The Crisis

by David Poyer

  He’d seemed glad to see them, pumped their hands, asked what brought them there. “We’re deployed, sir. Do it a lot,” Kaulukukui had said, as if any fool should have known. Teddy had almost choked.

  “I know you deploy—”

  “Ah, what Main Meal means, sir . . . Team Eight deploys a platoon to each of the fleet commanders. Most of our guys are with the ARG in the NAG, but we’re TAD’d to the TF for MIO.”

  Translation: most of the platoon was with the amphibious ready group in the North Arabian Gulf, but they’d been temporarily assigned with this task force to do maritime interdiction operations. “Uh-huh.” Lenson had nodded, as if that was interesting but not what he cared about. “Still doing that mudhole driving?”

  “Every chance, sir. Get dirty with us sometime?”

  “First opportunity.” Lenson looked back to the bridge, where, Teddy noted, the black CO was watching them. Jelly Man, Kaulukukui had named him.

  “So, what you doing aboard a PC, sir? Still at TAG?”

  “Right.” He’d explained: some kind of study about where the Navy was going. Teddy nodded, letting it go by. Os always obsessed on big-picture stuff that had nothing to do with real life. “Well, good to see you, sir. Get together for cards later, okay?”

  But whenever he saw Lenson after that the guy was huddled with the chief engineer or with the little analyst, Monty Henrickson. Teddy knew him too; he’d been aboard K-79 when they’d stolen it from the Iranians.

  “VESSEL ON MY PORT QUARTER, STOP ENGINES AND HEAVE TO IMMEDIATELY. . . .” The LRUS was blasting out again, more bullshit lawyerspeak no raghead could make sense of even if he understood English. Teddy craned again.

  Their target was a black-hulled merchant twice the displacement of the patrol craft. Not one of the little cargo dhows you saw here and in the Gulf, packed tight with oil drums and camels and dusty wedges of pilgrims. Geller had mentioned pirate activity up here, but it didn’t look like that. This was a trading dhow, long-hulled, steel—there weren’t as many wooden dhows in the Red Sea as there were in the PG. A Yemeni flag. That could be tricky. They were supposed to make nice to the fucking Yemenis. But any craft transiting the central Red Sea was obligated to heave to on demand.

  Which this guy wasn’t. He was plowing up a big bow wave, smoke blasting out of his stack, hammering along. No one was visible on deck. Teddy watched as the CO and Lenson confabbed on the wing. Then the barrel of one of the bridge M60s swung out. The wing team covered their ears.

  Spray leapt from the centers of eight circles, all in a line, from fifty yards ahead of Shamal’s bow to a hundred yards in front of the trawler’s.

  “That’ll get his attention,” said the boat handler.

  But it didn’t. Both ships plowed on, a hundred yards apart. Then eighty. Seventy-five. Shamal was slowly closing, but a second stutter of fire brought no more acknowledgment than the first.

  “Time for the firecrackers,” the handler said.

  On the catwalk, crewmen loaded shotguns. They waited, watching the captain. Shamal and the stranger rolled in sync, sixty yards apart. Geller nodded. The Mossbergs recoiled. The firecracker rounds popped bursts of white smoke ahead and abeam of the other’s bridge.

  A crewman came running lickety-split from somewhere on the bow. A moment later the bridge wing door cracked and a startled face gaped out. “HEAVE TO NOW OR I WILL SHOOT TO DISABLE,” Geller boomed on the LRUS. He didn’t sound happy.

  A pause, as Teddy noted the other ship seemed to be growing shorter.

  The bridge team must have realized what was happening at the same instant he did, because suddenly there was shouting, then the solid-sounding clunk deep underfoot as the PC’s engines slammed to full astern. The trawler kept coming around, though, the river between the two hulls narrowing. Sumo grabbed for a handhold, missed, and toppled off the gunwale like a falling tupelo as everything in the RHIB got pulled forward and to port. Shamal leaned in a decelerating turn. “TURN PORT. PUT YOUR WHEEL TO PORT!” the LRUS boomed out, without the slightest response from opposite.

