Chapter 59

Five o'clock and my cell was going nuts. I answered, "Johnson."

"This is Airman Franks from the team that picked up the prisoners from you earlier last night. I have some information for you."

"Go."

"There is a bomb in the South Central Tulsa Mall set to go off at ten this morning, another possible bomb in the basement of the federal building set to go at noon, and one at the West Tulsa Mall for two in the afternoon. We think there may be another somewhere, but no one knows exactly where. I'll call you as soon as we have more information. Do you need me to repeat that?"

"Got it Airman Franks, I thank you and Tulsa thanks you. Good man."

I called Sandy, "I've just heard from one of the airmen who are transporting the men we caught at the hotel. The prisoners say you have a bomb at South Central Tulsa Mall going off at ten, one at the Federal Building set to go off at noon, and another at the West Tulsa Mall set for two PM. There may be more, but let's get after the ones we know about."

"Got it, we'll blanket all three. See if you can get anything else. Let me go and I'll call you when I have an update."

I was scared, really scared for the people of Tulsa, how bad could this be? I did the shit, shower, and shave quickly and hurried downstairs. A deputy came into the lobby as I was getting off the elevator. He yelled, "Are you Johnson?"

When I nodded, he said, "I'm your driver for right now. Sandy asked me to come and get you. The ATF found the device at the Mall already and we have everyone in our building that is not evacuated looking for what is planted there."

I asked, "What about the West Tulsa Mall, that's supposedly going off at two this afternoon."

"Tulsa City has all of their off duty men going through the mall right now."

"Can we stop by the South Central Mall before we go see Sandy?"

"That's where he's at. We'll be there in fifteen minutes."

As soon as I was at the Mall, I was led through multiple barricades erected to keep shoppers and store personnel out. We went to the food court area where several people were gathered, trying to watch what was being displayed on a video monitor.

Sandy saw me coming and said, "The terrorists placed the device between two of the booths that are normally pushed flush together. Bomb guys are trying to defuse the device right now, and are about to haul it outside and set it off."

As I watched the technicians dismantling the explosive device, I had a feeling of déjà vu. I had seen this same type of device before in training and in the field. This was the same type of bomb used along the roads of Iraq, the same as the terrorists used to blow up their fellow Muslims.

I went over closer to the techs and asked, "Have either of you had military training?"

An older guy said, "A bomb's a bomb. They're all the same."

"Not all, these have a secondary trigger on the bottom in addition to the timer."

The techs stopped and the younger man asked, "What secondary switch?"

"We called it a jiggle switch as the bomb would go off when heavy equipment like a track or big truck made the road shake. If you can disarm the timer, you can move the device by sliding something firm under the bomb. If the explosive is C4, then the detonator should be easy to remove. Just be careful to disconnect the trip wire on the jiggle switch."

The older tech asked, "What's with the mousetrap?"

"That's for the detonator controlled by the jiggle switch. Just clamp it so it can't spring on you."

I backed out of the effective explosion area, hoping my input had helped the two men. I grabbed Sandy and pulled him farther away, "We should leave this here and either help at your building, or get over to the other mall. From what I saw, someone who is Al-Qaeda trained made this device. Hopefully they used the same type of device at all the locations so we can easily disarm them."

We went to the federal building to see how the search was progressing. I told Sandy, "Have someone go over the security tapes for the entrances only. See who comes in with something about the size of a small file box. You saw the size of the device at the mall. In all likelihood, the one here is about the same size. If we can see something of that size coming in, we'll know better where to look."

It was then that I noticed a sign over an elevator door that said, "Garage."

I asked one of the security men in the lobby, "Does this building have a basement garage?"

The man looked at me funny and said, "Three levels and that ain't big enough."

I went to find Sandy. He was in a security room directing men to view the tapes I had suggested.

"Sandy, you may need to look at something else. First, have someone call throughout the building to get all vehicles out of the garage immediately. Make sure you announce that any vehicles remaining will be towed and possibly destroyed."

The man realized what I was suggesting and became a little more nervous. He said, "Jesus, the garage holds almost four hundred cars?"

"Just clear them out, Sandy. A vehicle can hold a hell of lot more explosives. It can even have a fertilizer bomb like Oklahoma City."

I told the security video technicians, "Sync up videos of the garage entrance, the three floors, the garage elevator, and the lobby elevator. If the garage only lets people out through the elevator, then put one up of the lobby at the elevator so we can see who rides up and leaves. If there are other exits to the garage, we need to watch those to see who parks and leaves by another exit."

