I’d been gone for almost three years when my father died unexpectedly. I was with the Marine Corps, in Iraq; locked, loaded; desperately trying to seize the day; though in my heart of hearts I seem to remember I’d originally enlisted to go hunt for Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. I was granted emergency leave. I don’t know if any strings got pulled by NYPD brass, but I guess someone somewhere thought it would’ve been unseemly for so respected a senior police officer not to have his only remaining family member at his funeral, especially as that same someone on high also decreed that the memorial service would take place at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Over the years I’d come to realize that the death of any New York City police officer, in the line of duty, is always a big deal, the ripples spreading far and wide. The sea of NYPD officers, five rows deep in some places, marking the route the casket will take; every officer in best dress blue. Police officers on motorcycles, reds and blues flashing, leading the procession; the deep throb of their engines merging with the pipes and drums of the NYPD Emerald Society, ever resplendent, in dark-blue tunics and kilts, Kelly-green sashes and plumes.
The coffin, hidden beneath a carpet of flowers, saluted by mass ranks of white-gloved hands; the massed pipes keening “An Inspector’s Funeral” as the escorts remove it from the hearse. The casket hoisted onto the shoulders of six former colleagues and slow-marched into the church. The American flag; of green stripes, not red; tucked in tight around the coffin to ensure the deceased is correctly identified as a fallen NYPD officer all the way to the gates of St. Peter.
Eulogies from the pulpit by New York’s police commissioner and mayor; final prayers for the dead and departed’s safe passage into the afterlife offered by the officiating priest; the casket shepherded back into the street to the haunting sounds of “Taps.” Fidelis Ad Mortem. And I sit quietly through it all; the pomp, the circumstance, the ceremony; my eyes never for one moment leaving the flag-draped coffin. For I, too, am “Faithful Unto Death.”
Are the concentric circles of remembrance, the differing layers of enclosure, the only real key to the substance of one’s life, one’s death? The one true indicator of goals achieved; battles fought; honors and prizes won? One’s importance recognized, recorded, and marked by the exact number and order of veils required to sanctify what was once the all-too-human core? As when a deep moat, heavy portcullis, guarded gate, narrow passage, and stout doorway are all barriers to be negotiated before you gain entry into that sacred inner sanctum in which resides the beloved or despised king, queen, president, dictator… or father. Are the secret, hidden pathways to our hearts and minds really so very different?
Today’s package has already been recorded in multiple NYPD logbooks as a VBIED; a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. The tricked-out black Chevy Suburban; the same model sport-utility vehicle used by most state and federal agencies; displaying “official” registration plates an exact match of those on a Suburban used by the governor’s security detail up in Albany. CCTV has captured what looks to be a Caucasian male, in suit, tie, sunglasses, exiting the suspect vehicle; hair neat, no beard; same blank face adopted by security agents the world over. But that little conundrum is as nothing to the problems the Chevy presents us with since a very diligent traffic patrol officer first tagged it.
We began, as always, from a suitably safe distance, using the Remotec F6A. First order of business for our little caterpillar-tracked robot: to use its steel claw to shatter one of the SUV’s black-tinted side windows so we can get a camera inside. Video shows third-row rear seats removed and, in the expanded cargo area, four large metal drums, three propane tanks, a gun locker filled with bags of fertilizer, and half a dozen large plastic tubs duct-taped together. It’s all very neat and tidy, very expertly done, and very scary. What’s equally disturbing is that the rest of the interior is a goddamn mess of fried-chicken boxes, paper wrappers, plastic utensils, and coffee cups and lids. There’s also a briefcase, several sealed file folders, a backpack, a thermos, and a short length of metal pipe capped at both ends. Any and all of which could conceal a bomb. Best case, it could all turn out to be harmless. Worst case, everything from the handle on the briefcase to the plastic knives and forks could have been molded from Semtex or C4. We plan for the worst. Multiple booby traps.
