Force Protection

by Gordon Kent

  He felt stupid but wary. “What dhow?”

  “The dhow that carried the bomb.” She looked back at him quickly. “It came in from over there—” Pointing with one hand, pulling hair off her face with the other. The hair business was getting to him, driving him a little nuts. “It looked like it was going to the other dock, but it came very wide and then—”

  “How do you know this?”

  “There’s an eyewitness? They have him over at the Kenyan Navy base? They also have somebody—he’s totally in shock and really out of it—but I think he’s either from the crew here or maybe he was even on the dhow, although they would have been suicide bombers and, you know—” She shrugged, gave a smile with her mouth closed. Played with her hair. “The eyewitness says he thought somebody jumped off the dhow before it hit, so maybe he’s a bomber? And he was in the water when the bomb went off, and he’s suffered concussion or whatever?”

  “You interviewed an eyewitness?”

  “No, the Kenyans are being real selfish. They told me that’s what he said.”

  Alan was thinking that they hadn’t told him any of this, but maybe Lieutenant Ngiri hadn’t known any of it. Or maybe he had, and that’s the way the ball was bouncing. He remembered the Kenyan sailors who had been searching the ships on the opposite dock. Of course they’d found eyewitnesses. He looked again at her documents. “How’d you get in here?” he said. He looked up the dock at the blocked gate.

  “Oh, I came in through the tank farm.” Pointing again with one of those white arms. “I got an embassy shield on my car. Special plates. You know, they’re very hierarchical here—special plates make a big difference.” She scrabbled in the big bag again and came up with the sort of leather case that cops carry shield and ID in. She was laughing. “And I used this.” It had a courtesy card from the National Association of Sheriffs, unimpressive except for the big embossed eagle, and a shield that said “Special Police” and “007.” “I got it on the Internet,” she said, laughing and playing with her goddamn hair and showing him her armpit.

  “You’re lucky you didn’t get shot.”

  She shrugged. “You want me to look at the body or the engine first? They say you shot a sniper. Wow.” She waved toward the crane. “I better look at the body first. He’ll be pretty ripe in this heat. It is a he, isn’t it? I’d hate it if it was a woman.”

  “What do you want to look at the body for?”

  “I’m trained to look at bodies. I took an extra twelve hours in forensics. After law school?” She wrinkled her nose and looked at the sky. “I don’t want to do it in the dark. But I brought a flashlight? So maybe I could. I don’t know—” She laughed. “Or I could look at that engine. Engines have numbers, you know.”

  It was just what he needed, he thought—a pale woman in a long dress. A perfect target. Well, nobody was shooting. And dusk was falling. And Rafe had told him to investigate, and she said she knew how to investigate. Oh, he believed her credentials well enough, and he believed her story about using the patently fake police stuff. He’d been tempted to get himself just such crap, in fact—a badge, any old badge, went a long way in some parts of the world. “I think I’d like you to start with the body,” he said. He smiled, not entirely pleasantly. If she worked inside the crane, at least she’d be protected, and the smell was her problem. “You can examine the engine with your flashlight later.”

  “Oh,” she said, “cool!”

  Right.

  Half an hour later, he had a call from Harry O’Neill.

  “Hey, Harry!” Alan shouted. For this man, Harry O’Neill, he was able to be truly hearty. “How the hell’d you find me?”

  “Al, you’re into some bad stuff, man.” Harry O’Neill had not picked up his tone; instead, he sounded severe. The cell-phone connection was suddenly lots better, he thought, if he could recognize severity. “This is bad, bad, Al.” Harry had been a shipmate during the Gulf War, then had left the Navy and joined the CIA, jumped from that when he had lost an eye on a mission; now he ran a private security company in Africa and the emirates.

  And he had converted to Islam.

  “I’m not getting you, Harry.”

  “It’s all over the TV and the Net, Al—Islamic terrorists have hit another U.S. target, all that shit. It isn’t Islamic terrorists!”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know! No, I don’t know, but—fuck, Al, not everything bad that happens in the world comes from Islam! The TV is jumping at it like dogs, like—wolves. It makes me sick.”

