So now here he was inside an old, beat-to-hell cargo plane flying over the Tuscarora Mountain range toward Sunrise Valley, Nevada, and they were very close to T, for target.

He and his new best friends were assembling the bomb right there on the plane. They even had a diagram showing how to do it, as if they were idiots. Assembling Fuel-Air Bombs for Dummies.

The actual BLU-96 was a tightly controlled military weapon and relatively hard to obtain, Costa knew. Unfortunately for everybody who lived, loved, ate, slept, and shit in Sunrise Valley, Daisy Cutters could also be assembled at home out of readily obtainable ingredients. Costa had purchased a thousand-gallon supplemental fuel bladder, then filled it with high-octane gas, fitted a dispersing device, and inserted dynamite sticks as an initiator. Next, he made a motion brake and trigger assembly using a parachutist's altitude-deployment device for parts. Simple stuff like that.

Then, as he'd told the others on board the cargo plane, "You fly over the target. You push the bomb out the payload door. You run like your pants are on fire and there's an ocean up ahead. Trust me, the Daisy Cutter will leave nothing but scorched earth below. Sunrise Valley will be a burn mark in the desert. A memory. Just you watch."

Chapter 5

"Easy does it, gentlemen. No one is to be hurt. Not this time."

Nearly eight hundred miles away, the Wolf was watching in live time what was happening in the desert. What a flick! There were four cameras on the ground at Sunrise Valley that were pumping video footage to four monitors in the house in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles, where he was staying. For the moment, anyway.

He watched closely as the inhabitants of the mobile-home park were escorted by army personnel into waiting transport trucks. The clarity of the footage was very good. He could see the patches on the soldiers' arms:NEVADA ARMY GUARD UNIT 72ND.

Suddenly he spoke out loud, "Shit! Don't do that!" He started to squeeze the black handball rapidly in his fist, a habit when he was anxious or angry, or both.

One of the male civilians had pulled a gun and had it pointed at a soldier. Incredibly dumb mistake!

"You imbecile!" the Wolf shouted at the screen.

An instant later the man with the handgun was dead, facedown in the desert dust, which actually made it easier to get the other retards from Sunrise Valley into the transport trucks. Should have been part of the plan in the first place, the Wolf thought. But it hadn't been, so now it was a small problem.

Then one of the handheld cameras focused on a small cargo plane as it approached the town and circled overhead. This was just gorgeous to behold. The handheld was obviously on board one of the army trucks, which were, he hoped, speeding out of range.

It was amazing footage—black and white, which somehow made it even more powerful. Black and white was more realistic, no? Yes—absolutely.