Cal laughed. "What did the XO promise you this time?"
"This isn't a joke, sir," Barbieri said reprovingly.
"I beg your pardon," Cal said meekly.
"Quite all right, sir."
"So what's going on?"
"Evidently there's a VIP at the Cape and he wants to come out and watch the launch from Munro''
Cal knew a sudden foreboding. "Who is this alleged VIP?"
"Senator Schuyler, sir."
THEY LAUNCHED THE HELO WITH MINIMUM FUSS, ALTHOUGH Lieutenant Noyes did make a joke about being demoted to a taxi service. They were back in forty-five minutes, entirely too soon, roaring down the length of Munro at 140 knots, fifty feet off the water, a flyby for which they had not asked nor been given permission to do.
His stateroom full of strangers, two of them his superior officers, Cal had no recourse but to greet his father in public. "Dad," he said.
Senator Schuyler swept Cal into a manly embrace, including several thumps on the back for good measure. "Your mother sends her love, as always, son."
Cal was certain as he stood there that if Vera had given any thought to her son and only offspring in the last month it was to wonder yet again if he'd finally decided to leave the disreputable life of a sailor behind for one more befitting his mother's station in life.
The honorable senator beamed impartially at the assembled company. "And who are all these good people?"
As if the senator didn't already have the 411 on every person in the room, Cal thought, and performed the introductions, if not with grace then with utility.
The senator shook hands with Matson, saying cordially, "Of course, Admiral. You've testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee on several occasions, haven't you?"
Admiral Matson, whose lugubrious countenance had brightened considerably at the news of Senator Schuyler's coming, was almost voluble in reply. The senator listened with an indulgent smile for a few moments, murmured an appropriate comment, and with a diplomatic adroitness Cal could only admire cut Matson loose to exchange greetings with Admiral Barkley, and moved on to the Munros. "I've been seeing your daughter in the news a lot lately," he said. "A beautiful girl-"
"A woman," Cal said under his breath. "She's a grown woman." He tried and failed to catch the XO's eye.
"-and smart, too. One of our best and brightest, as the phrase goes."
Nick and Doreen said something polite and avoided looking at Cal. His opinion of them, already high, rose higher.
The senator was late for dinner but not too late for dessert. Cal fiddled with his silverware, turning the dessert spoon at the top of the plate from bowl up to bowl down. Seaman Roberts set out another gold-rimmed china dessert plate with the Schuyler coat of arms on it in front of the senator (the full set of china had been a gift from his mother, commemorating his first command, and didn't he hear about that from his friends for years afterward), and quietly left the room.
A few minutes later the phone rang. Cal was on his feet, answering it well before it rang a second time. "Captain."
"Seaman Roberts, Captain."
"Yes, OOD, what is it?"
"There was a young man from Austin," Seaman Roberts said. 1 see.
"Who bought himself a new Austin."
"Yes, I can see where that might be a problem."
"There was room for his ass, and a gallon of gas."
"Certainly."
"But the rest hung out and he lost 'em."
Sternly repressing a grin, Cal said, "Tell MPA I'll be right down."
"Yes, sir." Seaman Roberts hung up.
Cal put the phone down. "I'm sorry," he said gravely. "A little problem in Main Control. No, no, nothing serious, but my presence is required."
Halfway out of his chair, Taffy said, "Is it something I can handle, Captain?"
"No, no," Cal said. "Please, sit, enjoy yourselves as long as you like. I believe dessert this evening is apple pie a la mode, and you haven't eaten apple pie until you've eaten FS2 Steele's apple pie. I'll be back as soon as I can. In the meantime"-he grinned cheerfully at Taffy-"XO has the con."
He snagged his cap and headed for the door.
On his way out, Admiral Barkley caught his eye and winked at him.
21
TEN MILES EAST OF MELBOURNE, FLORIDA,
ON BOARD FREIGHTER MOKAME
Akil watched the tiny screen on the handheld GPS until the last digit on the coordinates changed. "All right, it's time," he said. "Everyone ready?"
