The Command

by David Poyer

  Lenson set the folder aside and leaned forward, looking at the man before him eye to eye. The radio hissed on his belt, but did not speak. “So you admit taking these photos?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What was your motivation?”

  “Well, sir … just to get shots of the girls. The women.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, they took their shirts off, sir. And we was all pretty shit-faced … drunk. I figured as long as they were showing it off, it was all right to take a picture.”

  “All right. Let’s see. One of your shipmates goes ashore. He gets loaded. Has to piss. He leaves his wallet out on the table while he goes to the head. It’s all right to take his money?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Excuse me? I can’t hear you.”

  “No, sir. It wouldn’t be right to do that.”

  “See the point I’m making?”

  “I think so.”

  “That you protect your shipmates, even when they’re not at their best.” The petty officer nodded miserably. “All right, everybody’s got a nice buzz on, you take some shots without thinking too much about it. But the next day, you’re sober. You could toss the film over the side. You could ask the women what they want you to do with it. Instead you take it up to the cryppies. Then pass the prints around for everybody to drool over. Whose idea was that?”

  A swallow, a pause. Finally Goldstine murmured, “Mine, sir.”

  “Nobody else involved?”

  “No, sir.”

  Marchetti watched the skipper turn this over. He didn’t look like he was buying it. Of course, it wasn’t Goldie’s idea. He’d told everybody in forward berthing about the pictures, and somebody told him, hey, why not take them up and get prints for everybody. He’d told the chiefs this. But Marty had taken him aside afterward and asked him why he wanted to get other people in trouble. Why not take the rap like a man. He was glad to see he was taking his advice. A stand-up attitude was better in the long run. Down in the spaces, when no khaki was around.

  “Very well,” Lenson said. He looked at Marchetti. “Senior Chief? What have you got to say for your man here?”

  Marty cleared his throat. “Sir, Goldstine’s a hard worker. This was an error of judgment, but think about what he was looking at.”

  Lenson had been regarding the man in front of him; now he looked startled. “Sorry, Senior. What exactly do you mean?”

  “Well, sir, just that he probably ain’t had any since we left the States, and suddenly there’s these chicks with their boozooms waggin’ in the sea breeze. It’d be hard to look away. He probably didn’t think twice about taking a picture.”

  “That’s the point. That we think about what we’re doing.”

  “Seems to me they should of thought about what they were doing, too.”

  The captain’s gaze sharpened. Marty met it, not giving any ground. Goldie was getting railroaded, and the fucking exec was driving the train. The girls start stripping, he’d have done the same thing. At least nobody’d tried to grab a handful. CO had to see that. Unless he was getting confused by cunt, too. Marty looked from Lenson to the exec. Possible? Likely? There were rumors.

  “I’ll be dealing with them in a few minutes, Senior. Let’s stick to what I asked you.”

  “Goldie’s good to go, sir. Doesn’t need supervision. I don’t keep non-performers around.”

  The division officer spoke up, too: he was dependable, this was a momentary lapse of judgment, and so forth. Lenson turned back to Goldstine. “Well, performance counts. You seem to be someone who contributes to his division and his ship. Anything else to say?”

  The petty officer mumbled he was sorry, he’d apologize to the women involved. Lenson listened carefully, examining his face.

  “All right, I hear you. Making a personal apology, that’s a good start. However, the fact remains you’ve damaged Horn’s camaraderie and trust. I’m going to hold you to account for that.

  “You’ll be restricted to the ship for the next forty-five days and perform extra duty for that period of time. Reduced in rate to the next inferior rate … to be suspended for six months. If you come before me again, anything of this nature, expect to be hammered.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any questions?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Dismissed,” Lenson said to the master at arms.

  Everyone relaxed, shaking out the kinks. The captain checked with the bridge on his radio. Then it was time for the petty officer who ran the darkroom, or what passed for one, a small compartment with a sink. Lenson came down harder on him than he had on Goldstine, pointing out he was a first class, expected to be preparing himself for the responsibilities of chief, who’d misused government facilities for a frivolous purpose.

