The Zero Hour

The first to enter was the NEST commander, Dr. Richard Payne, a tall, lanky man in his forties with a head of prematurely gray hair. Dr. Payne, who had a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, was in his regular life a special projects manager in the Advanced Technology Division of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. In the U.S. government’s bureaucratic hierarchy he was a GS-15. He had wide experience in nuclear weapons and was considered brilliant by everyone who’d ever dealt with him.

Alongside him was his number two on this assignment, U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Freddie Suarez, from the 112th Explosives Ordnance Division Detachment in Fort Ritchie, Maryland. Behind them the other members of the team pushed carts bearing enormous and impressive-looking equipment.

In normal circumstances, theirs was a fiendishly difficult job. Like all bomb squads, they were trained to find the device and circumvent any booby traps that prevented them from gaining access to it. After that came diagnostics: examining the device, determining how it worked. Then the device was rendered safe. If need be, this was preceded by damage-mitigation efforts.

But unlike any other bomb squad, they often-though not always-dealt with nuclear devices, or at the very least with extremely sophisticated improvised explosive devices.

They’d had ample time in the last few days to examine the fusing mechanism that had been intercepted at the airport. Although there was no guarantee whatsoever that the bomber would use an identical fusing mechanism, or even anything close to it, they were prepared in case he did.

Yet these were far from ideal circumstances. The rule book said you did not attempt to defuse a bomb until the entire area had been secured and evacuated. In fact, the rules said you needed a thousand feet “under cover”-but everyone knew that was impossible in Manhattan, where you’d be lucky to back people up to the next corner.

As he pointed his team toward the stairs to the basement, Dr. Payne thought grimly, At least I’m paid to risk my life. All these other people went to work this morning fully expecting to go home to their families and their pets and their houses and apartments. Alive.

“All right,” Dr. Payne told his assembled team in the crowded stairwell outside the basement of the Network building. “The locals have already sicced their dogs on the lobby of the building and found nothing.”

He didn’t have to explain to his men that when it came to sophisticated explosives, bomb-sniffing dogs are all but useless. They are fine for TNT or dynamite or other run-of-the-mill explosives. Even for C-4, if they got close enough, which meant within inches.

The NYPD Bomb Squad’s dogs had sniffed nothing, but they had not gone into the building’s basement. The doors to the basement were locked. Likely that was where the bomb was. From a structural-engineering point of view, that was the most logical place.

In fact, although the NEST men didn’t yet know it, bomb-sniffing dogs would not have discovered anything even if they had found the banker boxes and peed on them, for the C-4 that Baumann had used in the bomb emitted no odor the dogs could detect.

It was a fair assumption, based on the intel they’d been given, that a C-4 bomb was beneath the lobby, but the team’s first order of business was to make absolutely certain. If they could.

The mechanical version of a bomb-sniffing dog is a vapor detector, of which there are several types. Richard Payne had chosen an ion-mobility vapor detector, the size and shape of a medium-sized suitcase.

But they were working in the dark: if the bomb was in the basement, they had no idea where it was located in the basement, and it could be anywhere. They gathered in the stairwell beside the white-painted steel door that led to the basement. They did not try to force the door, because they assumed it was booby-trapped.

The shut door made it difficult for the vapor detector to operate well at all. Built into the machine was a vacuum pump, which would suck in air at a fair clip. But the bomb could be hundreds of feet away. Suarez held the intake nozzle to the floor, at the slight gap between door and floor. The machine was switched on. Air was drawn into the vapor detector’s lungs, trapping a sample that could be diagnosed.

After a few minutes, Lieutenant Colonel Suarez gestured for it to be switched off. If there was C-4 behind the door, it was not registering. Maybe it was too far away.

He shrugged.

Dr. Payne shrugged in reply.

There still might be C-4 there. They would have to do other tests.

It is a serious misconception that members of bomb squads like the Nuclear Emergency Search Team don’t get frightened. In a situation in which a bomb might go off at any moment, causing maiming or death, it is only human to be scared.