The Bomb Maker Read online

  “Easy,” Stahl said. “We’re going to be out of here very soon. The car is waiting for us just past the church. All you have to do is make it that far.”

  Glover turned his head, trying to look over his shoulder, but Stahl tightened his grip and pulled him forward. “You know better than that, Benjamin. What would you think if you saw a man who was looking over his shoulder all the time? You’d think he believed he was being chased, right? That he was trying to get away.”

  “I can’t help it,” said Glover. “I’ve been in that box for so long. They said if I ran away, they’d ruin my feet.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Stahl. “The ones that were guarding you are past noticing. Hey, isn’t that something? Just in that time we walked about fifty yards. We’re halfway. More, maybe.”

  Glover was irritated and peevish. “How can you be sure they haven’t noticed? They could be awake and coming after us right now.”

  “No,” said Stahl. “Not the three who were guarding you in that house.”

  “Why not?”

  “They ran into some bad luck,” said Stahl. “It’s a hazard of the kidnapping business.”

  Stahl tightened his hand on Glover’s arm and walked him toward the steps of the old church. At this time of night the town seemed abandoned. All day the square was occupied by food vendors’ carts and booths where wised-up girls with bored expressions sold clothing, pirated videos, cheap jewelry, sunglasses, T-shirts, and leather goods. At night the square was an open, empty space where the light rain glistened on the cobbles and the white church loomed against the dark sky.

  A car wheeled around the church with its headlights off, and onto the cobbled plaza. The car was not Garza’s, but it seemed to be heading directly for Stahl and Glover as they walked toward the church.

  Stahl said, “Study this car. Look at the men in the front. If you see a face you’ve ever seen before, tell me.”

  He released Glover, reached into the left pocket of his raincoat, and produced a small powerful LED flashlight. He held it in his hand and kept walking, his right hand now gripping the Steyr with the safety off.

  The car was close enough now. Stahl raised his left hand and switched on the blinding white light. The two men in the front seats flinched and squinted, and the car stopped with a jerk. The man in the passenger seat ducked, but the seat belt kept him from getting down.

  Glover said, “The driver! He was the one who was taking me to Tijuana when the kidnappers ambushed me!”

  The driver turned on the headlights and hit the high beam switch, bathing them in light.

  Stahl brought the Steyr up and out between the two sides of the open raincoat, and fired. The windshield bloomed with opaque circles of pulverized safety glass.

  The men were both dead, held upright by their seat belts, but the car kept coming, gliding along over the cobbles.

  Stahl pivoted with his short automatic rifle raised, its sights still trained on the moving vehicle as it passed.

  A man in the backseat popped up and raised a weapon that looked like an AK-47, but before he could fit the long weapon out the window, he bumped the muzzle against the window frame. The half second gave Stahl time to fire a shot into the man’s forehead.

  Stahl saw the dome light of the car go on and held his rifle sights steady.

  The car swept by, but the man who had jumped from the far side door was left behind, kneeling with a rifle rising to his shoulder. Stahl’s sights settled on him first, he fired, and the man fell backward onto the cobblestones.

  Stahl grasped Glover’s arm again and said, “Come on, as fast as you can manage.” He began to run, dragging Glover along with him. In a moment they made it around the corner of the church into the dark lane that led up the hillside. Stahl pushed Glover into the wall and they both stood with their backs against it in the shadow of the big building. Stahl used the moment to remove the magazine of his Steyr and replace it with his spare, then cycle the first round into the chamber.

  He took out his handheld radio. “We’re at the pickup location. What are you waiting for?”

  “We heard shots.”

  “Me too. I fired them. Get here now.” He sidestepped back to the corner of the church and craned his neck to look out at the plaza.

  The car with three of the dead men still inside completed its drift across the empty plaza and slowly pushed its way into the glass front of a long-closed restaurant, bringing the glass down on top of it and coming to rest among a forest of tables and upturned chairs.