It’s as if the truck has been driven by two different people, polar opposites, one of whom must’ve Googled the long and varied history of bomb making, read The Anarchist Cookbook, or watched how-to videos on YouTube. And if anything was meant to tell us we were being taunted and played with, it was that. I think I took most exception to the cup with the I LOVE NY on it; big red heart of the Big Apple, smack in the middle; a cruel mockery of the bomber’s intent.
Six years active duty with the Marines; first tour, in Iraq, with 2nd Battalion, 25th Marines; a transfer to Combat Logistics, my EOD training at Camp Lejeune, before being assigned to 2nd MLG, 2nd Explosive Ordnance Disposal Company. Two more tours; made sergeant; a couple of medals; a return stateside; an honorable discharge; two years Reserve, no recall. There was little surprise, me wanting to join the NYPD, more than a little at me wanting to stay in EOD, as a technical officer with the Bomb Squad. Family history prevailed, though, and I was accepted and soon set about relearning the craft, as civilian bomb disposal procedures are way different from those in the military.
Homeland presents a unique terrain. Safety of the public is paramount. On home ground it’s a given everything is automated, shielded, and at a distance. There are no snipers; no one in the crowd waiting to command-detonate a hidden bomb; at least not yet. So IEDs are only dealt with by hand as a very last resort. That’s why every three years every bomb tech in the land undergoes rigorous retraining at a special FBI bomb school, in Atlanta; followed by time at the Hazardous Devices School in Huntsville, Alabama. That way every bomb tech is kept up to speed on terrorist bomb-making techniques and bombings from around the world. The one “known” that keeps us all so utterly focused: that it’s just a matter of time before some terrorist group or other is able to put together a sophisticated bomb big enough to take out an entire metro. And maybe so, but I’ll be damned if it’s going to be New York City. One thing’s for sure; it ain’t happening on my watch.
After a deal of deliberation it was decided our first task was to take out all the garbage. Clear the playing field; see what was left; and only then attack the mysterious lead-lined box. An officially sanctioned reversal of standard ops that meant us first hitting all the possible secondary devices with the pan disrupter—a weapons-grade high-strength stainless steel cannon mounted atop the Remotec, so called because it can deal with most threats. We never fail to bless all the many techs who invented, then modified it, in all the many theaters of war, as the P-D fires specialized ammunition or a high-velocity jet of water powerful enough to punch out, disrupt, sometimes even completely dismantle an explosive device before it can trigger. It was definitely our best bet. And so “Robby the Robot” went to work again, with me very happy to be at the joystick end of the business.
Fools rushing in? No. At this stage, it’s all still well within the perimeters of “knowns.” Given the improvised bomb smorgasbord spread out before us, there could be any number of mechanical or electrical triggers, even chemical sensors. A simple pull-wire; a ticking Timex wristwatch; a mix of clock timers, digital timers, cell phones, or automobile remote-entry devices, as favored in Iraq and Afghanistan. So we immediately deploy a multiband radio frequency jammer, as much to negate the OnStar RemoteLink mobile app we know is an available option on the Suburban, as to block all signals from all surrounding cell towers and antennas. We don’t want anyone to be able to start the vehicle, control the door locks, or trigger a bomb remotely, be it from down the block or a thousand miles away.
As one of the very few unmarried NYPD bomb techs, I get a lot of ribbing from the other guys in the squad. It’s just them urging me to follow in their footsteps and let some woman make an honest cop of me. As, if I do
say myself, I do seem to attract more than my fair share of pretty women. Women far too good for me, I’m then told. I’m always surprised, though, when a woman knowingly dates a police officer; I know firefighters are supposedly top of the ladder; but, hey, who am I to complain if one of them decides to hook up with me? I tell them, statistically speaking, it’s far safer being a NYPD bomb tech than a regular NYPD patrol officer, as some of the people at large on New York streets can prove far deadlier than any bomb. Even so, when we’ve all met up at some function or private party, I’ve always been impressed by the wives of the other bomb techs; how they shut out any and all talk of danger; how they know it, but don’t think it; which I think is its own very special kind of bravery. My mom always said that about the spouses of all serving NYPD officers. As a Marine, I came to think the same about all the husbands, wives, children; the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters of all those who serve in the military. They also serve who only stand and wait. There are times I think waiting for a loved one to come home, safe and sound, is the toughest duty of all.
