‘Know what I mean?’

Between the conversion of the pre-WWII air control tower into an aeronautics museum and construction of new Navy housing, there was lots happening on Ford Island. And lots to see for Fatima bin Laden and Jennifer Hira during their VIP tour.

The sights, however, did not include the terrorist being held in the Navy brig on the island, Muhammed Resurreccion.

"He tried to kill a lot of people, but still," Lt. Basel Zakly Faris, USMC, said when Jen asked, "this is not a zoo. Know what I mean?"

It was an Americanism Fatima previously heard Baz use. Know what I mean? On this occasion, she wondered if there was another meaning, such as perhaps I'm a fellow Muslim and I would not condone any mistreatment of this prisoner. Out of respect. Out of sympathy.

Baz, wearing jungle cammy fatigues, was behind the wheel of a Jeep. Fatima, in the western style, rode in the passenger seat, not in the back where a proper Muslim girl should ride when in the company of a man not of her family. Jen and Baz's good friend Lt. Joe Matsuo, who was off duty, were in the back, and holding hands Fatima noted, shocked at such brazen behavior.

"The bridge changed everything," Baz was saying as he parked the Jeep. "Until then, they had a ferry that ran once an hour. No way any of this development was possible without the bridge."

No way, Fatima was thinking, the rescue of Muhammed Resurreccion, her uncle's friend and colleague, would be possible without the bridge. With Baz's assistance, they could simply drive him to freedom. What a triumph for Islam that would be!

Baz led them through a thicket of trees toward the water's edge, and there was the Arizona Memorial, gleaming white. Baz removed his cap. "Before there was 9/11, there was 12/7," he said. "Every time I come here, I imagine what it was like on that morning to be here, torpedoes falling, smoke billowing, young men dying, others becoming heroes. And then I think that somewhere out there, somebody's planning the next attack on America."

Was this another of those "Know what I mean?" moments? Would Baz welcome such an attack in the name of Islam? Would he take part in it?

"Actually," Baz continued, "where we're standing now, one of the Japanese torpedoes ran right up on the shore."

Oh, Fatima thought, to have such a long-range weapon. But with the Chinese agent her uncle hired to provide such weapons as she required for her mission behind bars, right now her only weapon was Baz.

At that moment, however, halfway around the world, her uncle was making arrangements to send reinforcements. Select members of the Khomeini Sharia Unification Movement for Preaching and Combat would soon be introducing themselves to Hawaii.