Piranha

by Dale Brown

  “Maybe having nothing to do for a few hours isn’t so bad,” she said.

  “Ya think?” said Zen. He pulled her down for a kiss. Except for the tooth, it was perfect; along, slow melt into the softness she kept behind the bomber-pilot face.

  “Mmmmm,” she said.

  “Mmmmm,” he repeated, his fingers sliding to the top of her flight suit. They had just started south when there was a scream outside.

  Zen jerked back and grabbed the wheels of his chair, Breanna rushed ahead of him, running to the medical tent ten yards away. Two Whiplash team members, fully armed, came on a dead run, one dropping to his knee just outside the tent and talking into his microphone. Danny Freah barked something and the door to the big tent flew open. Freah, Sergeant Liu, and a Navy corpsman pushed out dragging a small Filipino. It was the woman they’d captured below, her shirt hanging half off.

  “She grabbed a scissors,” said Liu. “She tried to stab the captain.”

  “Guerrilla,” said Stoner, appearing behind Zen.

  “Maybe she just doesn’t like the idea of being manhandled,” said Breanna. The young woman had collapsed to the ground. Bree went to her and kneeled down.

  “Careful, Captain,” said Danny.

  “Were there all men in there?” asked Bree.

  “I don’t think that was the problem,” said Liu. “We took a gun from her earlier.”

  Breanna squatted in front of the Filipino. “Are you okay?”

  The young woman didn’t answer.

  “restraints,” said Danny. Liu nodded and went back inside the tent.

  “CPP,” said a Marine officer who’d joined the semicircle. “Commie.”

  “No. she’s a Muslim,” said Stoner. “Ask her.”

  “What difference does that make?” said the Marine.

  Stoner said nothing, but came over and lowered himself into a squat next to Breanna. Danny, standing behind the Filipino and still holding her shirt, stooped slightly. A light drizzle had started to fall; the rain was warm, like the sprinkle from a shower.

  “What are you doing on this island?” asked Stoner. “You don’t come from here.”

  The young woman spit at him, but the spook didn’t react.

  “We’re not your friends, but we’re not interested in hurting you either,” he said. “Tell us why you’re here. Otherwise we’ll turn you over to the Army.”

  She said nothing. They stared at each other a few seconds more; then Stoner rose.

  “She’s a guerrilla,” said Captain Peterson. “You’ll have to give her over to Western Command, the Filipino Army. Her people were probably planning a raid.”

  “She’s not CPP, and she wasn’t planning a raid,” said Stoner.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Peterson said.

  Stoner gave the Marine a half smile but didn’t answer his question. He turned to Zen instead—he was the ranking officer, but even so, Zen thought it odd—and told him. “The people in that settlement are probably all related; came here from one of the other islands. Luzon or someplace. They’ll have a horror story.” Stoner then turned abruptly and walked away.

  “Whether she’s a Commie or not,” said Peterson, “you’re going to have to turn her over to her government.”

  “She’s my prisoner,” said Danny. “I’m not sure what I’m going to do with her yet.”

  Peterson took a long breath obviously designed to underline what he was going to say next. “Captain, you have to follow proper procedures. And if there’s a village that’s threatening our post, then—”

  “We’ll survey the village to see if it’s a threat,” said Danny. “In the meantime, this woman may have to stand charges.”

  “For grabbing some scissors?” said Bree.

  Danny glared at her.

  “I want to talk to Colonel Bastian,” said Danny. He turned to Liu. “Put her in the tent. Keep her hands cuffed. Behind her.”

  Stoner walked along the perimeter of the airstrip, letting the light rain soak his face and clothes. He knew he wanted it to purge his anger. He also knew it wouldn’t work, not completely.

  Desire was the cause of all suffering. He stared into the droplets of rain, gazing out at the ocean. The furling waves had no desire; they were just drop of water pushed by physics.

  Like him.

  Not like him. He hated Woods—he hated all of the Navy people. And the Marines. Especially the Marines.

