Snip

All poor choices, or not?

Snip

Benjamin Trayne

The massive explosive device was obviously well-crafted. Only one other thing was known. Once a wire was cut it would be over in a microsecond, right or wrong.

The young technician stared intensely at a carefully-assembled unit, anchored about a meter above his head. This particular device was different, in some way. Its maker was either new to bomb-building or he was extremely devious. The wiring and construction looked dirt-simple, not quite like anything he'd ever seen. Perhaps it was put together this way to make it seem as though its maker was inexperienced, or, perhaps, the uncomplicated appearance of the device was genuine. Determining which was true would also determine his future…that is, whether or not he had one.

Technician Mike, suspended about six stories above the street, knelt on a piece of weathered gray plywood without safety railing on a quickly-assembled painters' scaffold. It had been raised beneath the highway bridge by block and tackle from either side, before he'd clambered over the bridge railing and down onto it. His gloved hands lightly gripped a plier with cutting anvils and a small flashlight.

It was the thing's location that was most worrisome, because it wouldn’t have been put where this was, by a mere amateur. Its size and placement, to take out the main supporting structure, would destroy or at least render impassable a high bridge in a major artery to this city, all four lanes of it, obviously a major act of terrorism. Total destruction was the more likely of the two.

So why did the bomb look as if it an amateur had made it?

Of course, all of this had to happen while his mentor and teacher was away on holiday. Maybe that was by design as well. The question was still the same one. Was the builder an inexperienced newbie or a accomplished expert?

Turning his attention away from the device for a moment, he motioned to his assistant, who had accompanied him onto the high scaffold as helper, tool-carrier and trainee. “Wanna take a look at this thing before you leave?”

Most devices of this sort were similar in certain respects. Something has to serve as a detonator, there are usually batteries to serve as a power supply to the detonator, there's a triggering device such as a cell phone or a timer, and of course the explosive itself. But there are also many forms of tampering countermeasures that amount to booby-traps. Mike wasn’t seeing any evidence there were any of those at all, and that seemed unlikely. On the other hand, maybe the bomber hadn't expected the device would be found. In that event, a simple device would be enough.

‘Enough.’ Shit.

The trainee craned his neck and peered into the shadowy space between the heavy steel trusses of the bridge. “Aren't you gonna get a better light on it? Damn, that's a lotta dynamite!”

“'Course I will," Mike snorted. "Tell me what you see right now. Where's the timer?”

“Don't see one.”

“Right. So what's he using for a trigger?”

“No idea.”

“I can see part of the open back of a cell phone there. On the right, close to the bottom. The bomber doesn't need to know how much time is left.”

“What, it could go at any moment?”

“That's why I don't have a choice. Have to disarm it.”

“Are y’sure you can?”

Mike hesitated, then answered, “There's always a bit of luck involved. Gonna try to scope it, and maybe see how its mounted, so it’s time for you to get on outa here.”

“Well, good luck, then. You're the man, you know that, Mike? Big Amos thinks he knows everything. But you're smarter. Anyone can see that.”

“Think again, bud. Amos has military training,” Mike defended. “It's what you know, not how 'smart' you are. Anyway, he's very smart. And in fact he does know everything.”

“Well he's not here, is he? You are…” Mike was waving him away. “Awright, okay, I'm goin'! Cut carefully!” The trainee began his crawl over the planks, toward the end of the scaffold.

Turning his attention back to the task at hand, Mike selected his tools, clipped them to his belt and then stood up between the trusses. From the street below it had looked as though the steel had been recently painted, but standing beside the beams he could see they were already pushing little beads of rust through the paint. He brushed some of it from the steel and it frittered onto the plywood. He'd have to be careful to get a good grip. He grasped a strut and pulled himself up, then wrapped his right arm around it. It was necessary to stand with on one foot on the flanged edge of a beam just to be able to reach the device. There was a whole lot of air between himself and the paved road below. How in the hell had the bomber gotten up here, anyway? The air was pretty still, and since it was chilly out, that was a good thing. A brisk wind wouldn't be of any help.

