lighten the moment.”
“Try jumping out.”
Anyway, a few minutes after our thrilling short-takeoff maneuver, the pilot, still climbing at a steep angle, banked hard right, which caused the aircraft to shudder and caused Kate to grip her armrests. A voice on the PA said, “Sorry, folks. There was some traffic ahead.”
I hate it when planes collide in midair.
The pilot or copilot also announced, “We’re flying dark—no exterior lights, and please keep all the shades down if you turn on your overhead light.”
I lowered my shade.
A few minutes later, we came out of our gravity-defying climb and leveled off. I turned on my overhead light and scanned the aisle for the beverage cart.
The pilot came back on the PA and said, “Marib is almost due north of here, but unfortunately I forgot to file a flight plan with the authorities.” He chuckled. A little CIA pilot humor. He also told us, “To confuse anyone watching us on radar, we’ll take a northwesterly heading towards Sana’a, then as we approach Sana’a we’ll drop below radar coverage and head east into Marib.” He informed us, “Marib has an airstrip, so if someone thinks we’re going there, they’ll think we’re heading for the airstrip.”
Right. Because no one would think we were stupid enough to land on a road in the dark.
The pilot also assured us, “Weather is good en route, and we have some moonlight to fly by and we have night vision goggles for the landing.”
Do we have parachutes?
“Flight time is about two and a half hours.”
Well, we had reached the point of no return regarding Operation Clean Sweep.
Actually, Kate and I had reached that point when we walked into Tom Walsh’s office to talk about Yemen.
And here I was.
And here we all were, all six of us, with not much in common except one goal—to kill someone. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have some misgivings about this, but I’d be lying more if I said I wasn’t looking forward to the kill. That’s the reason I came here. Well, one of the reasons.
PART VIII
Marib,
Yemen
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
The pilot announced that we’d reached our cruising altitude of thirteen thousand feet, and we were free to help ourselves to refreshments from an ice chest in the rear.
So we all got up and fished soft drinks and bottled water out of the chest, and Chet invited us to sit on the facing bench seats. Zamo had no need or desire to know what Chet was going to say, so he returned to his seat with a Dr Pepper. Was it my imagination, or did his left arm seem not to be moving normally? I mean, if you take a hit like that, with soft tissue trauma, it’s going to stiffen up, and maybe it was also infected. Great. A sniper with a bum arm.
Anyway, Kate, Brenner, and I sat together, and Buck and Chet sat facing us. Chet turned on an overhead light and I saw that he had a file folder in his hand—what the CIA calls a dossier, just to be très cooler than the FBI.
Chet spoke over the steady din of the twin engines. “This is our psychological profile and background analysis of Bulus ibn al-Darwish. It was put together by a team of FBI and CIA psychologists and investigators over the last three years since we identified Mr. al-Darwish as a prime suspect in the Cole bombing.” Chet also informed us, “This report is based on interviews with the suspect’s parents, a younger sister, childhood and college classmates, teachers, school counselors, Muslim clerics, and others who knew the bastard in the States.”
I asked, “Any girlfriends?”
“Only one that we know of.”
“There’s the problem. He wasn’t getting laid enough.”
“John, please.”
Who said that?
Chet agreed, “Young men without women are a problem in this culture, and that often leads to male aggressiveness and other abnormal behavior.”
“Right.” When I get horny, I get mean.
Chet continued, “It may not seem necessary to know all of this, considering that we’re going to terminate the subject. But I thought you’d find this interesting, maybe for future assignments. And maybe you’d also just like to know what’s inside the head we’re going to blow off.”
I would. And I’d also like to know what’s going on in Chet’s head.
Chet continued, “Also, if you know how al-Darwish got to where he is, and who he is, you’ll see why I think he’s going to walk into that meeting with Sheik Musa and get himself killed.”
Chet, as I said, was a small breath