The Med

by David Poyer

  Lenson bit back anger, focused dutifully on the chart, checking once more. “Nothing, sir. We double-checked the map. No houses or anything shown.”

  “But they could be there. A map doesn’t show everything. I could be authorizing fire into a village. That’s a favorite terrorist tactic, decoying our fire onto the population.”

  Lenson couldn’t believe his ears. He recognized the familiar whine. Sundstrom was digging in. Next would come the bluster. He would deny everything, distrust everything they told him. He glanced at the men who watched him, and said weakly, “Sir, this is a new map. They don’t build villages that fast in the hills of Lebanon.”

  Byrne was digging furiously in the briefcase.

  “Let’s send the air in for a look. Don’t we have recon helos standing by? I can authorize that. Let’s use those, Dan. Use your head.”

  “Sir, we don’t have time. It would take fifteen or twenty minutes for them to get to—”

  Byrne emitted a cry of triumph and shoved a photograph in front of him. He had circled an area in the upper right-hand corner. Peering close, Dan could make out a winding road, a cliff, a hilltop. The hillside beyond was bare, littered with rocks. A reconnaissance photo, taken from high altitude. The coordinates, neatly typed on the edge below the Top Secret marking, matched the map.

  “Sir, wait a minute. Mr. Byrne just showed me a satellite photo. It’s the hillside. There’s nothing there.”

  There was a hiss from the intercom. He visualized Sundstrom’s face, close over it, holding down the button. Surely that was enough. Surely—

  “No,” said the commodore. The suspicion was open in his voice now. “Byrne? He’s not on my side, Dan. He’s pulled the wrong picture. I’ll guarantee that. No way I’ll authorize fire on his say-so.”

  But Dan had stopped listening to him. He was listening to the speaker from shore. It was Haynes, sounding, for the first time, frightened.

  “Commodore Sundstrom. Are you there, Ike? We need fire now. For God’s sake, we need support. We need gunfire or air. These ’tracks don’t have overhead armor and I don’t have room to turn around. Ike, can you hear me?”

  “Sir,” he said into the intercom, “Colonel Haynes is asking you personally to fire.”

  There was no answer. The intercom clicked once, twice, and then came on again.

  “Tell him I’m on the line to Admiral Roberts.”

  “Christ!” said Byrne. His face had gone white. “That’s the mission. He’s giving them up.”

  Flasher sat with the phone in his hand, staring at Lenson. McQueen stared. Everyone in SACC was looking at him. Slowly, he released the switch.

  What should he do?

  All his life he had tried to do what was right. What was right now?

  “Flag bridge, SACC. Commodore, we need you down here, right now.”

  “He’s on the radio, Dan. He says to wait.” Stan Glazer’s tight voice came back.

  Lenson hesitated for another long moment, looking back at the eyes; and then he reached out.

  He turned down the speaker. The sound of gunfire, detonations, faded into the still air, faded into the metal of the bulkheads. And one by one, he watched each pair of eyes go distant, go far away, and then drop or turn aside as each officer and enlisted man in turn shifted in his chair, looking away, looking down.

  They were sitting like that, quiet, all of them staring up at the point on the map where a red arrow marked the last position of the MAU, when the hatch ground open. Lenson turned.

  It was the commodore. He was in fresh khakis, open at the neck, his eagles gleaming silver. He paused in the hatchway for a moment, then came two steps into SACC, looking up at the map.

  “Sir?” said Lenson.

  “He can’t authorize fire without clearance from above,” said Sundstrom. He stared at the map as if drugged. And no one else said anything.

  “Sixth Fleet can’t, sir?”

  “He has his orders,” said Sundstrom. His voice sounded dead. “Just like I do. Just like we all do, Dan.”

  “Sir, we can’t wait for them to kick it all the way up to the White House and back. Let’s put a few rounds in, at least. Whoever’s firing might pack up if they think we’re spotting, going to pour it on in a minute.”

  “I can’t give permission for that.”

