The Towers

by David Poyer

  Knobby Swager stood motionless, pale, shaking. Teddy was about to look away, then remembered: He was in charge now. He grabbed the kid by the back of the neck. Talked for a couple of seconds, got him squared away. Word came to board. “Let’s move, troopers,” he shouted. Like some sergeant from a John Wayne. Yeah, well, life was like the movies sometimes. Yo, Oberg, he told himself, slapping each man as he went by. This is where you wanted to be.

  You wanted it real?

  This was the real thing.

  III

  The Gates of the Citadel

  8

  Prince Georges County, Maryland

  THE house had been in her mother’s family since before the Civil War. Its hand-baked primrose brick looked soft enough to eat. It dominated thousands of acres of rolling fields and woodland. The Blairs had been landowners, slaveholders, politicians, statesmen. One had sat in Lincoln’s cabinet. The Tituses were more recent, but Checkie’s father had done well in banking, a career his son had followed too. Her parents’ match had not been seen as unequal.

  Dan didn’t feel as confident that he belonged here. Who the hell was he, anyway? A working-class family. An alcoholic ex-cop for a dad. How lucky he’d been to find her. And how astonished when she’d accepted him. Welcomed him into a bigger, wealthier, more influential world than he’d ever before moved in.

  A tobacco-brown Crown Vic was parked kitty-corner across the stone gates. As Dan eased to a halt, uniformed men glanced into his car. “Why the guards?” he said, automatically getting his ID out. There’d never before been security here.

  “Mr. Titus hired us,” one said. “You the son-in-law? Lenson? Go on up, sir.”

  Her mother opened the front door. Queekie Titus was still beautiful, and even more imperious than her daughter. Her hand was kitten-soft, and the cheek she pressed ever so briefly to his smelled of lavender. “Dan. We were so glad to hear you were coming.”

  “I can’t stay long, Queekie.”

  “The Navy. I know. My father was in during the war, did I tell you that? I believe I did. But I can make up a room for you, shall I?”

  “I can stay for one night.”

  “How wonderful. Blair’s in the sunroom. We had to bring her home. You can’t actually rest in those hospitals. Always waking you up to take a sleeping pill.” She led him through, held the door for him. “Blair, sweetie. Dan’s here.”

  * * *

  SHE’D been drowsing, drifting in and out in front of the television, a book on her lap and the polished platinum croon of the drugs lulling her. She didn’t like what they did to her thought processes. But without them her bones ached, and her face hurt as if locked in an iron mask. When she managed to make sense of the news, it was frightening. Death counts from the attacks had reached three thousand. Something called the High Office of Homeland Defense was being created. It sounded like one of Orwell’s ministries from 1984. Someone had mailed anthrax spores to ABC, NBC, CBS, and Tom Daschle’s office in Washington. The whole postal system was shut down. It had to be Al Qaeda. Who else would attack the mail system, Congress, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, and Microsoft? No American would do such a thing.

  Or would he? Americans turned guns on their presidents. They shook their children to death. Tempted young men into their apartments, killed and dismembered them, and boiled their heads. But what was the answer? A police state, like some of the commentators seemed to want? Tyrannies were more murderous than individuals. She stared unblinking at the unblinking screen. Every few minutes the bewildered, simian visage of the nation’s chief executive returned, feigning resolution, feigning understanding, swaggering, blustering. She couldn’t believe he’d actually used the word “crusade.” Bin Laden himself could not have chosen a better rallying cry, to roil the Muslims they’d have to depend on to prosecute any punitive action.

  When her mother called, she groped for the mute button, then struggled to sit up. To hold her arms, or one, at least, up to the weary-looking man in khakis. He smelled of sweat and the outdoors when she hugged his neck. Suddenly, desperately, she wanted him close. She made a muffled noise into his shirtfront she herself couldn’t interpret.

  When he gently untangled himself and pulled up a chair, she lay back and tried to catch her breath. His hair was even shorter than usual. Was it grayer too? It seemed like months since they’d seen each other. Just a quick trip to the city for an interview. “You’re here.”

  “Got lucky. Talked them out of a long weekend.”

  “You drove?”

  “Straight through. Except for a stop at the house, to pick up some things.”

  She searched his face. “How long can you stay?”

