The Bomb Maker

4

Dick Stahl had been both a soldier and a cop, two professions that never left a man unchanged. He was forty-four now, but in a suit and open-collared shirt he was still straight backed and walked with a physical authority that made him seem taller than his six feet. He had the sort of tan men like him had — darkened forearms, face, neck, and hands — wherever his shirt didn’t cover. His tan was color acquired as wear, one of the things his work had done to him.

He got into his black BMW and looked back at the big house perched near the top of the hill overlooking the ocean. The woman who lived there was standing above him behind a floor-to-ceiling window watching him go. He gave her an unsmiling half wave and then drove.

Stahl’s mind was already working on Sally Glover’s problem. She and her husband had lived in that house for thirteen years. Every morning Glover had driven to his company offices in Calabasas, and she’d spent her days on the things the wives of successful men did — volunteer work for the homeless, the hungry, and the victims of a couple of favorite diseases — directing the spending of the couple’s small charitable foundation. Stahl was aware that the things people distrusted a rich wife for — keeping herself beautiful and capable of intelligent conversation, keeping the big house tastefully decorated and provisioned to entertain her husband’s colleagues and customers — were also just chores. The money didn’t change that.

The money had brought on their current problem. Her husband had begun to work on expanding his business into Mexico. He had wanted to build a facility for manufacturing and shipping medical imaging machines, and for the past few months he’d been spending weeks at a time in the small towns east of Mexicali, where he had been choosing a site and securing the land leases, permissions, licenses, and permits.

Two days ago Mrs. Glover had received a call from Mr. Glover’s cell phone. When she answered, a man with a thick Spanish accent told her that her husband would not be coming home until she had paid for his freedom. If she wanted him back, she should mail a hundred thousand dollars in cash to a mailbox rental business in Mexicali. She was skeptical until the man put Benjamin Glover on the line. He said he had been dragged from a taxicab, beaten, and taken somewhere. He was all right, if a bit hurt and shaken, but she should do as the man asked.

She had called the head of security at her husband’s company, who made some calls to friends of his in the narrow world of security and private investigation and found a name and a phone number. There was a man named Stahl who was known to have made some successful extractions from Mexico.

Stahl had come to see the prospective widow and told her to prepare the hundred thousand dollars. He gave her a blue cardboard box and assured her it would hold a hundred thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills. She must give him the address of the post office box and send the money right away. He took several pictures of the box.

She said she could get a hundred thousand dollars from a personal bank account. Was that all it would take? No, he told her. This was just the kidnappers’ way of beginning the negotiations. It would persuade them her husband was worth keeping alive while they prepared to make their next demand. In time they would ask for much more, so she should begin selling stocks, bonds, or property. She had to be ready to respond right away, or they might feel the need to send her an ear or a finger to motivate her.

Stahl said, “I’ll leave today for Mexico. I’ll do this as quickly as I can.” Then he listed some items he would need immediately. One was her husband’s most recently expired passport. Another was a collection of photographs of her husband. The third was her current passport.

When she asked about his fee, he said, “I have a flat rate for kidnappings in foreign countries. It’s five hundred thousand dollars.”

“What if you find you can free him for the cost of a trip to Mexico?”

“I don’t give refunds. But if it costs ten times as much to get him back, I won’t ask you for more. And no matter what it takes, I won’t quit or give up. Here’s my card. You can send the check to my office when you have the money in your account. Of course, you can do this another way or contact somebody else.”

“No,” she said. “I’ve been told you’re the one, and if that’s your fee, I’ll pay it. This is my husband’s life.”

As soon as he was on the road he made a telephone call to a man in Ensenada named Antonio Garza, and then another to a woman in Mexico City named Esmeralda Cruz. Next he dropped his car off in the underground parking structure at his condominium building and called to reserve a rental car. He bought all the insurance the rental company would sell him, and packed. A cab took him to the rental lot, and he put his two suitcases into the trunk.

