The Command

by David Poyer

  “We set, Senior?”

  “Yessir.” All right, he didn’t have the time to argue it. “Into the boat, you melonheads,” he yelled, and ran, boots pounding, out onto the deck.

  Dawn light, light wind. The boatswain was beckoning from the quarter, the bright orange plastic steps of the jacob’s ladder already rigged. He grabbed the top rail, swung over, went down fast but careful and dropped into the bow. The bowhook grabbed him and pushed him aft and he yelled, “Next man.”

  The last guy dropped in, the engine gunned, and they moved out, rocking under the impulse of the prop.

  Cassidy clambered over bodies back to where Marty clung by one arm, trying to keep the shotgun from sliding off with the other. “Here’s the plan,” he yelled. “They want the sixty in the bow. Everybody locked and loaded. Three hundred yards off the ship. One of these dhows swerves out of line, we fire a burst across his bow. If he keeps coming, they’ll designate him to the twenty-five-millimeters. So we better be ready to haul balls out of the line of fire.”

  “Roger that,” he said. The coxswain nodded, mouth hard, and reached down to pull his flak jacket out from under the console. Marty wiggled forward and got Crack Man and Sasquatch set up with the gun. Then went aft again, looking back at the ship for the other RHIB. He saw it alongside, saw another M60 being handed down. Good, they wouldn’t be the only ones out here.

  The Johnsons slowed, dropping to a ringing note like a free-running table saw. The boat coasted, then took up a slow pitch and tilt. He clung to the console and looked around the harbor, then back at the ship again.

  Horn lay like a gray island, and behind her was the city, and to either side the city. Her anchor chain straight up and down. What he didn’t relish was that both the chain guns and the five-inch were pointed at him. The fifties were manned, too, heavy machine guns mounted high on the ship, one on the bridge wing, near the searchlight mount, the other on top of the helo hangar. Beside each gunner stood a phone talker with binoculars looking right at him.

  He turned, to see the dhow approaching.

  It came on unhurriedly, rusty dented prow parting the water into a modest ripple of foam. These were not high-speed boats. But with their swelling midships, their broad beams, they looked like good haulers. Of fish, or of less innocent cargo. Its hull was russet, as if painted with Rustoleum primer. A white prow extension, like the bow dragon on a Viking longboat, pointed in his direction. Under a stumpy mast amidships was a rack of very long, thick bamboo poles. Diesel exhaust blew downwind. Fucker was headed right for them. He went forward and knelt on the floorboards and dug his grip into Sasquatch’s shoulder. “The first burst goes across his bow. Five seconds after that, he doesn’t swing away, fire through the pilothouse windows, then sweep the rest of the deck.”

  “Roger that, Senior Chief.”

  “Riflemen, get ready to sweep the deck. Light up any melonhead who pops up. Okay, lock and load.”

  The rattle and clack of bolts and cartridges slamming home, then they steadied their sights on the oncoming prow. Only two hundred yards away now. It did not seem to have the slightest intent of going anywhere else than right over them. If anything, it was increasing speed, the putt-putting of the engine coming clearly across the harbor to the tensely waiting team in the rocking inflatable.

  AISHA clung to the dash as the Chevy went faster and faster, finally hitting a hundred on the expressway leading toward the harbor. Ahead sirens warbled, lights flashed, Mercedeses and Toyotas pulled over as the convoy bore down. The trucks of security troops were going even faster than they were.

  “You’re sure you got through to the ship?” Diehl said anxiously, twisting around in the front seat. For some reason she didn’t get to drive when it was a question of getting there fast. Garfield had grabbed the wheel without a word, Diehl slid in shotgun, leaving her in the back. They were mad she’d found the map, not them. That the newest agent, a colored girl at that, had managed to pick up the one piece of paper that told exactly what was going on.

  “I didn’t try to get through to the ship. I called Rossetti.”

  “Good call. Kinky knows what to do.”

  “They’re calling their navy people, too, or coast guard, whatever they have,” Garfield said, pulling around a cement truck, then stepping on the gas again. “One way or another, they’ll get the word.”

