Force Protection

Some stringer, Dukas thought, his reactions flashing past as he switched off the answering machine. Some guy just happened to be there with a camera crew. And then he thought, Nothing just ‘happens,’ and he moved closer, squinting at the set to make the picture clearer, because he was an agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, and if it was a Navy ship there would have to be an investigation. And this was evidence. The scene was frozen while a studio newswoman blathered and a line of type moved across the bottom of the screen: Bomb blast in Africa sinks US ship –

And then the guy with the French accent was back on screen. ‘Jean-Marc Balcon, here on the dock at Kilindini, Kenya, where we have just witnessed this heroic moment by a special-forces agent. Here he comes – An incredible feat – this man climbed a dockside crane and took out a terrorist sniper, armed with only a pistol – Here he comes – out of my way – hey, you –! Hey –’

The camera moved, bouncing as the cameraman pushed forward. The French commentator’s breathing was louder as he started to run. The telephoto lens caught several figures moving toward it along the dock. In the lead, half-trotting, was a tall, slender man in casual clothes, carrying a rifle.

‘Holy shit –!’ Dukas mumbled when he saw the man, and he bent down even closer to the screen.

The hurrying man was heading for the ship. The camera zoomed in. Another figure, back to the camera, ran toward him, and now the camera followed, the shot bouncing, the frame teetering, almost spinning. The newsman with the French accent panted, ‘That is him – that is him –’ and the running figure ahead of the camera half-turned to wave the camera on, and it was clear that it was the newsman, running toward the man who had come down from the crane. The newsman reached out to stop the tall man and somebody body-blocked him out of the way, and his muffled ‘Eh – merde – Hey –!’ came from the TV. The camera, however, kept moving, and it had almost caught the oncoming figure with the rifle when he thrust out an arm, then held up a hand to block the lens. There was a moment when his hand was clear, three whole fingers and the stumps of the two that were gone, and then the screen went black.

‘Holy shit,’ Dukas said, ‘Al Craik!’

He grabbed the telephone and punched the NCIS number up from the memory, and when the duty officer answered he shouted, ‘Dukas, special agent. Now listen good! There’s some shit going down in Kilindini, that’s the harbor for Mombasa, Kenya. Got it? Kenya! I want fifteen minutes with the deputy in –’ he glanced at his watch – ‘half an hour, no bullshit about he’s too busy. Number two, I want to know if we’ve got a ship calling at Mombasa. Get on it.’ He’d seen enough of the crippled vessel to know that it was not a fighting ship but some sort of transport, probably USNS, but still within his responsibility.

He looked back at the television. The anchorwoman was trying to make sense of what they had just seen, but she was stalling while somebody offscreen was no doubt trying to get data from the Navy or the Pentagon.

Somebody else, Dukas knew, would be going down a list of Africa pundits to see who would like to put his or her face on national TV at seven in the morning. In half an hour, they’d have a line on it and a story that, if not accurate, would at least have punch and legs. They’re a hell of a lot faster than we are, he acknowledged. But we get it right. Then they played again the clip of the French-accented stringer and the dock and the hurrying man with three fingers.

‘Al Craik! Jesus. Here we go again,’ he muttered. He had recognized Craik hurrying down the dock, recognized, too, Craik’s maimed left hand. Unconsciously, Dukas rubbed the still-red scar on his collarbone; he had got the wound from the same shooters who had hit Craik’s hand. Here we go again. Do I want to go that way again? Then the telephone rang and he picked it up, and it was the duty officer with the word that USNS Jonathan Harker was scheduled to call in Mombasa as of day before yesterday, leaving tonight, local time.

Here we go again. Do I want to get shot again?

He called his own office, and Leslie picked up on the first ring. When she heard who it was, her voice changed from brisk to tender, and she said, ‘Oh, Mister Dukas,’ in a way that made him wince again. ‘Did you get my call about the –?’

He cut her off. ‘Put a message in the deputy’s box; mark it “urgent”. Here’s the message; take it down and read it back to me when I’m done. “Special Agent Dukas urgently requests assignment to investigation of bombing at Kilindini, Mombasa, Kenya. Important that we move quickly and have a team on-site no later than tomorrow. Dukas will be very unhappy if he is turned down.’ Read it back. Good. You’re doing good, Leslie.’ He didn’t give her time to hero-worship; he hit the fourth number in the phone’s memory and got a house in suburban Houston, where it was only five a.m.

‘Hey, Rose, wake up, babe,’ he said, making his voice falsely light, ‘your husband’s on CNN. It looks like I got to go save his buns again.’ He spent two minutes telling Commander Rose Siciliano that her husband was alive and well and on CNN; then he stared at the wall, as people will when they are in the middle of a mess of details and they want a moment of clarity, and then he put his hand back on the telephone and dialed another number at NCIS.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘It’s Dukas. Hey, Marie, check and see if a lieutenant-commander named Alan Craik was issued an international cell phone, will you? He was doing a favor for us and the FAA, checking out security in Nairobi, Kenya. I want to know if he got a phone and, if so, what the number is. Can you do that? You’re a sweetheart. I love you. No, it’s real love – Romeo and Juliet stuff. It may last, oh, until lunch.’ He made a big, smacking kiss noise.

On his television screen, Al Craik shot the sniper for the fifteenth time.

USS Thomas Jefferson.

Jack Geelin, Marine captain of the Jefferson’s thirty-man detachment, had a message thrust into his hand in the p’way as he made his way forward toward the flag deck. ‘On the double, Jack – Captain Beluscio wants you there ten minutes ago.’

