The Looming Tower - Lawrence Wright [185]
O’Neill also viewed the safe house where the bombers had been living. It was clean and neat. In the master bedroom was a prayer rug oriented to the north, toward Mecca. The bathroom sink was full of body hair that the bombers had shaved before going to their deaths. The investigators were solemn, imagining the scene of the ritual ablutions and the final prayers.
But cooperation was still very slow in coming. “This investigation has hit a rock,” General Naji admitted. “We Arabs are very stubborn.”
Ali Soufan teased him, saying, “You’re dealing with another Arab, and I’m also stubborn.”
When Soufan translated this exchange, O’Neill contended that the Arabs were not the equal of the Irish in that department. He told a story about the O’Neill clan in Ireland, who he said had the reputation of being the strongest men in their country. Every year there was a boat race to a giant stone in the middle of a lake, and the O’Neills always won. But one year, another clan was rowing faster and pulling ahead, and it appeared that they would touch the stone first. “But then my great-grandfather took his sword,” said O’Neill, “and he cut off his hand and threw it at the rock. You got anything that can match that?”
Soufan and the general looked at each other. “We’re stubborn,” said Soufan, “but we’re not crazy.”
ONE OF THE PROBLEMS investigators faced was that the Cole was in real danger of sinking. Naval engineers were urgently trying to prevent this indignity. Finally an immense Norwegian semi-submersible salvage ship, with a middle deck designed to dip underwater and scoop up oil platforms, arrived to pick up the wounded warship and take it on its long journey home. The public-address system of the Cole broadcast “The Star-Spangled Banner” as it piggybacked out of the harbor, followed defiantly by Kid Rock’s “American Bad Ass.”
There were so many perceived threats that the agents often slept in their clothes and with their weapons at their sides. The investigators learned from a mechanic that a truck similar to one purchased by the bombers had been brought to his shop to have metal plates installed in a way that might be used to direct the force of an explosion. Certainly the most tempting target for such a bomb would be the hotel where the agents were staying.
Bodine thought these fears were overblown. The agents were suspicious of everyone, she observed, including the hotel staff. She assured O’Neill that the gunfire he frequently heard outside the hotel was probably not directed at the investigators but was simply the noise of wedding celebrations. Then one night, when O’Neill was running a meeting, shots were fired just outside the hotel. The hostage rescue team took positions. Once again, Soufan ventured out to talk to the Yemeni troops stationed in the street.
“Hey, Ali!” O’Neill said. “Be careful!” He had raced down the steps of the hotel to make sure Soufan was wearing his flak jacket. Frustration, stress, and danger, along with the enforced intimacy of their situation, had brought the two men closer. O’Neill had begun to describe Soufan as his “secret weapon.” To the Yemenis, he simply called him “my son.”
Snipers covered him as Soufan strolled outside. The Yemeni officer stationed there assured him that everything was “okay.”
“If everything is okay, why are there no cars on the street?” Soufan asked.
The officer said there must be a wedding nearby. Soufan looked around and saw that the hotel was surrounded with men in traditional dress, some in jeeps, all carrying guns. They were civilians, not soldiers. Soufan was reminded of the tribal uprising in Somalia, which ended with dead American