Stabenow, Dana - Prepared For Rage

by Prepared For Rage(lit)

  There was no discernable result and Cal went on the pipe and repeated the message, his voice booming out across the water.

  "She must be taking on water," the XO said.

  "Boat in that bad of shape, probably got the pumps running all the time. Probably shut them down to go all ahead full when they spotted us." To Terrell he said, "Tell the boats to keep their distance until things quiet down over there, they can't do any good if they get swamped by a bunch of panicked migrants."

  Terrell gave the order. The two small boats veered off to idle on either side of the freighter. Seeing this, the people on the freighter began to shout and wave with one arm, flailing for something to hold on to with the other as the freighter's wallows increased in angle and velocity. The crowd on deck continued to increase as more people clawed their way up from below.

  They were close enough now that Cal could hear the shouts and screams. Again, inevitably, a man fell overboard, screaming, followed by a second, then a little girl. Three people jumped in after her, and then a rain of bodies overboard, too many to count.

  The freighter rolled heavily to port and swamped the deck. The rushing water swept half the remaining people topside overboard. Relieved of their weight, the dilapidated little freighter swung even more rapidly to starboard, probably further impelled by water rolling back and forth belowdecks, as textbook a display of the free surface effect that Cal, watching helplessly half a mile off their starboard beam, had ever seen. She rolled again and this time she kept going, all the way over, water swamping the gunnel, lines, buckets, boat hooks sliding down to the gunnel and over the side, the house disappearing beneath the waves, until at last she was keel up, there to display a soft-looking hull playing host to an entire biosphere of seaweed.

  And people everywhere in the water, screaming and splashing frantically and grabbing for each other. The few who could swim struck out away from the sinking ship and began to tread water. Some of them were already being picked up by the small boats, who had moved in and were tossing PFDs to the people in the water.

  "Son of a bitch," Cal said. "Dead slow ahead. Pipe Doc and all EMTs and stretcher bearers on deck now."

  "Dead slow ahead, aye."

  "Doc's already on deck, sir."

  "Every free hand on deck as well."

  "Already there, sir."

  "XO, get down there and direct traffic. Ops, call the beach and bring them up to speed. And call the mess deck and tell the senior chief that we've got what looks like about two hundred extra for lunch."

  "Two hundred extra for lunch, aye, sir."

  AT THE END OF THE DAY IT WAS 214, ALTHOUGH THE DEAD WEREN'T dining and many among the living were already victims of malnutrition and as yet incapable of ingesting solid food. Some, including many of the women, showed unmistakable signs of torture and abuse. Almost all of them were suffering from exposure and severe dehydration. Nine of them had drowned, including the little girl who had been third into the water. BM2 Hendricks, the bosun's mate who had been the boarding team leader on Mun 2, offered up this information still in his PFD and LE belt, his helmet under his left arm, speaking in a consciously dry, factual voice that was wavering just this side of cracking. His hair was a reddish sheen over his scalp, his eyes were normally a bright blue, and he had pale skin reddened by constant exposure to sun and wind. He was twenty-three. Today, he looked a shell-shocked twelve. It was moments like these that made Cal feel his age.

  "I couldn't let the boats get too close, sir," Hendricks said miserably. "There were so many of them, grabbing anything they could hold on to. They would have swamped us."

  "You did right," Cal said. They were in the captain's quarters. On the bridge everyone would have been listening and Cal wanted to give Hendricks breathing space.

  "We threw them PFDs but of course they didn't know how to put them on and they were too panicked to get into them in the water anyway. Most of them kept their heads enough to hold on until we got to them, but some of them just. . ."

  "Matt." Cal had to repeat his name to get his attention. "Matt, listen to me. I want you to grab a shower and some clean clothes. I want you to tell the rest of the boat crews and boarding teams to do the same, and then I want you to take them down to the galley and tell the senior chief that the captain says to fry you all a steak."

  An expression of revulsion crossed Hendricks's face. "I couldn't eat, sir, I don't think any of us could after today."

