Terrorist

One small thing nags. Getting out to lower the rattling garage door behind them-him, the truck, and the invisible company of his collaborators-Ahmad feels the juice of the breakfast orange and a suppressed nervous excitement press upon his bladder. He had best lighten himself for the journey ahead. He parks the truck, with its motor idling, on one side of the alley, raises the garage door again, and finds the machine shop's toilet behind a smirched unmarked door in a corner beside the workbench and the pegboard. There is a string that turns on the naked bulb, and a bright porcelain receptacle with an oval eye of dubious water to be flushed when he is done adding the little stream out of himself. He washes his hands scrupulously, using the dispenser of grease-cutting detergent in readiness on the sink. He returns outside and pulls down the rattling door on its knotted cord and realizes with an i

He consults his Timex: it says eight-oh-nine. Four more minutes lost. He rolls the truck forward, trying to avoid potholes and sudden starts and stops. He is behind the schedule that he and Charlie set, but by less than twenty minutes. Calmer now that the truck is moving, part of the flow of the daily traffic of the world, he turns right out of the alley and then left on West Main, passing again the Pep Boys, with its disturbing cartoon image of three men, Ma

The fully awakened city twinkles and swerves around him. He imagines his truck as an encircled rectangle in a helicopter view of a car chase, threading through the streets, stopping at lights. This truck handles differently from Excellency, which had an easy sway to it, as if the driver were sitting on the neck of an elephant. Driving Window Shades Systems, he feels no organic sympathy. The steering wheel doesn't fit his hands. Every irregularity in the road surface jars the whole frame. The front wheels persistently tug to the left, as if some accident left the frame bent. The weight- twice what McVeigh had, greater and denser than any load of furniture-pushes him from behind when he brakes at a red light and holds him back when he pulls out on green.

To avoid the center of the town-the high school, the City Hall, the church, the lake of rubble, the stubby glass skyscrapers supplied as sops by the government-Ahmad turns on Washington Street, called that because, Charlie had once told him, in the other direction it goes by a mansion the great general used as one of his New Jersey headquarters. The jihad and the Revolution waged the same kind of war, Charlie explained-the desperate and vicious war of the underdog, the imperial overdog claiming fouls by the rules he has devised for his own benefit.

Ahmad punches on the dashboard radio; it is tuned in to an obnoxious rap station, spouting unintelligible lewdness. He finds WCBS-AM on the dial and is breathlessly told that traffic on the helix into the Lincoln Tu

There is only one New Prospect interchange off Route 80. Ahmad steers the truck southeast on Washington until Washington meets Tilden Avenue, which feeds directly into 80 in its thunderous plunge, this time of day, toward New York City. Three blocks north of the interchange, at a broad corner where a Getty service station faces a Mobil that includes a Shop-a-Sec, Ahmad sees a somewhat familiar figure hanging on the curb waving, not waving like a man absurdly hoping for a taxi-which don't range free in New Prospect and must be summoned by phone-but waving directly at him. Indeed, he points to Ahmad through the windshield; he holds up his hands as if stopping sometJiing physically. It's Mr. Levy, wearing a brown suit coat that doesn't match his gray pants. He's dressed for school on this Monday but instead is standing outdoors a mile south of Central High.

The unexpected sight stymies Ahmad. He fights to clear his racing mind. Perhaps Mr. Levy has a message from Charlie, though he didn't think they knew each other; tlie guidance counselor had never liked his getting the CDL and driving a truck. Or an urgent message from his mother, who for a while this summer would mention Mr. Levy a little too often, in that tone of voice that meant she was embarrassing herself again. Ahmad will not stop, no more than he would for one of those writhing, importuning monsters, made from plastic tubes and blowing air, that bewitch consumers into turning off a thoroughfare.

However, the light at the corner changes and the traffic slows and the truck has to halt. Mr. Levy, moving faster tiian Ahmad knew he could, dodges through the lanes of stopped traffic and reaches up and raps commandingly on the passenger's window. Confused, conditioned not to show a teacher disrespect, Ahmad reaches over and pushes the unlock button. Better have him inside next to him, the boy hastily reasons, tJian outside where he can raise an alarm. Mr. Levy yanks open the passenger door and just as the traffic has to move again hoists himself up and flops into the cracked black seat. He slams the door shut. He is panting. "Thanks," he says. "I was getting afraid I'd missed you."

"How did you know I'd be here?"

"There's only one way to get to 80."

"But this isn't my truck."

"I knew it wouldn't be."

"How?"

"It's a long story. All I have are bits and pieces. Window Shades Systems-that's fu

"Don't touch it!" The words come out so sharply that Ahmad out of politeness adds, "Sir."

"I won't," Mr. Levy says. "But don't you touch it either." He is silent, inspecting it without touching it. "Foreign manufacture, maybe Czech or Chinese. It sure isn't our old standard-issue LD20 detonator. I was in the Army, you know, though they never sent me to Vietnam. That bothered me. I didn't want to go, but I wanted to prove myself. You can understand that. Wanting to prove yourself."

"No. I don't understand," Ahmad says. This abrupt intrusion has confused him; his thoughts feel like bumblebees, blindly bumping at the walls inside his skull. But he continues to steer smoothly, gliding the GMC 3500 through the curving co