The Command

by David Poyer

  The Red Sea. He’d transited it in Van Zandt during the Iran-Iraq War, on the way to Operation Earnest Will. Had run it again in the strangely fated Oliver C Gaddis, on her way to the Far East. But he’d never operated there long, not at night, in close proximity to land, under an air threat. And most of his people had never been here before. Many had never deployed before.

  Maritime interdiction operations, MIO. Not the most technically challenging assignment he could imagine, but maybe that was for the best, given they’d just gotten here.

  “Set up a preaction briefing. All officers, chiefs, tactical petty officers. How about during the canal transit, while we lay over?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  He studied their faces. When he’d joined the navy, a black ops officer would have been unlikely, a female exec unthinkable. Their smooth young faces filled him with vague alarm. But he hadn’t been any older when he’d filled their shoes…. He swung his legs down. “A thorough briefing,” he added. “I want everyone to see the big picture, not just his, uh, not just their own little piece of it.”

  Camill left, but not Hotchkiss. “Captain, a word?”

  “Sure.”

  “Alone?”

  “At-sea cabin?”

  “That’s fine, sir.”

  Dan looked at the officer of the deck. Resisted the temptation to check the radar. He wasn’t going to micromanage them, much though he wanted to. The tote board gave him no surface contacts inside fifteen thousand yards…. He felt uneasy leaving such kids in charge. Was this how Jimmy John Packer had thought of him, back on Reynolds Ryan?

  “Captain’s off the bridge,” Yerega shouted behind him as the door to the pilothouse swung shut. He went down a short passageway, passing the nav shack.

  His at-sea cabin was the size of a bathroom in a middle-class house. A leatherette settee stood along the starboard side beneath a blue-curtained porthole. Forward of that was a small desk with a shaded light over his notebook computer. Inboard was a shower and water closet. That was it. The reward of the general, he thought, is not a bigger tent. He pointed to the settee, then raised his eyebrows as she closed the door. “We need it closed, XO?”

  “Maybe so, sir.”

  She looked calm and self-possessed, as usual, but slightly flushed. He couldn’t tell whether it was anger or excitement, but it was intriguing. He steered his mind away from wherever it was going. “What you got, Claudia?”

  She unclipped manila and spread the photos on leatherette.

  They were of Palma. At least, the first two. The others were of Horn sailors having fun on liberty. On the beach. His heart sank as he thumbed through them. Eyes bleary, breasts bouncing as they ran into the sea. Lifting bottles, mugging for the camera. Not exactly pinup material, but that wasn’t the point. The Bacchae had gotten drunk and naked, too. At the peak of their revels they’d selected a man, chased him down, and torn him into bloody lumps of flesh.

  “They’re all over the ship,” Hotchkiss told him. “Lin Porter walked into the first-class lounge in the middle of the movie. She found this set on the table.”

  Dan looked through them again, playing for time. But Hotchkiss must have gotten the wrong idea, because she said sharply, “Do you find them exciting?”

  He decided he’d better miss her point. “What I find interesting is that they’re enlargements. Not Polaroids.”

  “Which means they were printed aboard.”

  “In the Evinrude spaces,” Dan said.

  The intel weenies were the only ones who had darkroom capability. He turned the photos facedown and cleared his throat. “It’s not what I’d call good news. But it’s not the end of the world, either. Sailors are sailors, I guess, of either gender. Sometimes they get drunk on liberty. Sometimes they display poor judgment. Occasionally they’ve even been known to take their clothes off.”

  “With all due respect, I don’t like that comment, sir. It strikes to the root of the problem on this ship, and I think it requires corrective action.”

  So the pink tinge to her ears was anger. He filed that for reference, and leaned back, clasping his knee. He gained a few seconds from the phone, which beeped to inform him of a crossing contact on the starboard bow. He told the officer of the deck to maneuver to avoid and to make sure CTF 61 and CTG 61.1 had the same track data. Then shuffled the pictures and squared the edges, careful not to look at them again, and put them back in the envelope, wishing it was as easy to get the issue out of sight.

  “Okay, you may have something there. What’s your suggestion? How should we handle it?”

