The opposite side of the instrument was a sharp hatchet, and there was the hook of a crowbar on the side. “Why are we stopping?”
“Men in the road!” Bishara yelled back. Court could barely hear him. He had burrowed like a mole into the gear and luggage, and his hearing and mobility were affected by the sacks and suitcases and pallets of water bottles and large rolls of tarpaulin above him. Sweat from his hairline had run into his ears and eyes. Even taking a deep breath was a challenge in the dark, claustrophobic confines in the back of the truck. Bishara had been back with him helping for a while, but two men kicking and pushing and digging through the cargo proved to be more hindrance than help. After burying one another with their own movements one time too many, Gentry sent the young man back up front to the cab with instructions for the driver. Court had then tried to use the flashlight and the hammer at the same time while he worked, but he finally gave up. Slinging a hammer in pitch-blackness had caused him to bang his thumb and forearm four times in five minutes, but not having to screw with the light at the same time sped up his work rate, even though it was hell on his extremities.
After a long delay, Bishara responded. “It’s the Janjaweed!”
“Shit,” Gentry said to himself. He stopped hammering, grabbed his flashlight, and began crawling back to the top of the cargo. One more thing he had to do. He only understood the theory of this project, had never built anything like this before. Doing it on the fly, in low light, had been a nightmare. There were many things that could go wrong, so many, in fact, that the only way he knew how to combat the majority of them was by erring so far on the opposite end of the spectrum that his project really only had one major danger at this point. He wasn’t worried about whether it would work or not; rather, he was worried that it might just work too damn well.
Court was afraid of his project’s very real, and very literal, potential for overkill.
Acetylene and oxygen, the two components necessary for a welding torch, are extraordinarily combustible when placed in the correct mixture and contained in a confined space. Court had stood the two large tanks up, filled six forty-gallon contractor bags with this mixture, tied the bags tightly like balloons, and then placed them on top of the cargo, taking up the vast majority of the empty space above the truck’s load. He used the alarm clock, the cigarette lighter, and a healthy supply of strapping tape to fashion a timed detonator for the bags. He’d tested it twice, before filling the bags, of course, and found the moving hammer of the clock could activate the striker of the lighter and create a flame of burning butane.
He wanted to make a large bang, with much noise and flash, but not a great deal of shrapnel, lest he kill himself, Ellen Walsh, and the rest of the Speranza Internazionale convoy. No, he wanted only a diversion, an oversized flash-bang grenade. To achieve this effect he’d placed the bags at the top of the load, hoping the roof of the truck would blast off but all the cargo inside would not be propelled out at hundreds of miles an hour. He also did not want the truck’s massive gas tank to ignite, which would create a bomb that could easily kill everyone. He really had no idea if his truck-sized concussion device would have the desired effect—there were dozens of variables at play—but he’d also had no other options that he could see.
Court had also created a second stage to his diversion, presuming that the few seconds of confusion by the enemy would not be enough for him to take any sort of advantage. He struggled and fought and pulled and pushed the iron acetylene tank to the top of the cargo load, positioned it in the back by the sliding door, with its nozzle facing the bags of combustible chemicals and its blunt bottom towards the door. He pointed it slightly downwards, and then built an extremely crude wooden cage around it, essentially rails above and below that it could travel on, like a missile on a launching pad.
Last, after the truck stopped, he opened the tank’s nozzle slightly and began backing out of