Who Cares!

Who Cares!

The pain had been with him since Haley’s death. It had been six years and his numbness to life was acute. Nothing mattered and his ability to care about anything had been amputated by one selfish act of stupidity. The only thing he cared about had been removed as completely as if it had never existed. Suicide hurts only the survivors.

“If they only knew”, he mused as he gingerly removed the screws securing the cover of the box, casually flipping the screwdriver over his shoulder as he finished. He flipped the cover in the same way one might remove the lid on a plastic bowl and it “snapped” just as crisply. The possibility that a mercury switch might have been installed to prevent prying hands from accessing the controls didn’t appear to faze Bills confidence. He had exposed a complicated nest of wires and circuit boards that may be the detonator, or just a clever decoy, in these cases no one never knew for sure.

IED’s were the most dangerous thing known, and now they had been found in New York City and were even more dangerous than the ones in Iraq. Access to sophisticated electronics and extraordinary invovation had become deadly in the hands of radicals. These new devices had more fail-safe triggers and bobby traps than anything previously encountered. Anything could set them off instantly. Often the maker was near enough to use a cell-phone to detonate the device as soon as someone began to disarm it.

This one was at least a little less dangerous now. Upon arrival Bill ripped off the shroud of ball bearings in the same way a child a opens a Christmas present; quickly and without regard to anything. That is why they call him the best. No fear.

Bill separated the bundle of wires so all six were easily accessible. This maker’s device signature is well know, clipping the wires in the wrong order had already killed six others. Bill looked down at the device and casually reached into his coat pocket extracting his cutters. He smiled and quickly clipped all six wires in not particular order at all. Nothing happened. The device is dead.

Bill walked from the building giving the all clear as he flipped the brick of C-4 to a waiting detective.

Bill is the one they want when everything is in jeopardy and no one else is steady enough to risk it all. He has nerves of steel and is unflappable with a sense of calm that he maintains in the most perilous of situations. They call him fearless, but what they don’t understand is that he just doesn’t care.