Force Protection

Beluscio hesitated and then, nodding, pulled off the headset and handed it over, as if it was a crown he was passing on. ‘I, uh – you know I’ll back you all the way, Rafe.’

The two men’s hands touched. Rafe took the headset and, putting it on with his right hand, grasped Beluscio’s arm with his left and squeezed.

‘Alan!’

‘Hey, Rafe –’ They were old friends.

‘Fill me in, the short version.’

‘Medics brought up parts of three, maybe four bodies in one bag, all cut up from shrapnel. One was an NCIS female agent who was known to be with the admiral. They found a Navy collar with two stars, same location. I’ve had the bag loaded for transfer to the Jeff so your guys can make a real ID, but – there’s no place left to look, Rafe.’

‘Okay. I’m assuming command of the BG, Al. What’re your orders?’

‘Beluscio ordered us out, including my det – the embassy told him the city’s rioting, something about Islamic fundamentalists – but that’s bullshit, Rafe. The Kenyans –’

‘No time. Answer me one question: you want to stay or fly back?’

‘I’ve got a mission here.’

‘Good. New orders: continue as before, your det to hunker down at Mombasa airport. I’ll send your second bird as soon as Stevens can have the guys ready. Okay, listen up, Al, I gotta go, but I’m depending on you there. You’re the Navy’s point man until you hear otherwise, you hear me? One, I want to know what happened to that ship; two, we want the bastards who did it if it’s a terrorist thing; and three, we want you to protect your people and the ship. Got it?’

‘You authorizing me to investigate?’

Beluscio had handed Rafehausen a quickly scrawled note. He scanned it and said to Alan, ‘NCIS is putting a team together, but that’ll take time. You’re on the spot – make the most of it. I’ll support you every step of the way. For now, hang on there. As far as I’m concerned, you’re in command of the Harker. Can you hack it?’

Alan tried to laugh. ‘I think the Navy’ll say I don’t have the right designator for command at sea.’

‘Yeah, well, you aren’t putting to sea, are you?’

‘It would help if I could contact my det at the airport. We can’t raise them.’

Rafehausen scowled. ‘Neither can we. All we can figure, they don’t have their comm on. We’ll keep trying.’ He glanced at the clock, then at the men and women around him. They were all looking at him, he realized. They knew. ‘Marines are to be attached to your det, under your command. Dispose them as you see fit. What else have you got for defense?’

‘One nine-millimeter handgun and a sniper rifle and some maybe-maybe support from the Kenyan Navy. They saved my ass from a missile attack, Rafe, so if you can send some sort of message of thanks, it’ll help. Right now, they’re back in their bunker. Maybe they’ll come out again to help us if things get bad and I say “please” really nice. But the situation’s iffy.’

Rafehausen made a face, glanced at the clock. ‘We’ll turn the choppers around as fast as we can; one should get back to you by –’ he squinted – ‘maybe 2200 local.’ He looked at Beluscio’s note again. ‘Captain Beluscio has been prepping the gator freighter to send in more support, but it looks like tomorrow before they can get there. Can you hold out?’

He heard Alan give a wry, small laugh. ‘We’ve made it this far.’ He hesitated, then said in a rush, ‘Martin Craw bought it.’

‘Oh, jeez.’ Rafehausen, Alan, and Craw had been in the same aircrew in the Gulf War. ‘We’ll be praying for you, Al.’

Rafe switched off the mike and squared his shoulders. Raising his voice, he said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, we have good reason to believe that Admiral Kessler was killed this morning on a visit to USNS Harker in Mombasa. As senior officer on board, I’m assuming command of the battle group. I’d like to meet at once with Captain Beluscio, Lieutenant-Commander Byng, Commander Nesbitt, and Commander Manfredi.’ He turned to a jg standing with Beluscio – the flag lieutenant’s gopher. He lowered his voice. ‘Dick, contact the chaplain, schedule a memorial service for tomorrow, subject to positive ID of the remains. But first, get ship’s captain on comm and let me speak with him personally, please.’