We do it by the numbers. Send in the Remotec; gain entry to the target vehicle; and, one by one, disarm all objects flagged as secondary devices. Locate, identify; aim. “Fire-in-the-hold!” Retreat a ways, reassess; reengage. Until every potential IED has been rendered safe, save for the lead-lined box wired to God-knows-what. We have no idea how many layers there still are to “the package” or how multiple or varied are its hidden depths. We’ve assessed the explosive profile as best we can; taken every kind of precaution; expended all known “knowns.” It’s the remaining “unknowns” that continue to gnaw at the soul.
My father died in an automobile accident, responding to a call for extra backup from a rookie cop going to the aid of his partner. It was happenstance my dad was in that neighborhood, on his way uptown to some official function. So he radioed in, set the mag-mount flashing atop the car’s roof, and did what he’d always done, went off in pursuit of bad guys. It was later determined that a man and his two little boys had just exited a crosswalk when the younger boy dashed back into the roadway to retrieve a toy he’d dropped. The older boy turned to pull his little brother to safety, the father turned to gather them both back up, and suddenly there they were the three of them, dead ahead. I wonder whether my dad saw them or us—himself, Teddy, and me—as we’d once been; the three of us; him, his little hero, and me, the hothead. Only, his one-and-only Teddy was gone forever and I wonder if it broke his heart anew. Whatever it was he saw or felt, he hit the brakes too hard, swerved too violently, the car skidded, a piece of metal in the road blew out a front tire, the Crown Vic bounced against a parked car, rolled, and slid first on its side, then on its roof, for some hundred yards or more before a delivery truck slammed into it. The Vic spun round and smashed into a light pole. The impact broke my father’s neck. He was dead before the paramedics got to him. He was posthumously cleared of any and all charges of reckless driving or of endangerment; the accident officially recorded in the books as being the result of him having suffered a massive heart attack. And so it goes.
All that’s left now is for a hooded man inside a bulky green bomb suit weighing ninety pounds, fingers bare beneath cuffs of Kevlar armor, fingerless spandex and leather gloves already edged with sweat, to start walking downrange from “the package,” and all without the company of a friendly robot on an electronic leash. “Where are you, R2-D2, when I need you?” I whisper, as the words of a stern-faced FBI instructor come to mind: “Start remote. Stay remote. Be remote.”
If only. Only, not today; today’s little problem calls for the personal touch; a closer, hands-on inspection, in the vague hope of producing more “knowns.” A process that will have me kneeling down and saying numerous Hail Marys while I attempt to locate, then cut, the correct wire or wires, sever the right circuit or circuits, and oh so carefully remove the blasting cap or caps, and defuse the bomb or bombs that still remain “unknowns.”
Thoughts of one’s own mortality not unnaturally turning to what makes life so sweet; what about all those pretty women who at different times have chosen to walk into this NYPD bomb tech’s life? Haven’t they filled me with joy; given life purpose? Well, yes, but maybe not in the way you might think. And, sadly, there’s no getting around the truth of it, because after only a couple of months or so of us getting to know one another, it’s always me that seems to come up short in any relationship.
It’s not that any of my girlfriends has ever come right out and told me I can’t or won’t make a proper commitment, but in one way or another they all tell me there comes a moment, as if out of the clear blue sky, when I look horribly, terribly afraid. Me, the man of action trained to take bombs apart with his bare hands. They all seem to stumble for the right words, but in one way or another they tell me the look on my face literally terrifies them and then starts to haunt them. Even the memory of it fills them with dread. And in the end it’s the growing chill inside that kills it dead. Cold always kills. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s fear, and so all the pretty women become ever more frightened. And when people get frightened, and don’t know why, they get angrier and angrier and they lash out. Things fall apart. The heart cannot hold.
