by David Poyer
Then his gaze stopped.
On a swipe of green paint, back by the after bulkhead. Where they’d stacked the bags as they burrowed down.
The team cursed anew but he drove them back to work. Bags tore as they manhandled them, releasing fresh showers of what looked like smashed-flat coffee beans. It made a slippery paste underfoot as they struggled hundred-pound sacks from one end of the hold to the other.
But gradually as the after level lowered, a patch of paint came into view. Same color as the rest of the hold, but cleaner. New.
He sent Crack Man topside for a fire axe, and took a roundhouse swing in the middle of the painted area.
Plaster or concrete flew apart with a cracking sound. “Son of a bitch,” Lizard said.
Marty grunted. He hacked around the edge till he was tired, then handed the axe to Sasquatch. Clouds of white dust filled the thick air. Finally Marchetti told him to back off. He crept forward, pulling his Maglite off his belt.
The beam showed him a void extending back under the fuel oil service tanks. Its inner walls were dark steel. He looked back to where his shotgun was propped and felt to make sure the .45 was still at the small of his back.
Then bent through the hole, and duckwalked into a space maybe four feet high.
Carefully dunnaged into the space with baulks of piny-looking wood were perhaps two dozen cylindrical brown objects. As he crept closer, he saw the brown was a thick impregnated kraft paper wrapping material. He slit it with the Ka-Bar. Beneath was … he couldn’t quite made out what.
He rapped it with the knife, but that didn’t tell him anything. Just that it was a shiny metal tube a foot in diameter and maybe eight, ten feet long. There were no markings on it, although there was writing on the paper. Too faint to read, but he thought it might be German or Dutch. They didn’t look like much. If he’d fallen over them stacked outside the engine room he wouldn’t have given them a second look. But they were hidden so there was probably a reason. He backed out and climbed out of the hold and reported back on the radio.
…
DAN was on the scrambled freq to Commodore Strong for the fourth time that afternoon. He was telling him he’d decided to leave his search team aboard that night. The master, expostulating fiercely he’d known nothing of any contraband, had been told to start the engines and steam back toward the mouth of the gulf. She lay now directly ahead of Horn, plodding along at nine knots. Dan told the officer of the deck to check in by radio with Ensign Cassidy every fifteen minutes and warned Cassidy and Marchetti to keep Yazd’s crew under close supervision.
Strong was saying, “Make sure your men keep close control. Once you lay hands on them, these smugglers will scuttle rather than turn over evidence. Especially if they’re Iraqi and have families in country.”
“Aye, sir.”
“I’ve reported our discovery up the line. Laboon will relieve you off Ras Muhammad, after you transit the strait. You’ll escort your detainee to Jiddah, where the Saudis will take him to a security area off Bahrain while his case is decided.”
“Aye, aye, sir. What happens then?”
“They off-load and evaluate the cargo. Eventually the ship’s auctioned as a captured smuggler. To deter the next owner the Iraqis approach.” He heard the commodore clear his throat off-mike, then come back. “Unfortunately, our best customers at the auctions are the other smugglers, the ones who’ve made it and gotten paid. They buy the captured ships, and the whole cycle repeats itself.”
“That doesn’t sound too productive, sir.”
“Well, one hopes we are putting something of a dent in Saddam’s rearming. At any rate, a well-done to you and your crew. MIC out.”
“Horn, out,” Dan said, and hung up the red phone. He looked out at Yazd again, plodding along against the backdrop of the mountains. Thin high clouds hovered above the distant peaks, growing darker as the day closed.
“Now all chief petty officers, first class petty officers, assemble in the chiefs’ mess. All chief petty officers and first class petty officers, assemble in the chiefs’ mess.”
He glanced at his watch. Swung his legs down, and went below.
DAN had asked Forker to get the enlisted leadership together. He stood in his in-port cabin, steadying himself against the sway of the ship. Debating, in the last minutes before he faced them, what would be the best approach.
