Hostile Contact

by Gordon Kent

  “If we’re a go with Christmas?”

  “Then watch your cats and keep them away from the action if you have to.”

  “Without any shooting, of course.” Brian hadn’t spoken until now. He seemed a quiet man.

  “Exactly,” said Dukas.

  “What if he agrees to a second meeting?” Triffler leaned forward.

  “That meeting will be down at the border between Tanzania and Kenya.” Dukas pointed to an empty spot on the map. “Lake Magadi. Here’s the airstrip where Alan will land the plane. We meet at the border. Both sides will have to be on foot. We talk, and he comes with us, or not. There’s some cover, big hills, but mostly a flat, rubble-filled plain with the lake in the distance. Not much high ground, either. We’ll cover that later, but I thought you’d all like to see where we’re going. If it works, and he comes across at Magadi, we’ll fly him to the coast and move him to the Jefferson.”

  “You’d rather have him on the Jefferson than at the embassy?” Alan sensed that Mike didn’t see any real chance of getting his man at the Safir and was pinning his hopes on the second meeting.

  “If we take him to the embassy, chances are really strong we’ll lose him immediately to the Agency. I can take that. We all work for the same country. But this time, it’s my case, and I want to—” Dukas looked off for a moment, out the curtained window over the dark city.

  “Nobody has ever induced the defection of a Chinese intel officer. Not ever. We can do this, folks. And if we get some luck, we will. I suppose it’s just team pride that makes me want to do it all Navy, but every time we blink, somebody over at the Crystal Palace seems to still be in love with George Shreed, so I’m keeping this our show till the very end.”

  “Where’s the plane coming from?” Alan asked.

  “You have to go rent it tomorrow morning. We have it set up at the airport. Ordinarily it comes with a pilot. We’ve paid a sizable retainer to get it without.”

  “I didn’t bring my license.”

  “Can you fly a Cessna 186?”

  “Sure. Should I?”

  Mike and Alan stared at each other. Alan owed Mike plenty, both good and bad. He nodded.

  Dukas went on. “If we’re going to Magadi, you and Triffler pick up the plane and check it out day after tomorrow. You fly down, get a sense of the area, come back by car, and spend the night here.”

  Alan nodded again. The boat was getting farther away. Dukas went on. “I’ll need a Jefferson bird to land somewhere and take Lao and me out to the boat. That’s how I see it now. I’ve already got the CNO, the admiral, and the air wing on board. Plane’ll be an S-3—only aircraft big enough to carry us. Worst case, there’s no bird and we take Lao back to the embassy.”

  “And Harry?” Alan was looking at the map, looking at the hundred kilometers of emptiness that separated Nairobi from Lake Magadi. To the south, at Dar, Harry would be watching Lao’s family.

  “If we get Lao, we’ll have to take his family. He’ll insist on that. Any defector would. That’s for Harry. It has to be done at the same time as we get Lao, or there’ll be hell to pay. Any questions?”

  “What happens if they start shooting and it all goes to crap?” Margo sounded bored.

  “Don’t shoot back, stay low, and go to the embassy.”

  “That’s it? What about you?”

  “I’ll worry about me. You aren’t a rescue team. I just want to hear, early and often, where Lao is and that he’s on his way. We have to know where his team is to have a prayer at extracting him if it goes that way. Other than that, you guys are wallpaper.”

  Silence followed. He looked around, recognizing that there were hundreds of possible questions, and that no one wanted to ask them. “This was put together fast. The odds are definitely against us, and as time goes by, the odds will get worse. None of this plan will survive contact with the enemy, and then we’ll be thinking on the fly. What can I say? We have a decent chance of doing something great. Get some sleep.”

  There were some murmurs, and some movement, and suddenly it was just Triffler and Alan and Mike.

  “That Margo shouldn’t have a gun,” Triffler said. “She’s liking it too much.”

  “She’s fine,” Alan said. “She former military?”

  Dukas waved Triffler’s worry away. “Treasury. She came from the President’s security detail. She’s used to guns. She’s cool.”

  “You want me to play tomorrow?” Alan was hesitant.

