The Shores of Tripoli

by Fisher Samuels

  The aft Mark 38 was still without power, so it was heavy and slow to gimbal. MacFarland charged the weapon and aimed for the waterline of the approaching ship. For a second, it seemed odd to her that she was about to unleash hundreds of rounds of depleted uranium at a wooden sailing relic. But she pulled the trigger anyway.

  The 25mm machine gun lit up the stern of the Dauntless with a rapid-fire stream of bright discharges. MacFarland waited for the tracer rounds to help guide her aim to the target, but none came out. The second diesel rumbled to life and a sudden acceleration shoved her tight against the machine gun’s shoulder guides. “Ah, shit!” she screamed. “Blanks! We still got blanks!”

  No one heard her over the roar of the twin turbos, but it only took Brewster a few dozen rounds on the .50 cal to reach the same conclusion: all of the weapons were still loaded with blanks for the exercise.

  “What’s the hostile doing?” Williams spun his chair to look through the aft windows for the approaching ship. “Come around, hard to starboard!”

  Marathyachi spun the wheel hard and the Dauntless heeled on its side through the tight turn.

  The hostile sailboat maintained its course toward the rowboats, but the activity on her deck was pure chaos as men ran along the edge and pointed at the Dauntless as she spun towards them.

  “We got fire control, yet?” Williams looked at Lieutenant Smith, who looked over at the dead display on the console and shook his head. “Thirty-eight on the bow, now!”

  Smith ran out on deck and quickly trained the machine gun at the hostile vessel. He charged the gun and pulled the trigger. Round after round of blank ammunition thumped sound and light at the ship, but little else. “Blanks!”

  Brewster slid through the hatch to the cabin. “We still got blanks in!”

  Williams’ eyes widened as Dauntless spun toward the hostile ship’s beam. The black mouths of the ship’s four cannons were gaping right at them. “Hard to starboard!”

  Marathyachi spun the ship again, just as the cannons thundered with four more rounds. Yellow flashes and white puffs billowed from the ship’s hull, but none of the shots hit.

  “Swap out the ammo, now! Bow thirty-eight first!”

  Brewster ran back to the deck and grabbed one of the eighty pound ammo canisters from the locker. Smith had already pulled the blanks out and slid the canister into the locker.

  Brewster shoved the heavy canister of live rounds in to the receiver and flipped down the retainer. “Loaded!”

  Smith pulled the charging handle again and waited for Marathyachi to complete his turn. The Dauntless was closing fast on the ship’s stern. “Firing!”

  Smith pulled the trigger and let a river of dark depleted uranium and luminescent phosphorous rounds stream into the stern of the vessel. Splinters of the ship’s stern and rudder exploded into the air and the boat spun slowly to port. Smith kept firing until the wooden hull glowed red and then burst into flame.

  The sails luffed and the ship kept turning to port, once again pointing her cannons at the Dauntless. But in those few short seconds, the Dauntless had closed the distance between them and once again dug in for another hard turn to starboard.

  By the time the Dauntless finished her turn, the burning ship was sinking stern-down. Marathyachi idled the engines just in time for Smith and Brewster to hear the crew screaming seconds before the ship’s magazine exploded. The ship’s deck plating buckled and the stern dropped even deeper, and in an instant, half of the hull was underwater. Burning men leapt from the deck and others crawled through the gun-ports. Just ten seconds after the first rounds hit the stern, the ship was gone.

  Williams processed the scene that unraveled before him, but none of it made any sense.

  Brewster’s subdued voice crackled over the speaker. “Men overboard.”

  “Dammit!” Grassley lumbered through the belowdecks hatch. “Just about broke my goddam neck down there.” He glared at Williams instead of Marathyachi. “You trying to fucking kill me?”

  No one in the cabin spoke. They just stared ahead at the men splashing in the water, reaching for flotsam.

  “What the fuck?” Grassley looked out and saw the chaos. “We gonna get ’em?”

  Williams nodded. “Yeah. Ahead slow.” Williams saw that his boat’s systems were coming back on line and reached for the microphone. “Recovery on deck,” he said over the intercom.

