Word: man
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There was something about the last man off the 6 p.m. ferry from Victoria, B.C., to Port Angeles, Wash., that didn't seem right to U.S. Customs inspector Diana Dean last Tuesday. She threw a couple of routine questions at him, and he choked, claiming to be a French Canadian named Benni Noris. When officials opened the trunk of his rented Chrysler, they found what looked like the contents of a bombmaker's shopping cart: 118 lbs. of urea; two 22-oz., three-quarters-full jars of nitroglycerine; 14 lbs. of sulfate; and four timing devices consisting of Casio watches...
Then he was in the car. It happened before we knew it had happened. He just opened the door, and then suddenly he was giving us directions from within the car. The smallish back seat was empty, then full, full with this large man, his knees cramped up near his chin. He was so nonchalant, and had not uttered any commands or taken out a gun or any of the other ostensible signs of carjacking, and so it dawned on us that this was what happened in Rome. In Cuba, that is. Here hitchhiking is custom. Hitchhiking is essential. Hitchhiking...
They get out near Jovellanos, and we never get their names. In Jovellanos, a medium-size adobe town of narrow streets, we get lost, quickly and irrevocably. At a street corner, there appears beside us a man on a bicycle. He knows where to go, he says--just follow him. We rumble behind him and his bike at 15 m.p.h., the streets full of onlookers watching our parade--left turn, right, left, left, right, left, 10 minutes and there we are, back on the main road. He points ahead, toward the on-ramp...
...help? Yes, yes, we say, of course. They want to siphon from our tank. They have an actual siphon right there. We don't have enough, we say, noticing that we're almost out ourselves. We'll take them to the next town. Another man, Esteban, about 19, gets in the back seat, as does Marisa, 24, petite, in silk blouse and black jeans. They hold the gas container on their laps. It's 15 minutes to tiny-town Roda and its one-pump gas station...
...them. Then they would let their vastly superior artillery and air forces bomb the Chechen fighters and strafe their village hideouts, until they fell back and Russian troops could move safely forward again. Since late September, a Russian force that now numbers 100,000--just about every viable fighting man in the armed forces--has managed to retake control of nearly 60% of Chechnya. For more than a month, it has laid siege to Grozny, pounding the capital with artillery and aerial strikes while ground troops slowly tighten the noose...