The Med

by David Poyer

So now they were installed—she and Moira, Michael and Nan—in a double on the third floor. The room, like the lobby, had been long abandoned. A rag of a dress hung in the closet, a razor lay rusted to the sink. The bed was a bare mattress. She wondered who had been here and where they had gone. The door was open, so that a man patrolling the corridor could see in, but for the moment they were alone.

  She did not know whether their condition had improved with the flight. It was slightly more comfortable, but she did not know where they were, even what country they were in. She did not know what fate awaited them. Most fearsome of all, she did not know what was in the dark man’s mind.

  But I’ve got to be cheerful, she thought, looking at Nan. Got to keep smiling, if only for her. “I’m glad as hell they didn’t take you, too,” she said to Moira.

  “Take me?”

  “The people they picked out. Freed, and the Stanweises—a few others—I was afraid—?”

  “They asked me if I was Jewish.”

  “And you—” she hesitated, uncertain just how to phrase it.

  “What do you think? I said no. They fell for it.” The Ox’s heavy eyebrows bent. “At least, for the time being.”

  “I’m glad you’re both with us,” Susan said. “Now, if only we had something to eat—”

  “Don’t remind me! God, I’m dying of hunger. But … at least we know they know what’s happened.”

  “They, Moira?”

  “The World. The cameras! Didn’t you see them?”

  “I saw them. What good will they do?”

  “You have me there, Betts.”

  “I hope they can figure out what this guy, this Majd, wants,” put in Michael. “If even he knows.”

  “You don’t think he does?”

  “I wonder. You know, I get the feeling this isn’t going quite as planned.”

  “What?”

  Michael paced the room, probing the lump that was rising over his ear. “I think they had a bunch of people who got through the gates, all right, and took the embassy, all right; but then found themselves upstaged by a real war. So then this Majd character decides to move us where he can get more coverage, or maybe where things are safer for him. And then—well, I don’t know whether he planned to land here, or whether we were forced down.”

  “You don’t think this is, like, where they come from? Their base, or something?”

  “Have you seen anyone else?” Cook went to the window and leaned against it, looking out. There was a balcony, but they had been told to keep the windows closed, not to go out. He tapped his knuckles on the glass. “Whup! Company.”

  “Who?”

  “An armored car, I think. And some jeeps. On the far side of that hill. Waiting.”

  “What for?”

  “Well, what do you want them to do? Tear gas, like they used on Jimmy Cagney? We’ll all bite the dust if they try that. And more—” he paused and his face darkened. “They might be out of the same bag as these guys.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  “No, dear. Do you?”

  “I always feel skittish when she starts calling me pet names,” Cook grinned to Susan. “No, seriously, Moira, I’m pretty sure we flew east. That would mean we’re in Syria or Lebanon. Maybe Jordan.”

  “Not Iran?”

  “Weren’t in the air long enough.”

  “Mommy, I’m hot,” said Nan suddenly.

  Susan shivered. “Let’s not talk about it now,” she said to Cook.

  In the bathroom the taps turned, but there was no answering rush of water. She stared briefly at a useless bidet. “Damn,” she whispered. She’d been content to be thirsty on the plane, no need to piss, but now she visualized a long iced tea with longing. Better yet, a tall gin and tonic. With lime.

  A few minutes later she bent over Nan with a hand towel. She’d had to use what remained in the tank. She sponged her throat, cheeks, forehead, feeling the fever through the cloth. She held the aspirin bottle to the light. Only five remained, and some broken fragments at the bottom.

  “Come on, honey, take this. Here’s some water.”

  “I don’t feel so good, Mommy.”

  “Mommy knows, darling.” Her helplessness and fear made her hands shake as she held the hotel glass to Nan’s lips. Dear God, she thought suddenly, coming a little out of numbness into despair so sharp she saw why her mind had walled it off. Dear God, what is going to happen to us? Someone in her head chattered on as she watched her daughter drink, hoping the water was clean, that it would cool and not harm her. In the Med you couldn’t trust it … no, that was not her thought. That was what the other Navy wives had said. That was the reason, ostensibly, some of them drank nothing but wine.

