“As fast as we can make a phone call,” I say.
Setting the screwdriver down, I pick up my phone and quickly punch in the number and wait. The line rings, and a moment later, Lieb Tal’s face fills the screen.
“Chief Wilder,” he says in his usual sober tone. “What is it? Have you found Ashley?”
“We have. But there’s a problem—”
“How can I help?”
I turn the phone so he can see the device attached to the lock, then turn it around so he’s looking at me again.
“We need to defuse this device. It looks like if we try to cut it off the lock, it will detonate,” I tell him. “Please tell me you have some experience with explosives.”
He nods. “I learned a great many things in the IDF.”
“Good to know,” I say with a heavy breath of relief. “So, what do we do?”
“The first thing you must do is make sure there isn’t a tripwire behind the face of the device,” he says. “If you pull that facing off and there is a tripwire behind it, removing it without disconnecting the wire will set it off.”
I glance at Astra, who looks as alarmed as I feel. “This is may be the best phone call you’ve ever made,” she gasps.
“Right?” I reply with a slight tremor in my voice. “Okay, so walk me through this, Lieb.”
“First, you must carefully remove the facing. Typically, you will have a couple inches of play in the wire behind it, so take out the screws and then very gently pull the facing off just enough to allow you to see behind it.”
“Copy that,” I say. “Astra, hold the facing while I pull out the screws.”
She nods and moves herself into position with hands on either side of the facing. I set the phone down so Lieb can see us as he helps guide us through this minefield. I pull the screws out and let them fall to the concrete flooring. When I have them all unscrewed, I give Astra a nod, and with trembling hands, she gingerly pulls the facing back an inch. When there’s a big enough gap for me to see inside, I lean close and shine my flashlight behind the device.
“I see it. You were right, Lieb. There’s a yellow wire that runs from the facing to the device itself,” I tell him.
“That’s likely your tripwire,” he says. “Can you see where it is plugged into a circuit board inside the device itself?”
“I do.”
“You have to unplug the tripwire from the circuit board,” he says. “And you have to do it very carefully. Be gentle. Do not yank it.”
“Copy that,” I say. “You okay, Astra?”
She nods. “About as well as I can be dealing with a bomb ready to blow up in my face.”
A sly grin curls the corners of my mouth. “Kind of wishing you’d gone outside like I repeatedly asked you to do?”
“Is this really the time to be mocking me?”
“I might not get another chance.”
“Not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
I fish a pair of tweezers from the toolkit and insert them behind the housing. The yellow wire looks like it’s been soldered into an adaptor of some kind, and that adaptor is then plugged into the board. I get the idea that if the wire is yanked and comes out of the adaptor, it’s game over. But if I’m able to remove the adaptor from the board, we’re still in the game.
I gently grasp the adaptor with the tweezers as a bead of sweat rolls down my face and hangs on the edge of my brow, quivering wildly just before it falls. Swallowing hard, I try to control the shaking in my hand as I grip the adaptor and start to pull. The tweezers slip, and I suck in a hard breath as the metal ends press hard against the yellow wire; I say a silent word of thanks to whomever might be listening when it doesn’t disconnect from the adaptor.
“That was close,” I whisper, half-afraid if I speak too loudly, it’ll finish the job.
“You can do this, Chief Wilder,” Lieb says on the phone.
“Yeah. What he said,” Astra says, her voice as low and shaky as mine.
Moving slowly and deliberately, I grab the base of the adaptor with the tweezers again and hold my breath as I wiggle it, feeling it loosen in the socket. Blowing out a breath, then drawing in another, I tighten my grip, then pull a little harder; and when the adaptor comes out of the socket with a soft clicking sound, I let the tweezers fall. They hit the concrete with a high-pitched ping and bounce away as I double over, hands on my knees, and try to catch my breath.
“Excellent work, Chief Wilder,” Lieb says.
“Yeah,” Astra says breathlessly. “What he said.”
“Agent Russo, you can now safely remove the facing,” Lieb instructs.
With a triumphant whoop, Astra tosses the faceplate and we watch it hit the floor with a sharp clang. We both take a moment to gather ourselves before I pick up the phone again, and I’m glad to see my hand isn’t shaking quite as hard.
“Okay, what’s next?” I ask Lieb.
“Let me see the device,” he says.
I turn the phone around and let him study it, changing the angles when he asks me to. After a couple of minutes, he says he’s ready to walk me through disarming it.
“The good news is that the man who built this is not an expert at bomb-making,” Lieb says. “His design is very rudimentary. Likely something he read in a book or on the Internet.”
