Читать книгу Force Protection - Gordon Kent, Gordon Kent - Страница 8

Mombasa.

Jean-Marc Balcon had got to the port’s gate before the riot started, and he had scolded and bullied his two-man crew into setting up a camera position where they could cover the event. The cameraman was as cynical as most of his sort, a Serb who had been kicked out of Kosovo and was now bouncing around the world, freelance and usually stoned, and he said that for stock shots of a fucking nigger port, he could put the fucking camera anywhere.

‘The ship,’ Balcon had said, ‘I want good shots of the ship there.’ He had pointed at Pier One and the gray Navy supply ship that floated there.

‘What the hell for?’

‘Because I say so.’ Balcon had sworn to himself for the tenth time that he’d get rid of the Serb as soon as the shoot was over.

Then the dhow had come in and the bomb had gone off, and Balcon had started running with his crew behind him as soon as the rain of debris was over. They couldn’t get really close because of all the crap on the dock, plus a small tanker was on fire and Balcon was afraid it would blow, too, and then shooting had started and the Serb had said he was getting the hell out of there, he’d had enough of this shit in Kosovo, and Balcon, because he needed him, had promised him an extra fifty and had said they could pull back some toward the gate.

And then an incredible guy, whoever he was, had gone up the crane, and Balcon had directed the filming of him as he went out the long arm and jumped – actually jumped a gap between two cranes, twenty meters in the air – then walked up behind the sniper and blasted away with a handgun. Balcon had seen it on the camera’s viewfinder, zoomed in tight, incredible stuff for which he’d do a voice-over the instant they were done. And the shooting had stopped. Balcon was thinking that he’d be famous, getting the credit for this shot, and somebody in the crowd said the guy was CIA, another that he was US Navy, a SEAL or a Marine, and Balcon thought of the man in Sicily saying ‘the fucking US Navy,’ and he made a face. He wouldn’t say it was the US Navy on air; that way, the man in Sicily wouldn’t get enraged at him.

By then, the riot in Old Town had spread, and the street outside the gate was filling. Part of the crowd had been driven through the gates to keep from being mashed; now they milled around Balcon and his little crew, curious as people always are and hoping to get their faces put up on global TV. Balcon paid no attention to them except to push one kid out of the way of the camera lens; he was calculating right then how much he could get for the film and how soon he could get it on a feed. He was walking around the camera, talking on his cell phone to his agency, watching the guy start down from the crane and twice stopping to do a ten-second bit into the camera – silver-blond hair blowing a little in the hot breeze, blue shirt open, safari jacket casual and perfect. Very blue eyes.

‘He’s down,’ somebody said in African-accented English. The crowd pushed around him and moved toward the hell of the dock.

‘Get it, get it!’ Balcon shouted at the Serb. He got in front of the camera and pushed to make a path for it, and now the camera followed, bouncing, almost spinning. Balcon was panting, ‘That is him – that is him –’, and he half-turned to wave the Serb on, pushing his hair into place with one hand and fending off a heavy woman with the other, his microphone hand. Then they were as close as they could get and the people around him were cheering and clapping: the gunman who had gone up the crane had just come out of the cab and was walking toward them along the dock.

‘Eh, Rambo!’ somebody shouted, and the crowd laughed and applauded.

‘Use the fucking telephoto!’ Balcon screamed at the Serb. ‘Zoom in, you moron –! Frame him, for God’s sake – I want just him, not these goddam –’

He switched his microphone on and his voice got crisp. ‘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 –’

Balcon tried to push through the last fringe of the crowd so he could climb up on a truck that had been overturned by the explosion, but somebody pushed back and he stumbled. ‘Eh – merde – Hey –!’ The Serb kept zooming in, kept walking forward, lifting the camera over the heads around him and looking up into the finder, and the heroic CIA specialist, or whoever he was, held up a hand – perhaps a greeting, perhaps an attempt to block his face – and the hand was clear, silhouetted against the rising smoke, three-fingered, maimed.

Then there was shooting from the street behind them and everybody scattered.

Mombasa.

Three General Service Unit trucks came down Moi Avenue side by side, herding the people in the street ahead of them like birds. The trucks were moving slowly so that the people could stay ahead, their goal not to run them down but to move them. Even so, a man was run over when he tripped and fell, the driver too excited to notice the bump among the other bumps that the already-dead made; hyper-ventilating, the driver stared wide-eyed through the windscreen, looking for men with guns, looking for the bullet that would shatter the glass and kill him. Like the other drivers, he drove bent over the wheel like a man in pain.

Black smoke was rising from the far end of Moi Avenue. Closer to them, two cars had been pushed into the street and turned over, and men in kanzus and white caps, men in shirtsleeves, men in T-shirts that said ‘Ball State University’ and ‘AIDS Sucks!’ were waiting behind them. Three men were siphoning gasoline from other cars into Tusker Beer bottles, and a boy was stuffing torn strips of rag into the mouths. The running men ahead of the trucks reached the overturned cars and dodged behind them, and a woman carrying a baby, coming more slowly behind the young men, looked over her shoulder at the trucks and wept and tripped on the curb as she tried to reach a doorway. Pulling herself to her knees, she scrambled out of the road. As the nearest truck missed her feet by inches, somebody fired a shot and they drove on.

The drivers stopped the trucks fifty yards from the overturned cars as Molotov cocktails began to fall. They scurried out of the cabs. Soldiers erupted from the rear of the trucks and began to fire through the flames.

Washington.

Fat-eyed, fleshy, scowling, Mike Dukas stood naked in his sublet living room. The television burbled about the problems facing the US administration. A cheerful woman was trying to make news where none existed, contrasting the incumbent with his predecessor to suggest differences that would be all but invisible to, let’s say, a European leftist. Dukas watched her, suffered through the views of two experts, one from the far right, one from the center-right (so much for balance), scratched his belly.