Going out, he grabbed Beluscio’s arm again. ‘Pete, Metro mumbled something to me about a tropical depression that’s coming the wrong way south of Sri Lanka; get a clarification and see what it means for us, will you?’ He let go and turned to the flag intel officer. ‘Get us a contact at the embassy in Nairobi; I want to be able to reach them twenty-four hours a day. Tell them to get my guy some protection at Kilindini – they need to lean on the Kenyans – tell them I don’t want to have to bring the BG off Mombasa to make the point – okay?’ He grabbed somebody else. ‘Dick, we’re going to have to refuel the gator freighter’s Seahawks for the trip to Mombasa. Here’s how I see it –’

Beluscio, left to follow in his wake, had already fallen back into the role of subordinate. He liked Rafehausen no better but felt a painful gratitude to him, as if, in over his head, he had been rescued by a stronger swimmer.

USNS Jonathan Harker.

Alan handed his comm set to Patel and ran his hand over his sweaty, spiky hair, thinking about Rafe Rafehausen as acting commander of the BG. A hell of a lot better than Beluscio. Far away, fire sirens wailed, and a seabird sailed on the wind above him, swung back as if to look again at the crippled ship, then soared away. A distant gunshot sounded.

Alan’s and Patel’s eyes went to the shoreline. The shot had been a long way away, Alan was thinking – somewhere up in the city, even. He heard a police hooter. He looked at Patel.

‘They won’t get in here again,’ he said more confidently than he felt.

‘I am not worried, sir.’ Patel’s lean head lifted. He looked like a Roman aristocrat. Then his eyes flicked over Alan’s left shoulder and he made a small motion with his head.

‘Sir,’ Alan heard behind him. Geelin, the Marine captain, was standing there, looking truculent. ‘You wanted to see me, sir?’

‘Yeah, thanks – you got my request to post a guard below?’

‘Haven’t got the men, sir. Sorry.’

Alan thought about having called it a ‘request.’ He grinned. ‘Something else has come up. You probably know – it looks like Admiral Kessler is dead. The acting commander of the battle group has ordered me to take command here. You and your Marines are being attached to my det.’ He smiled again.

‘I gonna get that in writing? Sir?’

‘In time, I’m sure you will.’ He smiled for the third time and lowered his voice. ‘Geelin, I need a guard on the space where we think the admiral died so that there can be an evidence chain. Okay?’

‘I’ll have to take somebody off the dock.’

‘Do what you gotta do.’

‘What’re we looking at – Arab mobs?’

‘More like a few real badasses and maybe some street action, demonstrations, like that. This isn’t Palestine, Geelin, and it isn’t Somalia. We’re not at war.’

Geelin looked down at the damage. ‘Somebody is.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s what we’re here to find out. You with me, Geelin?’

‘Call me Jack. I’ll get a man down below – sorry, I didn’t understand before, the way it came to me –’

Alan was starting to speak when Geelin whirled about and leaned over the rail and shouted, ‘What’s that goddam woman doing down there! Bring that woman up here! On the double! On the double –!’

Woman? His thoughts jerked to Laura Sweigert, as if she might still be alive –

Alan looked down at the dock and saw that there was a woman down there. But not Laura. Foreshortened by the angle from the bridge, she still looked too tall, too pale, too – what? Sort of limp, as if her bones were made of something softer, like plastic. His respect for Geelin went up: he had never known anybody before who had eyes in the back of his head.

A Marine began half-dragging, half-coaxing the woman up the ladder.

She was white, red-haired, a little overweight, and she was, surprisingly, laughing her ass off.

She raised one white arm and reached across her own head to pull some hair out of her eyes. ‘Hi!’ she said.

Geelin was all but gritting his teeth. He thrust his helmeted head at hers, ‘What the hell are you doing inside a goddam military perimeter –?’

Alan put out a hand. ‘Hey, hey –’