Force Protection

by Gordon Kent

  “What do we know?” Dukas said. “No jokes, please. Sandy?” She was part of his team now, not Alan’s.

  She looked better, her face less puffy and less angry, and she had been able to change out of the grubby long dress into a tank top and somebody else’s blue jeans. She had big hips, it was now clear. She drew both her upper and lower lips in, and then she said, “Well, mixing what we know and what we think: assuming the information is trustworthy”—a glance at Alan—“the dhow that hit the Harker seems to have come from Sri Lanka to Somalia, taken on some of the crew in Kismayu, and then sailed south and taken on the explosives someplace on the coast. We also know at least one of the cell-phone calls ended up on the coast someplace up there, plus I have a source that’s been telling me for two or three months about a lot of poaching up there, which I think may be relevant. We got anything on the explosive yet?”

  Geraldine shook her head. “Sheila’s working on it.”

  “Meanwhile,” Alan said, “there’ve been attempts on me and my wife, and telephones have been ringing all over the world, apparently as a result.”

  “How’s that going today?” Patemkin said.

  “NSA says the hits are down more than ninety percent. Either we tapped into an atypical day yesterday, or something happened to set off all that activity.”

  Dukas looked around the circle. “Anybody got any ideas about that?”

  “Not about the activity,” Triffler said in his flutelike voice, “but I’d like to go back to the attempts on Al and his wife. I think it’s really odd—odd, I mean, in terms of terrorism—to personalize it like this. First the big hit, the Harker, then two attacks on individuals, then Cairo. Then Cram. That isn’t normal.”

  Keatley groaned and muttered, “Jesus, normal.”

  “What’re you getting at?”

  Triffler folded his arms. He was wearing a striped, button-down blue-and-white short-sleeved shirt, chinos, and no tie. He still looked as if he was about to model for a Lands’ End catalog. “Well, two things, aren’t there? One is identifying Al and Rose and Cram, and so maybe our families. The other is, it’s anomalous.”

  “Well, if they ID’d me, they could ID Rose,” Alan said. He looked grim.

  “Yeah, but how?”

  “The television report,” Dukas growled. “Al was identifiable.”

  “The French guy doing the report said he was CIA.”

  Keatley shifted as if his chair was uncomfortable, as of course it was. “They could have found out. Ask around.”

  “Ask around where? Al had just got to town.”

  “The hotel,” Alan said. “Everybody knows where American military stay—out in one of the big beach hotels. ‘You got a guy with only three fingers, U.S. Navy?’ ”

  “Or he showed a photo. He could make a photo from the TV stuff, right?”

  “Not a bad idea,” Dukas said. “It cuts both ways. Al, you got somebody who could print stills from a—what the fuck is it called—screaming TV?”

  “Streaming, not screaming,” Triffler said. He looked pained. “Streaming video. Actually, that’s a good idea.”

  “Thank you.” It was Dukas’s turn to look pained. “Al?”

  Alan made a note. “Where’s the video?”

  Geraldine waved a hand, completed the gesture by scratching an ankle. “My laptop. You got fleas here?”

  “We got everything here.”

  Alan left the room. When he came back, they were talking about the Cairo bombing and Cram’s death, and what Triffler and Keatley would do in Cairo.

  “I’d like to go,” Patemkin, the CIA guy, said. “With you guys.” He must have sensed resistance, because he said, “I think I can help you with DEA and the embassy. I’m not trying to horn in on your case, honest.”

  “You just want to sleep in a hotel bed,” Triffler said.

  “Alan?” Dukas said, because he wasn’t yet clear who belonged to whom. Patemkin seemed to have signed on with Alan.

  “Suits me, if you think you can be useful and we don’t need you here. Sandy?”

  She shrugged. “Mink can represent the Agency here, if that’s the question.”

  It wasn’t the question, but it was agreed that Patemkin could go. Then Alan told them that he’d be flying up the coast to see if there was anything in the area where the dhow supposedly took on the explosive. “We’ll do a MARI run on anything we see, plus I’ve got a digital camera from one of my guys.”

  “I’m still puzzled about the attacks on you and Rose,” Triffler said. “I think they’re anomalous.”

