“Yes, I understand,” Taradin answered curtly.
“Do you think I haven’t done this before?”
Anwar chuckled again, a high-pitched chuckle that grated on Taradin’s nerves and patience.
“Taradin, I will see you around the corner after you turn the steering wheel over to Kayal. I will be with Qadafa, Sabiq, and Abu Tollah. Said Abu Said will join you at the corner where you get out.” Anwar looked at his watch.
“Said Abu Said has been there about an hour now observing the Americans. When you arrive, if you do not see Said Abu Said, then keep driving. Don’t stop. Him being there is the sign that everything is all right and nothing has changed. Him not… well, then something is wrong.”
Anwar opened his arms, as was customary, to hug Taradin. Taradin would sooner hug a tarantula. He ignored the gesture by turning abruptly and walking around the car to the driver’s side. He got in, leaving Anwar standing near the passenger door. Taradin cranked the car and backed out quickly from the parking space, coming as close as possible to Anwar, secretly hoping to see the man jump. Instead, what he got was a sneer from the cell leader, who never moved as the car narrowly missed him.
As he drove out the exit, he noticed in the rearview mirror Anwar climbing into the front seat of another Mercedes parked in the lane behind where they had been parked. That would be the second vehicle with the assault team. Anwar had not mentioned the other car being here. Probably to ensure they didn’t change their mind. It never ceased to amaze him how untrusting the religious right was of its warriors. From what he had heard, it was the same in the Western world. Only minute differences separated religious zealots of all religions, politically correct do-gooders of America, and the old, decades dead, political commissars of the Soviet Union. Different ideas, skewed perspectives, same implementation methods.
It was seven thirty before he reached the autopiste, only to find himself bumper to bumper in traffic inching out of the smog-laden city northward, sometimes reaching the mind boggling speed of ten miles an hour. At this rate, it would be morning before he reached Gaeta.
An hour later Taradin remembered he should be preparing Kayal for his sacrifice.
“Ah, Kayal,” Taradin said.
“Tonight you join arms with Allah. How I envy you this opportunity to show your loyalty to the Islamic faith.” He felt silly doing this, but it worked. At least it did the three other times he had driven a suicide driver to his destination.
The young man lay with his head against the closed window, his mouth open and sweat running down his head from the summer heat that was winning against the car’s air conditioner operating on full power. One eye opened slightly and seemed to focus on Taradin.
“Then would you like to take my place?”
Taradin was startled and failed to answer the question. He’d thought Kayal was unconscious.
Kayal sighed.
“Of course not. Taradin, I have been preparing to give my life for Allah since … since whenever.
The khat was nice. I have lived with khat my entire life in Yemen. It affects me less than Anwar thinks, but our Iraqi brethren breathe easier thinking they know everything, including how corrupt and useless we Yemenis are.”
“You’ve been faking?” Taradin asked in amazement.
“A little. Khat is doing what it is supposed to do. It calms the fear skulking within the soul and it tempers the nerves as it channels the mind to the great single purpose at hand. Everyone in life has a single great purpose for which Allah put them here. Mine is to die for Him.”
Taradin reached behind him and pulled the container from the floorboard of the backseat.
“Here, Kayal.”
“No, Taradin. I will greet Allah without the fog of khat.
Save it. You may need it or, better yet, give it to Anwar and tell him I sent it.”
“I’ll give it to Anwar, my friend. I chewed the stuff once and it made me sick as a dog.”
Kayal laughed, his green teeth showing flakes of khat stuck to them.
“Not supposed to swallow it.”
“Now you tell me.” Taradin increased the car’s speed to sixty kilometers an hour as the traffic thinned out twenty kilometers north of Naples. He looked at the dashboard clock.
“It’s nine o’clock.
We’ve been on the road over an hour and a half.
Hope they’re still there. We were supposed to be in Gaeta by ten and we still have sixty kilometers to go.”
“Don’t hurry for my demise, Taradin.”
“Sorry.”
Kayal leaned back against the headrest and shut his eyes.
“Allah will provide, Taradin. When events are organized such as this, the complexity of the events themselves produce obstacles. Obstacles that stop most. Obstacles most refuse to jump or go around or beat down. Obstacles that are greeted with thanks so they can rush back to the safety of home to tell everyone what an impossible task it was.
Secretly breathing easier that they avoided danger for another day and safe in the knowledge their own cowardice can be blamed on others or ‘things’ for their failure. We will succeed tonight. It matters little if we succeed in one hour or two hours. The important thing is that we succeed.”
“You don’t sound like the young man who spent the whole morning begging for khat, Kayal,” remarked Taradin.
“I know, but sometimes it is better to let others view you as they think you are rather than show your true self.”
He sighed.
“Taradin, I am prepared for what I have to do.
This has been my destiny since I was sixteen. Forty of us left Yemen to train in the hills of Lebanon under the tutelage of the Ayatollahs. We know what to expect at the moment of martyrdom. Martyrdom and I are one. We have more in common with the Japanese kamikaze pilots of World War II than we have with our fellow Arabs. We understand what drove them and why they chose the path they did.”
Kayal shut his eyes and leaned back against the headrest. After a minute, Taradin thought he had fallen asleep; then Kayal spoke.
“Taradin, drive quietly and let me sleep.
I have to admit, as used as I am to khat, I was ill prepared for the amount Anwar shoved into me today.”
Taradin acknowledged the request. He was amazed with himself on how his perception of Kayal had changed in the past ten minutes: a disgusting drug-crazed beggar had become a religious prophet destined for greatness.
He drove the remaining sixty kilometers in silence, periodically checking the motionless figure snoring in the seat beside him. He was impressed how Kayal, a man about to die, was able to sleep. If he had known earlier what he knew now about the man, he would have killed Anwar for the disrespect shown this hero of Islam. He silently offered a prayer to Allah for the man who was to die in Allah’s name.
Taraoin slowed the Mercedes as he turned the dark blue luxury car onto the city street that circled Gaeta Harbor. Ahead, the USS La Sane, flagship of the Sixth Fleet, appeared gray and huge at the north end of the harbor.
It was “Mediterranean moored”—stern to the pier. On the right side of the ship was the unexpected presence of the submarine tender USS Simon Lake. Taradin smiled. Bargain week at Gaeta, Italy. Two blocks later his smile broadened as a dark silhouette against the port side of the La Sane took form in the shape of an American attack submarine.
Taking his eyes from the American warships, Taradin scanned the sidewalks for Said Abu Said as he drove slowly along the harbor street. A block before the road curved to the left, toward the entrance to the port facilities, he spotted his contact, leaning against a street lamp. He nearly missed the short, dwarflike man, but the raised nod of Said’s head caught his attention. Taradin jerked the steering wheel to the right, earning an angry blast from the driver behind him, and deftly pulled into a vacant parking spot twenty feet ahead of where Said stood.