TICK TOCK (EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) Book 1)

by Jane Harvey-Berrick

  I shook my head.

  “No, not possible. It’s too soon. They’re not ready.”

  He looked away.

  “Ten days. It’s all you’ve got.”

  “If you send them in now, posing as bomb-makers, they won’t last a day—it’ll be a suicide mission, and you know it!”

  He stood and glared at me.

  “You think I don’t know that? We have no choice. Whatever they’re planning, it’s big. We haven’t intercepted anyone travelling through the U.S. so we suspect, hell we’re fairly certain at this point, but we think they’ve got a bomb-making factory on U.S. soil.”

  “Bloody hell!”

  “Exactly. You know what that means. So getting the assets in as quickly as possible is our only chance of finding out when, where, who and how.” He ground his teeth. “I can risk two assets—I can’t risk letting this terror cell slip away again.”

  He turned and left, calling over his shoulder.

  “Ten days, James.”

  The assets had names—and I had ten days to prepare them to enter Hell.

  THAT EVENING, WE were sitting around the campfire, making it smoke as much as possible by piling on green leaves. It helped to keep the bugs and mosquitoes away, even though it meant that we all smelled like barbeque flavour. I’d sprayed myself with insect repellent as usual, but the little sods kept finding a patch of skin to munch on.

  Smith was staring into the fire, his expression fixed, a frown on his face. Then he looked up at me and I knew it was time.

  “Team meeting,” he said. “Clay, go get Amira—she needs to hear this, too.”

  “Yes, boss.”

  As soon as Clay and Amira were seated by the bonfire, Smith stood up.

  “The deadline has changed,” he began. “We have intel that leads us to believe that the terror cell is planning something big, and soon. We need to get you in there as quickly as possible.” He paused, looking at both of them in turn, but neither spoke. “I’m aware that your bomb-making training is sketchy at best, but it just means we’ll have to spin your cover story slightly differently. It might even work to our advantage that you’re only partly trained since no one expects military precision from most ISIS bomb-makers.”

  “How much time do we have?” asked Clay, his face solemn.

  “Ten days.”

  Smith turned to me, nodded, and I began speaking.

  “I’m going to abbreviate the programme, so there’s a lot you won’t get to see, but I’ll teach you what I can with the emphasis on keeping you safe—and make sure that it sinks in. Tomorrow, at daybreak, I’m going to show you how to search for IEDs: what to look for, what kind of devices you might come across—and how to deal with them.”

  I was staring into the darkness, but my mind was thousands of miles away, remembering.

  “What I’ve taught you so far is small fry stuff: a few pipe bombs, basic timers. You’ll be useful but not indispensable to the terrorists. I can’t teach you expertise in ten days. But you can still make a difference. We’ll use the time to cover as much ground as possible.”

  I looked up. Clay was watching me silently and Amira’s dark eyes glittered in the firelight. I had no idea what she was thinking, no clue what she was feeling.

  “Smith’s team believe that the cell are connected to a bomb-making factory on U.S. soil. We’re talking large scale here, not just a few pipe bombs. We could be talking about a new 9/11. So I’m going to tell you what a bomb-making factory looks like, so at least you’ll know it when you see it, and the kinds of jobs you might be asked to do.”

  I reached into my rucksack and showed them a smooth metal tube with wires coming out, no thicker than a pencil and half as long.

  “This is a typical detonator. These are sensitive and where most accidents happen. Don’t hold it in your hand for long, because body heat can be enough to make it function—you’d lose your hand.”

  I let them hold the inert detonator, feeling its weight, studying the wires that hung from it.

  “Next: if they’ve got C4 from Iran, it often comes wrapped in green plastic, but inside it’s white like putty and sticky to the touch. Most terrorists prefer military explosives, but if they want to make a large bomb, they’ll make their own. They’ll have a room that looks like a workshop, tools and equipment on the tables and with someone connecting wires to saw blades—these are used for switches. As each switch is finished, it will be attached to a battery and a lightbulb.”

