Spiral (36 page)

"Which crossing is that, sir?"

"Oh, the place where it crosses Richmond," he said, lookin his map.

There was a second's pause. "That'll be Mr. Branard's divis Hold on, I'll connect you."

Another woman answered.

"This is Lisa Welch."

"Yes. I would like to ask some questions about how you re your street crossin's?"

"How?"

"Yeah. You know, like do you check them crossin's at regular times, or do you just fix them when they need it, or when somebody reports it, or what?"

"You want to report a crossing that needs repairing, sir?" She was a little testy.

"I just wanted to know how you handle it."

"Look, you don't want to report something wrong?"

He could tell she wasn't going to be easy to deal with, so he had to explain.

"Lady, I'm sorry to bother you." He tried to sound contrite. "But if you're not to bissy I would like to ask a few questions." He heard her sigh dramatically, but he went right on. "See, I'm kind of a railroad buff, you know. I been in a wheelchair ever since I was in Vietnam. While I was gettin' over it I used to sit by this window all the time. I was near this railroad track so I started watchin' the trains coming and going and the work crews, and all that. I got some binoculars, and watched those guys all the time. I could tell you everything that went on along those tracks, you know. I memorized the numbers of the engines so I could tell how many times they went east or west, learned the switchin' schedules, the different kinds of things they carried. You know, caliche, oil, cattle. Different kinds of cars. Longest train ever went by there wass one hundred sixty-eight cars. Anyway, see, I just moved here from Laredo and I don't know nothing about your routines here. Man, I knew everything down there. So I was just wonderin' about your work crews. It's just a hobby, you know, 'cause I'm in this wheelchair. I ain't got nothin' else to do."

There was a pause. Bias could imagine what was going through the woman's mind. He would be surprised if she hung up on him now.

"Yeah, well, okay," she said finally. She didn't want to be a bitch to a man who couldn't walk. If his legs had been good she would already have hung up on him. "What is it . . . what do you want to know?"

"You sure you have time right now ... I mean ..."

"Oh, yeah. It's okay."

"Thass great. Okay, in Laredo I used to watch them so much I knew everything about the repair crews, too, just like the engineers. How many they had on each shift, the color of their uniforms. One crew had women on it. Worked just like the men, you know. Did all right, too. Drove these big ol' green trucks with the name of the railroad on the side in yellow letters: Santa Fe Railroad Company. Your people drive special trucks, and have uniforms too?"

"Okay, I see. Yeah, the crews drive orange dump trucks. Usually there's three or four on a crew. A couple of patching men, a flagman, the crew chief. No women, though."

"They wear uniforms?"

"No, no uniforms."

"Do they always drive those big trucks? I mean, if they're working there the big truck's there too, huh?"

"Oh, yeah. They have to have them because of the asphalt."

"How many shifts you guys have here?"

"Only one. Seven in the morning until three o'clock in afternoon."

"No kiddin'? I thought you'd have a night shift."

"No one works on the tracks after three in the afternoon."

"Man, I wouldn't have thought that in a big city like this. I used to see 'em workin' at night in Laredo. It was fun watchin't through the binoculars at night with their lights. It was like a movie, I was hopin' to see some night crews here, too."

"The only time they work at night here is if it's a real emergency that holds up traffic or something, or the signal crews get called

"The signal crews?"

"Yeah, the signal crews work anytime they're called," she said. "If there's something wrong with the signals at those crossings have to be fixed whenever they break, no matter when it is. You have a gate that doesn't go down, or flashers that don't work. Those
things break we have to repair them right away. That's a safety thing."

"Yeah, you can't let that happen. How many people on a crew?"

"Just two."

"They drive big drump trucks, too?"

"No, they don't have any big equipment. Just electrical small tools. We've got those S-10 Chevys for those guys. You those little pickups."

"Oh, yeah. They have the railroad name on the side, too

"No. They don't put any name on those."

"So they just show up at the track and start workin', huh?'

"Well, yeah."

"Do they put up those sawhorses or anything?"

"No, one of the guys just flags the traffic."

"No uniforms either?"

"No. Well, they wear those yellow hard hats and bright orange plastic safety bibs, but that's it."

"That's interestin'." Bias was hurriedly making notes. He glanced over them, trying to see what else he should ask. "Well, I will know what to look for. I really get a kick out of watchin' those guys. I got real strong binoculars. Sometimes I can even see what it is they're doin'."

"That's good," Lisa said. "Anything else?"

"No, I guess not right now. Maybe I'll call back sometime."

"That'll be fine."

"Thanks a lot for takin' the time to talk to me. Have a good evenin'."

"You too," Lisa said. Her voice was a lot cheerier. She had done something that fell into the "good deed" category.

Bias studied his notes, then looked at his watch. He picked up the radio, called Rubio, and told him he would meet him at one of the parking lots near the Medical Center. Hurriedly, he packed the RDX in one side of one of the larger suitcases, placed the switchboard on the other, and put the Futaba radio transmitter in the canvas airline bag. He walked over to the small mahogany table and poured a dash of brandy. It was still burning in his throat when he walked out the door carrying the two bags.

They found a car rental agency on the Southwest Freeway that had the small Chevrolet pickups they needed. Bias transferred his bags to the pickup, and Rubio followed him to Sharpstown, where he stopped at a large discount store. Rubio watched the pickup while Bias went inside and bought hard hats, gray work overalls, flashlights with orange lens cones, battery-operated roadside amber safety flashers, a pick and shovel, a large gray toolbox, an assortment of electrician's tools, and leather electrician's bags to hold them.

