The bit quietly broke through the interior space to a measured distance. Max withdrew the drill bit in reverse with even pressure and slow rotations. When the drill bit cleared the surface, Wade exhaled as he watched, pale and silent.
Max nodded. “It looks like we have a clean hole.”
“That’s great.” Wade followed with another deep breath before asking, “What’s next?”
“We drill another one three inches alongside the first.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Wade bit his lip, wondering if Max was going to perforate the entire case. The morning temperature was still cool by tropical standards, but Wade’s face was covered in sweat. He checked Max’s face for similar signs, but Max was cool and dry as he readied the drill for the next hole.
The second hole was drilled with equal precision to the first, and Max seemed pleased that both holes had penetrated the right depth and angle. Wade’s sense of dread remained, anxious for the drilling to end. The thought of watching anyone disarm a bomb in close quarters required a sense of trust that he’d never mastered.
In fact, Wade’s concentration in the past few moments was so intense that an entire baseball team could have been standing behind him and he wouldn’t have noticed. As if emerging from a dream, he suddenly glanced around suspiciously, jumping to his feet to walk the clearing’s perimeter.
Max asked, “What are you doing?”
“I’m checking our perimeter.”
“I need you beside me right now.”
“I know we have a close relationship but… never mind, I was going to make a joke.”
“I don’t think we should be joking right now. I need you to hold the penlight over this hole, so I can look for wires.”
Wade complied with trembling hands.
“I need you to move the light up and down slowly, going to the extreme edge of the hole.”
“Like this?”
With the interior lit by the pen light, Max took his time, examining the entire area before he replied. “That’s perfect. You can’t see it, but there’s a small white wire running parallel to this ridge line on top of the case near the hole I just drilled. Whatever we do, we don’t want to breach that wire.”
Wade’s answer was deadpan. “You realize that if you had drilled a half inch above where you did, you would have gone right through it.”
“I know. That’s part of the uncertainly and luck in bomb demolition.”
“What’s next?”
“I need to drill my holes larger, now that I know where the wire crosses.”
With the larger holes drilled, Max once again probed the case while Wade held the flashlight. Max chose a slender stick from the ground and shaved off the bark. Using thin tweezers and the stick, he pulled the white wire away from its connection near the front of the case, while Wade nervously held the light.
After changing back to a smaller drill bit, Max turned the case around till he was facing the rear hinges and asked Wade to hold it steady while he drilled out the metal pins holding the hinge in place. Wade complied as Max repeated his routine, slowly breathing through his mouth.
“Can you get to the other side of the tree and hold this steady?”
Wade jumped over the tree trunk like a frog, still tense about what was going to happen next. He grabbed the front of the case to steady it.
“That’s great. The pins for the hinges are underneath the plastic, just like my instructor said they would be. I just have to be careful here.”
“Please do.”
After both pins were removed, Max used a flat wooden chisel to pry up the rear of the case. Now that it was opened half an inch, he peered into the case with the penlight. Slowly applying pressure against the edges, Max got the case opened a full two inches. He asked Wade to hold the entire unit in place as he checked inside, gently moving wires away from the edges.
“I think we’re going to be okay for this phase.”
“That’s great.” Wade breathed a sigh of relief, although he had no idea what that meant.
Max took a deep breath and gave an audible sigh. “That handle and locking mechanism turned out not to be wired. I can unscrew the hinges from the inside, and we should be able to lift off the top.”
“Good. So that wraps it up, right?”
“No, not even close. Assuming we get the top off, I still have to disarm the detonation device. That’s when things will get dicey.”
“Oh, my God!”
After carefully unscrewing the hinges from inside using a screw bit with a long extension, the top lifted off. Wade was overwhelmed by confusion seeing the inside of the explosive. The inside looked like the ghostly inner workings of an alien space ship. Max’s expression was quite different — more like he was staring at an incredible archeological find for the first time, admiring the clockwork mechanism in a crypt.
“What the hell is it?”
“What you’re looking at is a very well-designed anti-personnel explosive device. The two glass canisters on either side contain highly-concentrated white phosphorous crystals, which, when ignited, work as incendiary particles that burn through almost anything at very high temperatures. They don’t stop burning until their energy is completely consumed. The ignited particles will burn through a quarter-inch metal plate clear to the other side, and nothing extinguishes them.
“The gray clay-like material in the middle is a C-4 explosive, used to disperse and ignite the crystals. What’s ingenious about it is that it can either be pre-set with a timer or detonated with a remote device.”
“I take it that’s all bad stuff?”
“Very bad. Think of those small white pieces as crystallized napalm. The C-4 charge is equivalent to one or two sticks of dynamite. The device is not designed to take down buildings or bridges. That’s why it’s called an anti-personnel device.
“The C-4 is a large enough charge to disperse and ignite these crystals over a range of several hundred yards. Once shot out of their container with a blast, the crystals will burn on their own. If the smallest crystal touches human skin, they’ll be seriously burned or killed. This device is designed to cause maximum damage to personnel over a wide area.”
“The military uses similar material in bombs and artillery shells as anti-personnel weapons. I’ve seen them work in Vietnam. It’s devastating.”
Wade tried to summarize Max’s detailed description. “In other words, if this thing goes off in the stage area at the ceremony, all of the officials and most of the attendees will be killed?”
“That’s correct. If both of them go off, for sure there will be an untold number of human casualties within at least a 200-yard circumference of each case.”
“Was this thing put together by some madman?”
“No. This has military written all over it. If I had to guess, I would say it’s Russian — or at least made to look Russian. ”
“What do we do now?”
“Disarm the device.”
“Okay. Do you need me to do anything now? I have to go pee after all this.”
“Why don’t we both take a breather?”
“I’d like you to straddle the tree trunk with one leg on each side.”
“What? That means the explosives will be right in my crotch!”
“Near it, anyway.”
After thinking about Max’s request, Wade straddled the large tree trunk, leaning over, with the C-4 explosives and white phosphorous crystals between his legs.
Max gave Wade further instructions. “I need you to hold the yellow wire with the tweezers in one hand and grip the red wire with the pliers with the other hand. Keep them steady and the two wires separated from each other at all times.”