"He doesn't have to speak," Idris said. "Allah put these two on the gas tanker and sent it to us."
Harry said, "Why didn't you take it yourself?"
"I smoke too much to board a tanker. Three packs a day-I'm going to climb on a gas ship? I chew a bit of khat so I don't smoke so much," Idris said. He watched Jama the black American take a cigarette from his pack of Marlboros and light it with a match, Idris saying, "Let me have one of those if you will, please."
Harry watched Jama, not bothering to look at Idris, slip the cigarettes into his shirt pocket again, Harry smiling.
"As the Americans like to say, 'Fuck you.'"
Idris said, "I thought Americans were generous."
"Some are, some not," Harry said. "They have the world's nationalities in America, blacks from the time they were used as slaves. It should be enough to make blacks disposed to Islam if not al Qaeda." He said to Jama, "You should go home and tell the darkies how much fun you're having as a terrorist."
"You have to insult us," Jama said, "before you shoot us?"
"Shoot you," Harry said, "where did you get that notion? Tomorrow you will be riding in a procession of cars under armed guard. Shackled and blindfolded if you give us the least trouble. Late the second day the caravan arrives in Djibouti. We phone the American embassy and speak to the person in charge of their Rewards for Justice program, a way they've planned to stop your atrocities."
"They have a list of the ones," Idris said, "known to be al Qaeda. Both of you are on the list."
"With photographs," Harry said. "We hand you over to the American State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security"-Harry had to grin-"and guess what they give us for you naughty boys. Six million U.S. dollars. Five for Qasim and one for Jama."
"You didn't spread enough terror," Idris said to Jama, "to get your numbers up."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THEY WERE AT WORK again in Dara's hotel suite, looking at the rough cut on her seventeen-inch screen, a bottle of red on the table. They watched:
Xavier coming out to the Buster in a pirate skiff, a young Somali at the tiller. "Sixteen years old," Xavier said, "dyin to hijack some ships. I told the boy it wasn't for my age I'd be a dedicated pirate myself. They give us all these stores, stalk of green bananas, liter bottles of water wrapped in plastic, the meat-"
"I smelled it," Dara said, "and threw it over the side."
"That's what happen to it. I wondered how those sharks got diarrhea. The boy was no help to me till he picked up the bunch of khat I promoted for us." Watching the screen, Xavier said, "Good, you got me relievin him of the bouquets. The boy startin to chew on a bunch."
"This was Friday," Dara said, "the natives still friendly. They've got the captain of the Alabama in a lifeboat and want two million for his release. Sunday, the SEALs took out the pirates and the standoff was over."
"And all hell broke loose," Xavier said. "You ever use that expression?"
"It broke loose shooting Katrina but I restrained myself."
"You ask me did I see Idris and Harry Baker that morning. I found out from the khat-chewer runs the coffee stand, they left at six A.M. in five Toyota SUVs, armed, gun barrels stickin out the windows. Want people to see they mean business. I ask the khat-chewer where they headed, to Djibouti? He say, 'Where else?' They have water and gasoline strapped on top the vehicles."
Dara said, "Idris and Harry and two guys in handcuffs with hoods over their heads."
"In separate SUVs," Xavier said, "in the middle of the parade, one with Idris, one with Harry Baker."
"Did we know at that time who they were?"
"We knew they had to be the two guys off the gas tanker, one Saudi, one American. That got us wonderin about the ship, full of liquid natural gas. You not thinkin and light a cigarette, the port where you sittin could go up in flames. But these two and another one from the ship, the first mate, were at Idris's cookout. We don't know what happened to the mate. Where did he go?"
"And the Egyptian captain," Dara said.
"I told you I served under him one time?" Xavier said. "Captain Wassef. That trip, the captain picked me out to be a helmsman and we'd talk some when he was on the bridge. He was the only captain I ever served under was friendly."
"That's right," Dara said, "you ran into him."
"Still ashore the mornin after the party. Upset," Xavier said, "chain-smokin Turkish cigarettes and drinkin coffee. It's when he tells me his first officer's missin and two from the crew."
"The two with hoods over their heads," Dara said, "put in the SUVs."
"See, Captain Wassef didn't know nothin about them," Xavier said. "The Aphrodite stopped at Balhaf in Yemen, the LNG terminal there, took on their load of liquid gas and was escorted out of the port by the local Coast Guard. Then out a ways-they in international waters now-another gunboat, he believes from Yemen, stops the ship to inspect the load. This is when the two al Qaeda guys come aboard."
"The captain told you that?"
"He don't know they al Qaeda. We find it out later on."
Dara said, "This is when the explosives were planted."
"Must've been," Xavier said. "Steel-cuttin shape charges planted round the containers of frozen gas. Captain Wassef don't know nothin about it and we don't either at the time. But the captain's suspicious. He phones Emirates Transport in Dubai wantin to know what's goin on. Who are these desert-lookin boys he don't know joinin his crew? The transport company tells him to calm down, stay on course and keep his mouth shut. Captain Wassef thinks okay, now he's goin to Lake Charles, Lou'siana, no more trouble. Only the next day out of Yemen the ship's hijacked by pirates and Aphrodite ends up in Eyl."
"Where the two al Qaedas who joined the crew," Dara said, "are shanghaied by Idris and Harry and taken to Djibouti."
"We don't know what's goin on at the time," Xavier said. "But the pirates must've found out al Qaeda wants the ship. Emirates Transport offers the pirates a half mil for a thousand-foot tanker worth a quarter of a billion dollars, not even countin the payload, and they accept it right away. Like they can't wait for the ship to leave Eyl. Want to get it out of their hands fast."
"You didn't seem worried," Dara said.
"I don't make decisions. You see a movie in it, you tell me what we gonna do."
"You went swimming," Dara said, "bare-ass."
"That evenin, yeah. I remember you waitin to see me pull myself aboard."
"You looked young," Dara said. "I could see you years ago attracting curious girls with your slim body, the girls wondering what a man six and a half feet tall looks like naked."
"You mean they curious how a man that tall is hung," Xavier said. "I was good-lookin too."
It was a bottle of 'Neuf du Pape on the hotel table now. Dara filled their glasses halfway thinking of him yesterday evening on the Buster, the hijacked ships a mile off, their solemn lights showing, the ships waiting for their release. She said, "I wanted to shoot the ransom drop, remember? Do it from aboard the gas tanker."
"Shoot the money comin down," Xavier said, "watch it don't hit you on the head."
"But there was no ransom drop that time."
"We don't know they were ever paid the half mil."
"We waited too long," Dara said. "We should've left the morning after the party."
"Wouldn't matter," Xavier said. "Come Sunday, anywhere in the gulf, we the game. Hear the Yamahas gettin louder, pretty soon we see the pirates skiffin out toward us." BILLY HAD PEGASO OUT among the hijacked ships spread over a mile, Billy with his high-powered glasses on the LNG tanker, waiting for it to, goddamn it, move out.
"Man, that's an ugly ship. Round shape of five steel pods showing topside, the other half below, the superstructure hanging off the fantail. She rides low, easy to board. But who'd want to?"