Waiting for the End of the World (Open Road) by Madison Smartt Bell

Author:Madison Smartt Bell [Bell, Madison Smartt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453237441
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-12-06T05:00:00+00:00

33

Mau Mau

WHEN RUBEN CARRERA LEFT Riverside Drive on November 2, 1982, he went directly to a uniform outlet, where he bought an orange reflective jacket of the type worn by construction and road workers. Then he took a train down to West Fourth Street and walked over to his dorm at NYU. Once there, he dragged a chest from under his bed and opened it to see what kind of supplies he had on hand.

Carrera would have preferred to manufacture his own explosive, but he knew that time pressure made that method unsure. In the chest he already had a substantial quantity of plastique, a high-yield explosive which Simon had somehow obtained for him, and also a big bundle of fuse. Unfortunately there were no blasting caps, but Carrera thought he could get around that. For the rest of the afternoon, Carrera worked daintily with the plastique and fuses. He was going to try a method commonly called “lacing.” First he looped a length of fuse and thickened it into a heavy knot. Then, cautiously and delicately, he molded plastique around the knot. The end result was a large blob of plastique with a couple of inches of double fuse protruding from it. Carrera continued working until he had laced four such lumps of plastique.

By then it was four P.M. and he was sweating a little from the extreme concentration required to lace the explosive effectively without blowing up his dormitory. Carrera packed the prepared charges away in his chest and went down to Canal Street, where he bought a jumbo radio (broken), six D cells to fit it, two rolls of wire (one insulated and the other not), and a light switch. Back in his room, Carrera broke the battery pack out of the radio and connected it to the light switch. He made a coil from the uninsulated wire, connected it to the battery pack, flipped the switch, and timed the period it took the coil to glow red-hot. That established, he disconnected the whole apparatus. He made three more coils and cut some lengths of insulated wire. These he put into a knapsack, along with the laced plastique and the other supplies, except for the batteries, which he dropped into the pocket of his coat. When he had done all that, Carrera felt sleepy. Already it was dark outside. Carrera set his alarm for three A.M. and lay down to take a nap.

He slept soundly but when the alarm went off he was instantly alert. Carrera got up, found the knapsack in the dark, and left his room quietly. In the hallway of the building he picked up some scraps of plywood he had noticed there earlier. Then he took the A train to Fulton Street.

As he had anticipated, the platform was empty when he got off. Carrera put on his reflective vest and strolled to the concrete booth at the far end. Some ambiguous pipes ran up the wall of the booth through the ceiling, and

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