Michael Curtis Reynolds, a failure from Wilkes-Barre, leaves Room 205 of the Thunderbird Hotel in Pocatello, Idaho, in December 2005 and heads for a rest stop on a remote stretch of I-15.

His agenda for the day is to pick up a bag of money from al-Qaeda so he can destroy America.

A belligerent drifter who once tried to blow up his parents, Reynolds, 47, is a regular in the Osama bin Laden Crew chat room, searching for jihadists to help him cripple the U.S. economy.

Reynolds has made contact with a self-described Islamic extremist who says he'll pay Reynolds $40,000 for his scheme to blow up U.S. energy pipelines.

Hurricane Katrina taught Reynolds that disruption of oil hurts America.

And in that chaos, he believes, lies opportunity.

Shannen Rossmiller spends Sept. 11, 2001, frozen in front of the TV in her Montana home.

"Oh, my God," she tells her husband, Randy. "They're going to need thousands of body bags. This doesn't seem possible. It's so surreal."

Randy had never seen his wife so tense. "We can't do anything about it, Shannen," Randy says. "Just take a Jacuzzi or something."

Rossmiller, a municipal judge in a small town, complies, but the hot water doesn't help. Still shaken, she steps out of the tub and slips.

She lies on the cold white tile, staring at the two towels on the rack, willing them to fall and cover her in case one of her three kids comes in. She can't get her legs to work.

Calling for help, she waits until Randy finally runs in and carries her upstairs. But it is agony. She has broken her pelvis.

Rossmiller spends the next six weeks in bed, becoming "radicalized." Fox News, MSNBC, CNN - they saturate her brain.

She asks Randy to go into Great Falls and buy her the books about radical Islam and the Middle East written by the experts she sees on the news shows.

For reasons she cannot articulate, Rossmiller immerses herself in all things Arabic, studying the culture and learning the language.

It's as if a powerful force has taken hold of her, compelling her to think about 9/11 and little else, save for the spasming pain.

I can't figure it out, she thinks. Is this post-traumatic stress? It's more than passion. It's anger. This is the ugliest, darkest thing I've ever seen.

Depressed and aching, Rossmiller reads Middle East Quarterly on the computer and wonders why people hate America.

She reorders her checks to have them read, "9/11: We will never forget." She festoons her car with American flags.