  “You’re married. Right? A family man. Got a little boy. Davy. Do you take cheesecake shots of Rhonda and pass them around on the mess decks?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “I respect her, sir.”

  “And your shipmates? Who keep the ship running, keep you in steam and hot water and hot chow? Keep that 440-hertz power going for your listening equipment? You respect them, too?”

  “Yes, sir. I respect them, too.”

  He stood rigid, and Marty knew why. With a first-class crow and a security clearance on the line. The captain went on about how he’d violated his trust, misused his position, abused his shipmates. He kept asking why he’d done it, but the best the IT could come up with was how it was all a joke.

  “Yeah? Tell me why it’s funny,” the captain wanted to know. At last the accused just stood there. He got forty-five days restriction to the ship, extra duty for forty-five days, and a bust to second class … suspended for six months. His shoulders dropped in relief.

  This time when the accused was dismissed some of the khaki started to leave, too, but the CO said sharply he wanted them to stand fast.

  One by one, Lenson called in the women whose pictures Goldstine had taken. He gave them each the warning, showed them the photos, and asked them to explain. Then told them he’d already punished the men who had taken, developed, and distributed the photographs, but that they, too, had to behave like adults when they were representing their ship and their country. One after the other, he restricted them to the ship for forty-five days and gave them a week’s extra duty. One of the women, an English-sounding girl, cried at attention, silently, tears leaking down her cheeks. At that Lenson softened his tone, adding they weren’t on his shit list, he just wanted to make sure they got the message. But she got the same punishment as the others.

  …

  MARCHETTI was in the passageway one deck down, headed for the chief’s mess to adjust his coffee level before the boarding and search drill, when he heard “Got a minute, Senior Chief?”

  It was Commander Crotchkiss. And he was gonna have to be real careful not to forget and call her that to her face. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Want to buy me a cup of joe?”

  He held the door for her and wedged himself behind the too-narrow table while the mess crank got mugs. They were the only ones in the compartment. Through the door leading to chief’s berthing he could see the bunk curtains drawn back, jackets and towels hanging from the bunk bars. Everyone was out on deck, supervising. Hotchkiss stirred creamer into the Black Bear. “MIO training this morning?”

  “Board and search in fifteen minutes.”

  “Live fire? Small arms?”

  “I don’t think the Egyptians would like that here in the Canal.”

  She sipped. “Chief, I feel hostile vibes coming off you. What’s eating on you?”

  “My troop got a raw deal this morning.”

  “Which troop?”

  “Goldie. Goldstine. The one the skipper whacked for taking the pictures.”

  “You think he should have walked?”

  “It was on shore. They were letting off steam. If it was some hairy asshole mooning the camera,
nobody’d have given a shake about it. But they’re girls, so everybody goes apeshit.”

  “You don’t want us here, do you?” Hotchkiss asked him.

  “You asking straight out?”

  “Sure.”

  “Women got no business aboard ship, ma’am. Like this topless business. Goldstine got pulled off the twenty-five-millimeter for this mast, you know that? Captain wanted the fifties and the chain gun manned while we’re at anchor. But what are we doing? Getting distracted by some bullshit nonissue.”

  He took a breath, expecting her to snap back, but she didn’t interrupt. So he said, “Level with you, ma’am? They can do a lot of stuff good as the guys can. But that ain’t the point. It isn’t how much they cost. Or what’s fair, or unfair. I’ll tell you what I’m afraid of. That they just aren’t gonna come through when the crunch really comes.”

  “Well, we’re here,” Hotchkiss said, coming back at him at last. “So no matter what your personal feelings are, Senior, it’s your job as much as it is mine to make things work out. I hope you agree with me there.”

  He said reluctantly, “I know it’s ship’s policy.”

  “That’s good. Because I want you to consider putting some of our Horn women on your boarding and search teams.”

  Oh, Jesus, no. He barked coffee into his fist. “Well… ma’am … we already have all our billets filled. Both teams.”

  “There must be somebody you think would be better off somewhere else.”