  "It wasn't a suggestion," Cal said, and reached for the phone. "I'm calling Senior Chief myself."

  The bosun's mate hesitated.

  "That's an order, BM2," Cal said again, letting his command voice kick in. The BM went into an instinctive brace. "I'll be down on the mess deck myself in half an hour, and I expect both crews there. Understood?"

  Hendricks, looking steadier on his feet, said, "Understood, aye, Captain," and left the cabin. Cal called the chief in charge of the mess and spoke sharply enough that even that temperamental gentleman knew enough to say smartly, "Yes, sir," and no more. New York steaks weren't normally on the standard issue Coast Guard menu, but now and then Cal liked to put his father's money to work for Coastie morale. He was sure the senator would approve of this use of Cal's patrimony, and in any case he wasn't about to ask him.

  A few moments later there was a knock at the door. "Yeah."

  The executive officer poked his head in. "All clear?"

  Cal waved him in. "Close the door and have a seat."

  Taffy doffed his cap and sat across the desk from Cal. "We lost another one. A young woman. According to Baby Doc, she'd been beaten and raped repeatedly, as in recently."

  "How recently?"

  "Last night. This morning. Since they left port, Baby Doc doesn't know. She's very young. And pretty." He grimaced, and ran a tired hand through his hair. "Well. She was."

  "Somebody on the boat," Cal said. It wasn't a question.

  "Baby Doc says more than one. Marks on her wrists and ankles where they"

  Cal held up one hand. "Got the picture." He made a conscious effort to relax his jaw. "We should have let the fuckers drown."

  "They didn't all rape her, Captain."

  "They all know who did, though."

  "Most likely someone in the crew. Or all of them. They'd regard it as part of the price of passage." Taffy shrugged. "We've got them segregated from the migrants. Well. We've separated the ones with passports from the ones without. There are only six with passports."

  "Find any weapons?"

  The XO shook his head. "Passengers say they had them. Probably the first thing that went over the side when they spotted us. They know the penalties for getting caught with automatic weapons on the high seas."

  Cal nodded. Piracy carried hefty penalties in the United States, including serious federal time.

  "Do you want me to start an investigation?" Taffy said without enthusiasm.

  "No point," Cal said. "She won't be the only victim. We've got enough on our hands without conducting a criminal investigation that would likely turn into half a dozen separate cases before we're done. We'll be at the dock tomorrow. Leave it to the authorities onshore." Cal looked up. "You've got them under supervision?"

  "Our guests have more military police standing watch over them than Baghdad."

  "Everyone's been fed?"

  "Senior had the FSs cook up a mess of rice and beans."

  "Good." Cal brooded for a moment. "I'm declaring the derelict a hazard to navigation. Do you concur?"

  "If I concurred any more I'd be genuflecting."

  "Destroy it."

  "That'll make the gunnies happy. Nothing Chief Colvin likes more than to get in a little target practice." The XO rose to his feet and picked up his cap. "Anything else, sir?"

  "No. Wait, what'd we do with the bodies?"

  "Emptied out the reefer and stacked them to the ceiling." Cal grimaced. The XO pretended not to see. "Senior Chief says best speed for port or it's ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

>   "Thanks, XO."

  He lapsed into a brooding silence.

  "Something bothering you, sir?"

  Cal shrugged, playing with his pen. "Nothing. Well. It's something, but it's not something we can do anything about."

  "Sir?"

  Cal jerked his head in the general direction of the freighter. "How many more got through while we were picking people out of the water? Two? Five? A dozen? How many of these banana boats beached themselves on a Florida beach and their cargo walked ashore?"

  "We can't stop them all," the XO said.

  "We can't stop hardly any of them," Cal said. "We're spending billions, trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan to bomb the shit out of people who never had a pot to piss in, let alone enough money to buy a one-way ticket on one of these floating coffins. And here we sit, our finger stuck in a dike that is leaking like a sieve in a hundred other places. We can't stop them all. We can't contain them all. God knows we can't make their own countries more attractive so they'll want to stay home."

