Healy said, “What's the first goal?”

Rune grinned. “Don't get anybody's ass blown up.”

“Mine included. First we evacuate the area and set up a frozen zone.”

“Frozen?”

“We call it a frozen zone. Maybe a thousand yards wide. Then we'll put a command post behind armor or sandbags somewhere within that area. We have these remote-control robots with video cameras and X rays and stethoscopes and we send one up to take a look at the thing.”

“To listen for the ticking?”

“Yep. Exactly.” He nodded at her. “You'd think everybody'd be using battery-powered digital timer-detonators — Hollywood again. But ninety percent of the bombs we deal with are really crude, homemade. Pipe bombs, black or smokeless powder, dynamite, match heads in conduit. And most of these use good old-fashioned dime-store alarm clocks. You need two pieces of metal coming together to complete the circuit and set off the detonating cap. What's better for that than a windup alarm clock with a bell and clapper on top? So, we look and listen. Then if it really is an IED and we can disarm without any risk we do a render-safe. If it's a tricky circuit or we think it'll go off we get it into the containment vehicle.” He nodded toward the field near the shack. “And bring it here and blow it up ourselves.”

They walked outside. Two young men stood a hundred yards away from them in one of the three deep pits dug into the field. They wound what looked like plastic clothesline around a square, olive-drab box.

Rune looked around. She said, “This looks just like the Underworld.”

Healy frowned. He asked her, “Eliot Ness?”

“No, like Hades, I mean. You know, hell.”

“Oh, yeah — your analysis of the crime scene the other day.” Healy looked back to the men in the pit. He said to Rune, “You have to understand something about explosives. In order to be effective, they have to be explosive only under certain conditions. If you make this stuff that blows up when you look at it cross-eyed, well, that's not going to be real useful now, is it? Hell, most explosives you can destroy by burning them. They don't blow up; they just burn. So to make it go bang, you need detonators. Those're powerful bits of explosive that set off the main charge. Remember the C-4 that they used in the second bombing? If you don't have the detonator surrounded by at least a half inch of C-4 you might not get a bang at all.”

She heard enthusiasm in his voice. She thought how good it is when you've found the one thing in life that you're really good at and that you enjoy doing for a living.