Death of a Blue Movie Star

The next day at eleven-thirty Sam Healy picked her up outside of L amp;R and they drove north.

"It's just a station wagon." Rune, looking around inside, was mildly disappointed.

Sam Healy said, "But it's blue and white, at least." It also hadbomb squad stenciled in large white letters on the side. And a cage, empty at the moment, that he explained was for the dogs that sniffed out explosives. "You were expecting…?"

"I don't know. High-tech stuff, like in the movies."

"Life is generally a lot lower-tech than Hollywood."

"True."

They drove out of Manhattan to the NYPD explosives disposal facility on Rodman's Neck in the Bronx.

"Oh, wow, check this place out. This is totally audacious."

It was essentially a junkyard without the junk. Her feet bounced up and down on the floorboards as they pulled through the gate in the chain-link fence, crowned with spirals of razor wire.

To their left was the police shooting range. Rune heard the short cracks from pistols. To their right were several small red sheds. "That's where we keep our own explosives," Healy explained.

"Your own?"

"Most of the time we don't dismantle devices. We bring them here and blow them up."

Rune picked up her camera and battery pack from the backseat. There was a green jumpsuit there. She hadn't noticed it before. She tried to pick it up. It was very heavy. The helmet had a green tube, probably for ventilation, coming out of the top and hanging down the back. It looked just like an alien's head.

"Wow, what's that?"

"Bomb suit. Kevlar panels in fireproof cloth."

"Is that what you wear when you disarm bombs?"

"You don't call them bombs."

"No?"

"They're lEDs. Improvised explosive devices. The Department's a lot like the military. We use initials a lot."

They walked into a low cinder-block building that reeked of city government budget. A single, overworked air conditioner groaned in the corner. Healy nodded at a couple uniformed officers. He carried a blue zipper bag.

She glanced at a poster. rules for boiling dynamite.

There were dozens of others, all with bullet points of procedures on them. The clinical language was chilling.

In the event of consciousness after a detonation, attempt to retrieve any severed body parts…

Jesus…

He noticed what she was reading and, maybe to distract her from the gruesome details, asked, "Hey, want to hear the basic lecture on explosive ordnance disposal?"

She looked away from the section on improvising tourniquets and said, "I guess."

"There are only two goals in dealing with explosives. First, to avoid human injury. Destroy or disarm by remote if at all possible. Goal number two is to avoid injury to property. Most of our work involves investigating suspicious packages and sweeps of consulates and airports and abortion clinics. Things like that."

"You make it sound, I don't know, routine."

"Most of it is. But we also got odd jobs, like a couple weeks ago-some kid buys a sixty-millimeter mortar shell from an army-navy store in Brooklyn and takes it home. He and his brother're in the backyard playing catch with it. Supposed to be a dummy-all the powder drained out. Only the kid's father was in Nam and he thinks it looks funny. Takes it to the local precinct station. Turns out it was live."

"Ouch."

"We got it taken care of… Then we get a lot of false alarms, just like the Fire Department. But every once in a while, bingo. There's a suitcase at the airport or a bundle of dynamite or a pipe bomb and we've got to do something with it."

"So somebody crawls up and cuts the wires?"

Healy said, "What's the first goal?"

Rune grinned. "Don't get anybody's ass blown up."

"Mine included. First we evacuate the area and set up a frozen zone."

"Frozen?"

"We call it a frozen zone. Maybe a thousand yards wide. Then we'll put a command post behind armor or sandbags somewhere within that area. We have these remote-control robots with video cameras and X rays and stethoscopes and we send one up to take a look at the thing."

"To listen for the ticking?"

"Yep. Exactly." He nodded at her. "You'd think every-body'd be using battery-powered digital timer-detonators-Hollywood again. But ninety percent of the bombs we deal with are really crude, homemade. Pipe bombs, black or smokeless powder, dynamite, match heads in conduit. And most of these use good old-fashioned dime-store alarm clocks. You need two pieces of metal coming together to complete the circuit and set off the detonating cap. What's better for that than a windup alarm clock with a bell and clapper on top? So, we look and listen. Then if it really is an IED and we can disarm without any risk we do a render-safe. If it's a tricky circuit or we think it'll go off we get it into the containment vehicle." He nodded toward the field near the shack. "And bring it here and blow it up ourselves."

They walked outside. Two young men stood a hundred yards away from them in one of the three deep pits dug into the field. They wound what looked like plastic clothesline around a square, olive-drab box.