The Zero Hour

by Joseph Finder

  Pappas smiled to himself.

  Fire department volunteers stood both inside and outside the front entrance, rushing the panicked workers through the revolving front door three at a time and into the bus corridor. Once safely in the courtyard across the street, each person was looked over by a small team of observers from MINOTAUR, led by Vigiani and Sarah.

  The process did not go smoothly at all. The lobby swarmed with people, many banging against the plate-glass windows in terror.

  “I’m going to die in here!” one woman kept shouting.

  “Let us out!” a man yelled.

  The building’s windows, like those of many office buildings in the city, could not be opened, but on the street people could hear thudding. In one office on the sixth floor a metal desk chair was hurled through the plate-glass window, scattering shards of glass over the sidewalk. A voice screamed out in terrible agony, “I can’t stand it!” and then a woman in her early twenties jumped from the jagged hole.

  The impact of the pavement hurt the woman badly, broke several bones, but she survived the fall, which the police and fire department crews feared would encourage others to do the same.

  The commander of the Bomb Squad, though chafing at being supplanted by NEST, picked up a bullhorn and announced: “Stay in your offices! There is no reason to panic! There is time!” But he didn’t believe what he himself was saying. Poor bastards, he thought.

  * * *

  For the most part, Sarah and Vigiani were able to scan the emerging workers at great speed. Baumann was a master of disguise, but from a distance of a foot or two, he would not pass by undetected.

  A few men were detained—bearded men, including one with long hair who worked in computers in a law firm on the second floor—but after a few seconds of additional inspection they were cleared.

  “I’m going to sue your fucking ass,” the long-haired man said.

  “Good luck,” Sarah said tightly.

  There was another crash, as a desk was hurled out of a twelfth-floor window. Fragments of glass hit several onlookers, drawing blood, though no one was seriously hurt.

  “Anyone attempting to leave except through the front entrance will be detained,” a metallic voice thundered.

  “Who the fuck cares?” a middle-aged man shouted from the lobby. “We’re all going to die!”

  Sarah turned to Vigiani. “All right, now you take over. I’m going in.”

  “You’re … what?” gasped Vigiani.

  “Going in the building,” Sarah said, striding off.

  “You’re out of your mind!” Vigiani shouted after her.

  “Yeah,” Sarah said softly to herself, “but I’m the boss.”

  CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

  At the same time as the police and firemen were herding office workers out of the building, NEST had already begun to move equipment up a loading ramp and into the rear service entrance of the building.

  They were escorted by a tight blue knot of uniformed patrolmen who made sure no one was able to escape the building as they entered. Several persons attempted to force their way past the NEST men but were grabbed by the policemen.

  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.

  But there is a difference between fear—which, reined in and redirected, can fuel intense concentration—and anxiety. Anxiety, in the form of uncontrollable apprehension and distress, is the most dangerous th
ing a member of a bomb squad can face, far more perilous than any bomb. A bomb is logical (whether or not we understand its logic), and a person with anxiety is not.

  Dr. Payne and Lieutenant Colonel Suarez and the twenty-eight other NEST members who lined the stairwell were professionals and were experienced in rendering bombs safe. Still, each one was deeply frightened. There was far too much about this bomb that was unknown.

  Simply put, they did not know whether the bomb was set to detonate if anyone came near it. The fusing mechanism had been intensively examined in a Department of Energy laboratory to determine how much energy it would take to set off the detector, whether there was a sensitivity switch or a variable resistor. Dr. Payne had himself plotted the RF (radio frequency) emanation relative to the position of gain control. He knew how much motion would set the thing off. He knew that it was designed not to respond to motion beyond twenty-five feet.

  But he didn’t know whether the sensor had been dialed up, extending the safe line to forty or fifty feet or more. And it was possible the sensor wasn’t even on.

  He had no idea.

  This much he knew for sure: his men had not set off the bomb. Wherever the safe line was, they hadn’t stepped over it.