  Alan turned to look aft. The long sweep of the deck was empty of people, only the containers, jumbled by the explosion, breaking the straight lines. “Harry, you’re way ahead of me—I don’t know what you’re saying, man. I’m standing on a ship that’s had a hole blown in it; I’ve got a bunch of people killed, a bunch more injured. What’re you telling me—it didn’t happen?”

  “I’m telling you everybody’s jumping to conclusions.” There was one electronic break in the sentence, so that the word “to” had to be guessed.

  “Okay—but why you telling me?”

  “Because you’re there, man!”

  “Harry, I’ve been running my ass off since this happened; I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

  “Alan, every time there’s an incident, the first people you come for are Muslims.”

  “The first I come for!”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t know what you mean, Harry. What? Why are you saying this to me?”

  “Because you’re there! Because you’re all over the television!”

  It was the first he’d heard of it. He’d hardly noticed the newsman with the camera; now Harry told him in detail of the scene that was on every television news show in every country in the world. A worrying fact registered—I was on TV; I can be ID’d—and was put aside. At the same time, a cautioner in his mind said, This man is a Muslim now; how far can you trust him?

  Harry finished by saying, “Do you even know it was a bomb?”

  Alan thought fast—about friendship, about prejudice, about trust. “Harry, you know the position I’m in. You’ve been in the Navy.”

  “Okay, okay, I understand. I’m on the other side now, right?”

  “Wrong. I’m not saying anything, because I don’t know anything yet.” He was standing as far to the port side of the bridge as he could get, looking past where the water lapped at the ship’s deck. One of the SEALs surfaced and raised his dive mask, and Alan could hear him blowing air into it.

  “Was it a bomb?”

  “I don’t know.” Had the Kenyans told the Legat the truth about the dhow? If so, of course it was a bomb. The SEAL replaced his mask and dove again.

  “What’s the evidence for Islamic terrorists?”

  “You’d know better than I would, Harry. What’re they saying on the TV?”

  The SEAL, or perhaps it was the other of the pair, surfaced and slung a net bag into their inflatable. He hung on the side, and the other SEAL surfaced a few yards away.

  “I feel very strongly about this, Al.”

  “I know you do.”

  “No, man, I don’t think you do. You don’t get religion, Al. No offense—we’re old friends; I can say that. You’re not religious. You go to church, that’s it. I feel my religion. Islam has saved me, Al. From bitterness, from, oh, shit, just indulging myself, just—I went to Mecca last year.”

  “I know.”

  “But you don’t know what it meant to me.” He began to sound far away; was the sound of his voice changing because of his seriousness, or was the cell phone going? “Okay, I can’t explain it. It’s just—it’s important to me, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I don’t think this was Islamic, Al. I’ve got a lot of ears. I’m in that business—a lot of ears, a lot of eyes. I made some calls before I got you. Everybody’s in shock. It isn’t the usual suspects, Al!”

  Alan had been thinking of the Oklah
oma City bombing, the way they’d all jumped at “Islamic terrorists” the moment they’d heard of it. There was nothing wrong with basic caution in any case; what Harry was saying was only good sense. And if Harry had reason to believe this wasn’t the work of Muslims—well, Harry, as he said, knew a lot of people, and he lived in that world.

  Or, on the other hand, they could be using him.

  “Harry, the best I can say now is I’ll keep an open mind, okay?”

  “What? I’m losing you—”

  “I said I’ll keep an open mind!”

  “You’re running the investigation, am I right?”

  Harry knew the Navy, all right. Alan grinned. “Not for prime time, Harry.”

  “Let me help.”

  “You know what my security people would say?”

  “Fuck them. Al, I’m a source for you. I’m a voice from the other side of the wall. How about it?”

  In one pan of the balance, friendship; in the other, religion, habit, security. “No bullshit?”

  “No bullshit.”

  Alan watched the SEALs flutter-kick the inflatable parallel to the Harker’s side until they disappeared behind the superstructure.

  “When I have something, I’ll let you know.”

  He thought he could hear a smile in Harry’s voice, but there was static now. “Allah be praised. You’re a good man, Charlie Brown.”