  I took a length of wire with a bulb attached, a battery pack wrapped in rubber made from bicycle tyres and ran the wire along a patch of soil a short distance from the fire.

  “Once the wire is laid out, they’ll connect one wire to a lead from the battery and then touch the other wires together.”

  The bulb gave a bright flash and Clay jumped.

  “That’s how you blow up a convoy. The exact moment of explosion is less important with several vehicles to aim for, because if you miss the first vehicle, you’ll hit the second: either way, if there is a big explosive charge, the road will be damaged and you’ll be able to immobilize the convoy for your attack with small arms fire.

  “If you’re targeting a single vehicle, a professional terrorist group would tell you to practice ‘trigger time’ where you get used to the delay between touching the wires together and the bulb coming on.”

  Amira was looking between me and Smith.

  “I … I won’t be able to remember all this! I can’t, I…”

  “No one is expecting you to—I’m just trying to make you aware of the possibilities. If the cell is as organized as Smith’s bosses think, they’ll only use people with electronic skills to build the circuitry. In all likelihood, you’ll be doing the mundane leg work like making HME … homemade explosives—shovelling fertilizer into modified coffee grinders.”

  Amira’s hands were shaking, but there was no time to stop. I had so much to tell her, so many things that she needed to know to keep her as safe as possible—every second was precious.

  I ran my hands over my head as I felt her frustration.

  “If you see a uniform grey-coloured powder … that will be the aluminium. They mix it with fertilizer. It looks like this.”

  Smith had done his job when I’d asked for my supplies, and I showed them a packet of the powder.

  “Most HMEs will be packed into pressure cookers or homemade metal cases made from gas pipes, cut into sections and welded closed. Some are put into large plastic drinks containers. You’ll see the det-cord hanging out from pre-drilled holes.”

  I carried on.

  “Things to notice: anyone working with peroxide, it often bleaches the skin white. It’s more obvious on darker skinned individuals, and obviously any transit through airports would risk being swabbed and lighting up the explosive trace machines. That’s one of the reasons why Smith thinks the devices are being made on the U.S. mainland.

  “Now I need to tell you about booby trap devices, pressure plates being hugely common, and of course devices attached to a suicide bomber where…”

  Amira fainted.

  Grumbling softly to himself, Clay picked her up and carried her to her room.

  I stared at Smith, my gaze hard and accusing.

  “If you send her into that terror cell in ten days, you’ll be sending her to die.”

  Amira

  CLAY HOVERED BY my bed, trying to make me sip some water. He was kind, but I didn’t want his company. The horror of James’s words hung in my head: suicide bomber. Because suddenly I knew—that’s what I’d been recruited for. Fewer people suspected women, fewer believed that we were capable of atrocities. But we were.

  And yet faced with that stark reality, it had been too much. I was disgusted by my weakness.

  The fact that I hadn’t eaten much all day was definitely a contributing factor to my embarrassing dive into the dirt, but more than that, it was those words.

  “Amira,” Clay said softly. “There’s still time to walk
away. You don’t have to do this.”

  He didn’t understand. How could he? I’d never told anyone why I had the compulsion to do this, why I had to continue.

  “I’m fine,” I mumbled.

  “You’re not fine,” he sighed. “At least eat something. You’ll make yourself sick by not eating. I’ve left you two vegetarian MRE packs—just about edible cold. Eat something.”

  I didn’t want to tell him that I still had the two that James had left for me.

  I heard the door close behind him but I stayed curled up on the bed. I was tired, so tired. If I could just stay here forever…

  When I dreamed that night, it was of my family. Zada and my parents were standing together, looking into the distance, the wind whipping their clothes. I called to them, but they didn’t hear me. I kept calling, but my voice was swallowed by the roar of the approaching storm. I screamed their names but they never turned to look at me, didn’t see me, couldn’t hear me. And all through this, Karam was nowhere to be seen.

