The Command

by David Poyer

  “Calling that Alfa X-ray, sir. Range—sixteen thousand, five hundred yards. Bearing one-five-zero.”

  “Distance to the boundary of international sea?”

  “Five miles, sir, more or less.”

  He hoped he hadn’t put this off too long. But even if he had to go in the shithouse after this guy, he was going. He’d claim hot pursuit and let the diplomats fight it out. “And what are we on?”

  “One-three-five, coming up on thirty knots.”

  Dan said very well. He got his binoculars out and braced his elbows, pointing the glasses slightly to starboard of where the bullnose lifted and fell as it romped along. On the bow the gray tapered tube of the five-inch aimed smoothly left, then right, testing the train commands. He remembered when gun mounts had held human beings, beefy sailors straining to lift and slam heavy shells into breeches. Now all was automatic, computerized. Sixteen thousand yards was a long way to see, but he might have something out there. Anyway he wouldn’t have long to wait. At thirty knots, every minute brought Horn a thousand yards closer. A flash from above the horizon. He squinted and made out One-Nine-One, banking, the sunlight reflecting from the shimmering halo of her rotor.

  “Sir, I hold Alfa X-ray altering course to port.”

  “New course?”

  “Not sure yet, sir—seems to be going into a turn—no, wait. He’s coming back now.”

  The talker spoke up, too, confirming that from Combat. Dan rubbed his chin, frowning.

  The helo controller said, “Sir, Blade Slinger requests permission to fire a warning burst.”

  Hotchkiss, looking through her own glasses. “He’s trying to shake off the helo.”

  “Shit, yeah, how are they gonna drop if he starts snaking and weaving?” He was sorry now he’d lagged back. He should have gotten Horn over there first, overawed them with six hundred feet of gray steel, then put Marchetti over. He told the controller, “Permission granted. Put a burst across his bow.”

  THE man who called himself Mahmoud shaded his eyes, looking up at the huge clattering smoking machine that reeled and swayed in the air a hundred yards behind them.

  His men were dressed as simple fishermen. He’d told them to come up on deck at dawn, all except Antar, who had to stay below with the diesel. It had overheated during the night. They’d had to carry water in buckets all night long to keep it running. But it should get them back into Egyptian waters. They could lose themselves until the sardine fishers ventured out again. Then try again, and complete the mission this time.

  But now, this helicopter. He had no idea where it had come from. Only that with each pass it edged closer. He could see the pilots’ faces now. Looking down through the windscreen.

  A door on its side slid back, revealing an open blackness as the aircraft yawed. It banked away, flying out in a wide turn. Then wheeled back crossing ahead of them. A helmeted crewman aimed.

  The clatter of an automatic weapon, and bursts of white foam sprang up in their path.

  Rasheed leaned from behind the wheel. “They want us to stop,” he called uncertainly.

  Stroking his beard, he said softly, “Stop weaving. It only wastes time. Steer south by your compass, and put your throttle full ahead.”

  IN the roaring interior of the helicopter, Marty was still thinking about Cassidy How he’d grown up. How he was probably gonna be all right.

  He didn’t usually think about zeroes much. They only came in four sizes anyway. There were the ones he called brown-asses. They wanted to be your buddy, but never stood up for the troops when it counted. The second kind were the micromanagers. But some of them were teachable, once they figured out you were as smart and committed as they were. Then there were the ROAD scholars. Retired on active duty. A waste of a uniform and a paycheck, but with a little diplomacy you could run the division around them.

  Then there were the real officers. They listened to the chiefs, but they had the conn. Like Captain Lenson. He listened, but he made his own decisions, and they weren’t just what’d make him look good at the next promotion board.

  Thinking about that, Marty remembered how the CO’d told him to put Spider Woman on the team. Listened to what Marty had to say, then given him his marching orders. And goddamn if she wasn’t doing okay … not folded like he’d thought she would … Wasn’t that a kick in the ass?

