Suarez explained: “Those are CB2 screens. They fluoresce when hit by X rays. He’s using a Min-X-Ray SS-100 portable fluoroscope to send X rays through the thing, so he can see an image on the screen. He knows what to look for-mostly, any deviation from the device you folks intercepted.”
“Looks clear,” Tom shouted.
“Clear,” Suarez shouted to the rest of the team members, some three hundred yards off.
Tom opened the black box and looked inside. All the solid-state electronic guts of the fusing mechanism had been fried.
The bomb was dead.
But something caught his eye, just a glint at first, and he felt his stomach go cold.
It was a large mechanical stopwatch. A big, old, round-faced stopwatch that appeared to have been modified. A sweep second hand was moving at a normal pace, but to Tom, seized with panic, it seemed to be racing.
Two wires came out of the watch, snaked out of the box into the explosives.
He whirled around, saw the simple trip wire he had set off as he approached the bomb. A low-tech kind of thing commandos used in the jungle. The kind of thing that’s not affected by electromagnetic pulses or anything fancy like that.
The second hand continued to sweep along the face of the stop watch, toward a steel pin, and when it made contact, the bomb would blow. A sixty-second stopwatch. Less than thirty seconds remained.
From behind him, Tom heard a shout: “What the hell…?”
“Back off!” Tom shouted hoarsely. “It’s not dead!”
A simple booby trap, Tom thought. It hadn’t been in the mechanism they had inspected. Of course: Baumann trusted nobody, not even whoever had made his fusing mechanism. He’d put in a backup.
Two wires.
Two wires emanated from the watch. What did that mean?
Did he dare cut the wires?
What if it were a collapsing circuit, which meant that if you cut the wires, the circuit would automatically close, and the fucking bomb would go off?
Tom felt his fingers tremble.
Cut the wires or not?
Two wires.
Less than ten seconds remained.
No. A collapsing circuit always needed three wires.
Just over five seconds before the steel second hand touched the steel pin…
He snipped the wires.
Involuntarily, he winced, braced himself.
A second… two… three.
Nothing.
He exhaled slowly, felt tears spring to his eyes.
The thing was dead. He turned around slowly, numbly, and said, too quietly: “The render-safe is complete. The thing’s dead.”
Suarez sank to the ground in involuntary expression of relief. Sarah braced herself against the doorjamb and stared at the bomb in disbelief. Tears of relief welled up in her eyes.
“The render-safe is complete,” Suarez called out. “The thing’s dead.”
And then Sarah’s walkie-talkie crackled. “Cahill, Cahill, Roth.”
“Roth, Cahill,” she replied. “Go ahead.”
“We’ve spotted your man.”
CHAPTER NINETY-SEVEN
The area six miles in radius from the center of La Guardia Airport is officially La Guardia airspace. As Dan Hammond’s ASTAR approached the uncontrolled airspace above the Downtown Manhattan Heliport, he was contacted by La Guardia Class B service operations. Flying into a high-density air-traffic area as he was, his craft was now under strict ATC control. ATC mandates your helicopter route, at a prescribed altitude. For each flight, you’re issued a transponder code, which was in this case 3213. The transponder code tags up on the radar screen with your tail numbers, also known as registration numbers or N numbers. The tail numbers used to be painted only on the bottom of the aircraft, but now they are required to be visible from both sides. Also, because of drug-smuggling problems, the numbers are now required to be fully twelve inches high, which makes them visible from quite a distance.
Now, as he steered the chopper off into the controlled airspace just north of the helipad, he heard, “Helicopter three two one three, you’re north of your prescribed route. State your intentions.”
Hammond hit the talk switch. “I’ve-I’ve got problems-” he started to say, which was the beginning of his prepared line.
But the ATC interrupted: “Uh, helicopter three two one three, we’ve got a NOTAM posted for the area you’ve just entered.” A NOTAM is a Notice to Aviators and Mariners which declares a certain area off-limits.
A NOTAM? For what? Now, Hammond was momentarily confused. Who the hell would have expected this? What was the NOTAM all about?
He hit his talk switch again to ask.
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
She raced up the stairwell to the twentieth floor of the building, up a narrow set of iron stairs that led up to the roof, and stepped out of the roof exit into the dank gray late-afternoon air. She gasped for breath. Behind her in the stairwell waited several police backups. Several much taller buildings loomed on two sides. Shouts and sirens and the honking of car horns rose from below.
Two shapes were silhouetted against the glare. She couldn’t see their faces, but she recognized them at once.
Jared. He was gagged and handcuffed. One heavy steel handcuff tightly encircled both of his tiny wrists. The other end of the cuff was attached to the plastic handle of a rectangular object, a box of some kind, which Sarah at once realized was a child’s plastic lunchbox. She looked again, not comprehending. Could she be seeing right?
His silken voice filled her with horror.
“Sarah,” Baumann said with repellent gentleness, “I don’t want to hurt Jared, but I will if I absolutely must. It’s up to you to see that doesn’t happen.”
“Your bomb’s dead,” she said, short of breath, gasping. “It’s pointless now for you to keep going.” She moved closer so that her walkie-talkie, locked in transmit mode, could pick up their conversation for the benefit of the listeners down below.
“No closer, please. Now, I’d rather get out of here than stay. So now you and I will make a deal.” It was strange: he was speaking in a South African accent and sounded like a different person.
“What do you want?” Sarah said, queasy with disgust at negotiating with this monster.
“In just a few minutes, I will be leaving the building. I’m taking Jared with me.”
“What do you mean, taking him with you?” She was exhausted, bone-tired, and couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Now she could see Jared’s face. His eyes were wide with fright; he appeared frozen.
“Only for the first part of my journey. Just far enough to guarantee safe passage. Traveler’s insurance. I promise you Jared will not be hurt as long as you cooperate.”
“You promise-!”
“There’s no reason for me to hurt your son. I’m quite fond of him.”
Something was gradually coming over her now, an iciness, a fusion of hatred and determination and fierce protectiveness that made her less afraid. “Take me instead,” she said, and took another step forward.
“Please, Sarah,” Baumann said. “For Jared’s sake, stay where you are. Listen carefully, please. I don’t want you or your people to make any mistakes. First I must make a phone call.” Baumann pulled from a pocket a cellular phone and punched a few numbers. He listened for a couple of seconds, then punched a few more. “There,” he said. “Thank you, Jared, for the use of your phone. Now the bomb is armed.” He put away the cell phone and held up a small object Sarah couldn’t quite make out. “This is a dead-man switch, Sarah. You know how it works, I assume. This button is connected to a small radio transmitter, and to a signal generator that produces a continuous tone. It’s transmitting that tone now. A one-milliwatt transmitter-very low-powered. Good only for line-of-sight. As long as I keep the button depressed, the signal is transmitted. But if I let go of the button, my transmitter stops sending the signal.”