‘I hope they both lose,’ he growled and headed for the shower. He had first heard it said by a black woman happening on a televised football game between Alabama and Mississippi: I hope they both lose. Right on. The upcoming election disgusted him. Two rich jerks, he thought as he turned on the water. The likely choices had nothing going for them but their limitless ambition – and their pedigrees. How is it, he thought as he stepped into the hot water and winced as it hit his chest, that in the biggest democracy in the world, the two best guys we can find are both from private schools and the Ivy League? He soaped himself and bowed his head under the water as if praying. Reaching to expose an armpit to the spray, he winced again: only weeks before, he had taken a bullet in his collarbone, and he still had trouble raising his arms. Out of the shower, he wiped fog from the mirror and stared at the scar, which started just above his breastbone and circled his lower throat like a bubblegum-pink necklace where the bullet had split and plowed two paths along his clavicle. Above the scar, a dissatisfied face stared back at him, pouchy around the eyes, getting lines around the mouth.

‘Not a happy camper,’ he muttered and reached for a towel. He ambled back into the living room, an ugly brown space with nothing of his own about it: he had sublet it, spent as little time there as possible. Still drying himself, he punched his answering machine, and an adolescent-sounding female voice said, ‘Hi, Mister Dukas, it’s me.’ She giggled. Dukas winced. The voice belonged to a smart, naive twenty-year-old named Leslie Kultzke, who was his assistant and who had begun, he was afraid, to hero-worship him. ‘How are you this morning?’ she said. She giggled again. ‘I got in early and brought some Krispy Kreme donuts; I know you like Dunkin’ Donuts, but I think you should just try Krispy –’

But Dukas had cut her off and was staring at the television, where CNN had dumped the doldrums of politics and got itself a red-hot story that was happening in real time. Dukas heard ‘US Navy’ and saw a picture of chaotic motion, a street, a surging crowd, and, as the camera panned, a distant ship half-sunk by a dock, its superstructure tilted away and smoke rising from its far side.

‘– Kilindini Harbor in coastal Kenya, Africa!’ a Frenchaccented voice was saying, his panting breath audible. ‘A ship has been bombed here – nobody quite sure what has happened yet; sources dockside say it is –’ pushing somebody away, breathing heavily – ‘a US vessel and that the bomb was timed to coincide with Islamic demonstrations in this port city.’ The shot zoomed in on the crippled ship. ‘I am at the scene now but –’

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?’

The man opened his hands in helplessness, then gestured around them. The comm office was a mess; the ship had tilted, and what hadn’t been shaken by the blast was now tipped on the floor – pubs, gear, a cup of long-forgotten coffee.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Uh, Hansen – Joe.’

‘Hansen, we’ve got to get a number for the Kenyan Navy.’ He punched the numbers for NCIS Washington into the cell phone. It was ridiculous: he was halfway around the world and he was calling home. ‘If it doesn’t work, try a local operator. Try directory assistance, whatever the hell they call it here. Try our embassy; that’s in Nairobi. Try –’

A dark head popped in the broken door. ‘Fireboat is pumping water in – they think they got the fire limited now –’ It was Patel, the Indian who had come down from the riot with him.

Alan ran out to the catwalk that curved around the superstructure. Water began to fall on him like rain: the fireboat.

‘Great –!’

A bullet pinged off the steel bulkhead.

‘Oh, shit –!’ Instinctively, his wounded hand contracted into what was left of a fist.

Somebody had started shooting from one of the warehouses along the dock. Not a very accurate shooter, but real bullets. The few men available to do damage control on the Harker were belowdecks, thus safe from sniping; the wounded were up on the main deck now, protected for the moment by the ship’s list to port. But up here on the superstructure, they were exposed.

Three levels above him, Jagiello, another who had come with him from the city, was supposed to be sitting with the rifle Alan had taken from the sniper. He was a deer hunter, he had said. He’d drill anybody who tried anything.

Well, why wasn’t he shooting?

Alan crouched behind the solid starboard rail. ‘Hansen!’

‘Sir –?’

Alan looked up, waved him down. ‘Get down on the deck –!’

‘Get out here but keep down!’ When the younger man appeared, ape-like on toes and fingertips, he shouted, ‘Get down! Way down – that’s it. Try that cell phone out here.’

‘I’ve got to get a radio hookup.’

‘Try the cell phone – that’s an order.’

Neither of them was sure that Alan had official authority on the Harker, but Hansen seemed to recognize that Alan had authority of a different kind. He rolled on his elbow and began to punch the phone.

Alan drew the H&K and tapped two quick shots in the general direction of the sniper. ‘Fat lot of good that’ll do,’ he muttered. Where the hell was the guy with the sniper rifle? He peered out through the gap between the steel plates of the bulkhead. The warehouse had a long row of clerestory windows, the glass blown out of every one by the blast. The shooter could be in any of them. It hardly mattered; the range was ridiculous for a pistol, anyway. Still – He saw movement, aimed quickly, fired. Behind him, Hansen was muttering into the cell phone, his long hair plastered to his head by the falling water.

‘Got them?’

Hansen held up a hand, shook his head. Alan looked again at the warehouse, saw a silhouetted head, aimed more carefully and fired. Hadn’t there been some famous pistol shooter who enjoyed shooting at gallon jugs at a hundred yards? Oh, yeah. Do better throwing wads of Kleenex.

‘They won’t talk to me,’ Hansen said behind him. His young face was red with anger. He held out the phone. ‘They’re asking me for ID.’

