by David Poyer
“I think you will. There are quids, and there are pro quos. The French think they’re buying access: saving your can, cleaning up your mess, giving you a medal. Well, okay. A few more quids, and we’ll give them the pro quo. Only they’re not going to be the recipient. They’re going to be the source.”
“What? That’s crazy. What possible reason—”
Byrne muttered, “The administration your wife serves specifically told the intel community, hands off Iran. They’ve got their hands full with Iraq, they want this side of the Gulf quiet. Well, the Chief of Naval Operations needed what he needed, to protect the carriers. But the source can’t be American, because then it would be illegal, and we certainly don’t want it to be the Navy. So it’s going to be French.”
Dan stared. What kind of twisted logic was this?
Byrne added, “In fact, another angle just occurred to me: they can identify us as their source, and we’ll identify them as ours. No one will ever have enough clearances to check the one against the other.”
“And us? My men? Where do we fit in your fucking game?”
“You did your job,” Byrne told him, not smiling now, leaning in, keeping his voice low, and Dan’s arm pulled in tight so they were mouth to ear and he smelled the captain’s lime cologne. “A couple false starts, and you lost a man, but in the end, you pulled it off. The Navy won’t forget that. For you, or your guys.
“Now your job’s to write the fucking after action report, turn over all the data, the photos, those manuals I saw Henrickson with on the helo—then forget everything. We’ll determine who has access. Because the byline you’ll most likely see on it, when it finally comes out of the intel pipeline, will be de Cary’s. Who doesn’t work for the Defense Council, by the way.”
He patted Dan’s arm. “Now, my advice, go get some sleep, all right? You’re dog tired. See your guys, if that’s what you’ve gotta do. Then get your head down. Tomorrow is another day.”
When he let himself into sick bay he found Oberg sitting on the deck in stained BDUs, coughing as if his lungs were coming up. Dan could smell him from across the compartment. It did look as if he’d shaved, but apparently no one had dared to insist on getting him stripped. Henrickson perched across from him on a chair, arms folded, eyes closed.
Oberg grinned unpleasantly. “Commander. Nice flight suit. Wondered where you were.”
Dan was suddenly glad he’d stuck the medal in his pocket. “Taking care of things. How’s Sumo?”
“They’ve got him on oxygen, but he’s conscious. He got a heavier concentration of that chlorine than I did.”
“Monty, you okay? Where’s Donnie? Where’s Rit?”
Henrickson started awake, catching the chair just before it went over backward. “Huh? Oh. Inside there. I think. What’s the deal? We going to Bahrain?”
“No. They’re flying us off to the Air Force base in Dubai. Back to the States from there. Sometime this afternoon, so make sure everybody’s ready.” He lowered his voice. “The manuals? The camera?”
“Under Rit’s bunk. He’s keeping an eye on them. I figured that was the safest place.”
“Yeah, maybe so.” Dan glanced at the other door. “Let me look in on them. I’m glad you guys are all right.”
“Glad you made it, too, Commander,” Oberg said dryly.
The lights were on low in the bunking area. Kaulukukui was sawing wood, a bag crackling with his respiration, transparent mask over his face. A French medic was reading a paperback by his bunk.
In the next bay Carpenter lay on his back, fingers twitching, sleeping as well. Wenck sat cross-legged across from him, eyes wide, shoulders jerking with body English as he played some kind of thumb-operated game. He put it aside when he noticed Dan. “Commander!”
“Donnie, you okay? What are you doing in here?”
“They gave me a shot. I was kind of wired, I guess. Get that way after I stay up a long time writing code. One time I stayed up five days, I was so—”
“Uh-huh. They feed you? Did Rit eat anything?”
“Oh yeah, oh yeah, they fed us all a real good breakfast. Even chocolate. For breakfast! Boy, that Teddy can eat. Look what one of the sailors loaned me. This thing’s cool. I feel great now, but they don’t want me to leave.”
“Not a problem.” Dan patted his shoulder, hoping Donnie didn’t hit too hard when he finally crashed. “That programming you downloaded from the—from you know where?”
