“Okay. Wait for my call.”
Stahl looked down from the cab and saw Hines and Elliot standing a few feet away. They had both removed their helmets, and their hair was drenched with sweat. They looked shocked, their eyes wide.
“What can we do?” said Hines.
“Help me rig a harness for the device. It should be in front of me, so the weight hangs on my shoulders, but not strapped tight. I’ll need to use my hands to keep it level.”
“We can use one of the backpacks for the straps and the body,” said Hines. “We’ll add a floor so the bomb can’t shift.”
Elliot said, “Boss, I’d like to be the one who does this.”
“No,” said Stahl.
“I’m younger and stronger.”
“Better looking too,” said Stahl. “But I’m older, and I outrank you by so much I can barely see you down there. So forget it and help me get ready.”
Stahl got out of the driver’s seat, went to the toolboxes along the side of the truck, and opened each until he found a carpenter’s level. He held it up. “The secret weapon.”
7
It was late afternoon now, and there was a procession moving north in the center of the empty pavement of Laurel Canyon Boulevard.
As in many parades, the first cars were four black-and-white patrol cars with their colored lights flashing. They went at the speed of a slow walk five hundred feet ahead of the procession. Two of them stopped across the blocked entrance ramps to the 101 Freeway and the others parked across the lanes beyond. The next vehicle was the Team One bomb unit truck towing a containment vessel behind it.
Then, about two hundred feet behind the Bomb Squad’s truck, walked a single man wearing a harness made from a backpack that had once held a professional first aid kit. The spirit level was taped to the top of the rig, so the bubbles in the three glass tubes of the level were directly under his eyes as he walked.
He was five hundred feet ahead of the next pair of police cars. Behind them came a fire truck: a pumper that carried water and fire extinguishing chemicals. Next there were three ambulances, and after them, four more police cars. The whole procession was more than a block long, most of it shiny official vehicles with colored warning lights flashing.
The convoy to conduct Dick Stahl to the gate leading down to the concrete riverbed made a strange, dreamlike parade. All the police officers, firefighters, and paramedics in their powerful specialized vehicles were silent, rolling along before and behind the solitary walking figure of the man harnessed to the bomb. When Dick Stahl arrived at the station this morning he had been wearing a plain black sport coat, gray slacks, and casual walking shoes. Much of the day he had worn the heavy bomb suit. But now he wore his civilian shirt and slacks again. His clothes made him look like an outsider, maybe a penitent or a prisoner — certainly not a bomb expert. A man carrying fifty pounds of plastic explosives packed in a metal pipe was not going to be any safer wearing a protective suit.
Stahl moved with great care, his gait like a slow-motion version of the heel-and-toe steps of a tightrope walker, his eyes on the small glass tubes of the carpenter’s level. Now and then he made minuscule adjustments in response to the positions of the bubbles in the tubes of the level.
Stahl had been the source of the neighborhood evacuation order before. He hoped nobody had been foolish enough to stay in any of the nearby wood-and-stucco apartment buildings to hide behind blinds or curtains and watch him make his walk. If this bomb were triggered, many of the buildings within five hundred feet — just where he would be close enough for an occupant to see him clearly — would be heavily damaged.
The explosives he’d seen seemed to be a form of Semtex. Factory-made Semtex had a detonation velocity of twenty-six thousand feet per second and at the explosion’s center produced heat of three thousand degrees. These numbers renewed his alertness and his patience, two conflicting feelings. He used both to focus his concentration on keeping the bomb level.
Stahl could visualize the mercury tilt switch he believed had been placed under the cap of the device. It would be just like the first one they’d found earlier. There would be the glass tube, the shining slivery blob of mercury at the bottom, the two copper wires glued to the inside surface, connecting to a battery and to a blasting cap embedded in the explosive. He kept his eyes on the bubbles in the level as he walked.
Stahl reached the gate, which had been opened. It was a few yards past the wide bridge carrying the six lanes of Laurel Canyon Boulevard over the Los Angeles River. He had reached his first goal, but now he faced the most difficult steps, carrying the bomb down into the riverbed.
He paused at the gateway and looked down. He saw the bomb truck waiting in the concrete trough of the riverbed. Hines and Elliot had unhitched the containment vessel from the back of the truck and opened the lid of the vessel for him.
The other vehicles, the ones behind Stahl, were assuming their places, where they would not be in a direct line of fire if the bomb went off in the concrete channel. He looked at the ramp that led into the dry river. The ramp was wide enough for a dump truck to come down safely, but there were places where gravel or stray pebbles lay on the surface. He memorized them and the uneven spots, then took a deep breath and began to walk again.
He took each step so slowly that he imagined the people watching him must find it difficult even to detect his progress. He stopped occasionally to recheck the surface ahead, and then went on.
Finally, he was at the bottom of the ramp. He advanced two small steps and stopped to watch the bubbles before he took the third step down.
On solid, level pavement now, he walked steadily to the bomb containment vessel, where Hines and Elliot waited.
“Well done, boss,” said Elliot. “Let me steady the bomb while Hines helps you out of the harness.”
“Okay,” he said. “Just keep your eye on the level.”
Hines gently undid the clasps and lifted the rig, and Stahl slid the straps off his shoulders. Keeping the bomb vertical with Elliot’s help, he said, “Have you got the rack inside to keep it from tilting?”
“Yes,” Hines said. “I’ll help steady it. You and Elliot can lift it and then lower it into the rack in the containment vessel. I’m going to count to three, and you’ll both lift it slowly and together. Ready?”
“Yes.”
“One. Two. Three.”
Stahl and Elliot lifted the cylinder, moved it to the opening of the containment vessel, and lowered it into the bomb maker’s wooden frame. They both held it there for a few seconds, not quite ready to call it safe. Then they released it and slowly withdrew their hands. Hines closed and latched the lid of the steel vessel.
Stahl closed his eyes, shrugged his shoulders a few times, and then laughed. “Nice job. Thank you both.”
“Thank you, boss,” said Hines. “We still have to detonate. Do you want me to put a charge in there to initiate it?”
“I think we need to know if we were right about the way it works,” Stahl said. “Let’s lay out a few hundred feet of rope. Then we’ll attach it to the containment vessel and give it a tug.”
The bomb truck had a rope on a reel near the rear doors. Elliot paid out rope as Hines drove along the riverbed. They came to the spot where the concrete LA River met the concrete bed of the Tujunga Wash and turned a corner. When they had gone another two hundred feet, they set the reel on the concrete surface of the wash and drove back to the containment vessel. They tied the rope to the tow hitch of the containment vessel, drove back, returned the reel to the truck, and then set the reel so it wouldn’t turn. Stahl got on the radio.