The Med

by David Poyer

“We don’t anticipate your meeting them. Our guess is they’ll turn north again shortly for a landing near Famagusta. What we’re worried about here, though, is the Greek air force. They may try for a strike. And the Turkish air may be out trying to preempt.”

  It could be war, all right, Lenson thought. Between two NATO allies. They had clashed before. And with the ships of the task force, and the hostages, caught squarely in the middle.

  Sundstrom seemed to be thinking the same thing. “Can you give us air cover, Tony?” he was asking.

  “I’m trying, Ike, but basically we want to keep the heavies out of this,” said the distant voice. Lenson caught the implication: America and her nuclear-powered escorts were too valuable to risk. “Consider this a Warning Yellow, threat axis three-zero-zero. I want your units ready to defend themselves, Commodore. A direct flight path from the Greek airfields to the Turkish force passes right over you. A mistake in identification could have serious consequences.”

  “I understand,” said Sundstrom. “You know, sir, we have only one escort with us. That’s not much in the way of air defense.”

  “One? My plot shows you have two. Bowen and Ault.”

  “Yes sir. Well, Admiral, Ault’s reported some engine trouble. She may not be able to keep up with us.”

  “What’s wrong with her? Well, never mind, I’ll look at the casualty report. I’ll try to get you cover. Maybe the Air Force has something available. If you see aircraft don’t get panicky. They may be ours. If they’re not, rules of engagement follow in hard copy.”

  And Lenson, leaning against the rain-smeared scope, felt fear stir beneath the weariness. No air cover. He could read that behind the admiral’s half-promises. At this range Air Force fighters would be able to stay half an hour, no more. Hardly worth sending. They were on their own.

  “Any questions, Commodore?”

  “One, Admiral,” said Sundstrom. “If they don’t leave the island—or if they land somewhere within range—do you plan to send us in?”

  “We’re in touch with the War Room, Ike,” said the distant voice, taking on its own hard edge. A crackle of static sounded like gunfire, as if it were the distant admiral who was on the front line, and not the swaying, rain-lashed ships. “We’re getting guidance direct from the top on this one. I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, stand by. True Dream, out.”

  “Denver George, out,” said Sundstrom, and let up on the button. His arm sagged, holding the handset, and Lenson took it from his hand and hung it up. The commodore looked out forward for a moment, over the rainswept gray and painted circles of the flight deck, to where Barnstable County rolled like a pig in mud on the horizon. The squall had cleared as abruptly as it had begun, fallen astern. But they would meet it again as soon as they turned.

  The squall … Dan wished suddenly for a real storm, a hurricane, an engulfment. The blanket of cloud and rain was suddenly comforting. Rain would give them some cover.

  “Jesus Christ,” Sundstrom said, to no one in particular.

  “Sir?” said Flasher. “Any orders?”

  “They’re going to leave me dangling out here,” said Sundstrom, his voice low. “Jesus Christ! Tony’s going to let me go down the drain. It’ll be the Pueblo all over again!”

  “Want us to come around, sir?” said Lenson. “He said—”

  “I heard him, goddamnit,” said Sundstrom, the uncertainty instantly replaced by anger. “Are you trying to tell me my job, too? Well, forget it. Roberts wants to see me fumble; you all want to see me drop the ball. Well, I’ve got the bubble; I’ve been in deeper kimchee than you can imagine and come up smelling like a rose. Let’s get these people around, right now!”

  “Aye, sir.”

  The ships acknowledged the order by radio, doubt in their voices. One by one, waiting for lulls, they put their helms over and came about. Lenson watched Newport hesitate, waiting for a heavy sea to pass, and then lean into the turn. She was three-quarters of the way through it when a secondary system caught her on the quarter and pooped her. Green water foamed and spumed along her exposed deck, as if she were sinking stern first. Through the binoculars he could see the aft lookout running for shelter, jerking his phone cord behind him. The little ship hesitated, as if deciding whether to broach; then diesel exhaust burst from her funnels and she straightened, taking the next sea from directly astern. For a moment, staring out at her, he almost remembered the thing he had sensed at dawn; but as he groped for it the memory slipped back into the fog of fatigue. A spatter of rain blurred the little ship from sight.

