Karim looked around the small marina and felt great pride in his friend. He had never fully understood the word irony. He wasn’t sure, but he thought people often confused it with happenstance. Whatever the case was, he found it rather amusing that as a teenager Hakim had been completely enamored with the American author Ernest Hemingway. He so admired the man’s sense of adventure that at age thirteen, after reading The Old Man and the Sea, he’d hitchhiked on his own to Jeddah and convinced a fisherman to take him out for a day. At nineteen he’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, and at twenty-one he’d fulfilled what he’d said was his greatest thrill of all, catching a swordfish off the Florida Keys. Hakim had confided in him one cold evening that the real reason why he had come to fight in Afghanistan was because Hemingway had run off to be an ambulance driver during the Spanish Civil War. He felt that a man had not lived until he had experienced the raw thrill of war.
Hakim ambled over with his disarming grin. He placed an arm on Karim’s shoulder and said, “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
“You amaze me.”
“Even after all these years?”
“Yes, even after all these years.” Karim looked nervously back over his shoulder at the soldiers. “So we are free to go?”
“We are encouraged to go.” Hakim made a motion toward the men in the boats and they fired up the engines. “They do not want us to loiter.”
“Good, so we are leaving?”
“Yes.” Hakim pointed west at the setting sun. “I have rations on the boats. We will leave now and sail around the western end of the island out into international waters. Then we’ll set course for the Florida Keys.”
The two men stepped onto the old wood dock, careful where they put their feet since the planks were rotten and uneven. “Are you sure that this is the right spot?” Karim had always thought they should try to enter the country farther north. Up toward Tampa or even the Panhandle.
“I’ve told you before, my friend. It is a numbers game.”
“I know… more coast, more boats…”
“Yes. They can’t tell the difference between drug runners and fishermen. We take our time tonight and then in the morning we meander out into the Keys.”
“And if their Coast Guard shows up?”
“Then we run like hell.” Karim pointed down at the two dull gray fiberglass boats. Each vessel had three 250 hp Mercury outboard motors on the back. “These boats are as fast as anything they have.”
“As fast but not faster?”
“No, but don’t worry. We have a secret weapon.”
The creases on Karim’s forehead deepened. “What secret weapon?”
“You and your men. They are not used to being shot back at.” Hakim laughed and pointed at the second boat. “Stay two hundred meters back and follow in my wake. Everything is programmed into the GPS, and if you have any questions, just call me on the radio.”
Karim reached out and stopped his friend. “Wait. That is the extent of your plan? We run?”
“Essentially, yes.”
Karim felt the symptoms of one of his anxiety attacks. “After all we have been through… after all the preparation… this is what it will all come down to?”
“No, my friend, it will come down to more than just this, but we cannot control everything. At some point we must make our leap of faith.” Hakim could see his friend’s agitation. The eyes darting from left to right, focusing on nothing. His breathing becoming quick and shallow. “Would you rather try to fly into the country with all your weapons?”
Karim did not answer.
“You wanted me to find a way to get us into America with all the weapons and your detonators. There is no easy way, my friend, and you knew that going in. At some point we must put our faith in Allah and move forward.” Hakim reached out and grabbed him by both shoulders. “Look me in the eye. Take a deep breath. Trust me to get you through this part of your journey. We are so close. America lies just beyond the horizon. When the sun comes up, I will have you there.”
“But what about…?”
Hakim cut him off, saying, “Now is not the time to hesitate… to question. Now is the time to act. Remember, you have always told me that victory favors the brave. Now is our moment to be brave. Trust me. Get in your boat and follow me. I will lead you on this leg of your crusade, and I will not fail you.”
CHAPTER 35
ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
NASH parked his minivan next to a beat-up Ford Taurus and walked into the Safeway Food and Drug. He grabbed a cart and began to amble through the produce section. The only thing he really needed was milk for Charlie, but he had other reasons to be at the store. He grabbed a half dozen bananas, two large grapefruits, and a cantaloupe. A few aisles down he grabbed some peanut butter because he’d learned in the past that they could never have enough peanut butter. In the next aisle he saw the guy he was looking for waiting for him in front of the taco shells. His blond hair was poking out from under his Washington Nationals baseball hat.
Nash pulled up beside him and looked back down the aisle to make sure the other shoppers were out of earshot. Keeping his eyes on the taco shells, Nash said, “How are you, buddy?”
“Better than you.” The man was about the same size as Nash, although maybe a little thinner and a decade older.
“No doubt,” Nash said as he remembered Monday night was taco night. He took a box just in case.
“How are the kids?”
“Good.”
“Charlie?” he asked as he read the back of a box.
“He uttered his godfather’s favorite word this morning.”
The man turned his head and looked at Nash. “You fucking kidding me?”
“I wish I was.”
“That’s great.”
“No, it isn’t,” Nash said seriously bothered. “He’s only a year old.”
Scott Coleman began laughing silently to himself. He’d known Nash for a little more than seven years and they’d grown very close. Coleman had been the one who brought Nash to the attention of Rapp. That was back when they were running around the mountains of Afghanistan having the time of their lives hunting Taliban and al-Qaeda. Now the pussies were hiding on the other side of the border and the Pakistanis wouldn’t let them come over and finish the job.
Smiling and talking out of the side of his mouth, Coleman said, “You need to lighten up, buddy. I’ve told you before, the key to this shit is to never take it too seriously. The moment you do that, you lose your edge, you lose your nerve, and then you’re going to fuck up.”
Nash had heard the lecture many times before. Coleman, almost ten years his senior, was a former SEAL, and had been running his own security and consulting firm in D.C. since just before the attacks. The deluge of money that had been pumped into security firms had made him a wealthy man, but not as wealthy as he could have been. Coleman made the conscious decision to stay small. He had no interest in running a big company and managing hundreds of people.
Nash asked him, “You read the paper this morning?”
“Yeah.” Coleman grabbed a box of shells, set them in his cart, and started moving. “You’d better hope those pricks on the Hill don’t dig too deep, or you’re fucked.”
“I just left a hearing with the Intel folks. It was a real joy.”
“Any idea how this Commie reporter got his info?”
Nash turned the corner and grabbed a bag of Doritos. “I have a short list.”
“Let’s hear it.”
“In a moment. This reporter… Joe Barreiro… you have any problem setting up passive surveillance on him?”
Coleman scanned the next aisle and said, “Nope.”
“Good. Check the nearby pay phones first and then the e-mails. You still have your back door into the Post’s server?”
Coleman laughed.
“What?” Nash asked wondering what he’d done wrong now.