The Crisis

 

 

THE CRISIS

 

Previous Books by David Poyer

Tales of the Modern Navy

The Weapon

Korea Strait

The Threat

The Command

Black Storm

China Sea

Tomahawk

The Passage

The Circle

The Gulf

The Med

Tiller Galloway

Down to a Sunless Sea

Louisiana Blue

Bahamas Blue

Hatteras Blue

The Civil War at Sea

That Anvil of Our Souls

A Country of Our Own

Fire on the Waters

Hemlock County

Thunder on the Mountain

As the Wolf Loves Winter

Winter in the Heart

The Dead of Winter

Other Novels

The Only Thing to Fear

Stepfather Bank

The Return of Philo T. McGiffin

Star Seed

The Shiloh Project

White Continent

DAVID POYER

ST. MARTIN'S PRESS
New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

 

THE CRISIS
. Copyright © 2009 by David Poyer. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

 

www.stmartins.com

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

 

Poyer, David.

The crisis : a Dan Lenson novel / David Poyer.—1st ed.

     p. cm.

ISBN 978-0-312-54439-3

1. Lenson, Dan (fictitious character)—Fiction. 2. United States.—Navy—officers—Fiction. 3. Special operations (Military science)—United States—Fiction. 4. Africa, North—Fiction. 5. Terrorists—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3566.O978C75 2009

813'.54—dc22

2009023455

 

First Edition: November 2009

 

10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

E
x nihilo nihil fit.
For this book I owe thanks to Steve Biedermann, Harry Black, Joe H. Chaddic, Thane C. Clare, Kimbrew Clayton, P. J. Cook, Jodie Cornell, Cynthia Diggs, Richard H. Enderly, Dave Faught, Suki Forbes, Adam Goldberger, Brian A. Goulding, Chip Harris, David Herndon, Sarah J. Huggins, Michael C. Jordan, Gus Kaminsky, Joan LaBlanc, Marin Larson, Will Lawrence, David Luckett, Leslie Lykins, Hallie Munford, Paul O'Donnell, Katharine Parsons, Steve Ries, and many others who preferred anonymity. Thanks also to Charle Ricci and Carol Vincent of the Eastern Shore Public Library, unendingly patient with my obscure loan requests; Commander, Naval Surface Forces Atlantic; Office of the Chief of Naval Information; the U.S. Special Operations Command; the Spectre Association; the U.S. Navy Parachute Team; and the Library of Virginia. My most grateful thanks to George Witte, editor of long standing; to Sally Richardson and Matt Shear; and to Lenore Hart, my anchor on lee shores and my guiding star when skies are clear. Special thanks on this book to Naia Poyer for her sage advice too.

The specifics of personalities, locations, and procedures in various locales, and the units and theaters of operations described, are employed as the settings and materials of
fiction
, not as reportage of historical events. Some details have been altered to protect classified procedures.

As always, all errors and deficiencies are my own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of all that is bitter for men, cruelest is this: to know so much and to be able to control nothing.

—Herodotus

A
turtle crawled into a hole, it crawled inside of an ostrich's hole.”

The little girl hops from puddle to puddle, crooning to herself. A tin bracelet jingles.

 

Diin god gal, god gorey gal,
Gorey god gal, god diin gal.

 

Mist drifts from gray clouds above the three children in the yard in front of the hut. That morning they ate sorghum porridge sweetened with chopped dates, and their bellies are comfortable.

The roosters crow first, and the dogs bark. Then a low growl grows.

The trucks that come rumbling along the dirt roads between the fields are the biggest things the children have ever seen. Their steel projections snap branches off the young lemon and papaya trees. Their tires crush down the soft moist dirt. A goat runs into the road, baaing loudly. It halts, staring up, and a truck rolls over it without slowing. The soldiers in the truck beds are in dusty green uniforms. They're singing together, shouting out the words.

The family's hut is of hand-patted mud brick. Back of the wattle barn an old cow's tied to a pole buried in the ground. There's a privy with screens of woven branches. The yard faces a field of mangoes, with corn growing behind them.

Ghedi's atop a ladder, pruning one of the mango trees, when he notices the trucks. He doesn't know how old he is, but it's almost time to have a wife found for him. His arms and legs are like a spider's. He's dark, like his father, face narrow around the mouth, but with a wide brow and thoughtful eyes. He slides down the ladder as the soldiers jump down in front of the one house in the village with a sheet metal roof. The old
balabat
bustles out. He bows, then points at the broken branches.

The little girl croons on, oblivious to what's happening beyond her gate. “A turtle crawled into a hole, it crawled inside of an ostrich's hole.”