  “Goddamn weather,” said the commodore, watching her too. “How they can expect us to land in this is beyond me. Well, maybe we’ll get lucky and those bastards will fly to Iran.”

  Lenson stared at him. He couldn’t believe the man had said that. That would mean another humiliating crisis, one that could drag on and on … “Commodore,” he said then, remembering, “hadn’t we better get the word out? About the readiness condition?”

  “Of course, Dan. I told you that already. Antiair Warning Yellow, and all units at Condition One.”

  “General quarters, sir?”

  “That’s what I said. Right now.”

  “Sir, we don’t need—Yellow doesn’t require—”

  He saw the coming anger on Sundstrom’s face, and said quickly, forestalling it, “Aye, sir. General quarters,” and reached for the handset.

  * * *

  They spent the rest of the morning at GQ. At noon Sundstrom grudgingly gave permission for Flasher to take over the watch. Lenson paused aft of the bridge, bracing himself. Guam’s motion was different on this heading. With the seas astern she heaved herself up with each wave, digging her bow into the troughs like a man scooping hard ice cream. When it steadied for a moment he slid down the ladder.

  In the supporting arms center McQueen and Byrne and Glazer were slumped in their chairs, eyes closed. The N-2 turned his head as Lenson dogged the hatch behind him.

  “Hey, Jack,” he said.

  “Dan.”

  “What’s wrong?” Something in the way Byrne stared at him made him pause for a moment inside the door.

  “Oh. Nothing … what’s going on topside? We don’t belong down here. We’re ninety miles offshore.”

  “I know that, and you know that, Jack, but he doesn’t. He’s got the whole formation standing to.”

  “What for? Oh—the Greek Air Force. But why are we manned up in SACC? We can’t do any good down here,” said Glazer.

  “Brilliant deduction,” said Lenson. He dropped into his chair and reached for his headset, too tired to argue.

  Cyprus covered the bulkhead in front of him, red and yellow and brown, writhing with roads, indented with bays. His eye went directly to the southern coast. McQueen had taped in the beach blowup, and he had drawn in approach lanes and drop points himself the night before. Now, he thought bitterly, it was all wasted. Where would these faceless terrorists take their victims next? The ship tilted in a corkscrew, and a handset clattered to the deck.

  “Jack—you get all the hot gouge the same time Sundstrom does. Have you heard anything more about the embassy?”

  “Well, a little.” Byrne pulled off his aviator glasses and rubbed his eyes. Again Dan caught that hesitation, as if the intel officer was stalling to think through his words. “They’re moving out, all right. Might even be for the best. There’s a lot of firing reported from the city. The UN peacekeeping team pulled out last night; New York felt they were too small to be effective anymore.”

  “Anything about the hostages?”

  “Ah … nothing new. Just that there’s about a hundred of them, mostly U.S. and British.”

  “Who’s holding them, sir?” asked McQueen.

  “That we don’t know yet, exactly,” said Byrne, rubbing the bridge of his long nose and sounding very tired, “though we can guess from their demands.”

  “What do they want?”

  “The usual stuff … remember the guys the Turks caught heading
home after the bombing in Germany? They want them released. So it’s probably the same group. They’re covert; we don’t know too much about them, other than that their leader, guy who calls himself ‘the Majd,’ was implicated in the synagogue massacre in London last year. But it’s terrorist theater, standard procedure: The point is less to actually achieve a stated goal than to humiliate us, demonstrate our impotence, delaminate us from our allies, et cetera.”

  Once again, Lenson was glad Susan and Nan were safe back in Athens. “You think we’ll release them? The prisoners?” he asked Byrne.

  “They aren’t ours, they’re the Turks’. We can’t do a thing but ask them. And they don’t play patty-cake with bad guys. Those are tough bastards, Dan. I’ve seen them execute their own crewmen. Firing squads, on the fantails of their ships. They hold this little religious service, they shoot the guy, he falls overboard. That’s it. Not a lot of concern for what the other ships in formation think about it. No, I don’t think we’re going to talk the Turks out of much. Plus, they’re tied up in Cyprus now—oh, it’s masterly timing.”