  “You’re breaking up, Harry—I’ll make it short. Do two things for me, Haji—one, call Rose and tell her I’m okay; two, check out the IPK here in Mombasa and see what the skivvy is on them.”

  “Shit, I can tell you about the IPK right now—Sufi—[static] much oriented—Aga Khan, not as much [static] as a lot of Islamic parties—” There was a lot of noise, and then: “—call Rose. In fact—already called me—morning—her you must be—Hello? Al—? Hell—” Pops and a rattling hiss, and then, clearly, as if from somewhere else, Harry’s voice saying, “You’re my best friend, guy.”

  The battery indicator told him that the phone was dead. He dropped it into his helmet bag, wondering what he had done with the backup battery—with the battery charger, for that matter. He put on the headset, checked that Hansen was still getting him. There was a moment of quiet. He might have been in some other place, standing on the bridge of a healthy ship in some peaceful harbor. Suspended in that moment, his body had the chance to tell him how tired it was: aching, shoulder-bowing fatigue.

  “Last fucking chopper’s leaving.”

  It was Geelin. He turned and looked down the dock. He had time to see details in sharp focus: two Marines in combat gear out there, lying prone, weapons ready; the chopper rising, rotors churning up a sparkle of water drops that looked like golden sparks in the late-day light. With it went their last physical link with the battle group.

  “There could be a goddamn SAM out there anyplace—anyplace!” Geelin stared at the distant green shore beyond the harbor as if he’d like to nuke it. “We gotta secure this place.”

  “The Kenyan cops? Can you coordinate something?”

  “Coordinate something? I don’t even have a fucking map! How am I gonna tell some fucking African where I think a fucking SAM could be if I can’t even identify it on a fucking map! And I’m not sending my guys out there to do it all alone!”

  Alan said to himself that he wouldn’t let Geelin send his guys out there even if he wanted to; no matter what he felt, you didn’t send American Marines down foreign streets as if you owned them. The fatigue settled like a heavy, heavy bird on his head. He made a mental note, Maps. “Right, I understand—”

  “You don’t understand! I’m not sending my guys out into some urban warfare like goddamn Mogadishu to get them fucking shot up by A-rabs who hide behind women and little kids!”

  “Right.”

  “My mission is to protect this ship and you and the rescue choppers, and that’s what I’m fucking well doing!”

  “Geelin, I’m with you—”

  “I had ten minutes to get intel before we took off from the boat. I go to CVIC, you know what they gave me for a map of this shithole? The fucking liberty kit they give every sailor when he goes ashore! You think I’m gonna send my guys to fight with nothing but a fucking liberty kit?” Geelin stuck his lower lip out. His eyes were hot and hard, his face red. “I just want you to understand!”

  “I do.”

  Geelin nodded. “Get me some local plug-ins for our GPS, maybe we’ll talk about cleaning out some of this rat’s nest—when we’ve secured this area!” He looked around. “Where the hell’s that woman that was here?”

  “Looking at the body in the crane, I hope.”

  “Jesus—I don’t even wanta know.” Geelin hit his handheld again and told somebody to check for a woman in the second crane down the dock. He was still scanning the ships across the water. “She a reporter?”

  “Unh-unh. Embassy.”

  “Shit. How we gonna feed her?”

  “Feed her? Oh, right—”

  “She’s locked in here with us now, we gotta feed her. Bitch.” He laughed. “I hope she likes MREs. You eaten?”

  Alan thought about it. He’d had what was called breakfast on the plane before they’d landed in Nairobi. And then? My God, was that all today? He’d flown to Mombasa; Craw had got killed; he’d got the sniper. Laura. The admiral. “No, I haven’t eaten.”

  “MREs for them as wants them at 1900 hours. Bring your own beer.” Then Geelin was on his handheld again, shouting at the gunnery sergeant to keep those goddamn Kenyans out of his line of fire.

  Alan saw a single star in the steel-blue sky.

  Mombasa.

