“Did you do it?”
“Course not. I called over the medic. Guy’s living in Indiana now, has a decent job. It hurt worse at the time than the damage turned out. Sometimes, though, it’s the other way around. They save more guys in the field today than ever before.”
“Modern medicine.”
“One way to look at it. Or maybe it’s so the politicians can see lower numbers on the KIA report.”
“Hell, that’s cynical, Diaz. Maybe we need you in the FBI. Any theories on how Horn might’ve gotten a hold of the C4? Not like they keep a few bricks in the dispensary of Landstuhl.”
“No. Any reports of a theft?”
“You kidding? There are so many moving parts in the army. They probably lose ten million bucks worth of crap every day and don’t know it.”
“You don’t have to tell me. I remember them giving cash out to the Sunnis. You had guys earning twenty-five grand a year carrying around trunks with half a mil. Someone wants to make a bomb and sees some bricks of C4 piled up in a warehouse...he probably can’t resist temptation either.”
“And Albert Horn couldn’t resist temptation?”
Diaz bristled. “I didn’t say that. My gut—I still don’t like him for this. I don’t know why. Maybe someone tricked him or something. Anyway, pretty hard for a serviceman to bring C4 home to the States from abroad. Vast majority come home on commercial airliners unless they’re in super bad shape.”
“Maybe he took special medical transport, given his condition.”
“Probably did, but there would be a ton of people around, and he wasn’t exactly mobile at the time, probably snowed on drugs, too.”
“I see what you’re saying. You know what would help us, Diaz? If you have any old army connections you could exploit.”
“I don’t understand. How’d you get your information?”
“Through channels, but that’s all I have. It’s not like interviewing men on the street—get my meaning? It’s as if I had to solve a murder in the corporate headquarters only by interviewing the people in the communications department.”
“You want me to do an end-run.”
“I wouldn’t call it that and it’s up to your superiors. But it strikes me that you might have a few friends who would be willing to go off the reservation in the interest of justice. If I’m out of line—”
“No.” Diaz’s mind started chugging. “I do know some guys. I’ll think it over.”
“All right. I’m still working my end, of course. Pass along the information to Kahn, will you? And lemme know if you turn over any rocks and find something underneath.”
AT TEN O’CLOCK THAT MORNING, Warren Manis returned from an early outing with a spring in his step. It had taken a long time to locate his third victim, a homeless veteran named Lewis Salinowsky. This wasn’t like Horn or Littel, where the stalker could work from knowledge of an office or a home address. It was more like catching a single fish in the vast ocean, and Manis felt damn proud for having gotten this far.
It helped that he had a flexible schedule due to his own disability. Though educated as a mechanical engineer, Manis had most recently worked as a union machinist until the belt of a grinding machine seized and mauled his left hand. He lost two and a half fingers in the accident—the ring finger and middle finger and half of the index finger. As a consequence he now had persistent phantom feeling in the two wholly missing fingers, an erogenous zone in the notch, and disability checks for life. He also worked as night watchman for the warehouse attached to his apartment. He got the apartment for a nominal rent, took in a small paycheck, and had no one looking over his shoulder so long as the place didn’t burn down or get robbed.
The ground-floor apartment, which once served as the manager’s office of a Nineteenth Century sailing loft, had old wide-board pine floors and red brick walls. Manis hung his coat on a peg by the front door, walked across the large open room, and plugged his digital camera into the computer on his desk. Within minutes the printer spit out a series of crisp photos of a prosthetic leg that attached to a transfemoral amputation.
Manis seized the pictures and opened the padlock to his secret workshop. He spread out the photos on his workbench and proceeded to study them. Salinowsky had a relatively simple prosthesis manufactured from space-age materials. A soft high-tech foam lined the socket, Kevlar reinforced the harness, and carbon-fiber composites made the pylon especially light. The challenge would be getting the replacement leg to weigh close to the same while still being able to support half of Salinowsky’s body. Manis had some ideas for improving the harness in a way that would create the illusion of lightness. Also working in his favor was the fact that Salinowsky was a psychotic drug addict. If he noticed the discrepancy at all, he’d probably attribute it to his distorted mental state. At least, Manis hoped so, because this one was going to be tricky.
