by David Poyer
She noted a Cobra, a speck hurtling in a weaving dance. The tubby hull of a light armored vehicle shook out a curtain of concrete-colored dust. “Meaning?”
“Meaning we have to cut the individual ration on folks who are already borderline. A hundred calories less a day, we’ll see malnutrition diseases again.”
The turn steadied and the nose pitched down. The pilot never kept the same course for more than five seconds. The intel on the Maahdist insurgents hadn’t mentioned shoulder-fired missiles, but she and Ahearn would be high-value targets. Far ahead, miles away across terrain seamed with what looked like lava flows, rose mountains. She looked at her watch, wondering where Dan was and if there’d be time before the Dobleh meeting to spend with him. She did want to see the next item on her agenda, though.
“The Darew camp,” Ahearn said. “We can skip this if you want—”
“I don’t want to spend more than twenty minutes on the ground, but I definitely want to see a camp. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely right,” the general said. But was there doubt in his tone? “That’s why we’re here.”
SHE’D felt skittish, but how could she with four armed marines between her and people who gazed as inexpressively as if she were walking past in another dimension. She’d visited camps in Bosnia, but those had been vacation resorts compared to this sapping heat, this stink of dung, this smoky, eye-stinging, all-pervading grit. She watched listless children being treated for skin diseases. Old women squatting in the dust, shrouded in faded black, didn’t look up as she passed. One of the feeding staff held out a bowl of corn mush. She had to gulp for all she was worth to get one spoonful down, but the moment she set it aside a bony hand flickered and it was gone.
She asked the Italian staff about disease. They said their main concern at the moment was TB. They had antibiotics, but were seeing more and more drug-resistant cases. Diarrheal diseases were already epidemic, and pneumonia, meningitis, and urinary tract infections—a minor annoyance in the West, but a major cause of death in Ashaaran women, with their butchered genitalia—were barely contained. Isolation was impossible. At any time there could be a disastrous outbreak of typhoid or cholera, and barbed wire wouldn’t keep it in.
After half an hour they trudged toward the aircraft, the marines walking backward with them. She caught other sentries on a hill, scanning with binoculars while holding scoped rifles.
“No question, they need help,” Ahearn said, looking at her.
She nodded. No, there was no question of that.
The question—as always—was, how badly did the United States want to give it?
BACK at Rowley, she and the JTF commander conferred in his tent. The flap was closed and the fan was loud enough for privacy. She passed on Weatherfield’s doubts. “That’s what worries him, and the president just now,” she told him. “Iraq has us tied down. If that develops badly, it’ll suck in all our forces. Iran can make real trouble. And our reading is, they want very much to. Syria, Lebanon, Yemen—we have challenges all along the arc of crisis.”
The general played with his glasses, flipping them as if the missing fingers weren’t missing. With those moves, he could have earned a living as a card sharp. She waited for him to say something about Dan. About the submarine he’d hijacked from Iran the year before, ratcheting tension close to war. But he just sighed. “What I’m hearing, between the lines, is a pullout.”
“We’re not there yet. A little personal input, Corny. I came to DoD from the Hill, and maintained my contacts. Bankey and Telfair are responsive to our concerns about Ashaara. There’s been a lot of coverage of the famine. We’ve been approached about having Angelina out here—”
Ahearn grimaced. “I can’t act as a tour guide for superstars—”
“I’m not asking you to do a thing anent her, General. What I’m saying is, both Hill and West Wing interest follows media coverage. We can deplore it, but that’s how democracy works. Can you give us a peaceful transition to Dobleh with the forces you have? In the face of this Assad, and now this so-called Maahdi—”
“Calls himself Al-Khasmi—”
“—Whatever. Look, I can sit out there in your JOC and have your staff brief me up the wazoo on metrics and prognostics, and I won’t come out any the wiser except that we need to rebuild the Ashaaran army. State will tell me Ashaara needs more development aid. Ag will say we have to revive the agricultural sector. But it all costs money. I’ve got to tell Dobleh tonight to what extent we’ll support his government after the elections—”
“Do you mean his elections? Or ours?”