  In a moment another vehicle with no headlights emerged from the street beside the church and stopped. Stahl threw open the back door and pushed Glover onto the seat, then got in beside Garza. “Go.”

  Antonio Garza accelerated quickly, his lights still off.

  Stahl said, “Stay away from the restaurant on the other side of the plaza, and don’t run over that body.”

  Antonio skirted the plaza, using the open space to gain speed, and passed by a row of ornate government buildings. As he drove, they heard sirens and then saw the lights of the police cars illuminating the upper parts of buildings they passed on the way to the square. Antonio reached the mouth of a side street just before the police cars pulled up in front of the restaurant.

  Glover said, “Didn’t you see those police cars?’

  “We sure did,” said Stahl.

  “Aren’t we going to stop and tell them? They could help us.”

  “Not on this trip,” Stahl said.

  Glover was incensed. “That stuff about all Mexican cops being corrupt is nonsense,” Glover said. “This isn’t some remote village. It’s a busy town. Come on.”

  Stahl said, “One of the men holding you was a police detective. He wasn’t there to help you, Benjamin. He was there to be sure that when your ransom got paid the police got their honest cut.”

  “Look, I know a couple of police captains.”

  “Then we don’t have to wonder about who picked you out for the kidnappers.”

  Garza drove to the vegetable canning plant where he’d left the other car, and they made the trade. When Stahl helped Glover into the backseat, there was already a middle-aged woman waiting there. She was pretty, with large, lively brown eyes and long black hair with a streak of gray.

  She began to talk to Glover rapidly in Spanish, but Glover said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand you.” He said to Stahl, “Who is this woman?”

  Stahl glanced over his shoulder and saw the garment Esmeralda was holding up to Glover. “She’s asking you to put those on so she can get started on your hair and makeup.”

  “These are women’s clothes.”

  “She’s giving you a disguise. She’s very good. She gets lots of work for movie studios.”

  “Is this necessary?”

  “Only if you want to get across the border alive,” said Stahl. “At some point they’re going to get your picture into the hands of guards at the airports and border crossings. She can make you into a different person, but it takes time, so let her get started.”

  “What if I don’t want to cross the border in drag?”

  Stahl half-turned and looked at him. “I haven’t had time to explain the whole situation. You’re probably really good at what you do, manufacturing things in places where nobody has money and selling them in places where people do. That’s a great talent, and I wish I had it. But instead, I learned a trade. I can find and extract a kidnapped American businessman. The bump in the road this time was that I couldn’t get you out of the building where they had you without killing the three men who were holding you. That’s not something I’d normally do. And you saw what happened at the plaza. Those four men are dead too.”

  “But—”

  “If the police stop us, we die or go to prison for life. I picked that disguise because I knew they would starve you, and being skinny would help you pass for a woman. That’s the plan, and I’m afraid I have to insist.”

  Esmeralda began to work, first pulling Glov
er’s filthy T-shirt off and then pulling the silky blue-flowered dress down over his head. She fitted the wig and looked at him critically. She shaved his face with an electric razor and then began to apply foundation makeup.

  Glover said, “What made you do this?”

  “A whole lot of money.”

  “Who’s paying you?”

  “You are,” Stahl said. “Your wife already put up the money with my security company.”

  “She paid you in advance?”

  “It’s company policy.”

  “That’s quite a policy.”

  “It saves my clients from the unpleasant experience of seeing me again.”

  Glover lapsed into silence while Esmeralda applied foundation and then blush to his cheeks. She said in Spanish to Garza: “Tell me when you’re on a long, flat stretch so I can do the eyes. The eyeliner is the hardest.”

  In a few minutes she finished, and then Glover fell asleep. Esmeralda used a small makeup light on a compact to study her work, and then said, “I like him better as a woman.”

  Stahl shrugged. “You’re the expert.” After an hour of fast driving Garza said, “We’ll be up on that bridge before long.”

