Kreston rubbed his chin, then nodded.
“Take them to the command post in Queens. Let Cordelli and Brewer know.”
In Ozone Park, in the basement of the house, Cole sat on a swivel office chair, crying softly under the tape sealing his mouth.
Four white bricks of C-4 were duct-taped to his chest, as if he were wearing a bizarre vest made of butter sticks. His arms and legs were taped to the chair. Tears and sweat dampened Cole’s face, but the lone ESU officer sitting with him was instructed not to touch him.
All he could do was try to keep Cole calm.
“It’s gonna be okay, son. Our best guy will be down here.”
After the officer had flagged the situation to his squad members, all radio and cell phone communication in the area had been cut, in case the bomb was remotely triggered by a wireless device. A shadow, then a small tap on a basement window, signaled that help had arrived.
The floor above creaked from a colossal weight as an alien being in a hulking green canvas suit, resembling a mix between an astronaut and deep-sea diver, descended the stairs with the speed of Frankenstein’s monster.
Detective Bill Grant was inside the suit and he was pissed off. Upon arriving, he’d lost an argument with his boss. Grant did not want to wear the suit for this case.
“The boy has no protection and when he sees that I do, it tells him that I’m prepared to fail and he could die.”
Grant’s boss had to think about policy, liability and potentially losing Grant. It sickened him, because he agreed with Grant, but he could not allow his man to be unprotected.
In the end, it wouldn’t help anybody.
Once he made his way to Cole, Grant gave him a thumbs-up.
“Hey, there, Cole. My name’s Bill and I’ll get you out of this thing just as soon as I can, okay?”
Cole nodded.
The ESU officer smiled at Cole. He wanted to stay but had been ordered to leave.
Grant knelt before Cole and in the quiet began surveying the setup. He made no assumptions. The best bomb builders could be deceptive, lead you to think that the architecture was basic, simple, a walk in the park to defuse-then it was over. Grant estimated that this bomb had enough velocity to take out most of the house.
He set to work.
Half a block away at the command post, Jeff and Sarah waited next to Cordelli and Brewer. With power, communication, traffic and all activity halted, the street had fallen eerily quiet.
Like the church after Lee Ann’s funeral, Jeff thought as the minutes passed.
In Manhattan, Aleena Visser was floating in and out of consciousness in her bed in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Through her morphine-induced fog she woke, urging the nurse to let her know, needing to know.
“…help, did the number help police…did I help them?”
The nurse keeping vigil turned to the detective in the room who nodded. The nurse soothed Aleena’s brow and spoke softly into her ear.
“They said you helped them save lives.”
It took a few seconds before it registered with Aleena.
Then she let go.
The machines monitoring her began sounding alarms and although the medical team tried to resuscitate her, Aleena Visser, the former newspaper reporter from Rotterdam, died.
At that moment, in Ozone Park, NYPD bomb technician Bill Grant was taking meticulous care with the explosives attached to Cole. Again and again he examined the detonation system, the wiring to a cell phone and the insertion points of the blasting caps.
The heat in the suit was unbearable, making Grant sweat profusely. He continued studying everything, scrutinizing the arrangement, double-checking and triple-checking for any decoys until he was satisfied the device was built to be triggered by a call to the cell phone. It could be detonated by one call from any phone anywhere in the world.
With all the care and precision of a surgeon, Grant deactivated the detonation system.
He swallowed, allowing relief to wash over him.
He had defused the bomb.
“That does it.” Grant winked at Cole. “Now hold still while I take care of a few little things.”
Grant cautiously detached the explosives from Cole, then helped free him from his bindings and told him to get out and go to the police vehicles.
Cole raced up the stairs, ran out of the house to the street, looking to the left and to the right before he’d spotted the police line. He cut a small, vulnerable figure in the empty street, then heard his parents’ call.
“Cole!”
He ran toward them, faster than he’d ever run in his life.
Jeff and Sarah had broken through the line. Cole flung himself into his mother’s arms. Jeff took both of them into his, engulfing them as it all burst open inside him-all of his anger, guilt, confusion and fear, giving way to the flood of love and thanks for the gift he had been given.
Epilogue
Laurel, Montana
Late Friday afternoon. Sunlight streamed through the open bay doors at Clay Platt’s Auto Service where Jeff finished repairing a clutch on a Chev.
He went to his bench and reviewed the sheets of all the work he’d completed today. It included two brake jobs, a timing chain, a leaky radiator and three oil changes. Not bad. Everything’s in order.
Time to clock out.
Jeff changed out of his coveralls, washed up, then stuck his head into the small office. Old Man Platt looked up at him from the books.
“Heading out?”
“Yeah.”
“Give any more thought to my offer to sell the shop?”
“I did.”
“Could work out nice for you, what with a new baby on the way.”
“I know. I’ve been talking it over with Sarah. We’ll give you an answer Monday.”
“All right, you have a good weekend, Jeff.”
It was now nearly four months since they’d returned from New York City. Guiding his pickup through Laurel’s quiet streets, Jeff reflected on its small-town heritage, from the days of the settlers to its evolution as a railway hub and a God-fearing community outside of Billings. To the west he glimpsed the Beartooth Mountains, never tiring of the view and what it meant. Life out here, where the earth meets the sky on even terms, where your sense of self-importance is either exaggerated or diminished, suited him.
Now more than ever.
He was not as shaky as he first was on everything that had happened in New York. On some nights, during the first month, Sarah woke in tears and he’d hold her until she stopped trembling. Other nights they’d hear Cole crying out in his sleep and they’d both go to him.
And there were times early in those first weeks when Jeff was jarred awake, adrenaline pumping, heart hammering with overwhelming terror, forcing him to check on Sarah and Cole to prove that they were still there.
Since then, parts of it remained crystalline. Others were a blur, like the days of the immediate aftermath. The questioning by the NYPD and the FBI, the press conference that was carried live around the globe and later the endless network interviews.
“Joining us now in our Manhattan studio, Jeff, Sarah and Cole Griffin. They’re going to recount their terrifying experience, which has captured the world’s attention….”
In those early stages, talking about it seemed to help. It meant they were alive, that they’d survived. They told their story over and over, then again when they returned to Laurel.
Friends embraced them, supported them.
“That’s a hell of a thing to face,” Old Man Platt had said. “Especially after all you’ve been through, Jeff, a hell of thing.”
In the time that followed, Jeff grappled with questions.
Why did these things happen to my family? Why us?
There were no answers.