Ollie tried to allay his concerns and said that the device was rapidly approaching completion and that he was now planning how to best use it for their objective. He thought that moving it around could be difficult because of its weight, size and the possible leakage of radiation that might be picked up by gamma radiation detectors. Andreas was still worried because those plans should have been made months ago but Ollie said that he had not been certain that the device could be constructed until his last visit to Padova. Furthermore, he said, only after seeing Dr. Jay's mock-up model could the planning reach a practical phase. He also told Andreas that Dr. Jay said that the presence of the U-232 impurity made it necessary to create a thicker radiation shield than he had originally planned and that this added significantly more weight to the device, encumbering its transport. Andreas thought that a truck equipped with a crane could be used without causing suspicion since many of them were seen in the streets of Europe and that the device should be no bigger than the "fat man" nuclear bomb used in Nagasaki that weighed under 5 tons and was 3 m long by 1.5 m diameter (he had checked that in Wikipedia). Ollie informed Andreas that during his last visit to Padova Dr. Jay assured him that the device would weigh much less than "fat man" and be significantly smaller so although it would weigh several hundred kilograms it would be transportable by truck. Ollie, of course, did not tell him that he needed to transport the device by sea as there was no open ground connection between Italy and Jerusalem.
Chapter 8
ISIS troops brought a bulldozer to eliminate any sign of the old border between Iraq and Syria claiming that the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement between the British and French colonialist nations was null and void and the whole region was now part of the new Islamic Caliphate. The ultimate dream of the Islamists was to unite the entire Muslim world, including Iraq, Syria, Jordan, the Arabian Peninsula, Lebanon, Palestine and Israel, as well as a large part of North Africa, and rule it according to strict Islamic code, and removal of the old border was the first step. Ibn-Tutta himself was present at the ceremonial event and was just getting ready to deliver a fiery speech encouraging his troops to continue on the holy journey, when an unmanned drone fired a well aimed rocket that hit the improvised podium on which he stood, blowing Ibn-Tutta and his bodyguards to smithereens. Ibn-Tutta's last prayer to Allah making a wish that the drone had not been directed by a female returned unanswered, so he would be denied the pleasures in heaven promised to all Shahids who died fighting Allah's holy war. Captain Jean Lewis, sitting in a bunker in Nevada, almost 15,000 kilometers from the border, received an ovation from her colleagues in the control room for her accurate strike. Ibn-Tutta's second in command, Abu Alli, immediately seized the vacant position and asserted himself as the new Supreme Commander of ISIS forces. The irony that this had occurred on the same date that the country of Israel became independent did not escape Abu Alli. After arranging a traditional funeral for what was left of Ibn-Tutta and his entourage he swore to avenge the death of his commander in a way that the world of Kafirs, those people who rejected Islam and its profit Mohammad, would not forget. His problem was that he had no indication about Ollie's progress or even where he was, and had no way of contacting him. His only hope was that Ollie had completed his mission and would resurface soon and be in touch with Sheik Khalil, the head of the extremist faction of the Islamic movement in Umm al-Fahm.
Ollie had watched the news the previous evening and saw the video footage filmed by the drone of the disintegration of Ibn-Tutta and his podium. He had to grind his teeth when he watched the celebration in the control bunker, especially as he understood the significance of the festivity surrounding the female Captain who handled the drone and fired the rocket. His resolve to detonate the device in the heart of Jerusalem and instigate a global war among the Kafirs grew stronger, and he hoped that his next planned trip to Padova would be successful.
Ollie and Andreas arrived at the laboratory in the evening after being urgently summoned by Professor Modena. The professor informed them that 15 kg of U-233 have been produced and converted into metallic form. He noted that this was due to the extra efforts made by all members of the workforce after their vacation so they were slightly ahead of schedule. Dr. Jay said that the fissile uranium core had been cast and was now cooling, and expected that it could be shaped to the proper dimensions early the next morning and inserted into the center of the device. He said that if no unexpected problems arose the device would be ready by noon and could be transported. Ollie was taken by surprise by this announcement as he had anticipated that it would be at least one more week before the device was ready.
Dr. Jay explained that the detonation mechanism of the improvised nuclear device was quite similar to the mechanism used on the "fat man" atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The conventional explosives were arranged in a spherical configuration surrounding the spherical core of the fissile material. Several fast detonators that were purchased from the North Korean collaborator and 32 of them were arranged to simultaneously set off the specially shaped explosive charges and compress the fissile core to a critical mass. Dr. Jay further elaborated that for safety reasons these detonators were kept separately in a steel box that was locked with a combination lock. Ollie asked what steps needed to be taken to detonate the device. Jay and Modena looked at him and then at each other, as they had thought that the device would only be used for blackmail purposes and not really detonated. Andreas also thought that Ollie's inquisitiveness was out of place but was also curious about the detonation mechanism. Dr. Jay eventually answered that one needed to insert all the detonators into the slots in the explosives, connect the prearranged wiring to the detonators and then attach the two main wires to the timer that was battery operated. The battery used in this improvised nuclear device was a standard 12 Volt car battery and the timer was a simple mechanical alarm clock from which the minutes dial had been removed with the hour dial serving as a terminal so that whoever set off the device would have up to 12 hours to get away from the explosion, just in case they really needed to use it. Ollie, who had seen many films in which the explosive devices had tamperproof protection and the "good-guy hero" had to make a dramatic decision whether to cut the red wire or the black wire was surprised that their device had no such sophisticated mechanism, but was glad that it could be armed and rendered safe without any special skills or training.
Ollie realized he had to quickly arrange for moving the device to the secure location that he had prepared in a small farmhouse near San Giorgio delle Pertiche, about 14 kilometers northwest of Padova. Only Ollie and Andreas knew about this place and they thought that the two of them could rent a self-drive truck with a crane to transport the device there without any of the workforce noticing their destination. Ollie had considered "taking out" the entire workforce, including Professor Modena and Dr. Jay, but thought that none of them knew what his real objective was, so if they were apprehended and questioned they would only be able to disclose the plan to blackmail the governments into expelling immigrants and "unwanted elements", which would distract the authorities away from himself and his true target. He knew that he would have to eliminate Andreas once the device was safely stored in the farmhouse but there was no hurry to carry that out.
So Ollie congratulated everyone on the excellent job, announced that they would gather for a modest celebration at noon the next day and promised them all a fat bonus. He then called Andreas aside and asked him to go and pick up the truck he had booked from a local rental company. He told Andreas to use a false name, pay cash and to try and avoid having his driver's license photocopied. He said that this could be done with a few additional bank notes slipped quietly under the counter. They decided that the two of them would take the completed device to the new hiding place immediately after the little party. Andreas quietly asked him if it was safe to allow everybody to just walk away but Ollie convinced him that as they did not know where the device would be hidden there was less risk in letting them go unscathed than in leaving a mess and a mass of dead bodies. He also told him that the rumors about some big and unconventional terrorist act would make their blackmailing job easier. Andreas was still skeptical and went as far as quoting Stalin, the infamous dictator who executed many of his own countrymen, and quoted the saying attributed to Stalin "no man no problem". Ollie was a bit surprised that Andreas made such a dramatic proposition but finally convinced him to bring the truck with the crane at noon and not worry about the loyal workforce.