-24-
It was another three hours before he called the cellphone. During that time Nina had walked around the warehouse with the phone clipped to her skirt, drinking coffee by the gallons. Jack was begining to get worried about how agitated she was getting, and how tired she must have been. Carrey's lab reports had come back, and he'd confirmed it was C4. The paramedics and coroner had been through the scene and announced the death toll, several of the critical patients that had been sent into hospital had been redelegated, either by being moved to intensive care, or the morgue.
The little girl Jack had found had died.
"We were wondering when you'd call back." Nina was trying to keep some semblance of levity in the conversation.
"Well here I am." His tone was light. It only persuaded them to consider him as even more of a bastard. "Have you guys torn the train apart yet? Did you find my art?"
"Your art?" Nina raised her eyebrows and made a disguisted face, normally she'd try to counsel her emotions, but she was too tired to really care.
"It's an art, definitely not a static art, but..." he laughed, his tone taking on a haughty note. Nina glanced at the clock to remind herself of her goal.
"I wouldn't call bomb making an art."
"What else could it be? All that expression, all those souls - I make an art out of their lives." Nina took a moment to breathe and take in his words. "Do you know how to make a bomb?" He asked.
"Sure, you take a bottle, fill it two thirds with gasoline, add a tablespoon or two of detergent, stuff a rag in the top, wait a while so the air becomes impregnated with gasoline vapours, and light the top." The voice laughed, "Oh, and throw it - if you use a glass bottle it'll probably explode on impact."
"Mine were a little more complicated than that."
"Yes they were, you didn't have to throw yours."
"How did I exhibit my art?"
"You rented gallery space." Nina quipped, no laugh. "You put it in a briefcase, left it out in the open."
"I wanted people to see it." Nina chewed on her lower lip, she didn't know what to say - she thought of losing it, having a go at him about the little girl, that they found, the people trapped in the carriages further up, the bodies, the body parts on the track, but he'd either get off on it, or hang up on her.
The man on the other end of the line was obviously social, as Nina's silence pushed him to speak, "How do you guys think I made my bomb?"
Nina scratched her cheek, "C4 - couple of pounds, pentaflex wiring linked to a digital clock, from what I'm told, numerous safety loops, you wanted to make double-y sure it didn't go off before its time." Nina paused and clicked her fingers. "You didn't put it in the train until soon before detonation." Nina tried to keep her revelation out of her voice. "You made your bomb complex, unnecessarily so - afraid to go up in your own creation?"
"Look, Nina.." Nina wanted to laugh at the casual way he said this, even he was trying to keep the convversation cordial. "I'd love to finish this conversation, but I've gotta go, my dinner's cooked." The phone line went dead.
Nina pressed the button to end the telephone call and Johnson read out the time she had left until the two minutes worth of necessary tracing time. "Twelve seconds." Nina scowled in disguist and slunk down into the chair behind her. She'd taken to turning in a little circle during the conversation.
"It doesn't matter!" the tech exclaimed, cautious optimisium in his voice, "It's a cellphone, and we've got a frequency and a sector."
"It that good?" Nina asked, evidently familiar with bomb makings but not a call tracing.
Johnson stopped congratulating the tech to explain, "It means we can put some tracking vans out there, and next time he calls, narrow it down even further. Depending on the success ratio, we could have it down to a city block in less than five calls."
Nina smiled and yawned, the first sign she'd given anyone that she was tired. She cut it off, and was thankful when she realised that once again, Jack was the only one who'd noticed. He'd nodded at her, smiling across the room, realising that now, when exhausted and surviving on caffeine, she needed encouragement.
Copell walked over. "That was good, but there're a couple of things I wanted to go through with you..." Jack's ears perked up, and he wandered over to them, and sat down in a free chair in front of Nina. Copell dumped a binded file in her lap. She picked it up and glanced at the cover and then passed it, in exasperation, to Jack. 'FBI Hostage Negotiation Tactics'
"I think she's acquainted with this, John." Jack said, defending his agent.
"I don't think so," Copell changed and directed his words towards Nina, "You've been allowing long silences - we can't risk the chance that he'll hang up, also I don't exactly think that you should be describing how to make a molotov..."
Nina cut him off, "I think he already knows how to make a bomb, explaining a molotov cocktail isn't exactly the nation's guarded secret - any good chemistry teacher will tell you that."