  Irrationally, ridiculously. He had been a SEAL, and yet he hated the Navy. His assignments with the Company made use of his Navy expertise. Yet he hated the Navy. With no reason, beyond a hundred thousand insults and injuries, all to his ego, all meaningless in the great flow of life.

  He would never be a true Buddhist, since he could not denounce is ego. Maybe he didn’t want to be a true Buddhist—which, ironically, would make him closer to being one. The koan of it was a beautiful, humorous circle.

  Stoner held his fingers together, his arms down at his sides, absorbing the rain. He actually liked Freah for not wanting to turn the idiot girl over to the Filipino Army. He liked all the Dreamland people—Zen Stockard especially. The major had just sat there, listening, not forming a judgement. The guy knew shit every second he was awake, but he didn’t bitch about it.

  And his wife, his beautiful wife …

  Stoner let the idea float out toward the water. Desire was the cause of all suffering, the Buddha taught, and this was still the most difficult lesson to reconcile.

  Danny knew from Bison he wouldn’t find Colonel Bastian in the trailer, but he went there first anyway. Then he walked very deliberately—to the tent that had been designated as Colonel Bastian’s quarters. He knew he wouldn’t find the colonel there either. So by the time he went to look for him where he had known all along he would be—Iowa, getting ready to takeoff—it was too late. The Megafortress’s four engines rumbled and flared as Danny watched from twenty or thirty yards away; slowly being towed toward the runway, preparing to take off.

  “Hey, Cap,” said Powder as Danny watched the Megafortress put her nose into the wind. “Getting wet, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Danny. If he wanted, he could use his smart helmet to talk to the colonel right now, ask him what to do. But he didn’t.

  “So what’s with the girl?” asked Powder. “Tried to shoot your head off?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Like that girl is Bosnia, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Danny, who hadn’t even thought about that incident.

  Oh, he realized.

  Oh!

  “Spooky replay, huh?”

  Danny put his hand over his eyes, shielding them from the rain. Powder had been with him in Bosnia.

  “You know, I hadn’t even thought about it,” he told the sergeant. “I didn’t even remember that.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah,” Danny laughed.

  “Really, Cap? You blocked the whole sucker out?”

  More or less. It had probably poked at him when he realized the person he’d grabbed was a woman, but he hadn’t really remembered, or thought about it, maybe because he was too focused on doing his job. Or maybe the memory was just too much.

  The other woman was a Muslim too.

  “Shit,” said Danny.

  “Captain?”

  “Let’s go get some coffee,” he told Powder. “Assuming these Navy guys know how to make it.”

  He’d been in Italy as part of a Special Tactics Squadron, and through a series of related and unrelated developments, wound up being assigned with two of his men to accompany a UN negotiating team. The UN people were to meet with government officials at a police station in an obscure hillside town. The day before Danny, Powder, and another STS sergeant named Dave Chafetz went into the town with two plainclothes Yugoslavian policemen to familiarize themselves with the area. The policemen were scared shitless about something, even though they were in ostensibly friendly territory.

  Scouting the ingress and egress routes went q
uickly. The police station was located near the town’s biggest intersection, which, despite the Yug’s assurance, was highly problematic. Danny and his team members took mental notes of several evacuation points, including the police station roof. They planned to have a pair of Blackhawks and some scout helicopters no more than two minutes away, and a ground unit with armored vehicles within striking distance. With Danny taking pains not to tip off his assessments to his Yugoslav escorts, it took about four hours to scout the whole place. Danny’s efforts were more professional than practical; it wouldn’t take a genius to know roughly where an emergency rendezvous or pickup would be planned.

  The policemen kept asking nervously if he’d seen enough, hinting almost to the point of insistence that it was time for them to return to their UN base. Finally, Powder suggested they look at the building next to the police station; it was a grocery-type store, though from the window and door facing the street, the shelves looked pretty bare.

  The policemen argued it was time to leave. Danny exchanged glances with his two men, then told the Yugs they were going in.

