him.”
“Sure.”
I also informed him, “I may be out of town for a while. Maybe you want to handle this guy.”
“Okay.” He asked, “Where you going?”
“Sandland.”
“That’s a derogatory term.”
“Sorry. I’m going to the shithole of Yemen.”
“You screw up?”
“Not recently.” I let him know, “This is a promotion.”
He thought that was funny. He asked me, “Kate?”
“She’s coming.”
“Good. It’s b.y.o.b. in Yemen.”
“Yeah? I thought the babes were hot.”
“No, it’s the guys who will make you lose your head.”
So, with all the cultural jokes and slurs out of the way, I thanked Al for sitting in on the interview-formerly known as the interrogation-and I promised to bring him back a crucifix from Yemen.
I spent the next half hour on my computer, reviewing and updating my cases for whoever was going to get them.
Kate came over to my desk and said it was time to go see Tom.
On the way up the elevator to Tom’s office, she asked me, “Are we still okay with this?”
“I’ve always wanted to go to Sweden.”
“It’s Yemen, John.”
“Oh… well, that’s different.”
We got off at the 28th floor-housewares, supervisors, aggro, and bullshit-and walked to Tom’s door.
I was about to knock and enter, but Kate said, “Last chance.”
I knocked on the door and said to her, “You make the decision. Surprise me.” I added, “Remember the Cole.”
I opened the door and we entered.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tom stood and greeted us at his desk. He asked, “How was your weekend?”
I informed him, “We saw the Monet exhibit at the Met.” And I got laid Saturday night. How about you?
All the pleasantries aside, he asked us, “So have you reached a decision?”
Kate, without even a glance at me, said to Tom, “We’ll take the assignment.”
He smiled. “Good. Have a seat.”
There’s a grouping of armchairs and a couch around a coffee table that Tom uses for important people, or people he needs to screw nicely, and Kate and I took the chairs facing the window. Tom sat on the couch and began, “First, I want to say that I appreciate your willingness to accept this overseas assignment.”
And so on. We got a short speech that he probably gives to everyone who’s going off to some craphole or another.
I interrupted Tom’s good-bye, good-luck speech and asked, “Are you going to tell us what this is about?”
He feigned surprise at the question and replied, “It’s pretty much what I said Friday.” He elaborated, “One of the three masterminds who were behind the Cole attack is in Yemen. He has been indicted in absentia. You will be part of a team that is looking for him.”
I asked, “What do we do with him when we find him?”
“You arrest him.”
“And?”
“And, we will extradite him to the U.S. Or maybe to Guantanamo.”
“Right. But as I was told when I was there, and as you probably know, Tom, the Yemeni constitution specifically forbids extradition of any Yemeni citizen for any reason-including terrorism and murder.”
“Yes… that’s true. But they make exceptions. And that’s what Kate will be working on as our legal attache.”
“They haven’t made an exception yet, but okay.” I asked him, just to set the record straight, “Are you sure we’re not supposed to terminate this guy?”
He informed me, “We don’t assassinate people.”
“We don’t assassinate people,” I agreed. “But we have used Predator drones with Hellfire missiles in Yemen and elsewhere to… let’s say… vaporize about fifty or a hundred people.”
“That’s different.”
“I’m sure the vaporized guys understood that.”
Tom seemed a little impatient with me and said, “I’ll give you both a piece of information that you will get in Yemen. This suspect holds an American passport. He claims dual citizenship-Yemen and U.S. So yes, we have a good case with the Yemeni government for extradition.” He also reminded us, “We don’t kill U.S. citizens.”
“Actually we do if they’re enemy combatants. Also, as you know, if we do apprehend him and turn him over to the Yemenis, we may never see him again.” I reminded him, “Some of the Cole plotters were captured, put in Yemeni jails, and miraculously escaped.”
Tom nodded, then said, “Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. First things first. First, we need to apprehend this man.”
“Right. So to recap, we find this Yemeni with U.S. citizenship, turn him over to the Yemeni government, and hope they give him back to us.”
“Correct.”
“Can we at least torture him? Just a little?”
Tom asked, “Any other questions?”
Kate asked, “What is this man’s name?”
“You’ll be given his name when you get there. But he goes by the nom de guerre of al-Numair. Means The Panther.”
It seems to be my fate to get mixed up with Arabs who name themselves after big cats. The last guy was Asad-The Lion. Now I’ve got a panther to deal with. Hopefully, the next one will call himself Kitty.
Anyway, it seemed to me that Tom wanted to say as little as possible at this end. Or he didn’t know much.
In fact, he said to us, “To be honest with you, I don’t have a need-to-know, and what I know is what you now know. You’ll be fully briefed when you get there.”
Since Kate and I were about to depart on a dangerous mission into a hostile country, I felt I could be a little disrespectful of Tom with no consequences, so I reminded him, “You indicated Friday that what you were going to tell us was classified, and that once we heard it, we were committed to the assignment. Correct?”
He nodded.
I continued, “What we’ve heard is nothing. We could get up, go back to work, and forget about Yemen.”
“I suppose you could. But that wouldn’t make me happy. Or you happy.”
“Okay, let’s try a different approach. On a scale of one to ten, how dangerous is this mission?”
He thought about a reply, then said, “Capturing a top-ranking Al Qaeda leader is dangerous.”
“One to ten.”
“Ten.”
“Because?”
“Should be obvious.” He explained the obvious, “He’ll be guarded, he’ll be in hostile territory, he’s aware that he’s a target, and our resources and assets in Yemen are scarce.”
“Right. And we’re not going to vaporize him with a Hellfire missile because…?”
