The Command

by David Poyer

  Bucheery said bin Jun’ad, a would-be mullah with ties to radical groups in Egypt and Afghanistan, had been “persuaded” to give up the location of the stolen explosives, and other information about a plot to attack a United States installation in Bahrain. Bin Jun’ad had confessed to providing local recruits, but the actual leader was a shadowy figure he knew only as the Doctor. The Doctor was the primary goal of today’s raid, along, of course, with the explosives and any weapons the group had managed to assemble or import.

  Someone in the truck farted. The smell lay close and rank. She hated the idea of having to breathe in the actual molecules that had been in someone’s lower gut a moment before…. She tilted her wrist again.

  0420.

  A few minutes later the word must have come through, because the back doors opened and the crush lessened as men jumped out. Quietly. No one spoke. She dropped to the dew-damp asphalt with them. Took position in line, and began jogging down the street, deeper into the ancient reticulation of the old city. No streetlights, just stars, straight up, a narrow band of them between the tops of two- and three-story buildings that lined the street with no setback whatsoever, in fact many with the upper floors levered out over the frontages till they almost met. The muted crackle of a radio ahead, and the scuff of boots. The distant sound of a television, on very early.

  Sweating under the heavy vest, with someone treading on her heels, she took deep breaths, trying to steady the accelerating hammer of her pulse. Tipping her wrist back, glancing down at the luminescent hands.

  0425.

  DAN woke suddenly in pitch darkness. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. Where was the little red light that marked the phone, the faintly illuminated circle of the closed porthole. Then he remembered. He was in the in-port stateroom, they were working on the toilet in his at-sea cabin, and he’d shifted down here. He succeeded at last in resolving the direction of the bathroom. Then groped his way back to the too-short bed, wadded the pillow, lay back.

  And stared into the darkness.

  Blair had called from the States. A one-minute call from an army base before taking off for the funerals. She didn’t sound as if she missed him. Didn’t sound as if she was thinking about him at all, as if calling him was just another thing she had to get done. He replayed the last conversation they’d had. Then the days before it. Almost all of it, yeah, nice. For a while they’d recaptured what had brought them together in the beginning.

  But the navy was tough on marriages. He could count on the fingers of one hand the classmates who were still with their June Week brides. Damn few … Claudia was having trouble, too … and now he was starting to hear the same lyrics from Blair. A house, settling down, building something. What, like she was building a career in the executive branch? Compared with politics, the navy was as secure a career as the post office. At least, since he’d made O-5, he was guaranteed retirement, unless he really and truly screwed the pooch. Which he’d almost done a couple of times already…. His thoughts spun on, a perpetual motion machine whirring in the dark.

  He worried again about their exposed position, but not with the same intensity as when they’d first shifted out. What had the Senior called it? “Sitting here with our thumb up our ass.” But nothing had happened. He wondered if he should knock off the boat patrols. It soaked up a lot of man-hours. At least Schaad had looked at the quick reaction team procedures again, and they’d streamlined the procedures for getting weapons and ammo on deck. The trouble was, the easier you made that sort of material to get to, the fewer safeguards you had against theft and misuse. They were both security issues, but heightening one meant lessening the other.

  He didn’t want to think about that. Or about Hotchkiss, or the crew, or any of the hundreds of other things that occupied his mind when he was vertical. God! Couldn’t he just sleep! He rolled impatiently and socked the pillow. Tried to breathe slowly and think of some pleasant scene. Some pleasant scene …

  He hadn’t been able to spend much time with Nan when she was little. But now and then he’d read his daughter to sleep. Then lain with her head on his chest, her breathing deep and regular. And gradually his own slowed, and his thoughts began a slow spin into the freewheeling illogical vividness that preceded dream.

  He was almost there when he remembered: Today was his admiral’s mast.

  His eyes popped open again as his brain surged back to battle speed. COMDESRON 50, Palzkill, the admiral, 1400. Why couldn’t they at least make it early, why did it have to ruin his whole day? Would they actually relieve him? It was possible. CO’s lost their ships every day. Well, not every day, but it happened. Christ, he couldn’t worry about that. In fact, it might not be so bad, getting relieved. No, he didn’t believe that. Christ, why couldn’t he get to sleep!

