Dire Straits by Mark Terry

truth, he was terrified. He was a chubby man with a round face and red hair. His ears stuck out like handles on a pot. Broken veins in his cheeks and nose indicated a fondness for vodka, although he was rarely out-and-out drunk. With his job, blind drunk could be lethal.
    There were ten canisters. Each was round, about the size of a grapefruit. They were refrigerated.
    Yakov Shos stalked into the part of the building where Pavel was preparing the weapon. Shos was almost as frightening as the canisters, Pavel thought. Yakov Shos was a brutal man and looked it. Appearances were not deceiving. He looked like the sort of man who could gut you with a knife and not feel a bit of remorse as you lay bleeding on the floor. Shos was built like a blade. His head was shaved and his face was all planes and angles. His dark eyes snapped out from beneath a ledge of brow. He had been an operative with the FSB for years before making his fortune with the Bratva, the brotherhood, what some called the Mafiya.
    Shos headed the Red Hand, something a little different, something darker, more grand and glorious, far more ambitious.
    Pavel knew that Shos was a killer, that the man had taken the lives of dozens, maybe hundreds of people.
    But what really frightened Pavel right now was that Shos did not seem afraid of the canisters.
    “When will this be ready?”
    Pavel swallowed. Pavel was a bomb maker. This corner of the building was his work area. In his fifties, Pavel had been well trained by the Russian Army. He had served in the hellhole of Afghanistan as a young man and was delighted to see the Americans mired in that most miserable of places on the planet.
    “It’s not the kind of thing you rush.”
    “Our people are here. Make it ready.”
    Shos turned and strode back to the far end of the building, what had originally been a garage for school buses, to discuss matters with two men who had come in with a truck. Pavel did not know where this was destined to go. He was a bomb maker, a technician. He was not a strategist. Shos told him what to do and he did it. He was well paid and he was a devout follower of the Red Hand, believing that Russia could be returned to the glory and power of the days of the Soviet Union. He longed for the days when the world media stopped saying there was only one superpower in the world.
    Pavel reached into the special refrigeration unit and withdrew the canister. It was cold and slippery in his hands. It was lighter than expected, made of some sort of acrylic. Crossing to his bench, he studied the device. It was a special bomb, one that was designed in such a way that the canister would explode without incinerating the contents. The contents would be dispersed into the air, where it would spread.
    He was reaching toward the device when one of the goddamned crazy men honked the truck’s horn, loud and long. “C’mon! We’ve got to get going!”
    Startled, Pavel dropped the canister on his workbench. It hit with a crunch and he slammed his hands down on it to keep it from bouncing or rolling onto the floor where it would undoubtedly shatter. Sweat broke out on his forehead and his breath caught in his chest. Were they insane?
    He slowly inserted the canister into the device, securing it in its cradle. With great care he sealed the weapon. On cursory inspection it looked a little bit like a small microwave oven. The keypad on the front would allow a timer to be set. A hit of the On button would arm the device.
    Pavel wiped his hands on his pants. It would be good to get this over with. Turning, he whistled the men over. “All yours!”

3
    Baltimore, Maryland
    Derek Stillwater was on his hands and knees sanding down the trim on the deck of his cabin cruiser, The Salacious Sally , when the delivery came. It was a glorious April day on the Chesapeake Bay, the sun was blazing down on his bare back from a cloudless azure sky and he was even debating taking the train up to D.C. to push through the tourists and