“No.” I saw him swallow. “He didn’t know what hit him. When dynamite explodes there’s no delay, there’s no time to think. It’s immediate. Nano-seconds.”
I looked behind him at the newspapers spread across the table and gripped the warm coffee to steady myself.
“What did he look like?” I was sorry I asked the minute I spoke the words, but I had thought about it, imagined it when I saw the closed coffin, and I had to know.
Charlie put his hand on a stack of newspapers as though to protect them from a strong wind. He didn’t look at me.
“By the time I got there, he was on the way to the hospital. I never got to see him. Jerry Kelleher stayed with him.” He straightened an already straight file. “Brian looked just like he always looked. A piece of metal caught him in the throat. That’s how he died.”
I didn’t believe him. Unsuitable for viewing, went skittering across my mind, the words Paul had said at the funeral. My brother Timmy had identified Brian’s body and wouldn’t answer me when I asked the same question. I could have challenged Charlie. But I held on to the picture in my head, the one my mother had given me at the wake, the one with Brian wearing his blue uniform and his wedding ring.
After I heard Charlie’s car door slam, I took a copy of The New York Times from the top of a neat pile. Photos of Brian and Terry and Hank were lined across the front page. Below their photos was the Croatian: Zvonko Busic, raising his hands in protest. His dark, unruly hair and full beard made his face look wolfish, menacing. Beside him was his wife. I let my eyes rest on her long hair, her knee-length skirt, that slight, thin-lipped smile. “Julie Busic,” the caption read. “Wife of the Terrorist.” I scanned the article and found it horrifying how our lives paralleled one another. We had been born the same year, met and married around the same time, and for a few years, we even worked a few miles apart in Manhattan. She was blonde, fair, slender. She didn’t look like a hijacker. I studied her face in the newspaper, and longed to change the truth, curve the details so it was she who had lost the man she loved, not me.
There is a sense in which we are all
each other’s consequences.
— Wallace Stegner, All The Little Live Things
The Crime
The morning after Charlie’s visit I woke to sun streaming through the window, and it took me a moment to remember. For a split second I felt I had been transported back in time, when I was able to look over at Brian sleeping, listen to him breathe, and in his absence there was a moment of inexplicable panic, as if Brian were a little boy and I had lost him in a crowd. Now it still shocked me to see his wallet missing from the night table. I rolled over and kissed Chris’s damp forehead, then Keith’s.
“Wake up sleepy heads.”
As the boys ate their cereal, I stared out the window where Chris’s big wheel sat in grass overgrown in the weeks since Brian had cut it. The boys complained that my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches weren’t the same, a trip to the park with me not as much fun. Keith called for Daddy when he fell down or when I said “no.” He woke screaming at night, and I sat in the dark trying to soothe him, reassure him I was never going away. But it was Daddy he wanted.
I took a sip of cold coffee and rubbed my temples against a headache that seemed always to be waiting for me. The fan belt had come loose on the old Chevy, soon there would be snow to shovel, the bathroom faucet had dripped a blue stain on the sink. My mother was tying up loose ends in the Bronx, and I had made room for her in Brian’s study where she would sleep on the pullout sofa, but somehow the arrangement didn’t feel right. Her coming felt complicated instead of comforting, dredging up old memories I thought I had left long behind me when I married Brian. Did I really want my mother in my life every day?
In Brian’s study, the e.e. cummings poetry book he had been assigned for English class still sat on his desk. I read the books he brought home for class during my half hour commute from Rockville Centre to Penn Station, and this thin volume held a poem that for some reason I read many times.
and what I want to know is
how do you like your blue-eyed boy
Mister Death
As I recalled the lines, a shiver went down my spine, and I grabbed a yellow pad and a pen and quietly closed the door to the room Brian once claimed as his sanctuary. Before falling asleep the night before, I had devised a note-taking strategy for the papers Charlie brought over, mentally dividing the topics of Hijacking, Explosion, and Hijackers. Sitting at the dining room table, I began piecing together what happened from the various reports and myriad media.
