Action heroes are easy

There are fourteen minutes before the bomb explodes.

Greg Powers, bomb disposal expert and all-round man, is kneeling before it, talking urgently to his superiors via the device in his ear. Beside him stands a woman, who shows her anxiety by shaking her long auburn hair back and forth. Her clothes are too tight but her body is so bodacious that it doesn’t matter. At thirteen minutes, she begins to sweat, but only in the sexy places.

Powers reaches forward. His proposal is unlikely, improbable, but he’s the expert in his field. He’s been to war. He’s been near death before.

There are twelve minutes to go.

He has tried three different methods of disarming the bomb –  

The writer lifts his fingers from the keyboard and sighs. There’s something missing. Powers is everything a man should be. Maybe he just needs more depth. Some kind of additional character to show that he is more than just a shallow meathead with specialist skills.

Ordinarily, he would just walk away, and let the bomb explode, but it has been placed underneath a crowded shopping centre, and there’s also a kid chained to it. Little Jonny is related to Powers in some way, but he’s not his son, because Powers would never let a condom break. Jonny is sobbing and Powers is telling him to MAN UP, be brave, be like him, because only losers cry, and he wouldn’t want to be a loser, would he?

The woman is nodding her ascent because, naturally, she agrees with everything Powers says. She doesn’t have any ideas of her own.

Ten minutes to go. Powers reaches for the bolt cutters –  

This time, the writer pulls off his obligatory glasses, squinting at the screen, at the words which don’t flow properly. He reaches for his cup of cold coffee and sips. Compelling protagonist? Check. Emotional connection? Check. He stares at the ring left by the coffee cup on his crowded desk. Then, suddenly, he puts his glasses back on, the writer’s equivalent of shouting, ‘Eureka!’

In his ear, his superiors yell that he needs to stop, to wait for the rest of the bomb disposal squad. His boss, a squat little man called Smith, is screaming obscenities down the line, but Powers knows that he is just talking the way that real men do. He waits for a pause in the shouts, then tells him that he is doing this, and Smith needs to trust him. Without waiting for a reply, he yanks the device out of his ear.

Authority figures have always irked Greg Powers. He’s a rebel to the core and he isn’t about to stop now. Hands steady, he cuts the red wire. Little Jonny and the woman hold their collective breath. And for a moment, nothing happens. Then it’s back to square one, worse than square one, because the timer doesn’t stop. It speeds up.

Five minutes.

Now, the writer is satisfied. Conflict: the creator’s lifeblood. Powers would never be the type to submit to those who tell him what to do. The writer downs more coffee, thinking that after this paragraph he will go and drink a fresh cup. He has successfully raised the stakes. But can he make them even higher? What’s driving Powers? He needs to be the hero for Little Jonny and all those potential victims standing above them. Who else is he playing the hero for? The writer sees his wife through his office window, stretching before her morning run, and he has an idea.

Pacing the room, hips swinging, the woman lets out a sob of frustration, but it’s a sexy sob. A single tear runs down her cheek and she looks at Powers with big, vulnerable eyes. She is Bambi in human form, and Powers isn’t going to let anyone shoot her mother.

He reaches for her, spending precious seconds on a quick embrace, reassuring her that he has got this… And afterwards, they will celebrate together. He winks when he says the word ‘celebrate’ then turns back to the bomb.

Think, Powers, think. The red wire didn’t work. The blue wire? He reaches for the bolt cutters. But if he gets it wrong, that’s it. Kaput. All of the people walking around that shopping centre are dead. Could he move the bomb? Could he jump onto it and absorb the impact of the blast? Sure, dying was not on his agenda for today, but he’s a hero, and he will do what must be done.

Three minutes.

Little Jonny rattles the chains and Powers knows that he can’t let his nephew die. There are two wires left. Blue. Green. Blue. Green. Time speeds up. The woman becomes slightly hysterical and Powers shouts at her to SHUT UP so that he can think.

Blue. Green. Blue. Green.

Die. Live. Die. Live.

One minute.

His hand shakes a little now as he picks up the bolt cutters. Even the great Greg Powers clenches his other fist.

30 seconds.

The writer stands, stretches, and reaches for his cup. He types one last sentence before his daughter calls him from another room and he goes to help her with her Geography homework, marking lines on a string to measure the distances between places on a map. There is still something missing, but he is blocked now. Should Powers die in the end? But save them all first? His daughter calls with more urgency and he leaves the room quickly.

Die. Live. Die. Live. Feeling queasy, he raises the cutters before his eyes and he –

Much, much later, the writer holds down the backspace key until all that remains is the first sentence. He knows what he needs to do.

There are fourteen minutes before the bomb explodes.

Greg Powers, bomb disposal expert, is kneeling before it, talking urgently to his superiors via the device in his ear. Beside him stands a woman who inspects the homemade explosive device with care. This will be the sixth bomb she and Powers have dismantled. If they are successful, promotion is coming her way, and she will finally live up to the expectations of her father, a retired police chief who always told her she was powerful. They are a calm pair, the woman and Powers, both expert, both doing their jobs. Her name is Sarah.