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of the fort. Once on top he ducked to the left, disappearing behind the roof of the powder magazine, the room where explosives were stored.
    Frank and Joe ran after him, but when they reached the top of the ramp, they didn't see the white turban.
    "He can't have gone far," Joe said. "But those crowds are blocking the way around to the other walls."
    Frank nodded. "Looks like the noon gun is about to be setoff."
    More student-soldiers had appeared, these in dark blue uniforms with pillbox caps. They were wheeling back a cannon at the far edge of the wall, preparing it to be fired.
    "I don't see him in the crowd," Joe said. "So where is he?"
    Frank was staring thoughtfully along the top ridge of the earthen fortification. Two holes broke the line of the wall. Apparently they were dugout rooms that burrowed down into the hillside.
    Joe followed his brother's gaze. "Let's check 'em out."
    The entrance to the first dugout was locked, but the door to the second one lay open. They went down a couple of steps, through a doorway, and into a cramped stone room like a cellar. There was a large sign warning troops not to smoke or carry lit matches into this ammunition room. Joe was just peering into a separate chamber beyond when the door slammed shut behind them.
    Frank pounded once on the door before realizing that it opened inward. But when he pulled the latch, the door didn't open either. It had been jammed shut.
    Still heaving at-the door, Frank said, "Joe, look in that other room and see if there's anything we can use for a tool."
    Joe was in and out of the room in a second, his face white.
    "What's the matter, old gunpowder storage areas make you nervous?" Frank kidded.
    But after he spoke, he realized he was seeing some sort of blinking red glow from the other room.
    "The ammunition in there is not old," Joe said. "Not unless they had digital timers back in 1869."

Chapter 6
    FRANK FORGOT ABOUT the door and rushed into the other chamber. It was a bare, chilly, whitewashed room, with empty old gunpowder barrels.
    But sitting on one of the white-painted shelves was something a lot newer. At first, all Frank saw were the flashing red numbers on the timer, ticking down from the three-minute mark. Then he saw the wires leading into a small metal box. A little bit of grayish-yellow gunk that looked like clay oozed out one corner.
    Frank knew it wasn't clay—it was plastic explosive.
    He moved to the bomb. "This is my job," he said quickly to Joe. "You work on trying to get that door open."
    Joe ran for the outer door, yelling back, "Can you disarm that thing?"
    "Do my best," Frank said. "But there's not much time. Whoever set this wants us to go off with the noontime gun."
    "That guy must have been hiding on the far side of this dugout, then sneaked back and pulled the door closed." Joe's voice was full of disgust as he tugged at the door. "He suckered us just fine."
    Frank was busy trying to follow the wires from the timer to the plastique. Some of them didn't seem to have any purpose. He took a deep breath and wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. They had to be decoys or booby traps. Two minutes, thirty seconds left.
    He quickly traced a red wire into a complicated loop, where three other wires, black, yellow, and blue, twined in. Were they spliced in or just wound around it? Frank took a deep breath. "A Fellawi loop," he muttered out loud, startling himself.
    "A what?" Joe asked. He'd given up trying to pull the door open and was now on his back, attempting brute force. He was kicking at it. But the thick old panels resisted him, and the noise of preparing to fire the gun covered any other noises he made.
    "Omar Fellawi is the dean of terrorist bomb makers," Frank said, gently probing at the rat's nest of wires. "If the stories about him are true, he taught himself, and doesn't follow any of the usual methods." It calmed Frank to talk—it made it seem that he had time to kill. But he only had two minutes to detonation.
    "I didn't