  “Unless it’s already too late,” Diehl moaned. Aisha glanced at him. His cheeks were spotted pink and white. She hoped he wasn’t going to have some kind of attack. He was staring through the windshield, a sheen of sweat where his hair must have been when he was young.

  The trucks came to a straight stretch. The traffic police stood at the intersections, batons extended to block cross traffic. Buildings flashed by, avenues flashed by, startled faces on the sidewalks flashed by. The needle crept up again as Garfield floored it. Ninety-five. One hundred. One hundred and ten, the engine roaring, the wind tearing by. She leaned forward. “Tune the radio to four-forty”

  “What’s that?”

  She couldn’t believe he didn’t know. “Their police frequency, Bob. If we want to know what’s going on up ahead—”

  “Yeah, but what’s the use? We can’t understand what they’re—oh.” He made a face. “I guess you could, though. Yeah. Four-forty?”

  The voices overlay one another, cut into each other’s transmissions. She gathered police were already in the dock area. Someone was asking if they could radio all the dhows, order them to turn back. Another man replying most of them didn’t carry radios. Then a voice came through clear and strong.

  “What’s he saying there?” Bob wanted to know.

  She said, slowly, “He says there’s no way they can check all those boats. And anyway, they’ve already sailed.”

  DAN watched the leader come on, fingers tightening on the glasses. It did not slow or alter course. Beside him Hotchkiss said, “Twenty-fives and fifties manned, loaded, and tracking.”

  She sounded collected, and he was glad because he didn’t feel that way himself. This had all the earmarks of a bad situation. He couldn’t keep his attention both on the oncoming dhow and on Horn.

  Nor, he suddenly remembered, did he need to. “XO, take over getting the engines started, take the conn!”

  “This is Commander Hotchkiss, I have the conn!”

  A chorus of acknowledgments from helm, quartermasters, boatswain’s mates, officers. As it died, the talker said, “Main control requests permission to start main engines.”

  Hotchkiss, crisply: “Start them ASAP. Verify ITC at ‘stop.’”

  “ITC verified at ‘stop.’ Engine room reports engines started, ready to respond to all bells.”

  “Very well.”

  “Rudder test complete: I have rudder control from the bridge. Bring in the anchor, Captain?”

  Dan nodded. As desperately as he wanted to be under way, to have at least the option of choosing where an oncoming boat hit him, he hadn’t dared to before he was sure he had power. Being adrift and out of control, possibly on fire, after an explosion close aboard could be much worse than being hit at anchor. He lifted his glasses again, returning his sight to where his attention had never left, the oncoming boat.

  Which now, a bare hundred yards short of the waiting RHIB, suddenly put its rudder over. It heeled, tracking around, and steadied on course for the channel entrance, leaving a patch of whirling foam where it had turned.

  He eased air out. So that wasn’t it… then, almost immediately, held the next breath in his throat.

  A second dhow had appeared behind it, replacing the first as if popped out of the same mold, like some hellish video game that kept feeding him the same image. The same upswept bow and stern and enclosed pilothouse. The only difference was a blue hull this time. Men stood on the deck, watching him curiously.

  He focused, trying to get faces, expressions. If these were fanatical self-immolators, suicide bombers, wouldn’t they be overjoyed on the long-awaited day of martyrdom? The beard
ed visages he scanned looked more like underfed toilers on their way to another exhausting day in the broiling sun. No jolly baseball-hatted guys with coolers of beer here, the kind of fishermen you passed in the channel out of Pascagoula or San Diego. Their clothes were ragged and dirty, their “turbans” rags wrapped around their heads.

  Hotchkiss, at his side. “We’re under way. Shall I head for the channel exit?”

  “No! Back and fill. Just stand fast. Be alert for wind drift and don’t get any closer to the shoals.”

  “Aye, aye.”

  “Have you got somebody working the radios?”

  He meant, to their tactical superiors, the only ones, according to the rules of engagement, who could authorize him to fire on suspicion of attack. Of course, any ship had the right to fire in self-defense. But in U.S. usage, that meant returning rounds once the other side had started the firefight.