  “Could say the same thing about Cram,” Keatley said. “Why Cram?”

  “Because he could ID us,” Dukas said. “And our families.”

  “But why?” Triffler demanded. “This isn’t like terrorists, Mike! This is a vendetta.”

  “Against the Navy,” Alan said.

  “DEA isn’t the Navy,” Patemkin offered.

  “But the rest of it is.”

  “But why?” Triffler persisted.

  “Scare us off.”

  “But scare us off from what?”

  “The investigation?”

  They looked at each other. Alan said, “I think that’s at least part of it. Certainly the attempt on my wife looks like trying to scare me. And killing Cram looks like trying to scare you guys.”

  “But that’s not like terrorists. So”—Triffler leaned forward—“who?”

  “You ask great questions, Dick.”

  Patemkin scowled at his shoes. “I don’t get what Sandy said about poachers. What’ve poachers got to do with terrorism?”

  She was immediately defensive. “I just meant it’s something that’s going on up on that stretch of coast!”

  Alan raised a hand. “We don’t know what it means; we don’t know what any of it means. But Sandy’s source is solid, and I think it’s worth looking up there. Maybe somebody’s financing terrorism with poaching, who knows? Anybody object?”

  Everybody looked at everybody, and Dukas moved into the silence to say “The cell-phone calls up there went out of Malindi. I think it’s important enough that we check. Somebody take Malindi and hit Al’s hotel along the way to find out if anybody asked to ID him there. Geraldine, want to go to Malindi?”

  She gave him an ambiguous half-smile, head tilted. “What you got in mind?”

  “Well, you go to a strange city, you can’t trust the local cops, you got no friends, what else can you do? You spend the day with the whores.”

  Geraldine’s eyebrows went up; she cocked her head the other way, like a bird eyeing a worm. “I think we say ‘workers in the sex industry’ now.”

  “Not in my hearing, we don’t. Would you please-I-beg-you-be-good-enough, O goddess of PC, to interview some whores for me tomorrow?”

  Sandy swayed forward. “I speak the language.” She looked at Geraldine. “Shall we both go?”

  “Sounds good to me.” Geraldine looked at Dukas, no smile, and shook her head. She was saying that he was a stupid, troglodyte horse’s ass. Dukas already knew that.

  At that point, a young black rating brought in copies of the TV shot of the French journalist, and Alan passed them around as the discussion started to disintegrate. As he handed one to Sandy, Alan said in a low voice, “I’d like to have David Opono if I’m going to take a look at this poachers’ camp.”

  She looked suspicious, then half-turned her head away. Her reply was almost inaudible. “He’ll want to come.”

  “Please ask him to be here at first light, or even earlier.”

  She still didn’t look him in the eye. She nodded, her mind on something else.

  Bahrain.

  Harry O’Neill was being driven through the streets toward the old souk, what there was of it now, his Mercedes and its Arab driver hardly noticed among all the other luxury cars. Behind it, a smaller BMW tailed him, two stern men in the back looking out like hawks perched on a telephone pole. Up ahead was another car with two men doing the same. When they came
to an opening in a street of shops, the Mercedes slowed without Harry’s saying anything; it purred to a stop, and Dave Djalik materialized from a shadow and nodded, and when Harry got out Djalik was waiting in the sun. “No sweat,” he said.

  Harry nodded. He was wearing the nutmeg-colored linen jacket and a black silk T-shirt, chinos, and Bally shoes, on his head an embroidered Muslim cap. He carried a small black suitcase. He went through the opening between the shops and down a covered passage and across another street, Djalik following with the same raptor’s look as the men in the cars. Harry went into a shop that dealt in antique rugs and brasses, where the proprietor stroked his beard and nodded, and O’Neill went through a curtained doorway and out the back and into a garden.

  A man in a Palestinian headscarf was sitting at a table in the shade of a fig tree. A small fountain played at the base of a wall. On the side opposite the door through which O’Neill had come, another man in a headscarf leaned against a patch of shade. Behind O’Neill, Djalik did the same.

  O’Neill and the seated man murmured courtesies. A small tray already stood between them, on it sweetened tea and four honey cakes the size of walnuts. Each man took one. Each chewed. Each swallowed.