Hotchkiss wanted to take it outside the skin of the ship. The criminal investigators. Commander, Mideast Force. But he still thought Horn could do this herself. If she found her own answer, it’d be a hell of a lot healthier than one imposed from outside.
Because if it broke outside, she was lost. She’d be shattered for years, if not forever. Another repeat of Tailhook, another reek of cover-up and U.S. Navy closed-mindedness.
Nick Niles would rub his beefy hands. But from what Blair had told him, Dan didn’t think this clock ran backward. If the Horn experiment blew apart, the extreme feminists in DACOWITS and Congress would take over Women at Sea and kill any chance of proceeding with any semblance of goodwill. Splitting the service down the middle, with quotas, lawsuits, years of bad publicity. He could kiss his career goodbye, too, but that didn’t seem as important as what it’d do to all the guys and gals who’d striven to turn the ship around after Ross’s lackluster regime.
But he couldn’t do it, the XO couldn’t do it, a wardroom full of officers couldn’t do it. Only one community could turn the crew around.
Forker stood by at the door to the chiefs’ mess. Dan nodded, and the chief master at arms jerked it open.
“Attention on deck!” They came to their feet in a surge, cigarettes hastily stubbing out. The air was a blue haze already.
“Carry on,” he said, and took the center. The chiefs and first class stood around the edge of the compartment, crowded back into the berthing area. Some with arms folded: a bad sign. He caught Hotchkiss’s eye. Good, she needed to hear this, too. He raised his voice. “Can everyone hear me? Good.
“I guess everybody’s heard what happened this morning in female berthing. Some anonymous coward set a fuel fire. Endangering not just the lives of the sailors in that compartment, but everyone aboard. It’s arson, and if someone had gotten killed—and we had three people report to sick bay for smoke inhalation—it’d be murder. And this meeting would be the beginning of a murder investigation.”
He let that take effect. Some nodded, expressions sober. The ones who’d seen what fire could do at sea, most likely.
“Somebody doesn’t like having women aboard. Okay, he’s got a right to his opinion. But when it comes to destruction of property and threatening the lives of his shipmates, that’s where the right to an opinion ends.
“If the guys in this room want a witch hunt, a no-date policy, and the NCIS aboard tearing us apart, I’m ready to go that way. The message is written. It’ll wreck this ship. I can see that far ahead. And I think you guys in this compartment are the ship. You put your sweat equity into making her what she is today, the best-prepared strike destroyer in the U.S. Navy.
“But somebody aboard wants to destroy everything we’ve worked to build.
“Before I kick this upstairs, I want to try to fix this one last time through the people who lead this ship. The chiefs and senior petty officers, the work center supervisors. The seamen and junior petty officers listen to you. The younger sailors follow your example.”
He paused, looking at their faces; wondering if he was getting through. Maybe to some. Enough? The right ones? He had no way of knowing.
“I will say that I have ways of finding out who set that fire. When I do, he will not enjoy it. I will make an example of someone who values the lives of his shipmates so little.
“Here’s the offer I’m making to anyone who doesn’t want to be with the command program. I want you to pass it on to every one of your men.
“I don’t care what they think about women in the navy. They’re here. The problem’s not the women. The problem is certain peopl
e’s attitude.
“So let’s talk to that attitude. You men know who the cases are in your division who feel that way. Tell them this. From me.
“You can’t serve with women? Then get off Horn. Say so now. I’ll sign your letter and transfer you off. But if don’t get with the program, you’ll be sorry you ever met me. If anything like this happens again, you will go through every refinement of the military justice system I can locate for you.”
There, that was enough. He nodded curtly, and turned, and they made way for him to leave.
Outside, Forker looked both anxious and impressed. “Well?” Dan asked him.
“You laid it out for ’em, sir. Unfuck this, or die.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly the way I put it.”
Forker looked as if that was exactly the way he’d put it. “Anyway, that laid it on the line. I don’t think we’ll see any more fires.”