On September 9th, 1976, the night before the planned hijacking, the Busics had dinner at the top of the Gulf and Western Building on 59th and Broadway to go over the plan. While they enjoyed their last night of freedom, Brian and I fell asleep together, still believing in the possibilities of our lives.
While the Busics took a taxi to Grand Central Station, carrying a heavy shopping bag filled with explosives, Brian prepared to take his sons to the park. He loaded their bikes into the trunk and packed a bag with drink boxes and pretzels. When the Busics sought out the perfect locker space, one big enough to hold the cast iron pressure cooker, I was at my desk, a five-minute walk across town, unaware of the couple standing in the station concourse, unnoticed by hundreds of travelers, holding a bomb that could kill everyone and demolish the century-old landmark.
After putting the bomb in the locker, they took a subway to La Guardia Airport, arriving at the end of a security shift to avoid scrutiny. No one paid attention as they walked through security separately, each holding pieces of what would turn out to be fake devices, a duplicate of the real one they left in the subway locker. No one noticed their suitcases were filled with leaflets.
At 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 10th, they boarded Trans World Airlines Flight 355 headed to Tucson, with a stopover in Chicago.
When the plane took off, a few of the eighty-six passengers aboard noticed, but made no comment, when Busic, a raffish-looking man with a black beard, made several trips to the lavatory. There, he filled empty cylinders with silly putty and wrapped them with duct tape he carried on board. Dr. Richard Brockman, a passenger, took notes during the flight and the pages read that there was a blonde girl about twenty-five who kept going back to the restrooms. She had a good figure. She seemed anxious, in a hurry.
Ninety-five minutes into the flight, Busic emerged from the toilet with wires around his neck, black tape holding the mock dynamite in place. Entering the cockpit, then accessible to passengers, he handed the pilot a note. Captain Richard Carey had been trained to remain calm and cooperate with hijackers, and he read the note quietly as the plane moved through the air.
The note said:
1. This airplane is hijacked.
2. We are in possession of five gelignite bombs.
3. We have left the same type of bomb in a locker across from the Commodore Hotel on 42nd Street. To find the locker take the subway entrance by the Bowery Savings Bank. After passing through the token booth there are three windows belonging to the bank. To the left of these windows are the lockers. The number of the locker is 5713.
4. Further instructions are contained in a letter inside this locker. The bomb can only be activated by pressing the switch to which it is attached, but caution is suggested.
5. The appropriate authorities should be notified immediately.
6. The plane will ultimately be heading in the direction of Paris, France.
Dr. Brockman, who kept taking notes in the cabin, wrote that he was listening to Jefferson Starship when the captain came on to tell them the plane had been hijacked, and that they must do exactly what was asked. The captain told them to stay calm, the hijackers were fully armed, had a bomb on board, and threatened to blow up the plane if they did not obey them.
While Flight 355 traveled over Canada, TWA officials in Montreal radioed New York that a
bomb and a message could be found inside locker 5713 under Grand Central Station at Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street.
At 9:01 p.m., Hank Dworkin picked up the phone in the arson-explosion squad room and wrote down the details as they were relayed to him. Suspicious device at Grand Central. The seventeen men assigned to the bomb squad rotated partners, and he was up, along with Brian Murray. Emergency Service was dispatched, the area was cordoned off, and subway traffic halted as police ripped the door of the locker from the hinges with a claw tool.
Inside locker 5713 they found a Macy’s shopping bag with a pressure cooker inside. Its handle had been removed. After attempting to fluoroscope the device, they found the metal pot was impenetrable. Along with the shopping bag was an eight-page manifesto from Fighters for Free Croatia. “There is another bomb somewhere in New York City,” the letter read. Print this manifesto in the New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and The Los Angeles Times, and we will tell you where to find the second device. We want the world to help put a stop to the subjugation of the Croatian people, and we are willing to blow up an aircraft filled with innocent people to be heard.”