  Just as Obie braced for the collision somebody did something that grabbed the whole ship and twisted its tail far enough to starboard so that, combined with the reversed engines, it let the trawler pass clear, missing them by yards. Then they were jamming ahead again, the engines snarling like charging Panzers. Volumes of choking white smoke sheeted up, setting everyone hacking. In the middle of all this came the blam, blam, blam of the .50 cal. The cases, big as ladyfinger bananas, arced and clattered down through the catwalk forward of the dog house. Teddy watched the bright tracers, like orange comets, burn past the trawler’s pilothouse. No way anybody could miss them. And apparently he didn’t, because the welter of wake lessened at last.

  “Stand by, the RHIB,” shouted the petty officer. Teddy jumped back down, ducking as the crewman in the bow swung the long metal-tipped boat hook into position forward. He braced, gripping a line looped along the gunwale—an inflatable could catch a wave and flip, or nose under like a diving dolphin, converting its occupants into projectiles—and concentrated on what came next.

  The PCs launched boats differently than any other ship, a legacy of their original mission. Instead of hanging on davits, the RHIB squatted on a ramp slanting downward and aft. The advantage was, you could launch and recover in much heavier seas, since the ship could roll as much as it liked and the boat could still make up on her in the smoothed patch of the wake and drive straight into the stern and up the ramp. Now the petty officer twitched a knob on a hand-held control box. Salt-eroded bearings squealed as large gates slowly unlocked, letting the foam-pale sea swirl in. Beyond it the wake jetted and tumbled like a Jacuzzi as Shamal accelerated again after the trawler, which still had way on. Kaulukukui squatted in the stern, eyes on the port tending line. Vic Cooper and Mickey Dooley hunkered on the starboard side, and Petty Officer Lazaresky, the cox-swain, pumped the choke and hit the start button. Blue smoke burst out, joining the murk Shamal was still sucking along after herself, though she had enough speed on now that the underwater exhausts had cut in.

  His Motorola beeped. “MIB Team, Alleycat.”

  “Alleycat” was Shamal’s in-the-clear call sign. “MIB, over.”

  “Cast off and inspect. Carry out three-sixty eval before boarding. Do not board if hostile intent is manifested. Comm check every mike five.”

  Teddy rogered, and flashed the petty officer a thumbs-up. “Deploy,” he shouted. The crewman in the bow yanked a line. The quick-release hook clacked, the cable snaked back into the massive block arrangement that would bring them back aboard later, and the inflatable began a heart-stopping backward toboggan slide that while it lasted fully satisfied what Teddy admitted was his addiction to risk. Out in a strengthening chop, weapons at the ready, to board a guy who obviously didn’t want to stop. What could be better?

  Going back to LA? Making more money, sure. Having all the pussy and drugs you wanted. But as they hit the water with a rocking splash, got a faceful of diesel exhaust and the sun shone down as if through whipped buttermilk and the coxswain swore horrible oaths while wrestling the wheel to keep the wake from sucking them into the stern, Teddy thought: You really ready to give this up?

  “Enjoyin’ yourself?” Cooper yelled, stubble shading his jaw. Even close up the guy could pass for Ira ni an, with that dark skin and heavy eyebrows. He spent his time listening to the team’s Farsi tapes, and went around muttering in it.

  “Havin’ a great SEAL day, Crabmeat. How ’bout you?”

  The coxswain finished lowering the motor—you’d break the blades if you tried that before you launched—and gunned it. The bowhook and four SEALs hung on as it porpoised over the wake, jerking and slamming, the M60 on its flexible mount nodding in agreement it was indeed a fine Navy day. The radar hummed atop the framework over the center console. The engine blatted each time they leapt clear of the sea, then resumed its powerful burble as they squatted deep. The coxswain looked to Teddy, who fingered a circl
e in the air. “Check her out first,” he yelled.

  Their first surprise was a stocky bearded guy in a hunting orange knit cap pointing a rifle over the side. An old long-barreled bolt-action Mauser. Cooper and Teddy had him covered before he even got the barrel around. Kaulukukui had the M60 on him too. Cooper yelled, “Drop your gun,” then repeated it in Farsi.

  “Fuck you,” the guy yelled down. No interpreter needed, Teddy thought, tracking him over the sights of his HK. But the guy didn’t shoot. Didn’t drop the rifle, either. Just moved back, so they couldn’t see him from where they continued to circle the trawler.

  “Is this a hostile boarding?”

  “I’d say so.”

  “What about that?” Kaulukukui pointed to where the orange-hatted man and another, younger crewman in coveralls were kicking a boarding ladder over the side. It was too long and trailed in the water, but the rifle was gone. “Looks like an engraved invite to me.”

