Every morning when Stahl woke up he spent a second or two hoping that when he turned off his phone’s alarm he would see a text or an e-mail on the screen telling him a bomb maker had blown himself up. So far there was no such message.
It was Stahl’s job to assume the bomber had been busy preparing something bigger and more lethal. One possibility was that he was building many Semtex-powered devices. What was stopping him from planting fifty bombs in fifty places at once? Stahl knew this man was more likely to plant a hundred bombs than fifty. Each scene would have one to cause preliminary damage and a second one to kill the technicians and paramedics who would come later.
All the bomber had to do was keep the members of the squad moving fast from one call to the next to the next, until somebody got too tired to think and made a small mistake.
This bomb maker was versatile too. He could make bombs that looked exactly alike, but were triggered in vastly different ways. He could put one in plain sight and another under the only path to it. If he wanted to he could attach very sensitive bombs to immovable surfaces—bridges, staircases, large stone or steel monuments in public parks—with epoxy cement. There was no limit to what this kind of bomb maker could do. Each time a bomb was found, a bomb tech would have to walk up to it and decide what to do with it.
Stahl turned onto Williford Avenue and saw Team Four’s bomb truck just pulling up to the front of a large brick building that a sign identified as John Jay High School. The truck turned into a driveway and a police car that was parked across the entrance backed up to let it pass. Stahl approached before the officer could move back across the entrance, held up his identification, and followed the truck in.
He parked some distance from it and walked the rest of the way to join Team Four, who were climbing down from the truck and taking out equipment before entering the school. As Stahl approached he considered what he could see. This was a rich neighborhood. The houses he passed on the way were big and shaded by tall old trees.
He spotted Sergeant Paul Wyman, the supervisor of Team Four. Wyman was barely out of the truck when a middle-aged woman in a navy-blue business suit stepped up to him.
Stahl heard her say, “I’m Julia Cortez, the principal. All of the students have been evacuated to the next street over, where they’re waiting with the faculty in the supermarket parking lot. We’ve activated the phone tree to call their parents to pick them up.”
Paul Wyman said, “Very good. But we’ll need to double-check that the building is empty before we deal with the device.”
“I thought you might,” she said. “I can take you to where it is.”
“No, thank you,” Wyman said. “Just describe what was found and the exact location and we’ll take it from there. We have procedures that we need to follow.”
Stahl was pleased with the way Wyman was handling it, so he stayed a few yards off and kept listening. The principal said, “It’s in a black gym bag in the school cafeteria, which is in the back wing of the main building. This morning the teacher who was going to monitor the first lunch session saw the bag. He opened it to see if he could find the name of the owner and return it. Usually there will be something with the student’s name. This time what he found was a kind of bundle with a cell phone and wires and batteries. He left the bag and locked the cafeteria doors, then called me.” She handed Wyman a key. “This is the master key. It should open every door.”
As the members of Team Four prepared to enter the building, Stahl said, “Mind if I go in with you and take a look?”
“Not at all,” said Wyman. “We can use the help.”
“Good.”
The four police officers put on bomb suits and went in the front door of the main school building. Wyman sent Neil and Welsh to the main hallway to begin the search for stragglers or possible additional suspicious objects. They opened doors on either side of the main hallway and walked the perimeters of the first pair of classrooms, then moved on to the next pair of rooms. From time to time, one would call out: “This is the police. The school building has been evacuated. If you are still in the building come to the front door and gather in the parking lot. This is the police …”
Wyman and Stahl checked the rooms off the side corridors. When the four had made it all the way through the building they met where they had started. “The main section is clear,” said Welsh.
“The side sections are all clear,” Wyman said. “The captain and I will head for the cafeteria while you and Neil check the other buildings.”
“The cafeteria is down this hall near the back door,” said Welsh. “The doors are on the right.”
“All right,” Wyman said. “The captain and I will take a look and then we’ll meet at the truck.”
The two technicians went out the front door while Stahl and Wyman walked to the cafeteria. The room looked like the cafeteria of the middle school Stahl had attended over thirty years ago. There was a stainless steel and glass hot table three feet out from one wall, and the rest of the room was filled with long synthetic veneer folding tables that looked like blond wood, with five stackable molded plastic chairs on either side. They were all arranged in perfect order, with twenty tables to accommodate two hundred students at a time. Only one chair was pulled back from its table at an angle. It was on the far side of the room near where the hot food line would have been in an hour.
Wyman and Stahl approached, and Stahl stepped to the fourth aisle so he could see the one chair. “Damn,” he said. “It’s him.”
Wyman said, “How can you tell?”
“The gym bag. It’s just like the one he left on top of the elevator in the women’s health clinic.”
“Do you think he’s using the same kind of device?”
“It doesn’t sound that way. Didn’t the principal say it’s got a phone taped to it? This is the first one like that. Let’s take a look.”
He stepped close and peered into the half-opened gym bag without touching it. There was a beige brick of plastic explosive with a set of lead wires for a blasting cap running into it. He could see the cell phone and the corner of a lithium-ion battery. “The wires are the same color and style as the last ones—a number eight, probably from the same batch.”
“I was thinking,” said Wyman. “If we get the containment vessel up to the back entrance, we could just pop it in—even hand it out the window from here so nobody has to carry it far.”
“We can’t do that this time. It’s him.”
“What should we do, then?”
“Let’s get the jammer in your truck going.”
Wyman reached for his cell phone to call the others, but Stahl held his arm. “No phones, no radios until the jammer is running.” He let go of Wyman’s arm. “What model do you have with you?”
“TSJ-MBJ110.”
“Perfect. It’s been tested recently, right?”
“Once a week. We keep it charged and tested.”
They went out the back door of the school and headed for the bomb truck. As they did, Stahl focused his mind on the jammer.
This model jammer was designed for the military to prevent any radio signal, including a cell signal, from reaching a bomb and detonating it. The jammer had its own ten-thousand-watt AC generator, its own cooling system, and a battery backup. The jammer created a quiet zone for 150 meters around it, blocking every band from 20 to 250 megahertz. Once it was in place and operating, Stahl could go to work on the bomb.
Neil, Wyman’s second in command, set up the jammer in the central hallway of the school, plugged it into an outlet, and switched it on.
Stahl turned on his cell phone and waited for a signal, then put it away. “I get nothing. It’s operating. Thanks, Neil. Now go back to the truck, call a Code Five Edward and stand by while we figure out what we’ve got to worry about.”
“Yes, sir.” He went out the back entrance and headed for the truck.
Stahl and Wyman went into the cafeteria and Wyman stepped up to the gym bag.
“Don’t touch it just yet,” said Stahl.