  In its simplest terms, and as he well knew after their experiences in the Red Sea, ROE interpretation was anything but simple. Horn couldn’t fire, in the absence of orders from her tactical superior, until a hostile act had been initiated. But what was a “hostile act”? How was making a run with an explosive-laden boat, steered by volunteers, different from launching a torpedo guided by an electronic guidance system?

  He knew the answer, and it was unforgiving. Not an eye for an eye, but an even crueler resolution. An eye before he was mutilated himself; a tooth, before his own was knocked out; a life, before his own was taken.

  Hotchkiss said, “I’ve got McCall on the net, trying to get somebody who’s willing to make a decision.”

  “Carry on then. And keep an eye on the bow, the wind’s pushing it around.”

  She said aye, aye, and put the port engine ahead. Giving him time to think next about exactly what he was going to do if one of those dhows marching out, a long line of them visible now behind the first two, did sheer out. Putting rounds into a suicide boat, especially the explosive chain-gun shells, might well set off whatever charge it carried. Explosives, the calls had warned, but not what type, or how much.

  He discarded that problem with the realization that whatever the charge might be, it’d be better to have it go off a hundred yards away than alongside.

  Because an explosion alongside could blow the hull plates in. He had to consider Horn’s own cargo, too—Tomahawk boosters, warheads, a magazine full of five-inch shells. If he had a choice, maybe take the explosion aft… It’d blow in the engine spaces, most likely sink them, but at least the magazines wouldn’t go off.

  He hoped. If they did, the navy’d be writing a lot of letters to dependents.

  Fear was moving out now toward Faith, which bobbed inboard of the widening knuckle where the first dhow had turned. Where the second now approached, seemed to hesitate, then turned as well. Following in its wake, it, too, headed for the hazy, steadily brightening Gulf.

  He couldn’t just sit here, waiting for the one boat filled with desperate men and high explosive to putt-putt closer, judge their distance, and then, at their leisure and at close range, make their move. There just wasn’t enough reaction time. He had to know sooner. He clicked his channel selector to the boat frequency.

  MARCHETTI was on the radio when the word came over to move on up the line. He saw instantly what the skipper was trying to do. Fear was coming out to take their place as goalie. He was sending Faith up toward the inner harbor. It would put them at risk, but also push the moment of target identification away from the ship. Which hovered now, stack venting a burble of gas, guns still pointed in his direction. He wondered why they didn’t launch the helo, then decided since he was the man on the spot, he’d better stop second-guessing and get his ass in gear. “They want us to head on up this line and check out each dhow as we go by,” he told Cassidy

  The boat officer hesitated. “Then what? If we find it?”

  “I guess then we try to stop them.”

  The ensign looked doubtful, but nodded. Marchetti told the coxswain, “Goose her, Coxie. About ten knots, but slow way down as we pass each one.”

  The dual Johnsons were revving when Cassidy said, “And how about, when we get to that gap in the seawall, where they’re coming out, we park ourselves there and cork the rest of them in the harbor? Till the local cops can check them out?”

  “Now you’re thinking, sir.” It was good to see an officer using his head. Maybe he wasn’t wasting his time with him. Then he noticed the rounded buttocks of one of the troops, and his eye puzzled for a second before he remembered: she was here, too. Well, fuck her … from what he was hearing in the goat locker, everybody else had … Who’d had the bright idea to put fucking girls on fucking ships anyway. What a boneheaded, melonheaded concept.

  “Listen up, Golds. We’re gonna run up this line of dinky dhows and check ’em out close range. Eye contact. Look ’em over good. See anything suspicious, weapons, people hiding, we’ll haul them over and board. The first hostile move, shoot ’em. Capisce? You see a weapon, you shoot first.”

  The coxswain twisted the wheel, the engines roared, the boat rocked as the wake from dhow number two hit it. Three was coming on, something vaguely cowlike about it as it plodded on its day’s routine. Shit, he didn’t think ragheads even ate fish. Goat and rice, but not fish. There sure were a lot of boats … He pushed speculation away as the coxswain steered in, in, till it looked like they were going to ram the bitch head-on. The oncoming prow wavered, then steadied, obviously deciding to let the smaller RHIB do the dancing. He grabbed the sailor’s shoulder. “Don’t fucking run us under his bow, Coxie.”

