They walked outside. Two young men stood a hundred yards away from them in one of the three deep pits dug into the field. They wound what looked like plastic clothesline around a square, olive-drab box.
Rune looked around. She said, "This looks just like the Underworld."
Healy frowned. He asked her, "Eliot Ness?"
"No, like Hades, I mean. You know, hell."
"Oh, yeah-your analysis of the crime scene the other day." Healy looked back to the men in the pit. He said to Rune, "You have to understand something about explosives. In order to be effective, they have to be explosive only under certain conditions. If you make this stuff that blows up when you look at it cross-eyed, well, that's not going to be real useful now, is it? Hell, most explosives you can destroy by burning them. They don't blow up; they just burn. So to make it go bang, you need detonators. Those're powerful bits of explosive that set off the main charge. Remember the C-4 that they used in the second bombing? If you don't have the detonator surrounded by at least a half inch of C-4 you might not get a bang at all."
She heard enthusiasm in his voice. She thought how good it is when you've found the one thing in life that you're really good at and that you enjoy doing for a living.
"That's what we look for," Healy continued. "That's the weak point in bombs. Most detonators're triggered electrically. So, yeah, we cut the wires, and that's it. If somebody wants to get elaborate they could have a timed detonator and a rocker switch, so that even if you cut the timer, any movement will set off the bomb. Some have a shunt-a galvanometer hooked up to the circuit so that if you cut the wire the needle swings to zero because the current's been cut andthat sets off the bomb. The most elaborate bomb I ever saw had a pressure switch. The whole thing was inside a sealed metal canister filled with pressurized air. We drilled a tiny hole to test for nitrate molecules- that's how bomb detectors at airports work. Sure enough, it was filled with explosives. There was a pressure switch inside. So if we'd open the canister the air would have escaped and set it off."
"God, what did you do?"
"We brought it up here and were just going to detonate it but the word came from downtown they wanted to check the components for fingerprints. So we put it in a hyperbaric chamber, equalized the pressure inside and outside, opened it up and rendered it safe. It had two pounds of Semtex in it. With steel shot all around.
Like shrapnel. Purely antipersonnel. Mean, son-of-a-bitch bomb."
"You got the robot into the chamber?"
"Well, no. Actually I dismantled it."
"You?"
He shrugged and nodded to the pit, where the two men had finished their wrapping exercise and were retreating to a bunker of concrete and sandbags.
"They're practicing setting off military charges. That's an MI 18 demolition block. About two pounds of C-4. For blowing bridges and buildings, trees. They've wrapped it with detonating cord and'll set it off by remote control."
Over the loudspeaker came a voice: "Pit number one, fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!"
"What do they mean?" Rune asked.
"That's what they used to yell in coal mines when they lit the fuse on the dynamite. Demolition people use it now to mean there's about to be an explosion."
Suddenly a huge orange flash filled the sky. Smoke appeared. And an instant later a clap of thunder slapped their ears.
"Boaters hate us," Healy explained. "City gets a lot of claims for broken windows."
Rune was laughing.
Healy looked at her. "What?"
She said, "It's just weird. You brought me all the way out here to give me a lesson on IEDs."
"Not really," he said, considering.
"Then why did you invite me?"
Healy looked away for a moment, cleared his throat. His face was ruddy to start with but it seemed he was blushing. He opened his attache case and took out a couple of cans of diet Coke, two deli sandwiches, a bag of Fritos. "I guess it's a date."
CHAPTER TEN
He may have looked like a cowboy but he wasn't the silent type.
Detective Sam Healy was thirty-eight. Nearly half of his fellow Bomb Squad detectives had gotten into demolition in the military but he'd gone a different route. First a portable-a foot patrolman-then working an RMP.
"Remote motor patrol. It means police car."
"Initials, I remember."
Healy smiled. "You're talking to an MOS."
"Moss?"
"Member of Service."
After a few years of that Healy'd gone into Emergency Services: New York 's SWAT team. Then he'd signed up for the Bomb Squad. He'd taken the month-long course at the FBI's Hazardous Devices School in Huntsville, Alabama, and then was assigned to the Squad. Healy had majored in electrical engineering in college and was studying criminal justice at John Jay.
He talked with excitement about his workshop at home, inventions he'd made as a kid, his twenty-year, uninterrupted subscription toScientific American. Once he had come up with a formula for a chemical solution to neutralize a particular high explosive and had almost gotten a patent. But a big military supplier beat him to it.
He'd never fired his gun, except on the range, and had only made four arrests. He carried a Brooklyn gun shop's business card, on the back of which was printed theMiranda recitation; he knew he'd never remember the words in a real arrest. He'd been called on the carpet several times for failing to wear his service revolver.
When the conversation turned personal he became quieter, though Rune sensed he wanted to talk. His wife had left him eight months before and she had informal custody of their son. "I want to fight it but I can't bring myself to. I don't want to put Adam through that. Anyway, what judge is going to awardme custody of a ten-year-old kid? I deal with explosive devices all day."
"Is that why she left you?"
Healy pointed across the field. Rune heard the staticky warning again. Another huge flash, followed by a tower of smoke fifty feet high. Rune felt a concussion wave slap her face like a sudden summer wind. The cops watching lifted their fingers to their mouths and whistled. Rune jumped to her feet and applauded.
"Nitramon cratering charge," Healy said, studying the smoke.
"Fantastic!"
Healy was nodding, looking at her. She caught him and he looked away.
"The job, you mean?" he asked.
Rune had forgotten her question. Then she recalled. "The reason your wife left?"
"I don't know. I think the reason was I didn't ever get home. Mentally, I mean. I live in Queens. I've got a house with a lab in the basement. One night I'd been doing some work downstairs and I was kind of lost in it and my wife came down and said dinner was ready. I wasn't paying any attention and I told her about the experiment and I said, 'You know, this feels just like home.' And she said, Thisis your home.' "
Rune said, "Don't be too hard on yourself. Takes two."
He nodded.
"Still in love with her, huh?"
"No way," he said quickly.
"Uh-huh."
"No, really."
The sound of wind rilled the range. He became silent, almost impenetrable.
Which would have been one of his wife's gripes. The difficulty of reaching him.
After a moment Healy said, "All of a sudden, out of the blue, she says she can't stand me. I'm just one big irritation. I don't understand her. I'm never there for her. I was floored. I really asked for it, in a way-I pushed her, I kept telling her how much I loved her, how sorry I was, how I'd do anything… She said that was just torturing her. I went a little nuts."
"Lovers can do that to you," Rune said.
Healy continued. "For instance-when she left, Cheryl took the TV. So the next day all I can think about is getting a replacement. I went out and boughtConsumer Reports and read all about the different kinds of sets. I mean, I had to buy the best TV there was. It became an obsession. Finally, I went to SaveMart and spent-God, I can't believe it-eleven hundred on this set…"