged.

  “Most of them had trip wires fixed to a hook on the door. Pull it open so far and it tugged a nonconductive barrier from between two metal contacts in a homemade firing circuit wired to an APERS mine facing the door. The mine was plussed up with metal fragments. Nails and shit like that.

  “Open the door, pull out the barrier. Bang. Big pink mist.”

  “Damn,” said Ash.

  “Yeah. If you knew that the device was there it was a simple op. You only had to open the door slowly, a few inches and then you could slip the pull line off the hook on the door.

  “When we went in them, as I said, some were empty, some had shit in them, and two of them even had training aids.”

  “Training aids?” said Jazz.

  “Yes, sir. Full out cut-aways of landmines, grenades, anti-tank rounds, just like EOD school except for one thing.”

  “What?” said Jazz and Ash together.

  “We ain’t never seen a one of ‘em.”

  “You’re shitting me,” said Ash.

  “Naw, and remember this is our backyard. The 617 is out of Germany. We have guys in my unit that are on their fourth stint in Bosnia.”

  “LT and I were just talking about that,” said Ash.

  “Are they Albanian?” asked Jazz.

  “We are not sure. Some say they are Russian weapons that the Albanians modified. A lot of them do look like former Soviet stuff, but the dimensions are all wrong. We even think that they may have had technical drawings with no sizes on them.”

  “That’s weird.”

  “Yeah, so we took photos of all of them and sent them to the Technical Division at Indian Head.”

  “Can we see them?”

  Ironhorse turned to T-Ball. They smiled again.

  “Okay, Lieutentant.”

  The Air Force EOD Tech pointed and commented with each one as they drove by as if he was a tour guide on a safari.

  “Number one, a general purpose magazine. This one had anti-tank mines, APERS mines, hand grenades, and small arms. It was booby-trapped. Number two, general purpose. This one had tank mines, APERS mines, rockets, RPGs. It was booby-trapped. Number three, tank rounds and arty. This place had boxes and boxes of 76mm to 155 mm. Booby-trapped.”

  They passed seven of the magazines. From the outside they all looked non-descript to Jazz. Brown metal doors, probably steel, concrete frames.

  They stopped at the eighth bunker. Ironhorse turned the engine off. He and T-Ball got out, followed by Jazz and Ash. Per regulations governing operations in Albania, all of them still had their sidearms strapped on and rifles slung over their shoulders. Only back in the tent compound could they secure weapons.

  Jazz mimicked T-Ball and Ash, collapsing the stock on his weapon so that it was less obtrusive.

  The men sank in the mud while standing still waiting for Ironhorse to open a two-inch thick lock used by the U.S. military for securing magazines.

  He opened the door and they all moved in quickly to avoid more of the rain. Jazz heard a click as Ironhorse turned on a light. In the back of the room was a pile of ordnance “cut-aways” that showed the innards of each; half mines, half rockets, and half artillery shells. It reminded Jazz of the replica of the SANPAT Bomb.

  “Holy cow,” said Ash. “It’s a Bosnian EOD school.”

  “Yep,” said Ironhorse proudly. “We found a lotta good shit. I can’t wait to hear back from TECHDIV.”

  “Was this one booby-trapped?” Jazz inquired.

  “Nah,” Ironhorse answered. “All training aids. Who cares?” he chuckled.

  Ash walked to the stockpile of faux ordnance. He picked one up.

  “These are right off the line, metal not plastic. Manufacturers must have demilled a couple and cut them in half, or built some from the ground up as training aids.”

  “Smart really,” allowed T-Ball. “That way there are no mistakes. I know that we’ve had training ordnance at Two, stuff that we used for years, that we later found out was nowhere close to what the stuff really looks like. Limpets especially.”

  “What are you going to do with these?” asked Jazz.

  “Most will be shipped to TECHDIV, sir. After that, who knows? I will tell you this, some of them will end up as mantelpieces at the 617 and will become ashtrays in the homes of a few Airmen.”

  Jazz could see that Ashland was studying the devices closely. Ash looked at Ironhorse.

  “Could we see the pictures of these, or better yet obtain copies?”

  “Sure,” said Ironhorse. “You guys ready to see the next one?”

  Quickly, he opened the camera bag and pulled out the body with a telephoto lens on it. Ayman even provided false press credentials in case Guido was questioned about his sophisticated camera gear.

  The rain was still heavy. He fumbled for the rubber covering that would protect the front of the lens from rain.

  Shit, why wasn’t I ready? he cursed to himself.

  He took two photos before the last man disappeared into the magazine. He snapped another one of the vehicle in case it revealed anything.

  It was only the second time he observed anyone moving into the magazines. Usually they just drove back and forth on the road in a security patrol. Perhaps he could discover what was stored in the magazines now. Nasih suspected it was ammunition for further action in Kosovo. Guido wondered if this was an advance party that was about to draw ordnance in time for an attack.

  He waited until the men emerged. There were four of them. The camera whirred as Guido snapped photos. He was sure that he only got one face.