Stahl was on the road to Mexico by noon. He didn’t seem to be in a hurry or uncomfortable when he crossed the border at San Ysidro. He told the border cop he was headed for a resort at the tip of Baja. The police made him open his trunk, but they didn’t go any further. They just watched him to see if he was nervous, and then waved him on. A man who had spent years rendering bombs safe was not easily flustered. And as a rule, people didn’t smuggle anything to the south. It was on the way home that the authorities would be more thorough. He met Antonio Garza in Ensenada, where Garza had set aside a room for him in his house.

Garza was a longtime colleague whom Stahl paid a retainer to remain available to help him in any operations in Mexico. Like Stahl, he had been a soldier and a cop and then had formed his own security company. He had a number of regular clients who paid his company to protect things of value — often a family business, but increasingly, as kidnappings had become more common, their sons and daughters. Garza was about six feet three and 240 pounds, and he conveyed the peculiar impression that he was in life as a kind of referee.

When Stahl and Garza walked into a restaurant near the beach for dinner, Garza took the manager aside and pointed out the spot that would be the best place for him to seat them. The manager seemed to believe this was good advice. During dinner the two men spoke in only the most general terms about the operation. It was only later at Garza’s house that they discussed the specific plan. Garza had people watching the mailbox rental store in Mexicali for the blue box, and each of them had Stahl’s photograph of the box on his cell phone. There would be a constantly changing group — some men, some women. As soon as they saw the box, they would follow the person who picked it up and try to find the place where Benjamin Glover was being held. When it was time to act, Stahl would do the work and Garza would be the driver. Stahl had been with a great many people in frightening situations. He had learned Antonio Garza was a man who would not let fear overpower his pride. Garza wouldn’t get nervous and drive off without him if things turned bad. Stahl knew that if he failed, he wouldn’t be alone when he died.

The call came after three days. A man in his thirties had picked up the blue box in Mexicali. He had walked around a corner and gotten into a pickup truck. He drove south and east to the town of Corazón de Maria, then delivered the box to a house in the center of town in the oldest section, near the old church and the town square.

Stahl and Garza left for Corazón de Maria the next morning. Corazón de Maria was a market town with a considerable population, but because there were no luxury hotels, it wasn’t a place where American tourists were common. If the kidnappers were expecting an American operative, Stahl would be spotted immediately. Garza dropped Stahl off at a ranch owned by a friend of his and went on alone. He arrived in late morning and rented an office on the top floor of a commercial building across the city square from the house where the money had been taken and then went back for Stahl.

They returned late at night. Garza helped move Stahl into the office and unload the items he expected to need and then drove off to Mexicali to wait. Stahl began his own surveillance. He placed a sixty-power marksman’s spotting scope a few feet back from the window so it was enveloped in shadows, and he watched from his vantage point high across the square.

The house was one of the colonial-era buildings that lined some of the streets radiating from the square. There was a wall with a rounded door set into it. The place was like others of that period he’d seen in market towns. Through the portal on the inner side was a garden enclosed by the wings of the house. The rooms were situated in a row, all of the doors opening onto the long covered porch that surrounded the garden.

Whenever the thick wooden door opened, he used the few seconds to stare through it and learn more. Then he focused on whoever went in or out. By the end of the first day he had seen six men and memorized their faces. He had also noticed they brought in a large quantity of groceries, including cases of beer and tequila, and brought out a large number of garbage bags, which they hauled away in a truck. He saw no women or children.

Stahl watched the house most of the time for six days, noting everything that went on. Late on the sixth night, when his office building was empty and there was no chance of being overheard, he called Antonio Garza. “I’m going in tomorrow night. Has Esmeralda arrived yet?”

“Two days ago. I picked her up at the airport.”

“Can you be here at two a.m.?”

“Yes. Why tomorrow night?”

“For the past couple of days, men have been leaving and not coming back. It looks like they’re getting started on another operation or something. There seem to be only two men guarding the house tonight. It’s not going to get better than that.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“They’re not taking precautions. They don’t hide, and they don’t seem to have any defense. I haven’t seen lookouts with cell phones watching the place from outside, and nobody seems to guard the door. You know what that could mean.”

“Yes. They could have somebody else protecting them. And what about Glover? You haven’t seen him yet. How do you know he’s not already dead?”

“If he were dead, there wouldn’t be much point in leaving any men here, not even two.”

“Maybe.” Garza didn’t sound convinced.