  “Not very long. Overnight.”

  “Where to this time?”

  “Points east.”

  She squeezed his hand. “You look like you need some rest. But your voice—it sounds better.”

  “Still raw. But it’s getting better, yeah.” His fingers traced her cast. Was his gaze sliding away, off her face? The damage was still concealed, still covered, but it flamed steadily beneath the dressings: Remember me.

  Dan had been studying her since he came in. The light had haloed her at first, too bright in this glass-walled, quarry-tiled room looking out over a paddock, miles of hills, woods a riotous mosaic of fall color. Then out of it she’d emerged: strangely foreshortened, irregular beneath the flat facets of taut blanket. The air seemed too cold for a sickroom. No. She wasn’t sick. Only gravely hurt.

  “All right, tell me,” he said.

  “They say I was in surgery for seven hours. Three ribs. Two breaks in the right arm. One in the upper thigh. Those are all knitting.

  “They saved my eye, but it—I lost the eyelid, and a lot of skin. That’s a big deal for reconstruction, apparently. I’ll have scars—they say that’s how healing occurs—but later on a plastic surgeon can cut them out. The ear—well, there’s going to be trouble with that. Cartilage, apparently, doesn’t heal the same way bones do.”

  He squeezed her hand. Wanting to kiss her again, but afraid of hurting her. When she’d sat up to hug him, he’d caught the tug of pain on what was visible of her face. What he could see was wan and haggard; what he could not, he tried not to imagine. “Don’t take this the wrong way. But I want you to know, no matter what, you’re still beautiful. To me.”

  “I know, Dan. That’s not one of my worries.”

  “Good. Long as you know. How’s the pain?”

  “Stiff-upper-lippable. Except at night, sometimes—then I can’t always play the martyr.”

  Her mother came in with a tray. Set it down, then looked, just for a moment, nonplussed. “Oh—Dan. I forgot. Sorry. I’ll get some Coke.” She carried the whiskey decanter out like an acolyte bearing away the sacred wine.

  Blair clamped a hand over a laugh. Suddenly it seemed funny. Then it didn’t. Past Dan she caught the secretary of defense, then the prime minister. A bearded man in a headdress stood beside them. Oh, God, bin Laden? She rubbed her exposed cheek, confused, wishing she could scratch the terrible itch that crawled and bit beneath the inaccessible, dark side of her face. When she looked again, the three men were gone.

  “We’re going to start bombing soon,” he was saying. Dan, not the men on the television.

  “Are you going after him?”

  They both knew who he was. Dan said, “I’m not sure exactly where yet. I got TAD’d to CENTCOM and they’re forward-basing a targeting and intel group. I suspect pretty much everybody’s going to get thrown into this.”

  “A massive response. Like Desert Storm.”

  “That’s one of the options being considered.”

  “Where?”

  “Afghanistan. I don’t think that’s subject to classification. Since the SecDef’s spreading it all over the networks.”

  She blinked. “Uzbekistan will probably let us base there. The Tajiks—they’ll be wary. Can we supply through Pakistan? That’ll be the key. I met with Musharraf last year. He has his own
jihadists in the Tribal Territories; his security services funded the Taliban in the first place. The way I’d approach him—”

  Checkie cleared his throat from the doorway. When they looked his way, he wandered in. Shook Dan’s hand. “Good to see you.” He rubbed Blair’s head awkwardly. “She’s been asking for you.”

  Looking at them side by side, it was hard to remember Checkie wasn’t her biological father. He was Queekie’s second husband. Not a bad guy, Dan guessed, but not easy to feel comfortable with. Or maybe that was his own problem. “Well, I’ll leave you two alone,” her stepfather said. Then wandered out, the door slamming with a little puff of dust and flaking paint behind him.

  Blair kept drifting from apathy to something akin to sharpness. “You know what’s hard? Suddenly having nothing to do. No impact on events. No … calendar.”

  “You could call Margaret. Have her make you one up.”

  “Not funny. How would you like it if you suddenly became … no one?”

  “You’re not ‘no one,’ Blair. Just on the sidelines after taking a bad hit.”

  “I loathe football metaphors.”

  “You’ll be back on the field in no time. Carrying the ball again. For a touchdown.”

  “Oh, my God. Do all military people have to talk in clichés? Hey, will you turn me over? Not that way … this way.”

