Depraved Indifference Read Online Free

skyjacking. This was how he learned why the FBI had remained interested in Djordje Karavitch for thirty uneventful years. It was enough to frighten him badly. And he did not frighten easily. And it was not even the real reason.
    Later the same afternoon, a New York City police officer armored like a knight in thick Kevlar and a helmet was about to insert a key into locker number 139 in Grand Central Station. Terry Doyle had been out drinking until two the previous morning at a saloon on East Tremont in Throg’s Neck. There had been a retirement party for one of the officers in his division, and most of the guys had drunk a lot more than Doyle’s couple of beers. That was why the youngest member of the section of the NYPD Arson and Explosion Division, known as the bomb squad, was sweating like a pig under the bright lights trained on the locker.
    Doyle was not particularly frightened. Although this was only the second time he had done a job like this, he considered himself well trained and was proud to be part of one of the best bomb-disposal organizations in the world. And the odds were right: the NYPD bomb squad had not lost a single man in over forty years.
    â€œI’m putting the key in the lock,” Doyle said over the telephone built into his helmet. He shook his head to knock off a drop of sweat dangling from his nose. “When you dispose of a bomb,” his class instructor had said, “you tell someone else at the end of the phone line everything you’re doing before you do it.” If the thing went up, such information was useful to colleagues in dealing with similar devices. Or so it had proved in World War II, when this doctrine had been developed.
    â€œKey in the lock, check,” Sergeant John Doheny said at the other end of the line, in the bomb squad van. Doheny had been at the same party last night and had all he could do to keep both his stomach and his brain under control. “I’m turning the key,” the voice reported. “I’m opening the door.”
    â€œSarge, there’s a pot in the locker. Looks like a pressure cooker. There’s a six-volt taped to the side with black friction tape, a red and a black wire going from the battery terminals to a—it looks like a black plastic box about three by two, taped to the top of the pot. There’s a blue wire and a yellow wire running from that into a hole in the lid of the pot. There’s also a manila envelope leaning against the pot.”
    â€œCheck, Terry,” Doheny said. “You going to move it out now?”
    â€œRight. OK, I’m moving the envelope away from the pot.”
    Doyle backed off from the locker and used a pole to move the envelope away from the pot. Then he carefully ran a canvas belt clamp around the middle of the pot, snugged it down, and clipped it to a pole.
    â€œI’m moving it, Sarge.”
    â€œCheck.”
    He backed away to the length of the pole and jiggled the pot. Then he lifted it clear off the floor of the locker and let it drop about two inches. It made a discordant rumble, like stage thunder.
    â€œLooks good, Sarge. Let’s get it in the bomb carrier.”
    â€œCheck, Terry. Why don’t you wait ten? I’ll send D’Amato up.”
    Doheny rubbed his eyes and staggered slightly as he walked out of the van. This was not the right day for this to have happened. He blinked in the watery autumn sunlight and looked out on a scene of near chaos. The threat of explosion had excised one of Manhattan’s principal ganglia. Vanderbilt Avenue and the side streets bordering Grand Central Terminal had been sealed off and were full of police cars, fire engines, and their associated personnel. Park Avenue, where it ran on top of the Terminal, had of course been closed, and the Pan Am Building, perched atop Grand Central, had been evacuated. Doheny could hear the honks and rumbles of stalled traffic blocks away and the mutter of displaced office