Elmore Leonard - Djibouti

Cool.

But wouldn't he like to see the tanker explode?

Else why go to all the trouble.

BIN LADEN SAYS IN his speech, we ever quit being nice to the Israelis, clean up our intentions elsewhere, we could be friends. The only reason they ran the suicide flights into the Twin Towers, bin says, was to pay us back for supporting the Jews."

The Pegaso was about two hours out of Djibouti still trailing the gas tanker, Helene at the wheel in a cotton sweater and skimpy shorts, Billy watching Fox news.

"Is bin serious? The Israelis may be heavy hitters the way they do their paybacks, but they're still the good guys. You never see 'em taking any shit from Hamas. Why should they give back land they won fair and square?"

"I wouldn't," Helene said.

"What I don't understand," Billy said, "is how bin's still alive, all the smart bombs we've laid on his hooches."

"I'll bet he's dead," Helene said. "And it's what's his name, al Zawahiri doing the talking. They all sound alike." Helene said, "It's scary how a drone flies to a target in Pakistan, a guy in a trailer in California looks at it on his screen, presses a button while he's having a cup of coffee, and blows up the al Qaeda hideout in Pakistan with a Hellfire missile."

"You have a military-type mind," Billy said, "and a cute butt peeking out of your shorts."

"I could fire one from home," Helene said. "Turn from the range where I'm fixing supper for us and blast one off."

"I swear you learn faster than any girl I ever met. I sensed that when I chose you."

Billy went out on deck with his binoculars to spot drones, the UAVs crossing the sky at a few thousand feet in a glare of sun. "I see one," Billy said, "way up there, taking pictures of us and the gas tanker." Billy talking with the glasses at his face. "It's a Mariner, the navy version of the Reaper, the one belongs to the air force. She can stay up looking around for two days at two hundred and thirty knots packed full of sensors, plenty of fuel and weaponry. Six hardpoints, they call them, your Hellfire missiles. Muff, I'd like you to commit that to your memory."

"Six hardpoints," Helene said. "Got it, Chief."

It was fun sounding military. "Aye, aye, sir." Billy would drop into the cockpit and she'd say, "Captain on the bridge," and get him grinning at her.

"The drone can read a license plate from two miles away," Billy said. "What else you want to know?"

"Why are you grouchy?"

"I'm not grouchy. I'm telling about the MQ-9, a bust-ass hunter-killer and its firepower. We're getting to the point we won't need fighters or bombers no more, we send in the drones. I wonder what Joe Foss would think of that. Joe shot down twenty-six Zekes over the Solomons in his Grumman Wildcat and later on became governor of South Dakota. Major Bing Bang Bong flying a P38 shot down forty during his tour and gave his life testing a jet. Another ace, Pappy Boyington, a Sioux Indian, shot down his twenty-sixth Zeke over Rabaul. Later that same day some Nip sent Pappy down in flames." Billy said, "I forgot the name of the navy pilot in a Dauntless crashed his plane into a Jap cruiser after he'd been hit. Another hero giving his life for his country. All Medal of Honor winners."

Helene said, "Can you imagine doing something like that?"

"I'd love to see what it's like," Billy said.

He had his glasses on Aphrodite now, on her tall decks aft, the gas ship moping along toward Djibouti.

"We're gonna waste time wanting proof the ship's a bogey till it blows up a port in the U.S."

"But you aren't absolutely sure," Helene said, "are you?"

"If I believe that ship's gonna blow up at an appointed hour, and I see evidence of it, that's good enough for me. You might ask, 'You mean evidence you can prove?' Maybe not. I don't believe in wasting time on the horns of dilemmas, I go with my gut."

Billy paused and Helene said, "Yeah…?"

"My gut told me this morning the LNG tanker's gonna blow up right here. It's as good a place as any east-west-wise. Al Zawahiri makes a bullshit statement about al Qaeda drawing the line to cut us off. What he doesn't know hiding out in the hills, Djib's gonna get bigger, it's in the plans to become a major port in the east-west passage. Like Singapore. And if I'm convinced it's gonna blow up," Billy said, "I've got to do something about it, don't I?"

Beginning to sound like Sterling Hayden doing Jack D. Ripper again. No Communist plot or precious bodily fluids to deal with this time, but the destruction of a city.

He was serious.

Helene said, "Have you any idea what you'll do, Skipper?"

"Warn Harbor Security of the clear and present danger," Billy said. "Do that first, while the LNG tanker's still out in the Gulf of Tadjoura. If they're too dumb or set in their ways to take me seriously…"

Helene said, "Yeah…?"

"I'll address the risk of the ship directly. I'm thinking of doing it anyway. Hire a gook and send him out there in a skiff with a bullhorn. He tells them in Tagalog, English and Arabic to get your ass off the ship before she blows."

"They have to swim for it?" Helene said.

"Swim or get in the lifeboat. They got one like the Alabama the captain was in and snipers shot the three wogs. I hear they're making a movie about that. Some action picture, three Mohammedans are shot. The al Qaedas still aboard the gas ship want to die for bin, go ahead."

"That is so cool," Helene said. "You save all the gooks and the ship too."

"I don't save the ship," Billy said. "Once the decks are clear, I'll put a six-hundred-caliber Nitro Express round in her sweet spot and blow her up myself. Before, you understand, they can use it on Djib."

"That is so fucking smart of you."

"It's tricky, though, messing with liquid gas all frozen, twenty-seven hundred million cubic feet of natural gas aboard. You'll forget this if I tell you, but just one cubic meter-that's three of the twenty-seven hundred million-spill it, you got twelve thousand four hundred cubic meters of a flammable gas-air mix."

"You sound like you're reading it."

"I memorized it. You might want to look at it. My red notebook."

"I will when I have time, Skipper."

"If, say, nine, ten percent of the natural gas leaks out and spills in the water it will boil to gas in about five minutes. Because the water is at least two hundred twenty-eight degrees hotter than the frozen gas. It comes out and flows in a vaporous cloud close to the water until I hit it with a high-explosive Nitro Express round. It goes up, burning itself back to the ship, fireballs shooting up. That's a hundred times bigger than the Hindenburg disaster. Remember I showed you that news footage?"

"The German zeppelin," Helene said. "People running out of the fire…"

"Listen. The heat from this fireball, this inferno can cause third-degree burns and start fires miles away."

"Wow, really?"

"That's why I have to do it ten, twelve miles from Djib. But we have to be in position," Billy said, "where I can take the shots and still get us out of there in a hurry."

Helene said, "We might not get away fast enough?"

Billy said, "I'll make sure we do."

"We stay out here till you blow it up?"

Billy said, "I wish we could, Muff, but I've got to go to Djib to set up where the gas ship anchors. Then later on you can help me write the book, Ship Killer, that's the title. Under it: How We Lit or Lighted the World's Largest Natural Gas Conflagration. Something like that."

"I'll call the Kempinski."

"Or we tie up at the pier and stay aboard."

"We'll get a suite so you can walk around and think, and make calls."

Billy said, "You mean so you can see Dara and sound like a girl for a change."

"It's scary," Helene said, "the way you read my mind." She thought she'd better add, "But I was thinking of you, you need room to roam around in."