Force Protection

by Gordon Kent

  “I thought that plane was a little mushy, didn’t you, Skipper?” Hunyadi called over her shoulder.

  Skipper. Rose glowed, even under jet lag and a two-hour nap-of-the-earth flight in alien waters.

  “Mostly I thought I was mushy, Tara. The plane felt fine.”

  “I can hear my rack calling already!”

  They came to the cross-corridor: left to the ready room, right to the command spaces.

  “Don’t get your hopes up, Tara. Get me coffee and a slider, stop in CVIC, and give a debrief.”

  “We don’t debrief. Who debriefs helo guys?”

  “Stop in CVIC and give a debrief, then get back to the ready room. Unless that threat has been canceled, we’ll be in the air again as soon as the plane is checked.”

  “Sorry, ma’am, but no one ever asked me to do a debrief.”

  “Just do it.” Rose smiled to take the bite out. “Okay, Tara. In a terrorist-threat situation, when the helos are the only things flying and the ship is trapped in the canal with nowhere to run or hide, everyone wants information. Trust me. They’ll want your debrief.”

  “Okay. Sorry.” Tara smiled. “I can be an airhead.”

  Female insecurity. Not time for her lecture. “Just do it.” She turned left for the ready room. Tara turned right.

  Jack Rickets was waiting inside the door. He was part of her old life, pre-Alan, a guy she had flown with time out of mind, since they were both nuggets, and now her XO. He was the only guy in the whole squadron she knew from before, but if she had been allowed to pick one, it would have been Jack.

  “Heya, Skipper,” he said and whacked her shoulder.

  Skipper. He said it in such an unaffected way, too. She gave him a quick hug. “Good to see ya, Jack.”

  “Sorry I was in my rack when you got here, but I was beat. Look, you okay to fly round the clock? Jet lag can be a killer.”

  “I’m cool. When do you have me up again?”

  “Next event. You cool with Hunyadi?”

  “I like her. You?”

  “Yeah.” A loaded “yeah,” like something he would tell her later. “And I get to fly with Llewellyn. You guys have 903 for surface search. 903 will have a big searchlight and a fifty cal.”

  “Got any traffic for me to read?”

  He handed her a flimsy. “New message says Ismailia,” he said. Jack picked up his helmet, gave her arm a squeeze, and got his bag. “Sorry to hear about the astronaut thing, but it sure is good to have you back in a real Nav, Rosie.”

  “Thanks, Jack. Good to be here.” Then her eye went down the flimsy and ice touched her spine. “Ismailia means it’s us, Jack.” She meant the carrier.

  “You been away too long, Rosie. These terrorist things never amount to anything.”

  Rose wanted to agree, but at the bottom of the flimsy was a name, and the name was Dukas.

  “Jack, this one’s for real.”

  16

  Mombasa.

  ALAN HAD ORDERED THAT THE HANGAR BE KEPT DARK SO their preparations would be less visible to the Kenyan Air Force next door. He leaned against the bulkhead and watched the aircrews move quietly around their tarmac, the pilots using shipboard red flashlights to preflight their planes.

  Once they were in the air, the decisions would come thick and fast, and he tried to anticipate them, to be familiar with the possible failures that would create conditions that would force decisions. Choppers could have mechanical failures. Men could be sick. Would he go without the S-3s? Would he go if the skipper of the Esek Hopkins couldn’t make his rendezvous? Who were the critical personnel? He shook his head at his own nerves. Since his last conversation with Rafe, the whole weight had settled on his shoulders. For a moment, it all looked foolish; eighteen Marines and five Kenyan rangers, one SEAL and an intelligence officer against an unknown objective and a terroist foe.

  And my aircrews, exposed to God knows what. And Esek Hopkins riding the storm.

  He began to pat his pockets, checking his gear for essential items, a ritual for him now. At his feet lay a Marine rucksack, still an alien piece of kit. He flipped through the few items in it, squatted down on his heels. He smiled as his hand found the smooth plastic shape of his fishing kit, a rare survival item that had been issued to him as he prepped for his first combat mission, the night his father had died over Iran.

  He had taken it on every deployment since. Now he pushed it deep in the pack as he felt somebody grab his elbow.

