by David Poyer
“Whoa! Been there before, huh? What’s your name, honey?” He pointed to himself. “Rit.”
“Reet.” She smiled and pointed to her left breast. “Um mali.”
“Umali? That your name?”
She didn’t answer, just brought her face close again. And not long afterward, they were stretched out on the blue and white cloth. She was no Maxim-cover model. Her breasts hung pendulous, and her skin was going leathery. He figured her at forty, which meant she was probably about thirty. But who was counting, when she was rubbing his cock between her legs? She wasn’t as ugly as some of the tail he’d woke up next to in twenty-two years in the Navy. She giggled as she pinched a green worm off the tip of his dick and flicked it away.
Until she pushed him away, gasping. “What’s the matter? Did that hurt?” he murmured, cleaning her ear with his tongue. A sure-fire way to drive them crazy.
She placed a finger before her lips. Glanced toward the trail. A moment later he, too, heard the voices.
Male voices. They ducked and held their breaths. His heart was going like a coal truck climbing a steep hill.
When the voices passed he slicked back his hair and sucked in his gut. Tried to pick up where they’d left off, but she pushed him away. Motioned at the sky; made a curve with her hands. He frowned. “What?”
“You take me States?”
“You want to go to America? That what you said?”
“Take me States,” she muttered, hiding her face against his chest. “I go, you marry me. I love you, do what you say. Take me States, Reet, okay?”
He patted her, wondering what to say. Like he was really going to take her back? But, shit, couldn’t blame her for asking. He’d never seen a woman here who wasn’t working, butchering chickens, hoeing in their little gardens, wiping snot off kids’ faces while two or three others hung on them, while the guys lolled around shouting for food and telling stories and drinking, at least when Abu or one of the other chiefs wasn’t around. A dog’s life, as far as he could see.
She laid her head over and mimed sleep. Then waking. Then pointed behind them, to a screened glade by a ring of rocks he recognized after a moment as a well. The air was cooler here and there didn’t seem to be as many flies. He tried to take her hand again but she slipped away, miming the curve again. She looked hopeless and desperate, but she was forcing a smile. He felt sorry for her, but hell, what could he do? Maybe a little romance was just what she needed. He showed her his watch, tapped it. “When?”
And she’d brought her fingers together, like a pair of scissors closing, before looking quickly both ways, then pulling up her face-cloth and melting back into the green. Which he figured, turning the dial to study it, must mean midnight. Not too far away, now that the sun had gone down while they’d been lip-locked playing touchie-feelie.
Whistling under his breath, counting the hours till then, he’d buttoned up his trou. Looked carefully around, just to make sure none of the rebel assholes was waiting to jump out at him. It was getting dark, all right. He was about to step back out on the path, when footsteps crackled.
The shadow walked past as Rit crouched, stone motionless in the bush. It wasn’t one of the Sayyaf. They slipped through the jungle silent as smoke. Henrickson? Wenck? He wondered what they were doing up.
But not for long. When whoever it was was gone he stepped back onto the path, rubbing his palms on his thighs and smiling, a huge shit-eater stretching the skin of his face. Nobody’d believe this. Even if he told them. Which he had no intention of. At least, till they got back to Norfolk.
It would make a hell of a sea story.
“Fuck,” Donnie Wenck muttered, wincing as another web caught his face. Full dark now and he was afraid. For a while he’d thought everything was okay, that he knew where he was, even though it was late.
Now he knew: He was lost. Pretty clueless, duh, to get lost on his way to the well to wash. He had his towel and the bar of soap from the Holiday Inn Manila, the last place with running water before they’d gone native. The last with air-conditioning, a shower, or anything cold to drink . . . Oberg had gotten him fucked up in the bar, kept egging him on to chug the rum drinks . . . shouldn’t have had that last shot out of the bottle of that native shit, either . . . he stopped, catching his breath as something rustled in the bush. Then growls and thrashing and something small screaming as it died.
Totally. Fucking. Lost. In the middle of the fucking jungle. He felt like screaming himself, but if he did, whatever that thing was might come after him.
