“I’m Dick Stahl, acting commander of the squad. Thank you all for agreeing to fill in for a while. I just looked over the information about you that your home agencies have shared with us, and I’m pleased to serve with all of you.
“What I’d like to do is get you out on the line as quickly as possible. A normal LAPD shift is twelve hours, three days a week. For this week only I want each of you to stay on the schedule you’re used to: work five eight-hour shifts. We have two teams on duty at all times. You’ll work the first four hours with one team and the second four with the other. The next day you work four with the third team and four with the fourth. So after two days you will have met everyone and seen how all four teams operate.
“At the end of the first week you’ll form your own teams. The only exceptions will be the six of you who have come from offices in other cities. We’ll want to attach each of you to a team of our own officers for a bit longer. I have no doubt about anyone’s qualifications. But this is a city that’s essentially eighty miles east to west and sixty north to south, and some of it is more densely populated than New York. The term ‘rush hour’ isn’t used here anymore, because the roads are packed every hour of every day and night. You’ll need some time to get your bearings, learn the map, memorize the LAPD radio codes, and get used to our equipment.”
None of the bomb technicians betrayed surprise or doubt or discontent. They were professionals, ready to get to work.
“Just a few quick remarks on our situation. I’m a temporary recruit also. As you know, you and I were brought in because of the worst disaster in LAPD history. We lost half the Bomb Squad, including its commander, in a single explosion. Based on video recordings and a similarity of explosives and methods, I believe that we’re up against one bomb maker who is systematically targeting the Bomb Squad, and he’s tried twice more in the past two days. The bombs he makes are designed to force us to take risks and make guesses instead of doing what we were taught.” He looked around at their faces.
He said, “While this is going on, there are also about three routine calls each day to render a suspicious device safe. About twenty percent to one-third of the calls involve devices capable of producing an explosion. For now, we’re trying to detonate devices in place if we can, and transport and detonate if we can’t. Do not take any unnecessary risks. Anything you see that looks amateurish might be an amateur’s work or it might be this guy trying to fool you. Do not get fooled.”
He nodded and Andy came to the front with the schedules. As Stahl turned and walked out of the conference room there was a wave of applause. He ignored it, walking away as though it were an unrelated noise from down the hall. He supposed the agents must have seen the excessive news coverage of his two render-safe incidents. But the last thing he wanted was a squad built around loyalty to him. In a week he could be dead, and what they needed to trust wasn’t a boss. They needed to rely on their training and each other.
Stahl kept going all the way to Almanzo’s office in Homicide Special. When he got there Almanzo wasn’t at his desk, so he looked for the nearest detective. There was a tall black cop in a summer-weight suit sitting in a cubicle with his phone to his ear. “We’re trying to speak with all of the merchants and professional offices in the neighborhood to find out if you have any video recordings from surveillance cameras. The period we’re most interested in is yesterday from midnight until noon. Yes, sir. Anything. It might be extremely important in a homicide case. We’d like to see it all. No, sir. There won’t be anybody who would harm you, and your name would not be made public. We don’t even have a suspect yet. We’re trying to get one.”
Stahl saw Almanzo’s head pop up from a cubicle where he had been talking with another detective. As Almanzo approached, Stahl reflected again that Almanzo’s short, sturdy frame showed the results of a great deal of effort. It occurred to Stahl that there must be a long succession of suspects in Almanzo’s career who had found resisting arrest brought unwelcome surprises.
Almanzo said, “Glad you’re here. The number eight blasting caps were purchased by a licensed blaster named Carl Mazur. He bought eight hundred with that lot number in February. He had worked in coal mines for seventeen years.”
“Coal mines?” Stahl said. “What coal mines?”
“He spent most of his career in West Virginia. He’s dead. His wife told the FBI he was hired by a man who wanted him to clear land for a housing development, and he was supposed to start by blasting the way for a road to the site. The man gave him money and he ordered a supply of explosives, including the blasting caps.”
“What are the other explosives?”
“Dynamite and different kinds of electrical initiators and timers. He loaded up his truck and drove to meet the contractor in a relatively remote area of the Ozarks in Missouri. He was shot and his supplies were stolen.”
“Of course they were,” Stahl said. “Damn. We’ll probably be seeing whatever else was taken before long. Do the Missouri cops have anything?”
“Nothing yet,” Almanzo said. “They were thinking it had been a robbery, and the thieves who got the explosives weren’t looking for anything in particular. When we told them about the blasting caps turning up in bombs here, they said they’d start looking for people who might have seen the victim and another man together, or any pictures of them in the same truck on the interstates.”
“This happened in February. Three months ago?”
“I know. There’s not much hope of anybody suddenly remembering anything now, but it happens.”
Stahl said, “Has the FBI found anything on the people who attended the advanced bomb course at Eglin while I taught there?’
“Not yet,” Almanzo said. “Is there somebody you have in mind? Are you remembering somebody who didn’t seem quite right?”
Stahl shook his head. “No. But this guy thinks the way insurgents think. He’s hiding booby traps, building in antiwithdrawal mechanisms, setting bombs that attract technicians and secondary bombs to kill them. Bombs are crude, brutal weapons. What’s complex is the deception, using people’s mental habits against them.”
“Is bomb technician training the only way he could have learned that?”
“You can teach people a hundred ways of making bombs so they’ll watch for them. I don’t know if you can teach a person to love murder so much that he’ll risk the danger to himself to keep doing it.”
Stahl felt his phone vibrating and looked at the screen.
“I know,” said Almanzo. “You’ve got to go. Me too. Good luck to both of us.”
14
The bomb maker was in his garage workshop drawing new designs. Making bombs was imagining, building, and testing. The past few months had been a time of preparation, building devices and planning where and how to use them. Now, he’d realized, he had to incorporate new ideas if he wanted to kill bomb technicians.
The LAPD Bomb Squad had surprised him. They were competent and sure. They were sometimes wrong, but they were never careless or baffled. He had read somewhere they were about the best outside the military. They had invented many of the now standard ways of rendering bombs safe. He had hoped the current technicians were an inferior group living on a dead legacy, but they weren’t. They had found two of his devices, handled them expertly, and destroyed all the work and preparation he’d invested in them.
He had originally decided his best strategy would be to design and install a device that would bring a large portion of the Bomb Squad together and kill as many of them as possible. He’d killed half of them, and he’d been confident the rest would succumb in time.