The Crisis

by David Poyer

  The crackling was growing louder, a grinding like an icebound river giving way. Smoke columns pillared to the north. She wasn’t sure enough of her bearings to know what neighborhood they came from. The crackling ebbed and waxed, as if the miles of baking buildings were frying under the rising sun.

  She wondered if little Bahdoon and Major Assad and the old secretary who spoke perfect Italian were out there.

  She squeezed her eyes, balancing on the hand-worn steel. Remembering the raid Assad had taken them on. The frightened faces of the smugglers as his security troops had beaten them, bound them, thrown them into the trucks. Rebels? Possibly.

  Where had they gone from there?

  She remembered the tumbled bodies of the dead. Women. Children.

  She saw again the angelic young man who’d sprinted past in the alley. Whom she’d held in her sights long enough to end his life. But hadn’t.

  What was happening out there? Who else was dying?

  Perched there, she said a du’a for God to be merciful. Knowing that all too often, it seemed, the best He could do for those who suffered was death.

  THEY called everyone together in the chancery lobby. A chandelier of polished brass and aluminum shards hung like a massive scimitar from a ceiling speckled with stainless eight-pointed stars. Ridbout stood with the ambassador as the white-haired former child star explained the situation. The president and his cabinet had fled. The embassy guards the Ashaaran army usually posted hadn’t reported for duty that morning. Nevertheless, no grounds for panic. The Marines were on their way from Oman. Nonemergency personnel would be evacuated when they arrived. Essential personnel would stay, with U.S. military protection.

  If conditions degenerated, he’d evacuate everyone, haul down the flag, and wait for peace to return to the Ashaara they loved. Until then he was staying. Feeble applause followed, barely rising to those watching stars.

  Aisha noted Nuura squatting on the pale marble floor. Her roommate glanced past her, as if she didn’t recognize her.

  The DCM—deputy chief of mission—took over, reviewing the emergency action plan, making sure everyone knew his assignment. Ridbout came over when the meeting broke. A tall, deeply tanned, crew-cut marine in dark glasses followed her. “We’ve got a problem,” she began, no preamble. “No more Ashaaran security—you heard. Gunnery Sergeant Kaszyk here’s in command of our Marine security det.”

  “Gunnery sergeant.”

  “Just call me ‘Gunny,’ ma’am.”

  “Unfortunately, we don’t have a fully Inman-ized compound here. And I’ve only got a one-and-six detachment, seven men total, to defend it. I need you and your assistant to help Gunny out,” Ridbout told her. “Unless you object. Gunny, this is Special Agent Aisha Ar-Rahim, Naval Criminal Investigative Service.”

  “Any problem with that, uh, ma’am? Till we can get a patch over this situation?”

  “None at all. But call me Special Agent, please.”

  “How many with you, Special Agent?”

  “Myself and one other.”

  “Can you shoot? Any CQB training?”

  “We trained with shotguns and M16s at Glynco. Not to your standards, maybe, but we can take down a building.”

  He seemed to notice her abaya and headscarf then. Opened his mouth, looking her up and down; then closed it. “We’ll put you on our Goalkeeper team. Come with me, please?”

  BEING a Goalkeeper seemed to consist of sitting in a burnt-coffee-smelling “React Room” in the tower next to the USIS Library, just outside the concertina and inside the main gate. Kaszyk signed out rifles and vests festooned with magazine pouches to her, Erculiano, and two staff civilians who said they were Vietnam or Gulf War veterans. They took their weapons like young knights receiving their first swords. Aisha held hers on her lap, fingertips tapping metal and plastic.

  “D’ it go out?” Erculiano murmured, leaning toward her.

  The message to the Bahrain Field Office. She nodded. They might be trapped, but it was on record: the NCIS team at Ashaara City was officially part of the defense.

  Kaszyk unsnapped a binder. “Listen up. Defensive plan. We have twelve riflemen, including volunteers, and two light MGs. Not enough to defend a two-mile perimeter. These walls, any dirtbag with a ladder can scale them. So, we double-team the main gate and put two rapid reaction teams in the vans. Isolated incursions, trespassers, we send one and hold the other in reserve. When we have to send both, that’s when we secure the gate and fall back to the chancery.