“General, if we lose this November, the opposition’ll write off East Africa so fast your boots’ll be here while your ass is on a C-5.” She bent to check the dressing. The scrape had stopped bleeding, so she pulled the old bandage off, taped on a new one. She caught him eyeing her thighs. Even him . . . “Can I level with Dobleh? That our commitment’s paper-thin? Can he handle that?”
“He might. I wouldn’t say it in front of anyone else, though.”
“I’m not stupid, General. If you can’t hold the lid on, we’re going to have to leave Dobleh, Assad, and this al-Maahdi to duke it out. The UN and European Union can pay the warlords to protect whatever NGOs have the balls to stay, but we’ll have to live with another failed state, and maybe, another haven for terrorists. Well? Can you?”
Ahearn took a deep breath. He flexed his remaining fingers. And for a long time, did not reply.
WHEN the van braked Dan jerked awake, groping for his sidearm. The bulky vest made it hard to reach. Then he relaxed. They were back inside what the troops were calling the Blue Zone, the airfield and the administrative center of the city down to the terminal. In front of the Cosmopolite Hotel, and safe.
She was here. He couldn’t help the excitement, as if someone had tromped the pedal on his heart. He cased the street, traded gazes with the GrayWolfer at the lobby entrance, and rolled out.
The Cosmopolite was a dump compared to the Burj al Arab, but it was the city’s sole halfway-modern hotel. Five stories of reinforced concrete and bronze-tinted glass, most of it still intact. Twenty yards of fearsome heat, brick, and concrete radiating up even fiercer than the sun beating down, then the doors hissed shut. Overhead fans were turning, music was playing, lights glowed in the bar. After an expensive effort by a German engineering firm, power had come back on two days ago. From noon until midnight, life could be almost normal.
“Blair Titus’s room?”
The desk clerk shrugged. “Don’t know, signore.”
A ten-dollar bill changed his attitude. “I’m her husband. There should be a key for me.”
Instead there was a note: C’mon up, sailor. He was crossing the lobby to the stairway when he noticed the hum of elevator motors. Tempting, but one trusted the Ashaaran power-distribution system only so far. He ran up all five flights.
A black-uniformed guard leaned beside her door. He checked Dan’s ID against an entry list, comparing him to the photo. Then nodded, and Dan knocked.
“That you, Dan?”
She stood before the window in a robe, holding back the curtain as she gazed down at the city center. She’d lost weight. Her collarbones were outlined. At the second look, nearer, he saw that the skin at the corners of her eyes had not escaped the passage of time. She’d cut her hair, too.
Then he was too close to see, and she’d never felt better in his arms.
She held on desperately, then seemed to come to and backed him away from the window, into the singing breeze of an electric fan. “Can you put the chain on? In case Margaret comes back? I was going to take a shower.”
“Don’t let me interrupt.”
She tasted of sweat and dust and the familiar intensely exciting scent of aroused woman. His hands went under the robe, and she caught her breath. “Right . . . there. God, your hands are rough.”
“Like sandpaper?”
“More like cheese graters. But that doesn�
��t mean I don’t like it.”
“Do you like this too?”
Her closed eyes told him she did.
A minute later she struggled up from the bed, pulling her robe closed. “I know what you want, Dan. I do too. Problem is, in half an hour I meet with Dobleh and the ADA leadership to map election strategy. He’ll stand for president—”
“You spend too much time with presidents. How about if he waits?”
“Hmm,” she said. “Maybe it wouldn’t hurt him that much.”
“It would do him good.” Dan pulled her down again. “Teach him to be patient.”
“Maybe so.” She let the robe go and lay back naked, hair a mess and breasts sweaty in the close air. Her pale body gleamed like wet ivory in the dim curtained room. “If he’s patient, maybe good things will happen.”
He ran his hand up her thighs and softly separated twin leaves that unkissed to a slick wetness. She put her hands on his shoulders. He buried his face in her belly, then ran his tongue down into the taste of the sea.
