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environmentalists . . .
    Virgil had a degree in ecological science, and was a committed green. But he’d met quite a few people over the years who’d come into the green movement from other, more ideologically violent movements—people who’d started as anti-globalization protesters, or tree-spikers as opposed to tree sitters, who thought that trashing a McDonald’s was a good day’s work, people who talked about Marx and Greenpeace in the same sentence.
    The greenest people Virgil knew were hunters and fishermen, with Ducks Unlimited and Trout Unlimited and Pheasants Forever and the Ruffed Grouse Society, and the Conservancy and the National Wildlife Federation and all the rest, people who put their money and their time where their mouths were; but these others . . .
    There could be a radical somewhere in the mix, somebody who had twisted a bunch of ideologies all together and decided that bombs were an ethical statement.
    A guy sitting home alone, the blue glow of the Internet on his face, getting all tangled up with the other nuts out there, honing himself . . .
    Again, all it took was one.
     
     
    BEFORE HE WENT TO SLEEP, Virgil spent a few minutes thinking about God, and why he’d let a bomber run around killing people, although he was afraid that he knew the reason: because the small affairs of man were of not much concern to the All-Seeing, All-Knowing. Everybody on earth would die, sooner or later, there was no question about that: the only question was the timing, and what would time mean to a timeless Being?
    But a bomb brought misery. A nice quiet death at age eightyeight, with the family gathered around, not so much.
    He’d have to read Job again, he thought; not that Job seemed to have many answers.
    Then he got up, peed, dropped on the bed, and was gone.

4
    T HE BOMBER SAT in his basement—it had to be a basement—looking at the stack of bombs. He’d already packed the Pelex, which had a rather nice tang about it: like aftershave for seriously macho dudes. He’d packed in the last of the blasting caps, which looked a bit like fat, metallic ballpoint pen refills, and he’d already wired up all the batteries except the last one, because he was afraid of that one: afraid he’d blow himself up.
    He’d given himself two missions this night: the first would be to take out the water and sewer pipe the city was planning to run out to the PyeMart, as well as the heavy equipment that’d be used to lay the pipe.
    The second one . . .
     
     
    FOR THE SECOND ATTACK, he needed a bomb that would blow with motion—and since he didn’t have access to sophisticated detonators, he’d made do with an old mercury switch. To use it, he’d have to do the final wiring on-site, in awkward conditions, wearing gloves, with a flashlight in his mouth. Possible, but tricky.
    The trickiness gave him a little buzz. If anything went wrong, of course, he’d never know it, with his face a foot from the bomb. When they identified him, wouldn’t they be surprised? Wouldn’t they wonder?
    Made him smile to think about it.
     
     
    THE BOMBER WAS SLENDER and tough and smart. He worked out daily, ninety minutes at a time. He had a sense of humor, he often looked in a mirror and thought, Pretty damn good.
    But pretty damn good wasn’t enough. Time was passing; he wasn’t old, but age would come, and then what? Twenty years on Social Security? There were very limited opportunities ahead, and he had to seize the ones that presented themselves.
    And there was the competitive aspect to the challenge: Could he beat the cops and the federal government? He knew they’d all come piling in when the bombs started going off.
    He shook off the intrusive thought, and picked up the latest bomb, and turned it in his hands. Very, very simple; and deadly as a land mine.
    Not particularly delicate, though. He’d read that he could mold the Pelex into a ball and whack it with a golf club, with no effect. The blasting caps were a little more