  But it might be located at the doorjamb, and they would have to assume that it was.

  If there was indeed a proximity detector in force, Payne thought, most likely it affected the area on the other side of the door. Microwaves, for all practical purposes, do not go through steel.

  But to be safe, they could not risk encroaching even an inch beyond where the closest man—Dr. Payne—was standing. All of their tests had to be conducted from their present positions, and no closer.

  The first order of business for the team was to rule out the presence of a nuclear weapon. To do that, they had to test for radioactivity. Not knowing what was in the nuke, or even if it was a nuke at all, they had no way of knowing whether to test for alpha or beta particles, or gamma waves, or for neutron emission. Each is detected by means of a separate procedure. They could test either for whatever radioactive substance was in the bomb or for the “degradation material,” the substance the bomb material would degrade into.

  Dr. Payne knew they were not close enough to test for alpha or beta emissions. That left neutrons and gamma. If their detectors “smelled” a large quantity of gamma waves and a small quantity of neutrons, they were probably dealing with uranium; if they “smelled” the opposite, it was probably plutonium.

  Their tests told them that the bomb inside the steel door was not nuclear.

  That was a relief, though it lasted only a few seconds.

  * * *

  In a darkened room on the building’s fifth floor, Baumann was working with a soldering iron and a pair of wire cutters. Jared, his arms and legs bound, wriggled on the floor a few feet away, thumping his duct-taped feet against the floor in an ineffectual attempt to summon someone, anyone. But the floor was tile over concrete, and the thumping made barely a sound, and in any case, the top floors of the building were by now evacuated. There was no one on the floor to hear him.

  Baumann continued to work, his concentration undisturbed.

  CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

  The next order of business for the NEST men was to determine whether the microwave detector had indeed been turned on. If not, they could force open the steel door and safely approach the bomb to render it safe.

  If it was …

  Well, the first thing was to determine whether it was on or not. To do that, they used a device known as a microwave sniffer, which looks for emanations in the microwave wavelength, above ten gigahertz. A version of this same device is used to test kitchen microwave ovens for leaks.

  A junior member of the team, an Army sergeant named Grant who was trained in explosives detection, took the microwave sniffer’s long, flexible antenna and pointed it at the steel door as Payne directed him to do.

  “Dr. Payne,” he said, “we’re just not going to get anything. This door here is steel, and microwaves are pretty much blocked by steel, sir. It’s going to mask the microwave emanations.”

  “That’s right,” Payne said. “But keep at it, please.”

  Sergeant Grant had served in the Army long enough to know how to take orders with grace, so he continued, though with a trace of reluctance. The microwave sniffer was silent.

  “You want me to sort of snake this antenna under the door?”

  “No, Grant. That’s a huge risk. Bad idea.”

  “Sir,” Grant said, “Like I said, this here door—” But he was interrupted by a rapid, high-pitched beeping. The sniffer had gone into alarm mode.

  The antenna, which Grant had pointed at the crack between the bottom of the steel door and the concrete floor, was being bombarded by microwaves exceeding its preset threshold.

  “Oh, shit—” Grant cried out.

  The microwave detector was not just in force on the other side of the door. Microwaves were leaking under the door. If anyone moved even a few inches closer to the door, there was a risk the bomb would be set off.

  “Freeze!” Payne shouted. “Everybody freeze!”

  The beeping continued.

  “All right,” Dr. Payne said in a quiet, steady voice. “The thing hasn’t exploded. That tells us something. But any further motion might set it off.”

  “Jesus!” Grant whined. He was frozen in an awkward position, partially bent toward the floor, his extended right hand gripping the microwave sniffer’s antenna. It was pointed at the gap between floor and door, which was no bigger than a quarter of an inch. The antenna was approximately six inches from the floor. He shifted slightly.