It was a rhetorical question. They'd been ready for an hour and a half, since he'd brought the GPS out and left it out.
There had been very little discussion of their plan or its objective. "It really is quite simple," one of the engineers had said, sounding almost disappointed.
"Occam's razor," another said. "The simplest explanation is usually the correct one." He dared a shy smile. "Nine-eleven was a simple plan, too."
Akil smiled back. "Yes. It was. Inshallah."
"Inshallah."
At present several of them were on their knees praying toward Mecca. When they were done, they checked their weapons.
These were the smallest of small arms, the Ruger Mark II.22 semiautomatic pistol, with nine-round magazines. Each man had two pistols and a dozen magazines, all bought online through a variety of different Internet stores in different states with different identification papers and forwarded through several mail drops and a discreet, expensive customs clearinghouse to another mail drop in Port-au-Prince, where Yussuf had collected them upon arrival.
Akil's reasoning was that they were going to have to move fast and he didn't want the men to be burdened with a lot of heavy weaponry. Further, heavy weaponry would not be necessary if all went according to plan. He had ensured that his men would be trained on small arms. The Rugers were well made and reliable, and there was plenty of ammunition to accomplish the task at hand. Indeed, it was very probable they could take the ship without firing a shot. From Bayzani, he knew that at the time the ship in question was to be boarded, the crew would be unarmed, would be taken by surprise, and should be sufficiently cowed into obedience by a weapon of any size.
Lastly, and this was the most significant reason, in spite of the intensive training they had all received over some part of the past six months, these men were amateurs. They'd never seen combat. They'd never been under fire, if you didn't count the riot in Dusseldorf, and Akil didn't. Akil's plan depended on secrecy and stealth. The last thing they needed was for an inexperienced soldier of God to let loose with an AK-47 in the act of piracy on the high seas. Especially when Akil was absolutely certain none of them could hit what they were aiming at with a rifle of that size.
"Ready?" he said.
They nodded. They were wearing dark clothes and dark-colored, rubber-soled shoes. Their pistols were in doubled shoulder rigs, with the extra magazines in belt holsters. With jackets on, they looked a little bulky but that was all.
"Very well," Akil said. "Wait for my signal."
He slipped out of the door and down the passage, remembering the way from his earlier sortie even in the dark and even with all the bodies crammed into it. He tripped over some, he kicked others, but no one made a fuss. They were either too seasick to protest or too afraid of drawing attention to themselves to speak up, for fear they'd be put over the side before they reached the promised land. The first lesson had been ably demonstrated, and well learned.
When he got to the pilothouse, the captain was still there, perched on the high wooden chair in front of the wheel as if he hadn't left it in the five days they'd been at sea. "Ah," the captain said, "Mr. Mallah."
Akil had had so many different pseudonyms over the past year that for a surreal moment he wanted to look around to see who the captain was speaking to. Instead, he locked the door to the pilothouse behind him and pulled his pistol. "Captain, I'm afraid I'm taking command of your boat."
"Are you, now," the captain said, unsurprised. He took a leisurely puff o
n his cigar, and held it out to blow smoke on the lit end. Instead, he flicked the cigar straight at Akil, and rocketed out of his chair after it.
Akil instinctively dodged the cigar and twisted to one side to avoid being tackled. He hit the captain on the head with his pistol butt as he passed by, a glancing blow, not hard enough to knock him out but enough to get his attention. The captain hit the bulkhead hard and tumbled into a clumsy pile. He groaned.
"Shut up," Akil said, and hauled the captain to his feet and heaved him back into his chair. "Alter course to 240, due west."
Either still recovering from the blow to his head or faking it, the captain didn't immediately move. Akil took his left hand-the captain had been smoking with his right, and Akil needed him functional, at least up to a point-and flattened it against the bulkhead. He tossed his pistol up and caught it by the barrel and brought the butt down as hard as he could on the captain's little finger.
