They took a little break at the mine’s exit to enjoy the view, to set the last booby trap, to brew tea, to pray, and to try to get phone reception. Reasonable enough; it seemed as though the whole Idaho panhandle were directly visible from here, and there had to be a cell tower somewhere in that. The experiment would have been over very quickly if there’d been no reception at all, but it seemed that some of the jihadists were able to get one bar if they stood in a particular attitude in a particular place and held the phone a certain way and invoked various higher powers. Richard was tempted to make a sour analogy to pointing oneself in the direction of Mecca, but he didn’t think it would do much for his life expectancy. Their rituals became ludicrous after a certain point. Because none of these guys had an ironic modern attitude, none saw the humor.