  Yet after all they, whom she had scorned, had been proven the wiser. They’d distrusted change, stayed on their worn path of tours and shopping. A sudden rush of terror and regret clogged her throat, made her hands tremble as she wrung out the cloth. If only she’d stayed with them! The Athens airport was closed, the radio had said. But Alicia and the others would be free, aside from that, free and safe, safe, safe.

  But she hadn’t been satisfied. She had wanted adventure. Not even alone, but with a three-year-old.

  Nan pushed away the glass, spilling it on her T-shirt. Susan caught it, saving the last swallow. “Don’t want it,” the child said. “Want something to eat.”

  “There isn’t anything right now, baby. Tell you what … let’s take a nap. You and me. Aren’t you sleepy?”

  “But I’m hungry.” Nan began to cry, sobbing into the cloth of her shirt. Susan tried to soothe her, feeling like crying herself. Moira and Michael stood across the room, watching, holding hands.

  At last she lay down beside her child, stroking her head over and over, her eyes on the open door.

  20

  U.S.S. Guam

  Lenson was on the flag bridge again at thirteen hundred, an hour past noon, when Bowen reported incoming bogeys on her radar.

  Bogeys—unidentified aircraft. Dan jolted awake instantly from his daydreams. “This is it, pal,” he croaked to Glazer, who was staring at him open-mouthed. His own lips were suddenly dry. He keyed the air-warning handset with one hand, acknowledging the transmission, as he picked up Primary Tactical with the other. “All units November Kilo,” he said rapidly, “unidentified aircraft inbound, two-niner-zero true. Air warning Red. I say again, bogeys inbound, sector delta, Air warning Red. All units keep guns tight pending orders. Control on Air Defense Net Bravo.”

  He clicked off Pritac, not waiting for their responses, and hit the squawk box. “Bridge, flag bridge, you copy? Ready on chaff and electronic countermeasures?”

  “Bridge aye,” said the intercom. At the same instant the alarm began to bong. “GENERAL QUARTERS, GENERAL QUARTERS. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. AIR ATTACK INCOMING. ALL HANDS MAN YOUR BATTLE STATIONS. SET MATERIAL CONDITION ZEBRA THROUGHOUT THE SHIP.” In the background he could hear Captain Fourchetti shouting orders.

  “Stan. Crank the commodore. Call Flasher and Hogan and get all stations manned up ASAP.”

  “Right.”

  He felt something hard behind him; it was McQueen, holding out the steel helmet. Perhaps an anachronism, but it felt good, settling heavy, shuttering his skull. He shifted his gas mask and life vest to his hip, bent to check that his socks were rolled over his trousers and that his collar was buttoned tight against flash burns. All this World War Two stuff, he thought. We should have some kind of protective suit, at least ballistic vests.

  The bridge manned up fast. More people crowded in by the moment. He looked around for Sundstrom, but he was not yet there.

  “There they are,” said Glazer suddenly. His voice sounded thick.

  “Where?” Dan craned into the windows, searching low clouds. Rain squalls—low mist to the east, the seas cresting in long runs, spume blowing off them as they broke—

  “No, on the scope. They must be low fliers, all right. Three pips
breaking off a big group to the north of us.”

  “Report ’em,” he was saying, when at that moment the position report came in from the frigate. As their escort, and the only ship with halfway-modern radar and weapons, Bowen’s commanding officer had taken over defense of the formation at the first contact with incoming aircraft. Now he was broadcasting range, bearing, and target data, helping the amphibs slew their 3″/50 batteries toward the approaching aircraft.

  “Why’s he giving orders? Who is that? I’m in tactical command here. I’m the commander of this task force!”

  “Yes sir, you are,” said Lenson quickly, turning to where the middle-aged man stood, his uniform wrinkled, his eyes bleared. It was good someone could sleep, he thought jealously. “He’s taken over as Force Air Defense Coordinator, sir. It’s standard procedure, re our oporder. You still retain firing authority, though.”