Get a grip, dude. You’re still on the trail, right? It’s gotta go somewhere. He turned one way, then the other. He’d come that way . . . no . . . by the time he swallowed his panic, he couldn’t tell where he’d come from. He turned right, then left, but walked only a few steps in either direction before he was convinced he was going the wrong way. He stopped dead again and listened to the jungle night.
This is nutty, Donnie. Trails lead places. You just got to go until you get wherever it’s going. Then if that’s not the huts, turn around and go back.
But it’s dark.
Just keep going, jerkoff, he muttered to himself. And ran full tilt into another gross sticky web. He fought it, making little noises like whatever had just gotten eaten.
Then suddenly he felt calmer. Like he’d stepped through the horror and fear, and was back on the trail again. Dark, and narrower than he’d thought judging by how he blundered from one side to the other. But still, a trail.
Then he came to a fork. He didn’t remember any forks, just that the track went from the huts, past the well, down to the water. He wasn’t at the water, and the jungle was thicker here than he’d ever seen it. The ground was wet, but at least the mosquitoes were gone. Teddy had said that the ones they had here in the daytime, with the white and black bodies, carried dengue fever. And that they didn’t even want to get dengue fever.
Was that a light? He rushed forward but suddenly tripped, banging his shin so hard he almost howled, like hitting it on the knee-knockers on an aircraft carrier. He figured it was the buttress roots of one of the huge trees. He almost turned back, but got courage from somewhere and pushed himself on. He was pretty sure now this was the wrong way, he wouldn’t come out at the hamlet, but he’d see what was down here.
Voices. A dim light, one of the lanterns the Sayyaf hung in their huts. Some had battery-powered fluorescents, the portable kind, but most just used kerosene lamps. The light was soft and he was close enough to see huge moths orbiting it when he stopped.
The voices were in English. And they weren’t Oberg’s, or Kaulukukui’s. It was a woman. An American woman. She was singing, in a soft, sweet voice. Midwestern by the sound of it. He stood stock still, listening. Then took a quiet step forward.
It sounded like a hymn, low and musical, but he couldn’t quite make out the words. He moved in again, and one line came through the leaves and dark boles, and then another, before the longing voice was overwhelmed once more by the million-voiced jungle night.
. . . I surrender all, I give my self to thee . . .
Fill me with a love and power, that your blessing follow me. . . .
He stood unable to move, not understanding. Then, all at once, he realized who she must be, and who must be with her, and why small motors buzzed past above the jungle canopy now and again.
He took a step back, not daring to breathe, knowing that not far away, maybe only yards, someone was guarding her and whoever was with her, maybe drowsing but there, cradling a weapon, making sure no one penetrated this isolate ravine to its secret heart. And that anyone who did would have to vanish, and never be seen again. He stepped back again, and again, then turned and ran, sobbing for breath, tripping on vines and roots, splashing through fetid invisible streams.
He had to tell Oberg. Oberg would know what to do.
Singaporean Armed Forces Yacht Club,
Sembawang, Singapore
“Don’t even come aboard my ship,” the captai
n had said on the phone. Which was a frank and direct statement, Lenson had to give him that.
As the sun vanished and night came Dan crossed his civvy-clad legs on the cabana deck, enjoying the first cool and watching lights wink on one by one on the moored-out yachts. The club looked out over the narrow strip of sea between Singapore and Jahore, Malaysia. A hundred years ago this had been jungle. Now it was the most heavily industrialized island in the world. To his right huge floodlit white warehouses and cranes marked Sembawang, a shipyard, freight terminal, and naval base that dated from British times. Now it was not only a base for the Singaporeans, but a stopover for the U.S. and other navies. Blazing yellowgreen pierside floods picked out a containership, patrol craft, gray hulls flying Australian and U.S. flags.
The single white hull belonged to USNS John McDonnell, T-AGS 51. Whose commanding officer, if Dan wasn’t mistaken, stood now a few feet away, scowling around the cabana deck. He was in a short-sleeved knit shirt and blue slacks. Dan lifted a hand. The guy frowned, then reluctantly slid between the tables of chatting diners.
“You Lenson?”
He got to his feet, determined to keep this cordial. Considering he was essentially hijacking the guy’s command. “Good evening, Captain. Dan Lenson.”