  He was thinking that over when he heard the door gunner shouting something to the pilot. Then Snack Cake was leaning down. Lifting his cranial to yell in his ear, “Pilot says the sumbitch won’t stop. Wants to know if we can drop on him while he’s under way.”

  “Tell him Gold can do, if he’s not swerving around too much.” But he started to sweat nonetheless. They’d never done this for real. Just practice sessions down the cargo elevator. But, fuck!

  “All right, melonheads. Mister Machete’s going for a walk,” he bawled.

  THE great bird completed its wheel and returned to hover over the wake. He thought it would stay there, as it had before. But this time it kept coming, growing larger, louder, its bulbous body teetering suspended from the whirling disk. Smoke blasted out of its engines. A mist whipped off the sea, brewing over the afterdeck. It was cool and salty. Rasheed cursed from behind the wheel, looking back and up.

  A line dropped, uncoiling, and the end hit the water. Then lifted, water running off it. It hung in a curving arc, shivering in the downblast. Then began moving forward. It dipped into the wake, skimming up a fine thin peeling of spray. Dancing along the wavetops toward them.

  The little man with the lazy eyelid shaded his eyes, looking up. The man in the doorway was pointing the machine gun directly at him. Behind him another reached out and grabbed the line, snapped something to it.

  His eyes went to the gratings beneath Rasheed’s bare feet. There were rifles beneath the floorboards. But the steady eye above the machine gun promised they’d never live to point them. Not these ragtag martyrs, these unemployed losers. They’d be shot down. These marines, military, whatever, would descend and capture the ship. Find what lay waiting in her hold.

  A sadness swept over him, cool as the blowing mist. He wouldn’t retire, or marry, or grow rich. To a devout man, prison was nothing. He could pray, devote himself to Islam. But he’d never been devout, though he’d learned to feign devotion, and face to face with the end, he realized the only thing he’d truly miss and regret. More than the struggle, or the Sheikh, or even service to God. What his heart had truly delighted in was the making of the bombs. The perfection of his deadly expertise. The craftsmanship, and then the bloody harvest.

  This, at the end, was the truth, and he trembled at it and bowed his head.

  Then, beyond the hovering machine, he glimpsed on the horizon a shape that had not been there before.

  He shaded his eyes again, studying it. Still a distance off. But clearly cutting across their path, barring their flight. He studied it for some seconds, watching it gradually close. Until he could make out the numerals only just visible on its side.

  He smiled, suddenly filled with a dawning wonder.

  He knew this ship.

  He recognized its lofty sides and proud towers. Its guns and antennas. The fortresslike power, arrogant and foreign, that had intimidated him when he walked beside it, when he’d stepped aboard.

  The one he’d tried to destroy in Bahrain. Delivered back into his hands, as if by some incredible sorcery.

  And suddenly all was clear. Not by sorcery. By design. Truly, all was written from the opening of time. God Himself was speaking to him, clearly and unmistakably, sinful and imperfect as he was. God alone had delivered the Great Satan into his hands, to strike a blow that would resound across time into Eternity.

  “Abu! They’re coming down!”

  He did not answer the panicked cry. In his own heart had come now and forever the absolute calm of unconditional faith. He said quietly, face lifted to the sun, “Alhamduill’ah.”

  Let it be done, in God’s name.

  MARCHETTI
felt the helo flare out. He snapped the end of the line into the fitting, put his weight on it, then kicked the coil into space. Had to elbow Wilson again, it was so crowded in the compartment he could barely move. He hauled down on the line, testing the shackle. It held. He pulled the descender around on his belt, laid the blue braided line in it, and snapped it shut. Pulled the line forward and back, making sure everything ran free. Cool. Sweet. Good to go. He pushed his legs out the door, pulled the Mossberg around to where he could use it on the way down if he had to. Stand the fuck by, assahollahs.

  “Stand by,” Snack Cake yelled into his ear. Machete barely heard him. Son of a bitch! God! He loved this. He even had a hard on!

  This was the last thought that passed through his brain before, too suddenly even to glimpse the change, the air, the metal around him, and the very atoms of his body evaporated suddenly into incandescent light.

