Force Protection

by Gordon Kent

  And then an incredible guy, whoever he was, had gone up the crane, and Balcon had directed the filming of him as he went out the long arm and jumped—actually jumped—a gap between two cranes, twenty meters in the air, then walked up behind the sniper and blasted away with a handgun. Balcon had seen it on the camera’s viewfinder, zoomed in tight, incredible stuff for which he’d do a voice-over the instant they were done. And the shooting had stopped. Balcon was thinking that he’d be famous, getting the credit for this shot, and somebody in the crowd said the guy was CIA, another that he was U.S. Navy, a SEAL or a Marine, and Balcon thought of the man in Sicily saying “the fucking U.S. Navy,” and he made a face. He wouldn’t say it was the U.S. Navy on air; that way the man in Sicily wouldn’t get enraged at him.

  By then, the riot in Old Town had spread, and the street outside the gate was filling. Part of the crowd had been driven through the gates to keep from being mashed; now they milled around Balcon and his little crew, curious as people always are and hoping to get their faces put up on global TV. Balcon paid no attention to them except to push one kid out of the way of the camera lens; he was calculating right then how much he could get for the film and how soon he could get it on a feed. He was walking around the camera, talking on his cell phone to his agency, watching the guy start down from the crane and twice stopping to do a ten-second bit into the camera—silver-blond hair blowing a little in the hot breeze, blue shirt open, safari jacket casual and perfect. Very blue eyes.

  “He’s down,” somebody said in African-accented English. The crowd pushed around him and moved toward the hell of the dock.

  “Get it, get it!” Balcon shouted at the Serb. He got in front of the camera and pushed to make a path for it, and now the camera followed, bouncing, almost spinning. Balcon was panting “That is him—that is him—” and he half-turned to wave the Serb on, pushing his hair into place with one hand and fending off a heavy woman with the other, his microphone hand. Then they were as close as they could get and the people around him were cheering and clapping: the gunman who had gone up the crane had just come out of the cab and was walking toward them along the dock.

  “Eh, Rambo!” somebody shouted, and the crowd laughed and applauded.

  “Use the fucking telephoto!” Balcon screamed at the Serb. “Zoom in, you moron—! Frame him, for God’s sake—I want just him, not these goddamn—”

  He switched his microphone on and his voice got crisp. “Jean-Marc Balcon, here on the dock at Kilindini, Kenya, where we have just witnessed this heroic moment by a special-forces agent. Here he comes— An incredible feat—this man climbed a dockside crane and took out a terrorist sniper, armed with only a pistol— Here he comes—”

  Balcon tried to push through the last fringe of the crowd so he could climb up on a truck that had been overturned by the explosion, but somebody pushed back and he stumbled. “Eh—merde— Hey—!” The Serb kept zooming in, kept walking forward, lifting the camera over the heads around him and looking up into the finder, and the heroic CIA specialist, or whoever he was, held up a hand—perhaps a greeting, perhaps an attempt to block his face—and the hand was clear, silhouetted against the rising smoke, three-fingered, maimed.

  Then there was shooting from the street behind them and everybody scattered.

  Mombasa.

  Three General Service Unit trucks came down Moi Avenue side by side, herding the people in the street ahead of them like birds. The trucks were moving slowly so that the people could stay ahead, their goal not to run them down but to move them. Even so, a man was run over when he tripped and fell, the driver too excited to notice the bump among the other bumps that the already-dead made; hyperventilating, the driver stared wide-eyed through the windscreen, looking for men with guns, looking for the bullet that would shatter the glass and kill him. Like the other drivers, he drove bent over the wheel like a man in pain.

  Black smoke was rising from the far end of Moi Avenue. Closer to them, two cars had been pushed into the street and turned over, and men in kanzus and white caps, men in shirtsleeves, men in T-shirts that said “Ball State University” and “AIDS Sucks!” were waiting behind them. Three men were siphoning gasoline from other cars into Tusker Beer bottles, and a boy was stuffing torn strips of rag into the mouths. The running men ahead of the trucks reached the overturned cars and dodged behind them, and a woman carrying a baby, coming more slowly behind the young men, looked over her shoulder at the trucks and wept and tripped on the curb as she tried to reach a doorway. Pulling herself to her knees, she scrambled out of the road. As the nearest truck missed her feet by inches, somebody fired a shot and they drove on.

