Apaches - Lorenzo Carcaterra [31]
“My mother thinks it’s the work,” Geronimo told him. “Each day can be my last.”
“That is true of all men,” the old man said. “No matter the job. Only with yours, the fear cannot be hidden.”
Geronimo sipped from a cup of coffee and nodded. “That’s what I like about it,” he said. “I like knowing that any day could be my last. I like facing the fear.”
“Have you ever surrendered to it?” the old man asked as he tossed the remains of his coffee into the fire, causing flames to spit higher. “Allowed the fear to win?”
“No,” Geronimo said.
“Fear waits for us all,” the old man said. “And when your day comes, you will know the heart of your strength.”
“I’m not afraid of a bomb killing me,” Geronimo said.
“What then?” the old man asked.
“I’m afraid of a bomb not killing me,” Geronimo said. “It’s my only fear.”
“A warrior is meant to die in battle,” the old man said, nodding in agreement. “Not left behind for other men to pity.”
“I see some of the guys who used to work Bomb Squad,” Geronimo said. “They come around once in a while, looking lost and empty. Legs missing, arms gone, eyes blown out. Acting as if they want to go on with their lives. But in their hearts they curse that bomb for not taking them when it went.”
“Then pray, Delgaldo,” the old man said. “Pray for death.”
• • •
GERONIMO WAS STUCK in traffic near the Williamsburg Bridge and a half hour late for an appointment with his mother’s doctor when he heard the call over his police scanner. The radio was calling the Brooklyn Bomb Squad to an abandoned warehouse in the Flatbush section to scan a suspicious device on the third floor. Geronimo looked at the clock on the dashboard and at the clogged cars in front of him. The morning papers were tossed on the seat across from him, each folded open to the sports section. Geronimo loved basketball nearly as much as he loved taking down bombs. In between stop-and-go traffic moves, he clocked the scores from the previous night’s playoffs.
It was a sunny April morning in 1980, and Geronimo was only a few hours into his first Saturday off in three months.
The female voice over the scanner called the bomb unit for a second time, confirming the device and requesting backup patrol to seal off the area. Geronimo looked at the rows of cars ahead of him, snarled in four roads to nowhere, and slapped a red cherry cop light on the roof of his Chevy Impala.
He was on the scene in ten minutes.
He got out of the car, flipped his shield over the collar of a light tan sweater, and nodded to two officers holding back a row of onlookers.
“What’s the word?” he asked.
“Bomb guys just went in,” one cop, the younger of the two, said. “Must be serious shit. They came in three trucks.”
“Only way we know what goes down is when the guys walk out of the building,” the other cop, older, more seasoned, said. “Or if we hear a blast.”
“You in on this?” the young cop asked.
“No,” Geronimo said, shaking his head and eyeballing the crowd. “Just waiting for rush hour to thin.”
“Bar be a better place to wait,” the older cop said.
“I don’t drink,” Geronimo said, walking past a police barricade and into the gathered crowd.
• • •
HE CHECKED THE eyes and body language of the bystanders. Bombers plant devices for two reasons. They like the rush of the blast, relishing the fact that it was their handiwork that caused panic and destruction. The other reason is more basic.
They crave attention.
Geronimo had seen the statistics. More than three-quarters of bombers are cop buffs who make regular calls into the hot lines set up after a blast. Twenty-seven percent of all potential bomb suspects in the New York City area have, at one time in their lives, taken the police exam.
And 65 percent stay on the scene.
The bomber waits quietly among the crowd, wanting to see if the bomb unit can beat him at what he does best. If there is a blast, the bomber is among the first