Authorities diverted air traffic from New York City, halted all public transportation, put emergency tankers on hold at all local airports, and every precinct in the New York City Police Department had officers looking for suspicious packages.
Amid the crowd of police vehicles with flashing lights, Brian pulled up with Bertha, the bomb squad truck fitted with a basket that could take the impact of high explosives. It was the scene I had witnessed on television, the marquee of the Commodore Hotel seen just above the truck, Brian on one end of the pole, Hank on the other, the bomb balanced in the middle.
On the hijacked plane, passengers were strapped in their seats without recourse against the bombs Captain Carey told them were on board.
Zvonko and Julie Busic were composed as they sat in the seat facing the pilot. “We have a declaration we want printed in newspapers across the nation.” He spoke in broken English, Julie adding a few words to make their demands clear.
“We also have leaflets in our luggage that we want dropped over key cities in America and Europe. We want the world to know about the atrocities being carried out by the Yugoslav government, the pillage and rape, entire villages leveled. We have pleaded for your government to become involved and no one has helped. There is nothing more we can do but try to convince the American people to come to our aid. This bomb, he pointed to the cylinders duct taped to his chest, has a timing device that will be activated if you do not do what we tell you. We want you to fly this aircraft over London and Paris and then to Croatia to drop the leaflets, and we want another plane to drop more leaflets over New York City and Los Angeles.”
Captain Carey told the terrorists he would cooperate, but the aircraft didn’t have enough fuel to fly across the Atlantic. It was intended for domestic use and had only enough fuel to fly to Chicago, where he would have refueled for the next leg of his flight.
If you try to drop papers from this aircraft they would get sucked into the engines, he told Busic. It cannot be done. He then promised he would notify the FAA to request a refueling stop and a second aircraft that could accomplish the task.
Dr. Brockman, the note-taker, wondered if they were French separatists. “The oily-skinned one walks the aisle, sticks of dynamite taped to his chest, detonator in his hand. ‘Thirsty?’ Julie Busic asked, approaching Dr. Brockman. ‘Can I get you something?’ Blue eyes shining, blonde hair turned up at the end, as if she hijacked the plane so she could play hostess.”
They stopped in Newfoundland where the documents stashed in their suitcases were transferred to a 707 escort plane. They then flew to Montreal to refuel. There, Busic let out thirty-five passengers who feigned illness or had time constraints, “just to show some good will,” he’d said. Julie stood by, watching each person file off. She whispered to one of the disembarking women, “I wish I were going with you.”
Dr. Richard Brockman wrote: “They are taking me. I must write it all down. The thought of no more paper is as terrifying as the thought of no more time.”
He then recorded the captain’s words: “The hijackers have informed me that we are going to fly to London, Paris, and Croatia. They have not told me any further plans. The plane has been refueled . . . please extinguish all smoking material.”
The Busics passed out leaflets for the passengers to read. “We have no intention of killing anybody. All we want is for our declaration to be published in American newspapers. We are not asking for difficult things. We want the world to recognize the injustices against our people—the people of Croatia.”
Looking out the window, Dr. Brockman saw a mirage. “ . . . an incredible sight. I want to be the pilot of that plane. She is just across from me, fifty yards, wing tip to wing tip. The pilot holds her back so she stays with us. My eyes run down her straight lines. I am falling in love with a plane. She tantalizes, teases, shows her belly and banks, climbs, falls, disappears, comes back. Wing tip to wing tip.”
Once Busic noticed the French escort plane, he ran up and down the aisle yelling, “Pull the shade. Pull the shade.” The craft and the passengers were now in the dark. They no longer knew whether it was day or night or where they were. A Catholic bishop on board took the microphone and led them in prayer.
In London, the plane circled in a holding pattern until the propaganda leaflets were dropped, then flew on to Paris. The Freedom Fighters were expecting the same course of action in France, but as the craft touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport, French sharpshooters shot out the tires. They didn’t want a plane that might explode to fly over their county. “It was a pretty rough landing,” one of the passengers reported. “We were scared to death.”