  “All right.” Stahl unloaded the Steyr and then broke down the weapon. When they came to a bridge over the Rio Colorado, Garza stopped. Stahl hurled the receiver over the side to splash into the river. Then he threw the barrel, the trigger, and sear and springs as far as he could, followed by the ammunition and magazines, his pistol, and his knife; got back in; and buckled up while Garza went on.

  They drove into the long morning line at the Mexicali-Calexico crossing just before dawn. The line of cars inched forward, nose to tail, their engines idling under the gray, rainy sky.

  When they approached the customs booth, Stahl nodded and Esmeralda woke Glover. At the booth, Garza handed the four passports to the uniformed customs officer. As the man’s eyes focused on each passport in turn, his expression remained sleepy and bored. When he reached Glover’s passport, he studied him for a moment, and then said, “Mrs. Glover. Where were you born?”

  Glover said, “Cleveland, Ohio,” in a soft, nearly feminine voice.

  The customs man closed the passport and handed all four back to Antonio. Then he stepped back and waved the car into the United States.

  When they pulled away, Glover leaned forward and said, “Let me see that passport.” Stahl took the stack from Garza, then handed one to Glover. He looked at it, scowled for a few seconds, then laughed. “It’s my wife’s passport. I can’t believe you got me across the border on my wife’s passport.”

  When they were leaving Calexico, Esmeralda pulled off Glover’s wig and put it back in her kit, and then used wet wipes to remove all of the makeup from his face. She said, “Be careful with the dress. I want to give it to someone.”

  Glover took off the dress and handed it to her, then put on his pants and T-shirt. “They didn’t let me get a shower for the past few days. If the dress is ruined, I’ll pay for it.”

  They headed west toward San Diego. When they reached the San Diego airport, Garza took the freeway exit and stopped in front of the terminal. He and Esmeralda got out. Stahl shook hands with Garza, hugged Esmeralda, and said, “Thank you both. When you get home, check to be sure your money has been deposited in your bank, and then call me.”

  “Of course,” said Esmeralda. “Adios.” She set off for the airline ticket counters.

  “See you soon, Dick,” said Garza. He hurried to join Esmeralda in the airport.

  Stahl got back into the car, this time in the driver’s seat, and drove toward the freeway entrance. He said, “Your wife is waiting for you at a hotel up the road in La Jolla. I’ll leave you there and drive on to LA. Your passport and hers are in that bag on the floor. There’s also a wallet with money and a credit card.”

  “How did you get my passport back from them?”

  “The same way I got you back.”

  “Thank you for my life. I’m sorry I didn’t react right to things at first. This has been such a—”

  “It’s okay. Nobody crouches in a closet for more than a week without getting a little confused.”

  “I’d like to pay you for the extra … trouble.”

  “No,” said Stahl. “Your wife paid in advance, and I would have charged the same for an easy trip. When you get into the hotel, rest for a few days. Don’t go back to the house where you used to live unless you have armed bodyguards or police officers with you. Move to a new place far from there, and keep the address a secret for as long as you can. Stay hard to find for the next year or so, and then you should be all right. Whoever is alive back there might like revenge, and might kill you if it were easy, but they won’t want to waste a lot of time, and there’s no more money in killing you than in leaving you alone.”

  5

  Dick Stahl walked into the four-story redbrick office building on Sepulveda Boulevard. The double doors on the ground floor opened into a glass atrium about forty feet high that enclosed wide concrete steps that looked as though they ought to be outdoors. Somewhere in the glass panels above there were leaks, so drips of water had fallen from above and formed puddles in front of the steps. He could see it must have rained here too while he was gone.

  Stahl took the elevator to the fourth floor and walked down the hallway to the steel door he’d had installed. The sign on it said: NO-FAIL SECURITY.