Holding a small video screen in the hand he had put through the truss, Mike slowly drew a scanner along the surface of the device with his free hand, back and forth. The bomb was sure-enough real. There was nothing about it, as far as he could see, to suggest there were any countermeasures at all. That suggested he could break the circuit to the detonator anywhere, with no fear. He allowed the scanner to dangle from his belt, stuffed the little monitor into the pocket of his coveralls and reached for his wire snips.

He stopped. It just didn't feel right.

“Trust your instincts,” Amos had said. “If you think something could be wrong with what you see, you're right to stop and look again. Always take a second look. Make it a harder look than the one before it. Then, do it again.”

Mike climbed back down onto the plywood, then reached inside his coveralls and extracted a thin pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He just needed a minute. Noting the position of the plywood on the planks, he sat down and dangled his legs over the edge. Then he lit up.

Six stories below and well away, a police captain watched with a pair of binoculars.

“What's he doin' now?” The question came from another cop.

“Draggin' on a cigarette.”

“Amos knows how to pick 'em, doesn't he? Another cool customer.”

“Yeah, he's too much like Amos. Too cool. Four lanes of traffic backed up for miles on alternate routes. We need to get it done, and he's smokin' a cigarette.”

“Well if he goes too quick and he screws it up, traffic will be snarled for a lot longer!”

“Damn right. Six months, at least, even though it's a short bridge. Wouldn't want his job.”

“Has Mike got a wife?”

“Yeah, he was married not too long ago. Really pretty girl. Think they already got one on the way.”

“Why d'you 'spose a guy with a job like his even gets married?”

“Hell, look at Amos! Two grown kids and a teenager, and he's done this crap all his life, even when he was in the Army. I asked him once how many bombs he'd disarmed. He told me he stopped counting after a hundred. Three of 'em he couldn't get, but he got out of the way before they blew.”

“Lucky man.”

“Good at what he does, man. What'll kill that guy is his chain-smoking.”

Smoking was one of the things Amos had passed along to his understudy, who was at that moment thinking about the fact. Amos had said that smokers were better drivers, and that seemed to be true. It helped with patience, and you were less likely to speed. Of course, the habit had gotten the better of Amos. He hardly ever stopped unless he was asleep. Mike wondered to himself if Amos ever slept through a night without getting up to smoke.

Only a minute had passed since Mike had lit this one, so his thoughts drifted off across the cityscape, and to his wife. Missy was the prettiest girl he'd ever seen, and he knew without reservation that the little girl who was on the way would be just as pretty. He'd wondered too about the wisdom of marrying when he supported himself in this way. But Missy just wasn't someone you walked away from. Simple as that. Mike hadn’t known it was possible to love anyone, quite that much. And Ralston, their setter pup. What a doll!

“Mike, we've got to have that puppy,” she'd said, breathlessly. “Have to! Ohh, look at him...”

“Missy, we're pregnant! I'm at work all day, how're we gonna...”

“I'm pregnant. It'll be perfect,” she soothed. “Perfect. They'll grow up together. Get him. That puppy is mine!”

Mike and Missy had both grown up in countryside, and soon Mike was more in love with the pup than even she had been. The dog would plainly belong to him, and the pup agreed. The priority was now to get out of the city and out of this line of work. But for now, they needed the insurance, and the paycheck.

Back to it. Mike flipped the burnt-out butt over the side and got up.

Amos, meanwhile, was more terrified than he'd ever thought possible. Less than three blocks away, Amos himself was coming as fast as he could move, on foot because of stopped traffic, but running hard, breathless, hurting and wheezing. The bomb had been discovered this morning, some homeless guy sleeping beneath the bridge had seen it, and he pointed it out to a beat cop. It came up on the scanner. One day, just one day before Amos would have removed it.

The bomb was Amos' very own handiwork, the only one he'd ever put together himself, his final ticket out. Call it in, crawl up, remove it and then set it off himself, and his wife would be set for the rest of her life. Quick, probably painless, and you die a hero. So much better than wasting away with lung cancer...at least, that's what he had told himself.