  “Sir, you’re responsible for this landing—”

  “Goddammit,” shouted Sundstrom suddenly, lowering his head from the map. “I said no! I have direct orders, no heavy fire, no tactical air on the beach!”

  “Sir,” said McQueen softly, “The colonel says the mortars have the range.”

  Flasher stood up then, shoving back his chair. He swung himself over the desk, heavily, landing next to Lenson. He held out his hand. “Give me the handset.”

  “No, Red.”

  “Mr. Flasher! Get back to your post.”

  “Commodore, I’m giving that order, if you won’t.” Flasher’s voice was quiet, no trace of anger, no trace even of strain. Lenson felt admiration and terror. He looked up at the two men, face-to-face, the lieutenant and the commodore; one heavy, sloppy, his uniform pulled out at the shirttails; the other crisp and neat, tailored, self-controlled only with great effort; looked up at them both.…

  “Sit down, Mr. Flasher,” said the commodore again.

  “Lieutenant Lenson—the colonel is asking for you on the line,” said McQueen.

  Lenson picked up the handset. He turned the selector dial, clicking it from net to net. He stopped at one, began to depress the talk button, and then let it up. He looked at Sundstrom’s face, at the sweat that had suddenly sheened his forehead.

  He turned the selector one more notch.

  “This is Overkill,” he said. “Batteries released.”

  Flasher started. Both he and the commodore looked down together, toward him. He depressed the button again, watching the transmit light wink on, forcing himself this time to speak slowly and distinctly. “Gunslinger, this is Overkill: I authenticate, juliet romeo. I say again, batteries released. Out.”

  “Dan,” said the commodore.

  “It’s done, sir,” he said, and as if to underline his words a tremor came through the steel of the ship, carried through the sea and through the metal hull up to vibrate faintly under their feet.

  “I told you not to fire,” said Sundstrom. “Goddammit, I told you not to fire!”

  “We had to, sir.”

  “I gave him the order, sir. I’ll take the responsibility,” said Flasher.

  “That’s immaterial. Order them to cease fire. Right now! Do you hear me?”

  “Yes sir,” said Lenson automatically, but though his fingers jerked he did not lift the handset. The guns slackened for a moment—that would be the first salvo gone—and then picked up again in a continuous fusillade, like the drumming of rain on a metal roof.

  The shells were going out … he visualized their flight, fifty pounds each of steel and trinitrotoluene hammering out of the stubby barrels of the old destroyer in great pyrocellulose flashes of light and dirty smoke, traveling upward and inland at two thousand feet per second. Crossing the beach still headed up, spinning, as the next salvo came up from the magazines and slammed into the smoking breeches. Spinning, spinning … the glass-cased batteries smashed into life by acceleration, the complex and sensitive fuzes waking into their brief span of consciousness, suddenly deadly. Then the peak, high over Lebanon; the bitter brown of dry land whirling by beneath them; and then the descent. Range, twenty-nine thousand yards; time of flight, forty-three seconds. And then the fuzes, plunging downward, would sense solidity, earth. Calculating instantly the time of their remaining life, they would send a tiny current back through their metal bodies.…

  A rumble came through the speakers, and he reached out to turn it up. The commodore, who had gone quiet, lifted his head to listen.

  “They sound close,” said Flasher.

  Sundstrom said, “You’re firing right over their heads. If Ault has a short r
ound—”

  “I told them to shoot long and walk them up, on his direction.”

  It was as if Haynes could hear them; the colonel came on the circuit then, his voice exultant. “Overkill, Green Bench Leader; that sounded close! Drop two hundred, go to rapid continuous fire. I can’t spot exactly from here, but keep them coming.”

  “Give him a roger, Jack,” said Lenson. He did not look up at the silent commodore, but he could feel his eyes.

  “Lieutenant, we have two more aircraft reporting in on my net. Full tanks, full racks of ordnance. Should they orbit?”

  “No. Send them in. Dogleg to the east, tell them we have naval gunfire going in, max ordinate five thousand feet.”

  “Aye.”

