The third rail was easy to avoid. It was on the farther, inner side of the train bed. He knew he had ten minutes before the next train would come. He ran steadily for a hundred yards and then climbed up onto the walkway in the dimly lighted tube and ran more easily and faster.
When he reached a spot where a switch track was installed to shift a train onto another branch of the tunnel, he placed the first bomb. It had a detonator that would be set off by shock, a main charge of Semtex, and a timer that would set off a smaller backup charge if twenty minutes went by, so at least the tracks would be torn up.
He climbed back up to the maintenance walkway and resumed his run. When he was about a quarter mile farther down the track, he set the second bomb down on the walkway, where it would be seen.
Now that he had no burden, he ran harder. He reached the Universal City station, pulled himself up onto the platform, rode the escalator to the floor above, and then went up the second escalator to the street. He walked back almost to the first station and then to his car. He drove off.
The bomb maker knew exactly where his second spot would be, and he drove right to it. The second spot had a number of features he liked. It was public, but it wasn’t infested with a thousand witnesses and a hundred security cameras. Even in the dark he could see that in the daytime it would be pleasant and verdant, and it had bare dirt.
Griffith Park’s buildings, he was sure, would all have security cameras. But the bomb maker intended to stay far from buildings. Unless he was very unlucky, there would be no police cars with license readers or anything else.
Fern Dell was a wooded garden within the park. He entered Western Canyon Road at Los Feliz, then drove until he reached the picnic area. He parked as far as he could from the road and searched for the exact place.
He went to the trunk of his car and took out the posthole digger he had brought. He worked quickly and dug nine holes, each about the size of a large tomato can. He brought one to the spot to be sure it matched. When he had the nine holes, he went back to the car to begin moving components. He slipped them into the eight holes and connected the holes with insulated wire, then connected each of the holes to the main device.
When he was finished, he buried the wires, covered the holes with their plastic tops, carefully smoothed dirt evenly over all of them, and took his tools and wire back to his car. He drove all the way home while it was still dark, trying to beat the traffic that would begin to clog the freeways at dawn. It was a two-hour drive even late at night.
He made it home, exhausted, at about 6:15 a.m. He parked the car in the empty bay at the side of his garage and went to bed. As he lay there he wished he could see his work when it was set off, but he knew that was out of the question. If the device didn’t kill everyone close enough to see it, then it didn’t work.
37
“It bothers me. I’ll admit it,” Stahl said. “I don’t want people to think I would rig a newswoman’s car to blow up. But I don’t know what to do about it except wait. Either we’ll catch the real bomber, or the normal workings of Homicide Special will make it clear to everybody we couldn’t have done it.”
“They already have enough evidence to prove that now,” said Diane. “I don’t think everybody’s convinced. But I guess that’s the least important worry we have.”
Stahl drove with Diane to the office of his security company on Sepulveda Boulevard. They parked in the outdoor lot and walked around to the front of the office building. She looked at the red brick, the strange glassed-in set of exterior steps, and up ahead at the row of office doors along the balcony above. “Wow,” she said. “That is one ugly building.”
“It’s cheap. And the office is upstairs beyond the balcony where you can’t see it from outside.”
“If you ever call and say you’re staying late at the office, I’ll know you’re lying. Nobody could stand to.”
“It’s not as bad inside.”
“I’m sure. How could it be?”
“I was going to ask if you wanted to get into the security business. I haven’t spent time on it in months, and I could use the help.”
“I’ll consider it, if the money is right. But only until the police take me back.”
They took the elevator beside the top of the concrete steps, got out at the third floor, walked past the long row of offices, and then stopped at a door that faced away from the balcony.
She looked at the door. It read: NO-FAIL SECURITY in corroded brass letters. “How do you ever get customers?”
“It’s sort of a word-of-mouth business. If people need my kind of help, they ask around.”
He opened the door and they entered the waiting room. Diane saw that the receptionist, a pretty black woman about thirty years old, was behind a wall of bulletproof glass. Stahl waved his hand at her, and she reached for a button. There was a buzz and Diane heard the sound of a bolt retracting in the steel door.
They went through the interior door, where another woman about forty-five with long blond hair sat at a desk in a large office. She looked up and saw him. “Dick,” she said.
“Hi, Valerie. This is Diane.” He turned to Diane. “Valerie runs the business.”
“The money part, not the part that matters,” Valerie said. “I’m a certified public accountant. Pleased to meet you.”
Valerie glanced at the receptionist. “And this is Clarissa, who does everything else.”
Diane stepped to the receptionist and held out her hand. “Diane.”
The receptionist smiled. “It’s a pleasure. But I’m surprised to see you two here this morning.”
“Why?” said Diane. “He said you were expecting us.”
“That bomb business in the subway. I really thought they’d call you in.”
Stahl had his phone out, looking at the screen. “Nothing. Don’t tell me they’re that stupid.” He dialed a number, then said, “This is Dick Stahl. Is Deputy Chief Ogden available?” He listened for a moment. “I see. Can you tell me where it is? Thank you.”
He turned to the others. “Somebody set off a bomb on the tracks in the Red Line subway in North Hollywood and it caused a wreck.” He looked at his phone for a few more seconds. “I’d better get over there. Are you up to coming with me?”
“If I wait here you’ll get there faster,” Diane said. “And I don’t want to be part of the news story.”
He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you as soon as I can.”
As the casualties of the subway crash were brought to the surface by elevator and escalator, they were loaded into ambulances and driven north on Lankershim Boulevard toward Valley Presbyterian, east to Providence Saint Joseph in Burbank, or south toward UCLA. The rescue was rapid. One moment there were thirty ambulances lined up along the curb near the station, and ten minutes later there were none. The police and sheriff’s deputies kept the traffic moving across the nearby intersections, and kept a lane free for emergency vehicles.
In the sky a swarm of helicopters circled, the throbbing rotors and growling engines making it hard for the rescuers to hear a human voice. The cops and EMTs had to rely on practiced procedure and hand signals to get the patients away.
Dick Stahl pulled his car into the parking structure of a nearby supermarket and trotted to the mouth of the subway. When he got there he saw Judy Welsh, the agent from Raleigh who had been assigned to Team Four.
She was near the parked bomb truck talking on a device with a wire that ran down into the escalator pit. Stahl assumed they had set up a hard connection for communication so they could maintain a no-cell-phones zone. Cells didn’t work very well belowground anyway. As he stepped up to her she looked up. “Captain Stahl!”
Someone on the other end said something, and she replied, “Yeah, it’s him, big as life.”
She heard something else and she said, “Captain, they want you downstairs.”