He nodded to where Carpenter snored. Dan ducked his head and saw the black duffel under the bunk. “Keep an eye on it. We’re flying off this afternoon. Can you stay awake till then? Or get Teddy to?”
“Sure. Oh, sure, I can do that.” Wenck smiled uneasily, tucking his lips inside his mouth. “Uh, Commander, d’I do okay? The other guys got it more together. I know that. But I tried real hard. And I got everything in that guidance module. It’s all there.”
“You did great, Donnie,” Dan told him. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d have rather had along. Okay, I’m going topside, look at the sun. Get yourself cleaned up, and try to relax. If you can.”
Wenck grinned, ducking his head. He didn’t restart his game. Just sat there, blushing, as Dan waved and headed out.
He stood at the rail, on the wide gallery that ran the width of the carrier’s apartment block of a stern, looking into the turbulent Gulf as it roiled away, folding over on itself to reveal different layers, different colors, different depths. Gulls canted and shrieked as they inspected what the invisible screws throbbing far below brought up into the sunlight.
After a time he felt in the pockets of the flight suit, and came up with the tart, his third, wrapped in the linen napkin, that he’d managed to tuck away from the admiral’s hospitality.
Halfway through it a gray and white shape parted from the whirl of its fellows and hovered, beak cocked, one bright black eye fixed on him. He tossed it a bit of pastry. It blinked and banked, and caught the morsel neatly in midair.
The bird soared on an air current coming off the flight deck, and he thought it was gone. But it came back. He tossed it a few more bits, until the tart was gone.
It soared, but then returned once more, hovering and balancing in the bright hot wind a few feet off, graceful, alive, intent, alert, its black bright eye ever fixed on him. He had nothing more for it. Perhaps it could see that. But for so long as he stood there, it did not depart.
Read on for an excerpt from David Poyer’s next novel
THE CRISIS
Available in hardcover from St. Martin’s Press
Ghedi
The pickups career across the desert, throwing up a dusty smoke that smells of death and terror. It catches in Ghedi’s teeth, scratches under his eyelids. He coughs and coughs as he and two other boys slide on the sand that coats the jolting bed. A brown she-goat with a red ribbon plaited around her throat pants at their feet, blood pumping from a slit that looks like another ribbon. Her frantic eyes search theirs. The oldest boy swings himself out of the gate. He hits the sand running, but another truck swerves instantly to smash him down.
Rocks fly out of wheel wells, dust boils, shots crack in the adobe murk. The men shout and gesture to one another as they drive. They’re stringy, dark, with white cloths wrapping skulls shaped like ax heads and burning black eyes that turn now and again to look back at their captives like the hungry eyes of locusts.
The goat kicks, the blood pumps. Then it slackens. The animal relaxes. Her gaze goes polishless and fixed, filming with the dust that throngs the dry wind.
Ghedi screams without words, looking back into the boil that writhes and tumbles in their wake, blotting out everything behind them. The road, the clotted multitudes of refugees. Who’d scattered, screaming, clutching their pitiful belongings, their children, their feeble elders, as the trucks first circled, then, seeing no one armed, screeched around to plow into the crowd.
Right into where he’d left his brother and sister. “Let me go,” he’d screamed, struggling wi
th the man who’d hauled him up by one arm kicking and struggling into the bed of the truck, like a fish suddenly jerked into a fine thin element where breath itself could not be had.
Now that man smiles, showing yellow fangs like a hyena’s. His fingers dig in like the cold claws of a rooster. He leans till his lips brush the boy’s ear. His breath smells rank, meaty, like old blood.
“You do not jump off, like that fool. You look like a wise, brave boy. Yes? We will see how clever you are. And how brave.”
They ride locked gaze to gaze, Ghedi looking back into those eyes as if reading that which is written and must come to pass. His gaze slides down long bare forearms, scarred and puckered with old burns, to dusty, mahogany-toned hands.
To the weapon they grip, its blued steel worn to silver. The stock scarred where something very hard and moving very fast tore through the fibers of heavy-grained wood. The doubled jut of the barrel. The black curve of the magazine.