Stahl added, “It’s supposed to rain tomorrow night. Rain covers sounds and keeps people at home staying dry. The clouds cover the moon.”

“Where do you want the car?”

“Drive up the street by the back of the church, and wait for me to call.”

“All right. I’ll be there at two.”

At 2:00 a.m. the next night, Stahl walked in a light rain on the cobbled street leading off the square past a row of old colonial houses. When he reached the right house, he picked the front door lock, eased it open to keep its hinges from squeaking, and slipped inside. He was wearing a baseball cap to keep the rain out of his face and a gray raincoat to cover the items he was carrying — a short Steyr AUG-3 automatic rifle on a sling that let it hang muzzle downward, a pistol in his belt, and a razor-edge marine KA-BAR fighting knife with a black blade.

He stepped into the garden, which looked as he had expected from his distant surveillance. A low porch with a roof surrounded the grassy space, with tall leafy trees. The porch roof was covered with climbing bougainvillea that had scaled the beams and hidden the clay tiles. He moved along the covered porch, looking in each window.

Stahl was willing to take his time moving through the dark house. If he’d made a noise as he came through the door in the wall, he knew a sleeping man would probably ignore it unless there was another noise that indicated some sort of a pattern. Stahl felt ceramic tile beneath his feet. It made him happy, because he could walk across it silently.

He had gone about two-thirds of the way around when he found the first occupied room. There were two men asleep on beds. The beds were smaller than a twin bed and each consisted of a steel frame with a single layer of interlocking wire links covered by a thin stuffed mattress and a single loose army blanket.

Their quarters were so spare that if he had not seen both men during the week going in and out, he might have mistaken them for prisoners. He thought about the fact that they had bunked together. Every room had its window and door opening onto the courtyard, and he’d looked into every one he’d passed. The house was large, and none of the other rooms had any occupants. Why would both guards sleep here? It made sense only if the man they were guarding was very near. Stahl closed his eyes, waiting a few minutes so they would adjust to the dark, and then he studied the room. He saw a door with a padlock on it. That had to be it.

He couldn’t do anything before he made sure the rest of the rooms were empty. He resumed his prowl around the building. He found the second occupied room only two doors away. The man in this room was asleep too, but he looked as though he’d gotten the first choice of beds. His bed was wider and thicker, with box springs, two white pillows, and white sheets. The man had taken off a suit and hung the pants and coat on a single hanger on the door to the bathroom. Stahl could see that the breast pocket of the coat had a leather wallet with a police badge flapped open, the way plainclothes cops sometimes wore theirs to be identified during raids. Now Stahl was sure he knew why the men of this building didn’t seem to fear anyone. They had connections.

Stahl paused. He knew he was going to have to get the policeman out of the way before he could return to the room with the two guards. He slowly and carefully opened the door and stepped into the policeman’s room. He went to the man’s suit on its hanger to see if the cop’s gun was in his coat or in a holster. As he touched the coat there was a sudden motion in his peripheral vision.

The cop whirled in bed, his hand coming up from under his pillow with a pistol.

He was reacting like a cop, but Stahl had been a cop too. He had anticipated that this move was one possibility, so he was ready. Under his raincoat, his hand was poised to use the rifle, and he swung it up into the man’s face and hammered it butt downward on the cop’s head.

Stahl wrenched the pistol out of the man’s hand and held it on him for a moment. The man didn’t move. He examined the man’s skull, then shook him. Stahl was shocked. The blow with the butt of the rifle seemed to have killed him. Stahl had never intended to kill. He had planned to handcuff him with his own cuffs and gag him.

Stahl knew he had to hurry. It was critical now that he get Benjamin Glover out of this house — and out of this town. In a few seconds he was in the other bedroom.

The two men were still asleep. When he came here, he had expected to do what he had done several times before. He had entered a house at night, pointed an ugly-looking automatic weapon into a kidnapper’s face, and asked him to consider accepting a smaller ransom than he’d demanded. Stahl had confirmed each time that a few thousand dollars sounded much better to a man who was about to die than it had earlier.