  THE NEXT MORNING, I was determined to show them that I wasn’t weak, that I could do this.

  I ate two of the MRE packs that had been left for me and attended James’ lessons with a new drive and focus.

  I think I surprised everyone, not least myself.

  Today, we’d learn how to locate hidden devices.

  At dawn, James had been awake before us all, and set up a number of training devices so we could practise searching for them.

  “At a roadside, you’re looking for a mound of soil, something that’s been moved, unusual bumps in the road; sometimes slight indentations where the soil has sunk. Look for anything unusual, especially wires sticking out anywhere. And where you find one device, expect two. You find two devices, search for a third. A large device may have booby-trap switches to catch out someone interfering with them or trying to defuse it—and it could have more than one, sometimes two or three.”

  Then he showed us how to do a fingertip search of the area around the cabin, working from a starting point and making our way forwards. It was slow and tedious and sweat was pouring down my face, making it hard to see. I used my niqab to wipe my eyes because my hands were so filthy from filtering dirt.

  “Man, this is backbreaking,” sighed Clay.

  James didn’t crack a smile.

  “Yeah? Well, imagine you’re doing this with a limited amount of time because insurgents will be arriving any second to shoot your arse off. Remember, the longer you’re searching, the more vulnerable is the team watching your back.”

  We searched for the rest of the morning, our frustration growing.

  “I’m beginning to think you didn’t hide any devices out here,” Clay groused, his usual good temper wearing thin.

  Then his expression changed.

  “Wait! I think I just stepped on something.”

  James nodded and sighed.

  “Yep, pressure plate device. You’re dead, mate.”

  Clay gave a half smile as he removed his foot from something buried beneath him.

  “Does that earn me a ten-minute break and some iced tea?”

  “You can have five minutes and some water if you tell me what signs you missed.”

  Clay stared at the dirt under his feet, his forehead wrinkling.

  “The dirt is a different colour there,” I said suddenly. “It’s been disturbed recently.”

  James’s gaze swung to me as admiration shone in Clay’s eyes.

  “Good call. But is it safe for you to continue?”

  I crouched down, studying the dirt in front of me, eyeing the bushes at either side warily. Minutes passed and my thighs began to cramp. Was there anything? Was I seeing things were there were nothing?

  In the end, I huffed out a breath and rubbed my aching muscles. As I started to stand up, I bumped my head on something hard. Expecting to see a tree branch, I was surprised when James shook his head.

  “You’re dead, too. Look up.”

  We all looked up at the tree branch above my head. There, hidden in the foliage, was another device. I’d walked right into it.

  “Don’t forget to look up, don’t forget to look down: always check out nearby drains and sewers. Look everywhere. Suspect everyone.”

  BETWEEN JAMES AND Smith, and occasional fleeting visits from Larson, Clay and I were worked around the clock.

  We were woken in the middle of the night, had our sleep disrupted, and every psychological trick in the book was used to break us. But the harder they tried, the more determined I became. I was starting to understand what James meant when he said he locked his emotions away to do his job. As a nurse, I’d certainly had to learn to function without being overly emotional, and at the end of a shift, it had taken a few hours to feel like myself again after an especially bad day; but this was at a new level of intensity and it didn’t end. There was no ‘off’ button anymore, no end to my shift. I wondered if I’d ever reconnect with my feelings again—they seemed so far away, so unimportant.

  The physical workouts intensified, too, and I was exhausted all the time. Larson, in particular, took great pleasure in noticing when I was close to falling asleep, and once he pushed his boot into my ribs to wake me up.

  “Get used to it,” he sneered. “It’s going to get worse.”

  I didn’t know if he meant here at the camp, or when I became an asset, when I was sent to the terror cell. Maybe both.

  But he was excellent at teaching me how to use weapons and the basics of loading, firing, cleaning, disassembling and reassembling a Smith & Wesson handgun and an AK-47.