  33

  DAN was looking away when it happened. But even looking away, everything around him, sea, steel, cloth, turned the brightness of midday sun. The starboard lookout screamed, dropping his binoculars and clutching at his eyes. The dreadful, burning light went on and on, like someone had opened the scuttle to hell above the eastern Med.

  His mind didn’t take in what was happening. Instinct drove him across the bridge, slamming into the chart table, to shove Yerega aside and shout into the mike, “Nuclear detonation, brace for shock!” Then diving for the deck.

  Which jolted upward as his body met it, whiplashing him several feet into the air. Dust and paint chips leaped out of the overhead and cable runs to fog the pilothouse. An instant later and all together the windows came in on them with a crack like a bolt of lightning tearing an oak apart. Only it went on and on.

  As the hellish light waned to a reddish glow Horn started going over to port. Clanging reached him through the din, like a boiler factory stood on end and shaken until everything jerked loose. Then the glass crashed down and water came with it, shards and debris raining down on the bridge team as they lay gripping what they’d grabbed for anchor and shelter.

  A long groan, and the ship staggered slowly back upright. She moved in jerks, as if the sea around her hull had turned sticky. She rolled to starboard, then back to port again. As if she’d been punched hard deep in her guts and was trying to feel how hurt she was.

  Through the ringing afterblast penetrated dozens of alarms, beeping and buzzing and sirening. And with them, screams.

  Dan picked himself up carefully, checking first legs, then arms, then his face. His hands came away unbloodied, except for cuts on his forearm. But there was something wrong with his neck. He stood rubbing it as the others hoisted themselves to their feet, looking around. Hotchkiss was white-faced, slipping and sliding on shattered plastic and pubs and smashed binocular lenses. She got on the phone to Central, asking for damage reports while Dan felt his way from the nav table to the Furuno, then to the helm console, then out onto the wing.

  A queer beige fog hung close above the waves. The junior officer of the deck was hugging the starboard lookout, who still had his hands to his face. When he lifted one, Dan saw the swift reddening of a second-degree burn, an eye that stared but did not seem to see. “I was looking at it,” the man groaned.

  “We’ll get you below to the doc. You’ll probably start to see again in a few minutes,” Dan said. But knowing if he’d focused that flash through the glasses, his retinas were probably burned out.

  God! What had that been? Could it have been nuclear? He’d seen shells go off at close range, bombs, but never anything like that. He took the binoculars and swept the sea where the trawler had been seconds before. A tan rain was falling. Waves rocked crazily, radiating from an inchoate jumble of boiling whitecaps. A column of dirty-looking vapor towered above the spot, rising from a misty base. No sign of Blade Slinger or the fishing vessel at all.

  He turned, and looked the length of his ship.

  Horn had been blasted broadside, and the radar-absorbing tiles on the starboard side were peeling like roasted, sloughing skin. All her antennas were gone, snapped off or dangling by swaying lengths of cable. Her life rafts, davits, and lifeline stanchions were swept clear. What few were left were bent at strange angles. He didn’t see any windows at all, just holes. The starboard fifties and the twenty-five-millimeter looked unharmed, but their covers were ripped off. Only strings and shreds were left.

  With a sudden horror he realized what the gritty mist he was feeling on his face might be, and what might be filtering into the ship with it. He slammed the door behind him, dogged it hard. Roared at the dazed boatswain, “Set Circle William throughout the ship. Base surge incoming. Commence water washdown.” Circle William would seal every access to exterior air. And they had to start the cleansing spray before it was too late.

  Yet when he peered out again only a few fountains spurted here and there on the forecastle, and none aft of the bridge. Instead of being shriven in cascades of water, Horn lurched and wallowed, scorched and naked, as the murky rain pelted down.

  He clutched the compass stand as the damage reports came in.

  …

  THIS time when the lights went out, Cobie was ready. She knew they’d been at general quarters all night chasing some boats that wouldn’t answer radio calls. She knew they’d fired missiles at the ship but missed and that Horn had sunk them, and now they were tracking a suspicious-looking trawler. The captain had reported all that on the 1MC as it happened. So she wasn’t expecting it when everything slammed around her and the lights went out, when she found herself lying on the gratings with cold water spraying over her. No. But at least she had a clue what was going on.

