It’s the late spring, 1999, at The University of Georgia. Finals are in full swing, and students, bowed under the weight of both their textbooks and the accumulated knowledge in their heads, rush to classrooms to disgorge that knowledge back onto bluebooks. In a few short days, they will be free again- until the next quarter.

But one student doesn’t seem too concerned by finals… but is concerned about being seen. According to the witness who called 911, a figure carrying two suitcases and a trash bag skulked over to the dumpsters next to the Pharmacy Building and set them down gently. The figure looked around, trying to ascertain if anyone had seen them, and then scurried away.

The first officer to arrive at the suspicious package call had been trained on how to respond to them and noted the two suitcases, one a hard-sided clamshell and the other soft-sided, had an antenna wire wrapped around them, emerging from the soft-sided one. This was a far superior response to a suspicious package than the ones that happened during the ’96 Olympics …

…at least, until the officer opened the trash bag and rummaged through it. His radioed description was enough to prompt the Chief to send our brand new EOD unit to investigate further.

Now, understand that this response involves closing and evacuating 8 campus buildings, in the middle of final exams. That’s no small feat, and not without a lot of consultation with University VIPs all the way up to the President of the Uni. Which meant that a lot of them wanted to watch our response, and see if all the expense they footed to create and equip this EOD unit was worth it.

No pressure.

Dane and Andy had attended the FBI’s Hazardous Devices School at the beginning of 1999, and were a few weeks fresh from it when this call went out. I was slotted to attend HDS at the end of 1999, so my role during this was gopher and helping them don the suit. We had a majority of our equipment, purchased over the last year, in place- trailer to haul everything, EOD-7B and SRS-5 bomb suits, disrupter, X-Ray source and film cassettes, a small amount of explosives- C4 (untagged!), detasheet, 20 and 200 grain det cord, electric blasting caps- the film and explosives donated by the regional FBI SABT to get us started. (We did make a large purchase from a commercial explosives dealer later that year; but that deserves it’s own story.) No robot or real-time X-Ray yet; those would come later.

The initial officer had snagged some mail from the trash bag; bills addressed to a Married Housing unit… so we had a name, and a fuzzy description from the witness. So, while we were cordoning off the area and evacuation students, Detectives went to work and ID’d a suspect. He was a foreign student and his neighbors in Family Housing said he was leaving to go back home after his finals. A few more calls revealed he’d already gotten on a plane overseas.

Well then. Even though this is before 9/11, putting these facts together caused sphincters to pucker, a little tighter after each revelation. Suspicious person drops a package off in front of a campus building packed with students, the package has an antenna wire emerging from it, foreign student, skipped the country.

Andy and I help Dane suit up and he scuffled downrange with the X-Ray source and film cassettes, watched by the various campus VIPs as well as the chief and assistant chief. Were they too damn close? Absolutely; given the amount of explosives that could have been packed into these suitcases. But we were still brand new to this, and didn’t want to tell the Provost and President that they might catch some shrapnel to the forehead and could your holynesses go around the corner? We made this point during the after-action and they grudgingly agreed; miracle of miracles.

Dane zaps the packages with a few pulses and returns, and we develop the film. It’s a Polaroid product, BTW; basically a film gets ripped off to release developing chemicals and you wait a few minutes while it develops. Don’t have to fan it around like the songs say, though. We pull the sheet from the developing cassette and crowd around to see what we’ve got.

Aaaaaaaannd….

…It’s very, very dark. You can barely make out some wire, and electrical components, but overall it’s so dark you can’t be sure of anything.

I mentioned that our X-Ray film was donated by the FBI; but did I mention that it was donated because it was past its shelf life? Yeah. It has a shelf life because old X-Ray film tends to get dark. Like this.

Into a huddle we go. We can’t see all the components; but we’re fairly sure there’s no triggers on the suitcases themselves. Is that nebulous mass explosive filler? There’s a circuit board; but it’s too dark to see discrete components. Anyone see a detonator anywhere? What is this coil of wire? All the time we’re huddled, the VIPs are getting restless. The Assistant Chief keeps walking over to us and to see what’s going on. Lots of flop-sweat.

Finally, we decide, fuckit. Let’s open these packages and see what’s really in there. There’s no identifiable power source to target with the disruptor; it will open the hard sided one OK but not the soft-sided suitcase. Solution?

Wrap both with 20 grain det cord along the seam and spill the contents.

We take turns working in the suit, so it’s Andy’s turn. He trudges downrange trailing 2-conductor wire and a spool of det cord and proceeds to wrap the suitcases. Attach the cap, attach the wires, slog back to the CP and strip down.

“Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”

The det cord opens the suitcases beautifully; an absolute perfect disruption as the contents of the suitcases are blown 20 feet into the air and across the parking lot. The contents showered down; a hair dryer, an FM/AM desk radio with a long antenna, and-

Frilly panties, skirts, dresses, and halter tops.

…

Detectives made contact with the student after he landed, and after we blew women’s underwear across South Campus. He liked to cross-dress, and as this was his last quarter at UGA, decided to toss his collection before flying home to his parents. He didn’t want anyone to know, hence his furtiveness when dumping them at a dumpster near Family Housing. He tossed a few other things- the hair dryer, the radio with long wire antenna, etc.- in there as well, and added the collected trash from clearing out his room as well.

Whelp.

The VIPs, despite this being a false alarm, were apparently impressed enough by our response- in handling the evacuation, in Investigations’ quick work, in the EOD unit’s actions in the face of shitty equipment- that we weren’t shut down right away, and so we did get funded for the real-time X-Ray and Andros robot. And I got to make HDS class B-2-00.

But that’s another story.