Damage Control. Gordon Kent

      “And you did right. Fidel, it’s for the best—they’re the good guys.”

      Fidel frowned, unconvinced. “They all look alike to me.”

      When the straggling line of Indians had vanished into the yellow grass, Alan gathered the others close, their faces strained, eyes wary. “I think the car’s about a hundred yards along. We’ll probably have to go over another fence to get to it. Everybody ready?”

      He took silence for an answer.

      “Let’s go.” It would hardly have made any difference if they’d said they weren’t ready. It was get to the car or die—and then get to the hotel or die. And then—

      Bahrain

      In the parking lot of Fifth Fleet headquarters, Spinner could hardly wait until he was out of the building before he was on his cell phone to his father in Washington. The other times he’d passed information along, he’d sent e-mails because he’d heard they were more secure, but now time was everything. If he could scoop the intel agencies with his dad, he’d score points, and his father would score points with the White House. Scoring points was very big medicine with both of them—Spinner because he felt in his gut that he never pleased his father, and the old man because he loved power.

      “Dad!”

      “Hey, boyo. How’s public service?”

      “Listen, Dad, are you watching the news?”

      “I’m in a meeting.” The implied comment was that he was doing something too important to be interrupted but could make time for his son.

      “Dad, turn on CNN. There’s something going down in India.”

      “Ray, I’m in a meeting—” Warning sign. Dad was not a patient man, as Ray’s mother had discovered.

      “Dad, this is more important!” Spinner had the windows of his car rolled up despite the heat, his cell phone clutched to one ear. “Dad, now hear this: an Indian fighter jet just crashed into the deck of a carrier called the Jefferson. The doomsayers are telling the admiral it could have been deliberate. Pilchard is asking his staff for scenarios for intervention in India.” Spinner grinned. “I thought you’d want to know.”

      There was a pause at the other end of the line, and Spinner could picture his father waving apologetically at somebody powerful and walking out of the leather-upholstered meeting room in the Mass Avenue office and heading to the staff lounge down the hall where the TV was.

      “The President doesn’t want to waste resources on a country like India.”

      “Yeah, Dad, no kidding. Like, that’s why I called.”

      TV sounds bled through the digital connection.

      “Okay, India’s in chaos. What’s Pilchard up to?”

      “He has people on the ground there because of a fleet exercise, and they’re panicked that the carrier accident might have some connection. Plus just now we got a report that a destroyer may have been fired at by an Indian vessel.”

      “I think this goes right to my guy.” His “guy” was a deputy to the National Security Advisor. “Call me the instant you know more.”

      “You bet! Out here.”

      He punched off and looked around the parking lot. Had anybody seen him? Would anybody be suspicious, seeing an officer with a cell phone at his ear, at this hour? No, everybody had his own problems to think about. And everybody used cell phones all the time. And a plane had hit a carrier, so who gave a damn about a phone call?

      And he was Ray Spinner. Born to win. Born to make out. Born to rule.

      Mahe Naval Base, India

      The fleet-exercise parking lot was a trapezoid that held about eighty vehicles. They had reached the back of it—yellow grass and livid green weeds, black mud and the odd scrub tree. The mud ran almost to the fence, and the walking was worse. Clavers and Fidel plodded ahead, but Benvenuto and Ong were holding each other up, staggering, no longer caring about mud or grass or firm ground.

      Alan knelt where there was bamboo and some kind of thorned cane. “I’m going to do a recon up the far side to see if I can check out our vehicle and if there’s anybody at the gate. If the gate’s down, we’ve got another problem.”

      “Go through it,” Fidel muttered.

      Alan shot him a look but said nothing. “Meanwhile, I want you guys to look for a way in without going over the fence.”

      Benvenuto, who was lying flat, said, “Don’t raise the river, lower the bridge.”

      “Talk English,” Fidel growled.

      “Like, dig—dig?” Benvenuto giggled. “Go under, get it?”

      Alan made himself sound confident, trying to pump them up. “Use whatever works. Only big enough for the biggest of us to squeeze through—I guess that’s you, Fidel.” He stood in a half-crouch. “I’ll be back.” He glanced at Ong, who was next senior to him and should have been told to take charge. Nothing.

      Fidel got up. “I’m coming with you.”

      “Better alone.”

      “Unh-unh—sir. By the time you get that antique into firing position, you’d be in two pieces. You go; I cover you.”

      Alan grinned. “Okay, Mom, I’ll take the pistol.” He handed Clavers the .303; she looked hurt, but she turned over the CZ. Alan grinned at them. “Dig good.”

      He and Fidel went along the rear of the parking lot to the corner and turned up the long side. They hadn’t gone ten yards when Alan stopped, hearing a sound he knew he shouldn’t hear, an anomalous clink, then silence, then a soft sound of two things brushing together. He motioned Fidel back, knelt. Seconds later, an Indian noncom in fatigues appeared inside the fence thirty yards away, a new, black-plastic-stocked AK in his hands.

      “Shit.” He pushed Fidel down as a signal for him to stay there and hurried, crouching, back the way they had come. When he reached the others, Clavers and Benvenuto were scraping in the earth with their pocketknives, a pile of dirt between them.

      “Bag it!” he whispered. “Guy coming inside the fence. No shooting!” He looked down at the pile of dirt. “Kick it out of the way, push grass over it—!”

      He waited with them until the noncom had come into view, come down the fence in a crouch, and gone past. The man was edgy, worried more about what was ahead of and behind him than what might be outside the fence.

      “He see them?” Fidel said when Alan rejoined him.

      “You think I’d be standing here if he had?”

      At the far end of the fence, they knelt and studied the gate. An officer and three EMs were there, all armed. The arm of the gate was down and two cars had been parked bumper to bumper across the road.

      “Iffy.”

      Fidel grunted. “Maybe they’re good guys.” He was being sarcastic.

      Alan watched. And waited. Nothing happened—and then the officer’s cell phone must have rung, because he took a device from a pocket and put it against his ear. An alarm went off in Alan’s head: these guys somehow had a cellphone net that was still functioning. And then the officer reached inside his shirt and withdrew something, the gesture alone telling Alan that it was on a chain or lanyard. The thing gleamed in the sunlight. Then the officer took it in his fingers and connected it to the cell phone.

      “Bingo,” Alan said. Fidel pulled his brows together. Alan felt for the thing he had taken from the Indian commodore and put, yes, right there in his left-hand pants pocket.