The Crisis (10 page)

“Not for long-term maintenance. Especially how fast bottom fouling builds up here, biofouling in the intercoolers, et cetera. We'd need either a permanent base, which we aren't going to get in this region, or what we
used to have in Bahrain—an LPD or an LSD as a mother ship, machine shop, someplace the guys can hang out where there's room to move around. You'll see how true this is”—the commodore checked the bulkhead clock—“once you've operated aboard them, which I guess you'll be doing for the next week. We need to pull the guys off once in a while and let them breathe. Of course”—Goya touched his mustache again—“if we were rotating them every three or four months, they'd be happier with the living arrangements.”

Dan went over some other issues, knowing McCall was doing the same thing in greater depth with the chief staff officer, and Henrickson would be huddled with the N-4, going over parts requirements and how the supply system would have to be jimmied to keep a ship on station for three or four years at a time. Finally he turned off his notebook. “Commodore, thanks for your hospitality. We'll have more questions once we get back from our underway, but this should get us started.”

For the first time Goya looked ill at ease. “Well, you're all welcome. But there's a little hitch.”

“What's that, sir? I thought we had advance clearances, visit approval—”

“Right, but thing is, these PCs are real tight berthing wise.”

“We're used to stowing our gear pretty much anyplace—”

“It's McCall.” Goya grinned unhappily. “There's no separate berthing on PCs for females. Unless they're CO—he, I mean she, gets a separate stateroom. Everybody else is in bunkrooms.”

Geller said, “She can have my stateroom, Commodore. I generally nap in my bridge chair under way. SEAL berthing, if I have to hot-bunk it, no problem.”

“We can't take your cabin,” Dan told him. “I didn't realize space was that tight. Nice of you to offer, but I'm going to make a command decision and leave Commander McCall here to drill down into the logistics and maintenance, okay? You can bunk her aboard the uh, the Mountain, right, Commodore?”

“Certainly, if you're sure.”

Dan nodded, knowing McCall wasn't going to be happy, but she wasn't being paid to be happy, only to do what she was told. As he'd heard himself more than once since signing on the dotted line those many years before.

 

“STAND by to test engines,” Geller called into the pilothouse, mopping his bare glistening scalp with his bare glistening arm. Not the slightest hint of wind. Heat like Dan had never known broiled off galvanized iron roofs,
the mirrorlike glaze of the basin. Behind them the ten-by-ten pilothouse was cheek by jowl with crew. There were no phone talkers looking stoned as they listened to headphones, dragging wires around for everyone to trip on. Instead every crewman carried a black Motorola portable. It looked insecure, but Geller said their range was so short it wasn't an issue. Besides, anything classified still went by naval message over the big white dome of the Inmarsat antenna.

Dan was looking back at several men doing push-ups on the afterdeck, near a rigid-hull inflatable cupped in a well, when a startlingly loud ba-ROOM came from aft. A terrific burst of white-yellow smoke rose between
Shamal
and the pier, mushrooming till it blotted out the sun. Dan blinked as it expanded, shrouding them in a sulfurous murk.

One of Geller's junior officers had the conn, with the CO hovering. Sweating, the jaygee advanced control levers on the bridge wing console. “Ahead thirty on number one . . . back thirty on number four. Cast off the spring.” They could control the engines from out here, but oddly enough there was no remote rudder control, so they still had to bawl helm orders in through the door. The sound of a gigantic cat barfing a hairball aft must be the clutch going in.

“Four screws, total fourteen thousand shaft horse power,” Geller yelled. “You can torsion your way in to a pier if you have to. One and two to starboard, three and four to port, and the inner two turn clockwise, so you can actually back down in a straight line.”

Dan nodded as the smoke became so dense Geller faded to a yellowish ghost. He sneezed, wondering if something was on fire. But apparently this was normal; no one remarked on it.

“Cast off number one. Then back down and twist out. You don't need your rudder yet,” Geller told the conning officer.

Dungareed line handlers from
Whitney
cast off lines that the deck parties hauled in hand over hand. A horn that sounded like it had been salvaged from a Trailways bus went BLAAT. BLAT-BLAT-BLAT. The pier started to move ahead. Geller ducked behind the 01 level superstructure to the far side. Dan followed, keeping tabs. Geller was the skipper, but as the senior officer aboard, if they ran into anything his butt would be on the line too.

