The Aden Effect

by Claude G. Berube

  “No. He works for your president.”

  “Do you know his name?”

  “No, but Asha told me it was a color.”

  “I know your voice,” Green said to the man standing out of sight.

  “You should, Eliot.” Stark stepped forward.

  “You look older, Stark.”

  “And you look guilty, Green. Illegal use of military assets to assassinate a Somali warlord, conspiracy in the murder of Dunner’s son, conspiring to kill a U.S. ambassador and military personnel, treason. Shall I continue?”

  “You have lies from a man clearly undergoing torture. You’ve got nothing.”

  “Actually, I have quite a lot. Thanks to my friend here, I’ve learned that a Chinese firm made deposits into an Antiguan account that belongs to you. The payments coincide nicely with some interesting dates—the day Tomahawks landed on a certain warlord in Somalia, the day the attacks were made on Ambassador Sumner and the defense attaché, and others. The Chinese firm’s payments also coincide with payments made to the al-Ghaydah family and suspected terrorists in Yemen. Nice group you’ve tied yourself to.”

  “What do you want?” Green snarled. “You know you can’t touch me.”

  “C’mon, Eliot, you know the D.C. playlist: ‘What did the president know and when did he know it?’”

  Green scoffed at the questions. “What did the president know? Shit, he knows what I tell him. And that’s only as much as I let him know or he wants to know.”

  “Which was it for Yemen?”

  “He wanted to know.”

  Stark snorted. “Nice. So you destabilize Yemen, help the pirates, create an incident, get the United States out of there, and make the Chinese seem like the nice peaceful people they are. And you get a whole lot of money from the Chinese. Did the president know about killing C. J. Sumner?”

  “Yeah, he agreed to it. But he didn’t like it. She was his favorite mistress, after all.”

  “His what?”

  Green burst out laughing. “You didn’t know? After all this time? I thought you had half a brain, Stark. Hell, how do you think she saved you from a dishonorable discharge after your little escapade in Canada?”

  “C. J.?”

  “You’ve spent all this time with her in Yemen and she didn’t tell you?” Green was getting his confidence back now. “She couldn’t stop the court-martial, so she used the relationship she had developed with Becker when he was in the Senate. There’s more. I’m the man who knows D.C.’s best-kept secrets, Stark. Walk away with your friend and your guns now, and I may even share a few more with you.”

  “Go to hell, you bastard.”

  Green reached for a cigarette but stopped when he heard an unmistakable metallic click.

  “Put your hand back where I can see it,” commanded the first voice.

  “What’s next?” Green sneered. “Are you going to have someone arrest me?”

  “No,” Stark replied.

  The first man stepped forward from the shadows. Green didn’t recognize him. “Who the hell are you?”

  The man reached into a pocket and pulled out another pistol, this one specially made for the Soviet Spetsnaz.

  “You can’t shoot me,” Green said incredulously.

  The man spoke with a hint of a British accent. “That’s true. I can’t. Unless it’s in self-defense,” Golzari said. “But no one can trace this gun anyway.”

  “Do you know the story of General Rommel?” Stark asked. “How he died? He was given a choice: a predetermined public trial and the Nazis’ destruction of his family or a dose of cyanide. Same choice, Green. One bullet. It’s easy.”

  “I don’t have a family. You lose.”

  “Ah, but what do you have? Power? You’ll be discredited; the president will drop you rather than further taint his administration. Hell, with this recording we just made of you implicating the president, that’ll be a moot point because he’ll be impeached before the next election. You’ll go to jail. Money? That’ll be gone with your legal fees if the government doesn’t take it first. Reputation? After a long and nasty trial you’ll never have a job again. Not to mention the Chinese, who probably won’t be happy when all this comes out. What would they do to keep you quiet? You have nothing, Green. You lose.”

  Green thought it over, his mind churning to come up with some way to save himself. He always had before. But not this time. He had no chance to escape. All his precious contacts would fade away if a crack opened in his glass house of power. He’d have no one, no money, no power. Shit. Stark had won.

