Force Protection

by Gordon Kent

  He gestured to Fidelio. “Okay, the floor’s yours. Tell us what you found in the water.”

  Fidelio looked around and decided to stand up. Sitting, he had seemed menacing; standing, he was majestic—a big, big man with iron-pumped shoulders and arms, which he folded over his massive chest. Again, however, the voice was surprisingly, even comically, high. “Two of us spent three hours diving just off the hole in the Harker. What we found was damage from your typical Islamic bomb. That’s what we found.” He started to sit down.

  “Hold it.” Alan was leaning his elbows on the metal chair-back now, trying to stretch his back. “Please, folks, no conclusions yet.” His back arched, he had to look up to meet Fidelio’s eyes. “Skip the Islamic part. Give us some detail.”

  “Lots of pieces of wooden boat—they call them your dhows—and most of the rear end floating around over by the next dock. We found part of a propane cylinder on the bottom, which I’m not saying came from this dhow, because there’s all kinds of crud down there, but it has the kind of damage you get from explosives. We brought that up.”

  “I want to see it,” Sandy Cole said.

  Alan waved a hand to tell her not to interrupt, never taking his eyes from Fidelio. “Good. And?”

  “Hell of a hole in the ship, as you know. This was a big, big bomb. We figure plastic explosive, probably C4 with maybe the propane tank for ignition.”

  “Propane tanks are an IRA specialty,” Sandy Cole said. Again, Alan waved a hand at her.

  “Have you got anything that could have bomb residue on it?”

  “We brought up lots of junk. Lots of residue on the ship, I figure. But you put it together—the dhow, the type of bomb, the MO—you got your usual Islamic—”

  “That’s a conclusion. Premature.” Alan straightened. “That it?”

  Fidelio stared at him. “You want more detail? I gave the high spots.”

  “Let’s save it for tomorrow. You catalogued what you brought up?”

  Fidelio nodded.

  “Thanks.”

  Fidelio sat down. He looked around as if challenging anybody to say he’d been less than perfect.

  Alan turned to the woman. “Okay, now you can talk.” He tried to smile.

  “Well—” She started to slip one dirty foot into a shoe and apparently thought better of it and remained seated. “You want the sniper’s body first? I’ll do the body first. Uh—” Her left hand went to its usual resting place over her right ear, the pale arm framing the hair and face. Seeming to find inspiration in the open bracing of the ceiling, she kept her eyes fixed up there. “Dead man was a black male, young, I guess, but hard to say because of decomposition and wounds. Pretty swollen. But I think under thirty, don’t hold my feet to the fire on that. Shot six times, I’m told with a nine-millimeter, died pretty quickly. No ID. Nothing in the pockets, anything like that. No labels in the clothes. Not circumcised.”

  Bakin made a little intake of breath, expressing what every man was thinking: She had the balls to strip a corpse?

  Sandy Cole stopped playing with her hair and leaned forward. “The only other thing was an MP3 player. It was in the booth. I don’t think he was listening when he was killed, so I don’t think he was listening when he was sniping. Or maybe. Anyway, he didn’t have the earphone on, but it was connected, so I think he was listening sometimes, okay?” She shook her head. “Some kind of wailing sort of music, nothing I recognized.”

  “Another A-rab,” Geelin said.

  “There’re black Arabs?” Fidelio said, as if he and Geelin were two guys sitting in a bar with nothing to do.

  “Well, yeah—”

  “That’ll do!” Alan growled. He looked down at Sandy. “That it on the body?”

  “There’s the gun, but I understand you guys took that. I picked up the casings; we can check headstamps, but I think it’s Yugoslav ammo, and that’s everywhere.”

  “That it?”

  “There’s the engine?” She was squinting up at him, hand over eyes, as if she was looking into the sun. “The dhow engine?” She dropped the hand and looked at the others. “The dhow came in under motor power. We know that courtesy of the Kenyans. The explosion apparently blew the engine up on to the dock—at least, there’s an old Ford V-8 engine up there with part of a propeller shaft attached. I got the numbers, also some script that I think is Arabic.” She turned her attention back to Alan. “I got photos but I haven’t uploaded them yet. Digital.”