  “Don’t move a fucking muscle,” Payne hissed. “We’re picking up the microwaves that are coming through from under the door. The door is sealed tight against the doorframe everywhere except against the floor.”

  “I can’t stay this way,” Sergeant Grant moaned.

  “Goddammit,” Payne said, “don’t move a muscle or you might just kill us all.” He felt his body flood with panic.

  Grant’s eyes widened. Except for the rapid beeping, the entire stairwell was silent. Thirty men were standing almost completely still. From a distance there were faint shouts, distant sirens; but here the only sound was the papery whisk of their windbreakers as the men shifted stance ever so slightly, and the mechanical beeping.

  “Now, listen,” Payne said. “Everyone, look down at your feet.”

  Obediently, everyone on the team did.

  “Memorize that position. Keep your feet in exactly that position. Even a reflection of a body might be picked up through that gap. I don’t know why we haven’t set it off yet—maybe the sensor just switched on. But if you move your feet, you may cause it to detonate.”

  “Oh, please, God,” someone said.

  “If you have to move, move parallel to the door. You’re less likely to set it off that way. But if I were you, I wouldn’t move a fucking muscle.”

  “I—can’t—” Grant gasped. A tiny, liquid noise came from near the sergeant’s feet, which Payne quickly realized was a trickle of urine. A long stain darkened his left pant leg. Payne, though as frightened as any man here, felt acutely embarrassed for Grant. No doubt Grant knew that this would be his last assignment with NEST.

  Yet Payne could not help thinking, morbidly, that this might be his own last assignment as well.

  One of the men—the one who had just said, “Oh, please, God”—was, in shrink jargon, decompensating. He was a scientist from DOE headquarters, a young man, in his early thirties, and he had begun to babble.

  Payne ignored him, praying only that the young man wouldn’t move. If he did, at least he was one of the farthest from the door. Although he had broken out in a cold sweat, he knew he could not afford to divert his attention to this man, or to Sergeant Grant, who, despite his accident, at least had the self-control to remain frozen in position. Important decisions had to be made.

  There is a concept you often he
ar among bomb-squad technicians: the bomb’s wa. A bomb’s wa is its overall state of being.

  In order not to disturb a bomb’s wa, you have to understand and appreciate its wa, and Payne had not yet done that. He only knew that opening the steel door would likely disturb the wa.

  Payne could feel his anal sphincter squeeze tight as his body grew increasingly tense. This was a phenomenon well known to bomb techs—“asshole-puckering,” they called it. The detector was beeping furiously, telling them that the wrong move would detonate the bomb. Yet you couldn’t see anything, couldn’t smell anything. What did the beep signify? How sensitive was the microwave field?

  “Grant,” he said gently, “can you listen to me?”

  “Sir,” Grant croaked.

  “Grant, I want you to move that antenna upward by a few inches. Do you understand me? Slowly and steadily. Upward.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grant said. With a trembling hand he inched the antenna up. As he did, it shook up and down.

  “Steady, Grant.”

  “Doing my best, sir.”

  The beeping stopped.

  Sergeant Grant had moved the antenna less than six inches up from the floor, and apparently it was now out of range of the microwave sensor. “That’s the safe line,” Payne whispered, more to himself than to the others. “The microwaves are not moving through the steel door.”

  He had received his Ph.D. in nuclear physics at CalTech and was well versed in the strengths and weaknesses of the microwave sniffer. For instance, they now knew how strong the emissions were—that was on the receiver’s readout—but without opening the door to the basement they could not know how far they were from the bomb. That meant they couldn’t map the microwave field, couldn’t learn how close they could safely get to the bomb before it would detonate.

  Was there a dead zone? They couldn’t even tell that. Typically, a microwave sensor employs a Doppler shift, which means that the signal creates a constant pattern of microwave energy. The sensor looks for any change in the reflected pattern of that energy. A change occurs when an object within the sensor’s field moves. If you are standing absolutely still in the field, nothing will happen.