  “If that happens, both fire teams fall back on the Goalkeepers. From there on we hold. I think we can, unless they come through that wire with something like a truck, vehicle-borne explosives.”

  Erculiano lifted a finger. “The ambassador said a task force was on its way.”

  “We hold out, sure, they can evacuate us.” The gunny’s face seamed; suddenly he looked older. “But I saw what they did to the Kuwaitis in Desert Storm. You can’t liberate the dead. Holding till they get here, that’s up to us.”

  The radio crackled. “Post One, beachside overwatch. Movement along the fences of the tennis court.”

  “Fire team one, deploy,” Kaszyk said, and the long afternoon began.

  STANDING at the front gate, which was being rapidly sandbagged by marines and staffers wheeling the bags out on dollies from a side shed, she watched refugees stream past. Fleeing the city, thronging the road south toward Asmara. Occasionally a truck snorted by, or a Mercedes, but most went on foot, toting bundles and chests, pushing carts piled with children and old people, rolled-up rugs, brass and aluminum cookware, wall hangings. One cart, pulled by a donkey the size of a large Labrador, penned an electric water heater, its white bulk rolling back and forth like a disturbed whale.

  A slight black marine with a scar from a repaired harelip asked, “Where you from, ma’am? You new here, right?”

  “I’m with the NCIS. A special agent.”

  “You Moslem? Way you dressed—”

  “I’m from New York. Who are these people? Do you have any idea?”

  “These the president’s clan. Getting out of Dodge.”

  She surveyed the passing crowd. “These are Xaasha? They don’t look like they’ve done too well out of it.” When he didn’t say anything she added, “And the rebels? Who are they?”

  “Rebels is what the government says. Ain’t seen any yet. May not even be any.”

  “What do you mean? Might not be any?”

  But he didn’t say, just stuck out his lip and pulled a grenade out of a pouch and fiddled with the pin.

  AFTER lunch, with the air outside like a hot towel over her face, the crackling started again. The portable radios beeped and chattered as the officers and the gunny discussed it. She waited with the vets and Erculiano and the marines who were neither on the gate nor in the vans at the moment. Finally word came to take position in the tower.

  They climbed the steel steps and came out into something like an airport control tower, but without glass. Heat broiled down from the green steel roof like a toaster oven. A lance corporal said the shooting was coming from the National Museum. He sited a machine gun to cover the gate. He positioned her and Erculiano where they could watch the wall, and the two veterans the chancery. The Gulf War vet clanged a green metal can down and handed out ammo. Aisha filled three magazines, forcing the cartridges down until her wrists hurt, then aligned them fussily on the concrete floor. They weren’t to load their rifles until ordered to. She had her pistol ready under her abaya, too, but she had serious misgivings about firing at starving people. She returned a look from Erculiano. It was quiet up here, except for the shooting. Which was getting closer.

  “Tower, Post One, gate; crowd headed our way.”

  Gunny Kaszyk came up the stairs two at a time, boots ringing on metal treads. He looked around without letting go the handrails. Said a few words to the corporal, who went down with him and came back up with a case of bottled water. He passed the radio from his left hand to his
right, then back, whistling through his teeth. The other marines leaned over the edge of the tower to spit the snuff they’d dipped before leaving the guardroom. The Vietnam vet sat on the ammo box, turning his tasseled loafers this way and that. He asked a marine if he could have a dip.

  A distant murmur became shouting. She stood and tried to see. The corporal focused binoculars. He spoke into the radio, then listened.

  “Looters,” he said. “Don’t seem armed.”

  “Will we shoot unarmed people?”

  “Anyone comes over this wall, we shoot,” the corporal said. “Ma’am.”

  “Call me Aisha.” It seemed silly for him to call her “Special Agent,” and “ma’am” was what she’d called her grandmother in Detroit.

  “Okay, Aisha. You can call me ‘Lance Corporal.’ ”

  The column came into view up the road. It looked like a procession of multicolored army ants. They came to a compound with high white walls and slowly sucked in through the gates. When the corporal handed her the binoculars she saw them in the second-story windows, then the third.