Alan grabbed the phone. ‘They still there?’ He slammed the cell phone against his ear. ‘Hello! Now listen up. This is Lieutenant-Commander Alan Craik, US Navy.’ He rattled off his service number. ‘I’m under fire and I need help and who the hell are you?’

‘Uh – sir, this is Special Agent Gollub, NCIS Washington. Uh, sir –’

‘Goddamit, Gollub, don’t dick with me! I’m on a ship that’s been hit by an explosion, people are shooting at us, and I’ve got one goddam pistol! Get me some fucking help!’

‘Sir, we’re the Navy’s investigative serv –’

‘Then fucking investigate! I want the contact info for the Kenyan naval facility, Mombasa, Kenya. Right now! Do it!’

‘Uh, sir, your language is not –’

‘Do you know Mike Dukas?’

‘Uh, yessir, I know Special Agent Dukas by sight and repu –’

‘Well, if you don’t find me that information right now, I am personally going to have him tear your fucking throat out, because he is my asshole buddy! You follow?’ He put his eye to the gap in the steel plates, saw the head again, and fired. ‘Did you follow me, Mister Gollub? Hello? Gollub? Goddamit –!’

‘You want the Kenyan Naval Maritime Patrol Center, Kilindini, Kenya. The telephone is 596–987. They communicate on the following frequencies: a hundred and –’

‘Don’t tell me; tell this guy.’ Alan handed the phone to Hansen. ‘Get the phone number; screw the frequencies.’

He looked through the gap again, saw the head, fired three shots. There! Bang-bang-bang – body, body, head! Right? No, missed with every one.

Gallon jugs at a hundred yards. Jesus! ‘Where’s that guy with the sniper rifle?’ He tipped his head back, looked up the side of the superstructure. ‘Hey! Yo!’ What the hell was his name? Jagiello! ‘Jagiello, what the hell are you doing?’

He scuttled into the comm shack after Hansen. ‘You get the number?’

‘That guy said he was going to report you.’

‘Right, I’m really worried about that. Did you get the number?’

‘Yessir. What you want me to say?’

‘You say that Lieutenant-Commander Craik, US Navy, is asking – asking – for their support and cooperation. He is under fire on USNS Harker, hit by an explosion thirty minutes ago. We are in a hot zone – use those words, “hot zone”. They got a problem, give me the –’

Both men lifted their heads as the unmistakable sound of a rocket engine whooshed closer. Hansen’s eyes were wide. ‘Hit the deck!’ Alan shouted, but the missile was already by them, the sound decreasing, and then there was an explosion.

‘Sir, sir –!’ It was Patel, the lookout on the bridge. He came scrambling down the catwalk, half-fell into the room, still on all fours. ‘Sir, they are shooting missiles at the fireboat! Now it is on fire!’

Houston.

Rose Siciliano Craik was accustomed to waking with first light. Mike Dukas’s call had come a little earlier than that, but now, fifteen minutes later, she was up and moving quickly through the habitual motions of the morning. Brush teeth, shower, turn on television; dress in T-shirt and jeans and slippers, make coffee, watch the clip on CNN, check e-mails; feed the dog, check the kids (both still sleeping), drink coffee. Try not to think about where her husband was. Make lunches while standing at the kitchen counter, a book of engineering drawings of the space shuttle open in front of her, because she was beginning astronaut training. Try not to think about her husband.

Try not to think about her mother.

Her father had called her last night. Her mother, he said, had ‘gone funny.’ It had taken her a while to get him to explain what he meant. Her mother was forgetting things. Had been, he confessed, for some time. I didn’t want to worry you.

Thinking, when she wasn’t thinking about her mother, of that three-fingered hand coming up on the television screen, knowing how much the wound dismayed him. A proud man, perhaps vain, hating disfigurement; former wrestler, too aware now of holds he couldn’t make. Stupid little things really throw us, she thought. Poor guy. His first lovemaking had been awkward, hiding the hand. At dinner, he had kept it in his lap.

Her mother had got lost walking to the store, her father had said. She had been walking the route for twenty years. She worried that black people were coming into her house. He had found her nailing the windows shut.

Rose wrapped the lunches, hers and Mikey’s and the baby’s for day care. She flipped from channel to channel, looking for more news. Most of them had the story now, but CNN had the most, the best. Still, there wasn’t enough to know what was going on.

She worried. He could be dying. Dead.

She worried about him because he was a risk-taker, impetuous. A glory hound, some Navy people said. No. More like a poet with balls of steel – idealist, hardcase.

She had a tough day ahead. Two hours in the astronauts’ gym for VO2-Max and heart tests; an hour underwater in mock-zero-gravity, two hours hands-on on the engineering of the shuttle. Plus, just thrown at her by Mike Dukas, an obligatory half hour with NASA security to plan protection for her and the kids.

‘For what!’ she’d protested. ‘What am I being protected from, for God’s sake?’

Mike knew her temper and wasn’t phased by it. Mike was in love with her, but he wasn’t afraid of her. ‘From whoever blew up that ship, babe. Listen to me! The family of every man on that ship is going to get the same message today – maximum alert, get security, protect yourself! It’s Uncle’s standard OP when there’s terrorism.’

‘But why me? Mike, I’m up to my ass in work as it is!’

‘Because your husband’s on the ship now and because he put his face on TV for every goddam terrorist in the world to see. Babe! Trust me!’

‘Oh, yeah.’ She had pretended to argue, but she saw the point. If not for her, then for the kids. Dukas was to get on to NASA security as he soon as he had hung up from talking to her; she was to warn Mikey’s Camp and Bobby’s day care.

She wasn’t afraid for herself. But she’d kill to protect her children.