  The drivers stopped the trucks fifty yards from the overturned cars as Molotov cocktails began to fall. They scurried out of the cabs. Soldiers erupted from the rear of the trucks and began to fire through the flames.

  Washington.

  Fat-eyed, fleshy, scowling, Mike Dukas stood naked in his sublet living room. The television burbled about the problems facing the U.S. administration. A cheerful woman was trying to make news where none existed, contrasting the incumbent with his predecessor to suggest differences that would be all but invisible to, let’s say, a European leftist. Dukas watched her, suffered through the views of two experts, one from the far right, one from the center-right (so much for balance), scratched his belly.

  “I hope they both lose,” he growled and headed for the shower. He had first heard it said by a black woman happening on a televised football game between Alabama and Mississippi: I hope they both lose. Right on. The upcoming election disgusted him. Two rich jerks, he thought as he turned on the water. The likely candidates had nothing going for them but their limitless ambition—and their pedigrees. How is it, he thought as he stepped into the hot water and winced as it hit his chest, that in the biggest democracy in the world, the two best guys we can find are both from private schools and the Ivy League? He soaped himself and bowed his head under the water as if praying. Reaching to expose an armpit to the spray, he winced again: only weeks before, he had taken a bullet in his collarbone, and he still had trouble raising his arms. Out of the shower, he wiped fog from the mirror and stared at the scar, which started just above his breastbone and circled his lower throat like a bubblegum-pink necklace where the bullet had split and plowed two paths along his clavicle. Above the scar, a dissatisfied face stared back at him, pouchy around the eyes, getting lines around the mouth.

  “Not a happy camper,” he muttered and reached for a towel. He ambled back into the living room, an ugly brown space with nothing of his own about it: he sublet it, spent as little time there as possible. Still drying himself, he punched his answering machine, and an adolescent-sounding female voice said, “Hi, Mister Dukas, it’s me.” She giggled. Dukas winced. The voice belonged to a smart, naive twenty-year-old named Leslie Kultzke, who was his assistant and who had begun, he was afraid, to hero-worship him. “How are you this morning?” she said. She giggled again. “I got in early and brought some Krispy Kreme donuts; I know you like Dunkin’ Donuts, but I think you should just try Krispy—”

  But Dukas had cut her off and was staring at the television, where CNN had dumped the doldrums of politics and got itself a red-hot story that was happening in real time. Dukas heard “U.S. Navy” and saw a picture of chaotic motion, a street, a surging crowd, and, as the camera panned, a distant ship half-sunk by a dock, its superstructure tilted away and smoke rising from its far side.

  “—Kilindini Harbor in coastal Kenya, Africa!” a French-accented voice was saying, his panting breath audible. “A ship has been bombed here—nobody quite sure what has happened yet; sources dockside say it is”—pushing somebody away, breathing heavily—“a U.S. vessel and that the bomb was timed to coincide with Islamic demonstrations in this port city.” The shot zoomed in on the crippled ship. “I am at the scene now but—”

  Some stringer, Dukas thought, his reactions flashing past as he switched off the answering machine. Some guy just happen
ed to be there with a camera crew. And then he thought, Nothing just “happens,” and he moved closer, squinting at the set to make the picture clearer, because he was an agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and if it was a Navy ship there would have to be an investigation. And this was evidence. The scene was frozen while a studio newswoman blathered and a line of type moved across the bottom of the screen: Bomb blast in Africa sinks U.S. ship—

  And then the guy with the French accent was back on-screen. “Jean-Marc Balcon, here on the dock at Kilindini, Kenya, where we have just witnessed this heroic moment by a special-forces agent. Here he comes— An incredible feat—this man climbed a dockside crane and took out a terrorist sniper, armed with only a pistol— Here he comes—out of my way—hey, you—! Hey—”

  The camera moved, bouncing as the cameraman pushed forward. The French commentator’s breathing was louder as he started to run. The telephoto lens caught several figures moving toward it along the dock. In the lead, half-trotting, was a tall, slender man in casual clothes, carrying a rifle.