  Actually, there were; useless goofballs who bitched and couldn’t rappel, losers he’d planned to leave in the boat during any real opposed boarding; but he liked the idea of having to drag along a girl even less. It must have shown, because Hotchkiss said, “If I get you a woman who’s better than one of them, how would you feel about that?”

  “You show me one who can pull herself up a thirty-foot line hand over hand, I might take her,” Marty grabbed out of the air. Figuring there might possibly be one or two total steroid Olympic buffarillas who could actually do that, but none he’d seen on Horn could. “Send me one of those and I’ll teach her to do fire and maneuver. But until then I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  “I’ll send you one you can train,” Hotchkiss said.

  He glanced around the mess, made sure the cranks were back in the galley. Then leaned forward, taking her eye to eye. “Ma’am, no. Due respect and all that, but this team will be carrying live ammo. Climbing jacob’s ladders. Rappelling up stacks of containers and busting off locks with sledgehammers and crawling through bilges and holding crews at gunpoint, and most likely sometime during this deployment we will have to tee off on some actual bad actors who do not want us sniffing their assholes. Smugglers. Stowaways. Iranians who hate our guts. We will get in their faces. We will wrestle them to the deck and put cuffs on them. We might even have to light them up if they come at us with a knife or a gun or a cargo hook. I’m not taking someone who can’t react aggressively. It wouldn’t be fair to her, and it sure as hell wouldn’t be fair to the guy whose back she’s supposed to be covering.”

  The exec had gone stiff. Her green eyes were narrow now. “You’ll obey orders. Like everybody else aboard.”

  But he’d had enough. Getting up, he said, “Commander, you can’t order me to take anybody I consider dangerous to the team. I’ll take that one to the captain. And I don’t think he’ll go your way.”

  …

  “NOW muster Blue and Gold boarding and search teams in the helo hangar with GMGCS Marchetti,” said the 1MC.

  He waited, arms folded, as the last few men came up from the locker where the small arms and ready ammo and boarding party equipment were kept. They fell into loose ranks, pointing weapons at the overhead as they checked actions, buckled on pistol belts. Seven guys in each team. When he was a seaman, they’d have just been called port and starboard. Now they were the Blue Team, the Gold Team. It did sound better. Goldstine and Sandoff came hustling forward with the M-60 for the RHIB.

  The army had gotten rid of the .45 Colt automatic and the M-14 rifle years ago, but that was what the navy still carried aboard ship. “Machete” himself toted a black pump-action Mossberg with ghost-ring sights and a full-length magazine of triple-ought buckshot and solid lead slugs he could switch between in a fraction of a second. Along with a Ka-Bar strapped to his thigh, a handheld Saber radio, his boarding clipboard, a police-style D-battery Maglite, cuffs, chemical agent, and a canteen of water. The team wore steel-toed combat-style boots and blaze orange float coats and dark blue coveralls. Their Horn ball caps were all the same, no gold braid, no chief’s anchors, no rank insignia. No name tags, and they didn’t call each other by their real names, either. Just to give the shitsuckers they boarded less of a handle on them. He went down the line, doing an inspection arms, making sure each man had all his gear and a full canteen.

  Then he sat them all down in a circle on deck and started passing out paper. Boarding and search wasn’t all rappelling and pointing guns at people. You had to know basic math, first aid, restraint, legal stuff. He had a Farsi speaker this time, who said he knew some Arabic, too. Seaman Second Barkhat, a little dark wiry guy they called Deuce.

  They were going to do tanker inspections, stop fuel and weapon smuggling into Iraq. So he started off by telling them what he knew from doing the same thing in the Gulf. What to look for: recently painted areas, fresh concrete, hidden tanks in the chain lockers, tanks with water made to float on top of the oil somehow. But most shippers didn’t get that cute. He told them to take out their conversion tables.