“Get that fucking uniform off, Commander,” she murmured. “Right now.”
With a sudden, violent heave the bed rose behind her and he was on the floor, the cheap carpet prickling his back, bewildered, ears ringing.
Before he could register what was happening the wall surrounding the entrance door blew in. The overhead light shattered into cloudy spray.
He rolled onto her just in time to take the toppling fan in his back. Simultaneously the windows blew out with a sound so loud it struck him in the breastbone, the lamps in the room burst as if packed with dynamite, and the walls shook apart into plaster dust and fragments. The mattress came down on top of them just as part of the ceiling fell with a resounding crash mixed with a jarring, reverberating bang from outside, echoing from the dust-brown rock of the old citadel.
He gripped her tight, his right leg thrown over her naked ass, one arm flung out to clutch an electrical conduit which had appeared in a gap in the wall. She lay with head turned away. A thread of blood wormed her scalp, turning blond hair dark. He blinked; her hair was glittering.
The floor heaved again and sagged toward where the door had been. Screams came from outside, up from the street, amid the staccato trumpeting of car alarms, as if the Judgment had touched down in Ashaara. He lay with every muscle rigid, outstretched arm shaking. He didn’t like gripping an electrical conduit, but the way the floor was popping beneath them it might go any minute. Which would drop them five floors, and the reinforced concrete ceiling on top of them. He remembered again how much he disliked prefabricated concrete buildings.
“Honey?” he said into her ear. To his enormous relief, she stirred. Half turned her head. “A bomb went off, or a gas main. Anyway this floor’s about to give way.” He coughed. “Can you move?”
Blair came back from the black to find herself pinned under something. She understood immediately what had happened. The embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. Dan’s voice in her ear. The necessity to escape. She flexed her toes in experiment and took a breath. Nothing seemed to be broken, though her scalp stung as if savaged by hornets. She cleared her throat. “Yeah.”
“You okay?”
“Think so. Can you get off me?”
“That’s the mattress and half the ceiling, not me. Crawl forward . . . that’s right. I’ll hold it up. There.”
“My robe. My clothes.”
“Forget about—”
“I’m not going out of here naked, Dan. And neither are you. God—”
“What?”
“Your back. It’s bloody, all over.” She bent and saw shards of glass twinkling in the blood. “None of them look deep, but—”
The floor sagged again and half the wall facing the corridor slid away with a crackling roar, leaving them staring at a smoking chaos of rubble and, even worse, empty air. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
She couldn’t agree more. She found a corner of her robe and tugged it out from under the mattress. Found, thank God, her computer too. She shook plaster and glass out of the terry cloth and pulled it on. Handed him his pants, slipped her flats on, and handed him his boots. While he was lacing them she smelled something she’d hoped she wouldn’t.
Dan lifted his chin, catching it too. “Smoke.”
“Yeah.” She stepped over him and swung the computer through the shattered window and followed it out onto the balcony. Caught her breath as it leaned under her weight, but it didn’t go. Not yet. “Come on, come on.”
He bent and stepped through.
And halted. Looking down a hundred feet to a street paved with a crystalline sparkle. Over it people staggered or ran or crawled. Humvees and trucks crunched and swerved between them. Dark and white ovals of upturned faces stippled the crowd. As they looked down a wave of choking smoke burst up through the shattered floor and billowed out through their windows, through other windows to left and right and below too. Other guests were out on their balconies, waving and calling to those below.
She caught her breath, wondering how many hadn’t made it. If the bomb had gone off in front of the building . . .
“Dobleh,” Dan said, looking down.
“Where? You see him?”
“That’s who they were after. Or maybe both of you.”
She sucked her breath, realizing the whole ADA leadership had been scheduled to meet in the conference room. On the street side . . .
Dan’s cell went off in his pants pocket. He flinched and snatched it out. “Lenson.”
“You all right, sir? We just got word of a bombing at the Cosmo.”
“We’re trapped on the fifth floor, Kim. Me and the undersecretary. Where are you?”
