Shapiro left without a word. He did not feel like a hero going off to do battle. It was not the argument with Sally that made him feel a twinge of guilt, however. That last argument was a replay of what they’d been going through for more than a week.
He had not told Sally about Judy Katz, had not told his wife that he would be driving to Washington with an extremely attractive thirty-one-year-old woman and probably spending the next few days, and nights, with her. For that—not for leaving his wife, hardly at all for leaving his son—for that he felt guilty.
But guilt was soon replaced with excitement, at both the prospect of the huge demonstration and at who he was about to share that excitement with.
CHAPTER 44
The two young men had no idea how many sticks of TNT to use for each explosive belt. They decided to use as many as would fit around their waists, carrying the entire case 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. They smashed the lock on the cabinet with a hammer, not knowing whether the blows would set off the detonators inside.
They drove back to Sam’s house and carried their loot to his room, thankful his parents were gone on a short vacation. Sam regretted not having the opportunity to say goodbye to his parents. 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. After that, they’d made a trip to the Eastern Mountain Sports store at the North Shore Mall, Sam’s target, 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.
The Wikipedia article said the real killing power came not from the explosives alone but from the hundreds of small steel balls usually wrapped around the explosives. Finding several thousand steel balls would be no problem. Not in modern America. Not with next-day delivery from Amazon.
“They have everything there,” Sam said. “I’ll bet there’s something we can use.”
But searches for ball bearings and steel balls turned up nothing helpful. Then Sam had an idea. “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, jerk-off? 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 quarter-inch round steel balls for less than four dollars.
“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 orders for steel shot, alternating their names. 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, okay?”
“Okay 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 six-volt lantern battery, both from the hardware store.
“Ring the bell and BOOM,” Al told his friend.
When the vests were completed, TNT and shot 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, 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 let’s do the full thing—you know, dress up like those religious-type Jews.”
“Okay, do you know what they look like, the real ones?” Al asked. “Hey, let me try something.”
He turned back to the computer 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.
“We’ve gotta do that hair thing,” Al 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 store clerk.
“Do you have any Israeli flags? You know, those blue ones with the star on them?” he asked.
Eighteen-year-old Carol Rosenthal, 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 anymore.”
“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.