Stahl raised his Steyr rifle with his left hand and prepared to turn on the light. As he reached up, he heard a shuffle, a movement behind him. He turned and a big dark shape hurtled through the doorway behind him and clutched him in a bear hug, trying to pin his arms to his sides. The cop now had the crazy strength of an enraged, hurt man. He swung Stahl around into the wall, but it didn’t loosen the cop’s grip on him.

Stahl had not forgotten that the man had just awakened. He was still barefoot. Stahl stomped on the cop’s instep, and used the second of intense pain to break free. He grasped his razor-sharp commando knife and spun around, slashing the man’s throat. The cop fell to the floor bleeding.

Stahl whirled. The two guards behind him were freeing themselves from their blankets. Stahl lunged toward the nearest man, stuck the knife up under the center of his rib cage and found his heart. He snatched the man’s blanket, threw it over the second guard and shot him through the head with the rifle.

Stahl stepped to the padlock, used the big knife to pry the hasp out of the wooden door, and opened it.

Inside was a closet with two steamer trunks stored on the floor so that the emaciated, dirty man crouching on the trunks could not stand up and straighten his back.

Five minutes later Dick Stahl walked along the narrow, dimly lit street that led to the square of Corazón de Maria, his open raincoat sloughing off the gentle drizzle. His right hand was stuck in his raincoat pocket and through the slash he had made in the inner fabric so he could hold the 5.56-mm Steyr AUG 3 M1 under the coat. The forty-two-round magazine made the weapon bulky and heavy, but he had removed part of the bullpup stock and shortened the sixteen-inch barrel to make it lighter and easier to hide.

His left hand held Benjamin Glover’s arm. Glover was unsteady, almost staggering, because the muscles in his legs had cramped and tightened during the ten days he was imprisoned in a closet that was too low to allow him to straighten them.

“Easy,” Stahl said. “We’re going to be out of here very soon. The car is waiting for us just past the church. All you have to do is make it that far.”

Glover turned his head, trying to look over his shoulder, but Stahl tightened his grip and pulled him forward. “You know better than that, Benjamin. What would you think if you saw a man who was looking over his shoulder all the time? You’d think he believed he was being chased, right? That he was trying to get away.”

“I can’t help it,” said Glover. “I’ve been in that box for so long. They said if I ran away, they’d ruin my feet.”

“Don’t worry,” said Stahl. “The ones that were guarding you are past noticing. Hey, isn’t that something? Just in that time we walked about fifty yards. We’re halfway. More, maybe.”

Glover was irritated and peevish. “How can you be sure they haven’t noticed? They could be awake and coming after us right now.”

“No,” said Stahl. “Not the three who were guarding you in that house.”

“Why not?”

“They ran into some bad luck,” said Stahl. “It’s a hazard of the kidnapping business.”

Stahl tightened his hand on Glover’s arm and walked him toward the steps of the old church. At this time of night the town seemed abandoned. All day the square was occupied by food vendors’ carts and booths where wised-up girls with bored expressions sold clothing, pirated videos, cheap jewelry, sunglasses, T-shirts, and leather goods. At night the square was an open, empty space where the light rain glistened on the cobbles and the white church loomed against the dark sky.

A car wheeled around the church with its headlights off, and onto the cobbled plaza. The car was not Garza’s, but it seemed to be heading directly for Stahl and Glover as they walked toward the church.

Stahl said, “Study this car. Look at the men in the front. If you see a face you’ve ever seen before, tell me.”

He released Glover, reached into the left pocket of his raincoat, and produced a small powerful LED flashlight. He held it in his hand and kept walking, his right hand now gripping the Steyr with the safety off.

The car was close enough now. Stahl raised his left hand and switched on the blinding white light. The two men in the front seats flinched and squinted, and the car stopped with a jerk. The man in the passenger seat ducked, but the seat belt kept him from getting down.

Glover said, “The driver! He was the one who was taking me to Tijuana when the kidnappers ambushed me!”

The driver turned on the headlights and hit the high beam switch, bathing them in light.

Stahl brought the Steyr up and out between the two sides of the open raincoat, and fired. The windshield bloomed with opaque circles of pulverized safety glass.

The men were both dead, held upright by their seat belts, but the car kept coming, gliding along over the cobbles.

