by Gordon Kent
More shooting off to the right. The sergeant said something and crawled out on the road. His men stayed in the ditch, but their rifles were back on the car.
Harry climbed to his feet, no longer a picture of groomed safari wear. “How long have you been fighting here?” Harry asked. He sat back against the fender of the Land Rover. A pack of cigarettes, only slightly banged about, appeared in his hand. He looked more relaxed than anyone there.
In the front seat, both of the men moved restlessly.
The sergeant squatted, took a cigarette, nodded his thanks and lit it with a butane lighter from his breast pocket. He took a long drag on the cigarette and waved it to the north. “My regiment attacked Ambur ridge last night. We were not completely successful.” He smoked again, looking at the ridge. Suddenly, his flow became more rapid, as if he wanted to talk about it.
Post-combat stress disorder, Alan thought, listening from the back seat. He had his door open in case the shells came again.
“Nor did we completely fail. Now we are slowly pushing them off the rest of the ridge with artillery. Ours came up a few hours ago, yes?” He asked the last as if he expected they had seen it. But he didn’t wait for an answer. “Off east, they attack us this morning. We were not entirely surprised, yes? But we took some losses, and now they hold the road over there.” He pointed across the sugarcane fields, past rising ground covered in deep green scrub, to a trio of low buildings several miles to the east. Alan realized that this was the ground that the soldiers had been looking at every time they glanced away from his group, as if they anticipated an attack.
“We are supposed to go to Ambur,” Harry said.
The howitzer battery fired again up the road and more guns answered it. Again rounds fell long and detonated near enough to make them all take cover. Alan rolled out of the car and over until he was lying alongside Harry.
“Time to go for the fallback at Mohir.”
“Yeah.” Harry’s voice was flat.
Alan smelled the sweet tobacco smoke from one of the cigarettes and felt a flutter in his stomach; he was an old smoker, a frequent backslider, and stress always increased his longing.
“Got the map?” Alan asked Harry. Harry rolled on his side and pulled it out of a cargo pocket. Alan squirmed to face him across the map. The sandy soil was working between his shorts and his skin, and something was crawling on his leg. Just like Africa. He looked at the map.
“Where are we? Here?” he asked, pointing at a crossroads at the base of the ridge. The facility was south and west along over the ridge, three or four kilometers away.
“Or here,” Harry said, pointing to the next junction south. “I didn’t count the crossroads.”
Alan pulled the map around. He traced the line of the ridge to the east, looking at the low ground where the enemy—how quickly these things crystallize—had his tanks.
The sergeant was calling orders in his own language. His men began to move back toward the dug-in weapon.
“How far is Mohir?” Harry asked, pointing toward where he hoped the village was located to the west.
The sergeant finished his cigarette with professional intensity. “Their infantry is moving this way.”
“Do you know this village? Mohir?” Harry asked again.
The sergeant looked at the map, ran his fingers unerringly over the area where the attack was staging, then glanced west, at the village.
“Yes,” he said. “Workers’ housing for the power plants. Right there. Maybe four kilometers.” He looked at his men, back at the ridge. “You need to go.”
Harry brightened, and Djalik and Fidel exchanged glances, rolled their eyes, swore inwardly.
“Will you let us go that way?”
“Go. Just go. Yes, go that way—back along the road is cut now. Go!”
Alan was back in, noting that his seatback was cut up and his window broken; he dusted the glass off the seat and settled himself. Harry was hanging out his own door, still talking to the sergeant.
Djalik was rolling. The Land Rover moved up to the downed log, two crouched soldiers moved it just enough for Djalik to squeeze by, and they were out of the bamboo. Then Djalik gunned the engine, shot around the curve and took the corner at the intersection, headed west. The high center of gravity caused them to sway once, almost out of control, and then they steadied with a thump.
“Those guys were pretty good, for grunts,” Fidel said. He had the shotgun again.
Harry leaned up between the seats as they hit a hole—pothole, shell hole, something in the narrow track that Djalik couldn’t get around. Harry’s head hit the roof with a crack and he cursed. “Bit my tongue,” he said, shaking his head.
Alan laughed, and Harry took a swing at him, a mock swing that Alan avoided by sitting back heavily. Harry leaned back over the seat, keeping his head down.
“Another intersection here, then we turn right on to a paved road that doubles back and up the ridge here. See it?”
“Got it,” Djalik said. “Where’s it go?”
“Small valley, there. Then Mohir.”
Fidel let out a grunt of frustration. “How do we know somebody’s not fighting over that, too?”
“We don’t.” Harry looked at Alan. “Let’s go.”
18
Bahrain
It was late in the day, and Dukas felt as if he’d been cleaning the floor with his tongue. Deep fatigue can be like a bad hangover, he decided. He knew bad hangovers pretty well, had had quite a few of them until Leslie had moved in.
He had a draft plan for a counterterrorist investigation of the Jefferson on his desk, plus a case of probable domestic abuse in a Marine family at the embassy, plus three thefts, a racial incident, and a homosexual allegation on Navy ships in his area. The homosexual allegation made him groan aloud. “We’re wasting our resources on bullshit!” he growled.