They had a dozen monitors, so they immediately began bringing up the camera views of the last twenty-four hours.

Thinking that a view of the garage might be informative, I went down to the first level and saw a stream of cars leaving. I walked around the outside walls to find stairways leading down, as well as up, to the other levels. I went up the stairway and found a door leading into the building, as well as a security "push to open" door leading outside. I pushed the door to see if it was alarmed. Nothing happened when I opened the door, no alarm sounded and no one came to investigate. This was an easy way to leave the garage. Hopefully, there is video coverage of the stairways and the exit doors to the outside.

Back down in the garage, it appeared that at least the first level was just about empty. I went down to the second lower level to see it nearly bare also. I had to walk completely around two walls to see the whole floor. Down at the third level, it was empty except for a plain white Ford E250 van. When I went up to it to look inside, I noticed a Budget car rental contract on the dash.

I also smelled diesel fuel along with a nitrate fertilizer smell. Chills went down my spine and I almost ran for the stairs. I stopped, took a deep breath, and began checking doors. They were all locked. Now I ran for the stairs. I met a video security tech coming down the stairs. He said he was going to check out a van that had parked somewhere on the third level.

I said, "I already found it, smells like diesel fuel and nitrate. We need a slim jim to open the door to see if we can disarm the timer."

He said, "I'll get ATF out here, they'll take care of it."

"Why wait, let's get this done."

"Look, Buddy, what if the bomb is hooked up to the truck battery so that if the door opens the bomb goes off."

He had me there, I replied, "Okay, hurry, let's evacuate the building. If that thing goes off it could collapse the whole place."

As soon as we were upstairs, he radioed someone who was instructed to get hold of an ATF bomb squad. I asked the tech, "Do they have more than one team of bomb techs?"

"No, just one."

I said, "They're probably still out at the South Central Mall. They were disarming the bomb found out there. How about the city, county, or state?"

The video tech thought for a minute, "Let me call over to Tinker, you know, Tinker Air Force Base, near Oklahoma City, they have a bomb squad."

I tried to hand him my cell, but he pulled his and began dialing. It took him a couple of transfers but he was able to send up an alert to have a bomb removal squad come immediately.

He turned to me and said, "They're sending a squad by helicopter with their heavy equipment truck leaving right away."

Sandy was in the lobby, so I told him what I had found. He said the video people had found the van coming in and had some good views of the driver as he went to the stairway and left the building. They were enhancing the video so they could get some pictures printed. Sandy said, "They look Mid- Eastern, Arabic."

I suggested, "We need to evacuate too, so let's go out to the West Tulsa Mall. We might be able to help there."

On the way out to the other mall, Sandy told me the ATF bomb team had disarmed the bomb and was taking it to their lab to see if they can determine where the components came from.

At the mall, we entered through the main entrance and talked to an FBI agent directing the traffic of searchers. I asked if the food court had been checked thoroughly and his response was, "Yeah, we looked over there and found nothing."

I told Sandy, the two likely areas would be the food court or the rest rooms. Let's go take a closer look at the food court. We needed to find this quickly, since if ten o'clock came around and no news of the first bomb became apparent, the bombers would know we were upon them, and if they could arm the bomb remotely, they would.

Sandy and I closely looked at the booths and all around the perimeter wall, in trashcans, and even in plants. We were walking back toward the entrance area when I looked around the big fountain in the center of the large area between the four mall walkways. This would be the best location to explode a bomb. If they could cause the ceiling to collapse in addition to the shrapnel of an explosion, the effect would be devastating.

I told Sandy, "Let's start at the fountain and circle outward from here. This would be the place to plant something."

We walked in ever widening circles looking under, on top and in everything we could. When we had covered the entire entrance and outer hallway area, we met back at the fountain, sitting on the wide wall. As we discussed where to look next, I was looking at all the coins in the pool below the fountain. I noticed that about every six feet around the pool wall was a small box that was obviously where water intakes were. As I looked around I noticed one of the intakes was long, stretching from one grilled area to the next. I went to look at it and then saw it wasn't a part of the pool. The outer cover of whatever it was looked to be duct tape.

"Sandy, come look at this. See, it isn't part of the pool, there's even a little space between it and the wall of the pool."

Sandy asked, "Should we move it?"

"Let's not, but let's see if we can get a maintenance guy to shut off the fountain and drain the pool real quick. Call the ATF guys and see if they can get over here for this one, since they've disarmed the other one."