A MOMENT AFTER HANGING UP with Burbette, Diaz sat staring into the middle space, thinking of who he might know stationed in Germany. He made a few phone calls to old buddies, picking their brains about mutual acquaintances, and finally got the perfect name: an army guy, formerly EOD, who’d burnt himself out in that MOS and gone on to become a captain in the MPs. He was still based, someone said, at Grafenwohr. In a few more minutes, Diaz had the captain’s mobile number.
He set down the phone and gathered himself just as Kahn, across the room, did the same at his own desk. Kahn got up and walked past Diaz, nodded a good morning, but kept going, headed for the break room. There was something in Kahn’s look—something a little uncomfortable, a little mysterious—that made Diaz decide not to share what he was doing just then, see whether he got anything first, see how it played out.
The guy in Germany was named Victor Nunez—pronounced Noons. Diaz’s source had made a point of saying that there was no tilde over the n. Nunez picked up on the second ring and immediately said, “Hold on.”
When he finally returned Diaz launched right into dropping names and established his bona fides as former EOD himself. “What can I do for you, Lieutenant?” Nunez said. He had a southwestern accent that struck Diaz as almost too carefully cultivated, like the dropping of that tilde. Never mind. Diaz wasn’t exactly Señor Español himself.
“It’s not ‘Lieutenant’ no more. ‘Detective’ now.”
“Oh. Busted?” Nunez laughed.
Diaz had already explained that he’d left the army. He tried to laugh back but couldn’t put his heart into it. “Not busted, just climbing a different silo these days. You got a minute to talk?”
“Tell you the truth, I’m jammed up, couple of guys in the office here. Can I call you later?”
“With all due respect, I’d rather not. We have a situation here. Can’t say yet whether it’s national security, but it involves a bombing in New York, possible terrorism.”
“No shit. Hold on, then.”
Diaz waited a moment while Nunez cleared his office. He came back quicker this time.
“You called my personal cell. Any chance you can call me on the land line?”
Diaz shook his head, though of course Nunez couldn’t see that. “Not to start off all negative on you, but I’d rather not. What I’m about to ask you...it may be better kept off the grid.”
“Oh? Okay. Go on, then.”
Diaz gave an overview of what transpired in Times Square. He explained that Horn was former army. Paused for effect. “The main charge,” he said, “was C4 tagged to a United States Army batch that was delivered to your base.”
“Wow. How long ago?”
“FBI found out yesterday.”
“No. I mean, when was the C4 delivered to the army?”
“That’s an interesting question. I don’t know.”
“It would have to be the past five years. I don’t think they tagged that specifically before then.”
“Can we narrow that down further?”
“I doubt it. What else can I do for you?”
“What are the chances that someone co
uld’ve stolen C4 from the army?”
“High, I’d say.”
“Really? Ain’t that stuff under lock and key? It was when I was there.”
“Sure it is. So’s a lot of things. Doesn’t mean they don’t turn up missing. These days especially, all these outside contractors with their various clearances coming and going. Do you know how much stuff the army has? My guess is the bean counters don’t even know.”
“But we’re talking about C4 here, one of the most powerful explo—”
“I understand. Let me give you a hypothetical. Army engineers need to raze an old structure of some kind to make way for a new road. So they go to the secure vault where the explosives are held, fill out some forms, remove the material. Say for argument’s sake that it’s fifty pounds of C4.”
“Fifty pounds.” Diaz already knew where this was going.
“At the site, not only are the engineers there, but also the logistical guys, maybe a platoon of regulars for protection, outside contractors, even could be questionable friendlies, if you know what I mean, guys who got their uniforms yesterday morning. Not like blowing up a building to make way for a road would be a high-security need-to-know operation, right?”
