by Spencer Kope
They found the ship’s three-thousand-pound anchor two miles away.
Assuming all twenty-five to thirty barrels in Abel Moya’s warehouse contain ANFO or ANNM, the resulting blast would be equivalent to the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Centered at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the explosion destroyed or damaged over three hundred buildings in a sixteen-block radius.
Perhaps because of this, SWAT commander Keith Baker gets no arguments when he orders the command vehicle to a fallback position a half mile from the warehouse and then dispatches patrol units to the surrounding neighborhoods and business parks announcing a mandatory evacuation. The call and echo from the car-mounted speakers can be heard coming from every quarter, the voices cascading over one another, projecting urgency and demanding compliance.
Allen Road is shut down completely, as is Hageman Road.
The whole thing is a colossal mess, and the evacuation eats up more than an hour. Even then, we can’t be sure everyone got out. The only thing lending balance to the operation is the knowledge that the bomb only read ARMED. No countdown was triggered. After reviewing body-camera footage from SWAT members, the team is satisfied that no explosion is imminent.
Going frame by frame, they note the exact moment that the red LEDs come to life—come to life and just … wait. Their sudden flare is a bit like a bull pawing the ground and kicking up dirt before the charge. It’s a warning. The footage also shows what looks like a battery pack and wires going into the barrel directly under the display panel.
Somebody knew what they were doing.
* * *
Three hours after first arriving at the industrial park, the armored BearCat once again screeches to a stop in front of the warehouse, but instead of disgorging black-clad men with nasty weapons, two officers exit briefly and haul out a black rectangle that they set on the ground.
They leave just as quickly as they arrived.
The rectangle rests on the ground, unmoving. It’s perhaps a yard long by maybe ten inches high and twenty wide, and the only thing particularly unusual about it is the manner of its delivery.
Then it moves.
As if waking from slumber, it seems to stretch and then rises, pausing to take in its surroundings. The small head turns left and right on its long, thin neck until it finds the front door and fixes its sights. With a mechanical lurch, the body swivels and starts forward, moving at the tortoise pace of perhaps two miles per hour.
Watching the remote-controlled robot through Jimmy’s Steiner 10x42 tactical binoculars, I’m impressed when it reaches the outside steps and barely pauses before climbing to the upper platform. The SuperDroid HD2 tactical robot is a favorite of SWAT teams because it can be used for a variety of purposes. In addition to overcoming obstacles, its tanklike construction features cameras and a six-axis arm that can open doors and lift objects both light and heavy.
It’s perfect for retrieving explosives and removing them to a safe disposal location. Unless, of course, those explosives are accumulated in a couple dozen fifty-five-gallon drums wired to a detonator that’s ready to tick-tick-tick on its way to boom.
Even the mighty SuperDroid has its limitations.
Nicknamed Johnny 5 by the team—after the robot from the 1986 film Short Circuit—the SuperDroid will be called on for something a bit more specialized today. The next twenty minutes will tell whether the unit’s life comes to a sudden, violent end among the scorched ruins of a hundred buildings, or whether the robot will live to fight another day.
For Johnny 5, the outcome will not be dictated by the superior artificial intelligence displayed by his mechanical brother in the movie, but by the dexterity and skill of the explosive ordnance disposal (EOD) specialist now manipulating the controls from a half mile away in the command vehicle. I didn’t catch the EOD operator’s name, but one of his teammates called him Stick, which, if you ask me, is a pretty stupid moniker for a moderately overweight EOD guy.
But who am I to judge?
I’ve only ever met a handful of EOD types, two of whom were nicknamed Lefty on account of the missing or partially missing digits on their right hand. Lefty’s a cool name, but that’s a club not worth the admission price. Jimmy has a former Air Force buddy nicknamed Boomer, whom I met in Kansas City three years ago. When I asked why they called him Boomer, Jimmy said it was because he’d shout out, “Boom,” every time he detonated something.
A world of pressure bears down on Stick from behind as a dozen sets of determined eyes stand fixed to the screen that displays the camera feed from Johnny 5. When the robot makes entry through the shattered front door, every breath is held. The crowd presses closer, and the lookie-loos undulate in a constantly shifting mass, each vying for a better vantage point. The weight of their presence—even if imagined—is almost palpable.
My presence adds to the gravity.
* * *
Guided by Stick, Johnny 5 makes straight for the warehouse and its frightful collection of drums and pallets. The heavy-gauge door is closed when the SuperDroid reaches it. The jagged wound in the Sheetrock looks ominous through the camera feed, like a hungry mouth. It’s the kind of hole you don’t stick your hand into if you want to pull it back out in one piece.
Maneuvering the joystick with the patience of a monk, Stick raises the robot’s articulating arm and lines it up with the door handle. From the subtle manipulation of the controls, bordering on a caress, the robot grasps the handle and gives a gentle counterclockwise turn. We don’t hear the latch release from the striker plate, but the door opens into the cavernous warehouse nonetheless.
The light is still on, so Stick wheels Johnny 5 over to the barrels and spends several minutes looking for trip wires or booby traps. Finding none, he raises the arm until the camera is looking down on the digital display and the disquieting letters that suggest a real potential for calamity.