  The XO considered this. "Today was a good day, sir," he said, a hint of a question in his words. "At least most of them are alive to make a run for the border another day."

  "Agreed," Cal said. "I just worry about who else is coming into the country on all the boats we're missing. Be pretty damn easy for some bin Laden wannabe to bribe the right skipper, waltz off the ship somewhere north of Palm Beach, and hitch a ride north so he could light off his backpack nuke in the middle of Dupont Circle."

  "I'd like to see bin Laden wading ashore at Palm Beach," the XO said meditatively. "All those little old ladies with blue hair and lime green polyester pantsuits would beat him to death with their Gucci bags before his feet were dry."

  Cal laughed, as he had been meant to. "Point taken. Anything else?"

  Taffy hesitated. "You up for a little crew confabulation?"

  "I don't even know what the hell that means, but it's got to be better than people drowning on my watch." The words came out a little harder than he'd meant and he winced. "Sorry, Taff. Talk to me."

  "OS2 Riley."

  Cal groaned. "Not again."

  "Afraid so. And this time it's someone on the ship."

  Cal groaned again. "Who?"

  "ET3 Reese. He says it was consensual, she says it wasn't."

  Cal swore. "Where?"

  "Miami. Last inport. Neither of them live there, don't have family there, are pretty much at loose ends when they go ashore. A bunch of the crew rented rooms in a motel. It started out men with men and women with women."

  "And it didn't end up that way. Man, his wife is going to kill him this time."

  They both considered that eventuality with pleasure. "What I don't get is how such an undernourished, snot-nosed little twerp gets all the girls," Taffy said.

  "Does he still have money troubles?"

  "Big ones. Too much house, too much car, too many toys. Not to mention the wife and the two kids, ages one and three."

  "How did we hear about this?" Cal said.

  "She came to see me."

  "In Miami? And she's just getting around to tell us about it now?"

  "She told her mother, and her mother told her not to tell. Yeah, I know, but I get the feeling Reese comes from a family that's just barely getting by. I think she's sending money home. She needs the job."

  Cal rubbed both hands over his head. His hair was long enough again to be mussed. He wondered if he should call Papa Doc for an appointment for a haircut, and decided it was too close to returning to port. In port, hair was a good thing. Gave Kenai something to hold on to. "What made her come forward now?"

  "She says he's coming on to her again."

  "Now? Underway?" Cal felt a slow burn.

  "I get the feeling"the XO was notorious for starting sentences this way, and Cal had learned that more often than not Taffy's feelings were right on the money"that liquor was involved in the onshore incident, although she says no. If that is the case, her judgment was impaired. When she sobered up and realized what she'd done, she was horrified." He wasn't.

  "No, sir, he wasn't. The way she tells it, he's looking to continue the, er, relationship on patrol."

  "What does he say?"

  "Denies everything except the first incident. Which he says was consensual."

  "I am tired of this punk screwing around on my ship," Cal said. "Get rid of him for me, XO."

  "I'll break out the keelhaul, sir," Taffy said cheerfully. "Just say the word."

  "I wish." Cal brooded. "Okay, call shore and have the investigators meet us at the dock. In the meantime, ask Reese if she can last another ten days on the same ship as that asshole."

  "And him?"

  Cal fixed Taffy with a fierce eye. "Tell him he might like to keep out of the captain's way until then. I don't suppose I could restrict him to quarters?"

  "Alas, sir," Taffy said, getting to his feet, "he is by law innocent until proven guilty."

  "You're the only guy I know who can use 'alas' in a sentence without sounding like a pansy."

  Taffy grinned. "Why, thank you, Captain," he said, and fluttered his eyelashes.

  Cal turned serious. "However it turns out, XO, I've had about enough of this selfish, self-involved little brat. Time for the Coast Guard to make his services available elsewhere."

  "Understood, sir. He's a presenter at some kind of workshop somewhere when we get in. Always assuming the investigators are done with him by the time he's supposed to leave. So at least you won't have to suffer his presence in port, or not for the short term. Afterward, perhaps I can, uh, divert his return to the ship. We'll see."