The inlet was clear, though, only one speedboat two hundred yards off. The starboard gunner had the big .50 level on its pintle mount, brass belted into the loading tray. His binoculars were aimed at the speedboat.

Geller caught his glance. “Booty's a friendly port, but since that dhow attack in Bahrain we've put more effort into force protection.”

Dan nodded and faced aft, sneezing again.
Shamal
was backing slowly,
but still lay swathed in a thick bank of her own smoke. The bearing taker was talking into his Motorola, but Dan couldn't see what he was using for marks.

They emerged from the cloud bank, smoke still billowing up, but lighter now, shading to reddish brown, and Dan lifted his head, looking out past only two channel markers, to open water.

The Red Sea. He'd sailed it before, but still felt awestruck at its sere, remote beauty. The Gulf must have been like this before oil and the demands of commerce. But this shallow wide sea was still nearly untouched. Today the sky was all but dustless, so bright it hurt. The sea was a polished golden bronze shading to an opulent green, disturbed only a little, where the sun winked off it, as the waves of
Shamal
's advent eddied outward. The pintles creaked as the gunner swung to track the speedboat. The engines hairballed again, and Geller murmured to the conning officer, who shouted, “Come right, one five five.” The drowsy singsong of the helmsman echoed the order.

“Hold on,” the CO said. “You're gonna love this.”

A bellow like a dozen diesel tractor-trailers revving to full power came from aft, followed by billows of smoke that made the dose they'd sucked at the pier seem like a gentle mist. The ship accelerated out of it, though Dan, leaning to look over the wing coaming, saw more streaming out of the waterline exhausts. “That'll cut off in a second,” Geller shouted over the roar. “They vent underwater once we get past eight knots.”

Despite the noise the acceleration was smooth. He felt its tug, though warning him to hold on was overkill. “So, what comms do you have?” he asked Geller.

The CO went down the list: UHF line of sight, HF, UHF satellite communications uplink. “No data link or combat systems. Anything important comes in CUDIXS or on the red phone, HF covered. No Link 11 or 14. No WINSALTS or anything like that.”

The wind of their passage was hot and blustery, with swirling effects from the corners of the superstructure. The latched-open wing door vibrated in squeaks and chirps like Morse code. “From stop to flank ahead in under three minutes,” Geller yelled. “Full ahead to fifteen knots astern in sixty seconds. In high-speed, hard-over turns, we barely heel. Fin stabilizers. Course, they're CASREP'd right now.”

Dan grimaced at the mention of fin stabilizers. He'd been in a typhoon aboard a South Korean frigate when they'd failed, with catastrophic results. “What're we making now? About thirty?”

“Good eye, thirty-three over ground. We can pick up a few more in what they call sprint mode, but it's like every hour is four hours' engine wear.”

The sea was flying by, its speed accentuated by how low they were to the water. Only about twenty feet up, as opposed to forty or fifty on the destroyers he was used to. “What kind of range?”

“At thirty-three knots I can run for nine hundred miles. Most economic transit is around fifteen. Generally try to refuel every couple days on patrol. They had us doing oil platform duty in the NAG. We'd rotate out of KNB every couple of weeks. Refueling from
Trenton.
”

He was interrupted by a call on the bitch box from the chief engineer, who said the carbon was burned out, they could drop speed now. “Drop to ten, and come to your course for Point Alfa,” Geller told the officer of the deck. The ship surged, coming down off plane. This time Dan grabbed for a handhold; the deceleration was more abrupt. “This time out we'll mainly be holding station. That's why I wanted the chief to clean everything out with a high-speed run. That, and impress you. Were you impressed?”

“Sure. What's the patrol plan?”

Geller laid it out above the chart taped to the nav table. The mission was to show the flag and interdict any arms shipments bound for Ashaara. They'd proceed north to the patrol area, then maintain presence on a line covering 120 miles north to south, 20 to 30 miles offshore. There'd be comm drills, and a fast attack craft/fast inshore attack craft drill. He didn't expect much out of the ordinary, but Dan could get familiar with their capabilities.