He got a handshake and a grunted name, and then the waiter came. The other grumpily recommended the rice dishes, but warned him to order it “mild.” They ate in near-silence, though Dan tried to start a conversation. The guy didn’t play golf. He wasn’t a sailor. He turned down the waiter’s offer of dessert. Dan got the tab, but that didn’t seem to warm the atmosphere.
The other officer wiped his lips and threw down the napkin. “All right, I had to meet with you. I’ve met with you. Thanks for dinner. Good night, Commander.”
“Just a moment, Captain. I was hoping to get some time aboard with you to go over the operational requirements.”
“You’re not coming aboard. And this is the only time you’re getting with me. McDonnell’s on a surveying mission. I understand you have some sort of covert, spec-ops-type requirement. I don’t believe it’s an appropriate tasking for a USNS ship. Nor is it worth seven hundred extra miles of steaming time. I’ve made my position clear in a message to COMLOG, MSC, and the Oceanographer of the Navy.”
COMLOG was navspeak for Commander, Logistics Group Western Pacific, the captain’s immediate boss. MSC was the Military Sealift Command. Dan leaned back, considering how to re orient the guy.
Sealift Command vessels were civilian-crewed and civilian-captained. They sailed on federal business: hydro-graphic surveys, laying cables, transporting fuel and ammunition, missile flight test support, counterdrug surveillance, escorting submarines on test dives. A lot of ex-USN people worked for Sealift, but it wasn’t part of the Navy, strictly speaking; it was part of the Department of Defense, in the Transportation Command.
Which meant that even though he was pretty sure he had the whip hand here, it made sense to try sweet reason first. “Sir, how about some coffee?”
“I’ll pass. We done?”
“No sir, we’re not. Correct me if I’m wrong, but MSC’s mission is supporting U.S. forces.”
“My mission’s hydrography. We have no intel function. We can’t, Commander. The access various countries give our charting missions is on our ironclad assurance there’s no intel function attached. In any way.”
“What are you doing in the Banda Sea?”
“A sea bottom survey.”
“I don’t see the distinction, Captain,” Dan told him. “That survey might let us find a sub transiting in shallow water someday. That’s not an intel mission?”
“It’s not covert, that’s the distinction. It’s cleared by the host government and they have full access to the output.”
“Well, what we’re asking for will take place on the high seas. There won’t be a host nation involved, and if we do this right, no one will ever hear about it. So your argument falls.”
The other’s lips set. He pushed his chair back. “That all you got for me? Commander?”
“No, sir.” He got his briefcase out and unsnapped it. “You can kick the directive up your chop chain if you want, but it’ll come right back down. So while I’ve got you here, I need to make sure we’re on the same page. Lifting capacities on your cranes. Boarding ladders. Stowage requirements. Security. The transfer’s got to take place after dark, so—”
“How stupid do you think I am?”
Dan felt like belting him but just said, “Not very, sir. Okay? Now let’s get this over with like the professionals we both are, all right?”
Basilan Strait
Oberg stood on the bow as darkness grew above them, a black iceberg slowly eclipsing stars as brilliant as any he’d ever seen in the hills above Beachwood Canyon, when he’d sneaked out his bedroom window during one of his mother’s all-night cocktail parties. When he’d hiked so far up there were no more houses, no more lighted pools, he’d build a mesquite fire and smoke whatever he had and lay back and watch the stars. That was what the sky looked like now. This far out from Southern Mindanao it was as if the electric light had never been invented. He balanced as the surf rocked the boat. The burble of the big Hondas sounded very loud. He hefted the long supple pole at its balance point, making sure it was ready to go.
Captain Abu had told him how the Sayyafs operated. It wasn’t the way SEALs boarded oil platforms, a silent inchworm up from surf level. Or, the other alternative, the way he’d done it in the Gulf: run alongside in the inflatable, get a grapnel over the deck edge, and muscle your way up hand over hand. Some of the Iraqi ships had greased their sides. Others put barbed wire and busted glass on the deck. And some had even shot at them as they boarded, which hadn’t turned out very well for them, given that the SEALs always went in with either a ship or an armed helo on backup, along with their organic weapons. The way he figured, anybody who shot at them deserved what he got.
