Brute Force

25

My first job was to deal with the fishing line leading to the front wheel. No way was I just going to cut it with the knife. There was no telling how much tension it would take to trigger the thing, and cutting would create tension. Instead, I flicked the lighter and played the flame close to the device so there'd be no line left dangling to snag or pull.

The prime initiation mechanism was now dead, but that wasn't the same as saying the whole IED was. I still had to assume there was an anti-handling device.

I flicked the lighter again and held the tip of the dinner knife in the flame until it glowed. It took so long my thumb got scalded.

I put the knife straight to the two-strand end of the box and managed to cut through the plastic for a few seconds before the steel went cold. Then I had to roast my thumb all over again. I finally cut a two-inch square hole, and shone the torch inside.

There were no surprises. My fingertips touched a thin plastic sheet about halfway down. It would be sitting on top of a slab of PE. A clothes peg had been glued in place at each end. The torch beam also caught the outline of a test tube. Aball bearing glinted inside. I'd found the anti-handling device.

I probed further. I could feel a drawing pin in the jaws of each of the clothes pegs. They were touching, and therefore completing an electrical circuit. I felt for the plastic disc that would have sat between them until whoever had placed the bomb yanked it away with the two strands of fishing line.

I pressed open the peg and eased the disc back into place. The drawing-pin terminals were separated again. The circuit was broken. That just left the anti-handling booby trap.

The bomber had wedged a little bit of cardboard under one end of the Tupperware box to create enough of a gradient for the ball bearing to roll to the bottom of the tube. As soon as it rolled back up, either because the car was mobile, or because the device had been disturbed, the ball bearing would touch the two nails protruding from the rubber bung in the open end. The nails were connected to wires. Asecond circuit would have been completed when the ball bearing bridged the gap.

I pulled one wire free, took a deep breath and pulled the box gingerly from the chassis. It wasn't easy; the magnets were strong, and I didn't want to jerk the device.

Keeping it nice and level in case there was yet another anti-handling mechanism I hadn't spotted, I lowered it to the ground next to me. I wriggled out into the open air then reached back and retrieved it.

I carried it into the house. It weighed a good couple of kilos, more than enough PE to blow all three of us to smithereens. Half a kilo would have killed the driver, especially if the charge had been shaped to direct most of the brisance up my arse and through the top of my head. Whoever had placed it didn't give a shit about collateral damage.

I placed the bomb on the kitchen table then went into the front room and switched on the TV. I didn't have to wait long. As I hopped from channel to channel, my old mate Richard Isham appeared on the screen.

'You were at his funeral today,' the reporter said. 'Any thoughts on Liam Duff you'd like to share?' Isham did his best to conjure up a look of infinite grief. 'I've known him since we were both in the cages of Long Kesh. He was a popular and likable person.'

Yeah, right. Until about two weeks ago.

Isham said he'd been drafting a speech when the call came through to tell him of Duff's murder. 'The news came as a tremendous shock and surprise – especially the horrific way in which he had died.'

How had he reacted to the revelation that Duff had been a British double agent?

Isham gave a shrug of his shoulders. 'Philosophically.'

Any thoughts on who'd murdered him?

The camera pulled back for a wider shot of the funeral cortège, and I caught a fleeting glimpse of Little Miss Camcorder. She was filming the interview.

Isham was swift to align himself with the London and Dublin governments. 'Neither of them believe Republicans killed him. The IRA said it did not kill Duff and I believe them. You have to remember, Special Branch and the British intelligence agencies are forever trying to undermine and work against the peace process. Investigations in the past have found evidence of British agencies being involved in dirty tricks and criminal acts, including murder. The jury is out on this one.'

I'd seen enough.

I went back to the kitchen and switched on all the lights. Only now did I risk peeling off the lid. It was a simple but extremely well-made device. Every component had been glued onto the sheet of plastic resting on top of the big yellow block of plastic explosive. All the wires connecting the clothes-peg and test-tube circuits to the battery in the corner were glued down. This wasn't amateur hour.

I disconnected the wires from the battery terminals one at a time, and then removed the battery altogether. I touched the ends of the wires to earth them, and then twisted them together. It could take less than two ohms of current to set one of these off, and you generate that just by rubbing your hands together. Now no amount of electrical leakage in the house or even a freak thunderstorm could detonate this thing.

I prised the plastic circuit board away from the yellow slab and cut the two wires leading from it. None of this red wire, blue wire business – I just cut whatever I could.

Once the det was out, I twisted its wires together and put it to one side. All that was left was the block of Semtex. They hadn't skimped. There was enough there to blow up an armoured Land Rover. Without a detonator, the PE was harmless. You can even burn it, which was exactly what I intended to do.

A lot of care and attention had gone into the construction of the circuit. All four drawing pins had been roughened with emery cloth to ensure a good contact. Even the nails inside the test tube had been rubbed down, and the ball bearing had been polished free of any contamination. And most significant of all, every one of the connections between wires was finished off with Chinese pigtails.

If nothing else, I knew where this fucker had been to bomb school.