Parvez had moved from the café to a car the two Mohammeds had secured for him. The vest, loaded with C-4, weighed heavily on his shoulders, but his cleric’s garb concealed it well. He’d dreaded the arrival of the van, and once it appeared, he waited for the huge explosion like a man facing his execution. No hope. No appeal. Not even from a higher power, for the higher power had sentenced him to death. He found brief promise in the waterspout and the electrical storm, but it had done nothing to stop or delay the bombing. Nothing. Parvez could have cried.
Now he watched the traitor named Rafan throw open the van door, revealing sacks of fertilizer and containers of fuel.
Yes, save me, Parvez pleaded involuntarily, realizing his only hope lay with the miserable man who stole dirt.
Do something, traitor. Grab the fuse, you infidel.
* * *
Despite the storm, Jenna detected the smell of flammables. She saw a big stack of what looked like feed sacks in the back of the van, and realized in an instant that the whole cargo area was packed with explosives.
“Run, Jenna!” Rafan shouted, though he wasn’t running.
And as much as Jenna wanted to race away, she couldn’t, because she saw a barely visible wisp of smoke whipped by the wind. She stepped closer to the van and spied an inch of fuse burning on the carpet, which was marked by a long, dark, trailing scorch mark. Without hesitation, she reached for the fiercely sparking flame. Rafan tried to grab it, too. They jostled each other. Precious seconds lost.
The fuse shrank to a nub, continuing to burn despite the lashing wind and rain. Jenna lunged, grabbed it, and despite the burning pain, she pulled the fuse away and dropped it on the wet pavement. It sizzled and died while she shook her burned index finger and thumb for several seconds. Then she realized that she was shaking and very, very cold.
Rafan’s eyes grew huge. He stared at the bomb. Jenna knew he was looking for smoke. Her own stomach was gripped by the fear that a single spark had escaped and that the world would explode.
But there was no more smoke. They’d stopped the bomb.
* * *
There would be no one-two punch, Parvez realized. Infidels! Infidels had denied him paradise, for surely a man of his deep insight, understanding, and courage would be welcomed there with open arms by seventy-two virgins. But he could not go through with the next part of the plan now that the first punch had been foiled.
True, he could walk over and set off the C-4 in the vest—and that would trigger the bomb in the van. But that was not the plan; a plan that had been devised by wiser men than he. And who was he, a humble cleric from a poor island nation, to question them? That the plan had failed—surely that was Allah’s will.
Oh, how Parvez rued the loss of his martyrdom as he rushed to slip off the vest. To have been the first martyr of the Maldives. There, it’s off. Ah, but he would have to leave that honor to Adnan.
He almost dropped the vest on the console next to him. Be careful. What do you want to do, kill yourself?
Parvez rested the bomb gently on the passenger seat and drove away quietly, knowing he would live to fight another day. Allah had spared him in the end. Allah the wise. Allah the all-knowing. Why, Allah probably already had His eyes on a poor Paki, a hungry, unclothed boy who needed paradise so much more than Parvez. The cleric, with his deeper spiritual knowledge, could find a way to satisfy himself with so much less here on earth. Parvez’s unselfishness flowed to his very fingertips. Yes, it would be only fair to give such a child the keys to paradise.
* * *
The wheelhouse stopped shaking as the power of the storm lessened. Birk sat like a supplicant on the floor by Raggedy Ass’s smelly fucking feet. His lordship was perched with his AK-47 in the captain’s chair, while a few feet away the man who should have been in that seat was bound head to toe and lying on the deck.
The chair looked like heaven to Birk, whose hands, shoulders, back, butt, and sliced-up thumb throbbed, but the chair’s occupant, no doubt about it, was the devil incarnate. Raggedy Ass had ended Birk’s broadcast after twenty measly minutes. What’s with