  He was thinking about Harry O’Neill and Harry’s insistence that the bombing hadn’t been Islamic. It was pretty clear that the bombing had, in fact, been Islamic—Arabic writing, the dhow, the method. Still, Harry might be able to do something with the engine numbers. “Can you get the numbers on a JPEG file?” he said to her. “Tonight?”

  “Tonight?” she said, as if she had never heard of anything called “tonight.” Not that there was much left of tonight. “Well—I suppose so.” She sighed, a dramatic exhalation that told everybody how put-upon she felt. “Then there’s the possible terrorist the Kenyans pulled out of the water. Last I heard, he was alive.”

  “Can we interview him?”

  “Ha, ha, ha.” That was the way she said it—ha, ha, ha. As in har-de-har-har. “They’ll have him in a hospital in town by now, surrounded by cops, and if they haven’t beaten him to death, they’ll be trying everything short of a tongue transplant to make him talk. They won’t want any Americans around studying their technique.”

  “He’s got to be interviewed.”

  She shrugged. “The only people who can make that happen are the ambassador and the chief of station. It means saying in clear English that Kenya is a small nation of corrupt shits, and the U.S. is a big nation that can clean their clock without breaking a sweat. The ambassador doesn’t like to be that honest because it isn’t tactful.” She was slumped down, her arms crossed over her breasts. “They’ll do it if you get somebody to goose them from Washington.”

  Alan made a note. “Good.” He straightened. His back complained. “Okay, anything else? If not, I’m going to give us a chance to get at least a little sleep. Fidelio, I’d like a written report—you’re making one, anyway, am I right? Sandy, same goes for you.”

  “I report to the embassy,” she said.

  “Yeah, and I’d like a copy. Mark, remember that you’re taking off for Nairobi early, let’s say 0700, so set it up tonight. Bakin, you’re getting us a vehicle and you’re going to sterilize it. We both clear there? Okay. Captain Geelin, I’d like to meet tomorrow A.M., let’s say 0830, to talk about the incoming Marines and perimeter defense. Okay, that’s it—see you all in the morning.”

  They all sat where they were for several seconds, and it was only when he turned his chair back to its original position that they moved. Then Sandy stretched, Geelin jumped to his feet, Fidelio yawned, and Mark Cohen stood up and shook himself like a dog who’d just climbed out of the water. Alan wondered where he was going to sleep and remembered something about a plywood table that had been pointed out to him. He started toward a distant stair, and the others moved off into the darker world beyond the work light.

  “You really want those photos now?” he heard Sandy say.

  He remembered that he had decided to send the engine data to Harry O’Neill, and he said, “Mind?”

  “Of course I mind,” she said and disappeared into the gloom.

  “Sir?” The voice was behind him. He turned. Bakin was silhouetted against the light. “Uh, could I talk to you, sir? Only a sec.”

  He would never be allowed to sleep, that was what they were telling him. Okay, so be it. “Shoot.”

  Bakin came closer. “Uh, sir, the men want to do something about Craw.”

  He had to remind himself that Craw was dead. Too much had happened too quickly. And what did the man mean, “do something”? It was too late to do something.

  “They want to do a memorial service, sir.”

  Ah, that kind of something. “I’m sure there’ll be
a service on the boat, Chief.”

  “Craw was very popular, Mister Craik. The men’d like to sort of say good-bye. They were planning on having a man of God here, somebody local, but if you put the kibosh on anybody coming in—”

  “Negative anybody from outside.”

  “Well, I thought that was the way, yessir. Well—” Bakin cleared his throat. “I’ve done a certain amount of lay preaching myself. I’d volunteer to do that. Pray, and so on.”

  “Good. Okay.”

  “Fidelio would sing ‘Danny Boy.’ ”

  “Craw wasn’t Irish.”

  “Fidelio says he’s sung it at a lot of Catholic funerals.”

  “Craw wasn’t Catholic.”

  “Well, no—but the men think very highly of Fidelio’s singing. They want it.”