  “Yeah. I’ve got two places for you to watch, one during the day and later when we’re moving to the Safir. They’re both stationary and won’t stretch your fledgling skills.”

  Alan nodded to himself and read Triffler’s troubled look. “I can do it, Dick.”

  “I’m sure you can.”

  “What’s bothering you?”

  “Anytime I’m working with Mike, I spend my time waiting for the disaster.”

  “Hey, Dick, that’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not. That’s why I’m still waiting.”

  29

  Dar es Salaam.

  Harry O’Neill was standing in a small banda, a little house built of brush and mud and grass just a field away from the Laos’ fortified suburban housing development, one of a hundred such dwellings. Most of Harry’s neighbors worked as servants or day laborers in the Chinese-only suburb enclosed in rusting barbed wire and stone only seventy feet away.

  The banda had cost him less than ten dollars, and although his presence was an unavoidable three-day-wonder to the other bandas along the dirt track, Harry expected to be gone before his presence came to the attention of the suburb. He had a poor view of the Laos’ ranch house, but an excellent view of the one entrance to the community. At the gate, a dusty African guard sat in the shade under a corrugated iron shack, opening and closing it for the inhabitants in their polished European cars.

  Alice, one of Harry’s people, was sitting in a Land Rover parked in front of Ngonga’s Auto Motive Repair, a thriving business with a lurid sign. She was on a small rise that allowed her a clear view over the stone wall and the wire, past another house, and into the Laos’ yard. If the repair shop noted that she was an automotive hypochondriac, they didn’t seem to mind; each day, they let her sit in front until late in the day, then repaired whatever complaint she had brought, accepted the payment gravely, and let her go on her way.

  “Contact,” Alice said, her gravelly English voice clear through Harry’s headset. “I have the wife. She’s leaving the house for her car.”

  “Roger,” said Harry. He picked up a cell phone and told his team that Lao’s wife was out the gate, giving his watchers her license plate and the make and model of her car. The Laos had two, and Harry’s watchers already knew them well.

  As his lead watcher called Mrs. Lao on the highway toward town, Harry noted the time on his laptop, took a sip of water, and sent Mike an E-mail to indicate that he was established. Then he went back to watching.

  USS Thomas Jefferson.

  The heat on the O-4 level was overwhelming the air-conditioning of a nuclear aircraft carrier, no mean feat. Almost every man and woman in the admiral’s day cabin was in some stage of the flu, and the combined effects rendered them all listless and silent. Everything seemed faintly damp, because when the air-conditioning came, it came in blasts of chilled air that left condensed water on the surfaces and convinced the flu sufferers that they were in for another bout of fever.

  “Idem one,” said the flag captain through a stopped-up nose. “This black operati—shud.” Sneeze.

  “I’ve got it for action,” said Rafe, trying not to move his head. “If I have an S-3 crew who can fly, they’ll be there. LCDR Craik is supposed to be in Nairobi now. He’ll give us six hours’ warning to launch.”

  “The CNO wants this done. He sent the admiral a very definide message—sage.” Sneeze.

  Rafe nodded. He’d heard the item briefed twice now, and he knew how close to nonoperational the carrier was because of the fl
u. The medical personnel were scrambling to identify it and prepare a shot to prevent the healthy personnel from joining the sick list. It reminded Rafe of an episode from Star Trek.

  “Idem two,” the captain continued. “These damned cigaredde boads. Where are they? We need more ASuW coverage up the coast.” Sneeze.

  “I have two working S-3 crews, mixed from VS-34 and LCDR Craik’s detachment. I’ve got them flying as often as I can, consonant with crew rest. We’re trying to fill the gap with F-18s and F-14s. I’ve got six events today and they’re all focused on the ASuW threat.”

  “Keep theb off the Kenyan coast. If we have anudder dab airspace violation, Kenya’s going to go through the roof.” Sneeze.

  The air wing had continued a string of unlucky, or perhaps ill-judged, near-overflights of the Kenyan coast. Rafe bore the brunt of the flag’s irritation; he’d already punished the offenders. But his temper was fraying, too.