  0430. He lay totally awake, staring into the darkness with eyes wide open.

  IT looked to Aisha like all the others, a three-story building on a street lined with darkened shop fronts, the steel knitting of antitheft gratings. With the noiselessness of shadows, silhouettes disappeared one after the other into a door. The translator said in a whisper they were headed for the third floor. That was where the Qari bin Jun’ad said the cell met, where they slept. The first floor was a shoemaker’s.

  The Americans stood next to one of the shops, trying to stay inconspicuous, or as inconspicuous as you could get in black gear. Aisha caught the twitch of a curtain above her, barely visible dark eyes taking in the activity below. Then a shade came down.

  A thunder crack and flash shattered the darkness. The third-floor windows illuminated again to another flash-bang grenade. The embassy guy started forward, but the translator got him in time. “Not yet, sir,” he said, pressing him back. Diehl had his big revolver out, holding it down along his leg.

  High above, a window slid up. A black-suited figure she only recognized as Major Yousif when he spoke called down, sounding not pleased, and in English: “The area’s clear. Observers may come up.”

  THE apartment was bare, as if no one had lived there for a long time. It was small, low ceilings spotted with age.

  And maybe they’d learned something at the house in Muharraq, or maybe someone smarter was in charge, because they weren’t tearing the place up. The entry squad was filing out, submachine guns pointed at the ceiling. Evidence technicians in coveralls and rubber gloves were taking their places: opening the doors, closet and bathroom, starting to take apart the air conditioner.

  She stood looking around, trying to let her senses work, if possible something beneath her senses, trying to kick-start any intuition she might possess. She could still smell them. Maybe from the old mattresses on the floor that showed where bodies had pressed them not long before. Maybe from the stale grease and sesame smell of cooking. She went into the bathroom. They didn’t clean up after themselves, that was plain. Pubic hairs clumped in the bathtub drain. Yellow spots by the bowl. Sticky twists of food wrappers. But then, being a terrorist didn’t indicate a high level of concern for others. And as traditional Muslim men, they’d be used to having someone, almost always a woman, to clean up after them.

  One of the techs came in, glanced at her, saw the pubes, and began gathering them up, putting them into a plastic envelope. She thought he really ought to be using paper, for better evidence preservation, but he didn’t work for her.

  “They weren’t coming back here,” she said.

  “So where are they?” Garfield said, behind her.

  She shrugged. “That’s a good question. Left the country, I hope.”

  “For where?”

  She didn’t know, so she didn’t answer. She went back into the main room, to find it deserted. Then into the bedroom, and stopped, looking around.

  Scraps of green-insulated wire, gray plastic wrap, hand tools, empty duct tape rolls littered a folding table. The techs were working their way through the wastebasket. On the floor: flyers and magazines. She picked one up. It was titled, in Arabic, The Battlefield: The Safest Place o
n Earth. There were other flyers, jihad material, some of it the same sort of thing she saw now and then in mosques back in the United States. And what looked like printouts, although she saw nothing like a printer or a computer.

  She went slowly around the room, stepping around the techs, not touching anything. Phone. Copy machine. Fax machine. With a pencil, she lifted the flap of the copy machine. Sloppy people forgot things. Left originals in copiers, for example.

  The glass was vacant, but she saw something behind the machine.

  The paper had fallen between the copy tray, where it came out, and the wall. It lay curled up just below where the fax was plugged in.

  Above it the other outlet was occupied by a square plastic box she recognized as a surge suppressor. But nothing was plugged into it. There was a vacant space on the tabletop beside the copy machine. A square space free of the dust and trash and shed hair that covered every other surface in the apartment.

  She glanced behind her, to make sure no one was looking, and reached down. Got the paper in her nails, and tweezed it up into the light.

  “Somebody’s been at work here,” Diehl said, behind her. She nodded wordlessly, examining the paper. It didn’t make sense. Curving lines and straight lines. A little crude drawing of a ship, childlike, with pointed prow and matchstick guns pointing up.

