Brenner said, “I think it was more than luck. The Cole was an intelligence failure on our part.”
Chet, a member of the intelligence establishment, didn’t like that and he stayed silent. Well, Chet was not here just to avenge the Cole, but also to redeem the reputation of his Company. Everyone is driven by something.
Chet picked up his train of thought and said, “Think of an Italian-American from, say, New Jersey, who goes to his ancestral Sicily to join the Mafia. His accent and mannerisms are wrong, but his head and heart are in the right place. People such as this may be accepted and even trusted, but at the end of the day… well, they are different.”
Right. You can take the boy out of New Jersey, but you can’t take New Jersey out of the boy.
Chet added, “Al-Darwish’s American background might impress most Yemenis, but it does not impress the Bedouin, who would be distrustful of anyone born and raised outside of Islam.” He said, “Sheik Musa is not impressed, and this is another reason why Musa would betray al-Darwish, al-Amriki.”
I guess. But the A-team are real Americans. Like, Christians and all that. Chet, I thought, was overanalyzing this. But that’s what the CIA does.
Chet further informed us, “Regarding the warrior thing, al-Darwish has gone out of his way to be a hands-on warlord. We’re sure he was present when the Belgian tourists were killed, and he’s led his jihadists in attacks against Saudi soldiers on the border. But for some reason he didn’t lead his men in the failed attack on the Hunt Oil installation-maybe God told him to sit it out-and I’m sure that didn’t look good to his close lieutenants or his jihadists. Plus, The Panther has just had another setback with the failed ambush on our convoy. So when Sheik Musa requests The Panther’s presence at this meeting to negotiate the sale of the Americans, Bulus ibn al-Darwish, the weirdo from Perth Amboy, has little choice but to be there-to be The Panther, and to meet with the great tribal sheik on equal terms, man to man, Yemeni to Yemeni, warlord to warlord.” Chet concluded, “That is my analysis.”
Either Chet had been here too long or I’d been here too long, because some of this made sense to me.
So we all sat there for a minute as the Otter continued toward Marib, sipping our drinks, thinking about Bulus ibn al-Darwish. Killing this guy would be good for everyone, including maybe Mr. al-Darwish himself, who didn’t seem to enjoy life. But when you kill these guys, they become martyrs, and they go on beyond death.
And yet maybe when all was said and done, that’s where he belonged. Dead. Remember the Cole.
Chet asked, “Any questions? Any comments?”
No one had either and we all returned to our seats.
Kate said to me, “Chet is overconfident. This thing could easily go the other way.”
“We all know that.”
So, did I now have my question answered? Like, how could someone born in America, in a free and open society, raised in material comfort and educated in a liberal atmosphere, become a fucking terrorist? A murderer.
Maybe. But not completely. The answer wasn’t in the externals of life. The answer was deep in Bulus ibn al-Darwish’s head. The mind excludes external reality, or processes it differently, and justifies nearly anything.
No matter what kind of society we created, the terrorists, the murderers, the bullies and the wife-beaters and the sexual predators and all the rest would always be with us and among us.
So, no, I still didn’t know how Bulus ibn al-Darwish got to where he is, and what happened on that long, strange journey from Perth Amboy to Marib. Only he knew that.
And in the end, it didn’t matter. It only mattered that he died very soon.
The big, lumbering Otter flew on through the night, toward our rendezvous with Bulus ibn al-Darwish, who I imagined was sleeping now, unaware that his fate had been discussed and sealed. Or someone-maybe the voice in his head-had tipped him off and it was our fate that had been sealed. We would know soon enough.
The pilot said, “Landing in about an hour.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
The cabin was pitch dark, and I couldn’t even see Kate sitting next to me, but we were holding hands. I wondered if Chet and Buck were holding hands in the dark.
I could feel our speed and altitude decreasing, and I reached across Kate and opened the shade. There were no lights on the ground, but the moon illuminated a silvery expanse of jagged hills. I estimated we were at about three thousand feet, traveling at less than 200 MPH. It was 2:45 A.M., so we must be close.
Kate glanced out the window, but didn’t have anything to say. In fact, no one had much to say since Chet’s briefing, and the cabin was quiet except for the drone of the prop engines.
The PA crackled and the pilot said, “About ten minutes.”
It’s times like this when you wonder what the hell you were thinking that got you in situations like this. I remembered what my father used to say to me when I got in trouble with my friends: “An idiot will try anything. That’s how you know he’s an idiot.”
The pilot informed us, “Transponders are set correctly. Our designated road runs east-west, and we’ll come around and land from the east.” He added, “Light winds, good visibility.”
The Otter began a tight left turn, then leveled out and continued at the same speed and altitude. We were now lined up with the electronic transponders that marked the road.
The pilot left the PA on so we could hear him transmitting on his radio. “Night Visitor One, this is Night Visitor Two. Read?”
A few seconds of silence passed, then we could hear the faint response coming through the PA speaker. “Night Visitor Two, this is Night Visitor One. Over.”
The voice had a distinct Arabic accent-nit veeseetor tow-and I thought of Brenner’s objection to the Arab pathfinder. I could see his point.
The pilot transmitted, “Any dust?”
Again, a long silence, then a response that I couldn’t make out over the PA speaker.
Kate asked, “What did he say?”
I hoped he said, “Get the hell out of here,” but the pilot said to us, “He reports no dust tonight.”
Chet got out of his seat and opened the cockpit door so we could have visual contact with the pilots in case things started to go downhill.
Chet then said, “Shades down. Lights on so we can get our weapons.”
I pulled down my shade, and we all turned our overhead lights on and made our way to the rear.
Buck said to Kate, “Please put your balto on over your clothes.” He explained, “Sheik Musa and his men would be offended to see a woman dressed in men’s clothing.”
I added helpfully, “No cross-dressing here. This is not New York.”
Kate said something unladylike, but pulled her balto from her bag and slipped it on over her mannish attire.
We all retrieved our weapons and returned to our seats and buckled up.
I assured Kate, “Sheik Musa won’t give you a second glance.”
“Lights off,” said Chet. “Shades up. Give a holler if you see anything that doesn’t look right.”
Kate put her shade up and we both looked out at the terrain, coming up fast. It was much flatter here than it had been a few minutes ago when we passed over the hills. I thought I saw a light here and there, but mostly it was a dark landscape, though the moon was bright enough to reveal some isolated areas of cultivation.