  “I’m looking for a person in Lebanon,” Harry said in Arabic. “I think he is dirtying the name of Islam.”

  The Palestinian said that if true, this would be a terrible thing. He called O’Neill “haji” because it was well known that he had been to Mecca.

  “I think he used Islam to attack the American Navy.”

  “I wouldn’t weep for the American Navy.”

  “I would weep for Islam if its faithful were exploited in the name of another cause.”

  The Palestinian gave him a sharp look. “You know this?”

  “I think this. If you find the person, you can decide for yourself.”

  “You are American, haji.”

  “I am also a Muslim. My support for the families of martyrs is well known.” The Palestinian made a movement that could have been the beginning of a bow.

  Harry boosted the small suitcase to the table, careful not to disturb the tray or the tea. “The person in question uses a certain cell-phone tower. We have traced it that far—a town in the Bekáa called Tel-al-Makouf.”

  The Palestinian’s eyes flashed. “A Christian village.”

  “Just so.” Harry patted the suitcase. “This will allow you to listen to calls to and from that tower on the frequencies I will give you. I think it wouldn’t take you long to find the man. He has conversations every day with Italy and with the town of Malindi, in Kenya.” The Palestinian’s face showed concern, then puzzlement. Harry went on. “I think you would need an Italian speaker to translate.”

  The Palestinian hesitated. He explained that he would not, himself, do such a thing, but he knew people—he meant Hizbollah—who might. What would they get in return?

  O’Neill mentioned a figure. He mentioned American gratitude.

  The Palestinian sniggered. When he was done showing what he thought of the concept of American gratitude, he said, “It is not a question of the price. It is a question of the cause.”

  “I think this person has betrayed the faithful by exploiting them. Next time, maybe he will betray them by selling them—to Israel? I think your friends would be happy to discover him and deal with him.”

  The Palestinian put his hand on the suitcase and called to the man behind him. He spoke to him quickly in a dialect Harry could hardly follow—something about opening the case. The man disappeared through the far door with it and was gone long enough for Harry to realize that he had taken it to some bricked-in nook to open it, in case it was a bomb. When he came back, he put it on the table again, open. The Palestinian gave Harry a thin smile. “Forgive me, haji.”

  Harry held up his hands. “A careful man has no enemies.” He sipped his tea. They talked about the equipment in the suitcase, how it worked, who would be needed to operate it. The Palestinian closed it and signaled to the other, who came and carried it back to his patch of shade. “What do you want to know if the person is found?”

  “What his part in the ship bombing at Mombasa was. Whose money he is using. What else is going to happen.”

  The Palestinian tried his own tea. “And afterward?”

  “I have no interest in what Allah wills for such a person.”

  Four minutes later, Harry and Djalik were on the street again. “They had six guys around that building,” Djalik said. “Nice playmates you pick up.”

  O’Neill laughed. “Dave, we had ten people around the building.”

  “Yeah, but we’re the good guys.”

  Two hours later, when the 747 had disappeared into the soft night, Alan said, “Look on the bright side.”

  “There’s a bright side?”

  “No bomb today.”

  “Today isn’t over.”

  “You’re such an optimist, Mike.”

  Mombasa.

  Geraldine and Sandy Cole shared Geraldine’s spoils of civilization—her cosmetics, her shampoo, her bars of soap. They didn’t particularly like each other yet, but they’d known each other only a few hours and they were the only women there. Geraldine sat cross-legged on her bedroll and Sandy paced in her bare, dirty feet, wanting a smoke but not wanting to leave. They shared a Coke.

  “What was this guy Cram like?” Sandy said.

  “Like you wouldn’t want him to wind up a dead hero. A loser. An asshole.” Geraldine sipped her Coke, sniffed experimentally, trying to see if she really was sick. “Meet you one minute, try to hit on you the next.”

  “Anybody nice in the bunch you came with?”

  Geraldine shrugged. “They’re okay.”

  “You got somebody in D.C.?”

  “A guy?” Geraldine gave her a one-sided smile that tilted her eyes. “Well—” She shrugged again. “Actually, I get along pretty well without one.”

