Force Protection

by Gordon Kent

  Alan thought it was a piece of wood, then realized it was too thin to be wood. Leather, maybe—the sort of thing they bought for the dog to chew on. Then he touched it, and he knew it was cloth, blood-soaked cloth. Half of the collar of a Navy warm-weather uniform shirt that had been khaki and was now deep brown. Hidden by the medic’s darker thumb, as if he didn’t want them to exist, were two silver stars.

  “Shit,” Alan said. He looked at the medic. “I’ll have to identify him.”

  “No, sir.”

  “I have to”—his eyes went to the man’s name tag—“Green.”

  Green shook his head. “Nothing to identify, sir.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” And, because it had sounded harsh, he said, “I have to try. They can’t just take my word for it.”

  He moved past the medic and went down the ladder to the deck. They had marked out a safe lane with yellow tape, and he went along that, stepping over cable that they hadn’t had time or hadn’t been able to remove. The smell of fire was stronger, the smell of the sea, too, the offshore breeze shifting as the end of day came near. The four medics who had pulled the body bag out stood a little away from it. As he came near, one stepped forward; he checked the man’s tag: Hyman, First Class.

  Alan indicated the body bag. “The admiral?”

  Hyman’s shoulders rolled, a kind of shrug, maybe a suppressed shiver. He was wearing a T-shirt that was brown with rust and smoke. “We got what we could. We think there’s, um, parts of four people in there.”

  He absorbed that. “Is there more to get out?”

  “Well—not without— Maybe with a—special tools, like that.”

  Alan nodded. “Open it.”

  Hyman unzipped the bag. A smell of overcooked meat burst up. Most of what he saw was unrecognizable, but he made out the shape of a skull, the hair burned off, the skin black. Teeth plain where the lips were gone. He saw a hand. Ribs.

  “You sure there are four people in here?”

  “Sir, I’m not sure of anything. There’s at least three, I know that. We tried to count, you know? But there isn’t enough—you know? There’s pieces of metal everywhere—sharp as hell—they were cut to pieces.”

  Alan jerked his head. Hyman unzipped the bag the rest of the way. At the bottom, another hand, browned, shriveled, seemed to reach up from the mass. Above the wrist, it was wearing the stained remains of Laura’s pink shirt.

  “Okay, close it up.” He turned away and took deep breaths. Suddenly, saliva poured into his mouth, and with it the taste of salt. He looked for something to support himself on.

  A black hand appeared just below his nose. The sharp odor of ammonia filled his nostrils, and his head cleared. “You okay, sir?”

  “Yeah.” The ammonia had helped. “Yeah.” He put a hand on Green’s shoulder.

  “Breathe deep.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay now? It gets to everybody.”

  He nodded. “Send that bag back on the next helo and mark it. They’re going to have to do some kind of forensics on it to be sure. Where’d that piece of collar get itself to?”

  “I got it, sir.” Green was still standing close to him, as if waiting for him to faint. He held up a plastic bag. “We know the drill, Commander. Always gotta do ID.”

  “Right.” He tried to breathe slowly, deeply. “Mark off the area where you found them—put up some kind of sign, whatever. I don’t want anybody in there until we get some forensics.” Thinking, It’ll be my career if we screw up the ID of a dead admiral.

  He made his way up to the bridge again and stood there, trying to sweep the stink of cooked flesh out of his nostrils with the sweet, damp breeze from Mombasa. When he was better, he got on the comm to the Marine captain and told him to post a guard on the space where the bodies had been found.

  He was thinking that the situation was bad and getting worse: a ruined ship, an American island in a rioting city—now a dead admiral. Could they hold on here to the little they had left?

  Far down the dock, they were loading the body bags into the chopper.

  USS Thomas Jefferson.

  Pete Beluscio winced when he looked at the wall clock. It was too late, he knew. There had been too much time. If the admiral was alive, they’d know by now: more time, likelier death. He felt a queasiness in his gut. He’d have a hell of a night now, no matter what happened after this. He’d be up, taking pills, sitting on the can, feeling like hell. The perks of command. Yeah.