  “Holy shit—!” Dukas mumbled when he saw the man, and he bent down even closer to the screen.

  The hurrying man was heading for the ship. The camera zoomed in. Another figure, back to the camera, ran toward him, and now the camera followed, the shot bouncing, the frame teetering, almost spinning. The newsman with the French accent panted, “That is him—that is him—” and the running figure ahead of the camera half-turned to wave the camera on, and it was clear that it was the newsman, running toward the man who had come down from the crane. The newsman reached out to stop the tall man and somebody body-blocked him out of the way, and his muffled “Eh—merde— Hey—!” came from the TV. The camera, however, kept moving, and it had almost caught the oncoming figure with the rifle when he thrust out an arm, then held up a hand to block the lens. There was a moment when his hand was clear, three whole fingers and the stumps of the two that were gone, and then the screen went black.

  “Holy shit,” Dukas said, “Al Craik!”

  He grabbed the telephone and punched the NCIS number up from the memory, and when the duty officer answered he shouted, “Dukas, special agent. Now listen good! There’s some shit going down in Kilindini, that’s the harbor for Mombasa, Kenya. Got it? Kenya! I want fifteen minutes with the deputy in”—he glanced at his watch—“half an hour, no bullshit about he’s too busy. Number two, I want to know if we’ve got a ship calling at Mombasa. Get on it.” He’d seen enough of the crippled vessel to know that it was not a fighting ship but some sort of transport, probably USNS, but still within his responsibility.

  He looked back at the television. The anchorwoman was trying to make sense of what they had just seen, but she was stalling while somebody offscreen was no doubt trying to get data from the Navy or the Pentagon.

  Somebody else, Dukas knew, would be going down a list of Africa pundits to see who would like to put his or her face on national TV at seven in the morning. In half an hour, they’d have a line on it and a story that, if not accurate, would at least have punch and legs. They’re a hell of a lot faster than we are, he acknowledged. But we get it right. Then they played again the clip of the French-accented stringer and the dock and the hurrying man with three fingers.

  “Al Craik! Jesus. Here we go again,” he muttered. He had recognized Craik hurrying down the dock, recognized, too, Craik’s maimed left hand. Unconsciously, Dukas rubbed the still-red scar on his collarbone. He had got the wound from the same shooters who had hit Craik’s hand. Here we go again. Do I want to go that way again? Then the telephone rang and he picked it up, and it was the duty officer with the word that USNS Jonathan Harker was scheduled to call in Mombasa as of day before yesterday, leaving tonight, local time.

  Here we go again. Do I want to get shot again?

  He called his own office, and Leslie picked up on the first ring. When she heard who it was, her voice changed from brisk to tender, and she said, “Oh, Mister Dukas,” in a way that made him wince again. “Did you get my call about the—?”

  He cut her off. “Put a message in the deputy’s box; mark it ‘urgent.’ Here’s the message; take it down and read it back to me when I’m done. ‘Special Agent Dukas urgently requests assignment to investigation of bombing at Kilindini, Mombasa, Kenya. Important that we move quickly and have a team on-site no later than tomorrow. Dukas will be very unhappy if he is turned down.’ Read it back. Good. You’re doing good, Leslie.” He didn’t give her time to hero-worship; he hit the fourth number in the phone’s memory and got a house in suburban Houston, where it was only five A.M.

  “Hey, Rose, wake up, babe,” he said, making his voice falsely light, “your husband’s on CNN. It looks like I got to go save his buns again.” He spent two minutes telling Commander Rose Siciliano that her husband was alive and well and on CNN; then he stared at the wall, as people will when they are in the middle of a mess of details and they want a moment of clarity, and then he put his hand back on the telephone and dialed another number at NCIS.

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s Dukas. Hey, Marie, check and see if a lieutenant-commander named Alan Craik was issued an international cell phone, will you? He was doing a favor for us and the FAA, checking out security in Nairobi, Kenya. I want to know if he got a phone and, if so, what the number is. Can you do that? You’re a sweetheart. I love you. No, it’s real love—Romeo and Juliet stuff. It may last, oh, until lunch.” He made a big, smacking kiss noise.

  On his television screen, Al Craik shot the sniper for the fifteenth time.

