The Crisis

by David Poyer

  “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.

  5

  Ashaara City

  FROM 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.”

  “Don’t you get confused?”

  “We have our ways of identifying those we can trust,” he said. Before she could ask he added, “Women use their father’s names too. They do not change them when they are married.”

  She blinked out the window, shielding her eyes against the glare. The city—a town really—looked nearly empty. Then, as they passed side streets, furiously active. Here and there a balcony or stuccoed wall reminded her of Italy, bu
t shabbier. The dilapidated, crumbling buildings were one-or two-story, painted either white or bright green or blue. Here and there one had collapsed on itself. A woman in a sarilike robe, colorful as a tankful of cichlids, stared from the shade of a ragged awning. Hundreds of flimsy plastic bags slowly tumbled in the wind, past lean men standing by wooden booths, jiggling something in their pockets. One stepped into the street and spat where they’d just passed.

  “What are they selling?” Erculiano said, peering past her. “I don’t see anything for sale.”

  She twisted, trying to see, but caught only dark visages glowering after them. Her face was black too, but there was no acknowledgment of that in those eyes. Her gaze caught on a line of children sitting against a wall. Their thin legs cocked up in sharp angles. She looked after them for a long time, until they were out of sight.

  “Is there famine in the city, Bahdoon?”

  “No famine. Plenty of rice and bread. The president feeds us all. Unless of course they are a rebel.”

  A few blocks on what looked very much like a mob pushed and shoved in front of a row of shops. “Is there unrest in the city?” she asked. “I saw something going on down that street we just passed. Were those looters?”

  “No, no unrest. That is the Indian Quarter. If there is crime, that is for the police to deal with. I’m sure they are on their way. Only a few more minutes to headquarters.” He jerked his neck as if something were biting him between the shoulder blades, and looked away, to the other side of the speeding, lurching car.

  Aisha followed his gaze and saw two men beating up a third, who sagged, staring past his assailants as if he weren’t participating. All three were in colorful shirts and ragged pants. The victim’s gaze followed their car but his expression didn’t change as his eyes seemed to meet hers. Probably, given the tinted windows, he hadn’t seen her at all.

  The mansarded redbrick palace with corner towers was encircled by not just a tall iron fence but a moat. Once it must have been decorative. Now it was a dried-up ring of cracked mud and puddles of scum. The roofs shone the pale green of old copper. More of the troops who’d guarded the airport stood at the gate. A red-and-white crossing barrier from a World War II movie swung up as a guard leaned on the lever arm.

  “The Service of Interior Documentation,” Bahdoon explained. “You will meet our minister, Monsieur Mukhtar Samatar. He is eager to give you every assistance in your mission.”

  SAMATAR however wasn’t in, and from the looks of the offices, she wondered if he’d ever return. Despite being ringed by troops, the Palais de Sécurité felt abandoned. Bureaucrats in sweated-through pants and dress shirts sat tensely at desks, blinking, smoking one cigarette after another.

  Bahdoon finally found a major who agreed to sit down with them, in a dingy cubby in a subbasement. Apparently a cell block, though now there didn’t seem to be anyone in the holding area, which was dark. But the little Ashaaran didn’t accompany them, vanishing between the main floor and the basement.

  A lower-level policeman who spoke English sat in to translate. An aged, bent, very black clerk or transcriptionist crooned to herself near the door as she bent over an old ledger spidery with ink, which was literally—Aisha looked twice—chained to her desk. A ceiling fan that looked as if it had hung for a century without dusting rocked with a protesting squeal as it rotated at the speed of a clock’s minute hand. The major, in starched fatigues, a brown-leather-holstered Makarov automatic at his hip, listened to her without expression. “Here are our passports, visa, and documents,” she said, squaring them on the green paper desk protector. “And the letter from your minister expressing his hope we can work together. Perhaps our first step should be to link up with the local police for a background briefing.”

  The translator spoke around a cud of what Aisha assumed was qat. He had a red-eyed stare, as if looking at someone behind her at whom he was very angry. The major, whose name was Assad, said through him, “Unfortunate, Minister Samatar has left the city. Like big assistant. I am senior officer left in charge.”

  “I see. Do you know when he’ll be back?”

  “That major can’t talk you. Political situation is . . . orooyo at moment.”

  She had no idea what orooyo meant. Fluid? “Well . . . I’d like to begin by discussing the security situation, and how we can help.” She hesitated. “Tatakullum arabi, Ra’id? Do you speak Arabic?”

  “Shwei. Not much. Parlez-vous français?”

  She said she did not. Erculiano said nothing, though she glanced at him, so they continued as they were. Assad spoke, leaning on the desk, and the translator spat, “Major say outsiders, foreigners, they give Ashaara too much help. No. Not little help. When to say when.”

