TABLE OF CONTENTS Jimmy was fuming inside as he sat in the old wooden chair in the rundown restaurant. The food here was awful, but then again, he hadn t found any food in the local establishments that appealed to his Middle Eastern palette. A small but steady stream of locals came and went as he sat at the table looking out the window into the dirty street. They were content enough to eat the food. Perhaps it s just an acquired taste, he thought to himself.
But it wasn t the food, or even the people, that had him raging inside. It had been over two weeks now since the first phase of the project had fallen apart in front of his eyes. And although media outlets around the world were covering the strange incidents, the United States government was playing it off as another round of gastrointestinal illness similar to what had afflicted the cruise lines in 2002. They were trying to prevent an outbreak of mass panic. The American public was used to seeing news like this. Those few people who claimed this was a possible terrorist attack were discredited with declarations of paranoia and hysteria. It was a huge attempted cover-up, and he couldn t decide which way public opinion was swaying.
He could tell from newspapers and television broadcasts that press agencies around the world weren t sure which way to lean regarding the attacks either. Some were calling it an outright terrorist attack on an American industry that...
