by David Poyer
He tried to take his mind off it by looking at the large-screen display, the northern Red Sea and the Gulfs of Suez and Aqaba. But it only shifted his thoughts toward what exactly they were doing here.
Because he often wondered what exactly they were doing here. The forward-deployed U.S. fleet was supposed to be a stabilizing presence. The Mideast needed stability. But more and more, it seemed that the American presence was more of an irritant than anything that seemed to give the locals confidence, or fear, or anything else constructive.
But without them, who would deter Saddam and the expansionist Shi’ite fanatics of Iran? There were progressive tendencies in Islam. Regimes inching toward tolerance, circling around popular participation and limited forms of democracy. The United States had to back them up, not write all Muslims off as terrorists and dictators.
You couldn’t be neutral toward change. You either welcomed it or feared it. When you feared it, you fought to keep things the way they were. Using whatever came to hand; the Qu’ran or the Bible, or slurs about combat effectiveness that seemed to him to have less and less justification the closer he watched his own crew approach the battle zone.
But what about his own doubts? His own ever-altering, changeable, always-questioning incertitude? Where did that place him?
He rubbed his face, features lit the hue of malachite by the flicker-running, never-constant imagery of the digital displays.
OFF Ras Muhammad they intercepted the largest ship to date. The database said it was a thirty-thousand-ton motor containership, Indian registry, chartered to the Chinese, with a master from Singapore and crewed by the scrapings-up of three continents they’d gotten used to seeing on these trampers. So obviously they’d been boarded before.
But this time MV Royal Karnataka did not heave to, even after repeated hails on the VHF.
On the bridge, Dan debated his courses of action, flipping through the UN and the USN ROEs, the rules of engagement. Blade Slinger was down for maintenance, so he didn’t have the intimidation value of his air assets. The rules were vague when it came to what precisely an enforcing vessel could do. Finally he picked up the mike. “Royal Karnataka, this is U.S. Navy warship off your quarter. This is your final warning. Heave to now and permit boarding.”
“This is Motor Vessel Royal Karnataka. We have nothing aboard from Iraq and do not need to be boarded.”
“There a problem?” Strong swung up into the chair that had now become the task group commander’s exclusive possession. Coming up to find Dan in it the day before, he’d asked him rather brusquely to use the exec’s, to port.
“They don’t want to stop, Commodore.”
“Then it’s all the more evident you must stop them.” Strong looked across to where the freighter was plowing stolidly along. “So do it, Captain.”
Dan bit off a response and keyed the mike again. “Royal Karnataka, this is U.S. warship off your port quarter. I repeat, heave to at once or… I will fire.” He said to the officer of the deck, whose eyes had popped wide, “Mount 51, train right, relative bearing zero-three-zero.” This was a bluff. He was pretty sure he didn’t have the right to fire. The trouble was, it was hard to tell. Lawyers wrote the things, there were so many caveats and weasel phrases. Then he noted their inter-ceptee’s bow wave was decreasing. “She’s slowing, sir,” the officer of the deck said.
“Very well. Keep your relative position.” “Engines ahead one-third, set pitch for five knots.” “Away the boarding and search team. Which team’s up?” “Boatswain: away the boarding and search team, away, Team Gold.” He threw the dogs off the door and went out on the starboard wing. Every metal surface radiated like a microwave oven. He touched the leather of his wing chair and reflex jerked his fingers off before they burned. What wind there was, was from port; the RHIBs went down in the ship’s lee; he couldn’t see it go down but he figured it would be Faith. Some minutes later it came into view, playing ducks and drakes over the ruffled blue. He made out Cassidy and Marchetti, knees bent, clinging to the center console, nodding at each wave impact.
The officer of the deck put his head out. “Sir, contact’s putting on speed again.”
“You son of a bitch,” Dan told the master opposite. He said to the petty officer beside him on the .50 mount, “All right, gunner. Lock and load.” At the same time he was setting the channel selector on the portable Saber radio they used for bridge to boat. “Faith, this is Blade Runner.”
“Faith, over. Hear you, Captain.”
