The bomb maker woke to the sound of wheels rolling up the gravel driveway. The SUV engines almost idled as they slowly approached the house.

He stood up immediately, put on his pants, and pulled the shirt he’d left on the chair on over his head. The nearest window was high, placed where the outer wall met the ceiling of his bedroom. He pushed his chair against the wall and stood on it to look.

It wasn’t the police or the FBI. It was only the three black SUVs. He swore to himself as he walked to the closet beside the entrance to his house. He turned off the firing circuits and made sure the door was closed so they wouldn’t get curious, and then opened the front door.

Tonight he wasn’t feeling just the usual irritation at their presumptuous, unwelcome visit in the middle of the night. He supposed that if they had to come, the middle of the night was the best time. But these visits were costing him. He felt the anger as a pressure this time, like someone squeezing his chest and making it hard for him to breathe.

He’d made an agreement with them, and he had been living up to his side. He was doing impossible things, many of them repeatedly, just to speed things up and meet their ridiculous schedule. In return, they were supposed to go away and leave him alone to accomplish his work.

As he stood there he had a fantasy in which he would throw open the closet, hit the switches to arm the circuits for the mines outside, and then begin closing the switches that would set off the ones beside the driveway where they would have to step when they got out of their cars.

To calm his rage, he reminded himself of the money he had almost finished earning. Usually that worked to distract him from annoyances. But he was so sick of these men that even the huge payment he’d demanded did not seem like enough compensation. They were swaggering and arrogant and brutish. Their bald-headed leader was irritating.

He began to open the front door, but it swung inward into his shoulder and side, knocking him backward onto the floor. Two men carrying a third who seemed limp and injured staggered toward him. He crawled to the side out of their path, and was immediately stumbled over and kicked by the gang of men coming in after them who didn’t see him lying there. He was hurt, and the pain frightened him. One of the men turned on the light, and the glare seared his eyes.

His right shoulder was injured. How was he going to be able to do the rest of his work? If he couldn’t use his arm properly he could blow himself up. And if he said he couldn’t do his work, what would these men do?

Making and planting explosives could be very delicate work, and if something went wrong right now, it wouldn’t be some minor problem. The whole house and workshop were filled with wrapped bricks and tubs of high explosives. He looked at the other man on the floor with him.

He could see the man was dead. There was a hole in the side of his temple. Nobody was trying to help him or stop the blood that collected under his matted hair. The bomb maker crawled closer, drawn mostly by curiosity, and saw that the other side of the man’s head was much worse. That was the place where the bullet had passed out of the skull—the exit wound. Blood and tissue and bone had been blown out.

“What happened?” he said.

He pushed himself off the floor with his uninjured arm and lurched to his feet with a clumsy stagger. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a roll of paper towels, and then returned to the living room. He knelt beside the corpse and began to wipe the thickening blood off his floor, making a pile of crumpled towels beside the man’s head.

He collected most of them and wrapped them in a length of towel to carry them out to the kitchen trash, but stopped and dropped them by the body when he saw the bald man come in the door with two other men in a muttered conversation. The bomb maker heard, “We’ll just have to do things more quickly, and fight that much harder. The important thing is to move right away, before they realize the meaning of what happened. We can’t give them time to bring in all their men and send for more.”

The bald man noticed the bomb maker standing there over the body, holding his right arm. “What’s the matter with you?”

“The door hit me and I fell. What happened?”

“That building was like a military bunker. We lost a man trying to get to Stahl.”

“Why?”

“Somebody shot him.”

“No, why get to Stahl?”

“Because we wanted to be sure the whole plan wouldn’t be ruined. Once bridges and buildings began to blow up, they would have brought Stahl back. He was the one who was always able to make your bombs harmless. We didn’t want to let that happen again. Not now.”

“Did you get him?”

“Probably not.”

“Probably not?” said the bomb maker. “What the fuck are you saying?”

In less than a second the bomb maker realized he had not been seeing the situation clearly. The bald man had already been chagrined, and while he had been standing there looking calm, his rage had been growing. His left hand shot outward and clamped shut on the bomb maker’s shirt, then held him there to punch him in the face with his right fist. He hit him six times in rapid succession, holding him immobile. When the bomb maker’s knees would no longer support him, the bald man let go of the shirt and gave a tremendous push that sent him into the nearest wall, where his muscles lost their strength and his body slumped to the floor. He was astounded. His life had not offered any opportunities to fight that he couldn’t escape. He felt shock and pain that he had never experienced before.

The men all seemed to go into motion to fill the sudden silence. One stepped into the bomb maker’s bedroom and came back with sheets and blanket stripped from the bed. He and two others began to wrap the dead man in them. Other men turned and went outside.

The bomb maker heard the engines starting, and then the sound moved around the side of his house as the cars were parked out of sight behind the buildings. He hoped none of them swung too wide and went over a mine, but he didn’t feel up to getting to his feet, running out there, and shouting warnings.

He felt profoundly harmed. He looked down, saw his own blood drenching his shirt, and knew his nose was broken. Other things inside his face were damaged too, as though maybe a cheekbone had been fractured. He had never imagined what this felt like. He was filled with anger and hatred.