  “You think we should have put the MAU ashore, then?” asked Glazer.

  “If we could have done it that would have been the best way,” said the N-2. “But I guess it’s a missed chance. We’ll be twisting in the wind for months on this one.”

  “SACC, flag bridge,” said the squawk box, in Sundstrom’s voice. “Dan, are you down there?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Let’s get some drills going, as long as you’re on station. Bring the other ships up on the net, get some comm drills going. I want us to be on stream, ready for any eventuality.”

  “Aye aye, sir,” said Lenson. The intercom clicked off. The other officers glanced at each other, rolling their eyes. He ignored them, pulling out a call for fire form. They could laugh, they could be sarcastic, even—in spite of one of the oldest rules in the Navy—in front of an enlisted man.

  He would not. He would do his duty, despite fatigue, despite everything. No matter how silly or meaningless things seemed to him, he had to believe that Sundstrom knew what he was doing, that he was right. It did not matter, he told himself fiercely, what he or anyone thought of their commander. Because in the last analysis, if there was not obedience, and respect as well, then this ship, and this squadron, and the Navy, were lost.

  Suddenly his pen stopped moving. He sat up.

  “Dan? What is it?”

  “I just remembered.”

  “What?”

  “That tattletale,” he said. “The Russian. Snoopy.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s gone. He left the formation during the night.”

  “What’s that mean, sir?” said McQueen.

  “Nothing,” said Lenson slowly, staring at the map. “Nothing … I hope. Come on, let’s start the drill.”

  19

  Nicosia, Cyprus

  They woke her at dawn, for no reason Susan could see. With the others she sat through the morning, huddled, waiting. None of them knew for what. The men, whoever they were, who owned them now leaned with guns casual in their arms as umbrellas, smoking, eyes restless. Outside the shattered windows the drizzle drifted down steadily from clouds low-flying as pigeons, gray as lead.

  She held Nan close, and did not dare to wonder what lay ahead.

  At a little past ten they were motioned up from the floor and roughly instructed. Outside. Single file. One piece of hand luggage, no talking. She wondered why, but only briefly. One man—the Korea vet, she remembered—attempted to object. No word was said to him in reply; he was simply clubbed toward the exit. After that the hostages got up swiftly, all at once.

  As she filed obediently through the shattered gates of the embassy she pulled Nan close, hiding her face from what lay in the dripping rosebushes. Someone had thrown a blanket over the younger marine, but the sergeant lay rigid in dress blues, his face upturned. Rain pooled in the hollows of the opened eyes, ran down the cheeks to drip in the grass.

  “Go on! Over street.” “Move, or we shoot!” The shouts hurried them, like whips, along a gauntlet. They clattered into the street between two ragged lines of guards. One of them, shirt clinging translucent wet to his chest, shoved Ms. Freed savagely ahead of him. Shallow puddles of dirty water dotted the roadway. The wind drove ripples across them like miniature oceans. On one shore a red-and-white Lucky Strike package, empty and crumpled, lay hard aground. When the blanket fluttered, Susan caught sight of a dark wrist. The corporal had been black. She bent over her daughter, glancing fearfully toward the nearest terrorist.

  “Nan? Are you all right?”

  “Cold, Mommy…”

  She searched the upturned face. Her cheeks were too red, her eyes blurry with fever. It wasn’t imagination. Nan was worse this morning. Maybe it wasn’t flu, despite what Stanweis said. She wondered how much medicine the old man really remembered.

  If she got wet and cold now, even flu could turn into … she hated to think. Where were they going? Nan needed warmth and food and sleep. Where were these people taking them? Didn’t anyone know that this was happening?

  “Where are the police?” she whispered fiercely.

  Moira, just behind them, was holding the pulpy remains of a Greek-language newspaper over her head. She looked pale and frightened. “I don’t know, Betts,” she said, her voice pitched under the aural cover of the rain. “Probably waiting for the Turks.”