__________
Floodlights at the demolition site lit up the eastern part of the Bronx like Yankee Stadium. As Brian and Hank balanced the black kettle, Brian turned to his sergeant, Terry McTigue, and said, “I can smell the nitroglycerin.” This was Terry’s case, and he called the shots. In the best case scenario, the sergeant would contain the explosion and then examine the workings, but there wasn’t time. There was a plane filled with Americans whose hijacker threatened to blow them up with a matching device, and they had to know the intricate details of the bomb in New York in order for the French bomb squad to safely take apart the duplicate they were told was on the aircraft.
__________
The Busics waited for confirmation, by a pre-arranged code, that the newspapers had printed their declaration. Authorities towed the plane to an airfield away from Charles De Gaulle Airport, flat tires bumping along the tarmac. There French police in bomb trucks with water cannons and hundreds of sharpshooters surrounded the aircraft. Inside the darkened plane they waited and waited, but in a breakdown of communication, there was no news that their demands had been met. The passengers were kept locked inside, authorities refusing to bring them food or drink or empty the toilets, which had begun to overflow.
“I am in my seat,” Brockman wrote. “I am not sure how much time has gone by, whether it is dark out or light. I am not hungry, not thirsty, not tired, not hopeful, not fearful, not seeing, not hearing, not sensing.”
__________
At the disposal range at Rodman’s Neck in the Bronx, Hank and Brian placed the device in a twenty-five foot crater, and Terry McTigue, former major in the U.S. Army Ordnance Corps, directed the two men to attach an activator to the wires on the pressure cooker and cover it with an explosion suppression blanket. When the wires were severed, the bomb would either explode, the pieces contained inside the bomb blanket, or be neutralized.
__________
The plane sat on the runway for more than twelve hours. Passengers cried and pleaded for the hijackers to surrender, pleaded with the captain to force the newspapers to print the propaganda. They needed food and clean sanitary conditions. The smell of the ove
rflowing restrooms was beginning to make them sick.
Desperate, Busic herded together the passengers and threatened to kill them. “We will blow up the plane unless authorities confirm the declaration has been printed.”
Busic had not counted on the French refusing to cooperate. He had not counted on hours and hours of stalled negotiations, and he made a final request: allow his wife to leave the plane with the co-pilot to confirm that the papers had printed the proclamation.
__________
At the pit, Brian spoke his last words to Inspector Behr: “We use a new cutter each time. They cost twelve bucks.”
The team waited the requisite time, but the bomb did not detonate. As was their procedure, Brian Murray, Hank Dworkin, and Terry McTigue climbed back into the crater. That was when the bomb exploded, and when the confusion began. Why did the bomb suddenly explode? Had the wire cutter completely severed the wires? Had the severed wires somehow made contact? Was it sabotage? Human error?
When I begged Charlie to tell me how it happened, he said he didn’t know. He said that it was all a matter of where the men were standing, that a dynamite blast is directional. Evidence showed that when the circuit completed and metal and sand shot out like a cannon, chewing up everything in its path, it was Brian, standing on the left, who took the full blow. Ragged chunks of the kettle ripped through him, severed his windpipe and tore holes in his body. McTigue, a few feet to the right, also took the force of the blast. Propelled into the air by the concussion, shards of debris whistled past and ripped off his fingers and pieces of his face. Hank, standing across from Brian, got the wind knocked out of him and he suffered cuts and bruises, temporary blindness and hearing loss, but remained intact.
I thought a hundred times about how it must have felt—the rumble and shock and deafening percussion as the ground rocked and the air transformed into a solid mass of black rain. Charlie had told me a dynamite blast is so violent you are knocked senseless, and when you wake up, if you wake up, you have no idea what happened. That means that Brian never knew what hit him, but I wondered if there was a moment when he did know, when he saw the flash and felt the panic. Did he think of me? His sons?
Life Detonated Page 9