  “Skipper?”

  Alan raised his head to find Soleck standing at something like attention. Even in the near dark, his posture said he was nervous. Alan stood and dusted his hands.

  “Evan?”

  “Sorry, sir. I’m sure you have better things—”

  “Spill it, Evan. What’s eating you?”

  “I want to have a really great wetting-down,” Soleck blurted.

  Alan took a moment to understand what Soleck was saying. Wetting-down was not a concept close to the surface of his thoughts. Then he got it—the wetting-down party to celebrate Soleck’s making lieutenant. Now?

  “We’re about to drop bombs on terrorists and you’re worried about your wetting-down party?”

  “Yeah. See, I want it to be something great, sir. Something guys will talk about, remember, say to each other—‘Hey, Spike! Remember when Soleck did that great party?’ ”

  Alan thought back to his own party and a few others. The party he remembered best had been in Scotland, on Mull. Rafe had been there. He couldn’t even remember if that had been a wetting-down. He started to say that now was not the time for this, and then he thought of being so young—and of being brilliant, bumbling Soleck. “Nothing’s coming to me, Evan. A really good party usually just happens. You can’t make it. It’s like—like an operation.”

  Soleck moved in the dark. “Like an operation?”

  “You need luck. You plan, you prepare, and you train and get stuff together. The better you plan, the more likely you are to get the luck, but you still need it. I’ve heard guys say you earn the luck with sweat. See?”

  “Sure,” Soleck said, his tone lacking conviction.

  “So pretend it’s a mission. Where do you start planning?”

  “In CVIC? On a map?”

  “Bingo. The first thing is where. Move on from there. Like you were in mission planning.”

  Soleck brightened. “Where are we taking our homebound liberty? Can you tell me?”

  “I’ll tell you when this is over. Okay?”

  “Thanks, Skipper. I don’t want to let everyone down.”

  Alan looked at the first ribbon of the dawn in the sky, and spoke softly into the last of the night. “Neither do I.”

  He turned and lifted his rucksack, and Fidelio was there.

  “You ready, Skipper?” Fidelio was on. He had an edge to him, like a drug addict on a high.

  “I’m still not sure why you’re on this trip, Fidel.”

  “You need a bodyguard. And I have more training than all of these gyrenes put together. They’re nice boys, but—”

  “I don’t need a cowboy.” Alan watched him for a moment, the edge and the macho and the desire. “But yeah. I’m glad to have you.”

  “The muhreens are all ready to load. The gunny was just wondering if you wanted to say anything.”

  Alan hadn’t thought about it, but he could see that both NCOs thought it was a good idea. “Sure. Give me a minute.” He carried his kit over to the helicopter and handed it up to the AW. When he turned away from the plane, he found Sandy watching him from the edge of the light by the hangar. She walked toward him, her posture slouched, her approach wary, as if she was scared of him.

  “Can I have a minute, Commander?”

  Over her shoulder, the whole force was waiting under the bright hangar lights, rucksacks up and on their shoulders, rifles slung. Every face was turned toward him, like a group shot for a cruise book.

  “I need to talk to them, Sandy.”

  She walked aw
ay quickly, her hands closed to fists at her sides.

  Alan squared his shoulders unconsciously and walked into the hangar.

  “Gentlemen.” His first skipper had always called everyone, sailors, women, officers, anyone he addressed as “gentlemen.” Now it popped out. “This is a reconnaissance in force. Our mission is to gather enough evidence to prove a link between a terrorist group and organized crime elements here in Kenya and abroad. We will accomplish that mission most directly by taking their camp and searching it at leisure.

  “On no account will we fire first. If the camp turns out to be full of poachers with no ties to the attacks here, then we let the Kenyans under Mister Opono handle them. If these are our terrorists, they’ll react with force. Once any element of the force has been fired at, the gloves are off. Any questions?”

  They’d all been briefed, the leaders three times. None of them showed much in the way of a reaction. Alan smiled suddenly, and many of them smiled back.

  “Let’s go,” he said, without emphasis. It hadn’t been much as a rousing speech, but Gunny Fife gave him a thumbs-up.

  The gunny said something to his troops, and the Marines responded with a loud “Hu-ah!” and began to file off toward the plane.

