Force Protection. Gordon Kent

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