Every Second

58

Coyote Mountains, New York

The air ambulance helicopter whipped dirt and stones into the air, forcing emergency crews on the ground to turn away as it landed in a small clearing on the jagged hilltop.

Less than an hour earlier, after the Ferring brothers had gotten down from the ridge, Sidney Ferring had made a 911 call to a Greene County emergency services dispatcher who then set events in motion, alerting several agencies to a mountain trauma rescue.

On the scene now as the chopper put down were Greene County deputies, state police out of Cairo, forest rangers, and a K-9 unit that was checking the cabin and the trail to the outbuilding.

Crouching as they left the chopper with medical bags, the flight paramedic and flight nurse stepped down the hillside to join Greene County paramedics who’d arrived earlier with a scoop stretcher and gear.

They’d cleared away the branches and had set out working on the male patient when the chopper team arrived at the base of the slope.

“We’ve got vitals! He’s got multiple GSWs, multiple fractures, maybe spinal injuries,” one of the paramedics shouted. “Lost a lot of blood. Doesn’t look good.”

As they worked to get the patient on the stretcher and start an IV, one of the county paramedics shouted, “Stop!”

Everyone halted.

“He’s wearing a bomb vest! Everybody step back!”

Amid the blood-caked dirt and needles covering the patient, a canvas vest with various compartments, wires and a blinking red light of a battery pack was now visible.

The teams backed off several yards, using a rock formation as a shield as they shouted over the thud of the waiting helicopter.

“He’s that bank manager from Queens!” one of the county paramedics said.

“If we don’t move him now, he’ll die,” the flight paramedic called out.

“Yeah, but if that vest blows, we could all die! We need the bomb squad,” the flight nurse said.

“There’s no time. He’ll bleed out before they get here!”

“Wait! One of the deputies up top did bomb disposal work when he was with the army or marines.” The county paramedic shouted for help into his radio.

Less than a minute later, Greene County deputy sheriff Kyle O’Mara, who’d served with the US Army in Baghdad, hurried down the hill and huddled behind the rock with the paramedics, listening and looking toward the patient as they told him what they’d found.

“I’ll take a look,” O’Mara shouted then moved toward the patient.

He knelt over the bleeding man, studying the vest. The packs looked to him like C-4, which was material that was hard to obtain. He sniffed them for the characteristic smell of C-4 but was still not certain. He knew C-4 would not explode when moved or dropped and given the man’s injuries, he likely tumbled off the edge of the climb without detonating the bomb. Still, he was wary. The arming mechanism looked genuine and rigged to a remote detonation pack, but it wasn’t that sophisticated by his estimation.

With the helicopter thundering, the vest’s battery light ticking down and blood oozing from the patient, O’Mara knew he had to make a decision now.

Betting his life, he reached for the wire he believed would disarm the vest.

“It’s just you and me, buddy,” O’Mara said as he pinched a yellow wire, getting ready to pull it. “Our Father, who art in Heaven…”