  “That’s the harbor,” he said, looking over her shoulder.

  “Our harbor?”

  “Minas Salman. Right there—see? There’s the inner harbor, where the fishing fleet docks. There’s our pier, at the ASU, I mean the NSA.”

  “And the ship?” she murmured.

  It must have hit them both simultaneously, everything coming together, the deserted apartment, the scraps of wire, the missing explosives, the crude chart. Because she heard him suck his breath in, too.

  DAN was shaving when the rapid bong of the general quarters alarm echoed through the ship. At the same moment the phone went off. He snatched it off the hook. “Captain.”

  “Sir, Hotchkiss. We just got a call there might be trouble headed our way.”

  “What? Another storm?”

  The 1MC was saying over her voice, “Security alert, security alert. Away the security alert team and backup alert force.”

  “Maybe worse. A boat full of dynamite. Meet me on the bridge.”

  The bridge was maybe not the best place to be communications-wise. But at least from there they could see. That went through his mind as he was pounding up ladders, tearing along passageways filled with others who when they saw him coming flattened against the bulkheads and yelled, “Captain coming through.”

  He burst into the pilothouse to find Hotchkiss issuing orders to heave around on the anchor, man up all deck weapons stations, and set Condition Zebra throughout the ship.

  The first order of business was to verify the warning. He asked the man who’d taken the call exactly what he’d heard. Someone identifying himself as Petty Officer Rossetti of NCIS had called direct to the ship on Channel 16, warning them a small craft with a bomb aboard might be on its way out to them. One minute later substantially the same word came over the Harbor Control net. Dan was digesting this and searching the harbor surface when in the gray predawn the bow of a small boat appeared at the exit from the inner harbor, at the gap between the stone jetties that stretched out from Muharraq Island and Juffair.

  “Bridge, forward lookout: dhow coming out of the harbor.”

  “Bridge, Mount 51: acquired visual on target.”

  “Mount 51, hold fire, and keep that breech clear,” Dan said. The eastern suburbs were clearly visible beyond the emerging boat. He could not fire his main gun; any miss would ricochet over the inner harbor directly into those crowded houses. The missiles were useless, too. He was limited to the chain guns and .50s. He went for the 21MC. “TAO, Captain.”

  “TAO Camill here.”

  “Herb, I want weapons tight, all weapons tight for the moment. We’re in very close quarters here. I want you working the net for more info on this threat.” He let up on the lever and went on talking, to Hotchkiss this time. “Where’s our patrol?”

  A pointing arm. “Two hundred yards out toward the entrance.”

  “Pull him in here ASAP. M60s and small arms, flak jackets and helmets. Call away the Blue and Green Teams and get the other RHIB in the water as soon as possible.”

  Binoculars up again, he saw the boat had separated from the causeway, was headed in their direction. Movement was visible behind it, sticks and hulls …

  With a sudden sense of doom he realized it was the fishing fleet. They were getting under way. As they did every morning. The lofty-prowed, colorful, slow-chugging flotilla that fed the island. That before first sight of sun left the sheltered inner harbor, plowing southward, past where Horn lay anchored, then wheeling to thread out into the Gulf and their day’s work. As they had every workday morning for no doubt many centuries from an island that had once been the main source of pearls for the world. But now one might not be what it seemed. Detonated close in, partially under water, it wouldn’t take much explosive to blow in a ship’s bottom.

  It was diabolical, and for a moment he grudgingly admired the cunning of the mind that had conceived it. Striking beneath the weapons and sensors of the superior technology. Using his own unwillingness to inflict collateral damage as a shield.

  It was time to see how far that shield extended. “I need harbor control.”

  “Select five, sir.”

  Holding the handset, he forced himself to speak with deliberation. “Minas Salman Harbor control. This is Horn actual, over.”

  “Harbor control, over.”

  “I’ve received two warnings about an explosive-laden small craft bound for my location. We are at general quarters and am heaving around to short stay.”

  “Roger, copy that.”