The intersection where the Southern Pacific railroad tracks crossed San Felipe seemed at first to be a highly inappropriate location for what Bias wanted to accomplish. First of all, it was only a little more than a block from the eastern edge of the exclusive business complex of Post Oak Park, and the elegant Remington Hotel located in the park's southeastern corner. The West Loop Freeway was a couple of blocks beyond, with apartment buildings on the left and an Exxon service station adjacent to them where San Felipe went under the freeway overpass on its way to intersect Post Oak Boulevard a few blocks farther on. Directly overlooking the crossing from the west side of the Loop was a towering mountain range of office buildings, 3D International, Control Data, West Loop Place, West Loop Tower; and to the right was the looming column of Five Oak Place. In short, it was a high-profile area.

But in addition to its being the most frequently crossed intersection in Benigo Gamboa's weekly itinerary, it was precisely this prominent visibility that attracted Bias. It was an area of assumed security, and assumptions like that were the terrorist's gift from a complacent society.

They passed over the tracks several times, Bias in the truck Rubio in the rental car, each appraising the crossing from differen perspectives. Bias had spent nearly a thousand dollars for his trans mitter alone, almost all of that price to acquire a special feature called pulse code modulation which converted the radio signals to a digita binary code. One of the gravest hazards of remote-control transmiters was that the receivers were highly susceptible to signals from sources other than the intended transmitter. This risk was greatly reduced by the PCM feature which enabled the receiver to reject most "dirty" transmissions on a given frequency, and minimized the loss of control problems caused by adjacent and direct band interference. But it only reduced the risk. It didn't eliminate it. From the moment he set the explosive in place and turned on the receiver, there was the chance it could be inadvertently detonated by an errant, strong signal.

By ten-thirty, the traffic had slowed considerably, and then drove to the underground parking garage in the Galleria and change into the clothes Bias had bought earlier. While Rubio drove, Blas began wiring together the bricks of RDX, two in one bundle, three in another. He did not connect the two bundles, deciding to make that final connection after the bundles were in place.

It was almost eleven o'clock when Rubio slowed the pickup the crossing, pulled off on the shoulder, then turned parallel with t tracks and stopped beside the signals with his left-side wheels on the caliche bedding. Bias got out and quickly used a screwdriver wrench open the control box. He did not disconnect the wires. They didn't want to be caught by surprise. Rubio got the pick and shovel out of the back of the truck while Bias hung a few dead wires out of the control box for effect.

In his computation of Ireno Lopez's surveillance records, Bias had determined that Gamboa had traveled west over this crossing nearly twice as many times as he had traveled east, usually taking advantage of one of the other east-west arteries to return to Inverness. He had decided, then, to put all of the explosives between the ties in the westbound lane. Rubio placed the amber flashers in the center of the lane, screwed the orange lens over his flashlight, and diverted the occasional car while Bias began digging out the caliche from between the ties.

Only minutes after beginning, his clothes were clinging to him like cellophane. He tried to ignore the idea of suffocating. The caliche bedding had not been replaced in a long time and was packed tight. Bias had to use the pick every inch of the way. Pick, then shovel the loose dirt, then pick again. Luckily, he didn't have to dig far below the surface. The white chalky earth covered the new low-cut street shoes, falling in the gap at his instep until the insides were filled with crumbly clods. His feet kept slipping on the slope of the caliche bed.

Rubio paced back and forth, never saying a word. Sometimes when there were several cars in a row, he would wave them around, get the line of them started, and then walk over to the control box and pretend to work with the wiring, looking back at Bias as if they were coordinating their tasks. The only thing they had to worry about was someone coming along in one of the darkened cars who actually knew how the crossing lights functioned, and might notice that what Bias was doing bore no relationship at all to the flasher control box. There was no need to be digging between the rails and ties.

He did not put the explosive in containers, but dug the holes in the shape of inverted cones and molded the plastic to fit, thereby guiding the direction of the blast. The tightly packed caliche bedding of the track was the perfect repository for the explosive. All the force of the charge would be concentrated within an eighteen-to-twenty-four-inch zone directing the charge upward. It would be as close to the car as possible without actually being attached to the chassis.

By eleven-forty, they were almost through. Bias, drenched in sweat under the hot coveralls and his arms trembling from the hurried digging, covered the explosives with an inch of caliche and ran the wire connecting the two cones under the rail tie to avoid possible accidental severance. He had brought a lot of lead wire, and now began stringing it along under the rail on the east side of the track toward a slope and a stand of brown, sun-parched Johnsongrass. It was the nearest cover large enough to hide the toolbox which would contain the receiver and switch.

The traffic had slowed to only an occasional car now. Bias walked to the pickup, leaned over the sides of the bed, and transferred the receiver and switchboard from the airline bag to the empty toolbox, from which he had already removed the shelving. The rigid toolbox provided excellent protection for the moving parts on the board. When he had the board set as he wanted it, he turned on the receiver and ran two lead wires out of the bottom corner of the box which he then locked. There was no risk until he connected the lead wires to the wires coming from the explosives. He lifted the box out of the truck and walked off toward the Johnsongrass. In less than three minutes he had connected the lead wires to the RDX with plastic screw caps. The explosives were now live. He made sure the grass completely hid the box before he hurried back to the truck.

Within another ten minutes, they had loaded everything back into the bed of the pickup, put the crossing signal box back in order and double-checked the caliche around the plastic explosive. Then had left the Southern Pacific Railroad crossing at San Felipe near East Briar Hollow Lane primed with enough explosive to rattle all the windows in the Remington Hotel when it was detonated. They drove off, and never looked back.