  “Chinese embassy,” the Viet vet said. “They hauled ass last week.”

  Things began arcing out through the windows, which weren’t always opened first. She heard glass breaking, sharp thuds on concrete or asphalt, accompanied by shouting. Cascades of paper drifted like square white leaves through the heated air. Figures passed to and fro behind the windows. She lowered the field of view and saw them staggering out, heavily laden. Computer keyboards. Monitors. Whole filing cabinets, presumably empty—hence the shower of paper. Window air conditioners. A painted screen that must have been the delight of some bored bureaucrat.

  “Water,” said the corporal, more order than offer. She accepted a tepid bottle and drank it down.

  The radio crackled. “Intruders, south wall. Reaction One, respond.” The van gunned away, circled the roundabout past the chancery, and sped off.

  She aimed the binoculars and saw, wavering magnified in the mirage, tiny figures silhouetted atop the wall before jumping down. The van stopped and a popping came. The figures hesitated, then vanished, either falling or jumping. She couldn’t see, in the violent shimmer of hot air over dry ground, what exactly had happened.

  Shouting and shoving at the outer gate. The marines had closed and locked it, a massive portcullis of chrome-plated steel. They stood back a few yards, weapons at port arms, stifflegged as guard dogs. Something flew between the bars and shattered.

  “I’m going down there,” she said to the corporal.

  “That’s not a good idea,” he said. Then, as if recognizing his inability to actually order her to stay, held out another bottle of water.

  The interior of the tower felt like the belly of an incinerator. Outside, in the open, was even hotter. The breeze burned her skin. Abayas and head-scarves weren’t just for modesty. In a climate like this they made sense. She passed three employees in colorful local dress, squatting in the dust inside the wall. They glanced up fearfully. Then their gazes turned inward, but they never stopped speaking, engaged in what sounded like an agitated argument.

  A gate guard turned as she approached. His gaze fastened on her rifle, then looked her up and down. “You!” he shouted. “What’re you doing with that?”

  “The gunny issued it to me,” she said, and handed it to him. The belated recognition on his face made her even more angry.

  “Sorry. Didn’t know you were one of . . . I mean, I thought you were—”

  “Just shut up,” she said, and went around him, up to the gate.

  Hands and arms were thrust through, groping like the tentacles of an anemone. The smell hit her like a slap. Children pleaded to come in. On impulse, she held out the water. It was snatched away, and instantly two dozen other hands waved for more.

  She was about to speak when the crowd parted, revealing trucks braking in clouds of exhaust and dust. The troops who jumped down wore drab, threadbare fatigues like the Ashaaran military, but not one wore a helmet. Some were bareheaded; others had cloth tied in sweatbands; most wore garish headgear from various sources: stocking caps, ball caps, hats of woven grass, even a green Tyrolean with a red feather, incongruously stylish on one strutting bantam of a man. They carried other things, too. Radios. Shiny tape or CD players. As they formed a line she thought, Thank Allah. They’ll protect us until the Marines arrive.

  Then she saw the golf balls embedded in their cheeks, their saffron-yellow eyes.

  A hulking apparition in starched camouflage strode to the gate, hurling aside civilians slow in moving away. Sweat glistened on his stubbly, broad visage, and with him wafted a sweet stink of whiskey. At first she thought he was white. Then saw the mottling of vitiligo, melanin deficiency. She’d known a barber in Harlem with the same condition, but not nearly so extreme. This man’s neck and hands were black, but it looked as if a white man’s face had been torn off and pasted over his countenance.

  With his huge size and the gangster-style shortened Kalashnikov he carried like a pistol, the effect was disorienting and terrifying. He stomped up to the gate, and for a moment she feared he might tear it apart with his bare hands. She gripped her pistol underneath her clothing. Even the marines took a step back.

  The man shouted something long, involved, and angry. He shook his rifle at her. She tried to make sense of his words, but failed. She tried Arabic. He waited till she finished, then commenced roaring again.

  “Get a translator,” she told the marine still awkwardly holding her rifle. He hesitated, then trotted off.

  Nuura came, looking as if she was about to faint. Watching her walk, Aisha realized for the first time that her roommate was pregnant. The huge man roared again. Nuura falteringly came out with English. “He wants the ones inside. Demands you give them to him.”