The captain screamed, a hoarse, shocked sound muffled by the engines. In Akil's experience, hands were very sensitive appendages for even the strongest of men. He'd met many a man who could barely tolerate a paper cut. "Don't hesitate when I give you an order. Alter course to due west."
"There is land due west," the captain said, cradling his wounded hand in his lap and rocking back and forth.
"I know that," Akil said. "Alter course, due west. If I have to ask you again I'll cut off your hand."
The captain believed him.
CAPE CANAVERAL, ON BOARD SHUTTLE ENDEAVOUR
She had to pee.
She was lying on her back in her seat on the flight deck below the cockpit. The Arabian Knight was on her left. He looked pasty and scared, every drop of arrogance leeched out of him. It must finally have sunk in, what four million pounds of propellant could do if there was a problem during launch. He'd seen the fire trucks, and the ambulances, on their drive to the pad that evening.
It was T minus ninety, ninety minutes to launch, barring problems.
Her diaper rustled every time she moved. She could pee if she had to, but she didn't trust the diaper. What if it leaked? She thought she'd squeezed out every last drop of liquid in her body in the pad toilet, and at this point she was more furious at this betrayal of her body than she was terrified of blowing up.
Because she was terrified, of that there was no doubt. However stoic an appearance she presented to the world, the look on the Arabian Knight's face only mirrored what she felt inside.
In preparation for this day, she had worked and trained as hard as she ever had in her life. School, soloing, getting her commercial license, flying Otters full of tourists to go look at grizzly bears, these were as nothing by comparison. She'd flown formation in the T-38s in everything up to and including IFR approaches into the middle of storms that made her understand why the Greeks had made their head god one of thunder. She had rappelled down the side of the orbiter mock-up practicing emergency egress. She'd killed and eaten a rattlesnake during survival training. She practiced on the robot arm simulator until her own arms burned from sheer tension, and in the pool at Houston she'd practiced EVA maneuvers in the three-hundred-pound spacesuit until she thought she would grow gills. She had learned the function of every single one of the switches and knobs and levers and gauges and digital readouts in the cockpit. In a pinch, if Rick and Mike were both somehow incapacitated, she could land the orbiter at KSC or at Dakar International Airport or in Cold Bay, Alaska, or at any one of the designated shuttle emergency landing sites worldwide.
She was ready. She was ready for launch. She was ready for orbit. She was ready to carry out her mission. But she was also very aware of something the men who had flown the planes into the towers and the Pentagon and that field in Pennsylvania had intuited early on.
Aircraft were nothing more and nothing less than a thin, fragile skin barely containing thousands of pounds of extremely combustible fuel. She was on the inside with the fuel. If there was any kind of a problem, she was going to burn up with it.
And she would kill anyone, including Cal, her friends, her parents, and Joel Almighty God Minster, if they tried to take her off this flying bomb.
"T minus eighty-nine." Mission Control's voice was calm, almost laconic. The beat of her heart, loud and rapid in her ears, almost drowned it out.
No. She wasn't going to blow up. She wasn't going to screw up. At fifty miles high her silver astronaut pin would turn to gold and every dream she had ever had about space flight since she was nine years old and had read Michael Collins's Carrying the Fire for the first time would come true.
But she still had to pee.
"T minus eighty-eight."
A MILE OFFSHORE OF CAPE CANAVERAL,
ON BOARD USCG CUTTER MUNRO
The shuttle stood on its tail, mated to the solid rocket boosters and the massive external fuel tank, a valiant white spear against the night sky. A brilliant cacophony of stars glittered behind it, shouting the man-made lights onshore into a pale echo. A murmur of appreciation rolled down the deck of Munro and up over the bridge.
"My, isn't she pretty," Senator Schuyler said.
Cal agreed with him, but he agreed with him silently. It was a matter of personal policy never to agree out loud with anything his father said.
He was well aware of how childish that was. He didn't care. Agreeing with his father was always a slippery slope, at the bottom of which the senator lurked, waiting.