  He worked his hands under her, and although the burned patches were still tender, got her over on one side. Then took a second to wheeze. They looked at each other and burst out laughing. “This is how it’ll be when we’re eighty,” she murmured, shaking her head.

  “That won’t be so bad. If we’re together.”

  She captured his hand again. Glanced toward the door. Then pulled it down, under the blanket.

  Dan felt the rough edge of the leg cast, the binding around her ribs. In between was warm flesh. Below was a land he remembered. Eyes closed, she lay back. “A little lower … that’s right … oh. What if Mom came in…”

  It built, hovered, but then seemed to slip away. Submerge, back into the numbness. Numbness or pain. Her only choices these days. She reached down and stopped him. “Never mind. It’s not working. Almost did. Maybe later.”

  * * *

  AFTER she went to sleep, he sat with her parents watching cable news. A clip showing a demonstration in Iran came on. They were burning effigies of Uncle Sam and the president. SUPPORT ISLAMIC RESISTANCE one sign read. “We need to teach these people a hard lesson,” Checkie said. He looked at Dan. “You saw the guards, at the gate? The whole country’s going to be like that, if they have their way. We’re supposed to microwave our mail now. I hope you’ll tell me we’re going to straighten them out. I mean, body-count-wise.”

  “I guess we’ll see, Checkie.”

  “Are you going over there, Dan?” Queekie looked worried.

  “That’s what my orders say.”

  Her soft hand warmed his. “God be with you, Dan. And don’t worry about Blair. We’ll take good care of her.”

  “Yeah, we’ll take care,” Checkie said. “She’s going to need a lot more surgery, you know.”

  “On her face?”

  “Her face, her ear, her eye. Then they’ve got to take those scars away.” Her mother looked at the television. “She’ll have to go through physical therapy. That will be very painful.”

  Blair’s father gripped the arms of his chair. Said between gritted teeth, “Take the fight to them, damn it. Wish I was young enough to. No more of this pat-a-cake, like the last guy in the White House. We need to wipe these animals off the face of the earth.”

  * * *

  AT three Dan’s portable alarm went off. He dressed quietly, stripping the dry-cleaning bag off a set of khakis. Pinned on tarnished silver oak leaves; rows of ribbons; a gold Command at Sea pin. His old “water wings,” the surface warfare insignia, a destroyer, bow wave rolling out from her stem. His TAG tag with the unit shield and LENSON in block letters. His battle dress uniforms and desert boots were rolled in the duffel. That, an AWOL bag, and his computer case held his life now. It felt high schoolish, leaving Blair with her parents, but she needed care. And her face … what could you say to her about that? He’d watched her use her beauty on men many times. It had both attracted and repelled him, until he’d realized what lay under that cold perfection, that intellectual detachment. Not frigidity. Quite the opposite.

  A real double whammy: first she had to leave Defense, then this. How she’d deal, he couldn’t guess. And he’d be in the same situation soon. Retiring as an O-5 was respectable. Maybe not that great for an Academy guy. But respectable.

  Bullshit, he told himself. With his record, it was a slap in the face. But all he could do was do the best he could. Just as he’d done since stepping aboard USS Reynolds Ryan as an ensign, so many years before. He combed his hair in the dark, remembering humping his luggage up that brow, her rusty, dinged-in plates materializing out of a shroud of steam. And before that, lifting his right hand on the sun-baked brick of Tecumseh Court on a blazing day in June. I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic …

  All over America men and women were loading up. Across the Mideast, the Pacific. Shaving. Pulling on uniforms, flight suits. Boarding transport aircraft and ships.

  Going to war, against the most shadowy enemy America had ever faced. A man and a movement of suicidal zeal, bubbling up from pious but up till now largely peaceful millions. The Arabs he’d met, he’d liked. He didn’t think violence was typical of Muslims. If anything, they seemed more tolerant than a lot of Christians he knew.

  But maybe that was changing. If it was, the struggle would be horrific. And September the Eleventh would not be the only date etched in blood.

  The makeshift hospital room was dark. A motionless form snored in an armchair; the private-duty nurse. Dan took his wife’s hand. Tears stung his eyes. He blinked and coughed.

