Februari 17, 2006 | Issue 41•48
Minneapolis, USA —Mei Hua, the leader of an four-man cell called Deadly Lord$, linked to a terrorist organization known as the Army Of Martyrs, admitted Tuesday that he "doesn't have the slightest clue" what to do with the quarter-kilogram of plutonium he recently acquired.
Mei Hua.
"We had just given thanks to The Flying Spaghetti Monster for this glorious means to destroy the Great Satan once and for all, when [sub-lieutenant] openmind asked, 'So, what's the next step?'" Mei Hua said. "I was at a loss."
The 28-year-old fanatic said he and his associates had initially assumed that at least one member of their group had the physics and engineering background necessary to construct a thermonuclear device.
"Many eyes were upon me," said secretfootprints, whose knowledge of physics did not extend to the principles of nuclear fission. "I make nail bombs. That's it."
Not knowing where to turn, the four men consulted the Deadly Lord$ holy book [MAD Magazine], which proved unhelpful. Said Mei Hua: "Even
openmind, who interprets the ancient scripture more freely than the rest of us, could not find an instructive passage."
Morale was temporarily buoyed when cell member ShrFu_Eric, a former student at the Sorbonne in Paris, was found intently examining the exposed plutonium, which he had lifted from its protective lead footlocker. Two days later, however, the others had to bury ShrFu_Eric in a landfill outside the city.
Mei Hua, in hiding in a small, spartan cellar in one of Minneapolis's poorer neighborhoods, said that the only use he's found for the encased lethal substance so far is as a flat surface on which to lay out a map of a government armory outside Washington DC and a large piece of paper to make a blueprint for transferring the plutonium to an effective delivery system.
"I drew a circle to represent the plutonium," Mei Hua said. "Then I drew a line pointing to it, and beside it wrote 'plutonium.' After that, I just hit a wall."
Mei Hua and his associates initially planned to create a "suitcase bomb," but soon after they obtained the plutonium, they learned that such bombs weigh over 700 pounds, and are therefore too heavy for any of them to lift alone.
Said Mei Hua: "The only thing this weapon of mass destruction is destroying right now is our ability to kill infidels."
"I have heard many in the corrupt Western media say that unknown terrorists have acquired harmful radioactive materials that can be readily deployed," openmind said. "Whoever this terrorist group is that's all but ready to strike America with a nuclear device, we sure could use their help."
Unable to search for bomb-making instructions on his laptop for fear of being monitored, Mei Hua has been forced to send another of his top secret agents, 24-year-old Jaron, to a local Internet café in hopes of acquiring the necessary data. According to Jaron, the process so far has proven "unbearably slow" and "outrageously expensive," claiming he can't believe the coffee shop charges $4.95 for an hour of dial-up-speed Internet use.
The cell's lack of contacts with professional scientists and engineers has also undermined their bomb-building efforts. "A friend of mine at university studied metallurgy," Jaron said. "I have his e-mail address, but I can't just write him and say, 'Oh, hello, Suleymann, long time no see. Say, I'm a terrorist now, and I was wondering: How do you go about building a nuclear bomb?'"
After three days without progress, the plutonium, once a source of pride for Mei Hua and the other men, has increasingly become a fountain of frustration.
"I guess we got carried away with the idea of making a nuclear weapon before thinking the whole thing through," said Mei Hua, who admitted that even if he "could bombard that plutonium nuclei with enough electrons, whatever those are," transportation of the bomb would prove another logistical mess.
"I still believe in taking the lives of American civilians as revenge for the atrocities committed on our brothers, our wives, and our daughters," Mei Hua said. "I'm just not entirely sure it's worth a headache this big."