“Fifty pounds,” Diaz repeated.
“Now, you’ve been EOD. I don’t have to tell you how accustomed you can get to all this shit. Guy who never saw a plug of C4 is pissing his pants just to have it in the same room with him. Meanwhile, these engineers, they’ve gotten so complacent that they’re using it to stop a leak in their gas tank.”
“Never saw it used for that, but I get your gist.”
“I’m speaking metaphorically, Diaz. Point is when that fifty pounds of C4 is on the truck they’re not watching it every second, right? Maybe one guy goes to take a piss while the other one goes to have a smoke. They come back and the next time they check—which could be never—there’s only forty-nine pounds. What do they do—raise Cain? I doubt it. Unless they have a reason to suspect someone right there, they figure they miscounted at the vault. Am I right?”
Diaz thought back to his army days, all the shortcuts you took in the oppressive heat, just not to have to move another inch. “Probably.”
“You bet your ass. So...what? They’re gonna go back and report it, make a revision to the original form, risk getting called on the carpet, having to fill out more reports? Screw that. Hell, there are nuclear missiles that the air force has mislaid this way, entire tanks. They’re more dangerous than a brick of C4. A little C4 never hurt anybody.”
“Sure it has.”
“Are you smoking dope, Diaz? I’m not saying it hasn’t. I’m explaining how it gets rationalized.”
“Okay.”
“Now, a pattern of theft, that’s a different thing. That may get caught eventually. But a little skim here or there. Don’t kid yourself. I’d bet it happens all the time.”
Diaz reflected. “Well, let me ask you this, Captain. Do you have any record of a theft?”
“Not off the top of my head, but I could check. Albert Horn was the soldier’s name?”
“Yes, but he’s out four years. As far as the theft goes, anyone could be the culprit. What would help me most would be a list of names: everyone who’s authorized to remove C4 from storage. Going back as far as you can.”
“Should be doable but I can’t do it covertly.”
“No sweat. FBI might be asking for the same info through channels. I’m only going outside to expedite things, not because we got anything to hide.”
“Roger that.”
“Call me any time,” Diaz said. “Sooner the better.”
GAVIN LITTEL OVERSLEPT, WAKING BLEARY-EYED in Brooklyn at half past nine. He called his assistant and said he’d be late. She told him he’d better hurry or he’d miss the 10:30 meeting. Just another day for another mid-level office grunt.
Within half an hour he’d done everything any man must do in the morning. The one exception being that he also strapped on his prosthetic arm and flexed the fingers to make sure he had it aligned properly. It wasn’t responding as usual, so he took it off and put it on twice more, but there was no help for it. He’d have to make a phone call later—couldn’t deal with it now or he’d miss his meeting.
A balky arm, however, was better than no arm at all. He knew that from experience. So he had it attached when he left his house a few minutes after ten.
Wearing a pinstriped suit and a foulard tie, Littel walked down his block and turned south onto Utica Avenue, moving along briskly. He had the Wall Street Journal tucked under his arm—home delivery. Some of the stores were just opening, shopkeepers cranking up their awnings with long poles or rolling up the gates in front of their windows. Other establishments had been open for hours.
Littel stopped into the bakery between a shuttered Caribbean music store and the fresh fish store, where an employee stood hosing down the sidewalk, steam rising. Inside the bakery, he bought a morning glory muffin and a cup of coffee with cream and light sugar. He walked out clutching the bag with the muffin and the newspaper in his balky prosthetic hand. With his good hand he sipped the coffee.
Pretty soon he came to a point approximately sixty feet from the intersection of Utica Avenue and Eastern Parkway. Right across the street from a ground-floor Subway sandwich shop with a US Armed Forces Recruiting Station upstairs, something happened. Bag and muffin took flight in a rush of decompressing air. The forearm of Littel’s prosthesis disintegrated, puncturing his chest with shrapnel while the mechanical hand flew diagonally across the street.