  “Perhaps I didn’t understand that properly. Please ask the major if that is an official comment? For the record?”

  Assad shrugged. He said something the translator didn’t bother with. Then added, “Any rate, Major will do what I can. Are Americans considering come?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it. Background, that’s what I’m principally here for.”

  “Background . . . background,” the translator mumbled. Assad scowled at him.

  “Information. Knowledge about Ashaara.”

  “Intelli-jenz,” the man tried. “Espion?”

  “Not exactly. Uh, can the major tell me what are his principal concerns? As an officer of the Ashaaran national police force?”

  “He wants to know what yours. What your concerns.”

  “Well . . . safety and security of the airport, and the area close to the embassy.”

  “Tous les deux sont parfaitement secure,” Assad said in what she guessed was exquisite French. The translator said, “Oather okay.”

  Oather? “Um, second are what might become personnel safety issues, such as drugs.”

  “He say, you interest in drugs? What kind?”

  She looked at the bulge in the translator’s jaw. “What is this gentleman chewing?”

  The man grinned, showing her a grassy mass in his teeth. “This qat. Is no big deal. Is like coffee.”

  “Harder drugs, then. Whatever you find most threatening.” She paused, then chanced it. “Monsieur Bahdoon mentioned rebels on the ride from the airport. I knew there was unrest, due to the famine. Food riots? But what is this about a rebellion?”

  “Parlero Italiano?” said Erculiano.

  Assad looked blank, but the aged transcriptionist, or whatever she was, turned immediately in her backless chair. “Sì, parliamo Italiano. Che cosa gradite sapere?”

  “La città è nel corso della divisione. The city is in the process of being divided,” Assad said through her, then via Erculiano to Aisha as he studied her face. “The president has always governed without distinction of clans. All are equal. As are all religions: Christians, Muslims, even the animists of the Western Mountains, all are equal before the state and the law. The rebels reject this. They fight for loot and power, and for their savage interpretation of the words of the Prophet, peace be upon him.”

  “Peace be upon him,” Aisha repeated, earning glances from all three Ashaarans.

  Assad cleared his throat. His gaze tracked the creaking fan. “ I ribelli . . . alcuni di loro ora sono attivi nella parte del sud della città. Some of the rebels are active in the south of the city. Our troops are moving to address the unrest. Meanwhile, normal police activities continue. Would you find it helpful to accompany us on one of our activities? That would give you better background than sitting through a briefing.”

  She said warmly they’d look forward to doing so. Assad rose and bowed, not extending his hand. He spoke for the first time in English, the sentence obviously prepared before he spoke it.

  “Monsieur Bahdoon is . . . unavailable. My driver will take you to your embassy.”

  THEIR “office” was a Conex box. The interior was lined with steel shelving, the shelving with canned water, medical and rescue supplies, blankets, and batteries. All too obviously, it had be
en a storage unit the day before they arrived.

  The embassy lay a quarter mile from the sea, which was just visible between spreading acacias the color of dried parsley and sag-roofed tourist cabins or beachfront cottages. Its walls were brick, no doubt the local product, a soft pale rose, darker inside, where it was chipped. It looked like the campus of a moderately prosperous junior college. The grounds were a half mile across, ringed with a security road just inside the wall, though she hadn’t seen everything yet, just driven in and taken a quick meeting with the ambassador’s staff assistant and the military attaché, a Lieutenant Col o nel Jolene Ridbout, U.S. Army.

  Sitting in a tilting metal chair with a broken caster, Aisha contemplated a career that had brought her to this.

  It had started in Georgia, sixteen weeks at the Special Federal Agent course: crime scenes, firearms proficiency, hand-to-hand, arrest procedures. She’d finished third, then blown the criminal law final. But the service had wanted her all the same. Female African-American agents? She wouldn’t be the first, but they were still thin on the ground. Muslim agents? The director had offered a deal she couldn’t refuse.

  Her first assignment had been the San Diego Field Office, and the usual new-agent case load: burglary, larceny of more than fifteen hundred dollars, suicide. Having grown up as sheltered as the Muslim community had kept her, it had been sobering. Her first overseas assignment had been Bahrain. There she’d worked for one of the oldest agents still carrying a shield, a legend in the service: the man who’d fingered Jay Harper, the spy, years before.

  Since then she’d served on a protective service detail, providing security for visiting dignitaries, secretary of defense–level officials; then done the obligatory tour of independent duty afloat: in her case, the USS George Washington battle group, responsible for not just the carrier, but the whole strike force, destroyers, frigates, auxiliaries. She remembered Commander Candy, and sighed. His smooth mocha skin, in the darkness of his stateroom . . . the only time she’d slipped so far. Then, the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, to improve what was already fairly good Arabic.