Force Protection. Gordon Kent

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,