  Fuck command, he thought. Some people were born to be flyers, not to take command. Nobody knew better than he did himself that he’d reached his max when he was an exec. But the Navy said, “Up or out,” and he’d kept moving up. Now—

  A face he distrusted appeared at the far door; it took an instant for him to realize it was Rafe Rafehausen’s. He felt that momentary hatred, suspicion, fear that came from seeing the face of a rival, then almost relaxed as he admitted that maybe Rafehausen was about to take the whole problem off his hands. Bitter, bitter though that loss would be.

  “Pete, what the hell’s going on?”

  Beluscio was pleased to see that Rafehausen was stretched tight, too. “We’re keeping you informed, Rafe.”

  “Jesus, it’s more than four hours—they must know something!”

  “You’re on the links, what do you think, we’re holding back?” Beluscio had let his own tension show; his tone had been harsh. A second-class at a terminal looked around at them, looked away. Beluscio lowered his voice. “The moment I hear anything—”

  “Lieutenant-Commander Craik on four, Captain!”

  Beluscio clapped his right hand over the earphone and swung away from Rafehausen. “Yes!”

  Rafe Rafehausen was puzzled by Pete Beluscio, who seemed to him tricky, overcomplex. Rafe himself was a fairly simple man, one who believed that the best direction was always straight ahead. Beluscio seemed to him always to be going one step sideways for every step forward. Like now, getting antsy over nothing, turning away when he might be getting the word at last.

  Not a cynic, Rafehausen was still capable of suspecting that Beluscio might try to hold on to his temporary command of the battle group by demanding some absolute, legalistic confirmation of the admiral’s death long after it was clear the man was gone. If he did—

  “How long ago?” he heard Beluscio say.

  Rafehausen moved closer; at the same time, Beluscio swung back to look at him.

  “This is confirmed?” Beluscio’s head was down now, his eyes not meeting Rafe’s. He listened for what seemed far too long, then muttered, “All four?” After a few seconds, he said, “Well—the collar seems pretty, um, definite. Yeah, yeah, we’ll have to have the legal eagles confirm, dental and all that, but—”

  Beluscio looked up then and met Rafe’s eyes. Switching off his mike with his left hand, he said softly, “Craik has evidence the admiral’s dead.”

  The two men looked at each other. Rafe felt his heart surge with adrenaline, then with relief that Beluscio was going to do the right thing. He held out his hand. “I’m taking command of the BG, Pete.”

  Beluscio hesitated and then, nodding, pulled off the headset and handed it over, as if it was a crown he was passing on. “I, uh—you know I’ll back you all the way, Rafe.”

  The two men’s hands touched. Rafe took the headset and, putting it on with his right hand, grasped Beluscio’s arm with his left and squeezed.

  “Alan!”

  “Hey, Rafe—” They were old friends.

  “Fill me in, the short version.”

  “Medics brought up parts of three, maybe four bodies in one bag, all cut up from shrapnel. One was an NCIS female agent who was known to be with the admiral. They found a Navy collar with two stars, same location. I’ve had the bag loaded for transfer to the Jeff so your guys can make a real ID, but—there’s no place left to look, Rafe.”

  “Okay. I’m assuming command of the BG, Al. What’re your orders?”

  “Beluscio order
ed us out, including my det—the embassy told him the city’s rioting, something about Islamic fundamentalists—but that’s bullshit, Rafe. The Kenyans—”

  “No time. Answer me one question: you want to stay or fly back?”

  “I’ve got a mission here.”

  “Good. New orders: continue as before, your det to hunker down at Mombasa airport. I’ll send your second bird as soon as Stevens can have the guys ready. Okay, listen up, Al, I gotta go, but I’m depending on you there. You’re the Navy’s point man until you hear otherwise, you hear me? One, I want to know what happened to that ship; two, we want the bastards who did it if it’s a terrorist thing; and three, we want you to protect your people and the ship. Got it?”

  “You authorizing me to investigate?”

  Beluscio had handed Rafehausen a quickly scrawled note. He scanned it and said to Alan, “NCIS is putting a team together, but that’ll take time. You’re on the spot—make the most of it. I’ll support you every step of the way. For now, hang on there. As far as I’m concerned, you’re in command of the Harker. Can you hack it?”