Reminded, she went back into the bedroom and slid open the drawer on her side. There, in a locked metal box, was her armpit gun, a Smith & Wesson Model 15. A revolver. Some guys had laughed at her for picking a revolver. But she liked the feel of it and the no-bullshit simplicity of it, and she liked the .38 Special plus-Ps that she shot in it. ‘Not a lady’s gun,’ the fat man in the gun shop had said to her when she bought it, and she had said, ‘I’m not a lady.’

She aimed it at a spot on the wall. The sights lined up as if they had been programmed. She dry-fired every day, hit a range at least once a week, shot fifty-yard combat courses for fun.

There’s an old saying: Be careful of the man – or woman – who owns only one gun. They’ll really know how to use it.

Two empty speedloaders were in the box with a carton of plus-Ps. She took them back to the kitchen and loaded them while she watched the news.

Nothing really new. Her husband was suspended in time and space, his three-fingered hand held out to the camera, trotting toward risk.

She worried. About him. About her mother. She didn’t even like her mother; what was she worrying about? Her father, whom she loved, and the effect on him? Or was the link to her mother too strong for ‘liking’ to even matter?

She worried.

She wanted to talk to her husband. She wanted to hear his voice. To know he was alive.

She went back to the television.

USS Thomas Jefferson.

Captain Beluscio’s voice sounded strangled with tension. ‘Now what?’

The comm officer had just been handed a message slip and was reading quickly. ‘A message from the Harker. “Mob action in city and at dock gates. Local fireboat hit by shoulder-fired missile or grenade. Recommend send no air or surface help until situation resolved. Signed Craik.”’

The captain stared. ‘Who the hell is that?’

‘Unh, the O-in-C of the S-3 det is named Craik. The guy they had to fly out of Pakistan a few weeks back, he lost part of his –’

Beluscio made an angry sound. Friend of Rafehausen’s. The chief of staff and Rafehausen were cat and dog – too close to each other in rank, with Rafehausen having only days of seniority; too different in temperament, the CoS tense, quick, Rafehausen laid back. And the two men too often treated as opposites by the admiral, who liked competition among his officers.

‘Craik,’ the chief of staff growled now. ‘I remember. What the hell is he doing in Mombasa?’

The other man dared to grin. ‘You can watch him on CNN, sir.’

Mombasa.

Alan duckwalked along a line of wounded men, six in all. Cook White had patched them up, but there was blood on the deck, and one man was pumping blood from an almost severed leg despite a tourniquet.

‘I got to get medical help!’ White was saying.

‘Nothing’s going in or out of the docks.’ He looked down at the blood that was spreading slowly over the chipped gray paint of the deck. ‘Anyway, we can’t use local blood. Navy policy.’

The black man stared at him. What Alan had said didn’t register. ‘They could send in a rescue chopper!’

‘Yeah, they could, if people weren’t shooting at us.’ He glanced back toward the dock, but the tilt of the deck hid everything; he saw only thin, gray cloud.

‘This man gonna die if he don’t get help!’

Alan gripped his big upper arm. ‘Save the ones you can save.’ That was the moment when he realized that they all might die there. It hadn’t occurred to him before – but here they were, cut off from the city, easy targets, with Alan the only shooter. He was carrying the sniper rifle himself now, because Jagiello, it turned out, had panicked and forgotten to take his safety off when the shooting started.

Alan looked up at the blown-out windows of the starboard wing of the bridge.

‘Patel!’

The dark head of the lookout appeared. ‘Sir!’

‘What’re the Kenyans up to?’

‘Very active in aid of finding the missile launcher! Twenty or more guys running about! Some shooting!’

Hansen had got on to the Kenyans twenty-five minutes before. Now, two hundred feet beyond where the Harker’s sloping deck met the water, the crippled fireboat, its radars shorn off and its deck littered with metal fragments, had stopped pumping water on the Harker but had stabilized itself. Alan had to be grateful for the hit on the fireboat, because, without it, the Kenyan Navy wouldn’t have come out.

Beyond the fireboat, a Kenyan Nyayo-class Thornycroft cruised slowly between the docks; beyond it, eighty yards from where he stood, he could see the tiny figures of Kenyan sailors swarming over an anchored dhow. He guessed that they were searching the ships there – too late – for more snipers and missile launchers.

It occurred to Alan that the hundred-foot Kenyan patrol boat carried a potent surface-to-surface missile that he hoped they wouldn’t decide to use in these close quarters. As if in answer, the boat could be heard to back its engines, bringing it to a stop, and at once a 20mm repeating cannon opened up. Instinctively, Alan ducked, but he heard the rounds hit behind him and knew that the Kenyans had solved the problem of the sniper in the warehouse: they had taken out what was left of every window in the wall – and the wall, as well. (And collateral damage beyond? he was thinking as he ran to a ladder and started for the bridge.)

It had turned out that the Kenyan Navy had a facility two docks down from where the Harker lay. They had gone on full alert when the explosion had gone off, putting their three boats to sea and hunkering down for some kind of assault, but they never explained why they had not at least sent somebody to gather intelligence on what had happened. Alan suspected some sort of wrangle between the Navy, a minor part of the Kenyan establishment, and the army, with the GSU thrown in on the army’s side. More to the point, perhaps, was the huge fuel depot that sat behind where he now knew the Navy installation was: they were guarding that, they said, because if the explosion that destroyed the Harker was repeated there, all of Kilindini, maybe all of Mombasa, could be afire. At least that was the explanation the government would give later, although by then there were rumors that somebody had ordered the Navy to stay in barracks to keep them from helping the Harker.

Alan ducked as he came out on the bridge’s wing. He glanced aside, saw the shattered roofline of the warehouse.

‘Done nicely,’ Patel said from the windowless bridge.

‘Very nicely.’