  “Stassy, cover us with the sixty, okay?” Teddy asked the bowhook. “Anybody shoots, plaster ’em. But try not to hit us, okay? Let’s get this over with.”

  He kept a sharp eye on the whole length of the dhow as it loomed, in case somebody else leaned out for a potshot, but didn’t see anyone. He slung the HK and pulled up his fastropers, getting ready to climb. Better than hooking aboard with a bamboo pole, that time in the South China Sea. The RHIB curled in. He crouched, ready to jump to the ladder.

  Instead an unexpected wave peaked, maybe the chop and Shamal’s wake—the ship had just passed and was putting her helm over to come back—and the inflatable lofted suddenly and slammed into the hull. The flash hider on the machine gun’s muzzle caught between the doubled rungs of the boarding ladder, and as the inflatable dropped, the wave passing, the heavy long weapon levered itself up out of its pintles. Before anyone could do anything other than gape it executed a somersault, bounced off the steel hull, fitted itself like a key in a keyhole into the foot-wide slot that opened between the ship and the RHIB’s gunwale, and vanished, despite the bowhook’s instinctive plunging of his ash pole in after it.

  “Oh, my fuck!” Sumo yelled. The other SEALs cursed too. Teddy clutched his head, staring down at an innocent ring of bubbles. His rage wasn’t helped by the crewmen above, who were leaning over the lifeline and guffawing.

  THE dhow’s skipper looked more Peruvian than Middle Eastern. His huge-nosed, narrow face sported teeth so horrible Teddy avoided looking at them. He kept playing with a set of wooden beads, looking alternately pissed off and surrendered to fate. “Captain, sorry to have to pull you over,” Teddy said, abandoning the effort to remember who he reminded him of. “But why didn’t you stop when we requested you to heave to?”

  The guy mumbled that he didn’t see them.

  “Pretty hard to miss a ship right off your beam, Skipper. I see your radar head going around. Anybody up here ever look at the screen?”

  The guy said he’d punish his officer, but there wasn’t anyone else on the bridge, leaving Teddy to wonder who he was talking about. “Okay, second sticky, one of your boys pointed a weapon when we came up. The fat dude in the Halloween hat. That standard procedure?”

  He said it wasn’t, that man would be punished too, but there were pirates in these waters, that was why they had the rifle. Teddy let that pass. “So, where you registered, last port, where bound, Captain?”

  The guy’s gaze skated around the pilothouse and came to rest on his beads. “We are Yemeni register. Trade in parts, food, dates, and wheat. Bound to Al-Hudaydah.”

  Down south. Not the direction he’d been heading when Shamal had picked him up, but Teddy let that pass too. “Last port?”

  “Ashaara City.”

  “Name of ship?”

  “Al-Sambuk.”

  “Owner?” He kept pitching the standard questions while thumbing through the paperwork. “ ‘Farm products.’ What, exactly? Oilseed? Cowpeas? Sorghum?”

  The guy took too long answering, and Teddy held up a glove. “I’m gonna talk to my ship now. Then we’ll go down and see what you got.”

  Outside the pilothouse, for better reception, he brought the bridge up to date. “What paperwork there is checks out, but I want to throw an eyeball in his hold and make sure. Oh, and we lost some gear overboard, coming alongside.”

  Fortunately they didn’t ask what, and Teddy didn’t intend to be the first to bring it up. With any luck the coxswain would report it, and get blamed. Actually, hadn’t Lazaresky been in charge, as long as they were still in the RHIB? It was the ship’s 7.62 anyway, not the team’s.

  Yeah, he’d let them handle the loss report. He left Cooper on the bridge and headed down and forward with Sumo Man, collecting the two crewmen (maybe there were only two after all) and motioning for them to get the hatch cover off.

  THE baking-grass stench met them halfway down the ladder. An eye-watering cross between marijuana, pipe tobacco, and nerve agent. Kaulukukui gagged. “What is this shit? Ever smell anything like this?”

  “Smells like a fucking pot party.”

  “That’s right, you’re from Hollywood.”

  “I’m not from fucking Hollywood. I’m from Laurel Canyon. And this ain’t pot.”

  “Want me to go back on deck?”

  “Sure. Fuck, no, I want you here to carry me back up if I pass out.”

  “I could lower a line.”

  “What good’s that gonna do me, I’m passed out?”

  “I can put a hook on it.”