  “Who? Americans?”

  “Us,” Nuura whispered. When Aisha frowned, puzzled, she added, “Those who work for the foreigners.”

  Aisha caught her breath, remembering the frightened women arguing in the dust. When she looked back they were gone.

  “They were made rich in place of those more deserving,” shouted a fierce-faced young woman in a man’s shirt. “Look at me! I speak English! Am I employed? My brother was shot. Give them to us! We’ll decide which are traitors.”

  The translator shrank back. Aisha caught her arm and pushed her forward again. It felt light as a wren’s wing, her bones thinner than a human’s should be. Aisha smelled urine and swallowed, suddenly sick of the heat, the smells, the fear. “We’re not giving you up,” she told her. “Or anybody else. Right, everybody?”

  “Fuckin’ ay,” said one of the marines. He lifted his radio. “Post One, I say again: need the Big Bird down here, right now. Main gate.”

  Aisha squeezed the thin arm again. “Now, ask his name.”

  “He says he is Sergeant Major Olowe.”

  “Sergeant Major Olowe. All right. Now ask if he knows Major Assad. Of the Interior Ministry.”

  The man thrust out his lips, glaring at Aisha. She went on, “Tell him the major will not be happy to see him annoying us, instead of providing protection as agreed. Does he know your troops are out here looting? Threatening people?”

  Ridbout said, behind her, “Get away from the gate. Don’t get so close to them.”

  “I’m talking to—”

  “I’ll do the talking. Get back.” She watched, arms akimbo, as Kaszyk and two other marines set up a machine gun. The crowd murmured. “That one officer, or whatever he is. Sergeant major? Fine. Let him in.”

  Olowe had to lower his head to fit through. The marines aimed at the woman, who tried to come in too. She backed away, scowling, as they relocked the gate. Olowe didn’t object as a marine took his AK. He expanded his chest, looking around the compound. “Very pretty,” he said in heavily accented English. “Nice cars. Pretty.”

  “I’m Colonel Ridbout, military attaché to the People’s Government of Ashaara,” Ridbout told him. “What can we do
for you, Sergeant Major?”

  Olowe spoke rapidly; Nuura tried to keep up. “He says . . . there is no more People’s Government. Open these gates and let his friends in.”

  “This is the U.S. embassy,” Ridbout said. “Anyone who enters without permission, we have the right to kill. Tell him that.”

  Nuura’s voice shook; she clutched her stomach. “He says, give up Ashaarans and he will not kill Americans.”

  “No deal.” Ridbout nodded to a civilian who’d come quietly up from the chancery, a young man in a light gray suit and open-collared shirt, carrying a briefcase, whom up to now Aisha had not seen. “You may want to speak to our RSO, though.”

  The giant eyed her narrowly, then stalked toward the State employee. “What’s going on, Jolene?” Aisha murmured to Ridbout.

  “We’re making him an offer. Hopefully, one he can’t refuse.”

  Taking him out of sight of the gate, the regional security officer opened the briefcase. Olowe stiffened, as if insulted. Then bent to examine what lay within.

  THE streets were quiet for a few hours after Olowe left. Those who’d clamored for admittance trickled away, though a few, hunted-looking families of local employees, were admitted after lengthy checks. Gradually the shadows lengthened, but the air didn’t cool. She was called down several times to carry out body searches. She did them in a restroom behind the gate shack, seating the women on the toilet and asking them to lift their dresses while she ran her hands over them. She felt ashamed, but couldn’t help washing her hands after each search. She was climbing the tower again when shouts came from above.

  “They’re coming over the walls,” the corporal yelled as she emerged from the stairwell. He charged his weapon and aimed over the parapet.

  “Troops? Or more looters?” she panted, trying to catch her breath. Maybe she’d lose weight on this assignment, for a change.

  “Looters, I guess, but armed. Some of them.”

  Someone handed her her rifle. A flashback to Glynco, where they’d told her she had to name “her” rifle, and it had to be female. She felt doomed. Twice in her career she’d had to kill, but both times she’d been facing an armed and dangerous criminal.