  Sandy slumped into one of her boneless poses. “Lucky you.”

  A few minutes later, Geraldine decided she wasn’t really sick and said she was going to engage in some forgery in preparation for their trip to Malindi. Sandy—the embassy’s Legal Attaché, after all—should have looked shocked but instead looked interested. Then again, she was the one who carried the phony police badge.

  Utica, New York.

  Rose, the kids, and the two NCIS guardians had flown up from BWI in late morning. Rose, restless, had wanted to get out of the house almost as soon as she was in it. Now she was driving a rental car through what had been the Italian neighborhoods of her childhood.

  “Jesus,” she murmured at one point as she drove through what had once been familiar streets.

  “Changed?” Warrant Officer Reko said beside her. Gorki was with the kids at Rose’s parents’ house, a Utica patrol car also parked outside. Proud city defends local girl against baddies.

  “I haven’t really looked at it in years. I—” She started to say that she’d hardly been there and then stopped herself, embarrassed to admit how little she’d been back since she’d got away. When she had come back, it had been overnight, and she’d had no curiosity about a place where she’d been mostly miserable, and it had been to visit her father and tolerate her mother—and, she admitted, to leave her kids with them. “This was the Italian part of town. Up ahead a few blocks were the Greeks. The Poles were the other side of Genesee—that’s the main drag.” She was driving slowly through a neighborhood where urban decay had spiraled down into collapse. Plywood covered the windows of empty houses; vacant lots stared where once houses had stood. “When I was a kid, these were all two- and three-deckers. There were people everywhere. Now—!”

  The streets were almost empty. The few people who could be seen were black.

  Rose turned and turned again and headed back down toward her father’s house. A stone wall loomed on her right. Wrought-iron gates filled the gaps in the wall; behind them, a big brick building was closed and empty. Grass grew in the cracks of the concrete
courtyard.

  “My God.” Rose stopped the car. “I went to school there!” She tried to grin, felt the corners of her mouth tremble. “Until they threw me out.”

  Saint Catherine’s of Siena. Rose had been bounced near the end of tenth grade for fighting, disruption, smoking, and—unsaid to her parents but fully understood by Sister Anthony—precocious sex. Rose the bad girl. “This was a big school!” she said. It grieved her that it was closed, even if the place had rejected her and she had hated it.

  “No students, I guess,” Reko said. She meant the empty streets.

  No students, no money. The Italians had moved out of their two- and three-deckers and fled to the suburbs. All but her father and a few diehards like him.

  Memory was like a lash. She had changed to a public high school, where she had been a bad girl for the rest of the tenth grade and then, her voice already made permanently husky from screaming her way through life, looked around that summer and seen that she was either going to shape up or she was going to join the young women pushing baby carriages along the tree-lined sidewalks. She had thought she was pregnant, had fought through that alone and in ignorance, going on hearsay and such information as she could glean from the public library. When she had begun to menstruate again and knew she wasn’t pregnant, she saw through her relief to a hard truth: if not this time, then the next. She didn’t, as she might have, take the reprieve as a sign that risk was okay.

  I was lucky, she said to herself, but it wasn’t luck that made her see that she had to shape up. It was a kind of intelligence, and a terrible egoism, and a fear.

  Of ending up like her mother.

  That had done it. Her mother was to her like a prisoner—a woman locked into a life too narrow and a mind too empty. Rose had wanted out.

  The Navy had shown the way.

  She drove down to Bleecker and took Reko along the remaining two blocks of what had once been a vibrant Italian commercial street. Now there were an Oriental grocery and a Thai restaurant mixed in with remnant cafés and restaurants and tailor shops and empty stores.

  Rose didn’t talk. She was thinking about Houston and what she was going to do next. Her mind had made some connection she couldn’t articulate between her past and her immediate future, something about the woman she might have been and the one she was. She knew she had paid a price for not having become one of the women with the baby carriages who, in her generation, had moved out to New Hartford and Deerfield. She knew that part of that price was her behavior after the attempt on her life—the use of the gun, the abrasiveness toward Hansen, the single-minded focus on the cell phones.