Stahl pivoted with his short automatic rifle raised, its sights still trained on the moving vehicle as it passed.

A man in the backseat popped up and raised a weapon that looked like an AK-47, but before he could fit the long weapon out the window, he bumped the muzzle against the window frame. The half second gave Stahl time to fire a shot into the man’s forehead.

Stahl saw the dome light of the car go on and held his rifle sights steady.

The car swept by, but the man who had jumped from the far side door was left behind, kneeling with a rifle rising to his shoulder. Stahl’s sights settled on him first, he fired, and the man fell backward onto the cobblestones.

Stahl grasped Glover’s arm again and said, “Come on, as fast as you can manage.” He began to run, dragging Glover along with him. In a moment they made it around the corner of the church into the dark lane that led up the hillside. Stahl pushed Glover into the wall and they both stood with their backs against it in the shadow of the big building. Stahl used the moment to remove the magazine of his Steyr and replace it with his spare, then cycle the first round into the chamber.

He took out his handheld radio. “We’re at the pickup location. What are you waiting for?”

“We heard shots.”

“Me too. I fired them. Get here now.” He sidestepped back to the corner of the church and craned his neck to look out at the plaza.

The car with three of the dead men still inside completed its drift across the empty plaza and slowly pushed its way into the glass front of a long-closed restaurant, bringing the glass down on top of it and coming to rest among a forest of tables and upturned chairs.

In a moment another vehicle with no headlights emerged from the street beside the church and stopped. Stahl threw open the back door and pushed Glover onto the seat, then got in beside Garza. “Go.”

Antonio Garza accelerated quickly, his lights still off.

Stahl said, “Stay away from the restaurant on the other side of the plaza, and don’t run over that body.”

Antonio skirted the plaza, using the open space to gain speed, and passed by a row of ornate government buildings. As he drove, they heard sirens and then saw the lights of the police cars illuminating the upper parts of buildings they passed on the way to the square. Antonio reached the mouth of a side street just before the police cars pulled up in front of the restaurant.

Glover said, “Didn’t you see those police cars?’

“We sure did,” said Stahl.

“Aren’t we going to stop and tell them? They could help us.”

“Not on this trip,” Stahl said.

Glover was incensed. “That stuff about all Mexican cops being corrupt is nonsense,” Glover said. “This isn’t some remote village. It’s a busy town. Come on.”

Stahl said, “One of the men holding you was a police detective. He wasn’t there to help you, Benjamin. He was there to be sure that when your ransom got paid the police got their honest cut.”

“Look, I know a couple of police captains.”

“Then we don’t have to wonder about who picked you out for the kidnappers.”

Garza drove to the vegetable canning plant where he’d left the other car, and they made the trade. When Stahl helped Glover into the backseat, there was already a middle-aged woman waiting there. She was pretty, with large, lively brown eyes and long black hair with a streak of gray.

She began to talk to Glover rapidly in Spanish, but Glover said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand you.” He said to Stahl, “Who is this woman?”

Stahl glanced over his shoulder and saw the garment Esmeralda was holding up to Glover. “She’s asking you to put those on so she can get started on your hair and makeup.”

“These are women’s clothes.”

“She’s giving you a disguise. She’s very good. She gets lots of work for movie studios.”

“Is this necessary?”

“Only if you want to get across the border alive,” said Stahl. “At some point they’re going to get your picture into the hands of guards at the airports and border crossings. She can make you into a different person, but it takes time, so let her get started.”

“What if I don’t want to cross the border in drag?”

Stahl half-turned and looked at him. “I haven’t had time to explain the whole situation. You’re probably really good at what you do, manufacturing things in places where nobody has money and selling them in places where people do. That’s a great talent, and I wish I had it. But instead, I learned a trade. I can find and extract a kidnapped American businessman. The bump in the road this time was that I couldn’t get you out of the building where they had you without killing the three men who were holding you. That’s not something I’d normally do. And you saw what happened at the plaza. Those four men are dead too.”

“But—”

“If the police stop us, we die or go to prison for life. I picked that disguise because I knew they would starve you, and being skinny would help you pass for a woman. That’s the plan, and I’m afraid I have to insist.”