  Green opened the desk drawer and slowly pulled the pistol out as Golzari took a stance that demonstrated he would drop him at the first sign of a wrong move. Green brought the barrel up to his face and stuck it in his mouth. “Huck hue,” he snarled, glaring at Stark instead of his accomplice holding the gun.

  “Really, Green? Those are your last words? They’ll go down with ‘I have but one life to live for my country.’ I’ll remember your words and cherish them.”

  “Huck hue!” Green grunted louder, then pulled the trigger. His lifeless body dropped backward into the high-backed leather executive office chair, which rolled a few inches across the study floor.

  Golzari, wearing latex gloves, handed Green’s laptop to Stark and was checking Green’s desk for more evidence when the two men saw the lights of a car outside.

  “The police couldn’t have been called this quickly,” Stark whispered. He made his way to the study’s closet and slipped inside, leaving the door ajar. The digital recorder was still on; he held his gun at the ready. He motioned Golzari to go out the door leading to the deck.

  The front door clicked open. No one had rung the doorbell. Stark heard footsteps coming down the hallway—at least two people. As they appeared in the doorway, the dim hall light revealed that both were Chinese. The one Stark assumed to be the leader motioned to the other, who went around Green’s desk and used a flashlight to examine the bloody mess in the office chair. They spoke again in muted Chinese and began looking around the room. They were searching for something—the laptop maybe?

  Stark slowed his breathing and raised his gun, preparing to emerge from the closet. He waited until the one behind the desk was bent over sifting through the drawers and then opened the door wider, keeping his gun trained on the leader.

  He had taken two steps out of the closet when the man behind the desk noticed him and reached for his weapon. As stealthily as a panther, Golzari slipped up behind him and put the Russian pistol to the henchman’s head.

  The other Chinese man, the one closest to Stark, said something, and the man obediently pulled his hand back from his holstered weapon.

  Stark stepped slowly to the right, keeping both men in view as he maneuvered to a position where his back was to the rear wall of the house and he could see all the way through the study’s entrance to the front door.

  “Who are you?” he asked the leader.

  In the semidarkness he thought he saw a smile on the man’s face.

  “No one of concern to you.”

  “You are of concern to me if you had an appointment with Green.”

  “It would be best if you allowed us to go on our way.”

  “Why?”

  “Green is dead. My business with him is finished.”

  “What was your business with Green?” Stark kept his eyes moving between the two men and the front door, ready for sudden movement from either direction.

  “You are interfering,” the leader said, and again said something in Chinese. This time the man behind the desk didn’t react.

  A shadow crossed the deck, and Stark retrained his pistol toward the double doors leading outside. The second man made a move for his gun, and Golzari shot him in the arm. The double doors swung open and another Chinese man burst into the room. Stark shot him, missing the center of the torso where he had aimed. The man lived but dropped his weapon.

  The leader simply stood there, immobile and uncooperative.<
br />
  Golzari heard police sirens in the distance. Most likely a neighbor had heard the shot when Green killed himself and reported it.

  “Our business is done. Get out now,” Stark told the leader, who motioned to his men and left the house. When they were out the door, Stark retrieved the computer from the closet where he had stashed it and followed Golzari out the back door.

  On the way to his car a few streets away, Stark turned off the digital recorder and slipped it into a pocket, intending to have a friend at one of the intelligence agencies identify the voice and translate the man’s words.

  “Hu?” Golzari asked.

  “That’s my guess.”

  “Why’d you let him go?”

  “We got what we wanted—for now,” Stark responded.

  Golzari shook his head in disgust. “Well, that went bloody well. Do you even believe in the law?”

  “I believe in justice.”

  Camp David, 1423 (GMT)

  C. J. sat directly across from President Hamilton Becker in the informal office at the presidential retreat in Maryland.

  “It’s so good to have you back, C. J. I wish I could come around this desk and take you in my arms.”

  “You asked to see me, Mr. President?” she said coldly.

  “C. J., this Hadiboh Accord you got us into. We didn’t exactly get what we wanted, did we? The United States had no intention of entering a partnership with India.”

