by Thomas Perry
Also by Thomas Perry
The Butcher’s Boy
Metzger’s Dog
Big Fish
Island
Sleeping Dogs
Vanishing Act
Dance for the Dead
Shadow Woman
The Face-Changers
Blood Money
Death Benefits
Pursuit
Dead Aim
Nightlife
Silence
Fidelity
Runner
Strip
The Informant
Poison Flower
The Boyfriend
A String of Beads
Forty Thieves
The Old Man
THE
BOMB
MAKER
Thomas Perry
Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Perry
Cover design by Daniel Rembert
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].
FIRST EDITION
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: January 2018
ISBN 978-0-8021-2748-8
eISBN 978-0-8021-6553-4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this title.
The Mysterious Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
groveatlantic.com
18 19 20 22 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To Jo, Alix, and Ian, with thanks to Otto Penzler
Table of Contents
Cover
Also by Thomas Perry
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
About the Author
Back Cover
1
The maker’s fingers were nimble and certain, never trembling or touching any object or surface without intention. His hands were sure because he had designed the parts to be assembled in a precise order. A bomb was a simple machine. Its only moving part was a switch to complete the circuit running from the power source to an initiator and back. But bomb making was mentally demanding. Creating a potent blast required knowing the chemical processes he could produce by combining particular substances in specific proportions. He had to know how to coax them to transform from inert lumps of matter into sound, light, heat, and brute force.
The switch was enormously important. If he kept the switch open while he assembled the parts, nothing was at risk. The device became lethal only in the instant when the switch was engaged and the circuit was closed. Part of the maker’s power was building in the set of conditions that must exist before the switch would close.
He had used barometer switches designed to close when the bomb was at a specific altitude. He’d made time-delay bomb switches from kitchen timers, timers from lawn sprinkler systems, and alarm clocks. He’d made switches that used motion sensors from outdoor lighting fixtures to close a circuit when a person came near. He’d set bombs off with mousetraps, components from children’s toys and games, a pressure pad that turned on a laughing Halloween witch when a child stepped on it. He’d made a few from toasters and thermostats.
When commercially manufactured hardware was available that could perform the function he needed, he preferred to use it, no matter what its original purpose. Such components were tougher and more reliable than those built from scratch, and he could test them repeatedly ahead of time to be sure they worked, and then he could buy more or buy other models that worked better. Most electronic components came already tested, with a UL label on them. All he had to do was subvert the will of their designer to adapt them to his own purpose.
For similar reasons, he preferred to use commercially made initiators, preferably blasting caps. Usually he could not obtain manufactured explosives for the main charges of his bombs. Military explosives like C-4 were safe and reliable, but they were tightly controlled. Dynamite was far less powerful, but easier to buy or steal. The drawback of factory-made explosives was that they could be traced. Dynamite even contained tiny identifying tags that would be blown all over the blast area.
His only choice had been to learn to make his own. The planet was full of substances that could be made to explode. Many common materials could be induced to blow up—natural gas, wheat flour, coal dust, nitrate fertilizer. One of the biggest industrial explosions in history had been in a molasses plant. The cars people drove were propelled by small explosions of gasoline in the engine’s cylinders that pushed down pistons and turned a crankshaft. A bomb maker’s practical problem wasn’t that explosions were too difficult. Most of them were if anything too easy, too unpredictable.
Much of the challenge in his current project came from the miniaturization necessary to make a complex set of devices that would work in sequence, but not be noticed before detonation. He had to work with a magnifier on a small stand designed for jewelers and fly fishermen so he could do the delicate work without error.
The idea was to make a device small and familiar enough to be ignored, or at least to remain unsuspected. Right now his stand held a sturdy phone-size black plastic box bearing the white letters of a company logo: Canon, a name people knew. He popped open the case and studied the circuitry. He was pleased. This was an excellent piece of equipment. He could use it. He picked up his soldering gun to make the conne
ctions between the device’s circuitry and the electrical wires he was expecting the device to supply with power. Each of the wires was stripped to the copper at the end, and the rest of its length was white insulator. Most of the house where he wanted to use the small black box had white walls and white woodwork, so he had decided to start with white. He was intending to keep the device’s batteries charging on a wall socket until it was time. And then, even if the AC power source got cut off, the effect would be the same.
