The Seventh Angel - Страница 62

He walked back toward the table. “Maybe I am full of shit,” he said. “At least on the current point of discussion.”

“You are,” Ann sniffed.

Bowie smiled ruefully. “I’m willing to stipulate that, for the moment. But I’ll have to ask you not to voice that particular sentiment in front of my crew.”

He sat back down in his chair. “Where do we go from here?”

Ann wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “We try again,” she said. “I upload the patch to Mouse’s program code, and — as soon as the sun goes down — we put him back in the water and start over.”

“Do you really think that’s going to work?” Bowie asked.

“Mouse found your damned submarine before,” Ann said. “He can find it again.”

CHAPTER 51

3 EXPLOSIVE ORDNANCE DISPOSAL COMPANY

ICE PACK — SOUTHERN SEA OF OKHOTSK

THURSDAY; 07 MARCH

1113 hours (11:13 AM)

TIME ZONE +11 ‘LIMA’

Gunnery Sergeant Armstrong crouched behind an ice hommock about forty yards from the device, and watched through binoculars as Staff Sergeant Myers and Corporal Hicks backed away from the explosive charge buried at the 8 o’clock position. Gunny wasn’t looking at Myers or Hicks, who were both easily visible without the binoculars. He was examining the ice around their feet, looking for any sign of booby traps that might have been missed during the initial recon.

Myers and Hicks moved slowly and cautiously, taking care not to disturb the twisted pair of wires that connected the shaped-charge to the initiator, about fifty feet away. Myers was scanning the snowy terrain with a Föerster Mark-26, moving in as straight a line as the rugged surface of the ice pack would permit. Hicks was his observer and assistant, providing a second set of eyes and hands as they were needed.

The Mk-26 was a fluxgate magnetic gradiometer; it could locate hidden metal objects by detecting the fluctuations they caused in the earth’s magnetic field. Myers and Hicks were nearly finished with the magnetic sweep. They’d already done the visual sweep, the infrared sweep, and sampled the air down-wind of the device using a hand-held Fido detector to sniff for vapors and residue: the telltale molecular traces given off by explosive chemicals.

This was the last step of the secondary reconnaissance. Gunny Armstrong had performed the initial recon himself, with Sergeant Travers covering observe and assist. He was confident that he had the configuration of the device thoroughly sussed out.

Myers was performing the entire recon again, to be certain that Gunny hadn’t missed anything on the first pass. Gunny didn’t expect him to find anything new, but the procedures laid out by the 60 Series EOD manuals were clear: two separate reconnaissance sweeps, conducted by two pairs of qualified Explosive Ordnance Disposal technicians. There were exceptions to the rule, in time-urgent operations, or when there weren’t enough techs available. But Gunny’s team had the personnel and the time. They were going to do it by the book.

The device itself was relatively straightforward. Six shaped-charges were spaced evenly around the perimeter of a large circle, maybe a hundred feet in diameter, all wired to an initiator package in the middle of the circle.

Gunny and Myers had both scanned the initiator using an RTR-4 real-time x-ray unit. The package appeared to consist of two modules of electronic circuits, housed in an insulated enclosure about the size of a shoebox. There were no indications of explosive charges in or near the enclosure.

A Kevlar-jacketed cable led from the package into a hole drilled in the ice. Short of trying to dig it out, which Gunny’s team was not going to attempt, there was no way to know how long the Kevlar cable was, or what might be wired to its other end. The cable probably penetrated all the way through the ice, and into the unfrozen water below. Gunny assumed that the remote triggering device, whatever that might be, was hanging at the submerged end of the cable. There wasn’t really any way to test that assumption, but it seemed logical, and no one else on the team could suggest an alternative.

Of more immediate importance, Gunny hadn’t found any booby traps anywhere around the charges or the initiator package. No motion sensors, no proximity detectors, and no anti-tamper devices. Whoever had planted these explosives had apparently depended on secrecy and the remote location for protection. It would have worked too, Gunny figured, if some intelligence bubba hadn’t gotten his hands on the rough coordinates of the devices. Somebody with inside knowledge had talked.

Myers and Hicks finished the Mk-26 sweep, and backed away from the device until they were well clear of the danger area. Then they made their way across the ice to Gunny’s position, Myers still carrying the L-shaped magnetic sensor.