“Stand clear while we adjust this bozo’s attitude.”
Cassidy rogered. When Dan saw the RHIB’s bow swinging clear, he told the gunner, “Give them a burst a hundred yards ahead of the bow.”
The sailor adjusted his helmet, cranked the charging handle, and swung the barrel. The OOD clanged the door shut. Dan stepped back, clamping his ears, and the belt jerked and six rounds went out duh duh duh duh duh duh, the smoking-hot empty casings, thick as his thumb and twice as long, rattling into the gratings. The tracers arced out, hesitated, then fell, pocking white gouts up across the blue sea.
Strong came out and stood in the angle of the splinter shield. Dan tried to ignore him. Dan, as commanding officer of Horn, was the on-scene commander here. Strong was the sea combatant commander, in overall charge of maritime intercept ops for all the ships of the task force. So the commodore was both there, and not there, in one of those military oxymorons, and Dan was both in charge, and not. Plus—he knew it was childish—the asshole had taken his chair. It was intensely irritating, and he snapped into the radio, “All right, he’s slowing. Get in there and get aboard before he changes his mind again. And stay where we can see you.”
Cassidy rogered, and both ships coasted to a halt on the ruffled sea.
Time passed. Horn picked up the swing, rocking with a heavy cadence that set something clanking back by the signal shelter. The sun was the upper element of a broiler oven. The gunner, bored or heat exhausted, slumped against the pyro locker, goggling at nothing. On the main deck the crew of the chain gun sprawled like dead men shot down where they’d stood. Dan waited for Strong to go below. But the commodore, casual in white shorts and short-sleeved shirt today, just stood smoking and looking across the water.
After an hour he said, “Your boys are taking their time.”
“Sir, they’re experienced men. Our senior chief over there has done over a hundred boardings.”
“Then he ought to be able to do them more quickly than this. Our team on Torrens have it down to half an hour.”
“Blade Runner, Faith.” Cassidy, on the radio.
“Blade Runner.”
“Cargo data.”
“Go,” Dan said. He turned the volume up so Strong could hear, as a courtesy, though he didn’t feel courteous. He felt like flinging him off the wing and letting the Aussie prick swim to Egypt.
“We’ve got a hell of a lot of dates here.”
“Copy dates, is that right? Like what camels eat?”
“Two hundred containers of them. Packed with Syrian dates. The paper covers it.”
“Okay, good work. Sign him off and come back.”
“No, no, no,” Strong said.
Dan said, “Wait one,” into the handheld. To Strong he said, “I’m going to let this one go.”
“No, you’re not. Dates, you say? Out of Jordan? They’re Iraqi.”
“The documentation shows they’re from Syria—”
“Fuck the documentation. They’re Iraqi. They’re famous for their dates. Which are contraband. They can’t export anything without UN clearance, and the only thing they’re cleared for is limited amounts under the oil for food program.”
Dan held his finger on the button, looking doubtfully across two hundred yards of water at a very large ship.
“Blade Runner, Faith.”
“Go, Faith.”
“These guys are not being cooperative. They’re shoving us aside and going back to the bridge and engine room.”
“Oh, no, they’re not
. Keep them on the bow. If they give you trouble, cuff ’em.”
“They’re starting to play rough.”
“Use the degree of force necessary to control the situation.”
Strong cleared his throat, but didn’t actually say anything. “Roger,” Cassidy said, his voice muffled and distant. Then a clatter, as if he’d dropped the radio.
Dan reached past the commodore and pressed buttons on the 21MC. “OOD, Captain. Away the Blue Team, prepare to assist Gold Team. Exec to the bridge. Secure repairs on Blade Slinger and get it in the air.” He keyed the radio again. But Cassidy didn’t answer. He grabbed the lookout’s binoculars, and after a struggle with the sling, which got caught on their owner’s neck, got them focused where tiny figures struggled. As he watched, one broke away running. Another went after it, then both disappeared behind the superstructure.
Hotchkiss undogged the door. “Leave it open,” Dan told her, and yelled past her, “Goose her ahead, get us in close. We need the other team over there right away.”
