An hour south of the capital, Ali slowed and turned from the main road to an unmarked track that wound across the natural contours of the land. Immediately beyond the crest of the second ridge away from the highway they encountered a roadblock. Uniformed soldiers approached the car cradling submachine guns. Ali rolled down his window to show his identification. The smoldering air filled the interior of the car.
They rolled on through the sand and rock. After another fifteen minutes a military post appeared. Ali stopped before an unpainted, rambling two-story wooden building and both men got out of the car. Qazi stretched and let the furnace heat engulf him. “It feels good, eh, Ali?”
“Personally, Colonel, I wish we had some rivers and trees and grass.”
“Explain the device again.” Qazi stared across the waist-high table at Jarvis, who had cut himself several times that morning when he had been allowed to shave for the first time. Pieces of toilet paper clung to the gouges in his jowls. The men stood in a large room. The only illumination was the summer sunlight coming in the three open windows. Even with the breeze it was very hot and Jarvis was sweating.
“The weapon has numerous safety devices placed in the firing circuit. Upon release from the aircraft, a jolt of 220-volt direct current ignites a pyrotechnic squib. The heat from the burning squib is converted into an electrical current that charges a lithium battery. It happens quickly. The safety devices are between the battery and the detonators.”
Jarvis picked up a bundle of leads with alligator clips attached. “These attach to the battery. Basically, I have rigged up a timer, so you set these dials,” he touched them, “and at the end of the set period, current will run from the battery directly to the detonators.” He picked up another wire bundle with alligator clips on the end. “These attach to the detonator circuits.”
“What about the weapon’s safety devices?”
“Oh, they are still in the weapon, but they are bypassed. Once this thing is properly hooked up, the bomb will go nuclear at the end of the period set on the timer.” He pointed to the seventh trigger. “The radio in that one will receive the signal and that will start the timer. So you could initiate the firing sequence by radio and have whatever time was set on the timer to leave the danger zone.”
“We don’t want this bomb to blow up in our faces while we handle it or as we hook it up. Is there any way to leave the safety devices installed and still allow the weapon to be triggered remotely?”
“No way.” Jarvis shook his head and his jowls quivered. “Absolutely no way. The installed circuitry requires that you drop the bomb, let it free-fall for over ninety seconds continuously. Then the radar altimeter in the weapon is enabled, and when the weapon reaches the preset height above the earth, it detonates. There are over a dozen safety devices in all. There is no way to physically satisfy all those parameters unless the weapon is used as it is designed to be used — that is, dropped or tossed by an aircraft. So these safety devices must be bypassed. And once bypassed, there are no safety devices.”
“And how do we ignite the pyrotechnic squib that charges the weapon’s battery?”
“This thing down here.” Jarvis led the way to the end of the table. “I’ve rigged four automobile batteries in series and used a voltage regulator and a capacitor. The juice is stored up and then fired as one brief jolt of direct current.”
He paused and looked at the device. “You wire this contraption to the battery in the weapon. The timer triggers it. That’s all there is to it.”
“Will these things work?”
Jarvis mopped his brow with a shirttail. The bits of toilet paper looked grotesque against his pasty skin. “Yes, they’ll work.”
“Will they, Moffet?” Qazi asked Sakol.
“They should. Actually both these things are pretty simple.”
Qazi bent down and examined the wiring and workmanship on the battery charger. Finally he straightened up. “Show me.”
It took only a minute to rig the battery charger to a voltmeter. Jarvis performed the task smoothly, with no lost motion, as Qazi and Ali watched. When all was ready, Jarvis used a portable voltmeter to check the charge on the automobile batteries. Then he pushed a switch on his device. The needle on the voltmeter on the output wire swung and stopped. Qazi examined the reading.
“See, I told you it would work.”
“Now the safety bypass device, please.”
This instrument took several minutes to rig. All the input wires were connected directly to the battery charge device since Jarvis had no battery capable of storing the energy required in only a few milliseconds. Separate voltmeters were connected to each of the dozen output wires. Colonel Qazi dialed in one minute on the timer and watched it tick down. While it ticked, Jarvis triggered the battery charger. At the end of the minute, the voltmeters on the output wires pegged, Qazi examined each one. “Satisfactory,” he said at last. “Now build me six more of each of these. Then we will test them all.”
Jarvis mopped his brow again with his shirttail, which by now resembled a cleaning rag. “Listen. You have what you wanted. Anyone can duplicate these. Moffet here is quite capable.” He stopped as his lower lip began to tremble uncontrollably.
Qazi stood silent, expressionless, his hands limp by his sides. Ali moved toward a wall and Jarvis followed him with his eyes.
“Go on.”
“I’m Jewish,” Jarvis blurted.
Qazi slowly folded his arms. In the silence you could hear the bleats and cries of children coming through the window from the huts across the empty street.
“I don’t know where you are going to get these weapons. Maybe you have them already.” Jarvis took a step forward. “But for God’s sake, man, don’t make me a part of it. You can’t.”
“Get on the floor.”
“What?”
“On your knees. On the floor.”
Jarvis looked desperately from face to face. Sakol was staring stonily out a window, oblivious to the scene. Ali stood in the shadows with a trace of a smile just visible on his lips. Qazi’s face was expressionless, without mercy or emotion of any kind.
“I will not repeat myself,” Qazi said softly.
Jarvis slowly sank to his knees.
Qazi stepped forward and looked down on the man. “In this position you forfeited your rights as a man, as a Jew, as a human being. You forfeited your life. Now you will obey my orders or you will force us to smear your wife with your slime.”
Jarvis was sobbing.
“You will do as you are told. You will do precisely and exactly as you are told and you will attempt no evasions or subterfuges. You will concern yourself only with performing the tasks I set for you. You have lost the right to make moral judgments on the affairs of men. You have cut yourself off from your fellow Jews and from your family. We are all that you have left.”
Qazi seized Jarvis’ chin and forced his head up. He stared into the watery eyes. “I’m all that you have now.”
At last he removed his hand and motioned to Ali, who seized Jarvis by an arm and jerked him to his feet, then propelled him toward the door. After the door closed behind them, there were only the dusty shafts of the early afternoon sun.
Qazi bent to the devices on the table. “Nicely played, Colonel,” Sakol said. “Your reputation for manipulating overweight sexual deviates is well deserved.”
The amplified call of the muezzin came through the windows and filled the room. “Allah is most great, I testify that there is no god but Allah, I testify that Mohammed is the Prophet of Allah, come to prayer, come to success, Allah is most great, there is no god but Allah.” Even here, at this army base in the desert, the call of the faithful was part and parcel of life.
