“The perp?”

“Some fool EMTs went in and got him,” Drabinsky said. He had been pacing back and forth, eyeballing the crash. “They’ve got him at General. I don’t know anything else. One of the medics also tried to pull the tag number off the Rover, but it was buried in the bread truck.”

“They get anything at all from the car?” Max asked. Her questions weren’t just for her own information; she was running sound and the bites were often invaluable.

“You mean about the owner?” Drabinsky asked.

“That-or anything else.”

He shrugged. “If they have, no one’s told me. We’re just the garbage collectors. Last to know unless it blows, as we say.”

“Charming,” Max said.

Drabinsky gestured to a portable computer stand where a laptop had been set up. They walked over, Max following everything through the eye of her camera. The screen showed the view from a small video camera mounted on the robot.

“We use the robot to tell us what we’re up against. If it’s the real deal, we either blow it or I go in with the suit to disarm the thing.”

“What’s the deciding factor?”

“Size. We’d just as soon not take out half a city block if we can help it. If that thing is too big to blow, I have to break out my suit and get all Hurt Locker on it.”

Jack watched the bot-the remote-controlled robot-as it arced around and headed down the street, Max videotaping its progress. It moved at a leisurely pace, traveling about a block and a half before it came to a stop two feet away from the rear of the Land Rover. Jack glanced at the computer screen as the joystick operator adjusted the angle and focus, zeroing in on the two-liter bottles-which, it was quickly determined, were only the detonator. Under the upended dashboard were several bricks of plastic explosives, neatly bound together by det cord and at least half a dozen detonators.

Jack’s heart started to thump. This wasn’t one of the rusted-out IEDs the Explosive Ordnance Disposal units back in Iraq were tasked to deal with-the kind that had derailed Jack’s Humvee. This was military-grade C4 that looked as if it had come fresh out of the box.