  “If it hadn’t been for Commander Stark, we wouldn’t have anything at all, sir.”

  “Stark. Yeah, I have a report here that Eliot and the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee put together yesterday that cites a number of issues involving him: assuming command of a U.S. Navy ship without authorization, attacking local merchant ships, attacking innocent Somali fishing dhows and killing innocent people, attacking a Chinese-flagged ship, participating in unauthorized joint operations . . . the list goes on and on.”

  “Tear it up.”

  “What?”

  “Tear it up. Now.”

  The president reared back in surprise. “You can’t tell the president of the United States what to do, Miss Sumner.”

  “I damn well can, Hamilton. And there’s more. Here’s what’s going to happen. First, you’re going to get Helen Forth’s resignation.”

  “I won’t do that without checking with Eliot.”

  “Second, you’re going to announce tomorrow that you have decided not to accept your party’s nomination for reelection at the convention in two weeks.”

  “What the . . .”

  “Oh, and you’re going to push the party damn hard to nominate John Dunner at the convention.”

  “But . . .”

  “But nothing. I’m doing this to make sure you don’t ever get the chance to do again what you did in Yemen. I know all about Green’s role in the attack on the Bennington, and I know that you knew about it. I have recordings to prove it.”

  The president was paralyzed, shocked into immobility.

  “You’ll read this statement,” C. J. said, tossing a typewritten page on the desk before him. “It’s simple and direct—like the one Eliot forced John Dunner to sign. Yes, I know about that too.

  “Third, I will be your point person on Capitol Hill in getting the Senate to ratify the Hadiboh Accord. It’s a good agreement, and it’s going to happen.

  “Oh, and fourth, you will recall this person to active duty,” she handed him a slip, “in command of a destroyer—now.”

  “I can’t do that, C. J., I’m . . .”

  “You’re the commander-in-chief, at least for now. Act like it. Finally, you and I are finished. I wish to God we’d never started. You’re not the man I believed you to be. Maybe you never were.”

  “C. J. . . .”

  “You and Eliot Green planned to kill me, humanitarian aid workers, and the crew of the Bennington. I have stated four demands. Comply with them or be impeached, tried, and convicted. Understood?”

  “Let me get Eliot in here. We can work all these things out, C. J. I promise. He’ll be here soon. He’ll handle all of this to your satisfaction.”

  “Eliot Green isn’t coming in today. It’s time you learned to make your own decisions, Mr. President.” C. J. walked out to meet the newest member of her new protective detail, Agent Damien Golzari.

  EPILOGUE

  THREE WEEKS LATER

  USS LeFon, Norfolk, Virginia, 0420 (GMT)

  The captain of the newest warship DDG-125, the USS LeFon, was admiring her dayroom when a knock sounded on the door. “Come.” One of her new junior officers entered carrying a shoebox-size carton. “Yes . . .?” She eyed the red nametag on the summer white uniform. “Ensign Fisk, is it?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I just reported aboard.”

  “Please, come in. Where was your last billet?”

  “USS Bennington, ma’am.”

  “The . . .” She raised her eyebrows, then smiled warmly. “Welcome aboard, Ensign Fisk. It’s a pleasure to have you on my ship.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I was ordered to give you this on reporting.” He raised the box, which had a card taped to the top. The blond commander nodded toward her right arm, which was in a sling. “Set it on the chart table, please.” The box made an interesting gurgling sound as the ensign complied. She lifted off the card and opened it.

  This bottle may not be as good as your coffee, but keep it in your desk for when you really need it. You always deserved this command, Jaime. And keep an eye on young Ensign Bobby Fisk. He’ll stand by a good skipper through the thick of it. I can only imagine what he’ll do for a great skipper like you.

  —Connor

  Ullapool, Scotland, 1620 (GMT)

  It was drizzling again as he walked toward the pub. It always seemed to be drizzling in Ullapool. He was still clean-shaven and close-cropped from his active-duty assignment, and men he knew well passed him without recognizing him. Connor chuckled and decided that perhaps he didn’t need the beard and ponytail after all.