  USS Thomas Jefferson.

  Jack Geelin, Marine captain of the Jefferson’s thirty-man detachment, had a message thrust into his hand in the p’way as he made his way forward toward the flag deck. “On the double, Jack—Captain Beluscio wants you there ten minutes ago.”

  “What the hell—?”

  “Read it!” The lieutenant-commander was already hurrying down toward frame 133 and the intel center. Geelin broke into a trot, trying to read as he went, dodging people hurrying the other way. Three sailors had flattened themselves against the bulkhead to let this explosion of activity go past. Whatever it is, it’ll be all over the boat in three minutes, Geelin thought. He managed to make out words of the message: Mombasa harbor . . . USNS ship . . . possible terrorist . . . immediate help being requested for . . .

  He ducked into the next doorway and grabbed a phone. “Gunny! Captain Geelin! Roust ’em out—full combat gear, on the double! Yeah, the whole goddamn detachment—I want ’em on the deck, ready to go ASAP—move ’em!—”

  One Mile from USS Thomas Jefferson.

  LCDR Paul Stevens brought the S-3 to eight hundred feet as if he was parking it there and glanced down and around. Soleck, despite having his own tasks for the landing, was able to watch him, admiring the man’s competence despite himself. Stevens was so experienced, so good, that what to Soleck was thought and work was to Stevens a set of habits, yet habits that had not grown tired: Stevens seemed always ready for the unexpected in the flight—another aircraft too close, a change of wind, a turning of the CV. Always bad-tempered, he actually seemed calmer in emergencies.

  Now Stevens rattled through the landing checks, Soleck hardly able to keep up with his responses. The wonder of it was that Stevens was actually checking the stuff that he seemed to be hurrying through.

  “Fuel—”

  “Right tank uncertain—” Soleck started to say.

  “Eight thousand,” Stevens said, and went into the break. “Going dirty,” he muttered, hitting slats and flaps, and the big, fat aircraft slowed as if it had been grabbed by the tail. Around it came, settling into the approach as steady as a kite towed behind the CV, losing altitude and speed and touching down to catch the two wire. Soleck thought how it must look on the Plat camera, how the LSO would rate it—another okay—and all the guys in the ready rooms saying Nice job. Jeez, that guy can fly. “Nice landing,” he said.

  Stevens watched the yellow-shirt below him as th
ey rolled to a stop. “Hey, coming from you, that means a lot to me.”

  Three minutes later, loaded with helmet bag and kneepads and MARI tapes, Soleck was heading over the nonskid for the catwalk and a slider.

  Why does Stevens have to be such a prick? he was thinking.

  To his surprise, Stevens was waiting for him at the hatch. “Been thinking about your wetting-down party,” he said. “Just buy everybody a beer.” And went into the light lock without holding the door for the overburdened Soleck.

  Mombasa.

  “We need goddamn muscle!” Alan shouted into his cell phone. “Get us some cover, for God’s sake!” He had managed to raise LantFleet intel in Norfolk—a number he knew by heart—on his new, supposedly international, cell phone, but the signal was weak and the reception spotty. On the other end, a confused duty chief was trying to figure out why somebody was shouting at him from somewhere in Africa.

  “Sir, this isn’t a secure line—”

  “Fuck security! We’re dying here!”

  “Sir, I got no authority.” Over the satellite, it came through as Sir—got—o—auth—ty.

  “Chief, pass the goddamn message, will you? Mombasa, Kenya; USNS Harker, hit by an explosion and under fire, I have a Navy admiral and an NCIS special agent missing—”

  “There’s ships in your area, sir—”

  “Chief, our comm is down to one mayday frequency! Pass the fucking word for us, will you!”

  “I can notify Ops—” I ca—tify—ps.

  “And then call the naval attaché in Nairobi; he’s got to get us some onshore support here—cops, the army, whatever—we’re pinned—”

  “Choppers and Marines, sounds like what you need.”

  “Choppers’re just more targets until we can secure a perimeter! Chief, we’re a decoy—we’re helpless, we draw in choppers, they shoot them down. No choppers yet!”

  Then he really started to break up: “You telling me the—sage—to—there, sir? Sir—me get—straight—”