Dead on Arrival

22

He sat watching the television set, amazed at what had almost happened.

A man had just tried to walk into the U.S. Capitol with an explosive device strapped to his body. They had pictures of the man — somehow, some way, in this country there was always someone with a camera or a cell phone nearby — and the pictures showed the man standing, his arms outstretched, and then the bullets striking his chest. Why didn’t the bomb explode? he wondered.

But it was still amazing. Counting the man who had tried to crash his plane into the White House, there had been three attacks by Muslim Americans in a period of less than a month, and the last two had been only a week apart. The country was in an absolute frenzy. This man Broderick and his bill, his law — whatever they called it — it appeared he was going to succeed.

And if he did, the hatred would grow.

Maybe that was why the attacks had happened so close together: because Sheikh Osama wanted this law passed. But that could also explain the failures. Whoever was helping the American martyrs had rushed their planning or had not trained their recruits well or had not checked their equipment as thoroughly as they should have. But still, two attacks in seven days? That was phenomenal. They had never acted this quickly in the past.

He was embarrassed. He knew he had to move slowly and cautiously; unlike his brethren here in America, his identity was definitely known to the authorities. Still, it had been over three months since Baltimore. He needed to move more rapidly, particularly if his success could influence this law they kept talking about.

He and the boy had been to the refinery five times now, three times during the day, twice at night, and they still had one or more trips to make before they would be ready. The first visit had been the most dangerous. He had stopped the El Camino on a road that was not heavily traveled, and from which he could see the refinery, and then he had jacked up the vehicle to make it appear that he was changing a flat tire. But if a policeman had driven by, and if he had seen two Arabs, and if he’d realized the significance of the refinery, they could have been arrested on the spot. That did not happen, though; God protected them.

During the first visit, he and the boy studied the refinery for three hours. He took photographs with a digital camera with a long-range lens and used binoculars to study the markings on the various tanks and pipes. The refinery was filled with tanks and pipes; it was a forest of tanks and pipes. But the boy was very bright and he had no trouble at all memo rizing the markings that were significant and tracing the routing of the pipes that were important.

The next two daylight visits, he’d dropped the boy off and told him to find the best spots to place the explosives, places not too close together, places where the charges would not be visible to someone passing by, places where he could hide when he attached the bombs. He told the boy it was particularly important that certain valves be destroyed so the valves couldn’t be shut to stop the chemical from escaping.

He purchased bright-colored clothes for the boy, the type of clothes that teenagers his age wore: a sweatshirt that had the logo of a local sports team, baggy jeans, silly-looking tennis shoes. He made the boy turn the bill of the baseball cap around so it was pointed backwards, and when the boy did he couldn’t help but laugh. Even the boy laughed, something that rarely happened.

And he told the boy, ‘Don’t sneak. Don’t act like you’re skulking about. Act like a boy. Throw rocks, kick cans, run a stick along the fence. You’re just a boy walking about, going wherever boys go.’ On the last visit they’d been lucky enough to find a dog wandering near the refinery, and he tied his belt around the dog’s neck to serve as a leash, and the boy had pretended to walk the dog as he looked for places to hide the bombs.