  Alan tried to laugh. “I think the Navy’ll say I don’t have the right designator for command at sea.”

  “Yeah, well, you aren’t putting to sea, are you?”

  “It would help if I could contact my det at the airport. We can’t raise them.”

  Rafehausen scowled. “Neither can we. All we can figure, they don’t have their comm on. We’ll keep trying.” He glanced at the clock, then at the men and women around him. They were all looking at him, he realized. They knew. “Marines are to be attached to your det, under your command. Dispose them as you see fit. What else have you got for defense?”

  “One nine-millimeter handgun and a sniper rifle and some maybe-maybe support from the Kenyan Navy. They saved my ass from a missile attack, Rafe, so if you can send some sort of message of thanks, it’ll help. Right now, they’re back in their bunker. Maybe they’ll come out again to help us if things get bad and I say ‘please’ really nice. But the situation’s iffy.”

  Rafehausen made a face, glanced at the clock. “We’ll turn the choppers around as fast as we can; one should get back to you by”—he squinted—“maybe 2200 local.” He looked at Beluscio’s note again. “Captain Beluscio has been prepping the gator freighter to send in more support, but it looks like tomorrow before they can get there. Can you hold out?”

  He heard Alan give a wry, small laugh. “We’ve made it this far.” He hesitated, then said in a rush, “Martin Craw bought it.”

  “Oh, jeez.” Rafehausen, Alan, and Craw had been in the same aircrew in the Gulf War. “We’ll be praying for you, Al.”

  Rafe switched off the mike and squared his shoulders. Raising his voice, he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we have good reason to believe that Admiral Kessler was killed this morning on a visit to USNS Harker in Mombasa. As senior officer on board, I’m assuming command of the battle group. I’d like to meet at once with Captain Beluscio, Lieutenant-Commander Byng, Commander Nesbitt, and Commander Manfredi.” He turned to a jg standing with Beluscio—the flag lieutenant’s gofer. He lowered his voice. “Dick, contact the chaplain, schedule a memorial service for tomorrow, subject to positive ID of the remains. But first, get ship’s captain on comm and let me speak with him personally, please.”

  Going out, he grabbed Beluscio’s arm again. “Pete, Metro mumbled something to me about a tropical depression that’s coming the wrong way south of Sri Lanka; get a clarification and see what it means for us, will you?” He let go and turned to the flag intel officer. “Get us a contact at the embassy in Nairobi; I want to be able to reach them twenty-four hours a day. Tell them to get my guy some protection at Kilindini—they need to lean on the Kenyans—tell them I don’t want to have to bring the BG off Mombasa to make the point—okay?” He grabbed somebody else. “Dick, we’re going to have to refuel the gator freighter’s Seahawks for the trip to Mombasa. Here’s how I see it—”

  Beluscio, left to follow in his wake, had already fallen back into the role of subordinate. He liked Rafehausen no better but felt a painful gratitude to him, as if, in over his head, he had been rescued by a stronger swimmer.

  USNS Jonathan Harker.

  Alan handed his comm set to Patel and ran his hand over his sweaty, spiky hair, thinking about Rafe Rafehausen as acting commander of the BG. A hell of a lot better than Beluscio. Far away, fire sirens wailed, and a seabird sailed on the wind above him, swung back as if to look again at the crippled ship, then soared away. A distant gunshot sounded.

  Alan’s and Patel’s eyes went to the shoreline. The shot had been a long way away, Alan was thinking—somewhere up in the city, even. He heard a police hooter. He looked at Patel.

  “They won’t get in here again,” he said more confidently than he felt.

  “I am not worried, sir.” Patel’s lean head lifted. He looked like a Roman aristocrat. Then his eyes flicked over Alan’s left shoulder and he made a small motion with his head.

  “Sir,” Alan heard behind him. Geelin, the Marine captain, was standing there, looking truculent. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

  “Yeah, thanks—you got my request to post a guard below?”

  “Haven’t got the men, sir. Sorry.”

