Depraved Indifference Read Online Free PDF Page A

chimpanzee.”
    â€œCome on, Daphne, it doesn’t do any good to think like that. You know the rules. Guy flashes a teddy bear and says there’s a grenade in it and he wants to go to Cuba, it’s next stop Havana, no questions asked.”
    Daphne sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
    â€œWhat about the others?”
    â€œOh, Jerry’s fine. Alice, not so good.”
    â€œOh? What’s happening with her?”
    â€œConcrete smile, but watch the eyes. This is scaring the piss out of her, poor kid. Good thing it’s not a bunch of Ay-rabs with machine guns. Getting chummy with the boys in the back, too. Hand and foot service.”
    â€œStockholm syndrome.”
    â€œLooks like it.”
    â€œYou can handle it, Daphne,” said Gunn, hoping it were so.
    Daphne laughed, a low throaty sound. “Hell, yes. Count on that tough nut Daphne!” She left the flight deck, closing the door behind her.
    Connelly finished his conversation and turned to Gunn. “Montreal has us cleared to land. They’ve diverted traffic and have emergency and tankers standing by on D-19.”
    Rodman Neck, the southernmost extension of Hunter Island, looks from the air like the head of a retriever emerging from the Bronx to sniff the waters of Eastchester Bay. Where the dog’s nose would be, the New York City Police Department has fenced off a large chunk of real estate to serve as its outdoor shooting range. Besides the half dozen firing ranges there is a mock city street where cops are taught to shoot cardboard silhouettes of armed criminals and not silhouettes of moms pushing strollers, as well as the kennels for the department’s dope- and explosive-sniffing dogs. In the approximate center of this compound is the bomb range.
    It was nearly three o’clock before Terry Doyle began to work on the pot bomb. X rays of it showed a shadowy pressure cooker with what looked like a half brick at the bottom. Wires descended from the lid of the pot and disappeared under the brick. They had X-rayed the envelope too. It contained only paper: a demand by the Croatians that a manifesto listing their complaints be published in the Times , the News , and the international Herald Tribune . The manifesto was included, neatly typed.
    Doyle was working now in the bottom of a well made of packed earth. A dogleg vestibule was built into the well, from which a ladder led to the surface. The vestibule was in case you were deactivating a device and it gave you some warning that it was going to blow up. Then you could run into the vestibule, or throw the device into the vestibule if it was small enough, so that you had some buffer from the blast. There was a deep sump around the floor of the well for the same purpose. Of course, you had to have lightning-fast reflexes. Or a slow fuse.
    Doyle had the pot on a heavy plywood table in front of him. He was still dressed in his armor, with the helmet in place. Only his hands were bare. You can’t deactivate bombs if you’re worried about losing your hands.
    â€œI’m going to snip the external wires,” Doyle said over his telephone. Its cable led to the bomb-range command bunker, forty yards away, and Sergeant John Doheny. Doheny said, “Cutting wires. Go ahead.”
    Doyle cut the blue and yellow wires and bent them carefully out of the way. Then he cut the red and black wires, telling Doheny what he was doing before and after each cut.
    â€œOK, I’m turning the center handle counterclockwise. The clamp is loose. I’m rotating the lid counterclockwise. The lugs are clear. I’m lifting the lid. I’m shining the flash into the pot. I see a—it looks like a regular construction brick. I’m putting the lid down on the table. I’m pulling the yellow wire out from under the brick. It’s free. I’m pulling the blue wire—it won’t come loose. OK, I see that the brick is glued to the bottom of the pot. There’s