The young man set the jerry can aside, then screwed a cap onto each bottle. Finished, he placed the bottles upright into the backpack, then rose again and reached in the direction of the camera. The same hand presented him with a pistol, then with a clip, and then with a box of ammunition.

"The gun is an FN P-35, for the record," Rayburn said softly.

"Thank you, Simon," Barclay said drily.

Crocker frowned, looked toward Rayburn, and saw that the Director of Intelligence was glancing to him in turn. It made Crocker's frown deepen. The FN P-35 was known more commonly as the Browning Hi-Power, a popular enough firearm to those who used it, and in and of itself, nothing more needed to be noted. Except the fact that the Browning was the sidearm of choice for the Special Air Service, and while the gun itself was produced by Fabrique Nationale, a Belgian concern, and named after an American gunmaker-John M. Browning-there were many who thought of the weapon as Very British Indeed.

The young man was very deliberately loading the clip, one round at a time, to capacity. When he finished, he closed the box of ammunition, slid it away, and seated the clip into the pistol. Then he racked the slide, chambering the first round, and set the safety.

"Interesting," Crocker said.

"Yes," Rayburn murmured.

Weldon turned in his chair, looking first to Crocker, then to Rayburn, confused. Opposite him, Rayburn tapped on the desk.

"Explain."

"Very practiced, sir," Crocker said. "He knows just what he's doing with that weapon."

"One would expect as much."

"No one wouldn't, not necessarily." Crocker tried to keep his tone civil. "A suicide bomber doesn't need training, sir, he needs indoctrination. You put him in a madrassa and fill his head as full of Wahhabism as it can hold. You tell him he's got Allah and infinite virgins waiting for him on the other side. But you don't worry about training him as a fighter, because it's a waste of both your time and his. His job is to wear a bomb and die in the name of God, and your job is to make sure he does just that and doesn't have second thoughts along the way. You don't worry about training him in the proper usage of a firearm."