Free Purpose of Evasion by Greg Dinallo

me,” she said as if she had forgotten. “My husband is the drummer.”
    “The drummer,” the soldier repeated with a smile, backing his way into the entrance.
    The woman waved and hurried off.
    The shy soldier went to a table, ordered a beer, and set the gym bag on the floor behind his chair.
    Inside it, amid a few soiled towels, a cheap wind-up alarm clock lay ticking. The plastic lens that covered the face had been removed and a thin, pliable wire affixed with airplane glue to each of the hands. The insulation had been stripped from the tips, exposing about a quarter-inch of copper; one of these prongs had been bent slightly downward to ensure contact would be made when they coincided. As beer flowed and dancers gyrated, the minute hand slowly brought the tips of the two wires closer and closer together.
    It was exactly 1:04 A.M. when the young soldier waved the waitress over again.
    “Think this set’s ever going to end?”
    “I sure hope so,” she said, leaning over so he could hear her above the music.
    His eyes darted shyly to the swell of her breasts, the smooth skin almost brushing his cheek. He was hoping fervently it would and was fantasizing how it might feel when the clock hands moved to within a few ticks of coinciding, and an impatient purple-green spark jumped across the gap between the contacts.
    The 9-volt charge surged through the wire and tripped the detonator, which was plugged into a 15-pound chunk of C-4 plastique called Semtex. It was part of a 20-ton shipment of the deadly explosive that one of the renegade CIA agents had procured for Qaddafi. RDX, the main ingredient of the off-white putty, was unmatched in destructive potential save for nuclear weapons.
    It erupted in a thunderous explosion.
    The music and blinding strobes masked the sound and flash of the blast, but the torn bodies hurtling through the air like dolls left no doubt as to what had happened. Within seconds, La Belle Club was a roaring inferno filled with screaming people.
    Scores were injured.
    Two American soldiers were killed.

8
    THE NEXT MORNING, an entourage of civilian and military advisers assembled at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland’s Blue Ridge Mountains.
    The president had spent the weekend relaxing. He was dressed casually when he joined them in the library, where, despite the crackle of hand-split logs, a damp chill prevailed.
    “Intercepted a few hours ago,” Lancaster said, handing him a red folder marked KEYHOLE TOP-SECRET TALENT, the code name given intelligence collected by KH-11 spy satellites. It contained a cable that read:
    WE HAVE SOMETHING PLANNED THAT WILL MAKE YOU HAPPY.
    “When am I going to get one of these that will make me happy?” the president asked, settling in his chair. “I thought we had castiron coverage on these people?”
    “We do, sir,” Kiley replied. “Repositioning that KH-11 really paid off.”
    “Not for those two soldiers, it didn’t!” the president snapped in a rare display of acrimony.
    “My apologies, sir,” Kiley said, stung by the reply. “I meant we can prove that cable was sent from the People’s Bureau in East Berlin to Qaddafi in Tripoli.”
    The president’s posture softened, his head tilting slightly, re-considering his remarks.
    “As was this one,” Lancaster said, exhaling a haughty cloud of smoke as he handed him a second cable. Like the others present, the NSA wasn’t aware of CIA’s involvement in the bombing and believed the cables to be genuine.
AT 1:05 AM AN EVENT OCCURRED.
    YOU WILL BE PLEASED WITH THE RESULT.
    “That’s the exact time the disco was bombed, sir,” Kiley said incriminatingly.
    “Do we have any proof that Qaddafi gave the order?” the president asked.
    “I’d say it’s implicit, sir,” Kiley replied.
    “In other words, Bill, we don’t have irrefutable evidence that Qaddafi was behind this.”
    Kiley’s lips tightened in a thin red line. “No, sir.”
    “Be advised,” the chairman of the Joint