Bounce The Wire!

Tommy was stood in the small hallway of the house he could hear the teams talking quietly as they systematically went though room by room, Al had gone upstairs to supervise the search of one of the bedrooms, the home looked ordinary enough, pictures of family members adorned the walls and a panoramic view of the al-Haram Mosque during the Hajj dominated the wall above the fireplace. He saw Matt one of the searchers beckon him into the kitchen, he made his way carefully in to the small room and was immediately surprised at seeing four almost new refrigerators lined up along one wall they were all plugged in and running but as Matt opened each one in turn, Tommy saw they were all empty. Tommy knew; that one of the major concerns with the manufacture of some homemade explosives was the need to keep the mixture at a steady and low temperature. This could be achieved by ice cubes at some stages of the process and by keeping the finished product cool once the explosive had been produced. Four fridges was an awful lot of cooling space Tommy thought to himself. Sat on top of one of the fridges were two new coffee grinders neither of which showed any signs of ever having been used to grind coffee. The remaining cupboards were opened and apart from the usual crockery one would expect to find were eight new mixing bowls, thermometers and glass beakers all still in their original packaging. Tommy was watching Matt’s team photograph all these items when he was aware of Al standing beside him, “you should see this Tommy “he said softly and led the way upstairs. Al led Tommy to a small bedroom in which a box lay open on the floor, Tommy could see maps and photographs inside, but as he drew closer the reality of what he was looking at made him stop dead and he could feel the icy fingers of fear suddenly clutch his body, he knew then why Al felt he should take a look. The photographs, approximately fifty in total, were all neatly labelled showed Bomb disposal teams conducting their business; Tommy recognised most of the operators and number twos’. All of the pictures showed team members preparing or using equipment, or of operators being dressed in the bomb suit, a couple showed what looked like explosive devices being rendered safe by operators. The pictures were all taken on the mainland of the United Kingdom, Tommy knew that by the type of bomb van being used and the green and brown khaki uniforms being worn but also by the lack of body armour that would be worn in Iraq, Afghanistan or Northern Ireland. As Tommy leafed through the pictures he stopped at one that showed a young and very much alive Sergeant Frank Carter working on what appeared to be a Command wire device. Tommy could see a number of other uniformed personnel in the background and realised what he was looking at and where the photos had been taken.