The man pulls a fold of fabric up over the lower part of his face, and shoves Ghedi down into the rusty bed.
The camp’s a rock-walled ravine only partially sheltered from the rising wind. Heat radiates from it as from a burnt-over field. As the trucks halt beneath an overhang the bandits leap out, carrying the weapons they’ve picked up from the floorboards. Some pull drab tarps from behind the seats. Others cradle rifles as the boys climb slowly down. They huddle coated with dust like tan flour, sticklike arms and legs quivering, hugging themselves as they wait for what comes next. Ghedi glances at the sun, figuring the direction back to his brother and sister. But surrounded, boxed by steep stone, he doesn’t dare make a break.
The fighters’ voices are loud. Their dialect’s different from that of his village, but he understands them. They pour water into radiators from goatskin bags, pry rocks out of knobby-treaded tires with knives, refuel from battered orange metal cans stacked in the shade. The odor of gasoline tinctures the wind.
Presently, when the trucks are cared for and covered, the tarps pulled tight and then carefully disarranged so no straight lines are left, their attention turns past the captives, to where woodsmoke blows from, and merry voices and music.
And presently, the scent of roasting meat.
The boys wipe their lips with their hands, leaving smudges across their faces. They stand where the smoke blows. They’ve stood so long their legs shake, their heads spin with thirst and hunger and fear. Two younger fighters, one in a white robe like the drivers, the other in ball cap and T-shirt with interlocking colored rings on the breast, sit with terrible motionlessness against the ravine wall, weapons across their knees. Their jaws contract endlessly, chewing the wads of leaves called fat.
The other rebels are feasting. They toss bones over their shoulders, but none of the boys dares move. The fires crackle. Gradually the sky turns a darker blue. Shadows submerge the ravine.
A boy begs timidly for water. The young guards beat him with rifle butts until his head breaks like a clay bowl. He lies shuddering, eyes rolled up to blank whites, bare feet kicking as if he’s running. A darkness grows under him. He jerks, then goes still.
That was hours ago. Since then not one boy’s moved from where he was told to stand, not one has spoken.
Ghedi waits with them. His mind is reflectionless as the surface of the canal on a day without wind. He breathes in smoke and the smells of meat and smoke that come now and again like memories half remembered.
The dark comes, and stars sprawl above the firelight as light bleeds from the world. One burns brighter than the rest above the ravine walls. He fixes his gaze on it and listens to hyenas bark far off, the sound carrying across the desert for miles.
At last the man who pulled him off his feet hours before hoists himself from his crouch before the fire like a bundle of sticks wrapped in white cloth reassembling itself. He stretches, looking about, pushing dates into his mouth, sucking the sweetness from each finger. At the sky. The top of the ravine.
At last, as if remembering, he saunters toward the boys. Five are still erect, one lying in the sand, head shattered. The dark puddle has already vanished in the terrible dryness, sucked into the dust that looks white in the firelight, the light of the stars.
“You.” Seizing a small bandy-legged lad by the neck, he walks him to the fire, then past it, around a blind curve in the rocks and out of sight.
Ghedi has a sudden sharp memory. A lamb he’d grown to love, that he’d thought had been given to him. Then his father put the knife in his hand, and told him: this was Eid-ul-Zuha, and all belonged to God; and in His name the lamb was to die. He’d cried and begged. But at last, after it was explained, he understood.
God did not need the lamb. God had made all lambs, all human beings too. Ibrahim had been called by God to sacrifice his only son, Ismail. Ibrahim had shown his willingness, and God had not required that death. Now he, Ghedi, was called to do the same. What he loved most was the most acceptable sacrifice.
He remembered his father’s hand on the knife with his own. The feel as the blade punctured skin. The bleat, the twisting muzzle, quickly clamped shut by his father’s work-scarred hands. The smell of hot blood. The way the beast had looked up, trusting him.
He remembers the she-goat, in the bed of the truck.
And his own mother’s eyes.