Cassidy came back on the handheld, breathing hard. “Blade Runner, uh, boarding team had an incident… a runner, bound aft… got a man down.”
“We’ve got the Blue Team on its way, Sean. Who’s down? One of ours?”
“Well, they’re under control again now … Wait one. Uh-oh.”
The boarding officer clicked off. Then, seconds later, on again. “We got a man overboard situation.”
“What?”
“Machete had to uh … accidentally … We got a man overboard. Off the starboard side. We’re talking the RHIB around to pick him up now.”
“Machete or the crewman?”
“The crewman.”
“Have you got him in sight? Keep him in sight.”
Strong said disapprovingly, “Someone went overboard?”
Dan told Hotchkiss, “Get the leading corpman aft on the double.” He told the commodore, “Sir, let me get this sorted out. I’ll make a report after we have things under control.”
“Captain? Master of the Karnataka on Channel Sixteen.”
“I want to see the boarding officer myself, when he returns,” Strong said. “It sounds to me like your men are a little too John Wayne about this. I warned you, they have to know the ROE cold and act accordingly.”
Dan thought violently that this was exactly what he needed at the moment, a lofty Anglic voice pontificating on what cowboys his men were. He switched his handheld to sixteen, catching an agitated voice speaking broken English in midsentence. “—filing a complaint on you,” the voice said angrily. “Beating my men up. Injuring them. UN will hear of this. I will file complaint, swear to seeing this with my own eyes. Captain, is captain there?”
“This is the commanding officer of USS Horn,” Dan told him. He rubbed his fingers across his forehead, listening to a torrent of threats and vituperation as beside him Strong shook his head sadly. His hand came away dripping with sweat.
…
BOTH inflatables searched for three hours. It was not so rough they wouldn’t have found someone if he was still afloat. But they came up empty-handed. Cuffed, the crewman had gone straight down into the blue-green sea. And never came back up.
At last Strong ordered him to let the ship proceed. The State Department would check out the provenance of the cargo. If necessary, the Saudis could board again before it passed through the Bab el Mendeb. As to the death, they’d deal with that through appropriate channels. He’d look forward to Dan’s report at his earliest convenience.
Dan had Cassidy and Marchetti report to his sea cabin. They showed up sweaty and stained, still wearing pistol belts and float coats, boots dripping with the betadine-and-water footbath the boarding parties had to wade through coming back aboard. Otherwise, given the conditions of sanitation aboard the ships they inspected, Horn would be fighting bugs around the clock. He closed the door. “All right. What happened?”
“That was one uncooperative bunch of ragheads,” Marchetti said.
“Let’s hear it from the boarding officer first.”
Cassidy said angrily that the crew had been restive and mouthing off from the moment they came aboard. The master did nothing to control them. They complained about being kept out on deck, in the sun, but that was the only place he could keep them in view. He’d ordered the most aggressive cuffed. At that the others started pushing their way aft. The security team pushed back. The bigger American sailors were winning when one of the restrained men broke into a run. Marchetti went after him. The crewman attacked Machete and the senior chief punched him out and somehow he went overboard.
“He physically attacked you?”
“Sure as shit,” Marchetti said.
“I thought you said he was cuffed.”
“He was cuffed. Son of a bitch butted me. Hard, too.” He tilted his head back, and Dan saw blood bright on his tongue.
“You saw that happen?” Dan asked Cassidy. The ensign hesitated, then nodded. Dan asked him again and got a firmer affirmative.
“Okay, that’s physical resistance. By the rules of engagement, we can respond to that with the degree of force necessary to control the situation.” He looked at Marchetti. “But we’re also responsible for the safety of people under our control. How did he go over the side?”
“All I did was hit him, to get him off me. The lifeline snapped and over he went.” Marchetti spat blood into a paper towel from his coverall pocket. “He’s in cuffs, he can’t swim, he acts up, too fucking bad. Now he’s snake food.”
“That’s hard, Senior,” Cassidy said disapprovingly. Marchetti shrugged.
