“Okay,” Stahl said. “Just don’t get impatient. If you can’t see we can try something else.”
Elliot put on his helmet and tugged it down so his face appeared behind the Plexiglas front. Elliot inserted the end of the flexible scope into the trunk and began to move it around. From his helmet radio the others could hear his breathing, and the fan that kept the helmet’s window clear of condensation. They listened to his breaths, trying to guess what he was seeing.
Stahl hadn’t been in a suit in years. It felt familiar, but not pleasant. The suit weighed eighty-five pounds, and the armor plates in it made it stiff. He watched Elliot kneeling, looking down at the closed-circuit television monitor as he held the flexible cable to move the camera and its light.
Elliot’s voice in the radio said, “It’s a mess.”
Hines said, “What do you mean?”
“The trunk is full of what look like plastic explosives. I think it’s homemade Semtex or C-4. There are bricks of it, each one about a foot long by four inches by four inches, but they’re not even close to identical. Probably each one was a batch. There are wires going to each one, so it’s like a rat’s nest. Each pair of wires I see looks like the leads of a blasting cap. If only one circuit works, it will set off everything. At the center of the pile is a vertical tube about ten inches in diameter. It seems to be right above the hole that was cut into the bottom of the trunk.”
“Shaped charge,” said Stahl.
“That’s what it looks like,” Elliot said. “I think it’s set up to do what you said—blow downward through the pavement to breach the gas tank below.”
“We’ve put two inches of steel between the trunk and the pavement, but if a shaped charge that size is made correctly, it might still blow through the pavement under it and set off a tank. The rule of thumb is that a shaped charge can penetrate through steel plate seven times its own diameter. That might be why the car is chained there—so the trunk will extend over that set of tanks.”
“The tanks under the station could make a hell of an explosion.”
“Look at the trunk itself,” Stahl said. “Is the lid rigged?”
“I don’t think so,” said Elliot. “But he’s built in lots of ways to set this off. He must have fifteen or twenty sets of blasting cap leads, and they don’t seem to be wired to one power source. They run in every direction.”
“One more thing. Is there any ceiling space between the top of the explosives and the underside of the trunk lid?”
“Just a second.” There was more shallow breathing, and then: “It amounts to about three inches in most places, but only about an inch above the shaped charge.”
“Mark the spot on top of the trunk directly above the shaped charge.”
Elliot stood, still holding the screen, moved the cable a little, and then took off one of his gloves and set it on the trunk lid. He went down on his back and looked at the hole under the trunk. Then he stood up and moved the glove an inch back. After a moment Elliot said, “Done. The shaped charge is directly below my glove.”
“Come back.”
When the three were standing on the far side of the truck from the booby-trapped car, they all removed their helmets. Their faces were covered with sweat. Elliot and Hines stared at Stahl, who seemed deep in thought. After a moment he looked up at them and noticed they looked worried, apprehensive, scared. “Don’t worry. We can do this.”
Hines said to Stahl, “How do you want to go about this part?”
“Popping the trunk lid will probably set off a trap initiator, but we just found something else we can do to get into it,” said Stahl. “We take part of the trunk lid off, so we can reach the explosives.” He took a black grease pencil from the tool kit in the truck, and then walked to the trunk of the car. He drew a ten-inch circle around Elliot’s glove, then made a two-foot square centered on it. He picked up Elliot’s glove, carried it back to the truck, and handed it to him.
“Thanks.”
Stahl said, “Before we do this, we’ve got to think of a way to cut into the lid without throwing sparks into the trunk full of explosives.”
Hines said, “I think I know how to do that. An electric saw can open a hole in the trunk. But first, we use the hole we drilled to insert a layer of something over the explosive.”
“A layer of what?” said Stahl.
“I was thinking of that foam insulation they use in attics. They spray it into walls and things.”
He looked at her. “That’s not a bad idea. Call Engle and see if she can find us some.”
In a half hour, Officer Engle drove up without her partner and opened the trunk of her patrol car. “A hardware store on Ventura had it.” She lifted a tank out of the trunk and handed the box of attachments to Elliot.
“Thank you, Officer Engle,” Stahl said. “Now you’d better pull back.”
Stahl, Elliot, and Hines went through the procedure of drilling a second hole through the other side of the trunk, cooling the bit and the car over and over. When the second hole was finished, Elliot inserted the flexible video camera into the trunk again, then the small hose from the insulation tank, and began to spray. The foam came out steadily, but not too quickly as he applied a layer of polyurethane foam over the surfaces of the bricks of explosives. The insulation expanded to fill the available space. Elliot had to pull out the camera quickly to keep it from being covered. He repeated the procedure on the other side of the trunk to be sure all of the explosives were protected.
“Is everything ready?” said Hines.
Elliot looked at her and then Stahl, his expression tense. “Let’s hope that stuff works.”
Hines drilled a hole at the edge of the square Stahl had drawn, then picked up the electric hacksaw and began to cut along the outline. Every few seconds she stopped to cool the blade in water, but the work went quickly. In time there was a square of the trunk lid ready to be lifted out. They pried one edge up so Elliot and Stahl could get their gloved hands under it. They paused for a second, their eyes meeting. Stahl said, “Lift.”
The metal square was out. They set it down near the bomb truck and came back to the now open trunk and began carefully lifting out pieces of foam insulation to reveal what was beneath. They all saw the switch, but Hines got the words out first. “Mercury rocker switch.”
The switch was resting on the off-white layer of explosive bricks in a handmade wooden frame about six inches long. The frame held a glass tube tilted at a twenty-degree angle. Inside the tube were two copper wires glued on opposite sides of the upper end. An inch of silvery mercury pooled on the lower end. If the tube were tilted, the mercury would, for an instant, connect the two contacts.
Elliot said, “If we hadn’t stabilized the car before we went to work on it, we’d be dead.”
Hines touched his arm. “But we did.”
Stahl said, “Let’s get the best and closest possible look at the switch and the frame to be sure it’s not wired to another switch before we remove it.”
They examined the device with flashlights and magnifiers. Then Stahl reached down and cut the wire to one of the contacts. “Wrap that, will you, Hines?”
She leaned close, took an insulated cap, twisted it over the wire, and then waited while he cut the other wire and capped that one too, so they couldn’t come together and complete the circuit accidentally.
Stahl put the mercury switch in an evidence bag, took it to the truck, and then returned.
“What’s next?” Hines asked Stahl.