McCall was back at the JOC. He told her tersely they needed either a hook and ladder or, if there wasn’t one, a line-throwing gun. “We can get down if I can drop a line. But there’s a lot of smoke. Probably fire behind it. I don’t know who’s on-scene commander, but get help headed our way. We need oxygen, litters, extraction crews from the helo squadron. All the medics and quick response you can scramble. EOD too—there might be more than one bomb.” It was a common terrorist tactic, to detonate one bomb, then use a delayed-action device to mow down mourners, rescuers, and just plain gawkers. She said she’d pass the word, then come herself. Dan told her no, to stay there and coordinate the relief effort.
He flipped the phone closed as the balcony next to them squealed and collapsed, dumping the shirtsleeved man on it a hundred screaming feet down into the street. He pulled Blair against the outer wall. “We can’t stay here,” he yelled.
“Don’t go back in there.”
“You stay here. Less weight, maybe it’ll hold. I’ll see if there’s another way out.”
She reached for his arm, but her hand slid off sweat and blood and grit. The next moment he was ducking again through the shattered doorway, then dropping to hands and knees. Keeping close to the wall, he crept toward the open sky at the far end. Came to the corner of a wall; hesitated; then curled around it like a cat, and out of her sight.
IF he kept low, the smoke wasn’t as bad. He still wouldn’t be good for more than a few minutes. Still, he’d groped his way through torpedoed and burning ships, and knew that what looked solid could be a trap and what looked impenetrable could sometimes be wriggled through. If you moved fast, before the wreckage settled.
Above all, if you were lucky.
He found himself in what had been the corridor. Most of the roof was gone and the sun streamed through the smoke, making it look more crimson than black. The carpet tilted at an absurd angle, as if to spill him off into the smoke-obscured, wire-hung, rebar-studded cavern of smashed masonry below. Maybe that’s what had happened to the GrayWolf. There was no sign or remnant of him.
A cold numbness had taken his hands. There was glass all over, but he didn’t feel it in his palms as he crawled. His knee slipped on the carpet and his boot shot off into space. He clung with his nails, belly to the floor, panting plast
er dust and smoke and, yes, explosive fumes. When he didn’t slide off he pulled his boot back and crawled on.
The floor widened. Then became almost whole, though littered with chunks of concrete, asphaltum roofing material, twisted tin from air ducts. Some yards on he made out the stairwell. There was nothing left of the elevator. It was down in the volcano with the rest of the facade and central core of the hotel.
Including anyone who’d been there. He pushed that out of his mind—he had to focus on getting Blair out—and rose to a combat crouch and ran into the stairwell. Smoke was streaming just like up a chimney, so dense it would be impossible to breathe, but the concrete of the stairs was rock solid and there wasn’t much debris on them. At least the two landings he could see. Someone was yelling below and the words, not in English, echoed as if from a cavern. He yelled down, “Up here,” and was seized with a choking fit so intense he couldn’t get air to cough with. He backed out and caught his breath in the corridor, but the smoke was heavier and the air hotter there now too.
His cell phone again, just as he was about to cross the tilted bridge. He debated not answering, then realized he’d better. “Lenson.”
“Colonel Shingler here. Are you with the undersecretary?”
Her aide, the one who didn’t like him. “We’re in the hotel, Colonel, trying to get out.”
“I’d like to speak with her. Her cell doesn’t seem to be—”
“She’s busy,” Dan told her, and punched END. He almost pitched the cell into the smoking crater, but didn’t. “Blair!” he yelled. “Blair!”
No answer, and suddenly sweat broke over his back as he gagged. Either she couldn’t hear or . . . an image of her tumbling as she fell, hitting pavement, bouncing . . .
He bent and ran on tiptoe across the narrow section, hugging the wall, realizing as he did he shouldn’t, but made it to where their door had been. Started to slide around the broken wall, but stopped. Another ceiling-slab had come down, a solid expanse of stippled concrete. He couldn’t see past it. “Blair!” he bawled, loud as he could over the clamor of sirens and the growing roar of fire.