  Alan had already turned away to find Sandy. She was right against the hangar doors, standing in the narrow space between a stack of MRE crates and the door tracks as if she was trying to hide.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked. He could see as soon as the words left his mouth that this was going to be hard. Far harder than saying a few words to the troops.

  “Please don’t let David go,” Sandy begged. “I don’t want him to go.”

  “I need him.”

  “You don’t need him! Take somebody else!”

  “He’s our authorization, Sandy. He makes it a KWS mission.”

  She was weeping. “Please—please don’t take him—”

  He stood and watched her weep. This was how he bought David Opono from her, by standing there mutely, taking her sobs like blows. He wanted to say, “I’ll bring him back,” but he hadn’t brought Craw back, and he wouldn’t ever say that again.

  When she had run down and the sobs were only small convulsions of her shoulders, he turned and walked toward the helicopter.

  USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, Suez Canal.

  Five minutes later and two thousand miles away, Rose worked the stick on her second bird in as many hours and pushed the throttle forward and then brought it back down. “She looks good to me.”

  Hunyadi gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Everybody set back there?” She had a new door gunner and she didn’t even know his name yet. And a rescue swimmer. She’d made the call; more eyes on the water was better in every way. All of them had night vision. The deck looked like a tangle of bouncing green blobs and she flipped hers up on her helmet.

  “Ops says we’re good to go. Search box three.”

  Rose lifted the bird off the deck smoothly, a constant acceleration without any bumps, and flew over the bow, the huge shape of the carrier lit from below by the lights of the buildings along the canal. The carrier was crawling at less than five knots, by canal regulation.

  Her copilot glanced at her hands on the control, wondering when, if ever, she would be that good at a takeoff.

  Rose felt the plane alive under her hand. Even with the fatigue and the mission and the threat, she felt her heart rise with her bird. She leaned into her turn and in a moment they were over lights and land, a situation disorienting to a naval pilot. She glanced at her kneeboard to confirm that box three was, indeed, off the bow.

  Hunyadi hit the intercom button to keep her comment to the cockpit. “Ma’am? Is this a drill? Or for real?”

  Rose chuckled deep in her throat. “This is for real, Tara.” She remembered the first time she had confronted the reality of what military service meant. She brought the plane level and said, “Welcome to the real Navy, Tara.” She hit the intercom switch. “Night vision off!” she ordered to the whole plane and thumbed the searchlight.

  Somali-Kenyan Coast.

  Up above a thousand feet, where the recon team had made the cold transit from Mombasa, the first light had been visible out to the east. It wasn’t much light, because the typhoon was coming. Dawn was a hint at the edge of a sky devoid of stars.

  The SH-60 helicopter went in with the last of the night, well inland from the poachers’ camp and away from the nearest cluster of bandas that marked a Guryama tribal village. Out to sea, the two S-3s, loaded for bear, cruised above the storm-forced breakers, their MARI systems off, and the Esek Hopkins made its heavy way along a lee shore.

  Alan was standing in the cockpit door with a borrowed flight helmet on his head and a borrowed comm cord plugged into the copilot’s seat, listening to Soleck in Jaeger One. He touched the mike on his helmet.

  “Ready, Jaeger One?”

  “Roger.”

  “Go active.”

  “Going active and imaging. I have the target on image,” Soleck said, and then Alan heard something from the other plane that was too broken up to follow. His adrenaline began to rise. The helicopter was slowing, the sound of the great rotors changing to a lower note and the nose sinking so that Alan had to grab the doorframe. Both chopper pilots had their night-vision devices on and flipped down. Alan felt the press of a body behind him and looked back to see the bulk of the Marine lieutenant in the red light of the cargo bay.

  “One minute,” one of the pilots shouted and Alan shouted it again for the lieutenant. He gave Alan a thumbs-up and disappeared into the cargo bay, where his men were sitting in rows against the fuselage. They started to stand, to check their equipment. The five Kenyans looked like boys in their thin khakis, without body armor or helmets or packs. They also looked cold.

  “Target is green and clear.”

  “Stay clear, Jaeger One. Puma is going in.”

  “Roger.”

  Alan nodded to the pilot, and the rotor sound changed again.

