The Crisis (15 page)

“Well, maybe not in seconds, One. We can go to flank emergency and get to you in about eight, ten minutes, though. Just pass the word. Over.”

“He's got his helm over,” Kaulukukui murmured. “Coming alongside, starboard side.”

“Good, he won't see the RHIB.”

“We may need that fucker.”

Teddy didn't answer. He was studying the faces on the bridge opposite as it closed. The other ship had tires over the side for fenders. Not many crew on deck, three or four, moping around in that half-assed way you got around noon when it was this hot. No weapons in sight. Good.

Then other men filed out of a little after-structure stretched with canvas like a tent, and he sucked breath. Four, five, six . . . eight. Each on one end of a wooden box like the ones, empty now, down in the hold.

All gun-heavy with AKs and PKMs, the sniper variant. The men carrying them weren't black. Arabs or Iranians. Middle Eastern rather than African.

Weapons for qat. Nobody had mentioned this in the team's predeployment brief. Smuggling, yeah. Cigarettes. Booze. Somali emigrants. But not this.

The coaster was drifting in, the last few feet vanishing, the coaster's side five, eight feet higher than the dhow's low midships. He pulled the VHF over. Murmured, “Alleycat: Alleycat One. Target's alongside. Guys on deck with AKs, carrying crates of RPGs. I ah, I think we need that backup now.”

As he let up on the button a long blast of airhorn ripped out above their heads. He snapped around to see the skipper, baring rotten incisors at them, knuckles white on the horn lever.

Kaulukukui loomed over him from behind. Only for a second. Then the captain was slumping again, head twisted over his shoulder, like an owl's.

Teddy cracked the door to see not what he expected, guys taking cover. Somebody'd taught these dudes to take the fight to the enemy too, because half of them had dropped their crates and were rushing to the side.

As he watched, from above deck level and twenty yards away, the two ships drifted together. Heavy worn rubber tires compressed with a squirt of reddish dust. A jar shivered though steel. And with a concerted yell four shooters from the other ship jumped the five feet down to the dhow's deck and split up. Ice touched Teddy's spine as he realized each carried his weapon
the exact same way
. They weren't facing ragtag crewmen, but something more dangerous.

“Fuck,” he was muttering, when the first burst cracked out, followed by the booms of shotguns. One of the boarders looked startled. He straightened, then deflated like a cheap balloon.

Score one for Lazaresky. Unfortunately, the men left on the coaster had dropped to their bellies and were starting to shoot too. Within seconds a truly impressive volume of fire was clattering across the deck, most focused on a little sternhouse Teddy assumed was where Cooper had taken his guys.

“We got to take the pressure off Crabmeat and Skunk,” Sumo shouted. Teddy nodded, trying to figure out how. If he went out on the wing he'd be exposed. There was no splinter shield or bulwark. But he'd have a rest on the life rail, and a perfect enfilade down the line of prone shooters below. He went to the bone mike. “Crabmeat, y'there?”

No answer. Not good, but he couldn't wait. Time to earn that combat-zone pay. He eased back the bolt to check the load, checked that the rear sight had the biggest aperture dialed in, wiggled the front sight to make sure it was secure, loosened the second mag in the pouch, and gestured
covering fire
to Kaulukukui.

Rolling out the door, he took a knee, thumbed the selector to semiautomatic, and put the front sight on the closest shooter.

 

HE got three rounds off, all head shots, before they realized they were being fired on from above. The third he called low, the guy was still kicking on the deck, but he'd let go his rifle and Teddy didn't think he needed another tap. Especially since the others were jerking their heads around, yelling, reorienting on him. He double-tapped a torso shot and the target went limp. But by then the last guy was up in a crouch, aiming at him, and he was late, late . . . time went gluey as he waited for the flash and impact of the bullet . . . then Kaulukukui's MP barked from the other side of the bridge and the guy wavered and went down.