Copell folded his arms and scowled at her whilst she spoke, occasionally glancing over at Jack to give him a 'look'. "Read it." he told her simply, and walked off.
-24-
She may have been sitting in the middle of the room, but Nina had always been good at blending in. It took Jack a couple of sweeps of the room to pinpoint her, sitting on a chair, just to the side of what had ended up as 'his desk'. She was reading something, occassionally picking up a nearby mug and taking a sip. Jack made his way over, ducking between agents and work spaces.
"Hey." he greeted, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey." she returned, slowly finishing her page before tilting her head to look at him. They smiled awkwardly at each other for a few moments, "I'm reading that Hostage Manual Copell gave me." Nina said to break the silence.
"You're that bored, huh?" he asked her, jokily, pulling up a chair into the narrow slip of space between Nina's side and the table.
"Can you think of anything for me to do?" she asked, leaning back in her chair, angling her body slightly to him.
"There's a real threat to all the LA citizens out there, and there's nothing we can do at this point." He said, placing his second hand on her other shoulder. Nina leant into his hands and he pressed his thumb into her shoulder blade, pausing for a moment before deciding to complete the movement that characterised his massages. "What does it say?" He asked her, trying to cover his unease.
Nina picked the papers off the desk and brought them up to read. "At all times it is important to keep the detainer calm, any changes in mood can have a negative repercussions for the hostage or hostages. People are all different and react in different ways..."
Jack began nodding and laughing quietly, quite surprised that the FBI felt its agents needed such basic instruction. "I get it." he mumbled into her ear, and leant forward to snatch the paper off of her.
"Oi!" objected Nina, sitting forward and turning towards him.
He scanned his way down the page until he found where she had been reading from, and sneaked a glance up at her to smile. "...in different ways - some common tactics are: 1 - Sympathising, This ranges from helping him debate his cause to..."
Nina let out a loud petulant sigh and leant back into her chair, and Jack put the paper in front of her and rested his head on her shoulder, comfortably settling down before reading anymore of the manual. He cleared his throat, "...to agreeing with his dillusions, the latter must be handled with the utmost careful manner...."
The phone rang, and they both bolted upright. He took her hand and swiveled her chair, pulling her up when it got into the right position. "Did you learn a lot?" he whispered as he made his way across the floor.
"Oh yeah."
-24-
The five recognisable tones sounded from the mobile. "Hey, Nina." Dave began, sounding cheerful. It made Nina feel sick to her stomach to talk to this guy and listen to his banter. "Guess what?" sounded out from the phone.
"What?" she deadpanned, glancing over at Johnson and Copell who were communicating with the teams in the field. Just after the last call, they'd sent a large number of tracking vans into the sector grid that they'd found the call from originally, they were hoping their caller was staying in the same place.
"The artist has created another work, and - if you're really good, you can see it..." Nina froze, suddenly wanting to double over and throw up, a mix of exhaustion, hunger and shock.
"What do you want me to do?" Nina asked, as she began to feel dizzy.
Jack came over quickly, almost running, and she begged that no one else noticed how faint she was begining to feel. Jack stood in front of her, searching her face as their caller began to talk. "Somebody's art is very personal. So in return, I want to know something personal about you."
Nina looked Jack in the eye and leveled her head as she asked. "What?"
"Anything, everything." He told her. Nina knew she had no time to aim for, that now they had his cell number and frequency - there was no reason to keep him on for two minutes, the whole point was to keep him on for as long as possible. She was silent for a while. "I'll call back later."
The phone line went dead again and Nina ended the call. With a single glance at Jack he knew what to ask. "Did you get anything off that call?"
"We've eliminated a third of the sector grid." The tech agent called out, and next to him Jack heard Nina sigh.
Johnson started ordering agents to reset all their systems, move the vans ready for the next call and in the noise Jack whispered to Nina to ask her if she was okay, if she still wanted to do this. "We don't have much of a choice." She glanced at the phone and pushed her belt clip open to put it back in its slot.
It rung. She answered it quickly to hear the familiar five tones. "Hello." This time Nina spoke first, backing away from Jack a little, and regaining her confidence.
"You thought about it yet?" he queried.
"I'm not good at talking about myself, you're going to have to quiz me." Nina confessed, plugging her other ear to hear her better. There was a moment of silence and so Nina prompted him to speak. "What did you want to know?"
