"You are ready, my friend," Ghosn said quietly. He closed the inspection door, made sure it was properly latched, then replaced the cardboard cover. Ghosn blew warm breath on his hands, then walked back to the house.

"How will the weather affect us?" Qati asked Russell.

"There's another storm behind this one. I figure we'll drive down tomorrow evening, right before it starts. The second one will be short, maybe another inch or two, they say. If we go in between the two, the road should be all right. Then we check into the motel, and wait for the right time, right?"

"Correct. And the truck?"

"I'll do the painting today, soon as I have the heaters rigged. That's only two hours work. I have the templates all done," Russell said as he finished his coffee. "Load the bomb after I paint, okay?"

"How long for the paint to dry?" Ghosn asked.

"Three hours, tops. I want the paint job to be good, okay?"

"That is fine, Marvin."

Russell laughed as he collected the breakfast dishes. "Man, I wonder what the people who made that movie would think?" He turned to see puzzlement on the faces of his guests.

"Didn't Gunther tell you?" The faces were blank. "I saw the movie on television once. Black Sunday. A guy came up with an idea of killing the whole Superbowl crowd from a blimp."

"You're joking," Qati observed.

"No, in the movie they had a big anti-personnel thing on the bottom of the blimp, but the Israelis found out what was going on, and their CIA guys got there in the nick of time - you know, how it usually happens in the movies. With my people, it was always the cavalry that got there in the nick of time, so's they could kill all the savage Indians."

"In this movie, the objective was to kill the entire stadium?" Ghosn asked, very quietly.

"Huh - oh, yeah, that's right." Russell was loading the dishes into the dishwasher. "Not like we're doing." He turned. "Hey, don't feel bad. Just taking out the TV coverage is going to piss people off like you wouldn't believe. And this stadium is covered, okay? That blimp-thing wouldn't work. You'd need like a nuke or something to do the same thing."

"There's an idea," Ghosn observed with a chuckle, wondering what reaction he'd get.

"Some idea. Yeah, you might start a real nuclear war - shit, man, guess whose people lives up in the Dakotas, where all those SAC bases are? I don't think I could play that kind of a game." Russell dumped in the detergent and started the wash cycle. "What exactly do you have in that thing anyway?"

"A very compact and powerful high-explosive compound. It will do some damage to the stadium, of course."

"I figured that. Well, taking out the TV won't be hard - that's delicate shit, y'know? - and just doing that - man, I'm telling you, it's going to have an effect like you wouldn't believe."