"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 everybody'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.
Rune looked around. She said, "This looks just like the Underworld."
Healy frowned. He asked her, "Eliot Ness?"
"No, like Hades, I mean. You know, hell."
&nbs
p; "Oh, yeah--your analysis of the crime scene the other day." Healy looked back to the men in the pit. He said to Rune, "You have to understand something about explosives. In order to be effective, they have to be explosive only under certain conditions. If you make this stuff that blows up when you look at it cross-eyed, well, that's not going to be real useful now, is it? Hell, most explosives you can destroy by burning them. They don't blow up; they just burn. So to make it go bang, you need detonators. Those're powerful bits of explosive that set off the main charge. Remember the C-4 that they used in the second bombing? If you don't have the detonator surrounded by at least a half inch of C-4 you might not get a bang at all."
She heard enthusiasm in his voice. She thought how good it is when you've found the one thing in life that you're really good at and that you enjoy doing for a living.
"That's what we look for," Healy continued. "That's the weak point in bombs. Most detonators're triggered electrically. So, yeah, we cut the wires, and that's it. If somebody wants to get elaborate they could have a timed detonator and a rocker switch, so that even if you cut the timer, any movement will set off the bomb. Some have a shunt--a galvanometer hooked up to the circuit so that if you cut the wire the needle swings to zero because the current's been cut and that sets off the bomb. The most elaborate bomb I ever saw had a pressure switch. The whole thing was inside a sealed metal canister filled with pressurized air. We drilled a tiny hole to test for nitrate molecules--that's how bomb detectors at airports work. Sure enough, it was filled with explosives. There was a pressure switch inside. So if we'd open the canister the air would have escaped and set it off."
"God, what did you do?"
"We brought it up here and were just going to detonate it but the word came from downtown they wanted to check the components for fingerprints. So we put it in a hyperbaric chamber, equalized the pressure inside and outside, opened it up and rendered it safe. It had two pounds of Semtex in it. With steel shot all around. Like shrapnel. Purely antipersonnel. Mean, son-of-a-bitch bomb."
"You got the robot into the chamber?"
"Well, no. Actually I dismantled it."
"You?"
He shrugged and nodded to the pit, where the two men had finished their wrapping exercise and were retreating to a bunker of concrete and sandbags.
"They're practicing setting off military charges. That's an M118 demolition block. About two pounds of C-4. For blowing bridges and buildings, trees. They've wrapped it with detonating cord and'll set it off by remote control."
Over the loudspeaker came a voice: "Pit number one, fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!"
"What do they mean?" Rune asked.
"That's what they used to yell in coal mines when they lit the fuse on the dynamite. Demolition people use it now to mean there's about to be an explosion."
Suddenly a huge orange flash filled the sky. Smoke appeared. And an instant later a clap of thunder slapped their ears.