The voice over the phone laughed a terrible sickly laugh that they hadn't heard for a few hours. "Let's start with the basics," he suggested, "where'd you grow up?"
-24-
Through his headphones he was able to hear their conversation, round two of the getting to know Nina. The first conversation had been about childhood, school, bullies, proms, exams. Jack hadn't really listened to the text of their first conversation, but afterwards he'd listened to the tapes during one of the many times the sound technicians had played them, and made a list of the things he'd asked. Trying to figure out if he was giving them any hints - was the bomb at a school, was it at a concert hall? He scribbled down another word on his list 'art'.
"Have you ever been artistic?" 'Dave' asked.
"Not really, kids do drawings, I'm sure I did." she mumbled. "Although, when I was at college I minored in art for a month or two, Chicago gave me the side of a building to do a mural on." Nina laughed, Jack smiled to himself and glanced over at Nina, a few foot away, sitting on a chair passing the phone from hand to hand as she got tired.
"Really?" that comment had picqued his interest. 'Dave' probably didn't realise that they already had his cell frequency, as he'd been hanging up and calling immediately back quite quickly, leaving himself a minute and a half on each phone call, normally, he would have hung up already.
"I wonder if it's still there." Nina considered.
"So you do appreciate art.." Dave led her back to his favourite topic of conversation.
"Yeah, well, some not yours." Nina commented, instantly wondering whether she should have done.
"Do you know what happens when a bomb goes off?" he asked her, his tone going hushed and conspiratorial. He didn't wait for her to answer. "Do you know what happens when one of mine goes off?"
Jack watched the clock go up to 2:19. There was a possibility they'd be able to keep him on the line long enough for the vans to reposition. "When the signal is sent the C4 reacts, it ripped apart the casing and blew apart the train." Across the room Nina grabbed a handful of hindering hair.
"Do you know what the pressure's like when a bomb explodes? More than a hundred pounds an inch. You know what that is in SI?" Nina quickly did some rough math in her head.
"Something like 700Kilopascals." she said down the phone just as 'Dave' began to tell her.
"Very good!" Dave laughed, and quizzed, "Do you have some little man standing next to you with a calculator?"
"No, you already asked me if I was good at math." Nina stood up and began to walk in a circle around her chair.
"Do you know what normal atmospheric pressures like?" he asked her.
"One hundred and one K-P-A." Nina recited, and Jack glanced over at her, she had her back to him.
"The bomb pressure pushes outwards, creates a vacuum and sucks everything back in. Meanwhile all these people are freaking, and their bodies are being ripped apart by a pressure seven or eight times what they're used to, and then there's the heat." His tone began to sound almost like he was threatening Nina. "Would you like to know what that feels like?"
There were four more tones over the phone line, and the technicians almost tripped over themselves to check which numbers they corresponded to.
Jack took his headset off when he heard the phone click. Nina pressed the hang up button, and put the phone back into her belt clip, she sniffed and pawed at her nose. He walked over to her. "Come with me." he told her, and headed for the door.
-24-
Jack led Nina to the entrance hall and then opened another door on the opposite side of the entrance hall. It led into another room, the same size as their base of operations, with the desks around the room in the same formation but there was no equipment in this side of the room. In their room one side of the wall was covered in doors to empty offices and storage rooms, this room was no different. Jack walked her along that side of the room to one of the doors on the end, and opened it for her.
Nina took the cue and went inside. She reached around the side of the door and switched the light on. Inside the room the fluorescent lights flickered for a while, and then snapped on. Two leather couches were placed on the walls of the room, and there was a lamp table in between them. Nina walked into the centre of the room, and turned back to Jack.
"Get some sleep." he ordered her.
"I need to be in there if..." Nina's protest was cut off.
"Get some sleep," he reiterated, "How long have you been awake?" he wondered.
Nina didn't even need to check her watch to tell him. "Forty-two? Forty- three hours." she told him, "but I can't, Jack, if he calls back..." Nina began to protest, but cut her off.
"I'll come and wake you." Jack said simply, pocketing the phone. He began to walk to the door.
"Jack..." He shut the door behind him, and Nina heard his foot steps retreating from the entry door, and then the door at the end of the corridor shutting.
