He so didn't want to go there. At least his cutter still floated when it got into trouble. Space shuttles exploded. "Munro's almost forty years old, with a bunch of systems some of which are older than that, none of which were necessarily designed to work together. And let's face it, it's not like the Coast Guard ever gets first pick of the tech. A lot of our systems fall off the backs of trucks headed for the Navy. Sometimes I think it's a miracle we get off the dock."
"There's a story," she said, "so far as I know actually true. Gus Grissom was being interviewed on the radio one night, and when the host asked him how he felt waiting for launch on top of a Mercury rocket, he said, 'How would you feel sitting on top of a million different parts, all of which were manufactured by the lowest bidder?' " Cal laughed. "Yikes."
"Yeah, and that was back when all astronauts were de facto heroes and NASA could do no wrong." She stretched.
"Grissom was one of the guys who died in the capsule fire, right?"
"Yeah. Grissom, White, and Chaffee."
"You ever wonder if…" He hesitated.
"Every day," she said. "Every time I strap myself in. I'd still kill anyone who tried to take the job away from me." She smiled. "Just like you."
He thought of the go fast getting away, in spite of the massive amount of American manpower and assets arrayed against it. "Yeah," he said, a little wearily. "Just like me."
"Part of your problem is you're tired."
"And you aren't?"
"Time for me to be tired when we're wheels down."
"So long as you aren't arrested for homicide before you lift off."
She laughed. After a moment, she said, "Not loving the drug war, are you, Cal?"
"Not so much, no. If I had my druthers, I'd treat all drugs like alcohol, legalize them and tax the hell out of them and earmark the proceeds to underwrite the cost of marching every sixth grader in the nation through a detox center. 'There, you little twit, right there, see that guy sweating and shaking and screaming that the big snake's gonna get him? That's what'll happen to you if you use drugs.' After that, it's up to them and their parents."
He closed his eyes against the bright sun. "And I could get to work on stuff that matters. Like making sure your sweet ass gets itself safely in the air.
She raised her head from her arms again to smile at him. "You think my ass is sweet, do you?"
"Roll over here and I'll show you how sweet. Oh, never mind." He drained his beer, picked her up, and carried her into the bungalow.
10
YORK, ENGLAND, NOVEMBER 2007
The target was the very symbol of America 's power and prestige. Its destruction would be a blow at the. heart of everything they held dear, their capitalistic egotism, their imperialistic arrogance, their technological superiority.
Nothing and nowhere is safe from me, from us, he thought. That was the message he wished to send. It was the only message that had a chance of bringing the West to its knees, and that was what he wanted, a supplicant knocking at his door and begging to know how to make him go away.
The deaths would be minimal by comparison to 9/11, to the bombings in London and Madrid and Iraq, but there were names among them that would give pause to both East and West. If his time with Zarqawi had taught him anything, it was that no matter how many bodies were given up for cannon fodder, there were always more bodies to take their place. No, it was time to try something different, something spectacular, something that would burn indelibly into the hearts and minds of the enemy, something that would strike at their pride, at the very heart of who and what they believed themselves to be.
Further, the destruction of the cargo would throw down his gauntlet before his former masters in Afghanistan, a defiant gesture of independence. He meant them to know that he would not be intimidated or brought to heel, and from that moment on they would know it. After this,
they would have to treat him as an equal member. After this, his counsel would be valued.
Better, he would be feared. And with that fear would come respect. Isa and Abdullah would rank equally with bin Laden and al Qaeda. He would no longer follow, he would lead.
Yussuf and Yaqub had done well, recruiting from the Muslim communities in York and Leeds. He looked them over again. Most in their late teens, three in their early twenties, only one of them married, most of them with ordinary looks, and two actively unattractive. Again according to instruction, Yussuf and Yaqub had also selected as much as possible for surface ethnicity, dark skin, features tending more toward the African than the Arabic. Two of them were doctors. Four of them were engineers, which meant they had been trained to have a healthy respect for the laws of physics, and were conversant with the properties of electricity and the principles of elementary chemical reaction. Unafraid of complicated machinery, they were sons of Martha, they could make things work. He smiled at his comparison of these warriors of Allah to the Christian progeny of the sister of Mary, but only to himself.
They had been told as he had told Yussuf and Yaqub that this attack would be a second 9/11, only this time a simultaneous series of attacks on multiple targets in the West Coast of the United States: the airports of Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They were so inexperienced that they didn't even ask how they were intended to get past American security, notoriously tight since 9/11, but Akil told them anyway. Years had passed, the Americans had been lulled into a false sense of security by thinking that terrorist activity had been moved to the battlegrounds of Iraq and Afghanistan, it was time again to test their homeland defenses, over which he was confident they would prevail, to the greater glory of Allah.
Very little of this was true, of course. It was not time yet for any of them, not even Yussuf and Yaqub, to know their true target. Security must rest only with him until the last possible moment. He had told Yussuf and Yaqub to select educated recruits wherever possible, because in his experience the more education, the more effective the recruit, and the more long-lived, which meant a better return on the training investment.
"I know," he said in closing. "It sounds a little nonspecific, and at the same time a little… grandiose." He smiled. "But 'a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?'"
"The Prophet is wise," Yaqub said, and Yussuf nodded.
AMI refrained from pointing out that the words were from Browning, not Mohammed. If Allah was going to hand him a convincing quotation straight out of English 111, he was ready to accept it as a gift to further his argument. For one thing, it meant his time in America had not been entirely wasted.