…1 minute remaining…
Miriam felt a drop of sweat roll down her forehead, but
she could not reach up and wipe it away. She could not do much of anything with
her hands right now seeing as they were both hovering over the innards of a
bomb! She only had to look at it to know they could not just let the device
detonate. Even getting the thing to the bomb range would have been useless. The
thing had to be taken care of, disarmed, here and now. She was face-to-digital
timer with a suitcase nuke.
She
considered the guts of the explosive device before her, willing her body to
shiver so that her hands did not. It was chilling, the whole thing could fit in
an average briefcase, yet it could level this city and lay waste to most of the
countryside around it.
…45 seconds…
She needed to be ruthless
with herself. She had to maintain absolute control over her every action. She
could not let fear drive her. There was plenty of time if she could remain
cool. The bomb was powerful, but in its own way it was not complex. She made her eyes follow the wires, made her
mind identify the components of the device, the timer, the switch, the
detonator, and the payload. There were very few redundancies or false leads;
the device builder was not interested in subtlety or elegance. This was all the
better for her.
…30 seconds…
She
took deep, cleansing breaths, rigidly keeping them under her control, ignoring
the urge to hyperventilate or even hold her breath, both of which could lead to
a black out and that would be a disaster. Slowly she maneuvered her
wire-cutters over to the proper leads, the wires her training and solid
judgment and experience told her were vital to the operation of the device. She
slipped a little, her cutters missing her intended mark. She growled inwardly
as she felt the prickly shiver of cold sweat run over her body. So much was riding on this, on her. She could
not afford to make a single mistake.
…15 seconds…
The
cutters were over the right wires. Her eyes wandered the device, checking,
double checking. She had to be absolutely sure; there would be no second
chance. Not for her, or for anyone else within the next hundred miles or so.
…10 seconds…
She
was certain that she had identified the right wires to cut. She had remained as
calm and analytical as anyone in her situation could be. She had only to make
the cuts and it would all be over. She thought about all the people whose very
lives balanced on this critical moment. She just had to do it. She told her fingers to squeeze and make the
cut, only to discover they would not respond to her commands. She was frozen,
trapped in hesitation. If she could not shake this, everyone was doomed.
…5 seconds…
Cut!
She mentally screamed at the fingers that held the wire cutters.
…4 seconds…
Cut
Damn You!
…3 seconds…
CUT!
…2 seconds…
She
felt her fingers move, she felt the stiff sensation that had flooded her body flee
like darkness from a suddenly switched on light. She felt the wire-cutters slice
through the plastic insulation and metal wire and out of the plastic insulation
again. She glanced at the timer, the screen was blank. She looked at the
switch, it remained un-switched. She had
made it. Just in time she had made it. Miriam rose, taking her lucky, ceramic
wire cutters with her as she did. She took exactly ten steps away as the other
demolitions disposal techs rushed to dismantle, disarm, and transport the
separate components of the bomb away. They barely paid her any notice as they
battled their own fears and concerns. As
the adrenaline and all the other chemicals and hormones she’d ignored finally
wreaked their havoc on her body she fell to her knees and let it happen. She
didn’t remember if she cried or shouted or screamed or simply collapsed. She
stared at the beautiful cloud-filled sky for a while. She always was a pragmatist
however, so she did eventually think that it was going to cost a fortune to get
whatever filth was in the asphalt she was lying on out of her black dress and
frilly white apron. She also remembered that her hair band was probably also
out of skew and she more than likely looked a fright. When the others came to
pick her up, she was still lying there, chuckling to herself about it. Some
might have called her a hero, but to her it was just another day on the job.
