65 – Framingham, Massachusetts
The two young men had no idea how many sticks of TNT to use for each explosive belt. They decided to err on the side of caution and use as many as would fit going all around their waist. The case of explosives in the shack at the construction office provided more than they could possibly use. They decided to take the whole case anyway. After carrying the box to Sam Abdullah’s car, the boys returned to search for blasting caps, the small detonators that set off the explosives. They found them in a locked metal cabinet on the far wall of the shack. The most frightening part of the whole theft was smashing the lock on the cabinet with a hammer, not knowing whether the blows would set off the detonators inside or alert a passing police car, or both.
Neither happened. They drove back to Abdullah’s house and carried their loot up to his room, thankful his parents were gone on a short vacation that week. Sam regretted not having the opportunity to say goodbye to his parents, but he suspected he would not have the courage, or foolishness, to have done that even if he’d had the chance. I’ll see them again in Paradise, he thought. I hope they’ll be proud of me.
Putting the devices together was simple. Their research was limited to looking for the term “explosive belt” in Wikipedia on the Internet. After that, they’d made a trip to the Eastern Mountain Sports store at the North Shore Mall, which would be Abdullah’s target, a nice touch, they’d joked, where they’d each bought a fancy khaki fisherman’s vest covered with pockets across its front and back. Not quite what their Palestinian brothers wore, but it would serve the same purpose, they decided.
The Wikipedia article said that although people referred to the devices as “explosive belts,” they were really “explosive vests.” The online article said the real killing power came not from the explosives alone, but from the hundreds of small steel balls that were usually wrapped around the explosives. Abdullah and Farouk hadn’t known about any steel balls. They were impressed, though, that the Wikipedia article said the combination of these balls and the explosives turned the devices into miniature Claymore mines, highly effective killing machines used by U.S. soldiers in Vietnam.
Finding several thousand steel balls was no problem, not in modern America where anything is available to someone who knows how to find it.
Neither Home Deport nor Lowes carried loose ball bearings. Al Farouk returned to the computer and typed in www.Amazon.com.
“They have everything there,” he said. “I’ll bet there’s something we can use.”
Searches for ball bearings and steel balls turned up nothing helpful. Then Sam had a thought.
“What about that stuff that shotguns shoot? What’s that stuff called?” he asked.
“You’ve got to be kidding. What do shotguns shoot? What color is George Washington’s white horse, jerkoff? Shotguns shoot stuff called shot. As in ‘shot’ gun.”
“Oh yeah. I knew that,” Sam said sheepishly. “Well, do a search for shot at Amazon.”
That worked. They could buy 250 one-quarter inch round steel balls for $3.50.
“Hey look,” Sam said. “They usually cost $5.95. That’s a good price. Let’s get a lot of them.”
They decided it would be less suspicious if they split up their order, so over the course of a few hours they placed five different orders for the steel shot, alternating their names. The orders totaled 5,000 steel balls. They paid extra for overnight FedEx early delivery, knowing this was one Visa bill they’d never pay. Five separate packages arrived the next morning at Sam’s house. They divided the balls between their two vests, pouring the balls into the pockets containing the explosives then duct taping the tops of the pockets so the balls would not roll out.
Wiring the explosives together and to the detonators was equally simple. “I’ve done this lots of times,” Al said. “The foreman showed me how to do it when we were blasting ledge for those six houses my dad put up last year. Boy was my dad pissed when he heard what I’d been doing, but it was real safe and loads of fun.
“You put a blasting cap on the end of each stick, like this.” He demonstrated for his friend, trying his hardest to hide the shaking of his hand. “Then you run the wires from the cap to the detonator, but I’m not gonna do that until we’re ready to go for real, OK?”
“OK with me, show me how.”
The construction company used a complicated radio-controlled detonator so the explosives could be set off from a distance. Obviously, that was not needed for the explosive vests. They’d made their own detonator from a doorbell switch and a 6-volt lantern battery, both from the hardware store.
“Ring the bell and BOOM,” Al told his friend.
When the vests were completed, TNT and ball bearings taped tightly into the various pockets, front and back, and all the wires run from the blasting caps to the doorbell buttons in the front right pockets - both boys were right handed - but with the batteries carefully left on top of Sam’s dresser, Al suggested they put them on and take pictures of themselves.