  For the twentieth time since leaving Yemen a few weeks before, he pulled the folded fax from his pocket and focused on the only two words on it that mattered: “Honorably discharged.” Rain droplets splattered across the page as he folded it back up and slipped it into his coat pocket.

  He entered the pub. Nothing had changed. His friends were predictably at the dartboard, at the table in the corner, and on the bar stools. Glasgow’s team was fighting it out with another rugby team on the television. As he walked in, the lively chatter fell to a dull murmur and then complete silence as the crowd turned to him—much as they had weeks before when two naval officers had come to take him away.

  He slowly approached the bar and set his large olive-green seabag on the ancient wooden floor.

  “The same, Mack,” he said to the confused bartender.

  At that moment, red-haired Maggie made her way out of the kitchen with an armload of plates. She alone recognized him.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This work would not have been possible without the support of family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, and others. To anyone whose brain I picked to see if a character, a line, or a plot made sense, thank you for sharing your thoughts and expertise. I also drew inspiration from the U.S. Naval Academy Brigade of Midshipmen. As of this writing, I have been in the classroom with 910 students. In his musical The King and I, Oscar Hammerstein wrote: “If you become a teacher, by your pupils you’ll be taught.” No truer statement has ever been written. Thanks to all of you, especially the Class of 2009, who were plebes on my first day teaching.

  My wife, Kate, read the book as it was initially being written and offered a multitude of suggestions. I am indebted to her for her patience and perspectives.

  The boys from the “Ink and Drink” read and critiqued the first draft. Temple Cone, Tim Feist, Marcus Jones, as well as Ed Naro and John Williams ripped it apart and then drank my beer.

  If the “Lost Boys” come across as the unsung heroes
of the book, it’s because of my great respect for helicopter pilots, particularly those with whom I served: Neal Barham, Eric Bondurant, Dustin Budd, Jason Burns, Margaret Ewers, John Mikols, and Matt Somerville. Then there are the surface warfare officers and sailors, especially Wade Barnes, Brion Bennett, Matt Bucher, Dick Curtis, Rich Durham, Patrick Gatchell, Kim Himmer, Casey Mahon, Greg McIntosh, Todd McKinney, Todd Stengel, and Kevin Sullivan--and too many others to name here. No characters in the book bear any resemblance to them, but they all represent the finest Navy in the world and the commitment with which they perform their jobs every day at sea.

  For the character of the nameless captain of the USS Bennington, I simply removed every positive character trait I observed in Capt. Daryl Hancock, USN, one of the finest officers and individuals I’ve known and under whom I served twice overseas. The Bennington’s captain is the antithesis of Daryl Hancock.

  The publishing side would not have been possible without the extraordinary team at Naval Institute Press, from its director, Rick Russell, who took a chance, to expert editors Adam Kane, Marlena Montagna, and Mindy Conner, and the marketing team of Clair Noble, Judy Heise, and George Keating. My appreciation also goes out to my publicist, Jen Richards, and Barbara Esstman, who provided editorial advice with an early draft. In the interest of advancing the storyline, I ask the reader to suspend some disbelief. For example, it would be implausible for someone not selected for command or even in the Navy (as in the case of the character Jaime Johnson) to be given command of a warship.

  Secretaries of the Navy name warships. Since I’m not a secretary of the Navy, the only way I can name ships is through this and potential future novels. The Navy cruiser Bennington is so named because Connor Stark is the fictional descendent of Revolutionary War Maj. Gen. John Stark. I spent the better part of my senior year in college writing a paper on John Stark; naming a ship after one of his battles seemed appropriate and, with some exceptions, is in line with the general naming convention of the Ticonderoga-class cruisers. The destroyer at the end of the novel is named the USS LeFon as a small tribute to the late Captain Carroll “Lex” LeFon, USN. Some knew him as a leader and mentor in the Navy. Many more of us became devotees of his wit, wisdom, and inspirational literary prowess as the milblogger Neptunus Lex.