  “Fine,” said one of the policemen. “We’ll wait out here.”

  More than likely, they were just being paranoid, but you could never tell. The building had to be inspected and it had to be inspected now.

  Danny and his men were dressed in fatigues with armored vests, but weren’t carrying rifles. They could and would call on air support if things got crazy, probably cancel the meeting tomorrow, and set the process back considerably.

  He left his Beretta in its holster, trying to play it as innocently as possible. The door squeaked on its jamb as he pushed inside, and a bell at the corner of the frame rang, but there was no one in sight. He walked in, boots creaking against the old floorboards—there was a basement; they’d have to investigate.

  Danny had memorized a set of cumbersome phrases in Serbo-Croatian, meant more to show he was friendly than to really communicate. He rehearsed one—“Vrlo mi je drago što vas vidim,” or roughly, “pleased to meet you”—as he walked toward a glass display counter about three quarters of the way back in the room. The display was empty, as were the shelves nearby. The place had a slightly sweet smell to it, the sort of scent that might come from cooking cabbage. The faint odor mixed with something more like dirt or mud.

  Something moved on his right. He spun, his hands down near his belt and gun.

  A figure came from behind a tattered curtain, a thin shadow. He thought it was a boy at first, then realized it was a girl, a young woman really. Maybe five-one, barely ninety pounds. Her hair was very short, unusual for the area.

  “Vrlo mi” he started, faltering almost immediately with the pronunciation. He had memorized a phrase for “are you the owner?”—“da li ste sopstvenik?” which was intended to apply to the taxi drivers. He tried to remember it, but before he could, the girl held her hands in front of her, then backed away.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said, putting up his own hand.

  The girl stopped. The store was unlit, making it difficult to see her face well, but Danny thought she had understood what he said.

  “We’re just Americans. Yanks,” he told her. “United States. U.S. We just, uh, looking around. Do you have anything to sell?”

  It was lame, but it was all he could think of. Powder, who was a few feet behind him, said they were looking for coffee.

  “Powder,” said Danny. “This isn’t a deli.”

  “Hey, Cap, you never know. I could go for a good hit of joe right now.”

  “We just want to look around,” Danny told the girl. “Okay?”

  she stared at him, and then nodded, or seemed to nod.

  “You stay with her. Powder, while I check out the stairs.”

  “You sure, Cap?”

  “I’m sure.”

  The urge to take out his gun was overwhelming, but Danny managed to resist, determined to show the young woman he meant no harm. He walked toward an open staircase at the side of the room. A candle and matches were on a small ledge at the base of the steps; he lit them, then, calling ahead, went upstairs. In the glow of the candle, Danny saw the floor of a large room was covered with bird shit; he looked up and saw little remained of the roof. Still, he walked far enough inside to make sure no one was hiding in the shadows, then returned to where Powder was monitoring the young woman.

  “Basement next, Powder.”

  “Yes, Cap.”

  In the basement, Danny found a mattress and some bedclothes about four feet from the bottom step. There was nothing else; no furnace, no washing machine, not even a store of food—just the stone and dirt walls of the foundation.

  Danny relaxed a bit as he walked back up the stairs. Idiot policemen were probably just anxious to go home—

  or more likely, complete whatever black-market transaction was waiting for them near the checkpoint. Smuggling was a common sideline for the authorities here.

  Once back on the main floor, Danny started toward the door, then remembered he hadn’t looked beyond the torn curtain the girl had emerged from.

  As he turned and took a few steps toward the concealed area, Powder said something, then shouted. Totally by instinct, Danny ducked as the woman charged past his sergeant. He reached out and grabbed her leg, sending her tumbling against the shelves. A small revolver fell from her hand.

  “Shit,” said Powder.

  Now standing, Danny clamped his foot on the woman’s arm. The two Yugoslavian policemen charged inside, raking the ceiling with submachine guns. After shouts from the Americans finally managed to calm them, one of the policemen grabbed the woman and hauled her out. Danny—pistol now out—pulled back the curtain.