  Just as he thought he observed nothing of significance, a cursory inspection revealed that they were moving toward the ninth magazine. His magazine.

  This time he was ready when they emerged from the vehicle. Fortunately the rain muffled the constant click of the camera as he held the button down, moving it from man to man like a sniper rifle. He got a good still shot on each of them as they lined up and entered the magazine.

  Another two-inch lock was fumbled and pulled open. T-Ball squirmed as if he were a child on Christmas day. Jazz wondered what was so exciting about this magazine. It was obviously the center of Theodore’s excitement.

  “How was this one booby-trapped?” Ash inquired.

  “Hmmm. This one was the toughest. There was a sensor on the door. We had a brand new Basic Tech in the unit who actually noticed it.”

  “Wow, what did you do?”

  “We removed the sensor from the door and taped it to its mate. We still remote opened the door a few inches at a time in case there was a tripwire device like on some of the others. There was.”

  Ironhorse clicked on the light. The magazine was filled front to back with cylindrical objects sitting on racks about waist high. When Jazz realized what he was looking at he actually stepped back.

  “HOLY SHIT!” said Ashland.

  There were bombs, torpedoes, missiles, and rockets. All fuzed.

  Ironhorse and T-Ball were laughing now.

  “What?” said Jazz taking a step closer
to the door. He was confused. There was a ringing in his ears. “What the fuck!”

  “Calm down, LT,” said T-Ball. “Look again.”

  It took him a moment.

  “They’re all training aids,” said Ash.

  “Damn. I thought they were real,” said Jazz. “I thought we were looking at live ordnance waiting to go.”

  The other men were all giggling at the 1140.

  “I’m serious. I thought, ‘Who are the dumb motherfuckers that stored this shit ready to go?’”

  “They have not yet been fired, LT,” said T-Ball. “They’d be safe.”

  Ash walked to the first bomb closest to the door. It was Russian in design. He pulled on a niche on the side and opened a door that revealed the connection between the nose fuze and the high explosives in the body.

  “Do they all have cut-aways?”

  “Yeah,” said Ironhorse. “Mostly Russian and Chinese, variants thereof. There are a few Egyptian, Italian, and even a few U.S. bombs in the back.”

  “I’m surprised,” said Ash. “Since when did the Albanians have a legit EOD force? And if they did, why couldn’t they render safe the booby traps and get back into these mags after the government got a handle on things?”

  “Because they were not here for the Albanians,” said Jazz. “This ‘school’ was not for the Albanians, was it Ironhorse?”

  “I told you he was smart,” said T-Ball.

  “I knew it,” said Ironhorse. “I predict it will take another five seconds...”

  “Until I realize that there is more to this magazine than cutaways.”

  “Damn, LT. Are you psychic? Cruz is right. You oughta be a G-man,” said T-Ball. “How did you guess?”

  “Simple. The last magazine had training aids and was not booby-trapped. This one had the most sophisticated trap among them all. True it had some high speed training devices... but it doesn’t add up. Something far more important had to be in here.”

  “Lieutentant. I’ve got something to show you,” said Ironhorse with his now trademark grin.

  They all followed Ironhorse as he threaded his way through racks of training ordnance to the back of the magazine. As they moved further from the door the sound of the storm outside grew quieter and the light around them grew dimmer.

  “We were in here four days before we found it. We kept feeling a little breeze back here and hearing a strange sound as the door up front was closed. Then one time when we were goofing around, we turned the light out and closed the door on one of the other Airman in the unit. He felt the breeze, heard the sound, then he saw the light.”

  “Huh?” said Ashland.

  Ironhorse reached up and pushed on the back wall. A section of it opened. It was a false door with a room beyond.

  Now Jazz and Ashland were too shocked to speak. Suddenly Jazz knew what T-Ball was excited about.

  T-Ball’s voice became very serious. “Sir, I wanted you to see this the same way I did. It has been hard for me to contain myself.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Follow the rabbit down the hole.”

  Jazz looked at the door. A concrete slab was affixed to a steel door behind. He stepped through. It was a lab. A lab for making IEDs, laid out exactly like the one in San Patricio County.

  Jazz felt faint. The implications hit him immediately. He needed a moment to consume what he was seeing.

  “Holy shit,” Ash said again. “So the sound you heard...”

  “Some small pressure difference between the two rooms. As you closed the front door this one moved a little on its hinges making the sound. Just a small amount of light was coming through the bottom of the false door. It was not enough to be noticed when the light up front was on.”

  “None of this is full up or fuzed is it?” asked Ash.

  “No,” Ironhorse replied. “Funny isn’t it? What are we going to do? Recover it and store it in a magazine?”

  “Benny, tell me that you have gone to the FBI with this,” said Jazz.

  “Well, yes and no. We told the OSI guy.”

  “Henderson?”

  “That’s the one. He and a couple of other guys came in and looked at this stuff. They took photos, asked us not to move anything, and said they’d be back. We took more photos and sent them to TECHDIV.”