  In the slum behind the fuel depot, where the smell of sulfur and oil was so strong it flavored the food, men looked at the evening sky and watched the reflection of fire. Mombasa is burning, they said, but they knew that only part of the city was burning, because where they were there was no fire. Here, in alleys laid out between shacks made of flattened oil cans, men gathered in clusters, looking at the sky and telling each other how terrible the day had been.

  “Tomorrow will be worse,” a young man said. He said it with pride.

  The women were in the tiny shelters. Some stayed near the doors, looking out to watch the men. A naked child, thumb in mouth, stared.

  “I won’t go out tomorrow,” a fat man said.

  “Yes you will.”

  “I won’t! It isn’t my business! What’s the good—you wreck the city, you burn the shops—where are the jobs?”

  “This isn’t about jobs, you fool.”

  “Everything is about jobs. I need a job. You need a job. Allah be praised, this will be over by tomorrow and we will go looking for jobs again.”

  “Tomorrow—!”

  Somebody up the street yelled that the GPU trucks were coming, and the men scattered, pulling closed the doorways of the tin shacks with doors made of pieces of chipped plywood and, on one house, the door of a burned-out car. A GPU truck came down the alley more slowly than a man could walk, its sides grazing the flattened-tin walls and shaking the earth.

  Houston.

  Rose Craik had HAD another call on a STU from the Jefferson, this time from a Captain Beluscio, who was calling for Rafe and simply wanted to tell her that they were in touch with her husband and he was okay. She had already talked to Mike Dukas again by then and learned that he was off this evening to join Alan. She had wanted to shout “Take me, too!” but she knew she was where she had to be. Then Harry O’Neill had called—elegant, handsome Harry, who always smelled wonderful and wore the most beautiful clothes she had ever seen on a man—and he, too, had told her he had talked to Alan and he was okay and everything was going to be fine. “You should try to call him, Rose. I’ll give you the number.”

  “Mike gave it to me. But no.”

  “Duty calls, right?” Harry had been in the Navy; he seemed to understand this bit of Craik family ethos. You didn’t play the worried spouse when things were tough.

  “I’ll let him
call me,” she said. If he could, when he could.

  In fact, it wasn’t just the family ethos that kept her from calling. She didn’t want to load her troubles on Alan, and she was afraid that if she talked to him she wouldn’t be able to keep her mouth shut. Her mother, yes, that was part of it, but also her boss, Colonel Brasher, and the “Director of Personnel Education,” with whom she’d met ten minutes before and whom she’d despised. One of those smooth, glossy men, half corporate geek and half would-be makeout artist. He’d in effect given her a dressing-down, his eyes all the time giving her an undressing, and although he’d used words like “team player” and “the NASA image,” what he’d meant was Get in line, bitch.

  “We don’t want you carrying that gun.”

  “I do want me carrying that gun.”

  “I don’t think you understood what I said.”

  “You got kids?”

  “We don’t want to give the impression that the Space Center is the set of a cowboy movie, Commander.”

  She had tried the same smile she had used with the security officer. Submissive, pert, bright-eyed. Little Miss Cheerleader. After that, she let him talk, and she smiled.

  And when she got into her car, she made sure the gun was still there under the seat, with the two speedloaders and the extra cartridges.

  4

  Near Mombasa.

  THE HOTEL LOBBY WAS GLOSSY AND CLEAN AND LOOKED, quite deliberately, like hotels in Rome and London and Atlanta and Honolulu. “International” really meant “Western,” or even “white.” This hotel, like three others along the strip of white beach nearby, was close enough to Mombasa that you could shop in the city’s colorful bazaar, but far enough away that you wouldn’t feel overcome by what one Brit had called “miles and miles of bloody Africa.” A lot of American military people stayed here.

  A handsome, light-haired man, who might have been recognized as the French-accented journalist who had scooped the Harker disaster, walked with the ease of the international male—whiteness, Westernness—to the marble-topped reception desk. He was dressed in the sort of casual clothes that would have allowed him into any restaurant or office—a dark blazer, an open but good shirt, blue jeans, running shoes. He had a leather laptop bag slung over one shoulder. Without his journalist’s intrusive microphone, and in his fresher, better clothes, he looked quite different from the morning.