“I hope you’re right, Chief. But I want to find out who set this one.”
He stopped in his in-port cabin to get his gym gear. Looking around the empty stateroom, he suddenly felt everything he’d done that day was wrong, too late, too feeble, and not enough.
Was Hotchkiss right? Was he covering up a problem he ought to hand over to the investigators? Covering his ass to save his career, the same thing he’d hated and resented in those above him? Only time would tell. Unfortunately, with Claudia Hotchkiss on his six, he didn’t have much of that.
Even worse, whoever had done it might strike again. Killing someone this time. How would he live with himself then?
He stared out the porthole, rubbing his mouth as night came to the Red Sea.
14
Manama, Bahrain
THE big white Suburban was assigned to the office; it wasn’t hers. Aisha had bought a Hyundai in San Diego, but it was in Staten Island now. Her mom didn’t drive, but her dad took it to Jumah service every week to keep it in running condition.
She was waiting when the door opened, and a large man in a dark suit and maroon figured tie looked in. “Want me to—”
“It’s okay, Bob. I’ll drive.”
Bob Diehl was the size of a soft drink machine. His face was droop-cheeked and saggy-eared, like a basset hound’s. Tentlike slacks draped over cordovan loafers. Bahrain was his last station, his last tour. An old-line agent, he both impressed and repelled her. He and Kinky were always telling each other jokes, worn-out puns and remarks about faggots and women. On the other hand, she’d seen him in operation a few times, like when he’d “counseled” a petty officer who’d been stalking a girl at the Desert Dome.
Diehl had been in submarines before joining what was then the NIS. He had been an agent for twenty-four years, as long as she’d been alive. Sitting in on that interview, she’d realized how many times he’d done this and how well he knew the screwed-up young sailors that made up most of their clientele. First he intimidated the kid, letting him glimpse the big .357 Magnum revolver the older agents carried. Then he told a joke, about what you called an Arab with a hundred girlfriends. The answer was: a shepherd. Then he clarified exactly what the kid had been observed doing, characterizing it in the most rancid and dismissive terms possible.
And then scared the shit out of him, laying out what would happen if anything like this happened again. He made the process look effortless. Made the suspects, usually petrified and sometimes not too bright to begin with, say what he needed them to say. In fact, she had the feeling he could make them say anything he wanted, true or not.
The senior agent hesitated, then went around to the passenger side and opened the door for a tall, hook-nosed officer in tropical whites. Aisha pulled her purse out of his way. When he slammed the door, and she heard her partner’s door slam, too, she turned the key.
TODAY was the monthly security liaison committee meeting, where the local police and counterterrorism people shared information with the resident intelligence community. The Ministry of Justice and Islamic Affairs was also headquarters of the SIS, the Bahraini security police. Brigadier General Bucheery would chair. Commander Hooker, as head of security at the Naval Support Activity, was invited, as were the security liaisons from the various embassies. He’d asked her to come along to listen to the side conversations in Arabic—he wanted a typed report afterward—and Diehl had invited himself.
She was leery of Hooker. He didn’t say much, and his expression never changed. The agents didn’t work for him—their chain of command went separately from that of the military up to the director, who worked for the secretary of the navy—but they had to work together, and they all had to work with the lawyers. Hooker sat quietly for the first mile, then said, not turning his head: “Anything on the thefts in 138 yet, Bobby?”
Diehl rumbled cigar-phlegm from the back. “Not yet.”
“I hoped you’d have something by now. The captain was on me about it again this morning.”
Neither agent said anything. “Nothing?” Hooker persisted. “Do I need to take this investigation?”
“No, sir,” Aisha said. “We’re working on it.”
“What else have you got going but that?” Hooker persisted.