On the sidewalk, the explosion perforated the left eardrum of a seventy-five-year-old woman on her way to the grocery store, a flying ball bearing punctured her left eye, and more shrapnel caused contusions of her neck and face. A twenty-year-old man lost his left testicle to a fragment of titanium, traveling near the speed of sound. The owner of a bodega, standing outside having a smoke, lost part of his right hand.
The blast threw Gavin Littel onto his back on the sidewalk like a rag doll, one leg splayed across the curb, his foot coming to rest at an unnatural angle in the street. He lay there twitching while blood spurted from his chest.
By the time the paramedics arrived, he’d bled to death from a tear in his heart.
KAHN CALLED THE LIEUTENANT AS he and Diaz screamed to the scene in an unmarked squad car. Diaz could hear Cap cursing through the phone.
“We don’t know anything yet,” Kahn said. “Just that it’s another rather small explosion, one dead again, presumably the bomber from preliminary reports. And there’s a recruiting office right there.”
He paused and Diaz heard Cap barking again.
“Okay,” Kahn said. “I’m hanging up. We’re there.”
This time they’d beaten Burbette to the scene. Cops from the local precinct had cordoned off the area for a block in each direction and the injured were being loaded into ambulances. A team from the coroner’s office and CSU had only begun to evaluate the corpse, so the two Bomb Squad detectives didn’t get too close to him at first.
Sun shone up Utica Avenue—an egg-yolk yellow February sun, low in the sky. Diaz shaded his eyes with his hand in the middle of the avenue and looked around.
“Once again, minimal property damage,” he said, as Kahn returned from his own brief tour.
“Yeah,” Kahn said. “Look at what one of the POs noticed.”
He escorted Diaz over to the front window of a Bank of America branch office, where the prosthetic hand, having penetrated the glass, hung like a missile that had suddenly lost thrust.
“Something out of an action movie,” Diaz said.
“Make sure the photographers don’t miss that,” said Kahn.
“Roger. Who’s joining us?”
“Cai and Higgins.”
Diaz fetched a spindle of string from the car and began to mark off quadrants. The assistant ME was still working around the corpse when the detective approached. She handed him the suspect’s wallet and he slipped on a pair of gl
oves and took it from her, removing the driver’s license.
“Nice of these guys to carry identification,” he said half to himself. “This one lived right around the corner.”
“Jesus, look at that,” one of the photographers said. “Blew his arm clean off at the humerus.”
“No.” Diaz bagged the wallet. “That happened some time ago and a world away.”
“How do you mean?”
“Take a closer look. See around the stump?”
“I’ll be damned.” The photographer resumed shooting.
“Gavin Littel,” Diaz muttered. “Tell me. Why did this happen?”
Littel’s mouth gaped open, silent. His tongue had slid into the back of his throat and his jaw had been pierced with shrapnel. His right ear was torn off completely.
O’Shea arrived just as the body went off in a bag. “Whaddya know?”
“Same shit, different corpse.”
“Prosthesis?”
“An arm this time. And right there’s the recruiting station. Very little property damage. A few more injuries than last time, nothing life threatening, I’m told.” He handed O’Shea the wallet. “Dude lived in the neighborhood.”
“I’d better go check it out. You’ll send a response vehicle?”
“Already radioed. They’ll meet you there.”
Soon as he left, Burbette walked up. “One of the witnesses says black smoke.”
Diaz nodded knowingly. High explosives.
Burbette helped him finish laying the quadrants, and by the time they did so the whole team was there in their Tyvek suits. In three hours they found something like what they’d found around Horn, prosthetic parts and some of the interior workings of a cell phone.
Stoltz of ATF arrived, but no one would give him the time of day. When he stalked off, Kahn turned to Burbette. “You called him?”
“Had to.”
“What a dick.”
“Don’t get me started.”
A Danger to Himself and Others: Bomb Squad NYC Incident 1 Page 10