Alan went up one level to the communications space, where Hansen was still trying to patch in a secure transmission unit.

‘How you doing?’

Hansen had established a radio link to the Jefferson, but it wasn’t yet secure. Until he had secure communications, Alan couldn’t tell the CV anything but the bare bones of what was happening. He had been trying to raise LantFleet, Norfolk, on his cell phone again, but, as soon as he got somebody on the line, he’d lose the connection. He tried once more, waited two minutes, then gave it up. He laid the cell phone on Hansen’s table. ‘If they call back, tell them I tried.’

There was firing far up the dock. Presumably, the Kenyan sailors had found the missile launcher.

If they could secure the area – if, the Big If, and if the Kenyans would stay with them – he could call the Jefferson and tell them to fly in Marines and medics. It was an irony of the situation, of course, that when he could do that, they would already be more or less secure.

Twenty minutes later, Alan was heading below to check on damage control when a snappy-looking black man in a pale blue uniform shirt and body armor came striding over the deck toward him. He was smiling, but he was clearly not going to kiss any white man’s butt.

‘Ngiri, Maiko, lieutenant, Kenyan Navy.’ He gave a partial salute. ‘You are in charge?’

Alan nodded.

‘You are civilian?’

‘Craik, Alan, lieutenant-commander, United States Navy.’

‘Oh!’ Ngiri snapped to, really saluted, put on his helmet and fumbled with the chin strap. ‘Sorry, sorry, sir, they said this was a civilian ship –’

Alan waved all that away, pulled the man into the shade and relative privacy of a bulkhead. ‘What’s the situation up the dock, Lieutenant?’

‘Neutralized.’ He got the buckle fixed and snapped to again. ‘One shore party, under my direction, sent to neutralize missiles launched against our fireboat: mission accomplished, sir.’

‘What’d you find down there?’

‘Two Islamic terrorists, sir. One launcher, I think a bazooka. Bazooka?’

‘Yeah, could be – bazooka-type, yeah, could be one that hit your fireboat.’

‘And two surface-to-air missiles.’

Alan stared at him, stunned. A SAM could have taken out a helo – of course, that had been the intention. The explosion on the Harker was supposed to bring in help; the SAMs and the snipers would then destroy the help. Alan thought that through, then jumped back to something the lieutenant had said. ‘Islamic terrorists. You sure?’

The lieutenant smiled. ‘Nothing else they could be, sir. We have a so-called political party, the Islamic Party of –’

‘IPK, yeah, yeah –’

‘You know? Well, then!’ He squared his shoulders. ‘I am a Christian.’

Alan decided to let that pass. ‘You killed both of them?’

‘We did.’ With some satisfaction.

‘We’ll want to examine the surface-to-air missiles, if we may.’

‘They are the property of the Kenyan Navy, sir.’

Alan stared at him, nodded sharply. Embassy business. ‘Can you tell me what kind of SAMs, lieutenant? Country of origin, manufacturer –?’

Ngiri bristled because he did not know. ‘I am not an expert, sir. You must ask my superiors.’

Above, on the superstructure, Hansen was waving at him. ‘Come with me,’ Alan growled.

‘I have been ordered back to my base, sir.’

Out in the open water, the Kenyan patrol craft was still idling between the docks, its guns threatening the shoreline. Alan pointed at it. ‘Your guys are still out there. Hang on for a couple of minutes, okay?’ He guessed that Hansen had got his secure comm link at last. Could he now order in helos, with the possibility that a couple more SAMs were waiting somewhere in ambush? ‘Lieutenant?’

Ngiri’s face was blank. ‘I will ask my superiors.’

Alan started away, turned back. ‘What’s it like out there on the end of the dock now?’

‘Very quiet.’

‘Room to bring in a helicopter?’

Ngiri had never brought a helo in anywhere, he guessed. Still, the lieutenant said, ‘Oh, yes, maybe – perhaps –’

Alan took a step closer to the Kenyan. ‘Lieutenant, Mwakenya na mwamerika ni rafiki – kweli?’

Ngiri wasn’t taken in by the white-man-speaks-Swahili ploy. He lowered his head half an inch to acknowledge Alan’s feat, but he didn’t smile. ‘Yes, we are friends,’ he said, using English as if he was closing a door.

Alan didn’t give up. ‘Rafiki yangu, nitaka saidi yako.’ It was pretty bad Swahili, actually – he never could get those agreements of the prefixes – but it got across his plea for help. ‘Tafadhali.’ That meant ‘please.’ In Arabic, sucked into Swahili by the force of convenience on this coast that had been trading with Arabs for two thousand years.

Ngiri gave a flicker of a smile, held up a long, thin hand like an Ethiopian saint. ‘I will try.’

Alan started for the superstructure at a trot. He passed the wounded men sprawled in the shadows. The man who had been bleeding was dead.

Bahrain.

Harry O’Neill tried to ignore the knock on his office door. His house staff knew better than to trouble him when he was on the phone in his home office. He shuffled his slippered feet in annoyance.

The caller, a rich Saudi with a lucrative security contract to give, required careful handling, and any interruption of the conversation would almost certainly be taken as an insult. O’Neill, a black American with a security business in the Middle East, had learned to be careful with every nuance of courtesy.

‘Harry?’ Dave Djalik, ex-SEAL and Harry O’Neill’s best contract operative, was leaning in the door to his office.

‘Busy, Dave.’ Harry waved his hand and hardened his voice to convey the seriousness of the situation and went back to his telephone call.

‘Harry, you’re going to want to see this.’

‘I’m on the phone with an influential –’ Harry looked up and caught the expression on Djalik’s face. He leaned down to the phone and murmured an apology in Arabic. The response made him wince, and then he hung up. Djalik was already gone, and Harry followed him out of the office space in his house and through the foyer where a fountain played on ornamental rocks under a clear dome, and down a short hallway to the one room in Harry’s compound that held a television.

