die.”
Grant’s boss had to think about policy, liability and potentially losing Grant. It sickened him, because he agreed with Grant, but he could not allow his man to be unprotected.
In the end, it wouldn’t help anybody.
Once he made his way to Cole, Grant gave him a thumbs-up.
“Hey, there, Cole. My name’s Bill and I’ll get you out of this thing just as soon as I can, okay?”
Cole nodded.
The ESU officer smiled at Cole. He wanted to stay but had been ordered to leave.
Grant knelt before Cole and in the quiet began surveying the setup. He made no assumptions. The best bomb builders could be deceptive, lead you to think that the architecture was basic, simple, a walk in the park to defuse- then it was over. Grant estimated that this bomb had enough velocity to take out most of the house.
He set to work.
Half a block away at the command post, Jeff and Sarah waited next to Cordelli and Brewer. With power, communication, traffic and all activity halted, the street had fallen eerily quiet.
In Manhattan, Aleena Visser was floating in and out of consciousness in her bed in the hospital’s intensive care unit. Through her morphine-induced fog she woke, urging the nurse to let her know, needing to know.
“…help, did the number help police…did I help them?”
The nurse keeping vigil turned to the detective in the room who nodded. The nurse soothed Aleena’s brow and spoke softly into her ear.
“They said you helped them save lives.”
It took a few seconds before it registered with Aleena.
Then she let go.
The machines monitoring her began sounding alarms and although the medical team tried to resuscitate her, Aleena Visser, the former newspaper reporter from Rotterdam, died.
At that moment, in Ozone Park, NYPD bomb technician Bill Grant was taking meticulous care with the explosives attached to Cole. Again and again he examined the detonation system, the wiring to a cell phone and the insertion points of the blasting caps.
The heat in the suit was unbearable, making Grant sweat profusely. He continued studying everything, scrutinizing the arrangement, double-checking and triple-checking for any decoys until he was satisfied the device was built to be triggered by a call to the cell phone. It could be detonated by one call from any phone anywhere in the world.
With all the care and precision of a surgeon, Grant deactivated the detonation system.
He swallowed, allowing relief to wash over him.
He had defused the bomb.
“That does it.” Grant winked at Cole. “Now hold still while I take care of a few little things.”
Grant cautiously detached the explosives from Cole, then helped free him from his bindings and told him to get out and go to the police vehicles.
Cole raced up the stairs, ran out of the house to the street, looking to the left and to the right before he’d spotted the police line. He cut a small, vulnerable figure in the empty street, then heard his parents’ call.
He ran toward them, faster than he’d ever run in his life.
Jeff and Sarah had broken through the line. Cole flung himself into his mother’s arms. Jeff took both of them into his, engulfing them as it all burst open inside him-all of his anger, guilt, confusion and fear, giving way to the flood of love and thanks for the gift he had been given.
Epilogue
Late Friday afternoon. Sunlight streamed through the open bay doors at Clay Platt’s Auto Service where Jeff finished repairing a clutch on a Chev.
He went to his bench and reviewed the sheets of all the work he’d completed today. It included two brake jobs, a timing chain, a leaky radiator and three oil changes.
Time to clock out.
Jeff changed out of his coveralls, washed up, then stuck his head into the small office. Old Man Platt looked up at him from the books.
“Heading out?”
“Yeah.”
“Give any more thought to my offer to sell the shop?”
“I did.”
“Could work out nice for you, what with a new baby on the way.”
“I know. I’ve been talking it over with Sarah. We’ll give you an answer Monday.”
“All right, you have a good weekend, Jeff.”
It was now nearly four months since they’d returned from New York City. Guiding his pickup through Laurel’s quiet streets, Jeff reflected on its small-town heritage, from the days of the settlers to its evolution as a railway hub and a God-fearing community outside of Billings. To the west he glimpsed the Beartooth Mountains, never tiring of the view and what it meant. Life out here, where the earth meets the sky on even terms, where your sense of self- importance is either exaggerated or diminished, suited him.
Now more than ever.
He was not as shaky as he first was on everything that had happened in New York. On some nights, during the first month, Sarah woke in tears and he’d hold her until she stopped trembling. Other nights they’d hear Cole crying out in his sleep and they’d both go to him.
And there were times early in those first weeks when Jeff was jarred awake, adrenaline pumping, heart hammering with overwhelming terror, forcing him to check on Sarah and Cole to prove that they were still there.
Since then, parts of it remained crystalline. Others were a blur, like the days of the immediate aftermath. The questioning by the NYPD and the FBI, the press conference that was carried live around the globe and later the endless network interviews.
In those early stages, talking about it seemed to help. It meant they were alive, that they’d survived. They told their story over and over, then again when they returned to Laurel.
Friends embraced them, supported them.
“That’s a hell of a thing to face,” Old Man Platt had said. “Especially after all you’ve been through, Jeff, a hell of thing.”
In the time that followed, Jeff grappled with questions.
There were no answers.
The way to surmount it all was to feel whatever they were feeling, hang on and help one another.
“Take every day as it comes, and as an act of faith believe that it will get better,” Kransky told them in their counseling sessions.
And it worked.
Little by little they’d regained control of their lives. Sarah resumed teaching, drawing strength from her work.