These guys didn’t operate like that. They ran in close behind the target ship at night. Matched speeds, and edged in until they were running right alongside.
The shadow was close above them now. Behind him he heard Sumo Man curse softly as he wrestled throttles and helm. Oberg crouched, eyeing the angle the shadow made against the stars. The seas dropped them, then they rose again.
At the crest he swung the pole up. Abu had sold it to him for his spare knife. The springy bamboo was light but strong, sixteen feet long, like a pole vaulter would have used in the Olympics before fiberglass. An iron grappling hook was carefully bound to the end with light line. It looked like Captain Ahab had lashed it on, but it was tight. Halfway up, he twisted it. He’d practiced this scores of times and was starting to get it.
A faint ring of iron on steel echoed from above. He put his weight on it, then leaped.
He put all he had into the jump, getting as high on the pole as he could, and went up the smooth slick bamboo hand over hand. He wasn’t carrying a rifle. Or a pistol. Just his blade, and coiled over his shoulder, the real weight: a caving ladder, light cable and aluminum rungs, but still bulkier and heavier than he wished it was. The pole oscillated, then spun and smacked him against the black. Rough rusty iron whanged his back. He kept going, though the pole started to slip through his gloves, and got to the rail and pulled himself over and oriented, knife out. He pulled the goggles up—he needed binocular vision to climb, but he’d want night vision once he got aboard—and swept his gaze across the deck. Ready for anything, the way he’d have to be when he came over the rail for real.
He relaxed. Resheathed. Leaned, to call down to the idling cutout of the boat, the glitter of stars on black sea: “All right. Let’s try it again.”
The ship wasn’t a ship; at least hadn’t been afloat for many years, to judge from its dangling rusty plates, the huge hole in its side through which the surf rolled. An old cargo tramp, piled up years before on this shoal, it was being gnawed back into its component molecules by sea and salt air. Not a large ship, ei
ther. The stern was only twenty feet up.
He wasn’t looking forward to doing this for real. Shinnying up a bamboo pole in the dark, dangling over the screw . . . if he lost his grip things could go to shit fast. But if he and Sumo practiced it should go okay. He’d drop the ladder for the others after he made sure there was no after lookout. Or at least, that any lookout wouldn’t be warning anybody they were there.
Back in the boat, they idled in again. This time he nudged Kaulukukui. “Get farther over to starboard, Sumo.”
“Centerline, we’ll have less turbulence to fight.”
“Yeah, but most of these freighters have one screw. If one of us hits the water, we’ll be better off to starboard or port, rather than centerline. Maybe we can swim clear before we get turned into fish-flavored tomato paste.”
“Mm, sounds yummy.”
“Yeah, anything fish flavored, right? You guys ready to try it this time?” Teddy called back to the silent forms behind them. Christ, he hoped none of them froze on the ladder. Better to find it out now than on the mission, though.
The stern loomed and he crouched. Hooked on, and swarmed the pole again. If it was raining, he wasn’t going to make it. Maybe roughen it with a file, that’d give him a better grip if it was wet. He hit the top, swung, and almost went over backward as the rusted lifeline snaked out through the stanchions. “Fuck,” he muttered, and barely saved his balance before plummeting backward into the boat, tossing and growling below. Good way to break your fucking back, Oberg. Then you can drive that new Samurai from a crank-up bed.
He did the night-vision goggles check, then swapped the knife for the rock gear and kicked the ladder over. Sumo came up second, handing the helm to Carpenter, hulking up the swaying ladder with both their Kalashnikovs, extra ammo, and the tape-wrapped bricks of plastic explosive.
Wenck came up next. The gangly kid was pretty fast, considering. Wenck had wakened him the night before last nattering about hostages, a woman in a hut, hymns in the jungle. Teddy had told him to zip it. The Sayyaf did ransom snatches—everybody knew that. If they were holding missionaries, it had nothing to do with the Team. Maybe after they left, they could pass the word to somebody who could do something about it. Now Kaulukukui grabbed the kid as his head reached the deck-edge, hauled him up, and set him on his feet. Oberg watched as he oriented, swept the deck with the muzzle of his weapon, took position at three o’clock looking forward. Good.