  “Spitting distance off his starboard side. That close enough?”

  “Okay, but no fucking closer, okay?” He pulled sweat off his eyes with his sleeve. The sunlight was burning, bouncing off the flat harbor water. Christ, he should have brought grenades. No, you didn’t want to drop a grenade into a boat full of explosive. Pistol and shotgun, hope you cut them down before they got to whatever they used for a trigger. The hull, this one the dull red again, grew, became an iron wall stained with what looked like decades of fish guts and scrapes from the dangling gear. What were those poles for? He blinked sweat away again, cradling the Mossberg in the crook of his arm.

  Faith roared slowly closer to the oncoming fisherman, then, throttling back as its bow came abreast, passed it so close aboard spray coned up between the passing hulls and soaked everyone in the RHIB. Arabs yelled angrily down at them. They ignored them, swept past. The coxswain glanced over with a question in his eyes. Marchetti shook his head, pointed ahead. Three boats yet till they reached the seawall. This next looked different. Somehow… a dark green hull, white trim, it looked better cared for than the others. He yelled to Cas-sidy, “This guy’s on a better budget.”

  “Must catch more fish.”

  “Or just be new,” Snack Cake yelled from where he swayed, one arm hooked around a grip rail, other hand clenching the loaded M-14. The flash suppressor swayed over the sea.

  The green dhow went by. Marchetti saw nothing suspicious other than the new paint job, the new-looking gear. The ragheads didn’t spend much on their clothes, that was clear. He realized he could smell each boat as it went by, a rancid odor like the cod liver oil capsules he’d had to take when he was a kid. He’d cut one open once and the same stink had welled up.

  The next dhow was red again. Must have had a special on red paint. Or else they just slapped primer on and didn’t bother with the finish coat. He wondered if he should be putting guys aboard each one as it went by, check them out belowdecks, then get off when they got to Fear. No. He didn’t have enough men for that, and the following boats would just sheer out around the one he stopped and crank on by.

  Red hull checked out, bearded dudes gaping at them as they purred past, passed the smell check, too.

  He shook his arms out, realizing his skivvies were sopping with the heat and tension and spray from going right under the boats’ counters. Their props kicked up a shower at the stern that douched
them as they went by. It felt cool, good. Not so hot getting saltwater in the small arms, but at least his shotgun was marinized. He forced his attention back on the next boat. He had to stay sharp. The guys were depending on him.

  “Almost there,” Cassidy yelled.

  Yeah, they were nearly to the seawall. Waves broke on the tumbled rocks. Another dhow percolated by. He returned the captain’s wave, older guy with a gray beard and a cleaner shirt than the rest, with a curt nod.

  The throbbing beat of a chopper. An insectile pinpoint coming in from cityward. Not the ship’s. Probably the local cops. He twisted his head, made sure the flag was visible on their stern. He didn’t want to get taken for the bad guy.

  Low decks, scraggly messes of lines, yeah, there were some nets, this boat had a lower freeboard, he just wasn’t seeing them before. These guys were scowling back but he didn’t think scowls counted. The real bad guys would probably have shit-eating grins. He waved them on, and suddenly they were shit in the middle of the channel entrance, and now he could see them all, ay, caramba, dozens of ’em backing and maneuvering, circling, coming for him. The whole fucking fleet was on its way out. Cassidy looked at him, that questioning, open-eyed “hey, what now?” look you got used to from young zeroes. Mar-chetti yelled, “Coxie, put her broadside and hold her there. Right across the exit. We’re the cork, got it?”

  Only it didn’t work out quite that way.

  THE Chevy skidded to a halt, just missing a spike barrier the Bahrai-nis had set up, apparently to protect their own operations from truck bombs. Nice work, she thought… except they could have waited for us. The doors slammed open, and the agents were out, guns carefully not drawn. They jogged toward the harbor, holding up their shields and the local IDs General Bucheery had ordered they be issued. They came out on the waterfront, and she found herself face to face with General Gough. Who saluted with the same mix of lighthearted condescension and ironic disdain he always seemed to affect with her. “Sister Aisha. Sabaah el-khair. Thanks be to God, you are well and with us.”