Just being under way felt good. Who was he kidding—it felt
great.
He climbed another level to the flying bridge and stood leaning on the splinter shield watching the mountains shrink behind them. He looked aft, past the call-sign flags snapping on the mast, down to the catwalk. Two of the BDU-clad figures he'd glimpsed at calisthenics were walking toward the bridge.

Dan frowned. Did he know them?

He believed he did.

F
ROM the predeployment briefing, Aisha had expected the airport to be run-down. But she hadn't expected it to be surrounded by tanks.

Well, not tanks exactly, but high-wheeled armored cars with machine guns jutting as men in yellow-green berets lounged in their shade. Armed troops occupied the terminal building, too. The only civilians stood in a double line, heads bowed as they shuffled forward, laden even more heavily with luggage than she was. They didn't look as if they were going on vacation.

The little man was perspiring so heavily his pink shirt was soaked front and back. The terminal was hotter than the Harlem summer, a closed-in, waxy, intimate torridity like a closed-up green house. His knees shook as he bowed, eyes flicking to her, then away. “Welcome, welcome . . . Agent Erculiano, Agent . . . Ar-Rahim?”

“That's correct.”

“You are—you are with the Americans?”

“I
am
an American.”

“Oh . . . my mistake . . . come this way . . . very glad . . . a car waiting.”

Special Agent Aisha Ar-Rahim was used to people mistaking her nationality. Most Americans overseas wore an instantly recognizable uniform of khaki pants and polo shirts. Sometimes the khakis had cargo pockets, or the shirts were button-down, but they were always short-sleeved and wrinkle-free, and their wearers stood clear of the locals as if they carried flesh-eating bacteria. But she swished along in a voluminous cerise silk abaya, clogs, and a lavender pashmina she'd tied in a soul-singer headwrap as soon as she left Washington. In her purse was a cell phone, a gold-toned badge with the seal of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and handcuffs. Along with a little prayer rug she'd bought on hajj and a digital Canon.

The little man scurried ahead. Erculiano said again, “I can carry that for you.”

Paul Erculiano, of the open-necked shirts worn with Italian slacks, was the assistant agent in charge—her subordinate—but they'd never worked together before. It was the third time he'd offered, and she wasn't sure whether it was politeness, being patronizing, or simple brownnosing. “I can handle it,” she snapped, though her suitcase
was
heavy. The computer was in it and her Koran, and she always brought crime-scene gear overseas: a six-ounce spray can of ninhydrin, latex gloves, evidence tape, bags, and a dozen evidence-collection documents.

Down in the bottom, inside a folded Marine Corps duffel bag from the Camp Henderson Exchange, was her body armor are a nine-millimeter SIG Sauer P228 and four magazines of Cor-Bon +P+ hollow points. The pistol was her issue weapon, but the bag had been the suggestion of one of the older agents in the Washington office. “Take along a spare duffel,” he'd said. “I always do, on assignments. You never know when you're gonna find something worth bringing back.”

The Naval Criminal Investigative Service was the Navy Department's civilian detective force. Most agents focused on traditional criminal investigations, a big problem for a department as huge as Defense, but they also worked counternarcotics, counterintelligence, counterterrorism, and naval security, both aboard ship and wherever sailors or marines were stationed ashore. Aisha was a federal law enforcement officer, like an FBI or DEA agent. Her chain of command went not through the military, but up the civilian side to the secretary of the navy. Whom she happened to know, having been given the Navy Superior Civilian Service Award by him two years before for her work at the Middle East Field Office, breaking a case involving stolen explosives, forged base IDs, and a terrorist attack on a U.S. ship.

In the car the little man sat in back with them, though the front passenger seat was unoccupied. He kept wiping his forehead, taking deep breaths, and sighing. He said his name was Bahdoon. “First or last?” Erculiano asked, leaning forward so Aisha could see his chest hair. His beard had grown out during the flight, and he reeked of lime after-shave.

Bahdoon explained most Ashaarans didn't have last names, not as Westerners used them. “We have the name we are given. Then our father's name. I am Bahdoon, my father was Abukar, I am Bahdoon Abukar. Then my grandfather, so that is three names.”