Davis stepped off of Africa and onto the boat. The old man gave one last push seaward, and flipped himself over the rail with a lot more grace than Davis had managed. There was no Coast Guard safety briefing about life jackets or fire extinguishers or emergency whistles. The skipper just went to the motor and squeezed a bulb in the fuel line. He grabbed a pull cord at the top of the little Yamaha and gave a good tug. Nothing happened.
Davis didn’t say a word. Wouldn’t have even if he could speak the skipper’s language. After five unproductive pulls, the old man pulled off the cowling and started fidgeting with a wire. Davis was not instilled with confidence. He looked at the other fishing boats along the beach. There were seven, and of those, only three even had motors, the rest relying on canvas and wind. None looked more promising. The old man kept busy, but his hands were never impatient or agitated. They were careful, almost respectful. Davis realized that this motorized contraption, made in a factory ten thousand miles away, was to the old man what a camel had been to his grandfather — a temperamental thing that had to be coaxed into the right behavior. A vital part of his livelihood. With the cowling off, he gave another pull and the motor coughed. Two tries later it began to run. The old man dropped the cowling back into place and secured it, then pointed the boat north.
The seas were gentle, lapping at the bow in a soft rhythm. Davis watched the old man look up at the sky, then back at the village. He was probably taking bearings from landmarks, Davis reckoned, using a process of navigation that had been handed down by his father and grandfather. He half expected the skipper to pull out a sextant or a compass.
Davis reached down and offered up the chart, stuck his finger on Shark Reef. “Map?” he suggested.
The old man wagged a finger at him. “Gamun,” he said confidently.
“Gamun?” Davis repeated, wondering if he was about to be guided to sea by the whims of some mythical nautical god.
The skipper reached into his pocket and pulled out a handheld GPS receiver. Made by Garmin. He smiled broadly. “Gamun.”
The old man gave the throttle a turn, and the little boat pushed quicker through the sea.
They reached the search area two hours later. The old man pointed to Gamun, and then down into the water.
Davis could still see the coastline to the southwest, a strip of brown to split the variant blues of water and sky. In the distance a big freighter was plowing west toward the Suez Canal. It seemed motionless, a great rust-red slab, the only indication of headway a crease of white spray at one end. Davis pulled off his T-shirt. The sun was hammering down, already searing into his back and neck. He hadn’t brought any sunscreen, hadn’t thought to ask for any in the village. He was sure the old man had never heard the term SPF in his life.
“Listen,” he said to get the old man’s attention. “We need a search pattern.” Davis made chopping motions on the bench seat at even intervals, then traced an interlacing pattern with his index finger.
The old man said it again. “Gamun.” He showed Davis the receiver, showed him a base waypoint, and then hit a button labeled: OFFSET.
Davis raised his palms. “Okay, okay.”
He should have known better. You couldn’t live your life on the sea and not, at some point, drop something valuable overboard. A good lobster pot, a fishing pole, a valuable anchor. Sooner or later something went over and you had to get it back. So the old man would know all about marking a point and running a search a pattern around it. Essential stuff, with or without Mr. Gamun. The old man took the long rope and secured one end to the transom, then showed the other end to Davis. He had fashioned a grip out of what looked like a broom handle. Now it looked like a rope for water skiing. Only Davis didn’t have any skis.
The seas were still light and the tiny boat rocked gently. Back on the beach it had almost seemed like a reprieve; a day on the water where he wouldn’t have to face jungle ambushes or break up well-armed poker games. But now this little cruise seemed less appealing. Davis was about to get dragged through the sea for hours on end. He was going to have waves slapping him in the face, saltwater pouring down his snorkel, the sun beating hard on his back. Altogether, it put a serious damper on his yo-ho-ho.
Davis turned back to business. He touched the outboard’s throttle, then gave a big thumbs-up. “Up means faster.” He made a big zooming noise and pointed to the engine. “Thumbs-down, slower.”
The old man nodded like he got it.
Davis considered more signals, but thought, Screw it. It’s time to get wet. The old man heaved the rope overboard and put the idling motor into gear. Davis sat on the gunnel, and the boat tilted to starboard. He back-rolled into gin-clear water, swam to the rope and let it feed through his hand until the handle came to him. Davis grabbed on and waited for the slack to play out. When it did, he raised one hand out of the water and gave a thumbs-up.
With a jerk on the handle, they started moving.
Fadi Jibril had finally succeeded.
He’d spent two hours checking and double-checking the main flight control channels, measuring deflections and response times. Everything worked flawlessly. There were still constraints, of course. The mother ship on the other side of the partition would have to remain within range of the receiver — they had learned that the hard way on the test flight. But that is why we perform test flights, Jibril thought.
He had not left the hangar for two days. The pressure to succeed, catalyzed by his concern regarding the ultimate target, had distracted and confused Jibril. He’d hit a low point yesterday, a frustrating afternoon of self-doubt and marginal progress. Then Jibril had gone to pray. He had opened his heart and mind, and in doing so Allah had rescued him once again, brought him back with a renewed sense of faith. And as Fadi Jibril trusted Allah, he would trust the imam. Khoury’s words still echoed in his mind. You will be to Sudan what A.Q. Khan was to Pakistan. The father of a nation’s technical might. The imam had become his foundation once again, and Jibril threw himself into his work with renewed vigor. Now, with the systems engineering complete, all that remained was a very different type of work.
He had undertaken his research and planning some months ago, and the components Khoury had procured for the undertaking were all here. It was now only a matter of putting everything together. Not difficult work, but certainly delicate, even dangerous. Which was why he had left it as the final task.
Jibril had never realized the level of science involved in constructing bombs. At first, he had been awestruck, marveling at the twisted innovation of so many brilliant engineers. It seemed at odds, somehow, for a scientist to spend years learning how to build and create, only to then apply that knowledge in the design of devices that destroyed. At base level, bombs were simple enough — a high-explosive mass, some compounds more potent than others, the destructive yield of which was largely a function of weight. There were certain variances, primarily matters of shaping and directing the destructive force, multipliers for effectiveness based on the nature of an assumed target — hardened armor or soft flesh. Still, a primary explosive charge involved little more than brute force, not much of a challenge from a technical standpoint. It was the fusing that Jibril found truly fascinating.
A projectile could be designed to detonate before it had even struck a target, as was the case with aircraft missiles. An engineer somewhere had thought to create a radar fuse to trigger the warhead milliseconds before physical intercept. The result, an expanding ring of shrapnel traveling at Mach. From an engineering standpoint, elegant lethality. Then there were bunker buster bombs, essentially high-explosive telephone poles that were dropped from great height and speed to multiply the kinetic result. Here, detonation was delayed, milliseconds added after the initial strike to allow the explosive package to penetrate earth and concrete. Impact sensors and timers. The arcane science of annihilation.