ONE
Constable Eddie Dougherty climbed up the iron work of the
Victoria Bridge onto the railway tracks and said to his partner standing by the
radio car, yeah, “C’est une bombe.”
They were
halfway between the island of Montreal and the south shore, cars slowing down
but still managing to get past in the single lane and Gauthier said, “Vachon arrive,” as the unmarked black station wagon pulled up behind the radio car and
Gilles Vachon and Robert Meloche got out.
The bomb
squad.
Dougherty
walked back onto the railway tracks in the middle of the bridge and showed
Vachon the blue Expo 67 flight bag wedged between one of the the stone piers
and an iron truss.
Meloche
said, “Tabernac,” and Vachon nodded and looked from the flight bag to Dougherty’s
badge and name tag and then spoke english, saying, “Did you hear anything?”
“Just the
river.”
Vachon
said, “Of course.” Twenty feet below the bridge the St. Lawrence rushed by.
“This bridge is over a hundred years old,” Vachon said. “It would be a shame to
lose it.”
Dougherty
didn’t know what to say, he’d only been a cop a couple of years, practically
still a rookie and Vachon was becoming a legend dismantling so many bombs, but
he didn’t seem very serious.
“It was the
longest bridge in the world when it was built, almost two miles. Just for
trains then, of course,” Vachon said. “These lanes were added later,” and he
stomped on the metal grated surface the cars drove on.
Meloche
said, “Come on,” and started climbing down the iron work.
Vachon nodded
a little and looked down at the bag and then back to Dougherty and said, “You
didn’t get too close, did you?”
Dougherty
said, no, but now he was feeling too close. A bag stuffed with dynamite and the
bomb squad was two guys in overalls.
Vachon reached
down and took something out of a leather pouch on his belt and Dougherty
figured it must be some kind of fancy bomb squad tool and then saw it was a
pair of nail clippers.
“To snip the
wires,” Vachon said and he followed Meloche until they were standing on the
concrete pier face to face with the blue bag.
Dougherty
followed them as far as he could, holding on to a truss and watching as the two
man bomb squad who had dismantled almost a hundred of these dynamite bombs in
the last year talked about what to do. The flight bag was zipper-down, of
course, wedged in fairly tight.
From up top
Gauthier yelled, “What are you doing, come up here,” speaking english but
Dougherty didn’t say anything. He watched Vachon and Meloche waving their hands
and talking but couldn’t hear what they were saying over the rushing water
below.
After a few
minutes Meloche shrugged and pushed one end of the bag until it came loose and
fell into the river and disappeared in the fast moving current. And then the
two bomb squad guys climbed back up the iron work to the railway tracks.
Dougherty
said, “What the hell,” and Vachon said, “It’s gone now.”
“Yeah, but
now there’s a bomb in the river.”
“You don’t
know that,” Meloche said, “it could be a bag of donuts,” and he climbed up past
Dougherty.
Vachon
said, “The dynamite is ruined, it’s safe now.”
“What are
you going to say in your report?”
“What
report?” He walked over to unmarked station wagon, stood by the passenger door
and said, “If we report it, it gets in the press, why give these bastards what
they want?”
Dougherty
said, yeah, “I guess,” and Vachon smiled and got into the passenger seat of the
unmarked station wagon and Meloche drove towards the south shore to turn around
and head back onto the island of Montreal.
Dougherty
just stood there watching them go and then Gauthier, who’d been a cop longer
than Dougherty’d been alive said, “Come on, that’s enough action for me, I need
a drink,” and got into the squad car.
The action
was why Dougherty had joined the police.
The rest of Chapter One can be found here.