They were running darkened ship, so no one's night vision would be obstructed for the launch. The Munros were seated on canvas folding chairs on the port bridge wing, with the senator leaning against the railing, Admiral Matson at his side as if he'd been superglued in place, but nevertheless casting longing glances at the CNN crew on the foredeck.
"Great view," Admiral Barkley said from Cal 's other side. "Ever seen one of these before?"
"No, sir, I haven't."
"Me, either." Barkley's teeth showed in a smile. "I was in Admiral Mat-son's office when he invited himself along, and I figured it'd be my only chance, so I invited myself along with him."
The CNN reporter, her impeccably coiffed hair beginning to frizz under the influence of so much salt air, was on the main deck below, working her way toward the bow, doing man-on-the-deck interviews, all of it framed by the digital video camera perched on the shoulder of her cameraman. Cal had gone below to introduce himself and welcome them to the ship, introduced them to the XO, suffered through his own interview, and handed them off gladly to Ensign Schrader, the lowest-ranking officer on board and therefore the de facto last stop for all the jobs no one else on Munro wanted.
"It's great being the captain," the XO had said in a low voice as they watched Schrader herd his charges safely past the Darwin sorter. "Although you might have missed an opportunity there with Ms. Teeth."
Cal controlled a quivering lip. "Ms. Trenwith, I believe she said her name was, XO."
"Well, sir, I just wanted you to know you had an in there." The XO's teeth flashed in the dark. "You know, when the astronaut begins to pall."
"Stuff it, XO."
"Certainly, sir," Taffy said, and snapped off a salute.
Munro was idling directly abeam of the shuttle. In spite of it being July and no winds, it was night and cool on the water, and the crew was bundled into fleece jackets. He looked at them crowded up against the railing and the safety lines along the 378 feet of the ship and wondered who was driving.
"Captain?"
It was BMC Gilmartin, who had relieved Lieutenant Barbieri for the watch at 2000 hours. "The Falcon is reporting a freighter in the closed area."
"What?" Cal followed Gilmartin into the bridge. "Have we got it on the radar?"
They went to look at the surface radar, a monitor mounted in a freestanding console with a constant sweep revealing surface contacts in their area, radiating from Munro's position in the center. "What's the range?"
"Three miles, sir."
"So five miles from shore."
"Yes, sir."
/>
"That's three miles inside the security zone."
"Yes, sir."
"Why the hell'd it take so long for the Falcon to notice them?"
"They didn't say, sir."
They both watched the tiny blip move slowly and unmistakably inshore.
Tramp freighters were as common as seagulls in this area, some full of legitimate cargo like bananas or coffee or molasses headed north to waiting wholesalers, some full of stolen bicycles or cars, headed south to a less legitimate market in the Caribbean or South America. Some, as he well knew, were full of migrants looking for a quick and dirty way into America.
This ship could be any one of those and probably was.
Still, they were in the middle of a countdown for the launch of a U.S. space shuttle. A shuttle, moreover, that Kenai was on. Something that might later be termed overreaction did not necessarily seem uncalled for at this moment. "BMC, what's her speed?" Cal said.
"About ten knots, Captain. I'm thinking two or three of that is the Gulf Stream."
"And our nearest assets?"
Gilmartin raised Combat, and OS2 Riley's thin voice blared out of the speaker. "We're spread out pretty thin on the coast, Captain. Because of the threatened protest, the four small boats are all working close in, making sure nobody gets ashore. One of the MLBs is responding to a SAR south of here-nothing to worry about, they lost their engine and they need someone to make sure they don't run aground while they're waiting for the tow boat to show-and the other MLB is too far north. It's us, I guess, Captain."
Cal nodded. "Here's hoping the crew doesn't mutiny when I tell them they have to interrupt their launch viewing opportunity to do some actual work. Set starboard side boat launch detail, BMC."
"Aye aye, Captain. Set starboard side boat launch detail, BM2."
"Combat, captain."
Riley's voice came back at him, the speaker distorting it to make it sound tinny and almost afraid. "Captain?"
"Why'd it take so long for the Falcon to spot the freighter?"
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