Nina turned and looked at the couch nearest her. It was probably sized for three people, and was heavily padded black leather, probably quite an expensive couch to be sitting in a warehouse that was rarely used. Nina ran her hand along the cushions, brushing off any debris and feeling for any wet spots or stains. There was very little debris, and no wet patches, so she turned off the light and stumbled back to the couch where she pulled off her shoes before curling up.
Nina flopped onto her back, looking up at the tiny square windows at the top of the walls. They let the light in from the main room, but at the moment there were only faint indistinguishable glows made by the street lamps. She shut her eyes for a moment and then opened her eyes to look at the ceiling, this time she could make out car shapes, and cracks in the glass.
Nina's thoughts went to Jack. He was, after all, only a few rooms over - but she had different reasons to the normal for thinking about him today. They worked together closely very often, they trusted each other, but recently it had been different. Now that Nina had some kind of explanation, she had a clearer view of the last few months.
Nina and Jack worked together on cases regularily, and sometimes they disagreed. But during the first week or so of last month - what she now knew to be just after he and his wife split, he'd been more antagonistic. Nina had blamed herself, although she hated to admit it, that was the time of the month when she would have been more moody, by the time she was back to normal, Jack was less grumpy too, so it hadn't been obvious.
There had been subtle changes in their relationship recently. Touching her hair, rubbing her shoulders today had been far out of the norm, but it was not entirely new. For the last month or so, that'd been different too. They worked in close quarters, and Nina knew that she found Jack attractive, and she'd avoided close contact, she'd always felt awkwards when they touched for longer than absolutely necessary, but recently Jack had been initating it. When they were standing close to tell each other information, he'd touch her elbow, or her shoulder when he stood over her. Nina had to admit that she felt awkward still, but she hated to admit that she enjoyed him touching her.
She'd been attracted to him since they first met. Nina had never believed in crushes - certainly didn't have one for Jack, they worked well together, they were friends, in that they understood each other, and she felt attracted to him, yes. But he was married, and she certainly wasn't going to let him know, they'd both feel embarassed and it would ruin their working relationship completely.
Now he was separated, even though she'd only known for a few hours, she couldn't help but feel that everything was different. Jack was being protective of her back there, he'd been worried about her sleep, or lack of it - Nina couldn't help but feel that she'd been at a disadvantage recently.
It was another three hours before he called the cellphone. During that time Nina had walked around the warehouse with the phone clipped to her skirt, drinking coffee by the gallons. Jack was begining to get worried about how agitated she was getting, and how tired she must have been. Carrey's lab reports had come back, and he'd confirmed it was C4. The paramedics and coroner had been through the scene and announced the death toll, several of the critical patients that had been sent into hospital had been redelegated, either by being moved to intensive care, or the morgue.
The little girl Jack had found had died.
"We were wondering when you'd call back." Nina was trying to keep some semblance of levity in the conversation.
"Well here I am." His tone was light. It only persuaded them to consider him as even more of a bastard. "Have you guys torn the train apart yet? Did you find my art?"
"Your art?" Nina raised her eyebrows and made a disguisted face, normally she'd try to counsel her emotions, but she was too tired to really care.
"It's an art, definitely not a static art, but..." he laughed, his tone taking on a haughty note. Nina glanced at the clock to remind herself of her goal.
"I wouldn't call bomb making an art."
"What else could it be? All that expression, all those souls - I make an art out of their lives." Nina took a moment to breathe and take in his words. "Do you know how to make a bomb?" He asked.
"Sure, you take a bottle, fill it two thirds with gasoline, add a tablespoon or two of detergent, stuff a rag in the top, wait a while so the air becomes impregnated with gasoline vapours, and light the top." The voice laughed, "Oh, and throw it - if you use a glass bottle it'll probably explode on impact."
"Mine were a little more complicated than that."
"Yes they were, you didn't have to throw yours."
"How did I exhibit my art?"
"You rented gallery space." Nina quipped, no laugh. "You put it in a briefcase, left it out in the open."
"I wanted people to see it." Nina chewed on her lower lip, she didn't know what to say - she thought of losing it, having a go at him about the little girl, that they found, the people trapped in the carriages further up, the bodies, the body parts on the track, but he'd either get off on it, or hang up on her.
The man on the other end of the line was obviously social, as Nina's silence pushed him to speak, "How do you guys think I made my bomb?"