  “Firing authority?” repeated the commodore. “The rules of engagement—but Sixth Fleet hasn’t sent those to me yet; he said he would, but he hasn’t—”

  A spatter of rain hit the windscreens and was instantly whipped away by the wipers. “Fifteen thousand yards,” sang out Glazer from the ’scope. A shiver swept the men, packed close together, enclosed by steel, or rather its illusion; the amphibs were unarmored. The planes were closing faster than Dan anticipated. Supersonic, he thought. Modern jets. He felt his guts ease under the life vest.

  “We have missile lock-on,” crackled the radio. “Interrogative weapons tight.”

  “Should we give the frigate a fire order, sir?”

  “No, goddammit, no!” shouted Sundstrom, making a violent motion of negation. “Tony said he’d try to get us some Air Force cover. This might be them. I don’t want to fire until we have a positive identification. What about IFF? Electronic identification?”

  “They’ll all squawk NATO friendly,” said Flasher, from behind them. “Greek, Turkish, or ours. That won’t tell us a thing.”

  “Will they answer a radio call?”

  “We don’t know their frequencies, sir.”

  “We’ll have to wait till we see them, then,” said Sundstrom tentatively. He moved toward the hatchway.

  “November Kilo, interrogative orders,” the frigate asked again. He sounds so cool, Lenson thought. So unhurried. I might be too, if I were aboard her. She was built to shoot back. Smaller, more maneuverable, with a good gun and missiles. The thin-skinned amphibs, though, would be helpless before a determined attack. He looked at Sundstrom, waiting for orders. The commodore looked back at him, very briefly, and he saw indecision in his eyes.

  “Dan.”

  “Sir?”

  “Without rules of engagement, we’ll have to wait until we’re fired on. Even if these are Greeks.”

  “That’s right, sir. They’re still our allies.”

  “We have to wait, don’t we? Am I right?” He looked around the bridge. “Mr. Flasher? Do you concur?”

  “I guess so, sir.”

  “Send ‘hold your fire,’” said the commodore.

  “All units November Kilo: weapons tight until specific word.” He repeated the message, authenticated it, and signed off.

  “Three miles,” said Glazer, his voice high. “Closing fast, with a rapid right bearing rate.”

  “Where are my lookouts? I ordered lookouts on the wings!” shouted Sundstrom. Hogan started, then un-dogged the port hatch, moving with clumsy rapidity. A blast of wind and spray came in as he ducked out. Lenson caught the door as the ship rolled, held it open, looking out toward the northwest.

  It was only a glance, half a second out of a lifetime, but he knew he would always remember the way the sea looked that day, how the sky leaned close above the jagged tops of the waves. It printed itself clearer and surer on his mind than film could record. No film could recall the way the wind slapped spray from the sea and whirled it above the waves, rattling against the hull like thrown shot. No film could remember the cold, colder than thermometer could register. No camera could catch the intense crystal clarity of life, the colors gray, gray; gray-silver sea, dark sky, gray hulls of ships, small and lonely distant. Gray rain, sleeting down like a taupe curtain between Guam and Coronado. Abruptly he was glad for the rain, and then cursed it. It offered no concealment. Without visual identification the task force couldn’t fire. But the planes would have better radar, more modern weapons …

  “D’you see them, Dan?”

  “Not yet, sir—there they are!”

  Hogan pointed at the same instant. Three specks, frighteningly close, moving low and fast from left to right beyond the crazily rolling Barnstable. He riveted his eyes to them, afraid to raise his binoculars. At this range you could lose something that small in a moment, you could look away for an instant and they would disappear. Fighters, but he couldn’t tell the type. They vanished into the overcast, but not before he had seen them bank, veering in the direction of the formation.

  He turned, to find the commodore beside him. The rain was dark on his khaki uniform, and beads of water dotted his face. He stared into the mist, blinking rapidly.

  “Orders, sir?”

  “What, Dan?”

  “Do you have any orders, Commodore?”

  “You’ve got the deck, don’t you? Do I have to tell you people everything?”

  Lenson looked at him for a long moment, then pushed by into the bridge.

  “Stan. To all units: radar-illuminate and lock on incoming bogeys. Load, but hold fire until we pass the word.”

  “Got it.”

  “Red, on the CIC-to-CIC net, have everybody get their electronics up. I want everything radiating. Radar, radio, fire control, the whole schmeir. If they’ve got sensors on those bogeys I want them to know we’re American.”

