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| Djibouti |
I finally finished reading Djibouti by Elmore Leonard and now I'm finishing up my notes.
The story is about Dara, a middle aged woman, who is in Djibouti with her assistant Xavier to film a documentary about the pirates operating out of Somalia. They meet Idris, a pirate leader, Billy, an American zillionaire, and his girlfriend Helen. Billy has a big sailboat that he sails himself. There is also Harry who is some kind of loose cannon with connections to the CIA or the military, it's never really clear. Jama is a full-blooded American terrorist. He got locked up in prison in the USA and converted to Islam and kept going.
Cameron Mitchell shooting the .600 Nitro Express
Cam's Wild Life
The New London School Explosion | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
Fascinating Horror
Page 45
Page 80 Aphrodite thousand foot long LNG tanker owned by bin Laden
Page 110 Remember we're talking about a federal system of people with semi-one track minds. You make a mistake you spend the rest of your career in a third world country so they sit on this till the twins go away.
Chapter 31
The first 2/3 of the book are a bit of a slog. Eventually it occurred to me that Elmore may have been writing the way people talk which doesn't always translate into smooth reading. Also, in many of the scenes we have Xavier and Dara reviewing the films they have recorded that day and talking about whether what they have is good enough to be in their film.
Around about the 2/3's of the way though the book, things get lively, or rather deadly, with bodies falling left right and center. It's kind of a shock because up till then it's all cocktails, dancing and bravado.
Billy has 600 nitro express rifle. He loves to talk about it and mentions it every chance he gets. He also loves to show it off.
Cameron Mitchell shooting the .600 Nitro Express
Cam's Wild Life
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| LNG Tanker |
While this story is meandering along, there is also a very ominous ship lurking in the background. It's a LNG (Liquified Natural Gas) tanker. Some Al-Qaeda thugs have managed to get on board and place some explosive charges that can be detonated with a call from a cell phone, all you need is the number. (And the ship has to be in range of a cell phone tower, along with a subscription that allows it to receive calls in that region of the world. Never mind this, the story never gets that far, I'm just picking nits.)
Jama has the number and is trying to decide on the best time to blow it up. His Al-Qaeda bosses have canceled this operation. This might have something to do with the gas coming from Qatar and the elite Qatarians support for terrorists. You know, if Al-Qaeda bites the hand that feeds them, they might not be getting any more doggy treats. None of that is in the story, it's just seems obvious to me. But Jama doesn't care. He likes being a terrorist and killing people.
The best place to blow up the tanker would be at an east coast port in the USA, if the gas gets delivered there. Everyone is aware of the situation, but the terrorists are no longer on the ship and no explosives have been found, so maybe there's nothing to worry about. But not finding any explosives does not mean there aren't any there, so maybe we should be worried. Billy's solution is to shoot it with his Nitro Express rifle and blow it up where it is, in the middle of the Red Sea. Multi-million dollar loss for the gas company, but not a disaster for people living around the delivery port.
While this topic is under discussion Xavier mentions the 1937 gas explosion disaster at the New London School in east Texas:
The New London School Explosion | A Short Documentary | Fascinating Horror
Fascinating Horror
While I was reading I took sporadic notes. Here are some things that get mentioned:
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| USS Vella Gulf |
Page 77
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| USS Bainbridge |
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| Maersk Alabama Hijacking |
Page 80 Aphrodite thousand foot long LNG tanker owned by bin Laden
Page 110 Remember we're talking about a federal system of people with semi-one track minds. You make a mistake you spend the rest of your career in a third world country so they sit on this till the twins go away.
Page 199 'the Song telling us "The sweet things in life to you were just loaned. So how can you lose what you never owned?"' - Rudy Vallee
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| Statue de Foch Place du Trocadero, 75016 Paris France |
Page 202 We have this passage:
Cars came around to take different streets off the Place Verdun, circling past the statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, 1851-1929, on a pedestal in the center of the plaza, the single word J'Attaque below his name.
Xavier said, "Ferdinand was asked what he'd do if surrounded by Germans and he said he'd attack. I believe it was at Verdun he lost somethin like eighty thousand men j'attackin." He said, "There's your man there."
So I go looking for Place Verdun and a statue of Marshal Foch in Djibouti but all I find it this poster:
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| Commandant Marchand - Across Africa Book Cover |
Musee de L'Armee Invalides Page 34
"In 1896, Captain Marchand was appointed to lead the Congo-Nile mission to the White Nile River, with the aim of establishing a French protectorate in southern Egypt. Marchand led a team of eight French officers and 150 Senegalese skirmishers up the Congo, Ubangi and Bahr el-Ghazal rivers, arriving in Fashoda on 10 July 1898. They built a fort and raised the French tricolour flag. In September, the Anglo-Egyptian army under General Kitchener arrived at Fashoda. French and British colonialist ambitions came face to face at Fashoda, a standoff that ended in December 1898 when the French government ordered its troops to retreat to Djibouti."
Eventually I realized Xavier was just giving an example of a particularly bull-headed soldier to describe Buck, the soldier they were meeting. Although the French were in Africa, Marshal Foch was not.
Page 203 plant Epimedium otherwise known as horny goat weed
Page 215 Billy is talking about Medal-of-Honor winners:
- Joe Foss shot down 26 Zeke's over the Solomons in his Grumman Wildcat and later became governor of South Dakota.
- Major Bing Bang Bong flying a P-38 shot down 40 doing it during his tour and gave his life testing a jet.
- Another Ace, Pappy Boyington, a Sioux Indian, shot down his 26th over Rabul. Later that same day some nip sent Pappy down in flames.
- I forgot the name of the Navy pilot in a Dauntless crashing into a cruiser after he'd been hit. Another hero giving his life for his country, all Medal of Honor winners. He's probably referring to Colin Kelly who was flying a Vindicator, which is very similar to the Dauntless.
Page 217 1 cubic foot of liquefied natural gas will make 12,400 cubic feet of flammable gas air mix
Page 230 Golfo de Tadjoura
Page 243 Big Mucha Island
Page 243 Big Mucha Island
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