Russell Andrews - Aphrodite

After buying the supplies at the hardware store, they'd driven toward the Leger Retirement Home. Wendell directed Gordon to the rest-stop parking lot, which was fairly empty. He could do everything he needed to do there, and he assured his brother that the assembly wouldn't take more than a few minutes. While Gordon kept an eye out for any overly curious travelers, Wendell built his bombs. He had decided to make shape charges. For one thing, they were subtle, much subtler than something that would just total a car and blow everything around it to smithereens. For another, they required a very small amount of plastic explosives. He had decided to use C-4, a military explosive that looked like a bar of soap and was easily malleable. He could carry it, undetected, in a soap case, lumping it together with his toothbrush, toothpaste, and small bottle of mouthwash. A shape charge, he knew from his Gulf War days, was capable of piercing the armor of a tank, incinerating everything inside that tank, and leaving the shell practically unscathed. Its appeal was that it focused nearly all of an explosive's energy into a very narrow, extraordinarily hot jet. And it was easy as pie to make.

The first thing he did was go into the rest-stop complex and fill the plastic bucket with cold water. He also bought a five-pound bag of ice and a corkscrew. He then walked to the gas station right outside and put two dollars' worth of gasoline into the jug. Before he got in the car, Wendell opened and emptied four of the wine bottles into the bushes that partially hid the rest area from the highway. Inside the car, working in the backseat, he soaked several pieces of string in the gasoline, then tied pieces of the soaked string around the four empty wine bottles, approximately three inches from the dimpled bottoms. He lit a match, set the strings on fire one by one, and watched to make sure that the bottles heated evenly all around where the string had been tied. When the string was burned down, he instantly immersed each bottle into the bucket that was filled with cold water and ice. Within seconds, each bottle broke perfectly at the point where the string had been tied and the bottles burned. Wendell now had four pieces of glass the size of small juice glasses, each with an inverted cone at the bottom.

He packed the explosives tightly into each glass, then inserted one blasting cap per container. He sealed the tops of the glasses with duct tape, allowing the wires of the blasting caps to stick through. After that, he duct-taped a magnet to the bottom of each glass. The magnets were circular with a hole in the middle. This configuration suited his needs perfectly as it would create a standoff for the explosive jet to form.

That's all it took. Wendell encased each of the packages in several feet of bubble wrap, which he'd carried in his overnight bag. He got out of the car, opened the trunk, and placed the bombs in the small niche on the side where the jack would normally be kept. He gently closed the trunk, got back in the car, told Gordon to drive very carefully- even though he knew there was no danger of the things exploding until he attached and set the timer; he just thought he'd have a little fun at his brother's expense-and half an hour later they were at the Leger Retirement Home, where they had plenty of time to break in, smother Lewis Granger, go back to the car, and wait for their next three victims to show up.

Wendell had had a little more work to do in the Leger parking lot. Once they saw Westwood pull up and go inside-"New car," Gordon muttered. "This guy's not bad"-the younger twin took the leg wires from the blasting caps in each of his four bombs and connected them together in a parallel circuit. Half of these wires were then twisted together onto another wire, whose opposite end was glued to the zero point on the kitchen timer. One more wire was glued to the actual timer part of the clock, the dial that moved around and kept track of each passing minute. The other end of this wire was run, in series, to the double-A batteries and remaining blasting-cap leg wires. Wendell was careful not to let the wires on the kitchen timer touch. Since he hadn't bothered to include a safe arming switch, he knew that if the exposed wires came in contact with each other, the device would detonate in his hands. The last thing he did was duct-tape another magnet to the base of the kitchen timer.

As he secured his bombs, via the magnets, to Justin Westwood's car, Wendell had a clear and delicious vision of what was going to happen.

He would set the rooster timer for one hour. Sixty minutes later, the wires attached to it would touch each other, completing the circuit. The batteries would supply enough energy to initiate the blasting caps, and the resulting shock would set off the C-4. Due to the inverted cone at the bottom of each glass, most of the explosive force would meet at the center of the cone and be directed upward, forming a molten jet of glass and energy. This was called the Monroe Effect; it would cause each bomb to drill a tiny hole up into the car, through the frame, through the body of anyone sitting inside over the hole, literally drilling all the way up through the person's head, and melt whatever was in its path. This was why Wendell had decided to use four devices. Two for the front seat, two for the back. The entire inside of the car would incinerate and, except for the windows shattering with enormous force and the possible exception of the roof mushrooming out a bit, the outside would be left relatively untouched. At that point, he would open the fifth bottle of Bordeaux, he and Gordon would toast to their success, and then they would head back home.

A shape charge was a thing of beauty, Wendell knew. And, anticipating the results, he began to drool again at the thought of such beauty.

From the rear of the '97 Buick, Wendell looked up at his brother, who was sitting in their rental car halfway across the lot. He nodded at Gordon, checked his watch, then bent down a final time to twist the timer on the plastic rooster, setting it to the sixty-minute mark. He walked back to the rental car, got inside, leaned back in the passenger seat, closed his eyes, and told Gordon to wake him up when something happened.

Something happened twenty minutes later.

Justin Westwood came out of the Home with Deena and Kendall Harper. They headed toward their car, stopped, the mother and daughter seemed to argue for a moment, then they all got into their car. Sat there for several moments. The engine started up and they pulled out of the parking lot.

Gordon leaned over, gave Wendell a gentle two-finger nudge in his side.

"Are you just going to sit here?" Wendell asked when his eyes opened.

Gordon shrugged. "The job's done, isn't it? We can go home."

"I want to see this one," Wendell said.

"That's not a good idea."

"I want to see it, Gordon. It's going to be magnificent. You get to see your handiwork. I want to see mine."

"It's not a good idea," Gordon said again.

"I want to! And I deserve to!"

Gordon waited another fifteen seconds or so before he started up his own engine, pulled out of the parking lot, and began to follow the Buick.

Wendell looked down at his watch. Thirty-nine minutes until the explosion.

"It's going to be so beautiful," he said. "Wake me up in thirty-eight minutes."

When the knock at the door came, Edward Marion couldn't help but flinch.

He'd been sitting in his motel room in near silence, not even turning on the television, for over five hours. Every time he heard any kind of noise outside his room, he'd stiffen, wait for the knock, and envision the conversation he'd have to have.

Who is it?

FBI. Open the door.

I need to see some ID.

Open the door and I'll show it to you.