Almanzo said, “Captain Stahl, would you like to start?”
“All right. Here’s my interpretation of what I’ve seen. The surveillance tapes from yesterday’s attempted bombing make me think this is one man who works alone, not a political or religious group. This bomb maker is good. He has a sure hand and a very sophisticated sense of what a bomb technician is likely to look for and how he’ll go about making the bomb safe. That argues for some experience. He’s not at a point in his life where he can get military explosives — C-4 or Semtex. He’s had to make his own. That adds to my impression that he’s working alone.”
Stahl looked at the detectives, who were paying close attention. “That’s very bad news, because it makes him more independent and more dangerous. We think the explosive he’s been using is a homemade version of Semtex. Making it is a tricky task, because the main part of the formula is to mix two already powerful explosives, RDX and PETN. Since he can’t buy either of them, he must be making them. But because the ingredients are not perfectly controlled, he can make an unlimited supply. If an ingredient becomes scarce, he can simply move back a step in the process and make the components of the ingredient.”
“What do you suggest we look at first?”
“He used number eight commercial blasting caps for his car bomb. We took some out unexploded, so they can probably be traced to a source using model numbers and lot numbers. I don’t imagine tracing will lead directly to him, but it may give us something else — a licensed contact, a supplier. The car he left at the station has to have a history. He either bought it or stole it from somebody. He was all over it, touching many parts of it to turn it into a bomb. If we’re really lucky he might even have left a fingerprint. His switches are often the simplest kinds of devices to complete a circuit — wires attached to metallic surfaces that will connect for an instant if a door is closed or a spring is released or a button is pressed. But one thing he really loves is a mercury tilt switch. He knows we don’t want to defuse any bombs. What we want to do with a bomb is move it away from a populated area and detonate it. A mercury switch means that trying to move it will kill you.”
“Is he military trained?”
“I don’t know. There are signs he’s self-taught. His designs are eccentric, made for a single use on a single day. He’s good at improvising. He likes to build in redundancies like backup switches and separate charges, so a bomb will have several ways to detonate. That tendency is often part of the amateur mentality. Think of the guys who send mail bombs. The amateurs overwrap them. You know. It would look just like a normal package but it has layers and layers of tape around it. But it’s too early to assume this guy is untrained. He might be doing some of this to point investigators away from himself.”
“Could this man be a former Bomb Squad member who has a grudge?”
Stahl shrugged. “I can’t rule it out yet. I would definitely take a look at a rejected applicant who was angry, or a person who has served time for planting a bomb or possessing explosives in Los Angeles. It won’t hurt to look at the lists of men and women who have been in the FBI bomb tech school at Redstone, Alabama, or Fort Lee, Virginia, particularly if they washed out. But first I’d look at people who have been through demolition school in a foreign military service. An American graduate might make C-4, because he’s used to handling it. A graduate from some other country might make Semtex for the same reason. Semtex was bought and used by all of the former Communist countries, the Irish Republican Army, and terrorist states like Libya. You might say any country where soldiers were issued Kalashnikov rifles probably used Semtex for demolition.”
“Any indication of what he’s trying to accomplish?” Almanzo asked.
“He made a phone call to report the rigged house in Encino. There was no reason to report his own bomb unless he wanted bomb technicians to come to the scene. I think chaining the car to the gas pumps yesterday was also intended to lure bomb technicians to a trap. If what he wants is to kill every bomb technician, he’s halfway to total success already.” He paused for a second. “We’re losing. I can honestly say that my own team of three is about as good as any bomb team I’ve ever seen. But it’s unlikely we would be able to pull off what we did yesterday a second time. This bomb maker knows that, and he’ll keep giving us opportunities to fail.”
The homicide detectives looked shocked. There was a brief silence while they stared at Stahl. Almanzo said, “Do you have a plan?”
“I’m hoping we’ll get reinforcements from the FBI and ATF, but they’re not going to be any better than the technicians we already have. Their presence is welcome, and they’ll give me a chance to keep my teams from getting exhausted and making mistakes. But some of the reinforcements won’t have served here before, and learning to be a good LA cop takes longer than training to be a competent bomb tech. Our only possible strategy is to try to keep this guy from killing us as long as we can.”
Almanzo said, “We’ve been told that often bomb experts can recognize a bomb maker’s work. Any chance some bomb squad in some other city has seen this guy before?”
“It’s made national news and no agency has called. I spent part of last night looking through the ATF’s summary descriptions of explosive-related crimes, but there’s nothing listed that’s remotely like this guy’s work. I went back about ten years.”
There was a buzz and Stahl looked at the screen of his phone. “That’s my alarm.”
Almanzo looked at his watch. “I guess that’s all we can cover for now.” He reached to the back of his chair for his coat. “Anybody else who’s going to the funeral, it’s time. The rest of you, keep at it.”
Stahl drove to Forest Lawn alone and joined the mourners already assembled. There were a large number of civilians who continued to arrive for a long time — fourteen dead men had many friends and relatives — and the police presence was overwhelming. There were contingents from various parts of the state, and even from a few other states that touched California on the north and east. Parked on a single winding piece of pavement were a dozen news vans with satellite dishes on booms, and camera people recording with telephoto lenses.
Stahl had been present at too many funerals of men in uniform — men who had served with him in the army, police officers who had died chasing getaway cars in LA traffic, victims of shootings. They had become almost interchangeable to him, casualties of battles that seemed to be parts of one struggle. During the previous evening he looked at the photographs taken at the scene in the hope that his practiced eye would see something new, but they were the same as what he’d seen in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places. High explosive shock waves tore people apart and heat burned them. He recognized a couple of the victims as old friends, but there was little to be learned from this horror that he hadn’t already known.
Stahl listened to the words of the chaplain, the several priests, and the ministers who were there to represent their versions of God. He listened to the mayor and the police chief. His cell phone was in his shirt pocket. He was aware it might vibrate with an incoming call related to a new bomb threat at any time and felt relief with each passing minute when it didn’t.
He had scanned the ranks of uniformed police officers in the cemetery when he arrived, but he didn’t spot Diane Hines. She was probably somewhere in the rows behind him. The fourteen technicians who had not been at the Encino house would all be sitting together.