After two hours he finished and looked at his device. The circuit was as he had intended, and the solder connecting his twenty-four firing wires looked perfect. He turned off the intense desk lamp, rubbed his eyes with his hands, took a deep breath, and blew it out again. He had been working at this iteration of his idea for most of the day.
He stood and left the garage he had converted into a workshop, went out through the house and into the backyard. He thought of it as a backyard, but it was much too big to be called that. The land was fifty acres of sand mounds, dry brush and pebbles, rocks and yuccas, surrounded by miles more that didn’t seem to belong to anyone, and then a range of dry brown mountains on each side like the rim of a bowl.
It was late afternoon, and he looked out on the open land and assessed the period of daylight he had left. The shadows of the Joshua trees were long, but he might still get to his next device after he completed this test.
He had lived alone in the desert for over four years. The desert was a place where he could set off small charges, most of the time without anybody hearing them. Anybody who did hear would attribute the noise to a neighbor taking rifle practice. He did that sometimes too, and the sound was much louder than most of his experiments.
This time he didn’t need to make any noise. He had built a silent test device for the circuits he was making for this project. He went back into the shop in his garage and placed the small black box on one end of his long workbench. It had twenty-four coils of white wire attached to it. His test device was a six-foot board that held twenty-four five-watt lightbulbs. He connected each set of wires to one of the light fixtures.
He checked the adjustments on the small black box. Next he set the device to trigger when the electric eye detected motion near it.
He plugged the device into the nearest socket, stepped back about seven feet—too far away to touch it—and brought his hand down like a conductor eliciting the first note from an orchestra. The black box began to tick. With each tick, one of the five-watt bulbs went on. One by one, each of them lit and then went out, so it looked as though the light were a single bright object moving down the board. The effect reminded him of the marquee in front of the old Palace Theatre in Indianapolis during his childhood. He smiled. All twenty-four bulbs had lit and gone out.
He repeated the test, this time with the speed increased, so the light moved down the board much faster, taking only about a second to move the six feet down the board. He slowed it down and played with the timing control until he felt that the speed and rhythm were perfect. He disconnected the wires from the board and gently placed his small black box in a cardboard carton, taking care not to put any strain on the wires protruding from it. He went outside again, feeling he had accomplished something today.
The bomb maker was thirty-five and average looking, with short, dirty blond hair; a thin, sinewy body; and a flat stomach he kept that way with moderate habits and runs in the desert at dawn when it wasn’t too hot out. He stretched his back and arms and felt taller than his five feet ten inches. He took a deep breath as he stretched, enjoying the sun and the clear air and the endless blue sky and then decided he still had enough sunlight left to run his next test.
He went back to the workshop, retrieved another device, and set it up a hundred feet away on the range. The last thing he did was make the final connection to bring a blasting cap into the circuit. He retreated to the workshop and picked up the radio transmitter he had taken from the remote controller of a motorized toy car. He had rigged the transmitter to switch on when he stepped on a homemade pressure pad. He set the nearly flat object down at his feet and stepped on it. Instantly the receiver from the toy car received the signal and he heard the satisfying bang of the blasting cap.
Setting off a detonator from a distance wasn’t the whole game, but it was a necessary condition for a particular explosion he was planning. He was satisfied. He had five more toy cars in his garage, and tomorrow morning he would begin dismantling the controllers and taking the receivers out of the toys to begin modifying them for his purpose.
As he walked, he congratulated himself on his success. He made weapons, but didn’t consider himself a warrior. He was a bomb maker, a person who killed unseen and from a safe distance. All bombs came from a small, scheming, self-protective part of the mind. No bomb came from bravery. At most, bombs were cunning or imaginative, cleverly disguised as something harmless—or even appealing. The Russians used helicopters to drop small delayed bombs designed to look like toys so Afghan children would try to pick them up. The monumental cynicism that led to the design of those devices still excited and amazed him.
One of his specialties was making bombs that came from his observations about human impulses and temptations. He liked small, routine-looking bombs that would beguile a bomb technician and tempt him to try to defuse it. The technician’s efforts would then set off a bigger bomb he hadn’t seen or imagined was hidden nearby.