  This suggested a life in the EM spaces that Alan had hardly guessed. It made him feel guilty and a little angry. He told himself that he was wiped out, that he would see it differently in the morning. “Okay,” he said.

  “Basurto is writing a poem.”

  All Alan could do was nod. Basurto was nineteen and until that moment had seemed to him a kid who lived only for pop music. I’m their CO and I don’t know anything about them! “Okay,” he said.

  “I thought we’d do it down at the far end of the hangar—we can rig up two tables, sort of where a casket would go, you know—” Alan let him talk and then said that that was fine, everything was fine, good, he was glad the men were so thoughtful, and, wishing he’d had the idea of a memorial service himself, he staggered away toward the stair.

  Sandy Cole was waiting at the bottom. She had a laptop and a digital camera.

  “Ready?” she said.

  He’d forgotten about her. He looked at his watch. After two-thirty. “Yeah.”

  It took her twenty minutes to get three photos out of the cameras and up on the screen, and then, because he wanted his own copies, it took another fifteen minutes to hunt down a floppy she could use. He found one at last in the comm office, where a bright-eyed second-class named Belk was monitoring the equipment and making adjustments that only an electronics freak would have understood. “Hey, Belk,” Alan said.

  “Hey, Mister Craik. Hey, I’m really sorry about Master Chief Craw. Really.”

  “We all are.”

  He dug out a floppy and carried it to Sandy Cole, who was asleep in a chair in the det office. She woke up long enough to make the copy and then crept away, her languid bones bent so far she almost flowed along the floor like water.

  Alan booted the images up on his own laptop and then e-mailed them, PGP-encrypted, to Harry O’Neill.

  Thirty seconds later, he was stretched out on a plywood table with his head on his helmet bag, and a few seconds after that he was asleep.

  DAY

  TWO

  5

  London.

  IT WAS RAINING OVER LONDON. THE SMALL WINDOWS OF the aircraft wept ribbons of water, and Dukas, leaning over from his aisle seat to look out, saw only the grayness of cloud below and mist at eye level. He had actually slept for an hour between the movies and the snack, and now he stretched and decided to visit the head, but only in time to hear that seat belts and tray tables and all that were now more important. He sank back into the seat, felt the knees of the woman behind him, grunted. Her knees had been a problem all night.

  They came out of the clouds at a thousand feet, the air around them seeming to brighten. Then they were rushing down, and the wheels slammed and the engines screamed, and in only slightly less time than it would have taken him to walk, they were at the gate and the bin doors were crashing and luggage was raining down. Dukas signaled his people in nearby seats to stay put; only when the plane was all but empty did he pull himself up and, with the slowness of a patient man, take down his laptop and his raincoat and head for the front of the aircraft.

  They gathered in a knot in the exit area. Cram had enjoyed the free booze and now looked like hell; several of the others had the look of men who hadn’t slept, but Geraldine Pastner looked good, a little too bright-eyed, but amused and alert.

  “We’ll find a place to settle in at the outgoing flight lounge,” Dukas said. “Nobody goes through immigration or customs. You guys aren’t seeing London this trip.”

  “Holy shit, Dukas.” It was the ex-Marine. “We got eight hours.”

  “Life is hard. Use it to read the briefing stuff.”

  “I didn’t get any briefing stuff.”

  Dukas held up a CD-ROM. “You will.”

  “How about breakfast?” Geraldine said. “I don’t eat on airplanes and I sure don’t drink.” She looked straight at Cram. “It leaves me healthy but hungry. Who’s for breakfast?”

  Dukas started to say that he was, partly because Geraldine really pinged on him, but before he could speak he felt his left arm gripped hard, and a voice said, “Dukas, listen up.”

  It was somebody he knew but couldn’t immediately place; he had turned and seen the big, pale face quite close, registered blue eyes and thinning hair, and then stepped back to get a better look, thinking, NCIS, served with him someplace, where? The man pulled him back, mouth to ear again, and said, “There’s been another bombing. Come on.”

