Angel Snot
Seyed held the clear plastic egg in his right hand, fingers wrapped halfway around it. He ran his thumb back and forth over the smooth surface and the small edge where the two halves joined. In one direction the join was only a small disturbance on an opalescent sea of plastic. Moving the other direction it caught at the ridged flesh and created a rather pleasant rough sensation that was slowly turning painful.
Angel Snot, how American. Only Americans would be so flippant about the messengers of Allah.
"Jasmine scented Angel Snot" the package read. "The gift of precious fluids from heaven's messengers." The tripe on the back was worse. It was the perfect container for his special gift to the to Sammy Wade. Wade was a loud mouth drunk who knew too much, and greedy besides. Seyed had always thought the idea of working with the Irish Republicans was a bad idea and Wade was the proof: wanting money to keep his mouth shut. Kufers should never be trusted.
Sam Wade will soon find out what jihad is all about. Seyed thought, He wants money, but snot is all he is worth.
Seyed opened the egg and patted out a little less than half the fake mucous on the countertop in his kitchen cum laboratory. He put the original shell in a white plastic grocery bag and set it aside, then substituted a clear "Surprise Easter Egg" that opened lengthwise and lined half of it with the doughy substance. His nose wrinkled from its acrid smell. He laid the empty halves face up on a soft pad indented slightly to make sure the little cups stayed in the correct position. Using a new pencil, he pushed a cylindrical hole into a small wad of PlNp10 -- Black Semtex. With great care, he placed a watch battery lightly into the plastique. He checked the preassembled electric blasting cap, contact plate, and plunger assembly with the galvanometer to make sure the circuits were complete, then positioned the plastic plunger so that the upper plate fit snugly against the battery. He used a flat toothpick he eased a miniature electric blasting cap into the Semtex to one side of the blast assembly taking care not to dislodge the wire connections. Finally, the contact and pressure block were placed against the upper plate.
He held the elongated orb tightly and patted it into the shell so it was covered with the pearl white dough. Once assembled it was deadly. From now on, if enough pressure were taken off the Semtex it would explode with sufficient force to kill anyone within a few feet. He had chosen the new container because it would be easier to maintain a safe pressure while filling it. Seyed's heart rate was over 100, but his hands remained sure as he fitted the cover tightly on the laminate.
The danger was brief and so was the adrenaline peak. The rest of the evening would be tense, but without actual physical danger. Unless the egg was broken open it could safely be heated, cooled, or moved about at will. He carefully cleaned the egg, running the tip of a rubber gum massager under the lip where the two parts of the egg met to make sure there was no residue left. He then dipped the whole egg into one of the new odor neutralizers and dried it on a soft, lint free, towel. The process insured a safe and easy passage through the U.S. Mail detectors.
He changed gloves and put the extra bits and pieces of wood, plastic, latex gloves, and the remaining angel snot to the grocery bag then washed down the counter with oxalic acid to remove any traces of the morning's work.
Seyed took the sack and the egg into his makeshift office in the green-walled second bedroom. The little bomb just fit in the original bubble pack that had held unadulterated-whatever a hour before. At the desk, he donned yet another set of gloves. He glued the cardboard face and back together, carefully matching the edges. It was only a tiny bit thicker than the original package and Seyed was sure it would pass any visual or optical inspection. His only worry was that acrid Semtex smell; he dearly hoped it had been neutralized.
Jeezkallah it will not be found before it reaches the kufar tool of the Zionist enemy. It was hareem to ask fate to be rewritten for his own ends, but one could hope that it was already the will of Allah.
Seyed opened the loosely tied RiteAid sack that was the only object in the desk’s drawer. He pulled one loop handle around the top of the drawer front and put the other handle around the panel that that was meant to hold file folders firmly in place. Inside the sack was a child's toy printing set, and a packet of self stick stamps.
Using the print kit he put together the mailing label for Sam Wade. Wade was supposed to be working for the Irish Republican cause – and through that for the bin Laden groups. The trouble was three fold: Wade was a sloppy drunk who could not keep his mouth shut; he insisted on moonlighting as a petty crook; and most recently had tried to blackmail his handler, threatening to make the connection between the Islamists and the Irish Republicans public. He was already saying too much in the bars in San Francisco, if he were picked up by the police he’d tell everything he knew in an hour. Seyed had Wade’s exact address, but chose to send it to one that would make his connection to the Muslim cause more obscure. He chose the Republican bar where Wade often drank – and talked. Law Enforcement might well think the bomb was part of violent Irish politics, yet sure enough to reach Wade where Seyed was certain the hand of death would be delivered. The address took several tries. Messy and misspelled addresses were one of the things that were a heads up for mail bombs. Finally, it looked like a typewriter had produced the label:
Sam Wade, C/O O’Reily’s Pub, 622 Green St., San Francisco, CA 94133: Personal and Private to be opened only by Mr. Wade
Seyed returned the printing set to the RiteAid sack. He removed the disposable greens he wore and put them in the same sack. He pulled a cheap new white long sleeved shirt out of its cellophane pack and put it on. It fit his lean, hard body well. He did the same with the black polyester pants the sales clerk had so helpfully found and packaged up for him before he’d come close to touching them.
He added the detritus from the packaging to the trash sack and slipped the tiny bomb and the stamps into another bag. Downstairs got in a nondescript rental car the color of sand and headed for the RiteAid in the community of Hillcrest in San Diego. It was 0200 and there would be few people in the pharmacy. Moreover, something so simple as latex gloves would go almost certainly go unnoticed in a store where transvestite hookers plied their trade on the street outside and gold ribbed condoms vied with “Crazy Sex Feel” lube as the biggest seller of the morning. The tiny chance the gloves would be remembered by anyone was far less a risk than the possibility that his fingerprints or DNA would be picked up on the new bomb.
A box of Whitman's Sampler chocolates, deep enough to hold the package of ersatz Angel Snot and a large bubble pack envelope with a gusset bottom completed his purchases. Back in the car, he emptied the chocolates into the new Rite Aid sack and set it aside. He added the tiny bomb to the box, closed it and put it in the bubble pack, closed that and added the address label and stamps.
Seyed took the bags of trash -- all with RiteAid logos -- and dumped them in the trash barrel near the store's entrance. Then he deposited the package in the mailbox on the corner. By next week at the latest, he hoped the one person that could endanger the operation would be very very dead.
