Force Protection. Gordon Kent

attaché case. ‘Got some paperwork –’

      ‘What the hell, we just got here!’

      ‘Well, he’s makin’ a shore visit, so it’s some ship today, us tomorrow.’

      That changed the price of fish. What he and Laura had just done – moving illicit items through airport security for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service – was a peripheral responsibility, a test of local conditions that would become part of a report. He had treated it as a game; however, with this return to the realities of his detachment, the pleasures of the game faded and the serious trivia of Navy life took over.

      They began moving away from the arrivals area. ‘What’s our space like down there?’

      ‘Kinda filthy. One of the old air-force hangars at Mombasa airport. Not been used for a while – dust, gear missing – been a lotta thievin’, I’d guess. I put everybody to cleanin’ up, but the place is big – room for a couple P-3s in there and to spare, if you had to.’

      They were walking toward the Air Kenya desk now to start the flight to Mombasa. ‘How many personnel?’

      ‘Aircrew for one plane plus seventeen – other plane comin’ in a few days.’

      ‘Staying where?’

      ‘Nyali International.’ American military, like government people, got put up in the big international hotels on the beach because they were supposed to be more secure than hotels in Mombasa itself. ‘But I told ‘em, you boys just plan to be in this hangar nonstop till the admiral’s blown through, then I’ll get you some rack time. They’re all good boys.’

      They were, Alan thought; they were all good boys now, although when he and Craw had first encountered them some months before, they had been pretty bad boys. Detachment 424 was a one-shot unit put together to test-drive a 3-D radar-imaging system called MARI, and it had been almost run into extinction by its acting officer-in-charge before Alan and Craw and a few others had been able to shape it up. Now deployed with the Jefferson in the Indian Ocean, it had been ordered to fly off to Mombasa for two weeks as an advance party for a visit by the entire battle group.

      ‘Give me a rundown.’

      The men on the dhow smelled Mombasa before they saw it – a dustier air, car exhaust, garbage, people. The dark man raised his binoculars but couldn’t penetrate the haze; Mombasa is a low city, anyway, most of its seafront masked by trees, and the dhow was still well out, although in the shipping lane so as to seem as much a part of normal traffic as it could. Other dhows and rusty merchant ships had passed them going the other way; once, a sparkling-white Kenyan Coast Guard ship had approached and the men had tensed, but it had passed without hailing.

      The dark man gestured toward the deeper haze of Mombasa. ‘We go on past the city. Kilindini Harbor is beyond. Tell Simoum that he and the crew can take to the boat once he has sailed us into Kilindini.’

      The other man – paler, nervous – squatted in front of him, holding out the tools as if they were an offering. ‘Haji, I am ashamed – I am losing my, my – I want to go with them.’

      The dark man shook his head. His face was severe, but his voice was kind. ‘Pray. You will be with me in paradise. God is great.’

      The other man began to weep.

      

      They talked business, then a few personal things, then a little scuttlebutt, Laura laughing with them. When they got to talking about individuals in the det, Craw laughed – a loud, staccato sound, like a series of backfires – and said, ‘You know what Mister Soleck did now?’

      Alan prepared himself. LTJG Soleck was their idiot savant, their divine fool. He had once managed to miss their departure from CONUS and then spend three days catching up with them because, as he had said quite frankly, there had been a bookstore he had had to visit.

      ‘What’s Soleck?’ Laura said.

      ‘My cross,’ Alan groaned. ‘A good kid, but a royal screwup – when he isn’t being brilliant.’

      ‘He’s a doozer,’ Craw said.

      ‘So what’d he do?’ Alan had a vision of a wrecked aircraft.

      ‘He was trolling for fish from the stern of the carrier.’

      ‘The fantail?’

      ‘No, sir, the CIWS mount.’ Craw pronounced it ‘cee-wiz’ – the cee-wiz mount. ‘Somebody saw him and told me and I didn’t believe it, so I went down and there he was, with a gawd-dam spinnin’ rod, just standin’ there like he was bass fishin’. And the CV makin’ better’n twenty knots!’

      ‘Well –’ He looked at Laura. ‘Soleck is a little, mm, eccentric. He didn’t do anything really, um, stupid, did he?’ He had a terrible thought. ‘He didn’t fall overboard, did he?’

      ‘No, sir. But he caught a fish! A gawd-dam big fish! Which he carried by hand all the way to the galley so’s they could cook it for his dinner.’ Craw’s smile became small, almost evil. ‘And not just his dinner.’

      ‘Oh, no.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘He didn’t.’

      ‘Yes, sir. Direct to the flag deck, courtesy of LTJG Soleck and Detachment 424.’

      Laura guffawed. They were having a beer now in a crowded bar near the departure lounge. She leaned back to laugh, and conversation in the bar died.

      ‘Was it – edible?’

      ‘It was gawd-dam delicious! Some big red fish I never saw before, spines on it like a cactus, but it cut like steak and tasted like tuna. Admiral said it was the best fish he ever ate!’

      Alan let out a sigh of relief. ‘That’s okay, then.’

      ‘Well, no. Next day, twenty guys was fishin’ there, and the day after, forty, so the ship’s captain put it out of bounds and sent a memo specially to Mister Soleck, telling him to stop having good ideas.’

      Alan sighed. ‘I suppose I got a copy.’

      ‘Yes, sir. Ship’s captain would like a word with you when you’re back aboard.’

      Alan nodded. Right. One week away in Washington, back one hour, and he was going to be up to his ass in Mickey Mouse. Welcome to the US Navy. He flexed his hands and glanced down to where the fingers should have been. Welcome to the US Navy.

      Then they were moving down the ramp toward the aircraft that would take them to Mombasa. ‘Don’t worry,’ Craw said softly. ‘Everything’ll be fine.’

      ‘Right.’

      ‘We’ll make things shipshape for the admiral, then we got two weeks on the beach to relax.’

      ‘Right.’

      Alan didn’t tell Craw that he had a set of orders that would keep them busy for longer than two weeks, or that his orders had a secret addendum that gave him the responsibility for assessing the consequences if the United States and the UN went back into Somalia. He was returning not only to assess Mombasa as a port of call, but to gather information for a war.

      

      The dhow anchored in Kilindini Road. Ten minutes after she swung to rest on her anchor cable, a boat put over, and six men motored away for the distant shore. On the dhow, the dark man was standing by the landward side, peering through his binoculars. A distant gray vessel was barely visible in the haze at dockside, but he studied it for some minutes, then turned to the only two men left on the dhow with him.

      ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Bring the detonator.’

      

      Over the Indian Ocean.

      LTjg Evan Soleck was worried.

      The S-3 in whose right-hand