  The flag intel officer dragged himself to the front of the room and put up a computer-generated image showing the last known movements of the five boats that had first been located off Mogadishu. His movements indicated that it was an effort to stand straight and read from his own notes.

  “Office of Naval Intelligence didn’t have much to add, so we’ve been punching pubs from the Tanker War in the eighties to get a grip on the threat. These are fast movers, and LTjg Soleck’s missions reported the boats to be capable of moving between sixty and eighty knots on calm water.”

  “Shouldn’t we move farther off the coast?” asked a staff officer.

  “We have do be here do support the CNO’s direcdive,” droned the flag captain. “We’re as far out as we can ged.”

  “Our escorts will get them if they get out this far,” said another staff officer.

  “Led’s not led it ged to thad, okay?” The flag captain looked around. “I don’ wan those boats gedding near the escort screen. We’ve had two days of calb weather, but there are storbs coming, and if they have the guds to come oud, we’ll have a hard time dracking theb.” Sneeze, sneeze.

  “How the heck are they tracking us?”

  Rafe and the intel officer exchanged glances. The admiral, silent until now and unconsciously holding his head, watched their interchange and waved a hand.

  “What’s on your mind, Rafe?”

  “Al Craik sent us a theory from Seattle. It’s kinda hush-hush, but it fits with the evidence we’ve seen here. We think we might have a Chinese sub on us, passing our location.”

  “And the Chinese are passing it to the cigarette boats?”

  “I didn’t say it was a great theory, sir.” Rafe focused. “Craik said that out on the dark fringes of every service are people who might do this kind of thing, sir. They might pass the info to the Pakistanis, who would have a natural interest in our movements. And then some Pakistani guy who’s a fundamentalist might pass the info to a buddy in the mujahedin.”

  “Sounds like Cold War paranoia. Why would a bunch of ragheads be looking to take on a carrier group? No facts. Okay, watch the damn boats. I suppose we don’t have the crews to mount an ASW effort.”

  “Not and keep our screen on the cigarette-boat problem.”

  “Stay on it. Okay, folks. Drink lots of orange juice and get well. Intel, stay and give me what you know. Let’s get this Nairobi thing done and get out to sea.” The admiral drank off a glass of orange juice as if to emphasize his point and waved his hand. Then he pointed to Rafe.

  “What can those boats do to us?”

  “Pack ’em full of C-4 and one of them could put a hell of a hole in the Jefferson. Take out steering? Maybe get lucky and fry the reactor? I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be pretty.”

  “So six of them could kill us. Right. Draft some expanded rules of engagement for those cigarette boats and put rockets on the S-3s, okay?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  Next morning, the sun rose behind a dark bank of cloud to the east and cast little light, merely paling the gray. Underneath, a fitful pink colored the clouds and made the line moving in even darker. The swell pitched the smaller escorts, and even the mighty carrier moved enough for her more inexperienced crew to turn pale and hurry to the heads.

  On the bridge wing, Captain Rafehausen turned to the flag captain, up too early and deep in his coffee, and said, “Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning.” He was the first to say it.

  But not the last.

  The winds were high on the coast road as the sunrise, gray and dull, swept west ahead of the line of storm. There were breakers on the beaches, and the trees leaned away, seeking shelter on the land. Colonel Lao watched the white-capped ocean, so rare on the east coast of Africa, and thought that the leaden sky was beautiful in all its potent majesty. He stopped his car on the empty road and got out, walked to the edge, and stared at Shimoni Island, just to the east, as the little island bore the first of the storm surge. Then he looked back down the road toward Tanzania, from where he had just come. He was in Kenya, and a six-hour drive from his meeting with Greekgod. His team was well ahead of him. He had time in hand and knew it. He stood in the wind and let it rush over him, thinking how far it had come, and that it came from the east.

  Nairobi.

  Alan slept late and missed the dawn. He rose to a cool, gray day, typical for the Kenya highlands at the onset of winter, and prepared himself for a long day with a hot shower and a long breakfast in the hotel’s café. There was a note under his door in Mike’s spiky writing.