  “Get down here.” Obie dropped to the deck and pulled his Streamlight.

  “Here’s something interesting,” he said a minute later, trying to breathe shallow. “Look at this.”

  His light picked out the corner of a wooden box. The stinky stuff was bits of broken leafy stems, still green though the leaves were wilting in the heat. Someone had hacked it into four-inch chunks, bagged it in burlap, and laid it in the boxes. But that wasn’t what he thought was interesting. Nor was it the boxes. Those were just heavy, roughly finished softwood, many with broken sides or slats, as if someone had wrenched them open with a sharp tool ten minutes before quitting time. No, what he found fascinating was the stenciling.

  “Ver-y interesting. Type 69. Sumo. Know what that is?”

  “Rocket-propelled grenade.”

  “You got it, Jeopardy Man. Let’s see there’s any live ones here, okay?” They began tossing sacks around, pulling boxes out from beneath them. A strobe flared as Kaulukukui took a photo.

  TWENTY minutes later Teddy staggered off the ladder, on deck again. Behind him Kaulukukui lurched like a broken robot. The big Hawaiian had started muttering something that sounded like “kwoo, kwoo, kwoo,” and didn’t seem able to stop. Teddy squinted in the sunlight, hacking and spitting. He felt like when you took too many of the amphetamines that were part of every SEAL kit, except worse. His brain was a popcorn kernel in a microwave, about to blast out the top of his skull. His heart was racing like a Yugo with a busted engine mount, and he kept jerking and flinching. “You feel okay?” he muttered to Kaulukukui.

  “My mouth is as dry as fifty-year-old pussy.”

  The crewmen stared so deadpan it was obvious they were this close to bursting out in guffaws again. Oberg scowled, gripping his MP5, to make sure they didn’t.

  Someone on Shamal was watching through the Big Eyes, because they were on the radio right away. “Boarding Party, Alleycat. What you got over there?”

  Teddy clicked the radio, still trying to breathe and stand up at the same time. For some reason he wanted to do high kicks, like a Rockette. “One here. Ah, it’s qat. Tons of it. Which explains why he was in such a hurry. Shit loses its kick three days after it’s picked.”

  “Copy qat, correct? That’s his prime cargo?”

  “His whole cargo. Question is, where’s it from? He says Ashaara City, but I thought it was closed down. And what’s he running on the back end? ’Cause from his logs, he’s making this trip two, three times a month.”

  �
��Say again, One. You’re talking too fast to copy.”

  “Uh, yeah.” He glanced at Kaulukukui. “Ah, Sumo’s not feeling too good. Those fumes were toxic, man. We’re gonna take a break here . . . short break. Yeah. But first. What the qat’s packed in. Wooden crates stenciled NORINCO. China North Industries Corporation. With model and lot numbers for one hell of a shitload of rocket-propelled grenades.”

  He faintly heard Geller and Lenson discussing it. Finally the CO came on. “Oberg, empty boxes?”

  “Check. Empty. Turned over about a quarter of the cargo, no joy. Then we had to get out of there or we were gonna start drooling.”

  “All right. Get ready to retro.”

  He stared at Sumo. What the fuck, the Hawaiian mouthed. Teddy clicked the Motorola. “Say retro, Skipper? Evidence of arms smuggling here.”

  “Empty boxes aren’t a violation, Petty Officer Oberg. Unfortunately, neither is qat. Not by Yemeni law, and that’s a Yemeni-flagged vessel. We have no standing to hang on to this guy. Lawful commerce in international waters.”

  He started to protest, then shrugged. “You’re good to go, Driftwood,” he told the skipper.

  “Good to go? You mean, free to go?”

  “Right, free to go. Go on, di-di the fuck out of here.”

  The guy grew a big grin, as if he’d just crapped in his worn black polyester pants. Those teeth looked even worse now that the qat fumes were magnifying every crevice and pore of whatever Teddy looked at. The captain threw a lever and took station behind the wheel. The engines cranked wearily, then built to a pounding roar.

  “I can’t believe this,” Teddy’s partner muttered.

  “Me neither. Say qat’s legal here, and the crates aren’t evidence.”

  “Legal. So, how about we bring some back? Chew it when we’re off watch?”

  “Shit, all I did was breathe the fumes and I’ve got a worse hangover than I got off that Kahlua and schnapps shit you made up for us at Jillian’s.”