  A boy, three of four years old, sat on the floor in the middle of a small, squalid kitchen, his thumb in his mouth.

  By the time Danny got outside, the young woman was gone, and several policemen had poured out of the station next door. As Danny tried to sort out the situation, one of the policemen had said the woman was a known Muslim. Danny tried to find out what would happen to her, but was ignored. Finally, he and his men had no option but to leave. The meeting between the UN and government officials was never held.

  Powder had grabbed the pistol and found three bullets loaded, but the firing pug was broken and it probably couldn’t have fired.

  Months later, Danny saw a Reuters news story about bodies being unearthed in a field near the same village. There was murky photo of a recently opened ditch. In the corner of the photo were the bodies of a young woman and a small boy, both nude.

  Was it the woman and her son? The photo was too poor for him to tell. They could have been anyone in that war, any of a thousand victims, mother and child, sister and brother, innocents slain because of religion, or revenge, or just for the hell of it. It was the reason the U.S. got involved in the first place; to stop shit like that from happening, but reasons, and intentions, and the future didn’t make much difference to the people in that ditch.

  Aboard Iowa, over the South China Sea

  1600

  As she poked into a solid wall of rain just over the ocean, Dog slid Iowa back down through the clouds, holding her steady through a series of buffeting winds. Piranha was ready to dance, but they couldn’t find her a partner; the Navy ASW planes with their sonar buoys had been delayed. Delaford said the Indian sub captain might try to take advantage of the weather to snorkel and recharge batteries. So, with nothing else to, they were trying to find him on the surface. The laborious process of running tracks over the empty water hadn’t yielded any results, however, and Colonel Bastian was starting to feel tired.

  “I felt that yawn over here, Colonel,” said the copilot. “I thought we were heading into a hurricane.”

  “Very funny, Rosen. Just keep tabs on those Sukhois.”

  “Aye, aye, Cap’n.”

  “We’re not in the Navy yet,” Dog told him.

  “No, but we’re low enough to be a ship,” said the copilot. It was only a sli
ght exaggeration—they were at a thousand feet, using every sensor they had, including their eyes.

  “Shark Ears,” the Navy Orion with the sonar buoys, checked in. They were still a good forty minutes away.

  “Maybe we should set up a refuel,” suggested Rosen. “Extend our patrol and come back and work with them for a while, assuming they don’t totally scrub because of the weather. It’s pretty rough down there, and it’s going to get worse.”

  “Good idea,” said Dog.

  The tanker was flying a track well to the north east. With the help of Iowa’s sophisticated flight computer system, Rosen quickly plotted a course to rendezvous about thirty minutes away. Eager to get away from the water and the severe weather below, Dog leaned back on the stick and the airplane bolted upright. The air was fairly clear away from the leading edge of the storm, their view unimpeded.

  “We may have a contact on the surface,” said Rosen. “Ten miles, two degrees east of our nose, just about in our face.”

  Dog immediately began to level off and nudge toward the contact. Delaford, monitoring the feeds on his equipment downstairs, couldn’t find anything. Dog swung Iowa around, holding the Megafortress on her wing, and cruised over the coordinates at about a thousand feet.

  “If there was something there, it’s gone now,” said Delaford finally. “I don’t think we should launch Piranha until we have something more definite.”

  “I concur,” said Rosen.

  “All right. Let’s give Shark Ears this point as a reference,” said Dog. “In the meantime, let’s go tank.”

  As they started to climb once again, the two Chinese fighters flying over the nearest aircraft carriers changed their course.

  “Looks like we’ve finally aroused some curiosity,” said Rosen. “Their new course will put them in visual range in eight minutes.”

  There was no pressing need to refuel, so Dog decided not to lead the fighters out to the tanker. He told Rosen to cancel the rendezvous for now, and resumed what was essentially a holding pattern just over the worst of the storm. Big fists of gray clouds ran north west by south east for as long as the eye could see; a light haze sat to the northeast of the front, a dark blanket to the southwest where the storm was coming from.