"Back off for a minute and have a drink." Marvin said on his return.

"Good idea." Ghosn agreed, setting his brush down next to the bomb.

"Find anything?"

"A plug connection, nothing else." That was odd, too, Ghosn thought, pulling the top off the canteen. There were no stenciled markings, just a silver-and-red label block near the nose. Color-codes were common on bombs, but he'd never seen that one before. So, what was this damned thing? Maybe an FAE or some kind of sub-munition canister? Something old and obsolete that he'd never seen before. It had come down in 1973, after all. Maybe something that had long since gone out of service. That was very bad news. If it were something he'd never seen before, it might have a fusing system that he didn't know. His manual for dealing with such things was Russian in origin, though printed in Arabic. Ghosn had long since committed it to memory, but there was no description for anything like this. And that was truly frightening. Ghosn took a long pull from the canteen and then poured a little across his face.

"Take it easy, man." Russell said, noticing the man's tension.

"This job is never easy, my friend, and it is always very frightening."

"You look pretty cool, Ibrahim." It wasn't a lie. While brushing the dirt off, he looked like a doctor, almost, doing something real hard, Russell thought, but doing it. The little fucker had balls, Marvin told himself again.

Ghosn turned and grinned. "That is all a lie. I am quite terrified. I truly hate doing this."

"You got a big pair, boy, and that's no shit."

"Thank you. Now I must return while I still can. You really should leave, you know."

Russell spat into the dirt. "Fuck it."

"That would be very difficult." Ghosn grinned. "And if you got a reaction from "her", you might not like it."

"I guess when these suckers come, the earth really does move!"

Ghosn knew enough of American idiom that he fell backwards and laughed uproariously. "Please, Marvin, do not say such things when I am working!" Like this man! Ghosn told himself. We are too humorless a lot. I like this American! He had to wait another few minutes before he calmed down enough to resume his work.

Another hour's brushing showed nothing. There were seams in the bombcase, even some sort of hatch he'd never seen that before. But no fuse point. If there were one, it had to be underneath. Russell moved away some more dirt, allowing Ghosn to continue his search, but again, nothing. He decided to examine the back.

"There's a flashlight in my sack "

"Got it." Russell handed the light over.

Ghosn lay down on the dirt and contorted himself to look into the hole. It was dark, of course, and he switched on the light He saw electrical wiring, and something else, some sort of metal framework - latticework would be more accurate. He judged he could see perhaps eighty centimeters and if this were a real bomb, there would not be so much empty space. So. So. Ghosn tossed the light to the American.