He loved the power. He had the ability to obliterate anything he wanted. And he liked the perversity of bombs, the way he could make his enemies use their own skill and intelligence and selflessness and bravery—especially bravery—to kill themselves. When he wanted to be, he was death.
2
Tim Watkins was the senior officer of the team that got the call from the police dispatcher. He and Maynard and Graham had been out to pick up lunch in the truck, and they were within blocks of the address. Watkins had picked up the radio mic and said, “One Zebra Sixty-Three. We’re in the vicinity. We’ll take it.” Bomb Squad teams consisted of two bomb techs and a supervisor, and on this team that was Watkins.
The emergency call had come from David Hills, the owner of the house, who was in France on business. He said he had received a threatening call from a phone in the Los Angeles area. Hills had called the LA police and asked them to check on his house, because the caller had said he was about to blow it up. The suspect had persuaded Hills he was serious: he had the address and described the house—a light gray clapboard one-story traditional Cape Cod with a black front door and white trim, and a Toyota Corolla in the driveway.
The car had clinched it. Hills said he’d rented the car and left it there to make it look as though the house were occupied. That meant this wasn’t somebody who had simply looked online and found a picture of his house. Hills had been competing for a big contract with three eastern European rival companies, and he had been getting vague threats from two of them for over a week before the final call.
Watkins stood on the steps of the house and looked at the black front door. He knew this was going to be the last moment when his feet would stand on anything he trusted. The steps were solid concrete, so they were safe. But he was about to enter another universe alone. For a moment he thought about his wife, Nora; and his daughter, Kelly. The resemblance between the two was uncanny. He could see them in his memory, having dinner last night. He was grateful for the sight but then pushed it away so he could keep his attention on what he was doing.
The other two members of the team were sitting in the truck five hundred feet away, the standard distance. Watkins didn’t let himself envision Maynard and Graham, because he was intent on clearing his mind of distractions and images that competed for his attention. That was also why he didn’t allow any back chatter while he was going downrange on a scene. He reported over the radio built into his bomb suit’s helmet, and they listened.
He knelt on the porch in his olive-drab bomb suit. The Kevlar and steel plates made the suit heavy
and stiff, but he managed to get down to eye level with the knob of the front door. The boots were like the rest of the suit. The one part of him that could have no protection was his hands, but he seldom let himself think about that because it made him uneasy. He opened his black canvas tool kit and used the lock pick and tension wrench to line up the pins of the cylinder. Then he tried turning the knob. It offered no resistance. He put away the tools. “I’ve got the door unlocked. Now I’m going to look for reasons not to open it.”
His statement brought another memory, this one the image of Dick Stahl, the retired Explosive Ordnance Disposal expert who had promoted him to the Bomb Squad. That was the sort of thing Stahl used to say. He supposed his subconscious was reminding him to make every move the way Stahl had trained him to. He gave himself a few seconds to clear his mind again.
He stood and squinted into the fisheye peephole set at chest height in the shiny black door, but saw no shadows or lines that might be wires—only a miniature image, like a view through the wrong end of a telescope. He saw a sunny room with a brown leather easy chair under a window with translucent white curtains.
Watkins went down the steps and around the house, looking at the lawn in front of him, selecting the places where he could safely put his thick-booted feet free of trip wires or light beams. If there was a bomb, the mind behind it wasn’t familiar to him. He couldn’t predict or eliminate anything. There could be an electric eye that would set off the initiator if the light beam to its receiver unit was interrupted. There could be a piece of thin wire or transparent fishing line stretched across his path at a level just below the tops of the blades of grass. The trap could be any of a thousand things, or several of them at once, or there could be no trap, and no bomb.
He came to a window that opened onto a dining room furnished with a maple table and chair set. There were two entrances to the room, one a narrow swinging door to the kitchen, like what a restaurant might have, and the other a broad arch that led to the living room. He could see the inner side of the front door of the house from here, and he saw nothing ominous. Once a couple of years ago he had peered in at the inner side of a door and seen a shotgun propped on a coffee table, set up with a wire to fire at the level of a bomb technician’s groin. He had wondered why. He still did.