One wrong move might carve a jagged crater into the ground where the warehouse now stands. In such an eventuality, the fate of Johnny 5 might be the least of our worries. I don’t know a lot about explosives, but I’m starting to wonder if a half mile is enough distance from such a collection of barrels.
“Battery pack,” Stick says, pointing to a bundle the size of a six-inch sub sandwich. It’s wrapped in duct tape, but you can see wires attached to both ends, and the rough outline of perhaps a dozen D batteries in three stacks.
“Can you cut it?” Ross asks. “Or is that just in movies?” It’s the same question I had, but I didn’t want to look stupid.
“Yes and no,” Stick replies in a cool, even tone. “We need to make sure it’s not a decoy and then check for backups.” He taps the screen as if to indicate the display module. “This isn’t a complicated setup, which makes me think it’s a decoy.” He points out various wires connecting the battery pack to the display and the display to a small black box resting in the gap between barrels.
“If that’s your detonator,” Stick says, indicating the black box, “what are these?” He drags his finger along some barely visible lines on the screen, and I realize they’re additional wires, perhaps a dozen of them. They disappear under the tarp and away from the detonator, begging questions—questions to which we need answers.
“Can you remove the rest of the tarp?” Keith Baker asks from his perch behind Stick’s right shoulder.
“I can try, but didn’t you say that’s what activated the display?”
“Yeah, pretty sure it was a thread tied to the corner of the tarp. The flashlight on the arm should light it up if the other corners are rigged.” The statement borders on wishful thinking.
“I’ll give it a go. I’m just saying that if one thread arms it, another might start the countdown.”
“Or light it off immediately,” I mutter.
Several heads turn my way, as if weighing the possibilities, but most either don’t hear or don’t pay attention.
Maneuvering the robot to the left corner of the palleted collection, Stick zooms the camera and
does a thorough scan for threads or other triggering devices. Satisfied, he gently clamps onto a fold in the blue tarp and prepares to lift. “Grab your butts,” he suggests to the room, and in one smooth motion, the robot’s metal arm lifts the cover and folds it back onto the barrels, exposing the left corner.
No threads snap, no red letters blaze defiantly, no thunderous explosion rocks the command vehicle.
“So far so good,” Stick says in a voice two pitches too high.
He repeats the process on the rear corners, which proves more difficult due to their proximity to the wall, but it’s nothing that can’t be solved with minimal violence and maximum patience.
Folding the loosened tarp into a four-foot-wide strip running down the center of the barrels, Stick directs Johnny 5 to the left side of the pallets to grasp the end of the tarp. Engaging the tanklike tracks of the robot, Stick has the robot pull the covering clear of the drums and drag it across the concrete floor until it’s well away from the work area.
The air-conditioning in the command vehicle is blowing cold from the front and rear overhead units, but I still feel a trickle of sweat running down the center of my back. I’m not the only one feeling wet and sticky. Just about everyone else in the RV is either pitted out, damp around the neck, or in desperate need of a circa-1970s sweatband.
The only guy who seems to be taking it in stride is Detective Ross Feng. When he catches me glancing his way, he grins in his goofy way and nods, as if to say, Good times, eh, Steps? I smile back, not because I agree with the sentiment, but because the guy’s too likable to ignore.
Examining the naked barrels for additional battery packs or detonators, Stick begins to mutter incoherently to himself. I can’t tell if he’s puzzled or pissed. This continues as he traces out each wire, then he makes a rather surprising announcement.
“They’re decoys.”
“Decoys?” someone asks skeptically.
“I’ve got six wires dropping down between the barrels at six different locations, every one of them ending at nothing. They’re just hanging there.”
“Does that mean the detonator is the detonator?” I ask.
“Seems so.”
Turning his attention back to the display panel with its connected battery pack and detonator, Stick grows quiet as he manipulates the robot camera this way and that. The only sound in the command vehicle is the overhead AC unit and a low rumble from someone’s stomach.
Minutes slow as time turns to molasses.
The crypt-like quiet lingers as Stick studies the device from every angle, even tipping the display gently up on edge to examine the underside. Then, with the suddenness of lightning, he slaps the countertop with such force that the sound makes the whole room jump. Issuing a guttural, animalistic roar—as if losing his mind—he does the unthinkable.
Clamping the robot arm onto the detonator, Stick rips it from the side of the barrel with an exaggerated, fatalistic yank of the joystick. I duck instinctively, expecting a blast, but none comes. A confused round of gasps and hisses fills the confines of the RV as Stick next turns his attention to the battery pack, jerking it so hard it rips the wires free and sends them flopping across the nearest barrel.
To those of us watching helplessly, his reckless actions seem born of desperation, of sanity surrendering to delirium … but it only seems so.
With a shout the size of Texas, Stick slaps the countertop again and then jumps to his feet. “It’s a fake!” He gestures at the monitor and glances from face to face. “The whole thing. The bastard’s playing with us.” Stick exudes confidence as he goes on to explain his findings to the brass, but I notice a tremor in his right hand as it hangs at his side.
I’ve seen the effect before.