‘I’ve already watched it twice,’ Djalik said. He laughed.

On the screen, a slender man in shorts was climbing out on what appeared to be the derrick of a dockside crane. The yellow lettering at the base of the image said ‘CNN Mombasa, Kenya.’ The camera panned across wreckage and then back to the crane.

‘The man on the crane is unidentified, but CNN sources suggest that he is a member of the US Navy,’ a hushed voice from the television said. Djalik laughed again.

‘A member of the US Navy! Wait till you see who it is, Harry –’

One of the cranes was moving, the man on the derrick a passenger, the tension of his grasp on the supports around him clear even at a distance. The crane swung until its arm neared another crane, and the passenger was up and moving, jumping from one to another. A circle appeared around the man.

‘We think he’s firing here, Jean,’ one of the reporters said. In the background, Harry could hear somebody talking in French. The camera zoomed in, and he could see the man firing one-handed. Moments later, there was a close-up of the man as he walked along the dock, and Harry saw the man’s maimed hand and it all came together for him.

‘Alan Craik,’ he said aloud.

‘Bingo,’ Djalik said.

USS Thomas Jefferson.

Captain Beluscio stood in the Tactical Flag Command Center with his left hand on his hip, his eyes on a television screen that showed the CNN tape, right forefinger pressing a miniaturized headset to his ear. Listening intently to the headset, he was nonetheless giving orders to subordinates with his hands and eyes. Standing in front of him now was the Marine detachment commander, a wiry, muscled man whose short-sleeved shirt already revealed goose bumps on his arms from the frigid air-conditioning. Crew cut, scowling, the Marine looked like a boxer waiting for the bell. Beluscio held up a finger of his free hand to tell the Marine to hang on one more second.

Beluscio listened. ‘But –’ he said into the headset. ‘But –’ Then, ‘Goddamit, no, but –’

He threw his head back and rolled his eyes; clearly, somebody was really giving him an earful. He looked up at a wall clock. Reaching a hand forward as if he was going to touch the Marine captain’s cheek, he said softly, ‘Okay, suit up and join your boys. But nobody goes until I give the word!’

The Marine was gone as soon as he stopped speaking.

Beluscio glanced at the TV screen, now back to a talking head, and turned his attention again to the headset. ‘I know that, sir –’

He waved over an aide and murmured into his ear. ‘I want to know how fast Yellowjacket can put her Marines into Kilindini Harbor – at least a company.’ USS Yellowjacket was a Wasp-class gator freighter – a small aircraft carrier with VSTOL aircraft, choppers, and nine hundred Marines. Beluscio had decided to send the Jefferson’s Marines to Kilindini; the idea was that the helos could stay off the coast for at least an hour if need be, then divert to Mombasa airport if the landing zone was still hot. The chief of staff held the man from running off. ‘Tell them my Marines are on the way as advance guard; Yellowjacket is a lot farther away, and what I want to know is how fast they can be there in force, with logistics for at least a week. Go!’ He locked eyes with a female officer across the room and, eyes open in a question, mouthed the name: Craik? The woman shook her head, shrugged, palms up.

The captain swung around and pressed his whole hand against his ear and all but shouted, ‘No!’ He listened, eyes wide, mouth open. ‘I don’t care who you are, you’re not giving me that order! No!’

He gestured savagely at a lieutenant-commander a few feet down the space. He made equally savage writing motions; somebody pushed a message pad into his left hand. He was so angry that his handwriting became a tangle of points and edges as he wrote: Message to CNO URGENT. Get these assholes off my back! CIA – FBI – whoever!

He pushed the pad at the lieutenant-commander and returned to the headphone. ‘Sir, you do that! Go right to the White House! You tell them you’re going to override Navy authority in this area! I hope they ream your ass good. Until then, I’m in charge here, and I’m in charge of the situation at Kilindini! The Harker is Navy responsibility, and the Navy will investigate, and the Navy is in charge! Now get off my comm channel so I can do some real work!’

A sailor materialized in front of him. ‘Comm has a secure link with Lieutenant-Commander Craik on the Harker, sir.’

‘Well, thank God, finally –’

‘And, uh, sir, Captain Rafehausen is on channel four for you.’

Beluscio had an instant realization that everybody, even this sailor, knew of his and Rafehausen’s rivalry, and then he was on channel four and trying to sound neutral. ‘Captain Beluscio.’

‘Hey, Pete, Rafe. What’s the situation?’

‘I’m up to my ass in alligators, but everything’s under control, okay? We’re on top of it up here.’

‘What’s the word on the admiral?’

Beluscio hesitated. They were both thinking the same thing, he knew: if the admiral had been badly injured, the BG would need a new commander, and Rafehausen had the seniority. ‘Nothing as yet. We’re assuming that he’s alive and well until we hear otherwise.’

Then it was Rafehausen’s turn to hesitate. ‘Keep me posted, will you?’

Beluscio repressed a bitter answer and said something neutral. Switching channels, he snarled, ‘Get me this Craik – now!’

Washington.

Mike Dukas strode up the corridor toward his boss’s boss’s office, his face severe, hardly acknowledging the hellos and nods of passing people. The meeting he had asked for early this morning was going to take place three hours late. Not really his boss’s boss’s fault; he had been summoned to a meeting with the head of NCIS and reps from both the CIA and the FBI, and he had decided that meeting Mike Dukas was probably less important.