Leslie was cleaning up the files she’d been working on with Greenbaum, who had already gone. She smiled at him. “A wise old man named Mike Dukas once told me that nothing NCIS did was unimportant.”
“He was an idiot.” He looked at her. “I was trying to teach you an ethic.”
“Well, you did.”
“Where the hell’s Greenbaum, that you’re doing his work?”
“He said he was interviewing somebody’s wife.”
“Oh, Christ.” Dukas was annoyed all over again, now because Greenbaum had escaped him. “I’m going to bounce that sonofabitch right out of this office.”
“He’s all you got.”
Dukas opened his mouth and looked at her, eyes big. He closed his mouth. “Go home,” he said.
“You coming?”
“Later.”
“You going to be home for dinner? I thought I’d make pizza.” When she said this, she didn’t mean she’d hump in a pizza from Domino’s; she meant she had the dough already made and in the fridge, ready for a final rise, and she’d make sauce and put on fresh mushrooms from India and fresh tomatoes from Palestine and fresh cheese from Italy and a lot of other good stuff, exactly as he had taught her.
“I can’t make any promises, babe.”
“Well, I’ll put it all together; I can throw it in the oven when I hear you. Okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.” He was already reading the report.
“I got Ripley on the Trincomalee flight.”
“Ripley?” He was trying to read.
“Alien? God, Michael, haven’t you seen anything?”
“You talking about Totten—Brevard, to you?”
“And her house nerd. Twenty-hundred takeoff.”
“You didn’t like her.” His head went down over the page again, then came up. “She’s a type you see in the Agency—maybe you don’t like her, but my guess is she’s great in the field. Here in the office, not so good.” He bent his head over his reading again.
Minutes later, she said, “Goodnight, Michael.”
“Yeah.”
Dukas read on, editing as he went—it was his ow
n writing, not too bad but always full of typos. He heard a noise and looked up and was surprised to see Rattner, not Leslie, and only then did he realize that of course Leslie had left.
“Hey, Rattner.”
Rattner put his hand on his heart, said, “The Great Rattner has arrived.”
“What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“Wanted to throw some crap into a file.” Rattner crossed his arms. “What’s new on the Jeff?”
“Only able to make five knots. How you doing with the leaker?”
Rattner shrugged. “I’m checking the list from Fifth Fleet, but shit—”
“A woman arrived here today from a certain agency we both know and love; she told me that the White House and NSC knew something about the Navy before the official word ever left Fifth Fleet. Before her place knew about it. That grab you?”
“No shit! Where is she?”
“Headed for Trincomalee.”
“Aw, fuck—if I knew the times—”
“I got the times.” Dukas took a slip of paper from the bottom of the pile and pushed it across the desk. “I made her write it down before she left. Don’t tell me I never did anything for you.”
“I could use another guy. How about Greenbaum?” Before Dukas could object, he said, “Give him a chance, Mike.” He hadn’t called Dukas by his first name before.
“You gonna do the filing?”
“There’s that nice girl. Let her do it.”
“That nice girl lives with me, as you well know. If Washington knew she was here as a favor to me, they’d shit bricks—as you well know also—so I’d like for her not to work here.” He sighed. “Okay, maybe I’ll bring her in one more day.” He didn’t really care about what Washington would do. What he cared about was not building a debt of gratitude to Leslie—along with everything else.
Near Ambur
“This our turn?” Djalik asked, slowing for a paved road.
“Stop.” Harry had his door open before the vehicle came to a halt. He got out on the road and reached into his rucksack for a pair of binoculars. Alan slid over to his side and started comparing the ground around them to the elevations on the map.
Alan could see that Harry was making Fidel restless by standing in the road.
“If we’re going to stop for more than ten seconds, we should check out the scrub,” Fidel said, his hand on the door release.
Djalik just nodded.
“Hey, man, it’s your ass, too.”
Djalik nodded again.
Harry was looking up the paved road toward the high ridge. “I think I can see buildings all the way up the valley—concrete, like big apartment houses.”
Alan nodded, looking at the map. “Should be four klicks south of here. The hills look right. Can you see the switchbacks in the road?”
Harry grunted. “Want a look?”
“I have two eyes,” Alan said gruffly.
Harry gave him a smile as he handed over the binoculars, and said, “Don’t linger, bud. We have got to move.”
Alan took them, heavy, expensive Steiners, and tried to follow the road up the gradual ascent. He could see where the road vanished between two hills, and he could see some sharp angles way off in the haze of the day that might be buildings.
He hung the binocs around his neck and climbed up on the car, moving carefully to avoid putting the weight of his body on his left hand where he was missing fingers. Quite a collection of cripples, he thought. Once he was up, he panned around, moving his feet so as not to lose his balance while he looked at the horizon. To the east, the fighting was obvious with magnification; the line of shell bursts had moved past the road on which they had come up. To the north, he could see a town.
He saw a glint of metal. No. Glass. The information percolated through his brain, and then he realized that he was seeing the reflection of another pair of binoculars. Or a scope, he thought. He tried to look uninterested and continued sweeping. Without taking the binoculars off his eyes, he said, “There’s a guy with optics watching us from that place where the road goes between two hills.”