Diehl took that question, and she concentrated on driving. The Bahrainis had abandoned the British habit of driving on the left years ago, but unfortunately they’d kept the roundabouts. You had to stay sharp on the free-for-alls on Palace Avenue and King Faisal. She steered the heavy vehicle expertly as Diehl explained the theft was only one of several investigations in progress. One was a credit card scam. Then there was the guy they were hoping to turn into a cooperating witness and catch whoever was selling hashish on base.
“I’m not interested in those now,” Hooker interrupted. “The pressure’s on about this shortage. That’s dangerous stuff to have wandering around.”
He was referring to a recent theft of explosives and small arms.
Building 138 was the wire-ringed, high-security armory area that held equipment for SEAL detachments and other high-security items. The day before yesterday, a routine inventory had revealed four nine-millimeter pistols, fifteen fragmentation grenades, and at least forty kilos of demolition explosives missing.
“We dusted for prints and took pictures of the locked area,” Diehl began. “The locks weren’t cut, so it wasn’t a penetration from the outside.”
“Who has access?”
“The officer in charge, the NCO, four storekeepers. We’ve interviewed them all, with negative results.”
“Interviewed how?”
“The usual. Drill ’em and grill ’em. I gave them a good working over.”
Aisha had been there. He’d had one of the kids crying. But none had confessed to knowing anything about the missing weapons and explosives.
“These are military members? Marine or navy?”
“Two marine, two navy. Their NCO’s a gunnery sergeant. He reports to a supply corps lieutenant. You probably know him.”
“The NCO, the OIC, they have access?”
“Not alone. It’s a two-key system.”
“So you’ve got absolutely nothing?”
“We’ve just started, Commander,” Aisha told him. She kept her eyes on the road. More than once, she’d caught him staring at her. “We did the first-pass interviews, that’s all. We’ll let them stew a little and call them back in.”
“Well, don’t let it go too long. Anybody you like?”
A storekeeper second had avoided her eyes all through the interview. He was cool, didn’t know anything, but he’d shifted on his seat to avoid confronting her, even when it meant facing Diehl. He was from Detroit. His name was Childers, but the others referred to him sometimes, she’d noted, as Jaleel.
“There might be one,” she said, glancing at the rearview. The cross street to the palace was coming up. She got in the right-hand lane and signaled.
“Who? Which one?”
She didn’t want to answer that, both in case she was wrong, and in case she was right—in case they had
to take the man to court-martial. Better to keep what they suspected to themselves, until they were ready to bring charges. And as it turned out, she didn’t have to, because a faultlessly uniformed constable in white gloves was swinging open the gates to the palace. “Here we are,” she said brightly, and pulled in.
THE ministry was new and white, like every government building on the island. When she’d got here she thought at first it was like coming home. More like home than Harlem, with the kids yelling and throwing dirty snowballs when she and Zara walked to the madrassa. Here she heard Arabic in every shop and street, accented differently than the Nation taught it, but still the fluid lovely language the angels spoke, laced with compliments and whimsy and the familiar words of the Prophet, peace be upon him. An administrator from the Awali Hospital had asked if he might take her to lunch. She’d daydreamed about leaving her job and living here.
So sometimes it felt like home. And then there were times when it didn’t, not at all.
Like when she’d been bending over a dead body, and children had thrown mud clods at her. Calling her “American devil.” How had they known? Of course, of course, the huge white car.
Hooker got out, and she started, recalled from her thoughts, and followed the men inside.
THE conference room had been furnished by the Swedish consortium that had built the palace. It was all blond laminate and recessed lighting. There was a back-projection screen for briefings. Steaming silver urns and trays of cookies and succulent Iraqi dates waited on a side table. The servants, or waiters, or whatever they were, were straightening chairs and offering coffee and tea. Hooker went straight for a paunchy, sharp-bearded Arab in a spotless silk thobe. Aisha got coffee, checking out the room as she sipped.
The men wore uniforms, business suits, or the white robe and headdress. She was the only woman. The Bahrainis had a few in their charities and their labor and social affairs ministries, but they didn’t appoint them to the security organs.