  “Report to Haynes for direct support, Tacair Net, when they’re in range.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  It was done and irrevocable. He looked up then, words struggling against each other for his lips; then, together, they died away, leaving him voiceless. He could not justify what he had done. Successful or not, that did not matter. Whether it was right or not did not matter. He had defied a senior officer. He and Sundstrom looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Neither spoke. His hand began to shake, and he set the handset down, feeling it rattle on the desk before he let it go. Haynes’ jubilant voice talked on over the net, but he did not hear it. From somewhere a fragment came into his mind; something he had memorized, long before, at the Academy.

  Every law is as naught beside this one:

  Thou shalt not criticize, but Obey.…

  He saw the commodore’s hand on the desk before him. It, too, was trembling. Before he could speak Sundstrom said in a low voice, “I hope you don’t regret this, Mr. Lenson. All of your life.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “You will.”

  Byrne stood up then. “Tell him, goddamn it! I’m not keeping quiet any longer.”

  He stared at them. From the way they looked—

  Byrne leaned forward. He spoke quickly, his eyes riveted to Lenson’s. “Dan, your wife and kid are in Ash Shummari. They were taken hostage in Cyprus with the others. He ordered us not to tell you. He thought it would affect your performance.”

  For a moment he almost laughed, staring at them. Then he saw from Sundstrom’s averted eyes that it was true. The disbelief, then the numbness, lasted only a moment.

  He felt himself begin to shake. He had been ready to apologize, explain; but now it dissolved in anger white-hot and uncontrollable. He stood suddenly, and the commodore started back. Speech ran now through his mind, angry, lashing words. He wanted to say you bastard, you liar, coward, liar; but the strange control and separation that had always affected him in anger, sliding down smooth and deadening as a fire-curtain, separated him then from the rage, left him cold and observing.

  Aloud he only said, in a voice that sounded to the men around them toneless and inhumanly controlled, “Sir, you do not deserve your rank.”

  A moment later that control broke; but by then he was at the hatchway. It slammed open against the stops. Then it was empty, the door swinging slowly back to latch with the slow roll of the hove-to ship. The men in SACC did not look at Sundstrom, who sat motionless by the desk, one hand still raised and forgotten before him.

  After a soundless moment Flasher picked up the handset. “Green Bench Leader, this is Overkill,” he said slowly, staring right at Sundstrom. “Over.”

  “Green Bench, over.”

  “Has hostile fire ceased? Over.”

  “Green Bench. That’s affirmative. Over.”

  He clicked the dial. “Gunslinger, this is Overkill,” he said steadily into the bright and silent room. “Cease fire. I say again, cease fire. Your mission is complete.”

  32

  Ash Shummari, Syria

  The square was filled with light like a mountain pool with water. And as the pool in its depths turns the clear stream by mysterious alchemy to blue, so the afternoon sunlight, trapped between the silent buildings under a cloudless sky, turned to heat. The pavement shimmered, seemed on the point of melting. The boiling light of buildings, desert, the distant mountains eddied upward into her brain.

  Susan leaned out over the balcony, feeling the love of the immense earth begin the acceleration of her body. Leaning forward, only a pressure of her hands holding her back, she stared down to where the old doctor’s body lay crumpled and irrelevant as a discarded tissue.

  But she was not seeing it. She was remembering another hot day, years before.

  It had been a year after Nan was born. Dan’s ship was back from deployment, and her parents were glad to sit Nan while they drove to Atlantic City for the time together that she always wanted, but that the Navy never seemed to want them to have.

  But that weekend, as if by magic, they were alone. They found a motel south of the resort strip and walked to the beach in the same dizzying heat, the same silence. The sky had opened overhead in the same way, and there had been the same sense of expectancy, of waiting.

  They had walked alone for an hour. The flat brightness of the Atlantic glittered beyond the dunes, edged with a litter of wrack and driftwood. Behind them, inland, stretched a neglected tangle of scrub pine, thorns, and wild grapevine.