‘What the hell –?’

‘Read it!’ The lieutenant-commander was already hurrying down toward frame 133 and the intel center. Geelin broke into a trot, trying to read as he went, dodging people hurrying the other way. Three sailors had flattened themselves against the bulkhead to let this explosion of activity go past. Whatever it is, it’ll be all over the boat in three minutes, Geelin thought. He managed to make out words of the message: Mombasa harbor…USNS ship…possible terrorist…immediate help being requested for…

He ducked into the next doorway and grabbed a phone. ‘Gunny! Captain Geelin! Roust ‘em out – full combat gear, on the double! Yeah, the whole goddam detachment – I want ‘em on the deck, ready to go ASAP – move ‘em! –’

One Mile from USS Thomas Jefferson.

LCDR Paul Stevens brought the S-3 to eight hundred feet as if he was parking it there and glanced down and around. Soleck, despite having his own tasks for the landing, was able to watch him, admiring the man’s competence despite himself. Stevens was so experienced, so good, that what to Soleck was thought and work was to Stevens a set of habits, yet habits that had not grown tired: Stevens seemed always ready for the unexpected in the flight – another aircraft too close, a change of wind, a turning of the CV. Always bad-tempered, he actually seemed calmer in emergencies.

Now, Stevens rattled through the landing checks, Soleck hardly able to keep up with his responses. The wonder of it was that Stevens was actually checking the stuff that he seemed to be hurrying through.

‘Fuel –’

‘Right tank uncertain –’ Soleck started to say.

‘Eight thousand,’ Stevens said, and went into the break. ‘Going dirty,’ he muttered, hitting slats and flaps, and the big, fat aircraft slowed as if it had been grabbed by the tail. Around it came, settling into the approach as steady as a kite towed behind the CV, losing altitude and speed and touching down to catch the two wire. Soleck thought how it must look on the Plat camera, how the LSO would rate it – another okay – and all the guys in the ready rooms saying, Nice job. Jeez, that guy can fly. ‘Nice landing,’ he said.

Stevens watched the yellow-shirt below him as they rolled to a stop. ‘Hey, coming from you, that means a lot to me.’

Three minutes later, loaded with helmet bag and kneepads and MARI tapes, Soleck was heading over the nonskid for the catwalk and a slider.

Why does Stevens have to be such a prick? he was thinking.

To his surprise, Stevens was waiting for him at the hatch. ‘Been thinking about your wetting-down party,’ he said. ‘Just buy everybody a beer.’ And went into the light lock without holding the door for the over-burdened Soleck.

Mombasa.

‘We need goddam muscle!’ Alan shouted into his cell phone.

‘Get us some cover, for God’s sake!’ He had managed to raise LantFleet intel in Norfolk – a number he knew by heart – on his new, supposedly international, cell phone, but the signal was weak and the reception spotty. On the other end, a confused duty chief was trying to figure out why somebody was shouting at him from somewhere in Africa.

‘Sir, this isn’t a secure line –’

‘Fuck security! We’re dying here!’

‘Sir, I got no authority.’ Over the satellite, it came through as Sir – got – o – auth – ty.

‘Chief, pass the goddam message, will you? Mombasa, Kenya; USNS Harker, hit by an explosion and under fire, I have a Navy admiral and an NCIS special agent missing –’

‘There’s ships in your area, sir –’

‘Chief, our comm is down to one mayday frequency! Pass the fucking word for us, will you!’

‘I can notify Ops –’ I ca – tify – ps.

‘And then call the naval attaché in Nairobi; he’s got to get us some onshore support here – cops, the army, whatever – we’re pinned –’

‘Choppers and Marines, sounds like what you need.’

‘Choppers’re just more targets until we can secure a perimeter! Chief, we’re a decoy – we’re helpless, we draw in choppers, they shoot them down. No choppers yet!’

Then he really started to break up: ‘You telling me the – sage – to – there, sir? Sir – me get – straight –’

At that point, his voice faded and the line began to crackle. Alan shouted, ‘You’re breaking up!’ and he heard incoherent babble from the other end. He punched the phone off, watching the battery signal flash at him. How much time left?

He looked at the Harker’s radio man. ‘I’ve gotta have a radio link.’ He threw the cell phone on the tilted desk. It had been shoved into his hand, still in its plastic wrapping, when he had left Norfolk – memory empty, ability to find satellites untested. Now he was concluding it was a piece of crap.

The communications man looked barely out of his teens. He had come through the explosion with a forearm slashed by flying glass, had stayed at his post, put out his calls for help. ‘I’m working on it. Can’t you make a local call someplace?’

Alan thought of local friendly assets. There used to be an air force unit at the airport, but they had been pulled out, and it was their abandoned hangars that his detachment was to use. The British had had a regiment up the coast for decades, but they were gone now, too. He thought of the two Kenyan officers he had fought alongside in Bosnia – what the hell were their names? And where were they now? And how would he reach them? The last thing he wanted to have to depend on was a third-world cell-phone network in the middle of a citywide riot. Would rioters tear down cell-phone towers? he wondered. Why not? As useful as burning cars, wasn’t it?

Suddenly, he said, ‘The Kenyan Navy – Jesus, they’ve got to be here somewhere! There’s got be a Kenyan naval facility at Mombasa!’ He picked up the cell phone and punched in a number that he hoped was right. ‘NCIS, Washington – they can find the Kenyan Navy for us. Shit –!’ He looked around a little wildly; the cell phone wasn’t connecting with a satellite. ‘All this fucking metal –!’ He stared at the communications man. ‘You got any local telephone numbers?’