The President consults his advisors again. One finally says that during the oil embargo and the Iranian hostage crisis, when the Europeans wavered, it was Israel who stood by the United States. At the same time, a crucial deadline passes but the nuclear bomb does not explode. Now a safe distance away from the bomb, Whalid finally tells his brother Kamal that he did not build the bomb to incinerate New York City residents, he did it to bring Libya to nuclear parity with Israel, the Soviets, France, China, Britain, and America. Whalid had deliberately given the wrong instructions to the computer while his brother and sister had been working on the antenna on the roof. He had to buy a three pack of audio cassettes at the start of the novel, so substituting a fake cassette was easy. Whalid, in self defense, tries to shoot his brother, and misses; Kamal breaks Whalid's trachea with an expert martial arts maneuver, causing Whalid to slowly suffocate to death. Kamal grabs the detonation checklist and Laila, and drives back to the bomb to detonate it himself, manually.