Sam held up his hand. After the excitement of handling the explosives and constructing the devices, his voice suddenly took on a serious tone.
“No, remember, it won’t be us doing this,” he said. “It’s going to be a couple of Jews. The whole thing doesn’t work if we do it. It has to be a couple of Jews. We can’t leave any photos or make any farewell videos.”
“I know, I know,” Al replied. “I was just worked up, you know, like I was in the Intifadah or something.
“I thought we’d shout Long Live Israel or something before we set them off. What were you thinking?”
Sam smiled. “That’s a good start,” he said. “But we only get one shot at this so lets do the full thing, you know, dress up like those real religious type Jews.”
“OK, do you know what they look like, the real ones?” Al asked. “Hey, let me try something.”
He turned back to the computer, went to the Google Images home page and typed “Jew picture” into Google. The screen filled with photographs of men and boys in black coats and hats. Many had curls of hair descending in front of each ear.
Al pointed at that in the photo.
“We’ve gotta do that hair thing,” he said, getting excited. “Nobody but a Jew would do that.”
In the end, their costumes were simple. Another trip to the mall got them each a long black overcoat and black hats that looked a bit more stylish than in the photos from the Google search, but not by much. An embarrassing visit to a beauty salon at the mall got them a black wig, from which they extracted enough long hairs to give each a respectable lock, which could be held in place by a bobby pin snatched from Sam’s mother’s dresser drawer.
They decided fake beards would look too fake.
“Hey, we’ll be young Jews, too young to shave,” Al joked.
On the way out of the mall they made a final, spontaneous purchase at a pushcart titled Flag Us Down. Abdullah spoke to the girl staffing the pushcart.
“Do you have any Israeli flags, you know, those blue ones with the star on them,” he asked.
Eighteen-year-old Carol Rosenblum, whose mother owned the pushcart, was surprised at the request. She looked at the two young men. They sort of look Jewish, I guess, she thought as she rummaged through the cardboard boxes in which her merchandise was stored.
“Here are a couple,” she said, lifting the top of a box. “I think these are the last two I have.” She looked at the two young men sadly.
“I don’t think they make these any more,” she said.
“Yes, I know they don’t,” Abdullah answered. “I doubt if they ever will again.”
He paid in cash. They returned to his house, to his room, to examine their purchases and equipment.
When the vests were completed and the costumes ready, the two young men became deadly serious, as if they recognized the enormity, and finality, of what they were about to do.
“I think we should pray first,” Sam said.
He reached under his bed and unrolled the two prayer rugs he kept there, keeping the second because Al seemed to spend more time at Sam’s house than at his own.
They knelt on the rugs and chanted separately, alternating between leaning with their foreheads on the rug and sitting up straight. After ten minutes they stopped and stood up, then helped each other dress.
The vests, each filled with 2,500 steel balls and twenty sticks of TNT, were heavy to lift but comfortable enough to wear once the weight was carried by their shoulders. They put on white shirts, like in the photos, over the vests, then black pants, black socks and black shoes. They pinned the hair locks on each other then put on their hats and, finally, the black coats and the hats.
Then they stood a few feet apart, staring at each other.
Sam spoke first.
“You look like such a Jew,” he said, shocked at the transformation of his friend’s appearance. “You really do.”
Farouk, too, was surprised at his friend’s appearance. “This is going to work,” he said. “People are going to think we’re a couple of Jews.”
Sam looked at his watch, remembering for a moment that it was a birthday present from his parents.
“It’s 4:30 now,” he said. “We can get to the malls in forty-five minutes. Let’s give ourselves a half hour in case there’s traffic and to get situated. We set the bombs off at 6:30. The food courts ought to be packed then. We stand on a table, give some speech about Israel, shout out something that sounds like Hebrew and then ...”
“And then we find out whether there really is a Paradise,” his friend finished for him.
“Well, whether or not there is Paradise,” Sam said. “We’re sure gonna create some hell for the Jews we leave behind. Let’s go brother.”
They walked downstairs and out the front door to their separate cars, holding their breath when the cars hit bumps in the road, well aware of what they wore under their long black coats.