Dukas had spent his time finding out who was available to go with him to Mombasa and what sort of support he could hope for. He had tried to raise Al Craik half a dozen times on the supposedly international cell phone NCIS had given him, without success; two of the times, at least, Craik’s phone had been busy, so he was probably still alive. Otherwise, news from Mombasa was iffy, to say the least, that coming from the television increasingly so, as the stations went more to spin and less to simple fact. There had been a couple of long camera shots of the city, with distant smoke that the voice-over said was from the crippled ship, but who the hell knew how accurate that was? As with most TV news, what you had to look at most of the time was the newspeople themselves, who seemed to believe that they were really what was happening. Dukas had been particularly taken with a blond Brit who had worn a bush jacket and said he was broad-casting from ‘the edge of Mombasa city,’ although Dukas, who knew Mombasa a little, believed the guy was really at a tourist lodge about fifty miles away. Palm trees are palm trees, right?

NCIS had nothing in Mombasa. Neither had the Navy. The nearest presence was the naval attaché in Nairobi, and he didn’t seem to know squat until ten a.m. Washington time, when he called to say that ‘an asset on the spot’ said that there was rioting by the Islamic Party of Kenya, which the General Service Unit was putting down with maximum violence and minimum concern for human rights. (Actually, he hadn’t said the last part; that was what Dukas had added from his own experience.) The attaché added details over the next hour: hospitals filling; some people with gunshot wounds, a rarity in Kenyan demonstrations; firing heard from Kilindini, some of it described as machine guns; the dock area closed off; the big fuel dump by the docks safe so far. (The closing of the docks explained the end of the CNN coverage of the Harker, Dukas thought – also the disappearance of the French newsman who had tried to interview Alan.)

By eleven, Dukas was getting itchy. He wanted to go. He had even managed to get a tentative promise of a forensics team and an aircraft they called the Flying Trocar, an airborne forensics lab bundled into a 747. But only if he moved fast; in a few hours, somebody else would have a better claim on it.

Almost running now in his eagerness to get going, he nonetheless diverted from the straight path to Kasser’s office to put his head into one of the cubicles where the special agents spent their days when they weren’t on a case. A bright-looking, tousle-headed woman named Geraldine Pastner was sitting there, surrounded by photos of dogs.

‘You in?’ Dukas said.

She grinned. ‘Better than DC. We going for sure?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ll know in a couple minutes. Meantime, do me a favor? The clip on CNN – I want to know how they got it and who shot it. Get us a copy if you can, unedited if it’s available.’

‘Ask or order?’

‘Ask, ask, Jesus! We don’t want to get crosswise of them. Anyway, you can’t order media to give up sources, you know that.’

‘I know that.’ She smiled; he smiled; the smiles meant that under certain conditions you certainly could lean on the media, but this wasn’t one of the conditions.

Then Dukas pushed his heavy body to Kasser’s office, summoned by a phone call that to him was three hours late. He didn’t smile this time but shook the other man’s hand, took note of the wall of citations and certificates and trophies without acknowledging them, and sat. He preferred Geraldine Pastner’s dogs.

‘Okay,’ Kasser said, ‘it’s this ship at Mombasa.’ He was sixty, a career NCIS man, deputy to the overall honcho.

‘Right. I left you a mes –’

Hand held up to stop him. ‘I got it. You got bumped by CIA and the Bureau.’ He sat back, joined his hands, looked up at Dukas. ‘They want it.’

‘Like hell.’

‘That’s what my meeting was about: they want it. “Major international incident, part of worldwide movement, big picture; NCIS lacks the facilities, the personnel, the experience, the –”’

‘That’s bullshit!’

Kasser smiled. ‘Not the word I used.’ He had been a special agent for a long time. Now he was polished a lot smoother than Dukas, but he was still a Navy cop. ‘Make your case, Mike.’

Dukas hadn’t thought he’d have to do so. He thought the case made itself. Still – ‘This is a Navy service ship, considered as Navy property. In this situation – any war or combat situation – it falls under the command of the local authority, who in this case is the commander of BG 9, now the flag on USS Jefferson.’ He tapped the desk. ‘I checked with legal.’ Kasser nodded. Dukas went on. ‘Explosion, cause not yet known, but TV says a bomb, and we got no better information. But that’s what we need to investigate, right? No, this is not, repeat not, an Agency or a Bureau matter! They’ll get the reports; we’ll share with them just as generously as they share with us –’

‘Now, now –’

‘They think information comes in suppositories and should go up their ass for safekeeping.’

Kasser grinned and then got serious again. ‘There was also somebody from State at my meeting, plus two guys from the Joint Chiefs. They’d rather work with the Bureau.’

‘They’ve got nothing to do with it!’

‘They say they have. They’re saying what everybody on the TV is saying – Islamic fundamentalists, Islamic extremists, whatever. There’s already pressure to carry out a punitive strike.’

‘Without an investigation?’

‘Osama bin Laden. They’ve got a contingency plan.’

‘This only happened a few hours ago!’

‘It isn’t just this one – there’s a whole string of stuff. They want to use this one as motivation to make a punitive strike.’

‘They call for a punitive strike before there’s proof, and they’re wrong, this country looks like shit! What’d they do the last time – they blew up a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan! We’re not goddam Nazi Germany!’

‘The Agency and the Bureau say they can have the proof in seventy-two hours.’

Dukas banged his fist on the arm of his chair. ‘This is a Navy ship; we’re a Navy investigating unit; we do our own work. CIA and FBI stay out.’

Kasser looked at his hands again. ‘Tell me why I should send you.’

‘Because – Because I don’t belong in the office doing routine.’

Kasser nodded. ‘And because you got shot and you want to prove to yourself that you’re okay.’

Dukas shrugged.

‘You refused counseling, Mike.’

‘So would you have. What do I need counseling for?’

‘Post-trauma.’