  During those lessons, he was surprisingly patient, but hand-to-hand fighting brought out the beast in him.

  “Jesus, Larson,” snapped James. “You’ll break her bloody arm!”

  “She’s weak!” he snarled. “Being weak will get her killed.”

  “Well, she’ll be no use to anyone if you break her first!”

  I wasn’t a person anymore. I’d become a toy, a weapon. I was becoming an asset.

  I didn’t care.

  But I wasn’t weak. I’d show them how strong I could be.

  Karam, give me strength. Show me how to be strong.

  A breeze rustled through the leaves above me, and it felt like an answer at last.

  This time when Larson attacked me, I fought back with everything I had. He used his greater height and weight to pin me down, but I bit him on his cheek; even through the niqab, I left a mark.

  “Damn!” he said, rolling off me and rubbing his face.

  His eyes narrowed and I wondered if he’d hit me, but then his hand shot out and he hauled me to my feet.

  “Better,” he said. “Now do it again.”

  I glanced across to James and Clay, but they were engaged in their own battle, each using wrestling tricks to out-manoeuvre the other.

  Sweat glistened on their faces and on James’ arms, now streaked with dirt. Suddenly, he bent low and Clay seemed to fly over James’ back, thudding onto the forest floor, winded.

  “Sneaky, brother!” he gasped as James stared at him, then shrugged.

  Oh, I knew all about being sneaky. I’d learned that over the past year: hiding who I was from Zada, from my parents—I’d learned plenty of sneaky tricks before I’d ended up here.

  Larson’s fist in my chest threw me to the ground.

  “Concentrate!” he barked as I tried to catch my breath from his attack. “No distractions! Allow yourself to be distracted and you’ll be dead!”

  His eyes darkened with anger or maybe dislike, I couldn’t tell, but something inside changed in that moment. A deep well of hatred had grown inside me: Larson had just lit the fuse.

  As I prepared to fight again, I saw that James was watching me again, his face a mask of blankness.

  THAT EVENING, HE was sitting at our tiny kitchen table when I walked past him to my room.

  “You’re doing well,” he said, without looking up.

  I was surprised that he’d spoken to me; for the
last few days, we hadn’t had any conversations other than during training.

  “Does that mean I get a certificate?”

  He laughed, and it was such an unexpected sound after the seriousness of the day.

  “Yeah, I’ll make you a certificate with a gold star,” he smiled.

  “I must have a good teacher.”

  He grinned, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

  “I’d have to agree.”

  Curious, I stepped closer.

  “How long have you been doing this, working in bomb disposal?”

  “It took me seven years of training to be a high threat operator. Lots of studying,” he sighed, yawning as he stretched.

  “I’m sure your grandfather was very proud of you.”

  I didn’t know why I’d said that, but I felt it must be true.

  He hesitated before he answered.

  “I hope so. Yeah, I think so. But I wasn’t there when he needed me either. When you join the Army and you promise to serve your country, family commitments come second.”

  He was right, and the pain in my heart when I thought about my family grew daily.

  “Thank you for your service,” I said quietly.

  “I should be saying that to you.”

  I nodded and continued to my room.

  James

  CLAY HAD MAD skills at Ju Jitsu but I’d been a streetfighter since I was six. Being sent to an orphanage at an early age had toughened me up—you had to fight to survive. At six years old, I’d been a skinny little runt of a kid, so I’d had to learn to fight dirty. And right now that was serving me well. I was winning because Clay couldn’t break a rule if he drove over it with a tank.

  I’d put him on his back again and was laughing my arse off at his surprised expression. But then Amira walked past, muttering about taking a nap. The moment I took my eyes off Clay, he swept my legs out from underneath me.

  I was winded by a stabbing pain in my side.

  “You’re always telling me to focus,” laughed Clay, but then he saw I wasn’t getting up. “Damn, brother! Are you okay?”