“Apparently,” DeSantos said, “the corporate world isn’t the only place women are paid less than men.”
The attempt at humor fell flat.
“In the Koran,” Uzi continued, “Allah promises martyrs heavenly rewards. We’ve all heard about the dozens of virgins a male bomber is told he’ll get. According to a Palestinian bomber who did not go through with the attack, female bombers are told they’ll become the purest and most beautiful form of angel, at the highest level possible in heaven.”
“We’ve been approaching this as if our tangos are all male,” McNamara said. “But I do remember some cases involving female suicide bombers. Chechnya, I think.”
“Correct,” Uzi said. “But they’ve also been used against civilian populations in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Israel, France, Sri Lanka. The best known case out of Iraq was the one where Samira Ahmed Jassim recruited about eighty women for suicide attacks — and sent twenty-eight of them to their deaths.”
“Must be one persuasive lady,” DeSantos said.
“Not persuasive. Evil. She would arrange for women to be raped, and then convince them to commit suicide attacks as a means to atone for the shame of being raped.”
McNamara shook his head. “I remember that.”
“If I’m not mistaken,” Vail said, “the women who choose to become bombers on their own, their motivation is not political — opposite of their male counterparts. Most common reason is that the women are grieving the loss of family members and they’re looking to punish the person they consider responsible.”
“Revenge killing,” Bolten said.
“Yes. But there are also other female bombers who wanted to martyr themselves for reasons we could never figure out.”
“What are the odds women are involved here?” Knox pushed back from the chair and began pacing again. “We may need to adjust our approach. And obviously that expands our dataset quite a bit.”
Vail nodded. “It’s been a while since I looked at the statistics, but I think women make up about 15 percent of all suicide bombers — at least within groups that use females. Now if we’re talking about assassinations by suicide attack, women were responsible for about 65 percent of those. A fifth of them had the objective of assassinating a specific person — compared to only 5 percent for male attackers.”
“Meaning?”
Vail lifted her brow. “Well, I think because a woman is more disarming than a man, she’s able to get closer to a male target, no matter how well guarded he is. His defenses are down. So when you’ve got a specific target you want to kill, using a woman for the job is more successful. Bottom line, I don’t think we can rule out the use of women as part of this operation. But since we don’t know what or who their targets are, and we don’t know their motivation, for now we can’t say women are or aren’t involved. If there’s a revenge component or if they’re trying to kill a specific person, we have to look at women. Otherwise it’ll likely be males.”
“Do we have a more specific profile?” Knox asked. “Somewhere to start?”
“I’m not sure we have enough to formulate anything definitive.” Who am I kidding? We definitely don’t have enough.
“Your ass is covered,” McNamara said. “We realize you’re winging it. We’re just looking for some direction based on what we know.”
A bead of perspiration broke out across her brow. So I should make you feel like I’m giving you something useful without sending us off in the wrong direction. Yeah, sure. And for my next trick …
Vail took a sip of water, then set the bottle down. “Broadly speaking, given what we have, we’re looking for young adult male bombers, but as I said, we should not be blind to women. Males will be twenty to thirty-five, women will be younger, twenty to thirty. Regardless of gender, they’ll be educated, middle-class individuals who may have a connection to a family member who’s been killed in either an American action abroad or an Israeli action. The recent war in Gaza is a possibility, but we shouldn’t limit ourselves to that. Hamas has been an active terror group for over twenty years and they began suicide attacks in the early 1990s. Al Humat started a few years later, if I remember correctly.
“Some studies suggest the bombers may be depressed or mentally ill individuals. I don’t think that’s what we’re looking at here. This is a sensitive, very daring operation and the planners wouldn’t entrust such a difficult operation to an unstable personality.
“I do think we’re dealing with a group — that much seems obvious from the crime scenes we visited tonight — and that fits with the intel we got from Ekrem. As Uzi mentioned before, we need to be aware of groupthink mentality. Are you all familiar with that?”
She got a couple of blank stares. “Briefly, it’s a situation where members of a group blindly follow the opinions and directions of their leader because they place greater value on gaining consensus and harmony than on the critical analysis of an issue. So if a lot of people are fervently onboard with an approach laid out by their leaders, the others will set aside their personal opinions in favor of acceptance within the group, to keep from being rejected, ostracized, or kicked out. It can be an efficient way of getting things done — but if the group leaders are bad actors, as in this case, you get the situation we’ve got. Good for them, not so good for us.
“One other thing,” Vail said. “This is a group that looks at themselves as the underdogs going up against the big, bad USA: they use these asymmetric terror tactics as a mask to project strength and invincibility.”
Knox stopped pacing. “So if I can sum this up, it sounds like you believe Ekrem’s info is accurate: al Humat and/or Hamas.”
Vail bit the inside of her lip. “Let’s say I think Ekrem’s info is accurate insofar as it’s a group like al Humat and/or Hamas. I can’t tell you it’s specifically those groups or another one like the Islamic State or Islamic Jihad. Then again, a behavioral profile is only designed to tell you the type of person or group who committed the crimes. We need conventional forensics and investigative procedures to put an identity to our attackers.”
Knox frowned, then took his seat. “Understood.”
“Getting back to what Agent Uziel said earlier, sir, we really need to open an official investigation. I can then get full cooperation from my unit. ASAC Gifford—”
“Cannot be apprised of the situation,” Bolten said. “Absolutely not.”
Tasset leaned forward in his chair. “You’re on this team for a reason.”
I wish he’d stop saying that.
“And it’s got nothing to do with London.”
Bullshit. Vail tried to keep a poker face, but her gaze strayed over to Knox. His expression was as impassive as the sandstone columns of the White House.
“Your expertise in behavioral analysis,” McNamara added. “It gives OPSIG a dimension we’ve lacked. You may prefer to confer with the profilers in your unit, but the cases we handle are black. Your group does not exist. The things you do, the missions you carry out, have not happened. Just like in London. That’s the way this works. This meeting, in fact, is not happening.” He turned to Knox. “I thought you explained all this to her.”
Knox did not reply, but Vail wanted to — something like, “I haven’t been told a damn thing.”
“Do we have a problem, Agent Vail?” McNamara asked.
“No, Mr. Secretary. I don’t have a problem.” I’ve got so many I don’t know where to start.
“Agent Uziel,” McNamara said. “You sit on this team for a reason as well. Given your background with Mossad and counterterrorism, is there anything you can add?”