Next pageTERRORISM: THE VIEW FROM CENTURY CITY
BY BILL MOHR
This time the President arrives in the final
helicopter, its rotor blades crushing air
against roped-off photographers. Halfway down
its stairs, he raises his arm with a waveless jerk
and steps into a limosine resembling one
outside Beruit, in which a man is packing
gelignite between the upholstery and the body's frame.
Like an amateur smuggler, he's more concerned
with quantity than hiding it. He's only careful
with the timer, inserting it in a hollow fire extinguisher
tucked behind the driver's seat. A curse, the gas tank's
empty. He pumps it full at a station a man's just left
whose wife and daughter will erupt in an hour,
their bodies briefly coiled by the explosion,
then scattered with a singular vehemence.
The crater underneath the extinguished space
of their last steps slowly expels a globe of stupified air.
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