Free Fuse of Armageddon by Sigmund Brouwer, Hank Hanegraaff Page A

death. “Really, I do apologize.”
    The man shrugged and pulled away, apology obviously not accepted. Safady was fine with that; he’d accomplished what he wanted.
    At least, so far.
    Aside from the sniper here, there was also the shipping container with arms coming in from the Suez. Safady needed that part of the plan to go just as smoothly as this.
    Allah be praised, Safady thought.
    Sheikh Zuweid, Egypt • 11:29 GMT
    As instructed, about ten miles short of the Gaza Strip border crossing at Rafah, the Egyptian truck driver left the heavy traffic on Highway 30 and turned south toward the heart of the Sinai Peninsula. Five miles down the road was Abu-Aweigila—a camel stop of a town—and just past it a commercial dump in a set of barren hills.
    He didn’t bother to gear down as he passed through Abu-Aweigila. Shortly afterward he turned onto another road that wound up through desert hills. Ancient, rattling dump trucks passed him in both directions as he geared down to a complete stop beside a semitrailer with a container on the flatbed deck. It was parked a quarter mile away from the dump, out of sight but not out of the range of the smell of the trash or the muted roar of the bulldozer moving the garbage.
    The container on the other flatbed bore identical markings to the container that the crane had placed on his own flatbed trailer a few hours ago in Port Said.
    To another driver, this might have seemed like a remarkable coincidence. This driver, however, valued his life. There had been whispers of Iranian money backing Hamas involvement in arms shipping, and he did not want to know what was in the container he carried, nor in the one he would be returning to Port Said.
    All that mattered was uncoupling his truck from the trailer with the first container and coupling the second one in its place. And in the fastest time possible.
    The dust was heavy on the truck driver’s bearded face as he struggled with the equipment. The sound of the bulldozer’s diesel engine faded from the driver’s awareness as he concentrated on unhitching the first trailer from his truck. He skinned his knuckles and cursed; this was usually a two-man job, but he’d been paid well to do it alone.
    Finished uncoupling the first trailer, he climbed back into the cab and drove forward, then reversed to line up the coupling with the second trailer. It took several times in and out of the truck to get it maneuvered where he needed it, and his anxiety grew with each passing minute.
    Finally he managed to couple the second trailer to his cab. With a hiss of the release of air brakes and with grinding gears, he was grateful that nothing unusual had happened by the time he reached the highway to Abu-Aweigila. The money in this was good, but he wanted to return safely to his wife and two young sons.
    In the relatively sparse traffic all the way until he reached Highway 30 again, he spent as much time glancing in his rearview mirrors as he did watching the pavement in front of him. Only when he was back in the heavy eastbound traffic toward Rafah did he finally allow himself a sigh of relief.
    His relief lasted only another five minutes—as long as it took for the timer on the bomb inside the new container to count down the final seconds.
    For the driver, the end was a quick mercy. He died without comprehending the roar and the flash that threw the cab of the truck two hundred feet into the air.
    Megiddo, Israel • 11:42 GMT
    Jonathan Silver’s lecture on Megiddo had ended. As the Holy Land tourists began to shuffle toward the path that led down to the bus, Safady glanced at his watch.
    Two minutes. The sniper was a minor player in this. He didn’t know why he was involved. He had been paid simply to shoot the target that Safady indicated, then disappear in the confusion. Two minutes. Then the payoff for months of intricate planning.
    Safady raised his hand and called to Jonathan Silver. “I know we talked about this earlier,” he said, “but