Esmeralda began to work, first pulling Glover’s filthy T-shirt off and then pulling the silky blue-flowered dress down over his head. She fitted the wig and looked at him critically. She shaved his face with an electric razor and then began to apply foundation makeup.

Glover said, “What made you do this?”

“A whole lot of money.”

“Who’s paying you?”

“You are,” Stahl said. “Your wife already put up the money with my security company.”

“She paid you in advance?”

“It’s company policy.”

“That’s quite a policy.”

“It saves my clients from the unpleasant experience of seeing me again.”

Glover lapsed into silence while Esmeralda applied foundation and then blush to his cheeks. She said in Spanish to Garza: “Tell me when you’re on a long, flat stretch so I can do the eyes. The eyeliner is the hardest.”

In a few minutes she finished, and then Glover fell asleep. Esmeralda used a small makeup light on a compact to study her work, and then said, “I like him better as a woman.”

Stahl shrugged. “You’re the expert.” After an hour of fast driving Garza said, “We’ll be up on that bridge before long.”

“All right.” Stahl unloaded the Steyr and then broke down the weapon. When they came to a bridge over the Rio Colorado, Garza stopped. Stahl hurled the receiver over the side to splash into the river. Then he threw the barrel, the trigger, and sear and springs as far as he could, followed by the ammunition and magazines, his pistol, and his knife; got back in; and buckled up while Garza went on.

They drove into the long morning line at the Mexicali-Calexico crossing just before dawn. The line of cars inched forward, nose to tail, their engines idling under the gray, rainy sky.

When they approached the customs booth, Stahl nodded and Esmeralda woke Glover. At the booth, Garza handed the four passports to the uniformed customs officer. As the man’s eyes focused on each passport in turn, his expression remained sleepy and bored. When he reached Glover’s passport, he studied him for a moment, and then said, “Mrs. Glover. Where were you born?”

Glover said, “Cleveland, Ohio,” in a soft, nearly feminine voice.

The customs man closed the passport and handed all four back to Antonio. Then he stepped back and waved the car into the United States.

When they pulled away, Glover leaned forward and said, “Let me see that passport.” Stahl took the stack from Garza, then handed one to Glover. He looked at it, scowled for a few seconds, then laughed. “It’s my wife’s passport. I can’t believe you got me across the border on my wife’s passport.”

When they were leaving Calexico, Esmeralda pulled off Glover’s wig and put it back in her kit, and then used wet wipes to remove all of the makeup from his face. She said, “Be careful with the dress. I want to give it to someone.”

Glover took off the dress and handed it to her, then put on his pants and T-shirt. “They didn’t let me get a shower for the past few days. If the dress is ruined, I’ll pay for it.”

They headed west toward San Diego. When they reached the San Diego airport, Garza took the freeway exit and stopped in front of the terminal. He and Esmeralda got out. Stahl shook hands with Garza, hugged Esmeralda, and said, “Thank you both. When you get home, check to be sure your money has been deposited in your bank, and then call me.”

“Of course,” said Esmeralda. “Adios.” She set off for the airline ticket counters.

“See you soon, Dick,” said Garza. He hurried to join Esmeralda in the airport.

Stahl got back into the car, this time in the driver’s seat, and drove toward the freeway entrance. He said, “Your wife is waiting for you at a hotel up the road in La Jolla. I’ll leave you there and drive on to LA. Your passport and hers are in that bag on the floor. There’s also a wallet with money and a credit card.”

“How did you get my passport back from them?”

“The same way I got you back.”

“Thank you for my life. I’m sorry I didn’t react right to things at first. This has been such a—”

“It’s okay. Nobody crouches in a closet for more than a week without getting a little confused.”

“I’d like to pay you for the extra… trouble.”

“No,” said Stahl. “Your wife paid in advance, and I would have charged the same for an easy trip. When you get into the hotel, rest for a few days. Don’t go back to the house where you used to live unless you have armed bodyguards or police officers with you. Move to a new place far from there, and keep the address a secret for as long as you can. Stay hard to find for the next year or so, and then you should be all right. Whoever is alive back there might like revenge, and might kill you if it were easy, but they won’t want to waste a lot of time, and there’s no more money in killing you than in leaving you alone.”