Seaton took a moment to think his answer through. Hobart had repeated the question which suggested that it was more than just idle curiosity on his part. It would not take a senior FBI man long to find out from other sources about a domestic flight that Stratton had recently taken. Nor could Seaton ask his wife and kids to lie about the English special forces guy who had stayed overnight. A lie like that would come back to haunt him and then all the other lies, especially any about the origins of the explosives, would be difficult to cover up. ‘No. He came to visit me here, the day after he arrived in LA.’
Hobart stared at the side of Seaton’s head for a moment. Then he looked away as several pieces of the puzzle slipped neatly into place. Seaton was the one who had given Stratton the information that he’d needed to hit Leka and Ardian – and Hobart would bet his hat that Seaton had also given him the explosives.
The first thing that came to Hobart’s mind was that he now had the CIA over a barrel. But he realised that Weighbridge couldn’t have known about Stratton’s visit to Seaton or he sure as hell would not have invited the guy to the meeting. Seaton had done it as a personal favour to a friend. It was Seaton who Hobart had over a barrel. The obvious question now was where did Seaton’s true loyalties lie: with Stratton or with himself ?
‘So how good is he?’ Hobart asked.
Seaton glanced at him, unsure what he meant exactly.
‘With explosives,’ Hobart added. ‘How good is Stratton?’
Seaton looked back out of the sedan window. ‘The best explosives experts are often given the title bomb doctor. They call him the surgeon.’
‘Great,’ Hobart sighed.
29
As Hobart was setting off for Burbank that morning, Stratton was climbing out of the pick-up and heading towards the mine with his newly purloined goods from the night before. The ground squirrel was waiting at the entrance and Stratton, pleased to see that the little guy hadn’t been hurt by the blast, stopped to dig a cracker from his pocket. This time the squirrel grabbed it up, took a bite, munched on it for a few seconds and scampered off with it. Stratton tossed a couple more on the ground and headed down the entrance shaft.
The process of preparing the detonators was much more complex than making the RDX. Mercury fulminate was one of the oldest detonation explosives around and theoretically adequate to initiate RDX. But it was much more unstable and great caution was required in its manufacture.
A coat of dust had gathered over everything during the night and after lighting the lamps Stratton set about cleaning the equipment he was going to need. Taking one of the pots, he poured in four gallons of nitric acid. Then he put on the gas mask. When he added the first of four bottles of mercury metal, toxic red fumes immediately floated off the liquid’s surface. While the mercury slowly dissolved he placed another of the large pots on the gas heater, put the large glass cooking bowl inside it, poured in enough water around the bowl so that it would sit in the pot without floating, half-filled the bowl with ethyl alcohol and then ignited the burner.
While the alcohol heated, Stratton stirred the acid-mercury mix with a wooden spoon. When the ethyl was warm, he carefully poured the mix into it. Within a few seconds it began to bubble and froth while giving off thick white fumes whose colour changed to red and then back to white again in a short space of time. Solid particles started to form in the liquid and when it stopped bubbling he poured it into the third pot, which contained several gallons of water. Using the sieve, he filtered out the particles, placed them back into the glass bowl that he had cleaned out, added some more ethyl alcohol, poured it all back into the sieve and then ran water through it to clean it. Once the fulminate had fully dried it would be ready for use.
An hour later he had all seventy of the three-inch lengths of narrow plastic pipe lined up, each with one end twisted and heat-sealed and stuck into the ground. Their open ends were uppermost. Next came the laborious task of placing a teaspoonful of fulminate into each. Once that was done Stratton cut the fine wire into six-inch lengths, quickly heated the middle of each length over the gas flame and then stretched it, being careful not to break it. He bent each in two at the thinnest point to form a hairpin, which he then inserted into the end of each pipe so that it was buried in the fulminate. Epoxy glue was then dropped into the end to seal the wire and the fulminate inside. Now all that was required was another test.
Stratton used the same location as for the RDX test of the previous day since it appeared to be in a stable state. He walked down the shaft while unreeling the rest of the length of wire and carrying the deton ator and a small piece of RDX. The aim of the test was twofold. He needed to prove that the circuit would explode the fulminate and that the fulminate would in turn detonate the RDX. The problem was that he would not be able to tell if the RDX had blown unless he used a bit more than in the earlier test. The mercury fulminate would, of course, be far less powerful than the RDX alone. Still, a little more RDX than before was required to make sure. He would just have to take the risk that he might bring down the shaft’s ceiling.
Stratton moulded the hazelnut-sized piece of RDX around the end of the detonator, attached the wires and walked back to the initiation point. He touched one of the wires to one end of a small battery. Then, after a final check around him, he put the flashlight on the ground between his knees so that he could grab it quickly and touched the other wire to the opposite end of the battery.
The explosion rocked the shaft and when chunks of the rock ceiling began to fall around Stratton he grabbed the flashlight and sprinted away as the tunnel collapsed where he had been crouching. He did not stop until he had reached the main junction. Dust was falling everywhere and for a moment, as he made his way to the exit shaft, he thought that he had overdone it. But as the rumbling ceased so did the apparent imminent threat of a serious collapse. Nevertheless, he decided to go outside for a bit of fresh air and give the old mine a few minutes to settle in case.
Stratton did not need to inspect the detonation point as it was evident that the RDX had exploded. After a bite to eat he went back into the main cavern to find everything covered in yet more dust but otherwise in good shape.
Using the spike tool on his knife he made a hole in the bottom of each sandwich box, pushed a deton ator through it into the RDX and applied some glue to hold it in place. The final stage was to attach a battery and receiver to one end of each wire – leaving the other end free until the moment of placement – tape it all up into a neat package, and place each device back inside its original cardboard box, making it look completely innocuous. Soon the thirty-two home-made claymore mines were ready to go.
Stratton took another short break in the sunshine before returning to the mine with a hammer and a dozen spike nails which he hammered into several of the wooden supports. The next task was to make a length of explosive cord, which he had never done before. But he understood the theory. Taking the can of latex he poured a good amount into the glass bowl. Then he unreeled a hundred feet or so of the thousand-foot reel of string and pushed it into the tacky white liquid. Beyond the latex he placed an open bag of RDX and slowly drew the latex-wet string through it so that the explosive crystals stuck to it. As the string got longer he looped it back and forth from nail to nail, hanging it like a washing line. He placed another hundred feet or so in the bowl along with more latex and repeated the procedure until all the string had been coated and was hanging across the nails to dry.