  MacFarland, Smith, Brewster and Marathyachi were on deck for the recovery actions as the Dauntless growled it’s way to the survivors. As the Dauntless approached, the men in the water began screaming and swam wildly away toward the frigate still listing several hundred meters away.

  Further to the east, one of the rowboat crews shouted just before they dropped whatever they were carrying in their boat. A few moments later, MacFarland was able to see the second rowboat drop a large anchor into the water.

  MacFarland ran back in to the cabin. “They’re kedging!”

  “Off’a what?” Williams looked at Grassley, who was back in his chair at the helm. “There’s no reef or bar here, is there?”

  Grassley tapped at his display but it still hadn’t come back on line. “Nav’s still down.”

  “How far out are we?” Williams tapped on his display, but it too was dead. “This should’ve been dredged out to fifteen meters or more, right?”

  “I think so, sir,” replied MacFarland. “Want me to call it in, skip?”

  “Yeah, gotta report this anyway.”

  ———————

  This wasn’t the first time LT Gil Smith was trying to rescue boaters from a shipwreck. He’d been in the Navy for eight years and had seen plenty of action in two cruises during the China Seas Island Wars.

  Three years ago, he helped rescue thirty-eight Japanese protestors from a fishing boat that a Chinese sub split in half before it could land on one of the disputed Senkaku islands. The very next year, he worked in the task force that led the evacuation of more than three-hundred souls from a Filipino fish processing ship that hit a Chinese mine.

  Plucking tired and cold bodies from the water was nothing new to Smith. But this was the first time he was trying to recover survivors from a boat that he had personally sunk, and to make things more difficult, the survivors didn’t want to be saved.

  “Swim this way!” Smith tossed a preserver toward the dispersing survivors. None of them were listening and just kept swimming away no matter what he said. “We’re Americans. We’re here to help. Esalammo elaykum.”

  He watched the men in the water swimming away from the preserver every time he tossed it. He’d pull it in again, then toss it towards a few men, hoping that one of them would grab hold so that he could pull him in. No matter how many times he tried, the men scattered from the life preserver rather than grabbing hold of it so they could be pulled from the water.

  “This is crazy!” Smith looked at Marathyachi further up on the bow. “You getting any luck up there?”

  “No! They just keep swimming away. What’s wrong with these guys?”

  Brewster came over to Smith’s side. “Nothing over there. They scared of us or something?”

  Smith nodded. “Must be.” He laughed. “This is just how my dad died.”

  “What?”

  “Alcoholic. Drowned while trying to show off. Thought he was a stronger swimmer than the riptide. Kept swimming away from help.” Smith threw the preserver as far as he could. “He wasn’t.”

  “I, uh—how old were you?”

  “Twelve. That was the only time my mom wouldn’t let me help him out when he was shit-faced. Oh, and the day after he broke my nose for dumping out a fifth of rye.”

  “Your dad and booze sounds like my dad with drugs,” said Brewster. “Couldn’t wait to enlist.”

  Smith pulled in the preserver. “We’re Americans! We’re here to help! Esalammo elaykum!”

  A faint voice replied ahead of the Dauntless. “We’re Americans.”

  “I see them!” On the bow, Marath
yachi pointed to two men waving from the water a hundred meters away.

  Smith turned to yell back toward the open cabin windows. “Hundred meters, dead ahead.”

  ———————

  MacFarland released the transmit button. “Nothing at all. No response on any channel. US, guard, nothing. You sure this is working, Boats?”

  “Should be now. Lemme watch.” Chavez took a hand-cranked lantern to the radio panel and looked at one of the power gauges. “Try again.”

  “Tripoli harbor, Tripoli harbor, this is the USS Dauntless. Do you copy? Over.”

  Chavez shut the panel. “Yeah, we’re drawing about 200 watts transmitting. Everything looks fine.”

  ———————

  Smith held up his hand toward the cabin and closed it to a fist. “That’s good. Hold!” He tossed the preserver close to the two men and they each threw an arm through the ring.

  Smith pressed a button on the rail and a winch hauled the line in through a guide to a platform on the water. “Stand on the platform!”