  The door closed behind the XO.

  Cal, inexplicably, felt better. On a ship with 150 mixed-gender crew members, situations like this were inevitable, although on taking command of Munro he had worked tirelessly to ensure they wouldn't happen with any frequency, if at all. Well, he had failed, but dealing with the fallout from something like this was a lot easier on the psyche than fishing dead bodies out of the water.

  He went down to the mess deck to make sure his boarding team members were eating right.

  8

  WASHINGTON, D.C., AUGUST 2007

  "Damn it!"

  Chisum rarely swore, and then only mildly, but it was enough to make his personal assistant raise her eyebrows. "Bad news?"

  He looked up from the report and said with feeling, "Sometimes probable cause really gets in the way."

  "Yes, it does, and I thought that was why the previous administration did away with it in these cases. Also habeas corpus and"

  "Thank you, Melanie, that will be all."

  "Certainly, sir." Melanie swept out, and he couldn't help it, he had to watch. Women nowadays had forgotten how to walk, or maybe they just didn't care, striding along like they were in a race, all trace of what had once been an inviting softness to a man's hand long since worked ruthlessly off at the gym and leaving something perilously close to the stringy haunch of a greyhound behind.

  Melanie was a throwback. A pocket Venus of a blonde in her midthirties, she wore heels and pencil skirts topped by a variety of soft sweaters in even softer colors, and every day he sent up a prayer of thanks to whoever had assigned her to him when Birdy had left. A forty-year veteran with an institutional memory that went back to the agency's roots in the OSS, Birdy was irreplaceable, but even Birdy was subject to the march of time. When she retired in October, Melanie had replaced her, and Patrick had suffered so instant and overwhelming an attraction that he had hidden it behind a curt, distant manner.

  Even if every fiber of his being urged him to throw her down on his desk each time she walked in his door. "Whoa there, down, boy," he said beneath his breath. She was too good at what she did to treat with anything less than respect, so he locked his fantasies into a steel vault with a fail-safe lock and doggedly returned to the report.

  Isa or someone bearing a striking resemblance to him had been spotted in Auckland, of all places. The source reported he had it o
n good authority that Isa was recruiting from among the Maoris for the purposes of launching a terrorist attack from down under.

  Which was about as reliable as any humint his agents were fielding nowadays, he thought glumly. Everyone was hedging their bets, scarred from too many years of being slapped down for intelligence the previous administration either disbelieved or suppressed in pursuit of their almighty crusade. Except they didn't call it a crusade. They'd learned that much.

  There were times when he thought he ought to finally register to vote.

  There were others when he looked at the people in office and the ones running to replace them, and was overwhelmed by a sense of hopelessness and impending doom.

  Still, he could not afford to overlook any lead, and while the hard intel was grinding to a temporary halt the rumor mill was hitting high gear. Along with the sighting in York, he had reports of additional sightings in London, Darfur (from a recently evacuated aid worker who did some freelance work for the agency on the side, and whose product had never been all that reliable), Baghdad (at the site of an IED resulting in three killed and which he knew was nonsense because Isa would never have been so careless as to flaunt himself at the scene of one of his own attacks), Toronto (which frightened him; he'd sent a rocket back to the agent who had submitted it, requesting an immediate re-interview and a more thorough canvas of other possible witnesses), Bern (which he almost believed, given how well funded the al Qaeda cells were and how scrupulously they looked after their money), Moscow, and the list went on and on. Isa had been sighted fifty-three times in the last six months, three times in three different cities on three different continents on the same day.

  Boeing was good, but they weren't that good.

  The phone rang. "The director on line one," Melanie said, sounding fiuttery Patrick had noticed most women did around Kallendorf. Guy looked like a bull elephant and had about as much finesse but he had to beat the women off with a stick. Chisum smoothed back his thinning hairline, sucked in his potbelly, and picked up the phone. "Chisum here."