  Dukas felt himself marched along a corridor, his gut dropping, heart banging, his inner voice whining, Oh, no, oh, shit, oh, man, oh— He waved for the others to follow. Biggle. Biddle. Biddler, that was it—Biddler. Jesus, on the Jackson, that was umpteen years ago—

  “Biddler, right?” he said.

  “Yeah. Been a while. Wasn’t sure you’d remember me.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Not here.” He relaxed his grip on Dukas’s arm. “I’m in the London office now. I thought you were in Bosnia.”

  “I was, I was—long story.” They were going so fast that Dukas was puffing. Next to him, Geraldine was charging along like a racehorse. Or a model, he thought. Yeah, she looked like a model—long, long legs, coat open, good color in her face, even though it wasn’t even a pretty face, too much mouth, too much nose, but—

  “So tell me—”

  “Not here.” Biddler waved at a door up ahead, muttered something into a handheld, and the door opened, seemingly by itself. Once inside, Biddler led him into a corner where there were dark chairs and sleek tables and telephones and modems—some sort of VIP business place. The others were shepherded to a table with coffee thermoses and plates of killer sweet buns and, for some reason, a dozen bananas. Geraldine looked at Dukas and raised her eyebrows—What’s up?—and turned gratefully to the coffee.

  “Get me some!” Dukas called. Then, back to Biddler, “Okay, what’s going down?”

  “Car bomb, they think. Cairo. The AID office.” AID was a U.S. agency supposedly devoted to international development but suspected in other parts of the world of something more sinister. But was it suspect enough to get itself bombed?

  “Cairo! Shit, I’ve got a guy in Cairo! You sure it wasn’t—”

  “I’m not sure of anything. They told me yesterday to meet you out here and make nice; I get here this morning, and fifteen minutes ago there’s this call, Cairo’s had a hit. That’s about all I know.”

  Dukas made a face—tongue between teeth, lips pursed out, eyes looking aside. As Geraldine put coffee in front of him, he said, “Two in a row. They gotta be connected.” Then, less certainly, he said, “You think?”

  Biddler’s eyes went to Geraldine and signaled to Dukas, but Dukas said, “Oh, Christ, she’s fine. They’re all fine. What d’you think we’re here for, golf?” He waved at the others, who were munching sweet buns and swilling coffee and looking hollow-eyed. “This place okay?” he said to Biddler.

  “We use it all the time.”

  Dukas stood. “Hey, people, listen up—! We just got the word, there’s been another bombing.” Winces, a curse. “Cairo this time. Geraldine, plug the STU in, get the office, and find out what’s up. Mendelsohn, I want everything on baddies in Egypt; it should be on
the CD, but when you’ve got that down, double-check State and the Agency stateside. Keatley, find out what you can about AID in Cairo—where it is, what they were doing, what their security was. Hahn—hit the Internet, we got four chat rooms on our list, so see what they’re saying.” He looked at Biddler. “Right off the top of my head, I don’t get hitting an AID office.”

  “AID isn’t our business,” Cram said. His face, purplish and swollen from the free booze, looked a little crazy. His eyes were swiveling about as if he was looking for a way back to the States.

  Dukas held up two fingers. “Two bombings. One Navy connected. Therefore both our business, because when these things come in twos and threes—Jesus, pray God there isn’t a third—then they’re connected.” He swung back to Biddler. “I need a secure phone.”

  Biddler put him in a small office nearby, with a phone he was assured had been vetted that morning. He called Triffler’s hotel in Cairo, where it was two hours later and the entire Bright Star team were probably all eating breakfast in the same upscale place, and another car bomb could do a hell of a job on U.S.-Egyptian planning. The woman on the other end sounded a little excitable, he thought—the bombing? Or maybe just local manner. Whatever the reason, she had trouble with the name Triffler, which she pronounced Tereefeller and wasted a couple of minutes finding the room.

  “Dick?”

  “Who is this, please?” Triffler was a cautious man, to be sure, even when he was waking up.

  “Dick, it’s Dukas, come on!”

  “Oh, hi.”

  “You heard?”

  “Heard?”

  “Dick, come on—! We’ve got a report the AID office there has been hit.”