  “Thirty seconds,” the pilot said. Alan turned and bellowed it back into the cargo bay. Everyone there was on his feet, weapons ready. Alan looked out the canopy, but without NVGs all he saw was a sea of grass rippling like dark water in the wash of the rotors. He pulled off the flight helmet and swapped it for a Kevlar and then they were down, a gentle touch rather than the expected jolt.

  “Go!” the Marine officer yelled, over and over, and the plane emptied in seconds, the men moving like shadows. Alan followed the Kenyans, trying to watch the man ahead of him and gauge the progress of the Marines as they moved through the dark grass. They seemed to be going slowly. Alan found out why when he jumped down and landed in a foot of water. As soon as he was clear, the chopper lifted again, leaving him to slog along behind the party as they formed a perimeter.

  Alan sloshed, bent under the throbbing rotors, trying to get forward to the lieutenant, whose voice had risen with the stress of command. His gunnery sergeant was a shape in the dark.

  “I didn’t expect us to be ankle-deep in fucking water,” the Marine shouted.

  Alan grunted. There was a hand on his arm, and Opono was there.

  “High ground off to the left. I’ve never seen the water come up this high. That must be a hell of a storm coming out there.”

  The lieutenant started to move away toward one of his men and Alan grabbed his arm, towed him back to Opono.

  “Mister Opono’s men know the area. Let them find us some higher ground and then reset your perimeter.”

  Alan waited, still holding them both, until the lieutenant said, “Yes, sir,” and began to move.

  High above, Cohen watched the screen in front of him. The motion of the airplane and the limitations of the big radar antenna in the nose meant that every so often the whole scene of the camp would blur and jump, then freeze, as the radar’s tracking motion hit stops and lost contact. Then Cohen would ask Campbell to turn the plane.

  “I have movement,” Soleck said in Jaeger
One.

  Cohen had no image at all. “I just dropped track,” he said. “Brian, get us to 040.”

  “Roger, 040. Hang on.” Campbell turned the plane sharply toward the coast and Cohen reimaged the target. One of the features Soleck had tentatively identified as a “tent” was moving. It rocked back and forth and developed a streamer, as if it was leaking gas.

  “What the fuck is that?” Soleck asked from Jaeger One.

  Cohen shrugged, invisible in the back seat of another plane. “Better tell the skipper.”

  Ismailia, Egypt.

  Triffler’s convoy was half an hour late getting out of Cairo but made up for it on the arrow-straight road to Ismailia. Trapped between hell-for-leather oil trucks, Triffler gripped the wheel and kept his foot on the gas pedal; if he slowed down, he’d be run over from behind. Sergeant al-Fawzi sat white-knuckled in the back seat; Keatley, on the other hand, slept. Eighty miles an hour through the desert didn’t seem any different to him from the morning drive time in D.C.—when his wife drove and he slept.

  Behind them, Patemkin was in an unmarked car with two CIA people from the Cairo embassy; behind him, Geddes and another DEA agent were tearing up the road in their eagerness not to be left out. The oil tankers roared; the air stank; Triffler couldn’t believe that he was in an automobile going this fast in the dark.

  “Forsan Island,” al-Fawzi said for the third time as the lights of Ismailia winked ahead. Behind the lights and the jagged silhouette of the city, a knife-edge of sky was deep rose, then ochre. “The perp’s hotel is on Forsan Island.”

  “Just tell me where to go.” Triffler didn’t comment on “perp.” He was sweating, even in the air-conditioned car. Outside, it was already pushing toward a hundred degrees Fahrenheit.

  The sergeant had a hand-drawn map and some partly legible instructions. He didn’t have a flashlight, however. The Arabic road signs left Triffler clueless, and he had a vision of driving straight into the canal behind the oil trucks, emerging on the other bank in Sinai, on and on.

  “Get off,” al-Fawzi shouted. Triffler took this to mean he could leave the highway; relieved, he swung the wheel, and al-Fawzi directed him from there, holding his instruction sheet up to catch the light of the sodium-vapor lamps. Twenty minutes later, they pulled up on a residential block of dumpy apartment buildings where an Egyptian in a dark suit was standing with an opened umbrella in one hand.