  The two men climbed onto the platform and held on to the rail. One man reached out and rubbed his hand on the gray metal hull.

  Smith pressed another button and the platform lifted out of the water and up even with the deck stairs. Smith and Marathyachi helped the men on board and studied their costumes.

  “This some kind of dinner theater?” asked Marathyachi.

  Smith grunted. “We just sank a boat, Shiv.”

  Marathyachi saw blood on the man’s pant leg and scanned up to the large chunk of wood piercing his side. “This shit’s real?”

  Chapter 4

  Corsair Fleet

  Mudawar wondered how the huge black ship could move so quickly, and how it could spew fire that made his father’s boat sink in a few blinks of his eyes. He watched as it churned and frothed the water, and he thought it looked frightening and at the same time glorious. And what of his father, he wondered. Did he die when the fire ripped open the stern, or when the bags of gunpowder exploded in its hull? If he was dead, which qubtaan would try to take command of the others Nasser had spent years recruiting, buying or deceiving into working for his guild? Just thinking of the infighting and posturing and politics turned his stomach. The fleet should be his, but he would have to fight to keep it. And it was for that reason alone that he hoped his father survived the attack by the mysterious black ship.

  The entire fleet was in chaos. Men on the other gunboats were pointing and yelling at the fiery shadow that spun in circles. It rumbled like thunder echoing through the harbor and its guns all fired so quickly. Most of the boats had turned back toward their docks and others sailed off in random directions. Mudawar’s ship and a handful of others were all that continued toward the reefed frigate and the black ship that was prowling around it.

  Unlike the other gunboats, Mudawar’s was quiet, save for one of the deck planks rattling behind him. Mudawar looked back and saw the powder boy’s legs shaking with fear.

  “Steady your legs, boy. Or you can swim home to your mother’s breast.”

  Thin, wide-eyed and dressed in a dinghy thin thawb that draped just over his knees, the boy nodded but his shaking legs didn’t stop. He gritted his crooked brown teeth, but they started chattering too.

  Mudawar lightened when he saw a tear stream through the dust on the boy’s cheek. “Soon you will not tremble at the sight of death.” The boy looked at his own bare feet. “Soon you will be a man.”

  The boy raised his head, this time with a look of surprise.

  Ahead of his small gunboat, Mudawar could see the black boat slithering toward the American frigate. “Seek out the wind, Ather, whatever is left of it. There is another trying to steal our prize.”

  Three other gunboats drifted along the same course, and Mudawar saw the burnt-orange sails of Hassan’s boat growing nearer. Mudawar commanded Ather to get closer to Hassan’s boat. When he was two boat-lengths away, Mudawar called out in a loud whisper. “Hassan! Hassan!”

  Hassan looked over the near side of his boat and held up his old hand.

  “Father was foolish to try alone. We must strike her together.”

  Hassan nodded. “She can’t turn,” he replied in a gravelly whisper. “We have freedom to move on our side, but no wind to push us.”

  “No, Hassan. The black boat first.” Mudawar pointed. “We must wave off the flies before we cut up our meat.”

  Hassan looked over the bow of his ship, and then quickly back at Mudawar as though he hadn’t seen that ship until just then.

  Mudawar nodded, and then went to the other side of his boat to relay the same message to the other two boats.

  Mudawar looked at the rest of the fleet, but none were close enough to summon without yelling. “Cowards,” he said quietly. He hoped, Allah willing, that they would all return when he and his three other brave captains chased off that shadow thrashing the water beside the American frigate.

  ———————

  Nasser grabbed hold of the thin piece of wood that protruded through the surface. He realized it was the top of his mast, and it jutted out at an angle, which meant his boat was somewhere below on the shallowing sands next to the reef. His forehead was bleeding just above his right eye, and occasionally his sight went red as blood and salty water washed down. His face stung from the flames and hot wind that pushed him overboard when the bags of powder exploded. His ears were ringing, not like they did from his old age, but muffled and louder. And in his chest, he felt his heart thumping and his lungs heaving. It all reminded him of the day he held his first son’s bloodied body fifteen summers ago.

