Force Protection. Gordon Kent

booth and started to chat with a security officer. More balls than he had, he thought. He had only to move a 9mm pistol through; she had something far more dangerous.

      He flexed his fingers to relax them, felt the odd sensation in his left hand where two fingers were missing. Or, rather, were red stumps. He forced himself to look at them, felt disbelief, slight disgust. My hand. The fingers had been blown off by a bullet seven weeks before. There had been talk of his leaving the Navy.

      He balled the hand into a fist and forced himself to concentrate. Back to work.

      Alan laid his US passport, a twenty-dollar bill sticking from its top, in front of the black man at passport control. The man, too, had been looking at Laura, and Alan grinned.

      ‘Maridadi,’ Alan said. Pretty.

      The man’s eyes flicked over Alan’s shoulder again to Laura, fifty feet away, and he growled Whore in Swahili, which Alan wasn’t supposed to understand. He stamped the passport and waved Alan through. The twenty had disappeared.

      Alan took three steps, clearing passport control, and looked for her. For a moment he lost her, then saw the bright yellow of her buns swinging up the stairs to the balcony above. He guessed that she had seen the sign up there for a ladies’ room, used that excuse to bypass customs temporarily. Up there, however, farther along the balcony, was a uniformed Kenyan soldier with an automatic weapon, strategically located between the stairs and the exit at the far end that led directly to the terminal. He was there to turn back anybody who tried to get out that way.

      The yellow shorts flashed and the door to the ladies’ room closed. Alan turned and walked out.

      He waited for her in the terminal hall. His pulse had leveled off again, and the sweat that had threatened to leak down his sides had stopped. His part was over: he had moved the weapon and fifty cartridges through the airport’s security. Now, if Laura didn’t get arrested for moving drugs –

      

      A wooden dhow moved south along the Kenyan coast, nearing Mombasa. It was going slowly under motor power, its sail useless in the humid breeze that blew from the shore. The men aboard could smell the land beyond, an odor slightly spicy, smoky, earthy, overlaid with the moist decay of the mangrove swamps where Africa met the ocean.

      A dark man sat at the foot of the mast, waiting for the first sight of the city. Just now, he could see only blue-green haze where the land lay, and here and there a darker mass where a point thrust out. He had binoculars hung around his neck, but he did not use them. He was in fact seeing far more clearly with an inner eye, which looked beyond the haze, beyond Africa even, into his future.

      In four hours, he would be in paradise.

      He believed this more completely than he believed that he was sitting on a ship on an ocean on a ball rolling through space. He believed with both passion and simplicity; he believed utterly. He had no fear of the destruction of his physical self that would send him there. They had assured him that he would feel nothing: a flash, a pressure, and he would wake in paradise.

      Another man approached him. He had a bag of tools in one hand and, in the other, a black plastic case that held a detonator. ‘Time,’ the man said.

      The dark man shook his head. ‘Not yet.’ He returned to his contemplation of paradise.

      

      ‘Hey, man,’ he heard her voice say behind him.

      ‘My God, you made it!’

      ‘Piece of cake!’ She shrugged. Grinned. Held up a hand so that he could see that the fingers were trembling. ‘Little reaction after the fact.’ Laughed. Her distractions bounced, and Alan Craik, loyal husband, father, moral man, pursed his lips and thought that it was going to be a long three days – and three nights – before she went on to other duties.

      ‘How’d you get by the guy with the gun?’

      ‘Walked.’ She moved a little closer. ‘Want to see how I walked?’ She wasn’t wearing a bra, he knew – she had told him earlier – and her silk T-shirt was definitely a little small.

      ‘I think we ought to do our report.’

      ‘You’re a great partner, Craik. I tell you, man, I sure lucked out with you!’ She sighed. Laura Sweigert was a Naval Criminal Investigative Service special agent, good at her work, tough, but she had a reputation for liking what she called ‘contact sports’ when the workday was over. ‘I just scored big, man – you think I want to write some fucking report?’ He remembered a news report about a female tennis star who, after a big win, said she just wanted to get laid.

      A long three nights.

      He was saved by a voice, calling his name. Behind them and to their right was the exit lane from immigration, lined on both sides by a crowd of greeters – family, hustlers, tourist reps, women in saris, men with hand-lettered signs that said ‘Adamson’ and ‘Client of Simba, Ltd.’ The voice calling ‘Mister Craik! Mister Craik!’ came from there, and Alan searched the two crowds, feeling Laura’s hand on his bare arm. He thought he recognized the voice and searched for a face, a white face in the mostly black crowd, and then he saw a Navy ball cap and knew he had the right man, and he waved.

      ‘Craw! Hey, Craw!’

      Master Chief Martin Craw had been one of the people who had got him through being an ensign. Craw had taught him the back end of the S-3. Craw had shown him how to massage old tapes and older computers and pull up targets from electronic mush. Craw had given him an example of what a Navy man should be.

      Now Martin Craw came toward them, a little grin on his face as he took in both Alan and Laura, hand outstretched.

      ‘Laura, I want you to meet the best master chief in the US Navy. Martin, this is Laura Sweigert, who just brought a kilo of white powder through Kenyatta arrivals.’

      ‘Ma’am.’ Craw was in his early forties but seemed an ancient to Alan because of his great, quiet authority. His grin, however, and his quick appraisal of Laura, were not an old man’s. ‘How’d you do that?’

      Laura rocked back a little and smiled at him. ‘I think it was the T-shirt.’

      Craw reddened only a little. ‘Kinda dangerous.’ He didn’t make clear whether he meant the T-shirt or the white powder. Craw was from Maine.

      She made a sound that pooh-poohed the idea. ‘Hell’s bells, Craik brought through a goddamned gun!’

      ‘Not so loud –’

      ‘And bullets!’

      ‘Laura, hey –’

      She held up her hands. ‘Okay, okay.’ Her fingernails, like her toenails, were painted a glittery red. Her lipstick was pink, her eyeshadow violet, her hair a mousy brown that you ignored because it was gelled to look as if she’d just got very, very wet. ‘Entirely legit,’ she said. ‘We’re testing airport security for NCIS.’

      ‘I figured.’ Craw grinned. He jerked his head at Alan. ‘He’s always legit.’

      Laura made a face. ‘So I’m discovering.’ She put a hand through Craw’s arm. ‘What are your plans for the next couple of days, sailor?’ Alan, caused abruptly to see Craw through her eyes, realized that the senior chief was a damned good-looking man.

      Craw saw Alan’s look, blushed. ‘I’m goin’ to be working for Mister Craik.’

      Alan bent and picked up his helmet bag, which held the H&K. ‘You want to bring me up to date, Chief? Like, um, what you’re doing here?’ He had last seen Craw on board the USS Thomas Jefferson a week ago, when he had had to fly back to CONUS to be deposed for a national-security case.

      With Laura leaning against him, Craw explained that he had flown into Mombasa the evening before from the CV to set up the US hangar there as their home base while they shore-deployed. ‘Orders from the CAG.’ He raised his free hand, which held a black attaché