Nina scratched her cheek, "C4 - couple of pounds, pentaflex wiring linked to a digital clock, from what I'm told, numerous safety loops, you wanted to make double-y sure it didn't go off before its time." Nina paused and clicked her fingers. "You didn't put it in the train until soon before detonation." Nina tried to keep her revelation out of her voice. "You made your bomb complex, unnecessarily so - afraid to go up in your own creation?"
"Look, Nina.." Nina wanted to laugh at the casual way he said this, even he was trying to keep the convversation cordial. "I'd love to finish this conversation, but I've gotta go, my dinner's cooked." The phone line went dead.
Nina pressed the button to end the telephone call and Johnson read out the time she had left until the two minutes worth of necessary tracing time. "Twelve seconds." Nina scowled in disguist and slunk down into the chair behind her. She'd taken to turning in a little circle during the conversation.
"It doesn't matter!" the tech exclaimed, cautious optimisium in his voice, "It's a cellphone, and we've got a frequency and a sector."
"It that good?" Nina asked, evidently familiar with bomb makings but not a call tracing.
Johnson stopped congratulating the tech to explain, "It means we can put some tracking vans out there, and next time he calls, narrow it down even further. Depending on the success ratio, we could have it down to a city block in less than five calls."
Nina smiled and yawned, the first sign she'd given anyone that she was tired. She cut it off, and was thankful when she realised that once again, Jack was the only one who'd noticed. He'd nodded at her, smiling across the room, realising that now, when exhausted and surviving on caffeine, she needed encouragement.
Copell walked over. "That was good, but there're a couple of things I wanted to go through with you..." Jack's ears perked up, and he wandered over to them, and sat down in a free chair in front of Nina. Copell dumped a binded file in her lap. She picked it up and glanced at the cover and then passed it, in exasperation, to Jack. 'FBI Hostage Negotiation Tactics'
"I think she's acquainted with this, John." Jack said, defending his agent.
"I don't think so," Copell changed and directed his words towards Nina, "You've been allowing long silences - we can't risk the chance that he'll hang up, also I don't exactly think that you should be describing how to make a molotov..."
Nina cut him off, "I think he already knows how to make a bomb, explaining a molotov cocktail isn't exactly the nation's guarded secret - any good chemistry teacher will tell you that."
Copell folded his arms and scowled at her whilst she spoke, occasionally glancing over at Jack to give him a 'look'. "Read it." he told her simply, and walked off.
-24-
She may have been sitting in the middle of the room, but Nina had always been good at blending in. It took Jack a couple of sweeps of the room to pinpoint her, sitting on a chair, just to the side of what had ended up as 'his desk'. She was reading something, occassionally picking up a nearby mug and taking a sip. Jack made his way over, ducking between agents and work spaces.
"Hey." he greeted, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey." she returned, slowly finishing her page before tilting her head to look at him. They smiled awkwardly at each other for a few moments, "I'm reading that Hostage Manual Copell gave me." Nina said to break the silence.
"You're that bored, huh?" he asked her, jokily, pulling up a chair into the narrow slip of space between Nina's side and the table.
"Can you think of anything for me to do?" she asked, leaning back in her chair, angling her body slightly to him.
"There's a real threat to all the LA citizens out there, and there's nothing we can do at this point." He said, placing his second hand on her other shoulder. Nina leant into his hands and he pressed his thumb into her shoulder blade, pausing for a moment before deciding to complete the movement that characterised his massages. "What does it say?" He asked her, trying to cover his unease.
Nina picked the papers off the desk and brought them up to read. "At all times it is important to keep the detainer calm, any changes in mood can have a negative repercussions for the hostage or hostages. People are all different and react in different ways..."
Jack began nodding and laughing quietly, quite surprised that the FBI felt its agents needed such basic instruction. "I get it." he mumbled into her ear, and leant forward to snatch the paper off of her.
"Oi!" objected Nina, sitting forward and turning towards him.
He scanned his way down the page until he found where she had been reading from, and sneaked a glance up at her to smile. "...in different ways - some common tactics are: 1 - Sympathising, This ranges from helping him debate his cause to..."
Nina let out a loud petulant sigh and leant back into her chair, and Jack put the paper in front of her and rested his head on her shoulder, comfortably settling down before reading anymore of the manual. He cleared his throat, "...to agreeing with his dillusions, the latter must be handled with the utmost careful manner...."