Teddy whipped left, covering the pilothouse opposite, and shot a man in a white shirt with blue piping who was trying to quick-draw a pistol out of a holster. The guy behind him, eyes huge, stuck his hands into the air. Teddy shot him too, two rounds center chest, just so he wouldn't get any ideas.

He swiveled right again, thumbed to full auto, and walked a burst up the sprawled bodies till the mag went dry. He stepped back into the wheelhouse and speed-reloaded without taking his eyes off the other deck. He pulled the mag and checked that the top round had fed. “Clear,” he yelled.

“Going aft,” Sumo shouted from the far side.

They went down port and starboard simultaneously, running the short ladders from the wheelhouse to the deck as shotgun blasts boomed below. Teddy ran in a crouch, reminding himself Cooper and the two RHIB crewmen were back here too, he not only had to not shoot them but to make sure any misses on the bad guys wouldn't hit them. Absolute control of every round was the only way to prevent blue on blue aboard ship. He hoped the coxswain and bowhook had the same idea.

He rounded the corner to run full tilt into a wiry little guy coming the other way. Their weapons clattered together and the other's fired. Teddy smelled burnt powder and sweat and tobacco. He felt a jerk on his sling and brought his MP around into the guy's face and pulled the trigger.

Not even the dead click of a pin on a dud round. The trigger didn't even move as he stared into the guy's eyes. Who apparently had some problem with his AK as well, because he suddenly gave up trying to shoot and
backed up a step, jerking at the front of it. The glint of a short bayonet unfolding.

Ah, fuck, Teddy's mind said.

He started to go for his sidearm, then remembered: he hadn't brought one. He'd always thought carrying another full mag for the HK made more sense. But just now, looking down at the dished-out white-metal scar where the bullet had struck the receiver, he had to admit: maybe not the best idea he'd ever had.

The guy charged. Teddy did too, trying for a hand on the barrel so he could twist it up and go under with the knife already in his hand. Funny, he hadn't thought of drawing it, but there it was. But he missed his grip and the bayonet with the guy's weight behind it drove right into his solar plexus.

A textbook bayonet attack, but he felt the point snap as it hit the trauma plate in the vest at the same moment the sharper-than-a-razor thin-bladed Glock filleted up the inside of the guy's thigh. It snicked through the femoral and he curved the blade left, heard it ripping through cloth and flesh, felt another light resistance as the guy's eyes widened. His lips drew back and he screamed. The blade grated into the pubic bone.

Out and in again, slicing upward. His boy had forgotten about bayoneting anybody—he just wanted to get away. But Teddy had his head with his left hand, pulling him in, tight sweaty embrace, grappling, the guy clawing to fight free. He kept forcing the blade up, the guy going to tiptoe, trying to rise off his blade like a worm off the hook you were threading into its pith. But Teddy had his arm under it now, angling the point upward, trying for the heart or the big arteries beneath. Then gave a final twist and pulled it out.

He shoved with all his strength and the guy stumbled back, opened up like a chicken, everything falling out, till his heels hit the edge of a coaming and he toppled backward.

“You won't be much good to those forty virgins now,” Teddy told him, wiping the Glock on his trousers and stooping for the Kalashnikov. He cleared the jam as two more booms from inside the deckhouse blew out a window and sent another boarder over the side.

Then it was over and his ears were ringing and his whole front was bloody, but he kept going. It was when you thought it was over that you made sure it was over. He tested each body with the Glock and found one wounded man who'd do for intel. Sumo was working the coaster's deck. As they passed, Teddy going aft, Kaulukukui forward, the Hawaiian said, “Skunk caught one.”

“Bad?”

“He's not in good shape.”

“Fuck. Fuck.”

“That was why he wasn't answering up on the bone.”

“Fuck. Boat crew?”

“Lazaresky got nicked. Took half his ear off. Got the guy who shot him, though. Orange Hat. Even did a combat reload on the Mossberg.”

“These assholes fought. We had to kill 'em all.”

“I thought ragheads didn't do that.”

