Brian Freemantle - The Watchmen

Cowley was as close as it was possible to get, in the team’s control scanner halfway between the monument and the Sylvan Theatre, watching the instant television relay and listening to its accompanying commentary. It was tightly crowded. Besides the normal three liaison men, Pamela Darnley was there with him, together with a Parks Authority inspector with every available plan-as well as personal knowledge-to guide the team on anything that needed explaining once inside the hollow obelisk.

Which they weren’t yet. Painfully, quite literally, aware of the New Rochelle booby-trap, Cowley had disregarded the impatient assurance from the bomb squad leader that they didn’t require that sort of advice and urged that every inch of the surrounding ground be swept for mines, trip wires, or pressure sensors-for anything, in fact-before they even attempted to approach the monument itself.

They’d been doing that now for an hour, the scene made glaringly white bright by the searchlights of a concentrated circle of police and military helicopters. Other official helicopters revolved around that inner core to keep media machines out of what had been declared a civilian no-fly zone. All incoming and departing aircraft to Reagan Airport had been warned or diverted.

The body heat of three extra people inside the enclosed van was challenging its air conditioning. They were all in shirt sleeves-Cowley glad of Pamela’s perfume-and all wore headsets and mikes directly linking them to the outside crew.

Just as he was beginning to be embarrassed by a feeling of boredom, the team leaders declared, “Nothing! We’re going in. The park man there? Like to go through what we shouldn’t be nervous about finding right inside the door?”

Before the man to Cowley’s right could respond, another voice said, “Lambert here. It could help us if you filmed as much as possible as you go.”

There was an overly heavy sigh from the team leader, Nelson Tibbert. “Trust us. We’ll try to beat Spielberg to the Oscar before we get blown to hell. Which we hope we don’t. And I wish to Christ people wouldn’t keep telling us our job.”

“Just doing my job, too, buddy,” said Paul Lambert, who headed the FBI’s forensic team. They’d waited throughout the outside search in a larger van immediately behind that in which Cowley hunched. Lambert added, “We’re all holding our lucky rabbit’s feet for you.”

“Thanks,” said the bomb disposal head. Nelson Tibbert was a black man as overpoweringly big as Jefferson Jones: Cowley hadn’t needed the reminding comparison or the memory of six tiny, tightly closed faces.

Into Cowley’s headset came the voice of Michael Poulson, the parks official fortunately jammed against his left, good side. The man didn’t bother with his plans precisely to describe the entry vestibule, pay booths, and where the walkway would be found in relation to the central elevators. All the monument’s electrical power had been cut from the mains, against the possibility of further explosives being connected to its operating supply-the up-and-down elevator current being the most obvious. Poulson set out where the mains and generator-activated emergency systems would be found. He also itemized the emergency firefighting and medical equipment at the various levels up to the three hundredth level.

“Followed you through on my plan,” confirmed Tibbert. “And the door’s open and welcoming.”

It had been Cowley who’d ordered the service door left open by the quickly evacuated parks engineer who’d gone to investigate the alarm triggered by the explosion. Cowley’s head ached, despite a second Tylenol, and he’d already smiled and nodded his gratitude to Pamela for straining away from any contact with his injured side.

The scene-recording cameraman was leading-with no one in view-and Cowley’s immediate impression was of the minimally lit underwater television footage of the finding of the Titanic , even to the man’s heavy breathing that interspersed his commentary. He matched his description to everything he closely filmed on the ground floor.

The engineer had told them he’d trodden on every step both going up and coming down (‘You can’t manage six hundred taking them two at a time’), which would have tripped any wire, but the ascent was still slow, hands coming into the frame, touching and gently probing every step and running up each support to the handrails on either side. Each step was methodically counted off as it was climbed. The breathing became louder. Every man was dressed in the heaviest of armored protective suits, Cowley remembered.

Cowley didn’t have any irrational feeling of boredom any longer but just as irrational was the demanding, intrusive thought that he’d missed something-misinterpreted or misjudged-and the perspiration was more at the fear of that misinterpretation causing further death and injury than from the claustrophobic heat of the van. Pamela turned to him questioningly when he took off his headset, silently mouthing “What?” He shook his head, not bothering to hide the grimace at the sharp jab of pain. He turned down the earpiece volume, for a moment not wanting the distraction of the commentary.

Nothing had been overlooked-couldn’t have been overlooked! He hadn’t questioned the engineer alone, organized this alone. There’d been the bomb squad and their commander and a lot of other FBI personnel-Pamela among them-and the unseen, totally armor-suited men now groping with agonizing slowness around the pitch-black inside of the monument carried every sort and type of detection and neutralizing equipment. So there was nothing more. But Cowley couldn’t shake the conviction that there was.

Pamela took her own headset off and leaned close to him, although still carefully not touching. “What?” she said again quietly.

“I’ve got a bad feeling. What haven’t we done?”

She frowned, silent for several moments. “Nothing.”

“I think there is. Something we haven’t read properly.”

Pamela laid her hand on his arm. “A lot of professionals are involved.” He shouldn’t be here! It wasn’t the deal. She’d done exactly what she thought they’d agreed, by calling him after she’d been alerted, but hadn’t expected him to come like this, not trusting her by herself.

“They haven’t read it, either.”

The gaping break in the stairway came abruptly into view. Cowley put his headset back on in time to hear the panting cameraman say, “Here!”

“Careful!” came Tibbert’s voice. “Let me pass.”

Cowley’s underwater impression increased when the squad leader came partially into view. The metalled fabric of his armor and helmet glistened in the camera’s strobe. From his back, which was how the man filled the lens, he actually looked fishlike: a prehistoric monster from some very deep lagoon. Adding to the imagery, Tibbert gently directed a heat sensor on the end of a hydraulically extended arm, moving it like a patient fisherman over every part of the hole and its surroundings.

“No register,” Tibbert reported.

He repeated the process with what Cowley knew, from watching the equipment check, to be a device that could identify a variety of known explosive compounds from their odors.

“No register,” he said again.

“Is it structurally safe?” demanded Cowley.

Tibbert probed with a stiff, rubber-encased rod before putting his weight on each of the intervening steps, until he reached the very edge of the break. “It would seem so. The perspective approaching the hole from below is confusing. The three steps have not been completely blown away. There is still some base left to every tread.” As he spoke, the camera came up alongside, illustrating what he was describing. The picture was repeatedly whitened as another member of the squad took flashlit still photographs. “The damage is substantial, but my assessment is that it was a comparatively small charge …. I can see what looks to be explosive debris-”