It confused the hell out of me the first few times it happened, but deep down I suppose I always knew there was no real mystery to it. It’s the look my brother’s wife, Jackie, had on her face, the day she saw the TV images of the terrorists flying those commercial airliners into each of the Twin Towers, over and over and over again, and the buildings bursting into flames and slowly collapsing, over and over and over again, and her Teddy gone forever, having simply gone off to work that morning. The horror deep-etched into her face from looking over the edge, into the abyss, seeing the tortured mass of steel, concrete, and glass still burning white hot; still spewing dust clouds that plastered tears to cheeks and threatened to choke the life out of every living New Yorker. The look of horror thousands upon thousands of people woke up to every single day for weeks and months and years afterward. Yet, over time, even the deepest pain fades to distant memory; both a curse and a blessing; and people forget and they move on. There are those, though, that can’t ever let go; they just learn to mask it. And with me, it seems, there are times when the mask slips and the full horror of that September day is relived anew. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.
I take in the truck’s interior. The backpack, briefcase, cardboard files, the bits of plastic rubbish; only ever intended to confuse and cause a bomb tech’s heart to flutter; have all been blown to pieces by the P-D, but not all; the pipe bomb remains intact and I see for the first time it’s spot-welded to one of the wheel arches. The landscape of threat has been radically altered but is no less deadly. I look at what remains of the primary device and see that the lead-lined box has been split open at one end; enough to reveal the rat’s nest of wires inside. I close down that part of my imagination that fears for my own mortality; look without focusing to see if anything else presents itself as unusual; and try to see inside the mind of the bomb maker. My only task, at that precise moment in time, to identify something, anything, that might clue me into some “known.” The different bomb-making techniques used in Northern Ireland, Iraq, Afghanistan; in Israel, Spain, Russia; and almost every other country around the globe; are all known. Bombs that have exploded and brought bloody terror to London, Madrid, Belfast, Baghdad, Tel Aviv, Moscow, Mumbai, and Kabul have all left unique signatures and every scrap of knowledge has been gathered and recorded; all of them now “knowns.” I wonder which of those “knowns” now await me here.
Some years later I bumped into Jackie, on Fifth Avenue, outside a grand hotel, steps from St. Patrick’s. She was with her new perfect husband and their two perfect little boys; the perfect husband, to my eye, no match for Teddy, but by the look of him, a definite contender. Even I couldn’t damn her for that; everyone does what he or she needs to do to survive. She saw me see her trying to avoid seeing me. Then she looked at me,
deliberately, and stared for what seemed an eternity. She ushered her new perfect family further up Fifth, in the direction of the park, and turned and walked toward me. Still impossibly beautiful; tall, slim, willowy; camel coat, shoes, handbag; so chic, so elegant; her expensive silk scarf a perfect complement to her shoulder-length blond hair; as flawless as ever I’d seen her; the uptown girl of every man’s fantasy.
She looked me up and down; took in my shoes, clothes, and wristwatch. She shook her head, the curtains of her hair moving in perfect time, and told me in no uncertain terms it was a heinous crime for me to spend my whole life trying to be like my brother. I shot back; said I was very much my own man, thank you; and that I’d fought long and hard, every single fucking day, for years, in the Marines, in pursuit of the very people who’d carried out the attacks on 9/11. For some reason I even felt the need to tell her I’d joined the NYPD Bomb Squad, the moment I got back from Iraq, to continue with the fight. The bitch didn’t even miss a beat. “You still won’t be better than Teddy, you facing death, on purpose, Bobby, every single time you go try to dismantle some stupid asshole bomb,” she said. “Teddy’s gone forever, Bobby. He’s never coming back. Get over it. Go get a life, why don’t you, before it’s too damn late?”
She fucking blew me away. And as I watched her walk out of my life, again, I just stood there blinking, like a stunned survivor of a bomb blast, my mouth opening and closing, gasping for air, still not believing what’d just happened.
It’s true. I worshipped Teddy. I hated him. I envied him. I loved him.
I needed him. I wanted to be like him. And, like him, I’ll never know when it happens, not even as it happens, the blast will move much too fast for me even to register, let alone respond to. And it will happen, one day; I know it will; it’s simply a question of when.
Mystery Writers of America Presents the Mystery Box Page 19