  Harry called 0430L Lao prob. enroute have a great day Mike.

  He was enough into Dukas’s scheme now that it made his heart beat faster for a moment. Then he dressed in shorts, heavy shoes, and a sweater, a choice of clothes appropriate in few places outside the African highlands, and went to do his job. Lao enroute meant that it wasn’t merely an exercise with Dick Triffler.

  He had the easiest role, as befitted the least-trained of Mike’s people. He had two static surveillance points to watch on Mike’s complex and daylong route, and then he had the grandstand seat in the final drama, the high watch-point from the terrace of the Hilton itself. His job would be simple. He had to watch Mike go by the static points and see if anyone else who passed matched his earlier sightings or suspicions called in by the other watchers.

  Alan left the hotel and collected his car and a driver from the stand at the back and tried to brush up on his Swahili while they drove through boulevards to the highway, then out on Ngong Road to the racecourse. He established that the driver’s name was Jim and that he, Alan, didn’t like being called bwana. This was greeted with a deep roar of laughter. Perhaps the man had heard it all before. Alan spent the drive looking at pictures of Jim’s children.

  Alan had been to the racecourse once before and had felt then that it was a bastion for white Kenyans in denial about independence. It had changed in six years, and there were more black Kenyans with money, but the boxes were still white. Alan mixed with the crowd on the benches and watched two races, both enlivened by the occasional cough of a lion in the park, before getting back in his car (the perfect white tourist) and asking his driver to take him to the arboretum. Jim looked puzzled, as if he had never been there, then spoke softly to another driver in Kikuyu. Five minutes later they were flying through a vast sea of bandas on a dirt road connecting the major paved thoroughfares. In the distance, he could see suburbs like patches of fortified prosperity, each surrounded by its own town of slums. His driver probably lived in one of them. At any rate, the man knew his path, and they bounced along the red dirt road, their horn going to keep the way clear of children and animals, until they emerged on Mandera Road, a two-lane highway that had developed two extra lanes in the hard-packed dirt on each side, at least until the first rains came. The arboretum appeared on the right, first gardens and then well-watered trees like an English park.

  “Where we go now, bwana?”

  “Just park, Jim.”

  “Not very fun place, this arboretum. You want the t
our?” He laughed the deep laugh again.

  “I just want to walk around.”

  “Sure.” Hesitant. And then, “Nairobi can be a dangerous place.” Nobody in Africa encouraged whites to walk. It made Alan laugh himself, one of the thousands of details he had forgotten, like the man cooking field mice and the smell of his fire just over by the gate to the arboretum.

  “I’ll be okay. Ni nataka Coca-Cola, okay?”

  “Sure, bwana.”

  “Get one for both of us.”

  “Sure, bwana.”

  Alan walked away from the car and checked his watch. Fifteen minutes early, thanks to the local knowledge of his driver. Alan had learned in Seattle that early was as bad as late and could lead to all kinds of complexity. Right now, it meant that he had to keep his driver entertained while he dawdled in the parking lot of a set of gardens. He lit a cigarette and watched the sky, then crossed the parking lot and watched the old man cooking the field mice. The man pointed at one of the mice and gestured to Alan, who was touched and revolted by the man’s hospitality. His offer was obvious and generous. Alan smiled and almost bowed, an awkward, formal movement meant to indicate distress and hide distaste.

  Jim came up with their Cokes. “Don’t eat that!”

  I’ve eaten worse and lived, Alan thought, the memory of Zaire suddenly in his nose and eyes like the old man’s fire.

  The old man had a perfect view of the road. Alan went up to him, bolder now, somehow getting back into Africa.

  “Habari, m’zee.”

  The old man nodded and smiled, showing his complete lack of teeth. He might have been sixty or ninety or simply worn down at forty. The boy with him took courage and held out his hand, begging for both of them and protecting his elder from having to beg. Alan gave him some Kenyan shillings and took a mouthful of sweet Coke. The old man’s little fire felt good. There was a dampness in the air that made it seem cold. He looked at his watch. Still eight minutes.