  She came awake, rushing upward from blackness into the warmth of his lips on hers. Disoriented. Then she struggled to sit up. “Oh—you’re going?”

  “I have to.” He sounded hoarse again.

  “Be careful, Dan. No more Signal Mirror missions. Have them check that throat.”

  “I will. And you, get well. Don’t worry. About anything.” He kissed her again, smelling her hair and the damp-earth scent of perspiration beneath dressings. Forced a smile. “You’re going to be back on your feet a bigger knockout than ever. And we’ll have a lot of years together.”

  “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  Fingers trailing apart. Parting.

  The scrape of a closing door. Then the murmur of a starter, the crackle of gravel under tires.

  She lay watching the shadows cast by his headlights slide across the ceiling.

  He glanced into the rearview as the house shrank behind him, then vanished; and a dark and lonely road opened ahead.

  9

  Sana’a

  “HEY, A-ee-sha. Lookin’ good there, girl.”

  “Dream about it, Lance Corporal.”

  “I do, I do. Ever’ night. Goin’ out? Hot date out in town?”

  She grinned at the young marine manning the gate. Far too young for her. They’d heard about her fighting side by side with Gunny Kaszyk and the rest of the security det at the embassy in Ashaara City. That seemed to make her part of the Corps. “Thinking about it,” she told him.

  “We locked down solid here. Nobody supposed to leave.” A quick glance inside the gate shack. “Ain’t nobody lookin’ but me, though. You slip on out, girl, I ain’t seen nothin’.”

  She hesitated, peering through the rotating bars of the pedestrian entrance, like some slaughterhouse machine designed to slice human bodies into horizontal sections. She was in burka and sharshuf again. Armed, and with a fully charged cell phone. Already sweating and finding it hard to draw a full breath in the bulky Kevlar ballistic vest. Feeling as if she needed to g
o back and use the toilet one last time, although she just had.

  Should she venture out yet again? The last time, they’d put the Bosnian on her trail. Taking her hostage was the least-threatening construction she could put on it. Kidnapping was becoming a cottage industry here, although the main targets were Brit oil executives. But the Bosnian in the red cap was off the game board. For good, according to Colonel Al-Safani.

  She and the rest of the embassy staff had spent a week aboard Duluth. The interlude had taken her back to her days as special agent afloat aboard George Washington. The time with Commander Candy. These memories filled her with mingled shame and pleasure. Looseness outside marriage was not pleasing to God. But, oh, how sweet it had been. She’d never given Albert what she’d given Wilkes. Maybe she should have. Her fiancé didn’t answer her e-mails now at all, and when she called, he was short with her. He’d said nothing more about converting. Not that there’d been long to talk. Connectivity was tight, and the ship’s company seemed to resent anyone else using their broadband.

  From Duluth she’d flown to Bahrain, where she’d checked in with the Middle East Field Office, then strolled past the pool and the Dome for much needed visits to the ship’s store, the beauty shop, and the commissary. She still had some kind of respiratory bug from Ashaara, but when she’d gone to the branch clinic, who was there but the same clown of a doctor who’d been drunk out of his mind at the Diplomat Hotel brunch, singing onstage with the Filipino cover band. He wouldn’t see her because she was a civilian, and arguing with the office girl hadn’t done any good. She had more luck at the Bahraini pharmacies, which carried everything and required no prescriptions. They’d given her German antibiotics for her lungs and something Turkish for her bowels, and she’d come back with a decent supply of tampons, underwear, deodorant, and other necessities neither the Yemeni souks nor the embassy store could supply.

  The embassy hadn’t been attacked. The PSO had gone in with a full-scale raid based on information from Mujagic’s interrogation. To her surprise—it didn’t usually happen—she’d been routed an info copy of the CIA’s after-action report. Four men had been picked up and subjected to preliminary interrogation. One, a Yemeni national, had been released; the three foreigners were being held for further interrogation. She’d requested access, but that hadn’t come through. Al-Safani said it appeared that based on the quantity of food in the apartment, and testimony by a woman who’d cooked for them, not everyone in the cell had been captured. He suspected the others had left the country, tipped off, somehow, in advance of the raid. The prisoners seemed to be the foot-solider type, Yemenis and Egyptians, although it was possible they could be persuaded to reveal more than they themselves thought they knew.