“Come down,” Harry said. He gave Alan a hand. Harry was fidgeting, anxious, and Alan noted that Harry looked at his watch every few seconds.
Djalik was watching the ridge. “Give me a look?” he asked, and Alan handed him the Steiners. He could hear Fidel moving cautiously through the brush to the north of the car.
Djalik crossed the road, the binocs hung around his neck, and climbed a tree as if he was climbing a ladder one-handed, and in a minute he was straddling a limb and peering up the ridge.
“Another checkpoint?” Alan asked.
“Probably. I’m looking forward to telling the dynamic duo that we’re going up anyway,” Harry said. “We have got to get going, Al. Now!”
Alan turned to see Fidel trotting back from the road they’d come on, his shotgun at the low ready. Alan said, “Ever hear a woman say that her husband was a great companion as long as there weren’t other men around?”
“My first wife used to say it about me.” Harry gave a grim smile.
“Yeah. I think it’s truer of SEALs. Alone, they can be quite nice.”
Fidel came back. “Been traffic through here today. Tracks, people on foot in the brush, cigarette butts, some shit. Not in a few hours.”
Djalik came back, too. “I think there’s a vehicle up there, and men. Maybe two groups, one at the checkpoint and one farther up the ridge. Been some fighting, too; I can see bodies way up the road and some new earth just turned, like a bunch of shells hit.”
Fidel nodded at Djalik with an I-told-you-so air. “We go up there, we’re driving right back into the war. Somewhere up there, someone is going to have a whack at us. Capisce?” He took a breath. “I know that we’re chasing nukes, and I know you two cowboys are going. So I want to tell you what we’re going to do. When the first shot is fired, Commander Craik and me are going to bail out the left-hand side of the car. Mister O’Neill and Djalik will bail from the right. We’ll move and fire in support of each other, remaining in communication. I think you guys should get water and ammo and put them in your bags now, because if we get shot at, it’s just a matter of time before they blow the vehicle. Right?” He looked around, his eyes accusing. “One shot from that fifty cal at the last block would have brewed this tin can up. One grenade. One RPG. And then we’re all dead, because we have no backup vehicle, no helo, no medevac. Nada. Okay?”
Alan put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, primed for Harry to explode, but Harry didn’t. He looked back at Alan, then at Djalik, who nodded. “Okay, Chief,” Harry said. “No point in ignoring the experts.”
Alan said quietly, “This had better be worth it.”
“Amen, brother,” Harry said.
Djalik put the Land Rover in gear and turned on the pavement. “Here we go,” he said.
Trincomalee
Evan Soleck walked around his plane with extra attention, running his hands over the control surfaces, getting his nose down next to the landing gear struts where hydraulic fluid could leak, personally checking the chaff/flare load out under the belly of the plane, even though the check cost him some skin off his hands. They had so few maintenance personnel that he wanted to check everything. And he was flying in harm’s way, with a crew of strangers flown out from Bahrain, aircrew who had been on the staff of Fifth Fleet in jobs from intel to targets to ASW.
He climbed up into the plane and started the auxiliaries, got the air-conditioning going, and began leafing through his kneeboard cards, already a day out of date. He was just sorting the useful ones from those already knocked to hell by the fire on the Jeff when a flight helmet emerged from the back end.
“Hi!” The woman wearing the helmet looked clean and eager. “I’m Nelly Garcia.”
The natural consequence of putting Guppy on the flight sched as a lead pilot: a new copilot. Soleck noted that she was wearing the new, slick gray helmet usually issued to fighter jocks, and that she had a Palm Pilot thrus
t into her flight suit where most guys carried a kneeboard. She looked vaguely Hispanic and was attractive, even in an ejection harness.
“Evan Soleck.” He reached out, shook hands. “Glad to have you aboard. Know what we’re doing tonight, Nelly?”
“Giving gas to the CAP. That’s what the flight sched at the hotel says, anyway.”
Soleck had his copy of the schedule out, noted that Garcia was his copilot, not the TACCO. “Yes and no. We’re going to carry a full load of gas, but we’re going to go up high once we’ve given it and try to get a radar duct that will get us a look at the Indians up north of the BG.”
She gave him a big grin that showed a lot of even, white teeth. “Cool,” she said. “This going to get me some green ink?” Green ink in your flight log meant combat time.
Soleck gave her a thumbs-up.
She pulled at her seatback, checked the spreader pin, and then sat, her Palm Pilot already in her hand. “I’ve got freqs for the BG on this. And I did a little diagram to show the missile engagement zone and the fighter engagement zone around the Jefferson. I can input it straight to the computer once we have the back end up and the ship in the link.
“You supposed to put classified on that thing?” Soleck asked, feeling pompous and ungenerous. He was impressed as hell. Computer nerd was his middle name and it had never occurred to him to make downloadable sub-routines to support the ancient software in the plane.
She gave him a grin, wrinkled her nose. “You gonna tell on me?”
Fifteen minutes later, they were airborne for six hours of flying and giving gas over the BG, and then another hour of what Soleck hoped would be an uneventful look for what was left of the Indian battle group.