But the oncology physicians at the clinic where he'd spent his “holiday” had assured him his cancer could at least be placed in remission. An hour spent with his priest had convinced him, he'd better at least try. And for sure, his own sweet wife and their three children deserved better than a man who had committed suicide, whether anyone knew about it or not.

However unlikely, though, the bomb had been found, and now Mike was at risk, was sure to be killed if he tried to disarm it, and of course, he would. Every trick Amos had ever seen, every improvement he'd ever imagined, was part of that device...just because he could. Should any fragments of it ever be found, as they often were, it needed to be apparent that it wasn’t possible to disarm it. He had actually enjoyed making it, but Amos had never intended to be a murderer. It was a dumb idea, a stupid idea, oh dear God, please help!

Amos was old-school, and there were never any communications between technician and management during a job. Cell phones around a device that was often triggered with one, bad idea. And Amos hadn't been able to get a message through to command, to get Mike the hell out of there.

So he was doing the only thing he could, he was going there himself. His legs ached, his feet pounded the pavement, his heart threatened to burst and his vision began to darken around the edges. Amos only slowed slightly to avoid passing out. Up ahead, he could see the command post, set well back from the bridge, just in case. A block and a half, that was all that lay between him and saving Mike's life, and thereby, his ability to live with himself. Keep going! Go! Go! He turned it back up.

Six minutes earlier, Mike had pulled himself back up alongside the device and had begun to examine it more closely. His eyes slowly widened. There was something wrong here, after all. The wires themselves had been hand-made, and it was a hell of a job. Instead of one set of copper strands poking from the insulation, there were two, both separate insulated wires within a single jacket. And the one that was hidden was not part of that basic, simple circuit he'd observed at first. The more he looked, the more he marveled. This had a complex loop-back circuit that assured a hot lead to the detonator. It had a separate section that fed something not visible to him, somewhere behind the dynamite. Probably there was a mercury tip-switch back there. This thing couldn't even be moved.

Within another minute, Mike had realized that any wire at all he might have cut would have set off the device. Mike thought of Missy and the baby, and he shuddered. He wondered what Amos would do if he was here.

Well, if Amos had seen this, he might have abandoned it. No profit in getting killed, because the bomb was going to go off whether anyone was here with it or not.

But this was plain dynamite, not some exotic stuff. The simple act of severing power to the detonators should be enough, but that was why the ends of the bundle were heavily taped. There was no way to get to the detonators to sever the connections, without bumping a tip-switch. What if he cut all power? What if he...wait a minute. There had to be a benign state. Just to make it possible to move the device, to bring it here, there had to be one. A circuit that had been removed once the bomb was placed.

Mike climbed back down, scooped up a fistful of clip leads from the tool caddy and pulled himself back up into the girders. He began to carefully make connections, rather than to break them. Bypass, bypass, maintain continuity, one, two, three. Moving cautiously but quickly, Mike completed a facsimile of what he believed had been removed. But what of the tip switch? Look more closely. Pull a spade connector tab, take that out of the system. Done.

Retracing the circuits carefully, he was at last satisfied. With the makeshift wiring in place, it should now be safe to cut the hot lead from the power supply. Then he could move the whole device out of there as safely as if it was a common brick. But until he interrupted the hot lead, a signal from the cell phone could still trigger the bomb. So, cut it he would.

Mike reached for his wire cutters, once again. What a morning!

Amos blasted through the police line, and a uniformed officer leaped to stop him.

“Let him go, that's Amos!”

In six more steps, Amos would be in the never-land that would drop six stories if the bomb detonated. He plowed forward, just knowing there was no getting past the half-dozen end-arounds that were built into that device, added just because he could.

Just one more step. Surely if Mike cut any wire under any circumstances, they were both dead men.

“MIKE! MIKE! MIIIKE!!”

But Mike was still out of earshot, below twelve inches and four lanes of concrete, anticipating the satisfying feel of the wire cutters shearing through the solid copper wire. With his whole heart, he believed he had done everything exactly right. *Snip.*

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