  The deep, horrible rumble grew louder as the dark, angular ship approached. In his lifetime of sailing, he’d never seen a vessel such as this. He watched the men walking along its deck, their clothing tight to their bodies and dark in the moonlight. The ship was the color of dark soot, yet somehow it shimmered in the moonlight. Nasser thought the wood must have been painted with the rotting black blood of its victims.

  It didn’t have sails, yet it bubbled the water behind it and was capable of such great speed, faster than any ship he’d ever chased. It hissed like Mudawar’s copper fire toy, and grumbled like a sleeping lion’s snore. And when it attacked, it blew fire and lightning that tore through wood as if it were wet parchment. It was a sea serpent of death and it made Nasser tremble as he clung to the tip of what used to be the finest warship in the Pasha’s harbor.

  His men swam in every direction away from the beast, but Nasser didn’t move. He was cold and afraid, and his heart was still racing. He felt like letting go and hiding below the surface. What would these men do if they captured him, he wondered. If they could control that beast of a ship, they could make him feel pain far worse than he ever inflicted. Would he be ransomed for his return, and would the Pasha pay? How much was an old sea captain like him worth now? He was loyal and brave and successful, and did as he was told by all of the Pashas. He was loyal even to the Turk, the usurper Pasha, in his short and tragic reign, and quickly committed his loyalty to his successor. Pasha Yusuf would pay for me, he thought.

  The water was cool, and he longed for the hot sun and bathing in warm summer water. His arms started to shake. “Musad, my son, please warm your father’s heart by putting on a pot of tea. I will be drinking with you soon.”

  He closed his eyes and kicked at the tangle of sails and lines swirling below his feet. He opened them again and saw the black beast as it turned and rumbled further away. Behind it, four of his gunboats slowly approached in the calm winds. Nasser thought the vision might be a dream, so he closed his eyes again.

  He didn’t want to open his eyes. He was afraid the black ship would be sailing right toward him and he would be too scared to get out of its way. He imagined that he should swim down to his ship and wait for the black beast to pass and then command his boat to rise up behind it. If he could fire all of his cannons at the ship’s stern, its fire breathing weapon couldn’t harm his
boat anymore because it would already be wet and the extra gunpowder was already gone. He loosened his grip on the mast, and thought that if he held his breath for ten or maybe twenty strokes straight down, he would be able to stand at the helm of his ship once again. And when he got there, his sails would fill and the current would carry his boat off the reef and up to the surface in the perfect spot for his cannons to fire. But then he remembered that any powder that hadn’t burned would be wet and useless. The best plan, he decided, would be to sail away underwater, and leave the black ship in the harbor for the other qubtaans to fight.

  He rubbed the bloody water from his face and saw Hassad’s ship, and then Mudawar’s, and two ships from Kedar’s family. “Ah, Kedar, my old friend. And Hassad. You’ve come to see me off.”

  “Essalamo elaykum!”

  Nasser looked at the black ship, but he didn’t respond. The words didn’t sound right. They are deceivers, he thought.

  ———————

  Mudawar kept a close eye on the black ship. It moved slowly now, heading first for the frigate and then to the side like a Mediterranean moray slithering around a reef looking for minnows.

  Mudawar had coordinated the attack on the black ship. In five or six more boat lengths, the four gunboats would turn and fire the first volley.

  He looked at his crew, and then up at his sails. They were set to catch every bit of what little breeze was still left. On the wheel, Ather watched the sails and the gentle seas for any hint of better winds, and he made regular adjustments to gain whatever speed he could.

  Eight of Mudawar’s sailors huddled around the various guns on the deck and watched him carefully. Mudawar walked lightly along the deck behind them. He passed two young men on the peterero, a small-bore swivel gun used to shoot grapeshot rounds at officers on the other ship’s bridge. “Shoot them where they hide near the forecastle, habibis.” The rest of the young men were readying the three eight-pound long guns mounted on rolling carriages and tied to the ship’s bulwark timbers. “When we fire, the black ship will thrash about quickly, and then it will breathe fire at us. Your aim must be true, my brothers.”