  “So, say ship’s records list a fuel tank capacity of two hundred metric tons and it topped off two days ago in its last port of call. The question’s gonna be, how much tank stowage, in cubic feet, is the ship going to need to hold this much fuel? Because if he’s smuggling fuel or crude, the only way we’re going to find it is to match the tankage we find and what’s in it against his constructed or installed fuel tankage and what’s supposed to be there for his legal fuel to get wherever he’s going and back. The difference will be what he’s trying to smuggle. If they can hide it in amongst the fuel tankage, they can walk past us with two thousand tons of contraband crude.” He took a breath. “Now, how do we know what he tells us is diesel fuel is really diesel fuel? Who knows the specific gravity of gasoline?”

  “Point seven three five is gasoline,” somebody said behind him. “Point nine is heavy crude. Point nine five is bunker C oil.”

  The stocky blonde in coveralls had baby blue eyes and a round face. “Patryce Wilson,” she said, grinning at the guys on the deck. “GTE third. XO sent me.”

  He put his hands on his hips. “Sorry, lady. We’re full up.”

  “You the senior chief? The one they call Machete? She said all I had to do was pee up a rope.”

  The men grinned at each other. Marty cleared his throat, unsure how to take this but not liking it. “I said you had to climb a rope, not piss up it. That one.”

  He pointed to the two-inch hemp line that went up to the ceiling of the hangar. Every time they mustered he made the team climb the rope. At first without gear. Then, as they got in shape, with full gear. It might save their lives to be able to get up, or down, the side of a ship, a stack of containers, an escape scuttle. Just getting aboard a rolling trawler in heavy seas took a lot of physical strength.

  Wilson looked at it. She wiped her hands on her coveralls, then took a jump. She got a few feet up, then stalled out. Hung there.

  A chuckle, a snigger went around.

  She twisted her legs in the rope, resting. Then hauled herself up, inch by inch, locking the line with her boots at each hitch. Marchetti didn’t know where she’d learned that one. She grunted and farted, and the guys groaned, but now they weren’t laughing.

  She got to the top. Way up in the overhead. Hung there, puffing. Then started to slide.

  Marty started forward, wincing. She was letting the rope slip through her bare hands. He reached out, but she said in a muffled
voice, “Hands off, till you get invited.” Then let go and fell in a panting, tumbled pile.

  “There,” she said. She got up, looking at her hands. Wiped them on her coveralls, leaving dark patches.

  “Nice job,” he told her contemptuously. “I’d high-five you, but I just had my dick in my hand.”

  “Don’t let that stop you. I just had my finger up my snatch.” She planted herself down with the men.

  This dirty-mouthed bitch snapped back like a nylon line. He just needed a little time, to figure out how to ditch her. Though probably like most girls, she’d drop out all by herself, once it got really tough.

  “All right,” he said, “We’ll call you … a supernumerary. Any of these limp ladies wimp out, you step in. That should motivate you melon-heads. … Your teammates are Crack Man, Sasquatch, Lizard, Snack Cake, Deuce, Amarillo, and Turd Chaser. Your name’ll be … Spider. Cause you climb like a sick one.

  “Okay, that’s enough, listen up. Now we’re going to talk about a UN 986 Letter and what’s gonna be on it and what’s not. Pay attention, because we’re gonna be doing this for real starting about two days from now.”

  They bent their heads over the handout while he went on talking. Thinking, beneath what he was saying, that she still didn’t belong here. He wasn’t going to let her put the team, the mission, at risk.

  But he’d take care of that his way.

  13

  Oparea Adelaide,

  Northern Red Sea

  THE high sharp mountains lined the coast, lavender violet in the morning, red as candlelight through wine in the evening sun. They cut the horizon jagged and cruel for miles inland and never seemed to be out of sight, no matter where Horn went in the narrow band of sea that slipped like a crack through the most storied desert on earth.

  All the coasts looked the same, brown, hot, barren. The steady northeast wind was lip-cracking dry. It brought a fine invisible dust that lodged in the pores of the skin and could filter through a watertight door, especially if there was precision machinery on the other side. The dryness was only occasionally varied with a land squall that fogged the air like battens of fiberglass packed around the slowly moving ship.