Turkey Day

There were two streaks of light, the pilot said. They came up alongside the aircraft. He was convinced that there were surface-to-air missiles. He continued to take the charter jet on climb out, probably sweating hard, wondering if there were two more missiles coming, seeking the heat from the engines, coming behind him where he couldn’t see. The engineer is cursing softly in Hebrew and looking at the gauges for indications of disaster. as they head for angles 15, the flight level where the missiles lose their effectiveness.

Doctrine says you fire them in salvos of two. The airplane arced out to sea, the coast of Africa blending from green to sand and to the pale blue of the Indian Ocean. On the climb out they could have seen the Silver Strand district of Mombassa, the beach resort area over the bridge from the old colonial city. Nothing else happened. If they were Strella missiles, or Stingers, they are tube-fired man portable systems. There are a lot of them out there. We gave Stingers to the Mujahdeen, and the Russians have been peddling Strellas all over the world for years. There are newer models, too, a knock-of reverse engineered version from our pals the Chinese. If these missiles were in the hands of Al Qaida, they might be old, bought through the gray market. The seekers might have been out of specification, shelf life expired. The coolant in the seeker that enables them to distinguish the heat of a jet engine might have been gone, and the little rockets with the expanding rod warhead ! might have harmlessly flown to altitude.

I think about that on climb-out when I fly. I had a vigorous discussion with a colleague about whether a direct hit from a Strella on one of the engines would bring down a commercial jet. My friend scoffed at the notion, saying the warhead was designed to go against high-performance military targets. Taking a single engine off the wing was unlikely to cause a catastrophic event, he declared.

I demurred, reminding him that is why they are told to fire the missiles in salvoes of two.

From a window seat in the passenger compartment of the jet you can see the row of resort hotels on the lovely beach. The last time I flew into Mombassa’s airport my ship was a gray eminence out beyond the shore break, and the sun illuminated the shore with a magic dancing light. This morning, Thanksgiving Day in the States, you could have seen what passes for emergency vehicles gathered at The Paradise Hotel. That is an Israeli-owned place, and many of the people riding in the charter jet had been there. They missed the arrival of the rental car packed with explosives, driven by the usual wild-eyed young man on his mission of martyrdom. He drove through the through the glass front doors in his four-wheel drive vehicle, just enough time for the desk clerk to look up as he detonated the explosives, killing six and wounding eleven.

Poor Kenya. They lost hundreds dead and thousands wounded in the attack on our Embassy in Nairobi. I imagine they lost a doorman and a porter or two today. The radio explains that some of the dead might have been traditional Masai dancers, and that the timing was calculated to cause maximum casualties, guests checking in and out. At least six of the seriously injured were Kenyans. Israeli authorities say two children were among the dead.

Coastal Kenya is an odd place. The Arabs were here for hundreds of years, slavers and merchants down from the Peninsula, sailing in their dhows. There are mosques in town. The narrow band where they held sway does not extend far. Their domain was the coast. When you travel inland the women drop the headscarves and the territory of the Masai is dotted with their little huts and livestock on the broad grasslands. It is a pretty place, and President-For-Life Daniel Arap Moi has spent a lifetime squandering the riches amassed by the Colonial British. Right now the forces of democracy are mustering for a run against his hand-picked successor, the grandson of legendary freedom fighter Jomo Kenyatta. Who knows, they may even succeed. The young Kenyatta is a drunk and a drug addict, a malleable quantity for Moi’s cronies to manipulate. That is the scheme, anyway, but it may be that the forces of democracy may get one last try against the downward spiral of corruption.

I wish the Kenyans the best. They are good people, afflicted by a banal and crooked government and a small number of very angry men.

The charter airplane that was fired on was safe, and proceeded to a routine recovery in Tel Aviv. The war goes on. The BBC is speculating  on who did it, part of our Western desire for attribution. As if knowing who did it will bring some sort of closure. The rest of the news is a hodge-podge of heightened security alerts in Manila, and warnings of a smallpox attack here or in Iraq if we go there. The bombers in Kenya might be Al Qaida, or Palestinians, or just fellow-traveling fanatics. There are a lot of them out there.

What is clear on this day of Thanksgiving is that we are slowly turning inward even as our troops spread out in the wide world. We will look to our families and our groaning tables of plenty and try to forget the wide world where families on holiday are considered military targets. The Israeli authorities say they are reviewing recommendations for travel abroad for their citizens. I can almost see them shrug through the speakers on my radio. They say that not much is to be done. Today it is Kenya, tomorrow it could be Paris or London. Or here in Arlington.

This morning the sun has raced from East Africa to illuminate North America. It is crisp and clear and cold. Charlie Brown and Snoopy and Dudley Doo-Right are being filled with gas in preparation of their flight in the Macy’s Parade. New York cops are putting on their game faces to look for suspicious packages and angry faces, and Detroit is banning back-packs along the parade routes. The Redksins and Cowboys are having breakfast, getting ready to go to the stadium after a short week, and the Lions are exploring new ways to blow the game this afternoon. Santa is suiting up to fly into the department store there are signs of improvement in the Gross National Product, growth reported at a surprising 4%, the markets are up and money is flowing out of the bond market. Mortgage rates remain low and consumer confidence is up.

We have a lot to be thankful about. We just have some issues to deal with.

Copyright 2002 Vic Socotra