Teddy squinted up at him. The combat chill was gone and he felt angry now. Dooley, hard down. A perfectly good guy. “Oh, they do, Sumo. You get the right ones, they do.”

“AHOY BOAT ONE.”

He waved acknowledgment as
Shamal
came alongside, fenders out. Both 25mms were pointed at him, and three other MGs from the bridge and afterdeck. “Eight minutes,” Sumo said, looking at his watch. “Seemed like longer.”

The PC came alongside with a bump and lurch. Geller and Lenson stood on the port wing in armor vests and helmets. They looked down with startled expressions.

Teddy became aware that several of the sailors topside were aiming cameras. And that he was dripping with blood, surrounded by motionless bodies and empty brass, brandishing a bayoneted AK. He lowered it, snapped the safety on, and considered. Then shouted up, “You ever take a really good shit, and look down in the toilet and say, Hey! Good job?”

Their shocked stares told him he'd said exactly the right thing. The SEAL thing. “Tell them, put those fucking cameras away!” he added. “Right now!”

“NOW ON USS
SHAMAL
: PHOTOGRAPHY IS SECURED TOPSIDE. PHOTOGRAPHY IS SECURED TOPSIDE.”

“Guys got any cold water?”

“I'll send a case with the boarding party,” Geller shouted down. “All secure?”

“Not sure yet. Send the medic. Dooley's hurt. Send everybody armed, might be more below.”

“Enemy casualties?”

“Saved one to interrogate. You bet.”

Geller and Lenson exchanged looks. “What?” Teddy said.

“We need you back aboard ASAP,” Lenson said. “We'll send the corpsman for Dooley. Leave the bodies aboard for whoever follows up this, uh, event. Just got a message.”

“What'd it say?” Teddy asked. Saw him frown, like he should have said, “sir,” and nearly laughed in his face. Blackshoes. You hadda love 'em.

“Proceed to MODLOC off Ashaara City.”

“Off Asshair City? What for?”

Lenson glanced into the pilothouse as a radio crackled. “The embassy's surrounded and under attack. Centcom's considering how to evacuate it. They want us inshore as soon as possible. I need to go over some things with you. As soon as you get cleaned up.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOOD

D
AN stepped over the knee-knocker, still shaky from a violent helicopter flight. The Combined Arms Coordination Center was enormous compared to the one he'd once worked in aboard USS
Guam,
as a lowly lieutenant (jg). Its tiered seats sloped down to electronic displays instead of enlisted men wielding grease pencils on Plexiglas. Before them were twin brown-leather-covered reclining chairs, for the Navy overall commander of landing operations and the Marine commander of the troops once ashore. The Marine chair was empty, the Navy one occupied.

By Commodore Goya, who looked up from a notebook computer locked between upthrust knees. “Lenson. How your men doing? The wounded?”

How had they become “his”? “Two are minor, torn ear and a defensive cut on the hand. The other's serious, but the surgeon says he'll make it.”

“You left
Shamal
off Ashaara City?”

“Yes sir. Dr. Henrickson and I helo'd back.”

“Where is she? Pierside?”

“No sir, but within visual range. Captain Geller's standing off to observe, pending orders. I told him to try to establish comms with the embassy. Serve as a relay, or a backup comm channel. Even VHF or a cell phone would put us ahead of the game.”

“Okay, great. Question. Are you familiar with caps in geeks?”

That was what it sounded like, but Dan heard CAPS—the Crisis Action Planning System—in GCCS—the Global Command and Control System. “Yessir. At the Joint Staff College, then on the NSC staff.”

Goya's eyebrows rose. “You worked at the White House?”

“Yes sir.”

“Done any real-world crisis action planning?”

“The incursion into Syria after the embassy takeover in Cyprus. Arroyo Gold, the strike on Libya. Signal Mirror, in Iraq. Then in the Sit Room, for Eritrea.”

Goya reached above his head. “Mr. Wurtz there? I'd like to see him, if he has a moment.”