Well, that was good news. The bad news, of course, was that the surveillance drones might still miss fifty jihadists sitting in a mud hut waiting for us to come by. Or miss a roadside bomb. I asked, “And what do we do if we get this aerial surveillance information?”
Brenner, ex-combat vet, replied, “I will make the decision about how we react to an ambush warning.”
“Give me a call,” I suggested.
Kate asked a good question. “How about Hellfire missiles?”
Buck replied, “We are not authorized to use Hellfire missiles without the explicit permission of the Yemeni government.”
Kate, the lawyer, asked, “Not even as a purely defensive means to save lives?”
Buck informed us, “Unfortunately not.” He also let us know, “It takes a very long time to get this permission from the Yemeni authorities, so we can’t count on Hellfire missiles in a rapidly developing situation.”
I thought about that and said, “I assume that the Predator surveillance drones will be armed with Hellfire missiles, and that we will in fact use them if we’re ducking AK-47 rounds.”
Buck didn’t reply directly, but said, “To ask permission is to invite rejection. We do what we have to do, then apologize.”
“Right. And give the Yemenis another million.”
“Maybe two.” He smiled and said, “In Yemen, we pay to play.”
Right. Even wars have rules, but the rules here in Yemen did not favor the Americans. The good news was that we broke the rules. The better news was that the punishment was a small fine. Two million. Hell, give the Yemenis ten million and carpet bomb the whole country. Better yet, nuke ’em. Check’s in the mail for that.
Bottom line on this trip to Aden was that it was more than a method of getting from Point A to Point B; it was also trolling for sharks-fishing for Al Qaeda.
Buck announced, “That’s all I have. And if no one has anything further, this meeting is adjourned.”
Wonderful.
But Buck said, “Let me buy you all dinner at the Movenpick. They have a new French chef.”
I said, “I’d love to, but-”
Kate interrupted, “That would be very nice.”
“Good,” said Buck. “Afterwards, if you’re game for it, we can go to the Russia Club.”
I reminded everyone, “We need to get up early.”
Buck told us, “We can sleep on the way to Aden.” He smiled and assured us, “The roadside bombs will wake us up for the ambush.”
I felt like a guy who thought he’d joined an ace fighter squadron and found out it was a kamikaze group. I mean, bravery is one thing; war psychosis is something else. I said to Buck, “You’ve been here too long.”
“I know. But we’re all going home.” He added, “One way or the other.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
So we left the embassy and squeezed into the armored Land Cruiser with Zamo driving and Buck up front for the short drive to the Movenpick Hotel.
It was a nice hotel, and I was glad I was checked in there, though I was staying elsewhere.
I’m not a big fan of Continental cuisine, except French fries, preferring instead pigs-in-a-blanket, but the restaurant was good, and if you let your mind wander, you could be anywhere but here. I’m sure the new French chef felt the same way.
We had a nice, wine-fueled, getting-to-know-you dinner, and talked a bit about ourselves.
Buck Harris, it turned out, was married, with a wife in Silver Springs, Maryland, outside of D.C. I got the impression he had some family money, and he didn’t rely on his State Department salary to buy five-thousand-dollar jambiyahs. So for Buck, maybe the Cold War had been a gentleman’s hobby, something to keep him busy. What, then, was the war on terrorism? Probably the same thing, but with the added incentive of revenge, as he said. I could imagine him being buddies with his former Soviet enemies, but I couldn’t imagine a day when he, or any of us, would be having drinks with former jihadists. For one thing, they didn’t drink. More to the point, this was a war without end, and there would be no forgiving or forgetting.
Buck had a grown son and daughter who he said did not share his ideology or his enthusiasm for fucking America’s enemies. Buck told us, “They believe we should try to understand Islam.” He speculated, “If they’d been old enough during the Cold War, they would have told me I should try to understand Communism.” He assured us, “I understand both.”
Right. Hey, it sucks when your own kids think you’re part of the problem.
But Buck said philosophically, “The important thing is that I know I’ve spent my life doing what I thought was right-not just for me, but for my country, and for civilization-and also for my children and their children.”
Kate assured him, “You don’t need to justify your life or your work to anyone.”
Buck agreed, but said, “In this business, however, you are sometimes forced to compromise your own beliefs in the interest of the greater good-national security, global strategy, and so forth.” He confided to us, “During the Cold War, there were a few occasions when I had to betray or abandon an ally as part of a complex plan.”
No one commented on that, but I did wonder if he was hinting that the past was prologue to the future. Hopefully not.
Kate, too, spoke a bit about her background, including her wonderful FBI father, now retired, and her loony mother who was a gun nut, though Kate mentioned that only in the context of growing up around guns and learning at a young age how to hunt and shoot.
This was a great opening for her to tell everyone about how she whacked Ted Nash, but she didn’t go there. Maybe she was saving this interesting story for when we met our CIA teammate, thinking that the retelling of it would be even more interesting to a CIA officer. But I’m sure everyone in the CIA already knew this story.
I used our bonding occasion to tell some funny cop stories, which made everyone laugh. But to show it wasn’t all fun and games on the NYPD, I mentioned getting shot on the job, and my medical retirement, and my rocky transition from NYPD to the Federal Anti-Terrorist Task Force, and of course, my first case, where I met Kate Mayfield, the love of my life.
Paul Brenner seemed to have had an interesting and adventurous life in the military, but like most combat veterans, he downplayed his war experiences, and again he didn’t mention his clandestine mission to post-war Vietnam. But he did say he’d had a brief wartime marriage, though he didn’t say anything about his current lady in the States, and I didn’t expect he would; he seemed to be a private person. Also-how do I put this? — he was smitten with Kate Mayfield. Hey, no big deal. I think Tom Walsh has the same problem. And it wasn’t my problem.
Anyway, four-fifths of the A-team got to know one another a little better, which might or might not make us work better together. And with luck, we’d all get home and have a few stories to tell. Or, in this business, not tell.
I suggested a reunion. “We’ll meet at seven under the clock at Grand Central Station, just like in the movies, and we’ll go to Michael Jordan’s Steak House.”
Everyone liked that happy ending and we agreed to be there, date to be determined by fate. I wondered who, if anyone, would make it.
Buck paid for dinner as promised-sixty bucks, including tip, wine, and drinks. That’s a month’s pay for a Yemeni, and about four drinks in a New York bar. Maybe I should buy a retirement house here.
Anyway, showing the poor judgment of the intoxicated, we thought it was a great idea to go to the Russia Club.
Zamo drove us the few hundred meters up the road to Tourist City. The half dozen guards at the gate appeared to be Eastern European, and they looked tough and menacing with their flak jackets and AK-47s. But they recognized the American Embassy Land Cruiser, and probably recognized Zamo, and waved us through.