  “We need an outside investigation.”

  He quelled his first impulse, which was to say that might be overreacting. Instead he went to the porthole and pushed the curtain aside, looking out.

  Beer and partying and the shirts come off. Some might see it as harmless. But Tailhook had changed the way the U.S. Navy thought about what had once passed for innocent fun. If it pissed Hotchkiss off, he’d better think about it again.

  On the other hand, reporting it up the chain of command would mean what Aronie and Blair had asked him to do, make this experiment work, would go up in smoke.

  Or was he starting to think like the senior officers he used to hate? Covering his ass. Trying to keep bad news from going upstairs.

  No, this wasn’t about him. They were all in unfamiliar waters, the leadership as much as the rank and file. He didn’t think a couple of topless pictures were a big deal, as long as he didn’t know about them. But the longer he pondered, the more he saw that now they’d found them, the leadership had to react. To let it go would send the message it was okay to ridicule and belittle the women. Inviting Blair’s hostile ten percent to go a little further, and a little further after that.

  To react too harshly, though, would drive the splinter of the male crew’s irritation under the skin, to fester and turn ugly.

  When he thought he was there, he turned from the sea. “I’d like you to hold off taking it outside the ship. At least for now. I’m not ruling it out. It may be the way we’ll go eventually, but before we do, I want you to conduct your own investigation.”

  “An XOI?”

  Dan said yes, an XO’s investigation. He told her to start with Lieutenant Sanduskie, the intel officer, to find out who’d developed the photos, presumably using the ship’s equipment, chemicals, and paper. That should lead to whoever had snapped them. Hotchkiss asked how she should charge him, and Dan suggested Article 134, disorders to the prejudice of good order and discipline. He then stopped her dead by saying, “I want the women charged, too.”

  “I’m not sure I heard that right, sir. That’s blaming the victim.”

  “Not quite. If one of my male sailors decided to disrobe in public, I’d expect to see him at mast. Granted, it’s a topless beach, but it’s still conduct prejudicial to good order. Discipline applies to all hands.” He glanced at his watch and said, more harshly than he actually felt, “Clear?”

  Hotchkiss hesitated, then nodded.

  “As long as you’re here. I want the chain guns and fifties manned as we go through the Ditch.” She started jotting on her clipboard. “Make it a rule, as long as we’re within sight of land in the Red Sea and Gulf, I want the ship’s self-defense team manned up. Check the rotation and get more people trained if we need to. I want at least three sections qualified. We’ll stay in three sections in Combat, too, with a qualified TAO on watch at all times.

  “Second, once we get into this operating area, we’re going to be doing a lot of MIO. Make sure we’re taking a strain on our boarding team; they’re not going to have a lot of time to break in. We’ll get there, and probably an hour later we’ll have to put guys over.”

  “Want me to get more people qualified there, too?”

  “If we need to. I think Marchetti’s got one team already, but back-check the weapons officer on that. I already told you about food … Camill’s working on the chop message … I guess that’s all for now.”


  A tap on his door. The duty radioman. “Sir, message from CTF 61.”

  Hotchkiss got up, too. As she left, she brushed so close he could smell her hair. Strawberry scent. He looked after her as she went down the passageway, fanning himself with the message, before he saw the radioman watching him, eyebrows raised.

  11

  Manama City, Bahrain

  THE smell of strawberries took him back—to his college days, carefree, or as carefree as a young Arab could be trying to get good grades and make his parents proud.

  Back to the days in America.

  The man who’d called himself Malik in Iran, Rafiq in Buenos Aires, and other names in many other places, sat under fluttering blue canvas awnings in the Marina Corniche, looking over the sun-gleaming gulf and eating fresh strawberries and frozen TCBY yogurt with a plastic spoon. His thinning hair ruffled in the hot wind. His narrowed gaze, watching the pedestrians promenading past, laughing and chattering and playing music on cassette decks, seemed to see everything and yet nothing at all.