The soldiers shoot and the
balabat
falls. Ghedi stands rooted, not believing it, though it's happened in other villages, the news passed from mouth to mouth across the land. Other guns pop, distant and trivial across the fields. Engines snort from the other side of the
garad
, from across the canals the ancestors dug when the People first came to this land. Lions are growling all around the horizon, a long rope of lions, drawing tight around the village.

Their mother's scream snaps the children around. “Come in out of the yard. Come inside! This instant!”

His little brother and sister look at Ghedi. He shoulders his pruning hook and shouts, “Come!” The children trail in, eyes wide. Chickens run squawking under their feet. His sister Zeynaab's carrying her doll. His little brother Nabil is naked. He keeps pushing at his runny nose with the back of his wrist. Nabil's cute as a baby goat, but his foot drops when he lifts it so he limps when he walks.

“Huyo, huyo,”
Nabil whimpers. “Mama, mama.”

“Mother, they killed
balabat
. Where's
aabbe
? Where's Father?”

His mother doesn't seem to hear. She's looking toward the fields.

“Where's Father?” Ghedi grips her arm, shakes her.

“Gone. He's gone.”

“What? Where'd he go?”

She doesn't answer. Just stands looking across at the soldiers, at something they're dragging into the field.

Ghedi turns the hook in his hands. “Mother, what shall we do?”

“They told us to go,” she says to herself. “Give up the land and go. But the council wouldn't listen.”

A strange humming comes then, and a moment later the air cracks like a whip but louder. His mother jerks and puts her hands to her face. When she opens them her cheeks are bloody. She looks at her palms, then cups her face again. Part of it's gone. There's blood behind her too, all over the wall of the hut.

“Huyo, huyo,”
Nabil whimpers, clutching her dress where red spots are falling. They rain on his head too. Ghedi slaps his brother's head till he lets go.

Their mother whirls and runs inside. As she moans in there the children look back at the soldiers. The humming drifts above them like angry bees. “Who's taking their honey?” Zeynaab asks. Ghedi pushes her inside the hut, then his brother.

Inside it's dark. Their mother's stumbling about, pulling objects down
from places the children couldn't reach. Something falls and shatters. Fragments spin in the dust. He recognizes them. A white bowl with blue birds and rabbits on it. The children ate from it when they were small, first him, then Zeynaab, then Nabil. It would have been the baby's turn next.

The pieces crunch as their mother steps on them. Her blood patters on the dirt. It makes a red apron down her dress. She wraps
muufo
bread and rice in a cloth and gives it to Zeynaab. She takes off her
xirsi
amulet and knots it around her daughter's wrist. At Ghedi she thrusts a knife and a folded packet of dirty paper. He stares at it, not knowing they had money.

She snatches the baby up from where it lies wrapped by the door. Its hand waves in the air, black where the healer burned it. She thrusts it into Ghedi's arms. “Take care of your brother. Never let them see your sisters. Pray to Allah for those killed that He takes them home to paradise. Those who murder, he will put in baskets and burn alive. Go to your family, they'll always feed you. Go to the
magaada
, the great city, find
Abti
Jama. At the Suuqa Haqaaraba. Now
run.”

“Where is the city?” says Zeynaab, wiping her eyes. “Mama, are you not coming?”

But she's slumping, holding the table with one hand. Melting, like a candle. “Go with your brother,” she whispers. “You children stay together. Always stay together.”

“Why are the soldiers here?”

“The soldiers take it now, but you will take it back. This land is ours. Our blood is in its water.”

“Mama, come with us.”

A screech of metal, so close it sounds as if it's in their yard. Forcing herself up, their mother pushes them out the back. She pushes so roughly Nabil falls. She drags him up and shoves him at Ghedi. Then she sits down, and blood runs down from where her teeth were into the bare ground where the chickens pecked. “Hide in the canal. Bullets will not hit you there. Go to the city. Tell Uncle Jama a man's judged by what he does for his kin. Now go!” she screams, face smaller somehow than they've ever seen it. As if it too is a child's, and she's no older than they.

They look back to see their hut, the
balabat
's, and all the others on fire. The smoke rises black above hills green and golden with groves of lemons and oranges. A bright small red flame rises and hovers before falling again. Shots snap like cattle whips through the leaves of the orchards.

Ghedi's mouth tastes of dust. He left the pruning hook in the hut. How could he do that? He could kill one of the soldiers. He slaps his brother and pushes him along the ditch when he cries and tries to turn back.
“What is it to you? Don't complain. You're not hurt!” he shouts, then lowers his voice as men yell not far away. More bees hum over their heads.