The phone rang, and they both bolted upright. He took her hand and swiveled her chair, pulling her up when it got into the right position. "Did you learn a lot?" he whispered as he made his way across the floor.
"Oh yeah."
-24-
The five recognisable tones sounded from the mobile. "Hey, Nina." Dave began, sounding cheerful. It made Nina feel sick to her stomach to talk to this guy and listen to his banter. "Guess what?" sounded out from the phone.
"What?" she deadpanned, glancing over at Johnson and Copell who were communicating with the teams in the field. Just after the last call, they'd sent a large number of tracking vans into the sector grid that they'd found the call from originally, they were hoping their caller was staying in the same place.
"The artist has created another work, and - if you're really good, you can see it..." Nina froze, suddenly wanting to double over and throw up, a mix of exhaustion, hunger and shock.
"What do you want me to do?" Nina asked, as she began to feel dizzy.
Jack came over quickly, almost running, and she begged that no one else noticed how faint she was begining to feel. Jack stood in front of her, searching her face as their caller began to talk. "Somebody's art is very personal. So in return, I want to know something personal about you."
Nina looked Jack in the eye and leveled her head as she asked. "What?"
"Anything, everything." He told her. Nina knew she had no time to aim for, that now they had his cell number and frequency - there was no reason to keep him on for two minutes, the whole point was to keep him on for as long as possible. She was silent for a while. "I'll call back later."
The phone line went dead again and Nina ended the call. With a single glance at Jack he knew what to ask. "Did you get anything off that call?"
"We've eliminated a third of the sector grid." The tech agent called out, and next to him Jack heard Nina sigh.
Johnson started ordering agents to reset all their systems, move the vans ready for the next call and in the noise Jack whispered to Nina to ask her if she was okay, if she still wanted to do this. "We don't have much of a choice." She glanced at the phone and pushed her belt clip open to put it back in its slot.
It rung. She answered it quickly to hear the familiar five tones. "Hello." This time Nina spoke first, backing away from Jack a little, and regaining her confidence.
"You thought about it yet?" he queried.
"I'm not good at talking about myself, you're going to have to quiz me." Nina confessed, plugging her other ear to hear her better. There was a moment of silence and so Nina prompted him to speak. "What did you want to know?"
The voice over the phone laughed a terrible sickly laugh that they hadn't heard for a few hours. "Let's start with the basics," he suggested, "where'd you grow up?"
-24-
Through his headphones he was able to hear their conversation, round two of the getting to know Nina. The first conversation had been about childhood, school, bullies, proms, exams. Jack hadn't really listened to the text of their first conversation, but afterwards he'd listened to the tapes during one of the many times the sound technicians had played them, and made a list of the things he'd asked. Trying to figure out if he was giving them any hints - was the bomb at a school, was it at a concert hall? He scribbled down another word on his list 'art'.
"Have you ever been artistic?" 'Dave' asked.
"Not really, kids do drawings, I'm sure I did." she mumbled. "Although, when I was at college I minored in art for a month or two, Chicago gave me the side of a building to do a mural on." Nina laughed, Jack smiled to himself and glanced over at Nina, a few foot away, sitting on a chair passing the phone from hand to hand as she got tired.
"Really?" that comment had picqued his interest. 'Dave' probably didn't realise that they already had his cell frequency, as he'd been hanging up and calling immediately back quite quickly, leaving himself a minute and a half on each phone call, normally, he would have hung up already.
"I wonder if it's still there." Nina considered.
"So you do appreciate art.." Dave led her back to his favourite topic of conversation.
"Yeah, well, some not yours." Nina commented, instantly wondering whether she should have done.
"Do you know what happens when a bomb goes off?" he asked her, his tone going hushed and conspiratorial. He didn't wait for her to answer. "Do you know what happens when one of mine goes off?"
Jack watched the clock go up to 2:19. There was a possibility they'd be able to keep him on the line long enough for the vans to reposition. "When the signal is sent the C4 reacts, it ripped apart the casing and blew apart the train." Across the room Nina grabbed a handful of hindering hair.
"Do you know what the pressure's like when a bomb explodes? More than a hundred pounds an inch. You know what that is in SI?" Nina quickly did some rough math in her head.
"Something like 700Kilopascals." she said down the phone just as 'Dave' began to tell her.
"Very good!" Dave laughed, and quizzed, "Do you have some little man standing next to you with a calculator?"
