Editor’s Note: Marlow remembers.

-Vic

I was on the southernmost coral speck house hunting with the ex. We had returned to our inn’s courtyard bedroom with croissants and locally roasted coffees. The first tower had just been hit and was live center-stage on the Today Show. Suddenly the second tower was hit.

I turned to the ex and calmly said, “We’re at war. Let’s go home now.”

Upon our circuitous return to DC at the end of the week, we drove our rental car along an empty GW parkway past the still burning Pentagon, knowing that she would have been flitting in and out that section as part of her work routine for the Dir DIA staff.

Before returning the rental to an empty National Airport, we paid a brief visit to our daughter’s grave high up on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery with a commanding view of the Pentagon and the District’s memorial core.

It was then and only then that a stream of profanity and invective flow from me at the gods, certain countries, and several intelligence community agencies, in particular. These moments would recur now and then over the next 10 years.

In the days that followed I remember thinking YGTBSM hearing and seeing 24/7 BARCAP over DC, Alexandria, and Arlington. It went on for months and months on end. I remember 50 cal MG nests at the entrances to many military installations (some with bands locked down and in). I remember getting my arm poked by wrongly shoulder-slung rifles and shotguns when getting my ID checked at base entrances.

I also recall getting entreaties via third parties from Saudi officials and royal family members who were deathly afraid of US reprisals. They were all dutifully passed along to Langley folks I knew.

For these last folks, I feel we missed and still miss unique opportunities to extirpate a continuing threat.

I swear less and less now as time passes by. It was and still is not on our side.

9/11, 2021