Brenner stopped the Land Cruiser. He glanced in his rearview mirror and said, “Kate? Do you believe this?”
My soul mate replied, “No, I do not.”
Zamo, who usually has no opinion, said, “I do.”
There you go. It’s settled.
Brenner asked the obvious question. “How do you think this… this is going to happen?”
“I’ll get to that later, but I can say it will happen between right here and the Marib airstrip.”
No one had any response to that.
I asked, “Why do you think we’re in this SUV, out of the Crow Fortress and away from Chet and Buck?”
Brenner replied, “What Chet said makes perfect tactical and operational sense.”
“Indeed, it does, which is why my paranoia wasn’t supposed to kick in. And you know what? I’m only, let’s say, seventy-three percent sure I’m right about Chet wanting to get me and Kate whacked.”
Kate said, “If we sit here all day, we could get killed. We need to get to the airstrip.”
Brenner asked me the next logical question. “What does this-if it’s true-have to do with me, or with Zamo?”
I replied, “You are just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s logical that you would be ordered to leave with Kate and me, and if you weren’t, that would look suspicious. As for Zamo, he was never going to stay behind. That was all bullshit to make this look like a tactically sound plan.” I informed Mr. Brenner, “Buck knew exactly what you were going to say about Zamo staying here, and one way or the other, Zamo was not going to stay with Buck and Chet.” I added, “And if he did, Chet would kill him with an AK-47, take his sniper rifle, and make it look like the Bedouin did it.”
Both men remained silent, then Brenner said, “I’m just not buying that Zamo and I are going to get wasted by our own people just because we happen to be with you.”
“You should believe it, but here’s another reason you’re not in a good place-for all Chet knows, I or Kate have confided in you about my suspicions, and you are therefore a person like us who knows too much.” I reminded him and everyone, “And in this business, when you know what you’re not supposed to know, you become a worry to the Company.” I added, “The Company chose well when they chose Chet Morgan for this job.” I explained, in case no one noticed, “He’s crazy.”
Brenner, Kate, and Zamo thought about all that, and I could imagine them concluding that John didn’t need a Kevlar vest as much as he needed a strait-jacket.
But Brenner, either avoiding the topic of my paranoia, or maybe testing it, asked, “So do you think Buck is in on this?”
That was a tough call. The answer was that Buckminster Harris had been in the deception business so long, he really didn’t know what was real and what he was making up. Right and wrong was a little blurry, too. Plus, he just enjoyed the game. I was sure he liked me, Kate, and all of us, but if Chet presented him with a national security problem and a solution, then Buck would work with Chet on both. Nothing personal.
Finally, I replied, “Buck has to be in on it.”
Well, by now, Paul Brenner was waiting for me to announce that I’d been abducted by space aliens. But he was smart enough to be concerned, and he was still enough of a cop to want all the info. He said to me, “Even if you’re right… I mean, you’re giving Chet a lot of credit for being some kind of genius…”
“He’s out of his fucking mind,” I assured everyone. “But he’s smart. I, however, am smarter.” I asked my seatmate, “Right?”
She didn’t reply. Clearly Kate was upset, and she was obviously worried that I’d slipped over the edge.
Brenner, in fact, said, “Look, we’ve all been under a lot of stress-”
“All right,” I said, “drive on.” I promised everyone, “We’ll see what happens.”
But Brenner didn’t drive. He asked me, “What do you think is going to happen?”
I replied, “I think that a Predator drone, under the command of the Central Intelligence Agency, and under the operational control of Chet Morgan in his fish van, is going to launch a Hellfire missile at this vehicle and kill everyone inside it.” I added, “The Predator pilot, wherever he is, will be clueless, or at least unsure, but he’ll do what the operational control guy on the scene-Chet-tells him to do.”
It was Zamo who spoke first. “Yeah. That could happen.”
It sure could. I also said, “The Company has picked this method of a friendly fire accident to send a clear message that it wasn’t friendly and it wasn’t an accident.”
Brenner stayed quiet awhile, then said to me, “Okay… what are we supposed to do?”
“What we’re not going to do is drive down that slope and head cross-country toward the Marib road, because if we do, we’re not going to get to the Marib road.”
Brenner asked, “Then why are we even in this Land Cruiser? Why didn’t you tell us this back in the Crow Fortress?”
“If I had, what would we have done?”
“Tell Chet and Buck what you just told us.”
I replied, “At least they would believe me. But here’s the deal-the mission comes first. Chet is poised to kill The Panther. And we will let him do that. But we will not let him have a friendly fire accident on our way to Marib.”
Brenner sort of nodded.
I said to him, “Let’s go.”
As we moved toward the rock pile and the Bedouin guarding the approach to the plateau, I said, “Chet has not directed a Predator to watch us because the Predator pilot and other ground controllers would see that it was us who got into this Land Cruiser, and they would not fire on it.” I explained, “Chet will get a Predator on station when he thinks we’re traveling cross-country toward the Marib road. He will tell the pilot to keep us in his sight, then at some point he will inform the pilot that the Land Cruiser is a confirmed target. And then Chet will execute the assassination stage of the flight and order the pilot to take out the target.” I added, “Kate’s balto and our shiwals will be mentioned in the incident report as one reason for the misidentification of the people in the Land Cruiser as a target.” I added, “Souvenirs can be dangerous.”
No one had anything to say about that, so I asked, “Would anyone have a problem with asking one of those Bedouin to drive this vehicle down the slope and toward the Marib road?”
Zamo replied in a heartbeat, “Not me.”
Brenner said, “I would have a problem with that… but…”
Kate didn’t reply, and I said to her, “If nothing happens, then you’re right and I’m crazy.”
She hesitated, then replied, “I… would not want to see an innocent person killed…”
I pointed out, “You said I was wrong.”
“I’m not making that decision.”
“Okay. I’ll make it.”
The Bedouin around the rocks were watching us, and Brenner pulled close to them.
I said to him, “I need your Arabic.”
Brenner and I got out of our Land Cruiser and everyone did their peace thing.
There were five Bedouin with AK-47s and they had one white Land Cruiser with them.
I said to Brenner, “Tell them we will give them mucho rials if one of them will take our vehicle to the airstrip and pick up an Amriki who is waiting there for us.”
Brenner glanced at me, hesitated, then began speaking in halting Arabic.
The five Bedouin nodded in understanding, and Brenner said to me, “This gentleman”-he pointed to a bearded guy in his thirties or forties-“will go for us.”
I nodded and smiled at the guy.
“He says he’ll take his own vehicle.”
“No.” I took Brenner’s arm and we stepped onto a small flat rock. I said, “See that?”
Brenner stared at the roof of our Land Cruiser, whose dusty white paint was smeared with what looked like blood, probably goat blood. He kept staring at the smear, then said, “Jesus…” He looked at me.
I stepped down off the rock and asked him, “So what do you think, Paul?”
He seemed at a loss for words, but then reminded me, “Yasir told us to take any vehicle.”