While Sandy called the ATF, I found a mall maintenance worker and told him what I needed. He went to a closet off the main area and shut the fountain off, turned a big valve and threw a switch that pumped the water from the pool. The water level began lowering immediately. The container on the side of pool was right at six foot long and about a foot square.

By the time the ATF team arrived, the pool was empty so they could inspect what we had found. They had a portable fluoroscope and set it up to view the long box. They were watching their monitor as they moved the scope from one end of the box to the other. As they looked up at Sandy and me, one said, "This is it. Looks like a simple timer but there also looks like a cell phone device in it too. There doesn't look like there are any mercury or what you called jiggle switches. I think we should get this out of here as quickly as possible. We'll try to get it into our container, then if it goes off, no one will even know it."

They moved the device within the emptied pool, causing me to want to run, but they didn't seem concerned. The older man said, "Have our container driver get the truck up as close to the front door as possible."

The mall maintenance man said, "I'll open the rear access door and unless it's bigger than a garbage truck, he can drive it right up to the pool."

"That's great, do it," the tech said.

Soon the big bomb disposal truck was next to the pool. The operator said, "I'll use the crane with the remote control to lift the container into the hold. We can do it from outside using the portable video monitor. Everyone clear out while I hook this thing up."

We went outside to watch as the operator slid straps beneath the container and hooked the ends up to the crane's cable lift. When he had everything connected, the operator came out with a monitor and a joy stick control. We all watched as he lifted the device and moved it into the disposal truck. He pushed a button and the straps were released so he retracted the cable and pushed another button that slid the giant lid in place over the container.

The bomb squad guys went back in to pack their equipment. The one tech said, "Just to be sure, have your men completely check this place to make sure there's nothing else."

Sandy and I left to head back to the Federal Building, leaving this site to the FBI's direction. Back at the Federal Building, a large flatbed was outside with the white Ford Van up on it.

Some Air Force bomb techs and some Bureau lab techs were looking at the timing device that had been connected to the detonator. When I approached them, I asked if they could tell the origin of the devices. The one tech said, "The detonator is Chinese, but that's not unusual. The timer is from a cheap windup alarm clock and the cell phone in this set up is Saudi. Someone would have had to hack a local cell phone company to get this to work. We should be able to get some information from that."

One of the Air Force techs said, "There's close to a thousand pounds of explosive in that truck. If it had gone off in there, the whole building could have come down. I heard you have other bombs, how are you coming with them?"

I answered, "We knew of three and have now found all three and they are now all disarmed or contained. Hopefully that's all of them. Now we need to find out who is planting them and where their headquarters is."

The Bureau lab tech said, "We're working on all of the materials and we'll see what we can find out. The picture we got of the van driver is being circulated, so we may be able to find someone who knows him."

I told Sandy, "Let's get Homeland Security to watch for the man out at the airport. We should circulate the picture to the rental car agencies as well. We can also see if the transport crew found out anything else."

Taking Sandy by the arm, I said, "Before we do much more of anything, I need to be fed, I'm starved."

I hesitated as I remembered that it was just coming onto ten in the morning. Time for the first bomb to go off. I wanted to be sure the Bureau techs had both cell phones so they could track the calling number in an attempt to locate the caller. "Sandy, we'll wait; let's go to the Bureau lab to see what happens. Maybe we can have some food from the cafeteria sent up."

We hurried to the lab to find the guy and two girls hooking up several pieces of equipment to the two phones. The one girl said, "Both cells are connected to the same provider, so we're going to be able to locate the relay tower instantly. Anything else is going to be luck. If we can, we'll try to keep the calling cell phone connected so we can track the movement between towers."

At ten twenty-two the cell phone that had been in the van went off. The phone rang six times before the lab tech pushed the answer and mute button. We didn't think the cell phone from the first mall would ring, but a minute later, that one began ringing as well. We just let it ring.

The guy tech said, "We got em, they are calling from a GPS cell phone. Let me give you the location, just a second."

The guy was typing so fast his fingers were a blur on the keyboard. "Got it, the phone's locked, here use this GPS telephone unit. As long as the phone's power stays on, you can track it."

Sandy and I took the device and headed to his station. There he radioed three duty teams and gave them the area to head toward. Next Sandy called the Bureau and told them the general area of at least one of the bombers. They were sending four teams that way immediately. Sandy said he would use the federal tactical frequency to guide everyone to the location.

We headed down to Sandy's car and drove quickly toward the west part of the city. We drove past the location and noted a nice house less than a block from one of the Mosques that had been watched recently in connection to some illegal immigration problems.