  Alan thought about having called it a “request.” He grinned. “Something else has come up. You probably know—it looks like Admiral Kessler is dead. The acting commander of the battle group has ordered me to take command here. You and your Marines are being attached to my det.” He smiled again.

  “I gonna get that in writing? Sir?”

  “In time, I’m sure you will.” He smiled for the third time and lowered his voice. “Geelin, I need a guard on the space where we think the admiral died so that there can be an evidence chain. Okay?”

  “I’ll have to take somebody off the dock.”

  “Do what you gotta do.”

  “What’re we looking at—Arab mobs?”

  “More like a few real badasses and maybe some street action, demonstrations, like that. This isn’t Palestine, Geelin, and it isn’t Somalia. We’re not at war.”

  Geelin looked down at the damage. “Somebody is.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what we’re here to find out. You with me, Geelin?”

  “Call me Jack. I’ll get a man down below—sorry, I didn’t understand before, the way it came to me—”

  Alan was starting to speak when Geelin whirled about and leaned over the rail and shouted, “What’s that goddamn woman doing down there! Bring that woman up here! On the double! On the double—!”

  Woman? His thoughts jerked to Laura Sweigert, as if she might still be alive—

  Alan looked down at the dock and saw that there was a woman down there. But not Laura. Foreshortened by the angle from the bridge, she still looked too tall, too pale, too—what? Sort of limp, as if her bones were made of something softer, like plastic. His respect for Geelin went up: he had never known anybody before who had eyes in the back of his head.

  A Marine began half-dragging, half-coaxing the woman up the ladder.

  She was white, red-haired, a little overweight, and she was, surprisingly, laughing her ass off.

  She raised one white arm and reached across her own head to pull some hair out of her eyes. “Hi!” she said.

  Geelin was all but gritting his teeth. He thrust his helmeted head at hers. “What the hell are you doing inside a goddamn military perimeter—?”

  Alan put out a hand. “Hey, hey—”

  “She could get killed! She could get my men killed!”

  “Hey, Geelin—easy—”

  “I haven’t got the men to nursemaid women!” He whirled on the woman. “Are you a goddamn journalist?”

  “Belay that, Captain Geelin.” Their eyes met. Geelin’s shifted away, as if he had remembered rank and discipline. Alan said, “I’ll take care of the lady.”

  Geelin’s eyes swung back. “I’ll do my job, then, sir.” He nodded—a substitute f
or a salute?—and went around the woman without acknowledging her and started down the ladder, calling over his shoulder for the Marine to follow him.

  The woman was again laughing her ass off. Alan wondered if it was nervous laughter, maybe even something near hysteria. In the movies, you always slapped the woman at this point, and she broke into tears and fell in love with you. Bad move.

  “ID, please?” he said.

  She used that same gesture, the raised arm reaching across to mess with her hair, the arm a frame around her head, her armpit bare and dead white, and she said, “I’m Sandy Cole?” Squinting at him from slight pop eyes as the last of the sun splashed golden light on her from behind him. Then she was scrambling in a huge shoulder bag that was full of junk—he saw address books, checkbooks, lipsticks, tampons, maybe a pair of panty hose, pens, coins, combs, lists, keys—and tossing out phrases, half-finished sentences. She gave him an embassy ID badge. Her passport. A State Department card.

  “Uh, Miz Cole—what are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I came as soon as I saw it on TV. To investigate? I’m the Legat!”

  Legat, legal attaché—from the Nairobi embassy, must be. Okay. Meaning that she was also FBI. Not so okay. He studied the documents, which looked authentic enough. “Were you ordered here, Miz Cole?”

  “Oh, no, God—” She started laughing again. “I just got into my car and drove.” She held a hand over her eyes and squinted. “You want me to look at the body or the engine first?”

  He hesitated. “What engine?”

  “The boat engine. There’s a V-8—” She made a sweeping gesture toward the dock with an arm; the other was over her head again, the hand in her frizzy hair, head tipped. That way, she looked like a dancer or a model, her flexible bones bending and willowy despite her size. “An old car engine with a propeller shaft; I think from the dhow.”