“The master said he was going to file a protest.”
“He’ll just have to file,” Dan told them. “I’m not happy someone died, but I told you to use necessary force. This sounds like an accident, especially since the lifeline broke. If there’s heat, that’s what they pay me to take. Sean, I’ll need a written report. Close of business today.”
They stood glumly. He went on, fighting his own depression over things going so wrong, “Okay, new subject… we’re taking a long time to do these boardings. I know you’re not getting enough sleep, or much else done. Anyway, can we speed up the process? It’s just taking too long considering how many ships we have to go through here.”
“No, sir, not and do a thorough job,” Marchetti told him.
“Sean?”
“Senior chief’s right, sir.”
“The commodore says the Aussies do this in half an hour,” Dan told them.
“No fuckin’ way they can search a ship like that in half an hour,” Marchetti said. “These guys have containers three high on deck and just as tight below. It takes time to get up to them and cut the padlocks. Then you got to go through them, and put the seals back on.”
Dan studied his shaven head as the senior chief went on to explain that particularly in the larger vessels, containerships and tankers, they had to check every space and every container. The only way to cut down on the workload would be to stand up a third boarding team.
“That might not be a bad idea,” Dan told them. “Have you got anyone who could stand up as a boarding petty officer?”
Marchetti said he had a first-class sonar tech might have the leadership and judgment to take on the job. “A sonar tech?” Dan said, taken aback.
“Sir, Crack Man’s not a weenie like the other ping jockeys. And they don’t have squat to do up here, the water’s so shallow. I’d shuffle the others around so you get a mix of raw and salty in each team. Blue, Gold, and … Green.”
“All right,” Dan said. They were glancing at the door when he added, “How are you going to man the new team?”
“We’ve got a waiting list, sir,” Marchetti said.
“Is Wilson on it?”
“Wilson?”
“Commander Hotchkiss tells me she makes all the musters and workouts and familiarization fires. Think she deserves a shot?”
“I’d rather not, sir.”
“Why not?”
“These ragheads hate Americans anyway. I’d hate to think what they’d say to a woman. You heard the stuff they say over the bridge to bridge, when one of the girls goes on.”
“That the reason? Spare her feelings?” Dan asked him.
“No, sir.”
“Okay, what’s the real reason?”
“She’s not going to be able to do the job.”
Dan said, not wanting to order him to do this, wanting him to do it because he thought it was worth a try; to get him on the side of giving the girl a chance: “That’s your opinion. Right?”
“An opinion based on a hundred and twenty-one boardings.”
“Is it possible you could be wrong?”
“No, sir.”
“Not even remotely?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re never wrong, is that it?”
“I didn’t say that, sir,” Marchetti said, face about as closed as it was possible for a rock-armed, slick-headed, tattooed senior chief’s to get. “I said I couldn’t be wrong about that.”
“All right, I’ve heard enough. Put her on the team, Senior Chief,” Dan said.
Marchetti snapped stiff. “Aye, aye, sir.”
“You can cut the bullshit, too. I expect you to treat her like any other team member. That goes for you, too, Sean. If I hear she’s not being treated with the respect due a shipmate, you’ll explain why to me.”
The Machete said aye, aye again. Dan let him stand at attention for a couple more seconds, then dismissed them both, telling Cassidy the commodore wanted to see him but that he probably had time for a quick shower first. Thinking as the scowling senior chief left that he wouldn’t want to be in Wilson’s boots over the next few days. But maybe it would work out.
Or maybe it wouldn’t. But that was the whole point, wasn’t it. To see.
He leaned back, staring blankly at his Compaq. Unless the environment in Washington meant they were going to be integrated even if it weakened fighting effectiveness. Blair didn’t seem to think that was the case, and she was in the thick of it. He had to believe Congress had at least some modicum of responsibility.
Or did they? A conversation from when he’d been working in D.C. came back to him. With a staff aide to a congressman. What had Sandy said? Something about how the guy she’d worked for had tried to do the right thing once. And paid for it. That no one in government had any other goal than to keep their jobs.