It’s the aftermath of too much adrenaline and cortisol pouring into the circulatory system and then finding itself out of a job. Shaking is just one of the possible physical effects of such a hormone dump. There’s also increased heart rate, constricted blood vessels, a pale or flushed face, tunnel vision, dilated pupils, hearing loss, and more.
A relaxed bladder is probably the worst of the possible side effects, at least as far as I’m concerned. Not that I’m speaking from personal experience. A few random drops scared out of the urinary tract hardly qualifies.
The body’s fight-or-flight mechanism is a marvel of genetics, but its kill switch is a little slow on the uptake. As the adrenaline slowly drains from Stick’s system, the shakes will settle and then vanish altogether. I’ve been down that road more times than I care to recall.
When the EOD tech sees me looking, he just smiles, gives a small nod, and tucks the hand into his pocket.
16
It takes EOD another forty-five minutes to conclude that all twenty-seven barrels in the warehouse are filled with nothing more than water—brownish, murky water, but water nonetheless. Ross gets the all clear from SWAT and leads the way through the office door, down the hall, and into the troublesome warehouse. Shine abounds, but none that matches the polished malachite from the cemetery.
We find ourselves standing next to the collection of unmasked fifty-five-gallon drums, the wires, display, and fake detonator stacked neatly on top of the nearest barrel. Crossing his arms, Ross takes in the sight and snorts.
“People and explosives,” he mutters. The words should simply be a statement, but the way Ross says them you just know they’re a prelude to something more.
He doesn’t disappoint.
“Last year, we had this little asswipe twenty-year-old cop wannabe working security at an industrial park on the south side of town. In his infinite wisdom, he decided to make his own flash-bangs. Blew off half his hand in the process.”
Ross looks at me, dumbfounded. “They found his index finger impaled on a roofing nail that was poking through the shed ceiling, if you can believe that. Never saw anything—” Ross’s phone rings and he holds up a finger; an index finger, ironically.
As he slowly drifts away in conversation, Jimmy just chuckles. We leave Ross to his call and make our way back to the office spaces, and I motion Jimmy into what looks like a makeshift conference room. Its purpose is unimportant; the only thing I care about is that it’s empty at the moment.
“We’re wasting our time on Abel Moya,” I say bluntly.
He nods, as if expecting this, but nonetheless says, “You’re sure?”
“I’m positive. Hundreds of people have passed through here in the last few months, including a lot with green shine, but none are remotely similar to our gravedigger.”
Jimmy suspected as much but is disappointed nonetheless. “Good luck convincing Kip.”
“We need to have another talk with Ella. There’s something in the congressman’s history that we’re missing … either that or he’s not the target.”
Jimmy nods. “Meaning we’ve allowed ourselves to get tunnel vision, ignoring other possibilities.”
“We started with the most logical—”
Jimmy holds up a hand to stop me. “I know, and you’re right. We focused on Marco because he’s a congressman and because Secret Service is breathing down the director’s neck. This could just as easily be about Jason, Wade, or Noah.” Giving me a hard look, Jimmy adds, “Are we sure that photo of Wade means he’s the next to die? Couldn’t it just as easily mean that he’s the reason for all this—for Jason’s death and any others that follow?”
“Wade’s next,” I say unequivocally. “You know it as well as I do. We’ve seen this type of signaling on other cases, though never this obvious.”
Jimmy meets my gaze, his face grim and set.
I’m about to speak again when something catches my eye. A partial syllable—a meaningless guttural not meant to stand on its own—has already escaped my lips, but the rest of the word dies in my throat. My eyes fix upon the floor behind Jimmy with such intensity that he turns to look but sees nothing.
Aside from the conference table and a handful of chairs, the room is Spartan. A fridge sits in the corne
r next to a particleboard stand that holds an antiquated printer covered in dust. The only other item is an unused four-by-eight whiteboard that rests on the ground and leans into the back wall. Its face is mostly clear of marks, save for a few dates, some minor notations, and a phone number for a pizza-delivery service.
“What is it?”
“The whiteboard,” I say in a low voice.
He makes a gesture as if to say, What about it?
Slowly and in a clear but quiet voice, I say, “Some of the footprints that lead up to it don’t come back.”
It takes a moment for the enormity of this to register, but when it does, Jimmy’s hand flies to his Glock and he motions me back. Moving flush up against the wall on the left side of the board, he holds his handgun at the ready as he tips the panel forward a few inches at a time.
“What is it?” I hiss.
Jimmy shakes his head briskly but doesn’t look at me or answer, intent on what lies concealed behind the whiteboard. At last, and without warning, he pulls the top corner away from the wall and lets the whiteboard fall forward. It strikes a chair and knocks it onto its back with a loud crash before striking the edge of the conference room table with a calamitous crash. An open box of office supplies skids across the table surface and plunges to the floor on the other side, adding to the cacophony.
The wall behind the whiteboard now stands exposed.
Where one would expect Sheetrock and paint stands a jagged three-foot-by-three-foot hole that opens into darkness. It’s as if some enormous rat chewed its way through the wall and then hid its misdeed behind the innocuous board. I half expect a gray-whiskered nose to poke through, followed by sharp teeth and beady black eyes.