  “Were the other guys Air Force?”

  “I think they were from the company.”

  “Benny, T-Ball and I saw this same lab in Texas.”

  “He told me, sir. I think these wackos got their info from the same website.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe these wackos are working together.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Meetings

  Ayman answered the phone on the first ring.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me. We need to meet now.”

  “Okay. I’ll come to the road behind your camp. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Good.”

  The rain had let up somewhat. Guido ducked as he felt the downdraft of one of the big U.S. Navy helicopters as it flew overhead. He looked up as it passed and noted that two of them were headed for the coast.

  Ayman was on a moped, smoking casually as if he stopped here all the time.

  “Buongiorno.”

  “Greetings. What do you have for me?”

  “Photos. There was activity in the magazine today. I think something is about to happen there.”

  “As long as it is not soon we will be okay. It is time for you and the girl to leave. Nasih is going to take action soon. If you are here you may be implicated.”

  “Such a shame, I wanted to help.”

  “You have. Your role here is not of action. That will be carried out by someone who has direct interest and greater flexibility than you here.”

  “I understand.”

  “This may be our last meeting. I wish you success in your cause.”

  “And you.”

  Ayman slipped the film into his pocket. Started his moped and drove off. Guido wondered if Renata was still randy.

  Melanie almost dropped Abigail running for the phone. She waited for Jazz to call for two days since the Executive Officer of EOD Mobile Unit Six reported to the Det Four wives that their husbands were okay. She even watched the news constantly, hoping to see Jazz in the coverage.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, hon, its me.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Melanie exclaimed.

  “How are you doing?”

  Jazz heard Melanie crying.

  “Mel, are you alright?”

  “I’m just glad to hear your voice,” she said. “I’m glad that you’re safe.”

  “Hon, it was no big deal, really.”

  Jazz looked down at his feet. He wondered how many times he was going to have to lie to his wife for the sake of operational security.

  “Malarky. You almost died on me again.”

  “Mel, you are being overly dramatic... how are the kids?”

  Melanie allowed him to change the subject. She filled him in on how the family was doing and made sure he got to talk to both of the boys. Neither one of them wanted to hang up.

  “Mel, I gotta go. I don’t want to, but I have to go.”

  “Be careful you big lug. I want you back in one piece.”

  “I will. I love you.”

  “I love you too, Jazz.”

  After hanging up, Melanie realized that she did not really tell him how angry she was. She wondered how long she could handle this new life.

  Plowing through email messages was the bane of Elena’s Monday morning existence. One message forwarded from Thompson caught her attention. The subject line read, “FWD: Improvised Explosive Device (IED) “Factory” discovered in Tirane, Albania.”

  She opened the message.

  From: Thompson

  To: Cruz

  Subject: FWD: Improvised Explosive Device (IED) “Factory” discovered in Tirane, Albania.

  Elena,

  Read attached message. See me
regarding our suspect.

  R/ Cam

  p.s. If you screw this up, I’ll kill you.

  From: pucharelli

  To: tanagier

  Subject: Improvised Explosive Device (IED) “Factory” discovered in Tirane, Albania.

  Boss,

  An IED factory was discovered in Tirane, Albania by an Air Force EOD Team deployed there as part of the military response to the Kosovo crisis. The factory was hidden in the back of a former Albanian Army magazine.

  AF EOD reported their findings to the local OSI contingent. OSI conducted an initial investigation and drafted a report. EOD sent photos to TECHDIV. OSI and EOD determined that the explosives were stable and could remain in place until its investigators were dispatched to gather forensic evidence.

  OSI’s report came across my desk yesterday.

  OSI man called in, as I was knee deep into his report. A second EOD team observed the factory and said that it mirrored a factory they saw INCONUS. I pulled up FBI Bulletin on San Patricio incident handled by San Antonio office.

  Second team consisted of Lieutenant James J. Jascinski, BM1 John Ashland, and BM2 Theodore Ball.

  Rome office worked with this group only weeks ago on SECSTATE debacle. Odd coincidence.

  Draft of formal report attached.

  V/R

  Pooch

  Attch: iedtiralbinirpt.doc

  The clock on the wall with “Rome” written under it could be seen from her desk. The hands told her that it was 3:00pm there. She clicked on Pucharelli’s name and a box opened up with all of his amplifying information down to his badge number. Elena dialed the number.

  “Pooch”

  “Agent Pucharelli?”

  “Hell-o, and who may I ask who this is?” Pucharelli said flirtatiously.

  “This is Special Agent Cruz from San Antonio.”

  “Doh! Sorry, I uh...”

  Elena possessed an advantage already.

  “I saw your email about the IED factory in Albania. I did the job in San Patricio. Do you mind if I ask some questions?”

  “Sure. What ya got?”

  “It is about Jascinski.”

  “Who?”

  “The Navy lieutenant.”

  “The EOD officer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Elena imagined Pucharelli furrowing his brow over the phone.