Damage Control. Gordon Kent

      “No pain, no gain,” Clavers said.

      Ong moaned.

      Benvenuto, perhaps out of sympathy for somebody even nerdier than he, reached back and grabbed her right hand and pulled her across a stretch of black mud.

      They stopped under the trees, pushing wet hair off their foreheads and leaving mud stains. Fidel looked toward where the creek was supposed to be and shook his head. “Too easy,” he said. “We won’t be the only ones thought of coming this way.” He looked at Alan.

      Alan grinned. “If I’d had time, I’d have ordered in a chopper.”

      “We need flankers. Okay?”

      “Okay by me.”

      “Gotta be you guys with the rifles. Still okay by you?”

      Alan grinned again, nodded. He had one of the old .303s, Benvenuto the other; Clavers had the CZ, because she said she had done a private combat handgun course—she said.

      Fidel sent Alan thirty feet to the left and twenty feet ahead and put Benvenuto on the other side, almost on the fence. Fidel took point. When they moved out, Alan lost Benvenuto at once, and then he could see Fidel only between clumps of grass.

      And then he was in the mud.

      He plodded forward, seeming to drag the creek bed with him. The heat was oppressive, even after Bahrain, worse because the air was saturated. The effort made him hyperventilate, and he drew up on a tussock of grass, gasping, knelt to catch a moment’s rest. When he looked up, movement registered in the yellow-brown wasteland ahead of him.

      He stared. Nothing. Then he saw it again—tan moving past darker brown, then into sun-blasted near-white. Tan pant legs, brown hands. Brown gunstock.

      And other movement closer to the creek.

      He looked for Fidel but didn’t see him. Farther back, he saw a flicker of something dark. Benvenuto’s hair or Ong’s.

      Then a sound to his left like a woman’s wail, quickly muffled.

       Oh, shit, shit, no—

      A voice called, birdlike, nervous, from in front of him, was answered from ahead on his left, and he heard Fidel shout, “Hit the dirt—down, down!” and an automatic rifle opened up. Alan, still kneeling, put the .303 to his cheek and fired where he had seen the gun, then swiveled and started to fire toward the movement closer to the creek and thought better of it, remembering that female wail. Fidel shouted again and began to fire three-shot bursts. Alan dove into the mud, propped his elbows on the next grass clump and fired again where he thought the shooter was.

      That was two of his ten cartridges.

      Where ignorant armies clash by night. From a poem. High school. It had struck him even then, what clashing by night would be like. This was not so different, clashing in the tall grass with an enemy who may have been a friend.

      “Americans!” he shouted. “We’re Americans! American Navy!”

      He heard single reports from his right: Benvenuto with the .303. Fidel must have shot a full clip, because there was a pause. How many clips had he found on that kid? Not many—

      Somebody female was screaming ahead and to his left. He swept the sights that way, then back, hunting for the shooter on that side. The screamer was a woman. Was she hit? Would mutineers include women?

      Fidel fired a burst.

      “Fidel! Fidel, goddamit—stop firing—!” Then, in the silence, “Friends!” he shouted. “American Navy!”

      A long silence, then the woman’s sobs. Not one of his.

      “US Navy!”

      Another voice, calling in an incomprehensible language.

      “US Navy over here! Friends!”

      Then another voice. “Show yourself.” The voice had authority, timbre.

      “Jesus, don’t!” Fidel.

      “Who are you?” Alan shouted.

      “Show yourself.”

      He waited. He was trying to pierce the grasses with his stare, willing them to part and show him who it was. But what difference would it make? His neck hurt from craning upward; he dropped his head forward, stared into the mud. It might, he thought, be almost the last thing he was ever to see. Oh, Rose, what a mess—

      He pushed himself upright. His hands were caked with mud, his uniform shirt filthy, his face streaked. “Commander Alan Craik, United States Navy.”

      He heard the unmistakable sound of a foot being sucked out of the mud, then the swish of grass.

      “Fidel, don’t for Christ’s sake shoot.”

      The man who emerged from the yellow grass had gray hair, a complexion more olive than brown, heavy circles under his eyes. He stood as straight as it was possible for a human being to stand, his look imperious—head a little back, eyebrows arched. “Commander Ramanpur Upadhyay, Indian Navy.” He looked at least as disheveled as Alan.

      Alan bent and picked up the .303, never taking his eyes from the Indian officer. He held the rifle well away from him to show he wasn’t going to use it and, with slow, deliberate steps, crossed on his toes to him. Neither man was wearing a hat: no saluting. Instead, Alan smiled. “Commander.”

      “Commander.” They shook hands.

      “I hope you have no casualties, Commander.”

      “A credit to the depth of the mud here, I daresay.” He had no Indian accent whatsoever, in fact sounded more British than a Brit—an Indian type Alan had learned to recognize. “Most of mine are civilians. Yours?”

      “American naval personnel.”

      “I am trying to take mine to the hospital, where there is an attempt to gather loyal forces. I regret that we thought you were—an enemy.”

      “So it is a mutiny?”

      “God only knows what it is.” He spoke over his shoulder in another language. Alan, looking back, saw Fidel and the others struggling to their feet. Like two tribes meeting in a jungle.

      “We’re trying to get to our vehicle. In the fleet-exercise parking lot.”

      “I hardly know this part of the base. I am a lawyer, actually. We were trying a court-martial in the JAG building when this dustup started. There will be a good many more courts-martial soon, I daresay.” He gave a hint of a smile. “Perhaps you would join us?” He gestured toward his path ahead. It sounded as if he was proposing a stroll with the family.

      Alan thought of what it would mean to get through the mud to the bridge and then try to cross it. “I have to get my people off the base.”

      The Indian commander nodded. “Quite the best plan, I’m sure. However, we had a garbled order to move to the hospital.”

      His people, also filthy and disheveled, had arranged themselves behind him—an enlisted man with an old, wood-stocked AK, two astonished-looking younger officers who were, Alan guessed, also lawyers, and five civilian women, two in saris.

      “Well—” Alan looked around, focusing on where the fence must be. “If we stand out here, we’ll bring trouble.”

      “Quite. Best be moving on.” Again, a hint of a smile. “Our separate ways—ships that pass, and so on.” They shook hands again. “My profoundest apologies for the shooting.”

      “No harm done.”

      The two lines of people passed each other without words, individuals exchanging rueful smiles, especially the women on both sides. Fidel looked disgusted. Alan looked the others over—Benvenuto smiling