“Check this out,” Davis said, lifting the carpet and pointing to a six-inch-diameter hole in the floor near his seat. Through it they could see the runway flying by.
“Nice.”
Stepping off the plane, they were hit by a blast of fresh Mediterranean air pungent with spices and mixed with jet fuel.
Ritchie asked, “Didn’t we bomb this shithole in the eighties?”
“That was Mitiga Airport, east of the city, near Gaddafi’s former stronghold,” Mancini interjected. “Nineteen eighty-six, to be exact. Part of Operation El Dorado Canyon launched by President Ronald Reagan.”
“Bombed his tent, too,” Ritchie added.
“That’s right. Gaddafi barely escaped. Turned out he was forewarned by some Italian politician.”
“Fucking asshole.”
Shifting loyalties. The Libyans were now our friends. They were also one of the top oil-producing countries in the world, exporting approximately 1.2 million barrels of crude a day, 80 percent of which went to Europe. Violence and instability there meant an increase in gas and heating oil prices back home.
The terminal was dark and relatively empty. All the green flags once flown by Gaddafi’s Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya had been replaced with the black, red, and green of the NTC. Soldiers in green camouflage uniforms holding AK-47s patrolled the building. Some were wearing sneakers and sandals; others were equipped with boots. They looked more like gang members than members of a disciplined army.
After a period of contemplation, Gaddafi proclaimed the Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya and released the first volume of The Green Book, which outlined his concept of direct democracy with no political parties. The country thereafter would be governed by its populace through local popular councils and communes. A General People’s Committee (GPCO) would serve as the country’s executive cabinet.
Gaddafi resigned as the head of the General People’s Congress (GPC) and was thereafter known as the Leader of the Revolution. But it was really all a ruse. Absolute power still rested with him as supreme commander of the armed forces and the embodiment of what Gaddafi called direct people’s power. The popular councils (also known as revolutionary committees) were used to spy on the population and repress any opposition to Gaddafi’s autocratic rule.
Eventually the truth caught up with him, as it had with other despots.
When the six Americans reached Immigration, a young man with a wispy beard and thinning hair stepped forward and said, “Salaam alaikum.”
Because he had an olive complexion and was casually dressed in a tan shirt and wrinkled brown pants, Crocker assumed he was a local. “Salaam alaikum to you.”
The man squinted through gold-rimmed glasses and smiled. “You’re Tom Crocker, right? I’m Douglas Volman from the U.S. embassy.”
“Hey, Doug. Nice to meet you.”
“Welcome to Tripoli. Follow me.”
The six casually dressed “engineers” followed Volman and his driver, whom Volman introduced as Mustafa, out the arched terminal entrance to a large black SUV parked at the curb.
Mustafa wore a green baseball cap with a Playboy Bunny logo embroidered on it. This struck Crocker as too casual for a local employee of the CIA.
“Who’d you say you work for again?” he asked Volman as they started loading their luggage in back.
Volman flashed his diplomatic ID. “I’m a political counselor at the U.S. embassy.”
“State Department?”
“Yeah, Foreign Service.”
Made sense. He seemed smart, well educated—and soft.
They sped through the city on a highway littered with abandoned, stripped cars and garbage. Traffic was chaotic and moved extremely fast. From the passenger seat, Volman turned to face them. He chewed a piece of gum as he spoke.
“Libyans are the friendliest, warmest people in the world. But everyone’s on edge now that Gaddafi is gone.”
“I thought they’d be happy.”
“Some are. Many aren’t. He remained a popular figure with a large segment of the population even until the end. He created a standard of living here that’s higher than that of Brazil.”
“No kidding.”
Approaching the sea, they passed a modern complex made up of five eighteen-story buildings. “Those are the El Emad towers, built by Gaddafi in 1990. They house most of the foreign companies doing business here—oil, telecommunications, construction.”
The skyline boasted a few other modern office towers. The rest of the city seemed to be made up of two- to four-story concrete structures painted white and beige. Domes and minarets marked the locations of the numerous mosques. Slogans in Arabic had been painted on many walls. Some of them depicted a cartoonish Gaddafi asking, “Who am I?”—a reference to one of his last televised speeches, in which he vowed to fight house to house, alley to alley, and taunted the rebels with the question “Who are you?” Others, directed at the interim government, asked, “Where are you?”