  Of course. She had forgotten the impending invasion. But the takeover of an American embassy could not be overlooked, even at the edge of that abyss. “Somebody has to know what’s going on here,” she whispered.

  “I don’t,” said Michael.

  “I mean, outside of us. Somebody’s got to be thinking about what to do, how to get us away from … them.”

  She flicked her eyes past Moira and went silent. Arms folded over his rifle, shirt open to his waist, a young man watched them go by. He looked no older than sixteen. His eyes were both wary and repelled, as if those who passed carried some disfiguring disease. The green armband was dark with rain. A knife was thrust into his belt. He was only a boy … but it must have been just so, Susan thought suddenly, that the blond young fanatics of the SS had regarded those they called subhuman. They passed him and she whispered again, “Don’t you think so? They can’t just let them do this.”

  “I think Persinger might have got a message off, just before they came in the gate,” said Michael. He seemed about to say more, but just then one of the guards, as they plowed by him through a puddle, reached out suddenly for the radio.

  Cook grabbed for it, but too late. Plastic shattered, and the pieces subsided back into dirty water. Cook stared at the Palestinian for a moment—this one was short, ugly, and thirtyish, with crooked teeth and a crazy smile—and then reached out. He had his hands on him when Moira pulled him back by his shirt, putting him off balance. The man smiled even more then and stepped into him and stroked him to the roadway with the automatic pistol he carried. The sound of steel on bone was just like a baseball bat connecting.

  “Michael!”

  “Oh, mommy, he hit Mikey!”

  For a moment she could not move. It was the first time she had seen a man strike another like this, not caring if he killed. For a moment she seemed to go far away. Then she came back, called by her daughter’s cry. But the world was different now, and something in her, too, had changed.

  “Help me get him up, Susan! Damn you,” Moira spat at the small man. He stood watching, grinning down at Nan, but keeping the pistol pointed at Cook. Behind him two other terrorists stepped up, their faces closed.

  “Majd say no radios,” the small man said, still grinning.

  Susan set Nan down and reached for Michael. A thread of blood showed at his ear. The women got the archaeologist out of the water and up on their shoulders. He stood, with an effort, and tried to push their hands away.

  “I’m okay, you don’t have to drag me … he just got me down for a minute.
” He waggled his head.

  “You’re bleeding.”

  “Harrach!” said one of them, moving forward.

  “Let’s go,” muttered Moira. She wrapped Cook’s arm around her shoulders. “Come on.”

  “Mommy, carry me. It’s cold,” whined Nancy, putting up her arms to be carried. With a wrench of her heart Susan saw how small she was, standing in the empty street, armed men around her.

  The small guard reached out then. “You have pretty girl,” he said. Presumably he meant only to pat her head, but Susan bent hastily, scooped her up and backed away, watching craziness well up in his eyes. Her heart began to thud, but after a moment he turned away, laughing with the others.

  “Michael, you sure you’re okay? You’re all wet—”

  “Yeah.” He glanced back, eyes narrow. The collar of his shirt was turning pink, blood mixed with rain. “That snaggletoothed little sucker sure hits hard.”

  They were headed, it seemed, across the square, and again she wondered why they were being moved. If, as seemed most likely, they were being held as hostages, why should the terrorists move them? Wouldn’t there be more symbolic value, for whatever point these people were trying to make, in holding them in the American Embassy?

  The leader, the young one … he had ordered it. He … what had the guard called him? “Majd.” That was it.

  At that moment she saw him. He was standing to the side of the line of march, with three swarthy, mustached men. Rifle slung over his back, hair slicked wetly over his forehead, he was smoking a cigarette and listening gloomily to one of them. As she watched, he nodded, once, took a last puff, and flicked the butt toward the passing Americans. He looked off, toward the embassy.

  She glanced back too, to see the last of the hostages filing out. When they were clear two of the guards lingered by the gate. As she watched, one pulled a bundle from his shirt, bent, then threw a piece of cloth over the twisted ironwork. A flag, red and green. Then, to her amazement, the other aimed a camera. The first posed, grinning, his weapon at port arms. Then they rejoined the rest.

  She was wondering about that when they came out onto the main plaza, and saw the buses.