  “It might not matter,” said Byrne. “Most of the Turkish Navy is ex-U.S. They’ll have the same signatures.”

  “Well, at least we’ll be able to track them. Sir—permission to hoist a battle ensign? They could see that better—”

  “Goddammit, yes,” said Sundstrom. “Right now.”

  The roar came then directly above the ship, a rolling blast that rattled Plexiglas in its frames and made all the men duck. Lenson ran to starboard in time to catch the yellow-blue flare of the afterburner as the fighter pointed itself upward from the pass. The forward gun mount trained around after it, but far behind, too slow to keep up. This time his eye caught the familiar stub wing: an F-16, built in the U.S., but from rain and speed he couldn’t see the insignia. The Air Force flew Falcons. But so did the Greeks, and the Turks too, for that matter. There was just no way to tell.

  It’s that way for them too, he thought with sudden horror. They can’t tell who we are. They’re going too fast, the visibility’s bad. If they’re Greek they’re looking for ships, the Turkish invasion fleet. But they’re land-based pilots; they probably can’t tell an oiler from a surfaced submarine, much less—

  The fighter shrank as it opened, turning, its momentum taking it far out from the task force. It almost disappeared, winking on and off at the limit of sight. Then it became a dot again, head on, and he saw the other two joining above and behind it.

  They dropped suddenly to just above the gray-green crests, no higher than the bridge. He knew then that this was a firing run. He glanced back. Sundstrom met his eyes for a moment, then dropped his gaze and shook his head slightly. Knowing it was not enough.

  They had to wait until they were fired on.

  And then they were. The sound came faintly across the water, a popping rattle mixed with the rising howl of engines. He saw flashes, streamers of pale smoke from the wings, and jerked his head round; but as his mouth came open Flasher was already barking, “Batteries released! Shoot the sons of bitches!”

  “Fire,” said the commodore a moment too late. Dan stared out as the fighters roared directly over them, dreadfully close. They banked left, the first run complete, and were erased instantly by a low bank of cloud. “Make sure the destroyer gets that word—�
��

  “Bowen!” Flasher was already shouting into the handset, forgetting, or not bothering with, the call signs. “D’you copy my weapons free? Answer up, damn it!”

  “Copy,” said a voice from the frigate. One word.

  “Flag bridge, bridge,” said the squawk box. Fourchetti’s voice. “We have radar lock-on with the aft three-inch mounts. They’re closing again—almost in range—”

  His voice was blotted out in a sudden chorus of high-pitched bangs from aft. Between the detonations the rattle of machine guns swelled to a roar and then cut off as the planes appeared overhead. The forward mount, fifty feet down, fired suddenly, creating twin balls of bright orange flame as big as the bridge. Each flash was succeeded by gray-black smoke and a bellow of sound that shook the steel fabric of the island.

  The aircraft flashed by like silver sabers, a hundred yards off the bow. The guns whined around, trying to follow but far behind, twin barrels spewing alternate balls of fire thirty feet across. Empty brass arced upward from the breeches, somersaulting through smoky air with incredible slowness, and clanged into the decks. The guns fell silent as the barrels trained into the superstructure. The bow mount fired last, four spaced rounds after the rapidly dwindling planes. Lenson imagined the shells hurtling after the jets, closing at first, then slowing, dropping, ripping at last into the sea. Choking smoke blew in through the open hatchway. “… Hits?” said the commodore, turning for the bridge wing, where Hogan stood with binoculars to his eyes.

  “Sir. Don’t go out there. They’ll be back.”

  “I think we hit one, goddammit!”

  “Not a chance. Those old three-inch were thirty degrees behind them when they went over,” said Flasher.

  “Maybe the frigate’ll do better,” said Lenson.

  “Somebody better do something, and quick. Or we’re going to have some dead sailors here.”

  Dan thought for a furious moment, calculating lead angle, found he lacked data. He pulled a phone from the bulkhead and snapped its switch to Guam’s fire-control circuit. “Guns!”

  A faint, tinny voice answered. “Here.”

  “Flag bridge. Were you on those babies?”