  He had a jumpy, uncomfortable feeling today, a hot sensation on his spine. In Mexico he had listened only for the sound of sirens, and then after he and the others had crossed into the United States he’d kept the radio off so he could listen to his own thoughts about his rescue of Benjamin Glover. But a few minutes ago, while he was in his car on the way to the office, he heard something on the radio that shocked him. He thought now that he must have heard it wrong and was anxious to get inside and turn on the television set in his office.

  He pushed the door open and entered the outer office. He could see his office manager, Valerie, at the desk behind the glass wall. She was blond and about forty, a person who always moved as though an emergency had been declared, chewing gum as she darted from place to place swooping to pick up papers that had to be fixed or finished. As he watched her she stopped and typed something into the computer at the reception desk, then moved out of the field of the big bulletproof window. He’d had the bulletproof glass installed when he started the business seven years ago and it had no nicks in it yet, but it made him feel better about having employees sitting in plain sight.

  Stahl stepped in and caught a movement in his peripheral vision. He looked at the row of leather chairs along the wall of the reception area and saw he had a visitor. David Ogden stood and stepped toward Stahl. Today he was wearing his LAPD uniform with the three stars of a deputy chief on the collar. But there was black tape across his badge.

  “Hi, Dick,” said Ogden. “Valerie said you’d be back this morning.”

  “David,” said Stahl. “What’s going on?” His eyes were on the badge. “I heard something on the radio, but I—”

  “It’s bad,” said Ogden. “It’s really bad, Dick. Yesterday afternoon there was a call to a house in Encino. The caller said he was the owner. He said he was away in Europe, and that he’d gotten a threat that his house was all primed to blow up. Tim Watkins and his guys took the call. Tim went in, but they couldn’t save the house. Later, when half the Bomb Squad was searching the rubble for unexploded ordnance, a secondary bomb went off, a big one.”

  “Who got hurt? How many?”

  “Not hurt. They’re dead, Dick. Fourteen men. Half the bomb techs on the force. Gone. They’re calling it the biggest massacre of police officers in national history.”

  “Tim Watkins? Who else?”

  “Maynard, Del Castillo, Capiello, Graham. I have a list.” He took a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket and handed it to Stahl.

  Stahl stared at it.

  Ogden said, “This seemed like a routine call at f
irst. Tim and his crew responded, and then when the place blew up, the ones who went to help clear the scene were the senior people, the most experienced. We lost everybody who was there.” He paused. “I came to ask for your help.”

  “You’re asking retired techs to fill in?” said Stahl. “I’ll be willing to help out for a few days, until reinforcements arrive. It’s been a while, but I’ve kept my certification current. You can run into anything in the security business.”

  Ogden said, “The reinforcements aren’t arriving. You know how many bomb techs Ventura County has right now? Two. Whenever anybody in Southern California has a situation, they count on reinforcements from us.”

  “Have you called the FBI?”

  “First call we made. The FBI techs stationed here are going to pitch in. Same for ATF. But transferring anybody to us long-term means taking them from other cities. They’re going to put a rush on getting the first twenty officers on our waiting list trained, but you know how long that takes.”

  Stahl knew. The first part of the course that used to be at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama had been moved to Fort Lee, Virginia, a couple of years ago and was still at least six weeks. The part after that in Florida was thirty-nine weeks. Stahl said, “It’ll be a year before the first one is back here ready to work.”

  “All we can do is get started today. We’re also asking police forces all over the country for lists of bomb techs who retired within the past three years and might still be certified.”

  “What a mess.”

  “That’s why we need you.”

  “Sure. I said I’d help out for a while.”

  “We need more than that, Dick,” said Ogden. “You trained Watkins, Capiello, Del Castillo, and half the other senior technicians. You ran the squad for five years.”

  “Two years.”

  “Nobody else who’s alive has done it for a day. We need you to run the squad for a while, until we can get a permanent commander. I can get you a rank of acting captain.” He frowned. “Whoever did the bombing is still out there. We lost fourteen cops, and we don’t know a thing about who did it. No group has taken credit. The recording Tim Watkins left told us nothing.”