  So she didn’t waste any time looking around to see what everybody else was doing. She just bolted through the spray coming up through the gratings, through the crackling showers of sparks and the deafening blast of suddenly released steam, hauling ass for the ladder. Only she didn’t get very far, because somebody was lying across it at the top where it came out at the boiler flat. She heaved a sodden body out of the way and squirmed up past it.

  It might be Akhmeed, he’d been heading down to the PLCC flat to get a wrench when the missile, or whatever it was, had gone off. It must have been a hell of an explosion, she realized belatedly. To whip the ship itself back and forth like that. To break pipes and smash valves so they were spraying water and live steam. The hot oily smog was suffocating her. She had to get out.

  But then she stopped, looking back.

  Steam rose in an enclosed space. Climb and die was the rule after the first fifteen seconds. But she couldn’t just leave him. She got the unconscious fireman’s leg, then switched off for one of his arms. But no matter how hard she hauled or how mean she swore, she couldn’t budge him.

  Someone came out of the smoke and spray and blundered into her. Richochet’s whine. She grabbed him, yelling, and at last he got Akhmeed’s other arm. Together they dragged him to the ladder and with a strength she hadn’t ever thought she had, humped him up it, bouncing his knees off the treads.

  When they reached the passageway this time the shouting was louder, the thresh and panic of guys tearing by in the dark faster. She felt her way to the remote station, got her flashlight on the controls, and started isolating, like Helm had showed her. But where was he? She and Richochet had got out, they’d gotten Akhmeed, but she hadn’t seen Mick Helm or the Porn King.

  She hoped they weren’t still down there, scalded or knocked out as the steam displaced all the breathable air. She’d glimpsed white water boiling below as they dragged Akhmeed out. She got on the phone, but it was dead. Of course, the power was out. The sound-powered circuit was working, but so many people were shouting on it she couldn’t get a word in. Faintly in the background she could hear the Wizard yelling for everyone to shut up, but it didn’t do any good. After steering, Aux Two, Main Two were shouting they had steam leaks, flooding; they were evacuating.

  To her horror, she realized it wasn’t just Main One. It wa
s the whole ship.

  Then Helm was there beside her, helping her isolate the space. He must have come up the other way. She felt suddenly better, like everything was in control now. In the beam of a battle lantern she saw he had two guys from the other watch team with him. “Anybody didn’t get out?” was the first thing he asked her.

  “I think Pascual. The rest of us made it out. Akhmeed’s hurt.”

  “Where is he?” Helm shone his light around, as if they’d left him on the deck somewhere.

  “Ricochet took him aft, to Medical.”

  He reached up and hauled down a big red lever she recognized as the main firemain riser. When you did that, you were supposed to get a rush of water out of the firemain. Only nothing came out. There was no pressure. Which meant none of the ship’s six fire pumps was running.

  Which meant they were really, really in deep shit.

  “Grab an OBA and we’ll go in after him. Everything isolated?” He ran his light over the switches she’d thrown. “Good job. Get suited up.”

  The breathing apparatuses were in racks along the port side, with the green curved oxygen-generating canisters that fit in them, plus hard hats and gloves. She got her mask on and pulled the straps as tight as they’d go. Inside the mask the dark seemed darker. The black rubber interior made her feel smothered. It was big for her face, but she thought she had a seal. She seated the canister, pulled the tab, and set the timer. A smoky smell filled the mask. She sucked it in reluctantly. There must have been oxygen in it, though, because although she felt woozy and scared she didn’t pass out.

  A click at her waist. She looked down to see he’d snapped a line on her. Was giving her a thumbs-up. She nodded and returned it, though she was so terrified she could hardly breathe. But she had to see if the Porn King was down there. They’d do the same for her.

  Clambering in the heavy gear, the heavy gloves, the hard hat, she followed Helm through the open hatch.