“By cutting these wires. Or jerking them out, if you are in a hurry. And if you want to detonate it immediately, just turn on this red switch.” He gently fingered a small red toggle switch wired into the circuit.
Clyde sat there for a minute or so, looking at the timer, counting down the digits from 07:00:00. The sight of it filled him with a strange feeling of peace. Maggie had not died, and because of this device, Desiree wouldn’t die either. At least not from botulin poisoning.
The climb to cruising altitude seemed to last about an hour. Then the engines throttled back and the plane settled into a steady attitude. The skies must be clear up there, Clyde thought, because the flight was smooth, and when the door leading to the passenger deck was opened, he was startled and disoriented to see bright sunlight shining down the stairway from the windows above.
Al-Turki came down with one of the crew members and walked around the red tank a couple of times, checking its moorings, his breath steaming out of his mouth as he asked questions. Then he retreated to the warmth and quiet of the passenger compartment.
About an hour later a crew member came back into the main cargo area carrying a stainless-steel thermos and staring up into the jungle gym, trying to catch sight of them. Finally Clyde stuck one hand out and waved to him.
The crew member climbed to their level and handed off the thermos, threw them a mock salute, and then climbed back down. Clyde opened it up and gave it a sniff; it was hot tea, and no beverage was ever more welcome.
There seemed to be no more point in hiding high up in the reeking stack of fuel tanks, so they climbed down to the deck and retreated toward the tail section of the plane, where they could not be observed, and sat down on some duffel bags. Clyde poured some tea into the lid of the thermos, and he and Fazoul passed it back and forth for a while. It was made in the Russian style, almost too bitter to drink. But the trudge through the blizzard, and two hours in the cargo hold of the Antonov, had left them dehydrated and chilled to the bone. This was perfect.
Which made it all the more disappointing when Fazoul dropped the last third of it, a full cup, onto the floor. The steel lid bounced down the tread plates for some distance, and Clyde had to run it down. When he came back, Fazoul was leaning against a duffel bag, breathing raggedly. Clyde aimed his flashlight at Fazoul’s face and saw that his lips had gone purple.
“We have always avoided religious discussions,” Fazoul said in a thick, slurred voice. “Now, at the risk of being rude, I would like to recommend that you accept Islam here and now. We have only a few minutes to live. It is unfortunate. But our wives and children are safe.”
“What’s going on?” Clyde said. He was afraid Fazoul was having a heart attack or something.
“The tea,” Fazoul said, now stopping after almost every word to fight for breath. “Iraqis—know that—we are here. Russians told. Cockroaches.Couldn’t shoot us—because of fuel tanks—so—the tea—with botulin.”
Clyde knew that Fazoul was right. He recognized the symptoms now; Fazoul’s eyelids were drooping just as Hal Karst’s had done.
“Red switch. Now! You—have—poison—too,” Fazoul said.
“Fazoul,” Clyde said, “you can count on me to blow this plane up if that’s what it takes. And if I ever see Farida and little Khalid, I’ll tell them you went straight to heaven like a jihad man, and that you were thinking of them the whole way.”
“Red—switch,” Fazoul said. His body went into convulsions, racked by oxygen deficiency, and Clyde threw his arms around him and held him so he wouldn’t batter himself against the cold metal of the deckplates. The convulsions grew weaker over a minute or so, and then Fazoul’s body went entirely limp.
Clyde arranged Fazoul on the deckplates and closed his eyes. He said a prayer over him, trying to make it something ecumenical that would not offend the dead Vakhan. Then he took a few deep breaths, stretched his arms, and wiggled his fingers, checking for any signs of numbness. His fingers felt a little stiff, but that could have been due to the bitter cold.
Dr. Folkes had been taken aback when Clyde had shown up on his doorstep a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving and started asking a lot of pointed questions about botulin immunization. The torrent of phone calls coming into the old professor’s kitchen from the Pentagon had, if anything, only increased during the weeks since his first encounter with Clyde, and he knew that Clyde’s interest in the subject must have some kind of deep significance. At some length he had dragged the whole story out of Clyde.
“So you’re afraid of being exposed to the stuff right here in Nishnabotna?” Dr. Folkes had said. “I see. That’s remarkable.”