  She had not really been surprised when he had led her downward, neither of them interrupting the heavy stillness, their feet sliding in hot sand. There were shadowed caverns under the vines. Hot, sand-floored grottoes where pale sand crabs scuttled back, claws raised like kung-fu masters. She had not wanted to lie down. She was afraid of ticks. But at last she had, and then, a little later, given him what he wanted: a wordless token of her loss of self; and then he had lost himself too, shouting hoarsely above her into the bright empty sky.

  And the brightness remained with her a long time, seared into her eyes as she lay staring upward, into the all-seeing sun.

  A faint grumble came from the distance, from somewhere beyond the hills. She shaded her eyes and looked, but there was nothing to see. Nothing moved below her. The watching jeep, she realized, was gone. The distant bass muttered on for some minutes, individual detonations at first, then running together into the continuous rumble of an alpine avalanche.

  Again, again, again, she thought angrily and wearily. When would men finish their madness? When would this end—and how?

  Behind her, a child began to cry.

  When she closed the window Nan was sitting up, watching her. Her eyes were preternaturally dark, the pupils widened till the irises all but vanished. The bare mattress creaked as Susan sat beside her. The guilt and the terror she felt as she smoothed her daughter’s hair made her feel faint. Her child was ill and helpless. Totally dependent on her. And that, at last, was what decided her.

  “Bunny, Mom’s got to go downstairs for a few minutes.” Her voice sounded faint in the thin hot air. “You won’t mind staying here alone for a little while, will you? You won’t cry? You won’t go out?”

  Nan’s eyes did not alter. For a moment Susan wondered what this was doing to her; what nightmares, what vein of dark terror was being laid down that she would carry all her life. Then she thought, It’s not my fault. I’ve done all I can to protect her. More, I know now, than I should have. I will have to depend on her for the rest.

  “Nan? Did you hear me? I—”

  “I heard you, Mommy. I be quiet. You come back, won’t you?”

  “That’s right, Bunny. I promise.” She crossed her heart solemnly and pushed her hair back. “Want anything before I go?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got someone I have to talk to. Maybe he can help us.”

  “Daddy?” she suggested, without hope.

  “No.”

  The child said nothing more then. After a moment Susan bent and kissed her, tasting the sweet salt, and went out of the room. Halfway to the stairwell she remembered that she was filthy, unkempt, her T-shirt soaked through with sweat; but she threw her hair back again and went on anyway. There was noth
ing to be done about it. There was one guard in the stairwell, lighting a cigarette. He looked startled to see her, and grabbed for his rifle, coughing the cigarette out of his mouth.

  “I want to see Harisah,” she said, spacing the words so that he might understand.

  “Harisah? El-Majd?”

  “Yes.”

  He did not say anything more, simply looked at her stupidly, so she shoved by him and went down. Her thongs flapped on the stairs. The stairwell stank of urine. They’ve been doing it right here, she thought. Disgust and fear slowed her for a moment at the foot of the stairs, but then she took a breath, lifted her head, and went out into the lobby.

  Crowded through it the morning before, she had seen it only briefly; had gained a confused impression of luxury long abandoned. But now she could see that the lobby, the carpet, was littered with trash. Crumpled plastic and bits of metal and empty glasses lay around a Russian-style water machine. Its coin mechanism gaped open, unlocked with a bullet. Razored fragments of mirror snapped beneath her feet. Crumpled cigarette packs, heels of bread and empty juice bottles lay about the lobby.

  Across it, by the propped-open entranceway, she saw the men. They were standing under the portico. Their backs were to her; they were watching the airstrip and the desert beyond. They all held guns. As she stood there, waiting, another rumble came in faintly from the mountains. For a moment she fancied it seemed closer than before.

  She moved forward, glass cracking underfoot. And then she stopped again.

  He stood at the center of a group of his men, hidden from her before by a corner of the building. He was talking to the others. He gestured; none of them moved. He shouted, made violent blows of his fist in the air. She wished she could understand the Arabic. His listeners shuffled their feet on the dirty marble of the steps. They glanced toward the mountains, at each other, and then, as if drawn, back toward the leader, as if they could not take their eyes from him or their attention from his impassioned speech.

  Susan waited alone, in the middle of the empty lobby. She felt tired, but unafraid.