‘Bullshit.’

‘Statistics show –’

‘I’m not a statistic! I want a job!’

Kasser swung around to look out his window at the tops of trees, blowing now in a warm wind. He sighed. ‘Okay, you got the case for now – for as long as I can fight off the Bureau and the Agency. What’s your plan?’

Dukas, suddenly sweating, ran through it: team, schedule, forensics, support. ‘I can be there tomorrow,’ he ended.

Kasser nodded, but he was frowning as if the most important thing hadn’t been said. ‘CIA will have somebody onsite before you get there – they’ve got a station there, can’t be helped. The Bureau, too – they’re international now. We can insist that you’re in charge for a while. But if you find something that doesn’t go along with what they want to find, you’re going to have a hell of a time.’ He pointed a finger. ‘You go, and go as fast as you can. You hit the ground running. I’m not going to be stampeded, Mike, but I think we can hold the line for only a few days. Maybe a week. Okay?’

Dukas jerked his head. ‘Okay.’

He held out his hand. ‘Go.’

Dukas went.

Houston.

For Rose Siciliano Craik, the television sets were like needles some malign power had left to jab her with. She’d manage to forget her husband and the idea that he might be dead, and then she’d pass a TV and would see some part of the Kilindini footage, and he’d be back at the front of her mind.

She had dropped the kids off and spoken with their teachers, and she had come on to NASA and spent her obligatory time with a woman in security. The idea that somebody who had blown up a ship in Africa would also reach into a day-care center in Houston seemed absurd. Dukas had said they had to ‘take precautions.’ Whatever that meant. Arm all the six-year-olds? String razor wire around day care?

‘I’ve got a weapon in my car,’ Rose told the security officer. ‘NCIS recommendation.’

‘Not on the base, I hope!’

‘It’s locked.’

‘That’s against the rules, very much against the rules, Commander.’ Rose thought that was a peculiar view for a security officer to take, but she was only beginning to glimpse the culture around her. It was more about rules and conforming and looking good than she had suspected. Or, a traitorous voice whispered in her mind, than she liked.

The security officer said that Rose was safe on the base and there was no reason for a gun. Rose volleyed back with an offer to check her handgun in and out every day at the gate. She would be a good little astronaut, but off base she wanted the gun. The security officer frowned and said that unfortunately she had no control over what Rose did off the base, but she advised against carrying weapons.

‘I’m not carrying it.’

‘Semantics.’

The security woman got on to Rose’s boss, a Colonel Brasher, and made an afternoon appointment to meet with somebody whose title was Director of Personnel Education, although she’d already learned a lot about the educating that went into the making of an astronaut, so she concluded that ‘education’ in this case probably meant something else. Like fitting in or getting along.

‘Fine,’ she said with a bright smile. She could feel the phoniness of the smile, like something she’d glued on. She hated that smile.

She was in the gym when they pulled her out for an ‘urgent’ phone call. She thought at once of her kids – a kidnapper? an attacker? – and then of Alan, and then of her mother.

It was Rafe Rafehausen, calling from the Jefferson.

‘Nothing yet, Rose, but I wanted you to know we’re trying. We can’t get a secure channel.’

‘Thanks, Rafe. Any idea how he is?’

‘I figure no news is good news. He’s tough, Rose.’

They were all tough. That was what they got paid for. Life was tough; they were tough. Rafe had a paraplegic wife who was pregnant; she was tough, too. She thought of her mother, who was not tough, who was a whiner, who couldn’t see beyond the end of her own comfort.

‘Keep me informed, will you, Rafe?’

‘The minute I know anything.’

Walking back to the gym, she decided she’d get a book on Alzheimer’s. Not for her mother’s sake, but for her father’s, because he was the one who was going to have to be tough.

Mombasa.

For the old silversmith whom Alan had visited that morning, who was not really old but was an ‘old man,’ an mzee, because he owned his own shop and had three sons, the hospitals were hell. He had always stayed away from doctors, cured himself with traditional remedies, avoided the clinics where Western medicine and modernity were doled out together, and now he was in a hospital and it was, as he had known it would be, hell.

This was his third hospital today. He had let his second son lead him through the streets from hospital to hospital, allowing himself to be pushed into doorways, pulled down behind a barricade, urged into a trot to escape the trucks and the soldiers. They had walked or run everywhere; there were no taxis, no cycle-jitneys, no matatus. Chaos. He wanted to go inside his house and shut the great wooden door and wait until it was over.

Instead, he was in hell. Hell had green walls, scuffed and nicked and stained, marked today with new blood in smears and spatters. Hell had a slippery floor where there was hardly room to place his small feet because human bodies had been put down everywhere. Mostly men’s bodies, young men, but some women, some children. Bleeding. Bandaged, some of them, with cloth torn from garments and now sodden.

Hell had four one-storey buildings with signs outside that said, in English and Swahili, ‘Maternity,’ ‘Outpatient,’ ‘Surgery,’ and ‘Wards.’ The signs meant nothing today, because the floor of every building was covered with human bodies. The wards were full; the families who had come to feed relatives who were regular patients shrank back around the beds as if protecting the sick from the wounded. The sick who were not already in the wards sat or lay in the shade of the acacias between the buildings and waited, their cancers and tuberculosis and AIDS and childbirth pushed aside by the inhabitants of hell.

The old man plodded between the lines of the wounded. He had small feet shod in heel-less slippers; he pulled up the skirts of his kanzu with his fingers to keep them out of the blood and dirt, thus revealing the feet and the slippers. His fingers wore silver rings, because he was a silversmith. He looked into faces as he stepped over ankles, shoes, bare feet.

Every young man looked like his son but was not his son. When, at last, he found his son in the Maternity building, his son was dead.