The wind wasn’t blowing very hard, but it had a whistling quality that made conversation difficult, so Myers leaned in close and spoke loudly. “Secondary recon is complete, Gunny. No big surprises. I count six shaped-charges of roughly thirty pounds each. Cyclohexyl-based plastic explosives. The Fido samples called out cyclic nitramine with high mercury content. Looks like Russian military-grade RDX to me.”

Gunny nodded. He’d gotten the same readings. “Continue.”

“All six charges are wired to a central initiator, enclosed in an insulated housing. On the RTR-4, it looks like a couple of blocks of electronics, connected to each other, to the charges, and to a cable that runs down through the ice.”

Gunny nodded again. The report matched his own assessment.

“No signs of any anti-tamper devices,” Myers said. “I didn’t spot any proximity detectors, no motion sensors, no tripwires. Nothing.” He shrugged. “I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think our render-safe procedure is going to be pretty simple. I say we take out the initiator with the PAN, and use Niffers to cut all six pairs of firing wires simultaneously.”

The PAN, short for Percussion-Actuated Non-electric Disrupter, was a specialty tool of the EOD trade. Consisting of a long stainless steel barrel attached to an adjustable metal frame, the PAN used blank 12-gauge shotgun shells to fire specially-designed slugs into bomb components, destroying key circuits or mechanisms, and making the bomb inoperative.

Niffer was the common pronunciation of the abbreviation NFR, which stood for Nonvolatile Fast-Response Wire Cutter. A Niffer was a tube-shaped device — about the size of a fountain pen — that could be attached to a small bundle of electrical wires, and sever them on command. Unlike the PAN, which had been invented specifically for Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Niffers had been adapted from the American movie industry, where special effects technicians used them to remotely control pyrotechnic charges for action films.

“Good plan,” Gunny said. “That’s about what I was thinking. But I want to take out that Kevlar cable at the same time.” He jerked a thumb in the direction of the device. “Odds are, that cable leads to a remote trigger. We’d probably be okay if we left it in place. But I don’t want to gamble if we don’t have to. So we take it out of the equation, just to be on the safe side.”

Staff Sergeant Myers nodded. “Understood. How do you want to cut the cable? It’s too heavy for the Niffers, and we’re already using the PAN to disrupt the initiator package.”

“Let’s pop it with detonating cord,” Gunny said. “The cable is Kevlar, so it’s going to be resistant, but a couple of loops of det. cord ought to do the trick.”

“Roger,” Myers said. “I should have thought of that.”

Gunny Armstrong slapped him on the shoulder. “You will next time.”

Myers gave him a thumbs-up, his hand almost cartoonishly large in the thick cold weather glove. “Roger that,” he said.

The Staff Sergeant looked out across the grubby surface of the ice, in the direction of the device. “Is it just me? Or is this turning out to be too easy?”

“Don’t count your chickens,” Gunny said. “When we’ve finished the render-safe procedure on this site and the second site, you can tell me all about how easy this all was while we’re riding home in that raggedy-ass chopper. Until then, make sure you keep eyes in the back of your head, Marine.”

Myers nodded. “Will do, Gunny.” He turned and walked toward the team’s pile of equipment, to select the gear they’d need to safe the explosives.

Gunny Armstrong watched the younger Marine go without speaking. He was feeling it too: the nagging suspicion that this mission was proceeding just a little too smoothly. EOD jobs never went this easily, not even in training exercises.

He kept wondering if they had forgotten something, if all four members of his team had overlooked some critical detail. But as hard as he wracked his brain, he couldn’t think of a thing.

Then again, maybe it wasn’t something they’d missed. Maybe it was a premonition.

The idea brought a grunt of disdain. Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Armstrong did not believe in premonitions. That crap was for the Psychic Hotline; dial 1-800-Mystic-Bullshit.

He shook his head. It was just a case of the heebie-jeebies. His best bet of getting out of this in one piece was to forget about premonitions and focus on doing the job safely and correctly.

He picked his way across the ice, toward the spot where Staff Sergeant Myers was breaking out the gear. Gunny spoke to himself as he walked, his voice swallowed up by the whistling wind. It was an unconscious thing; he wasn’t even aware that he was doing it. “This ain’t gonna work,” he said to himself. “It ain’t gonna fucking work.”