Night Fall

BOOK THREE

September

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Conclusions: CIA analysts do not believe that a missile was used to shoot down TWA Flight 800… There is absolutely no evidence, physical or otherwise, that a missile was employed.

CIA “Analytic Assessment,” March 28, 1997

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

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Not having contracted malaria or been abducted, kidnapped, or murdered, I arrived at JFK on a Delta flight from London at 4:05P.M. on the Friday after Labor Day, having spent about forty days and forty nights in the desert wilderness of Yemen.

For the record, the place sucks.

Kate was still in Dar es Salaam, but she’d be home within the week. She seemed to be enjoying Tanzania, e-mailing me about friendly people, good food, interesting countryside, and all that. Rub it in.

Exactly why we’d gotten off with short tours was more of a mystery than why we’d been exiled in the first place-which was no mystery at all. Possibly, Jack Koenig and his colleagues believed that, as with a prison sentence, a short one teaches you a lesson, and a long one breeds resentment and revenge.

Wrong. I was still pissed off and not a bit grateful for my early release.

I cleared Passport Control and Immigration quickly since I wasn’t carrying anything except my overnight bag, a diplomatic passport, and a concealed grudge; I’d left my safari clothes in Yemen where they belonged, and my Glock was being shipped home through the embassy dip pouch. I was wearing tan slacks, a blue blazer, and a sport shirt, which looked good when I’d put them on about a day ago.

It seemed strange to be back in civilization, if that’s the right word for JFK International Airport. The sights, sounds, and smells-which I’d never noticed before-were jarring.

Aden, as it turned out, was not the actual capital of Yemen-some shit-hole town called Sana’a was, and I’d had to go there a few times on business, where I had the pleasure of meeting Ambassador Bodine. I introduced myself to her as a close friend of John O’Neill, though I’d met the gentleman only a few times. I didn’t get kicked out, which was the plan, but neither was I invited for di

Aden, where I was stationed, was the port city where theCole had been blown up, and it, too, sucked. The good news was that the Sheraton Hotel where the team stayed had a gym (the Marines had to show the staff how to put the equipment together) and a swimming pool (which we had to teach the staff how to clean), and I was as tan and fit as I’d ever been since I took three bullets up in Washington Heights about four years ago. I’d kept the drinking in Yemen to a bare minimum, learned to like fish, rather than drink like one, and experienced the joys of chastity. I felt like a new man, but the old man needed a drink, a hamburger, and sex.

I stopped at the lounge and ordered a beer and hamburger at the bar.

I had my cell phone, but the battery was as dead as my dick at the moment, and I asked the bartender to plug in my charger, which he was happy to do. I explained, “I was in the Arabian desert.”

“Nice tan.”

“Place called Yemen. Dirt cheap. You should go there. The people are great.”

“Well, welcome home.”

“Thanks.”

There had actually been e-mail service in Aden, through Yahoo! for some reason, and this is how Kate and I had kept in touch, along with an occasional international call. We never mentioned TWA 800, but I’d had lots of time to think about it.

I’d e-mailed John Jay College of Criminal Justice, explaining that I was on a secret and dangerous mission for the government, and I might be a few days or years late for class. I suggested they start without me.

The TV over the bar was tuned to the news cha

I ordered another beer and sca

Anyway, in Aden, I worked with six FBI agents, including two women, and four NYPD guys from the Anti-Terrorist Task Force, two of whom I knew, so it was okay. Along with the investigators, we had about twenty Marines armed to the teeth, and an eight-man FBI SWAT team, all of whom rotated duty as sharpshooters on the roof of the Sheraton, and which the hotel, I think, used in their marketing strategy for the few other guests.

The mission also included about a dozen Diplomatic Security Service people, and a few Army and Navy intelligence perso

My duties in Aden consisted of working with their corrupt and stu

Now and then, Yemen intelligence would round up the usual suspects and drag them down to police headquarters so we could see some progress in the investigation. About once a week, five or six task force guys would be taken to the police station to question these miserable wretches through inept and lying interpreters in a fetid, windowless interrogation room. The intelligence guys would smack the suspects around a little for our benefit and tell us they were getting close to the “foreign terrorists” who blew up theCole.

Personally, I think these suspects were hired for the day, but I appreciated the police interrogation techniques. Just kidding.

And then there were the “informants,” who gave us useless leads in exchange for a couple of bucks. I swear I saw some of these informants in police uniforms around town on the days they weren’t being informants.

Basically, we were pissing into the wind, and our presence there was purely symbolic; seventeen American sailors were dead, an American warship had been put out of commission, and the administration needed to show they were doing something. But when John O’Neill had actually tried to do something, he got the boot.

As a point of interest, a week ago, word had reached Yemen that John O’Neill had left the FBI and was now working as a security consultant for the World Trade Center. I should see him about a job-depending on how the TWA thing played out; I was going to be either very employable, or unemployed forever.

Kate, in her e-mails, told me she was having a lot more luck in Tanzania, where the government was helpful, partly as a result of losing hundreds of its citizens in the U.S. Embassy bombings.

The Yemen government, on the other hand, was not only unhelpful, but also treacherous and hostile, and the guy who was head of their intelligence service, some slimeball named Colonel Anzi, who we nicknamed Colonel Nazi, made Jack Koenig look like Mother Teresa.

There had been an element of danger in Yemen, and we always traveled with bulletproof vests and armed Marines or SWAT guys. We didn’t mix much with the locals, and I slept with Mrs. Glock every night.

Our hotel had been mortared and rocketed a few years before by some rebel group, but they were all dead now, and we only had to worry about the terrorists who blew up theCole and undoubtedly wanted to blow up the Sheraton Hotel, first chance they got.