  The Sudanese passport tucked into the breast pocket of the cream linen sport jacket showed him without the plastic-rimmed glasses he’d worn in Mashhad, without the beard, with only a carefully trimmed mustache. With his high narrow forehead and prominent nose he looked a little like Anwar Sadat. The name in that passport was Doctor Fasil Tariq al-Ulam. He wore light slacks and a yellow shirt, unbuttoned at the throat, and pens in a pocket protector. A gold-toned Casio calculator-watch. A wedding ring. A cigarette smoldered in an ashtray. He’d spent the afternoon strolling the waterfront. Coffee at the Phoenicia. The hourly show at Dolphin Park. Another coffee at the Marina Club, where he’d struck up a conversation with one of the boat owners, and spent twenty minutes examining a chart of the harbor before taking the table in the café.

  The chill sweetness numbed the roof of his mouth. How did they get fresh strawberries here, he wondered. Fly them in?

  He looked out over the beach and felt the hot wind like the breath of the Devil. Heard the flutter of canvas. Smelled a tang of wood smoke.

  With that smell another beach floated up in memory. Far away, and long ago, but he’d never forgotten. Who could forget something like that? He could not.

  He could not.

  He could not.

  He’d taken a job with the Vietnamese. That summer that seemed to him now the longest season of his existence, heavy, dirty, dangerous work far out on the Gulf of Mexico. Himself young, eager, friendly, someone people liked. A good guy, the Americans said. The shimmering water, the heat, had not been unlike the sea on which he looked out now.

  Then, he’d admired America. He smiled bitterly to himself.

  Three semesters a year learning the engineering he’d make his life’s work. The teachers spoke English too swiftly to understand. But the books were patient. And yes, the West was attractive. There’d been alcohol. And blond Southern girls, with their soft speech and flirtatious ways. They said he was dreamy. They called him Omar. He met them at bars. A few drinks, then back to his apartment.

  Closing his eyes he recreated the tangle of sun-browned limbs, the fine golden hairs inside the parted thighs of blond cheerleaders who called him darlin’. Slipping white panties from the tanned hard bodies of tennis players. They passed notes to him in class saying they wanted to stroke his fancy. Or pressed their breasts against his back in the library, when he was trying to study. They fucked without shame, eyes blue as ice staring into his. Later he saw them with other men, and they met his reproachful stare with amusement at his anger. At Star Trek cons he slept with Romulans, Vulcans, Klingons, Kohms. With Commander Uhura, her high boots tumbled on the floor as he violated the Prime Directive again and again.

  But that summer his hands calloused and his fingernails broke, and he picked up shrimper’s Vietnamese and learned how to keep engines and winches, injection jets and coolant pumps running when there weren’t any parts to fix them with.

  That August the Hônh Phúc threw a wheel and another boat towed them in to Cameron, on the pass to Lake Calcasieu. He’d gone ashore to get away from the stink of shrimp and diesel fuel, and walked till the sea left his legs. By then he was far out on the beach. He stopped at a bar. Then it was night, and he heard the music, and followed it out into the wind and the sand grated under his sandals and he walked down between the dunes to where the surf roared glimmering in the moon.

  On another beach decades later, he closed his eyes again. Listening to a truck going by behind him, on the wide smooth highway that bordered the Gulf where the emir held sway.

  He must have heard it then, too, but mingled with the surf his ear could not distinguish that deep-throated throb, huge pistons firing up and down in the brutal syncopation of tribal drums. Because walking down out of the dunes he’d found a dozen men gathered around a fire.

  They must have thrown gasoline on it, to get it blazing so high in such a short time. The flames streamed up from huge crooked logs of bleached driftwood. Jagged scars showed where they’d been dragged across the sand.

  Barrel-chested, muscled, their vests and leathers were studded with bright metal and dangling with chains. They wore boots and wristbands, head wraps, heavy rings that flashed in the firelight. They passed bottles from hand to hand, and the smell of marijuana came with the crackle and heat of flame. The firelight flickered on their machines, slanted in black shoals. He had not realized here existed no obligation to welcome the stranger. Had just walked past, sandals digging into the cool sand.

  Someone had called out. And something in his voice had given him away, when he answered.