  “Request permission to fire on any dhow that steers for this ship. Small arms and twenty-five-millimeter only.”

  He figured it would take them a moment or two, but when there was no answer at all, he clicked transmit again. “Harbor Control, Horn; did you copy my last?”

  “Horn, this is Harbor Control.” Furious voices in the background; then “Horn, this is Harbor Control. We cannot give you permission to fire within the harbor.”

  “This is Horn. Intend to fire only on craft clearly making a hostile approach.”

  “This is Harbor Control. Sir, understand your situation, but we cannot clear you to fire within the harbor.”

  He savagely switched the selector to what he hoped was a direct circuit to the squadron. “Flash, flash. COMDESRON Fifty, COMDESRON Fifty, this is USS Horn in Minas Salman Harbor. Over.”

  “First dhow is making its approach.”

  “RHIB’s alongside, transferring weapons.”

  “Who’s talking to it?” Dan snapped. A talker stepped up, radio in hand, looking scared. Dan told him, “I want them between us and the dhow traffic. One hundred yards off the starboard side. Weapons loaded and clearly visible. Understand? Pass that at once.”

  “Sir, COMDESRON Fifty SDO on the horn.”

  A young voice, and he felt his heart sink. The SDO was the staff duty officer, not the commodore. Most likely some duty jaygee. Dan said rapidly, hoping to carry the guy with him before he had time to think, “This is CO Horn. NCIS and base ops warn me a small craft loaded with explosives is en route my posit. I suspect it may be one of the dhows in the fishing fleet. They are steaming in my direction now. If one swerves out of line, I need permission to fire, and I won’t have time to ask for it when it happens.”

  A hesitation. “So what are you asking for, sir?”

  “As per your rules of engagement, I’m requesting clearance to fire on any threatening contact.”

  “If it’s threatening, sir, you don’t need my approval.”

  “Yes, I do. It won’t look any different from the other dhows. I’ll have to take it out based on my best guess.” He wished he hadn’t used that word, trie
d again, “I mean, on the basis of my professional estimate of its level of threat based on its maneuvers, its apparent intent.”

  “Sir, I don’t think I’m the one who can give you that.”

  “Is the commodore available?”

  “No, sir. He’s not here.”

  “Can you get him on the line? Or on a land line?”

  “I’ll try, sir.” Clearly relieved at having a course of action pointed out to him, the voice signed off.

  “I’m going to full self-protection,” Dan told Hotchkiss. “How’s that anchor coming?”

  “It’s up and down. But if we get under way, where are we going?”

  He put his binoculars on the lead dhow again while he pondered that question. She was right, there was nowhere a ship the draft of a Spruance-class could go in these restricted, shallow roads except out to sea. And the path to seaward led through the same bottleneck channel the marching ant line was now bending toward. At least where they lay, an attacker would have to swing out of queue toward them. They’d have a few minutes to decide what to do as it crossed the three hundred some-odd yards of open water to where Horn swung to her shortened anchor. Not to ask permission. He’d given up on that. The rules of engagement would serve only to make sure his ass was the one to be fried if he decided wrong and shot up a boatload of confused, rudder-jammed, curious, or even just momentarily inattentive Bahraini fishermen.

  “Where’s the second boat?” he shouted. “I want Fear in the water. Right fucking now!”

  IN the hangar, Marchetti was suiting up as fast as he could yank gear on. The sling slipped off his shoulder, the Mossberg clattered to the deck. He grabbed it and reached for his life vest.

  Ensign Cassidy came up from below, carrying the radio, and grabbed his .45 from the gunner’s mate. Gold Team was suited and armed, as fast as they’d ever mustered. The gunner’s mate handed Marty a handful of cartridges. He dumped them into a cargo pocket and swept a look down the line. Crack Man, Sasquatch, Lizard, Snack Cake, Deuce. The Old Gold. Amarillo and Turd Chaser were dead, lost on the Iraqi tanker. He had a new guy, Showboat, lanky and gangly, still learning the ropes. And … goddamn it… the supernumerary. Wilson. Spider Woman. There she fucking was.