A staccato of gunfire. The men at the fire glance that way but do not move from their relaxed crouches, their stone perches.
The tall one strides back alone. The folds of his maahwees whirl behind him. He swings one of the ugly rifles in one hand, muzzle down.
“Follow me. You boys! This way.”
Ghedi’s legs pop as he takes his first step in hours. He sways and almost goes down. Another boy catches his hand. They squeeze each other’s grip tight and stumble along together. The two guards fall in behind the little group. Curious gazes trail them as they pass the fire. A woman in the long colorful dress of the nomad crouches picking scraps and bones out of the dirt and placing them in a red plastic bowl. Only her eyes show beneath her shawl, and she does not look up as they pass.
“You’re nothing,” the tall man says conversationally. “You have no land, no clan, no weapons. You’ve pissed your pants. What sort of men are you? Are you men at all?”
None of the boys answers, and maybe he doesn’t expect them to. The smoke eddies around them, hanging in the ravine, drawing stinging tears.
When they turn the corner he lifts the rifle and they shuffle to a stop. Ghedi feels the hand gripping his tighten.
The boys stand shoulder to shoulder, barely breathing. Covered with the dust, they might be terra-cotta statues in the dark. Save for their wondering eyes. Then the guards shove them from behind, rifles out stiff-armed. They swim through the gathering shadows, through the last of the fire-smoke. Gradually he makes out what fills the depression ahead. The mass of blackness seems to crawl, a living blanket.
It’s a crowd of women and children, squatting in what little light falls from the stars, from the single burning planet that hangs directly above.
“Yes, look on them. These are your enemy,” the tall man says. He doesn’t even sound angry. Only tired. “The enemy of all Ashaari and of your country. The government took it in their name. The government, that steals what is ours in the name of fairness. Does this seem right to you? Does this seem just?”
These people don’t look as if they took anyone’s land. The boys peep at them from the corners of their eyes. The women rock, black-draped, bare heels flashing, holding their children close. One wails, beginning a general outcry. The high thin sounds mount to where the moon rises close and pale.
“The time for blood-compensation is past. When an injury is done to our clan, do we not have blood? Or are we its sons?
“I want all those of noble clan to my right. All those who are sab, to my left.”
The sab are those who are not of the pure clans, the proud tall nomads who come out of the geelhers, the camel camps, the high desert.
The boys edge apart. The hand gripping his loosens, then slides free in a whisper of dry skin. There’s no possibility of pretense. Each boy holds in his brain the chain of genealogy that defines his clan. More intimate than his bowels, as impossible to disown, this cannot be denied or lied about.
But his people have not been nomads for many generations. He’s proud of his line, but what will this man judge, when he asks its name? Time narrows down, narrows down, to a spider-thread glistening in starlight.
He stands where he is. The tall man asks his clan family, and when he says it, nods slightly. “Yes,” he says. “You are welcome with us.”
“I am proud to stand with you,” Ghedi says, the words from which old tale of camel raids and flashing swords he can’t recall.
The tall man blinks. “Remember when you were small, and your father and uncles showed you how to give honor to God.”
The weapon feels heavy, awkward, for a moment. Then it seems it’s lived within his skinny arms forever. Its weight makes something move inside his chest. Something that lifts, under his heart.
He’s pointing it when a short bandit in a dirty Western-style shirt suddenly slaps him on the ear. He staggers, head ringing. The man grabs the weapon back, shows him how the brassy shining rounds lock into the magazine, the magazine locks into the gun, the bolt snaps forward and the lever on the side goes up and down. “Now it’s ready to kill,” he snarls. “Are you?”
The smoke eddies in his eyes. The whimpers come louder. He aims the rifle again.
Then lowers it. “I have no quarrel with these,” he mutters. “Soldiers in trucks drove us from our land. Not these.”
The men smile grimly. “Then don’t kill those,” the short one says. He looks past him, at the boys who stand to the left. The one whose hand he was holding stretches out his arms. Their gazes lock.
“Were you not taught that he who does not strike back when he is offended against is unworthy of the name of Ashaari?”