  “Hold on there a minute,” a contemptuous voice had said, when the light fell on his face. “Look what’s tryin’ to sneak up on us. Where you think you’re going? Wherever you think, you ain’t.”

  He’d known then to run, at least, but someone else had dropped his beer and tackled him, slamming his face into the sand.

  He’d begged, but up in among the dunes they’d pushed him from one to the next. Made him strip off shorts and T-shirt, sandals and underwear. Then made him kneel in the sand.

  He tried to laugh. Naked. Alone. Hoping once they saw he was harmless, wouldn’t fight back, they’d let him go.

  Then one of them, coming up from the fire, had picked up a pointed stick.

  Alone at the café table, the slight dark man who’d passed through so many identities he had no longer any name at all sat motionless, staring out at the sea.

  …

  AT a little after three o’clock another plodded into the shade. He was heavyset and bearded, with a wide, sunburned nose. He wore the thobe, the long white shirt or robe many wore on this island on the street or in the shops, especially during the hot season, and a ghutrah on his head. Their gazes touched, then slid off. Al-Ulam took sunglasses from his jacket and slipped them on. They looked around the café, noting those others who sat sipping coffee or lemonade or beer, foreigners mostly. At last the new arrival shuffled to his table. Murmured in classical Arabic, “I still feel the loss of Al-Quds, like a fire in my intestines.”

  “What excuse have I to surrender, while I still have arrows, and there is a tough string for my bow?”

  The other bowed. “Peace be to you, sir. Do I address the honored Abu al-Ulam?”

  “I am Doctor al-Ulam.”

  “I am Rahimullah bin Jun’ad. We are honored to have you among us.”

  “May God increase your honor, Rahimullah bin Jun’ad,” al-Ulam said politely, waving to the seat. “Please, sit down. Join me.”

  The heavyset man glanced at the cigarette, but said nothing as the waiter listened and presently brought freezing glasses of sweetened lemonade tinkling with ice.

  There was no hurry to their talk. They became acquainted gradually, both wary, both formal. Al-Ulam learned bin Jun’ad had two sons and that he was a customs clearance manager for InterFilipinas International, a shipping company. He was originally from Yemen, but had lived in Bahrain for twenty-two years. He in turn told
the other rather less, and only part of it true.

  As two dark-haired beauties came swinging along the corniche, bin Jun’ad frowned. Flicked stubby fingers in their direction. “Are these muhajaba?”

  Al-Ulam thought this might be the first approach to their business. As bin Jun’ad closed his eyes, he admired them. They were bold, attractive. Their skirts did not cover their legs, their scarves did not cover their hair. As they clicked by on high heels, he caught the hot glance of dark eyes.

  “They must be foreigners. Indians? Lebanese?”

  “Unfortunately, they are our women; but seduced by the devil, and the West, which serves him. This regime”—opening his eyes, bin Jun’ad gestured at everything around them, speaking in a thick low murmur unintelligible a few feet away—“is jaahili: ignorant, false, deeply corrupt. The land is kufr, the law kufr, the regime kufr, the people kufr, all save a few. The al-Khalifas and al-Sauds permit this evil.”

  “The shadow cannot be straight, when the source is not.”

  “Indeed. They call themselves Muwahhidun. But those who have knowledge say that to use man’s law instead of shariah, and to support the infidels against the Muslims, turn those who do so into mushrik, those who are no longer in Islam.”

  “You are eloquent,” al-Ulam told him.

  The stubby fingers fluttered. “No, Abu, I am an ignorant one. But I am a Qari; I have memorized the Book. These spewers of filth call adopting the ways of the polytheists modernism. But did not the Prophet, peace and the blessings of God be upon him, say, according to al-Bukhari, and ibn Maajah and others: ‘Whoever brings anything new into this affair of ours that is not from it, it is rejected from its doer.’” Bin Jun’ad glared out as more women passed, laughing and commenting as they watched a young man run along the beach.

  “Those whom I serve in the name of God, subahanahu wa ta’la, do not hold with those who shirk their faith,” said al-Ulam. He rattled ice, set the glass down. “The word of God is simple to know and easy to obey. All has been set forth clearly. A command is a command. Is that not simple enough?”