"No, you already asked me if I was good at math." Nina stood up and began to walk in a circle around her chair.
"Do you know what normal atmospheric pressures like?" he asked her.
"One hundred and one K-P-A." Nina recited, and Jack glanced over at her, she had her back to him.
"The bomb pressure pushes outwards, creates a vacuum and sucks everything back in. Meanwhile all these people are freaking, and their bodies are being ripped apart by a pressure seven or eight times what they're used to, and then there's the heat." His tone began to sound almost like he was threatening Nina. "Would you like to know what that feels like?"
There were four more tones over the phone line, and the technicians almost tripped over themselves to check which numbers they corresponded to.
Jack took his headset off when he heard the phone click. Nina pressed the hang up button, and put the phone back into her belt clip, she sniffed and pawed at her nose. He walked over to her. "Come with me." he told her, and headed for the door.
-24-
Jack led Nina to the entrance hall and then opened another door on the opposite side of the entrance hall. It led into another room, the same size as their base of operations, with the desks around the room in the same formation but there was no equipment in this side of the room. In their room one side of the wall was covered in doors to empty offices and storage rooms, this room was no different. Jack walked her along that side of the room to one of the doors on the end, and opened it for her.
Nina took the cue and went inside. She reached around the side of the door and switched the light on. Inside the room the fluorescent lights flickered for a while, and then snapped on. Two leather couches were placed on the walls of the room, and there was a lamp table in between them. Nina walked into the centre of the room, and turned back to Jack.
"Get some sleep." he ordered her.
"I need to be in there if..." Nina's protest was cut off.
"Get some sleep," he reiterated, "How long have you been awake?" he wondered.
Nina didn't even need to check her watch to tell him. "Forty-two? Forty- three hours." she told him, "but I can't, Jack, if he calls back..." Nina began to protest, but cut her off.
"I'll come and wake you." Jack said simply, pocketing the phone. He began to walk to the door.
"Jack..." He shut the door behind him, and Nina heard his foot steps retreating from the entry door, and then the door at the end of the corridor shutting.
Nina turned and looked at the couch nearest her. It was probably sized for three people, and was heavily padded black leather, probably quite an expensive couch to be sitting in a warehouse that was rarely used. Nina ran her hand along the cushions, brushing off any debris and feeling for any wet spots or stains. There was very little debris, and no wet patches, so she turned off the light and stumbled back to the couch where she pulled off her shoes before curling up.
Nina flopped onto her back, looking up at the tiny square windows at the top of the walls. They let the light in from the main room, but at the moment there were only faint indistinguishable glows made by the street lamps. She shut her eyes for a moment and then opened her eyes to look at the ceiling, this time she could make out car shapes, and cracks in the glass.
Nina's thoughts went to Jack. He was, after all, only a few rooms over - but she had different reasons to the normal for thinking about him today. They worked together closely very often, they trusted each other, but recently it had been different. Now that Nina had some kind of explanation, she had a clearer view of the last few months.
Nina and Jack worked together on cases regularily, and sometimes they disagreed. But during the first week or so of last month - what she now knew to be just after he and his wife split, he'd been more antagonistic. Nina had blamed herself, although she hated to admit it, that was the time of the month when she would have been more moody, by the time she was back to normal, Jack was less grumpy too, so it hadn't been obvious.
There had been subtle changes in their relationship recently. Touching her hair, rubbing her shoulders today had been far out of the norm, but it was not entirely new. For the last month or so, that'd been different too. They worked in close quarters, and Nina knew that she found Jack attractive, and she'd avoided close contact, she'd always felt awkwards when they touched for longer than absolutely necessary, but recently Jack had been initating it. When they were standing close to tell each other information, he'd touch her elbow, or her shoulder when he stood over her. Nina had to admit that she felt awkward still, but she hated to admit that she enjoyed him touching her.
She'd been attracted to him since they first met. Nina had never believed in crushes - certainly didn't have one for Jack, they worked well together, they were friends, in that they understood each other, and she felt attracted to him, yes. But he was married, and she certainly wasn't going to let him know, they'd both feel embarassed and it would ruin their working relationship completely.
Now he was separated, even though she'd only known for a few hours, she couldn't help but feel that everything was different. Jack was being protective of her back there, he'd been worried about her sleep, or lack of it - Nina couldn't help but feel that she'd been at a disadvantage recently.