The Command (44 page)

“He designs a hell of an interesting bomb,” the civilian said.

“We'd like to know more about him, too,” Diehl said. He was the only person there who didn't seem intimidated by three stars. He patted his paunch like an old dog. “Unfortunately, he's disappeared. None of the captured plotters know who he is or where he went. At least, according to the SIS.”

The civilian in the sport coat said, “We think he's Egyptian, but currently based out of Sudan. He may be with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, the group that assassinated Sadat. So he's probably been at this a while. He escaped across the causeway to Saudi in a light-colored 1992 Mercedes S-class.”

“So that's the Sudanese connection,” the captain said, looking enlightened.

“How do you know that?” Hooker demanded. “The Bahrainis don't know any of that, do they? Because they sure as hell didn't tell us.”

“He was traveling on a diplomatic passport.”

“How do we know—”

The civilian advisor drawled, “Don't keep asking
how
we know. Ask
what
we know, then what it means. One last detail: it was a Saudi diplomatic passport.”

Diehl whistled.

The captain said, “If I could forge a diplomatic passport, I'd do it for someplace obscure, where no one could check on whether it was genuine—like, Sierra Leone.”

“That's right. Therefore, I don't think it was forged,” the CIA man said.

Diehl said, “You mean the Saudis are playing us both ways? Hosting us, but helping these guys attack us? Aisha—what do you think? Does the Moslem mind work that way? Mine sure doesn't.”

The black woman said coolly, as if, Dan thought, he hadn't just insulted her whole religious community, “I would regard it as more likely
that it was forged. We know this organization, whatever it is, has sophisticated capabilities.”

Karnack got up. The military members bolted to their feet; the civilians simply looked up. The admiral said, “I've got to move on. But before I do, I'd like to get certain things clear with Captain Lenson here.”

“Yes, sir,” Dan said.

“People tell me you have a rep for taking independent action. Pending the results of the investigation, you're forbidden to move
Horn
inside Saudi territorial waters. Nor will you approach the Saudis or the Bahrainis in any way outside of official channels.”

“I had no intention of—”

“Don't tell me your intentions. Listen to my orders. Any unauthorized action on your part will result in your instant relief. So you won't take any. Am I crystal clear, Commander?”

“Yes, sir, Admiral, you are.”

“That goes for the Bahrainis, too,” Karnack said to Diehl.

The civilian advisor said, “He's saying the crime, the attempted crime, took place in their waters. The attack was launched from their streets. None of you—that goes for you NIS clowns, too—are going to try to solve it yourself.”

With that the meeting seemed to be closed, or at least Karnack, the colonel, and the advisor left. Those who remained looked at each other, then, as one, began stowing away what cold water was left for the trip back.

ON which, he found himself with Ar-Rahim and the intel captain in the second Suburban. They didn't start the conversation. So he had to, or sit in silence all the way back to Manama. “You work with the Bahraini cops, don't you? Ms. Ar-Rahim?”

“To some extent.”

“I heard the guys who actually ran the dhows were all Bahrainis.”

“That's right.”

“No outsiders?”

“All Bahrainis.”

“So the only outsider was this doctor guy. I'm wondering what if anything's going to get done about him.”

“We're continuing the investigation,” Ar-Rahim said.

The captain said, “That's the official answer. The unofficial one is: Probably not much, if he's actually Saudi-sponsored.”

“You think that's possible?”

“You heard everything I just heard. As to doing anything about it, that gets decided at a lot higher level. This administration doesn't like to strike back without a clearly identified guilty party. You were on that last launch from the Red Sea, weren't you?”

Dan nodded, remembering the missiles roaring away into the sandstorm. The captain said, “We already proposed a punitive strike against the Sudan. With
Horn
participating, for the public relations aspect. The ship they tried to blow up, striking back.”

“My guys'll be happy to smoke whoever tried to take us out.”

“No they won't, because it got turned down. It might lose us basing rights for the Southern Watch overflights.”

“So we do—what?”

“At most, they'll try to get the Saudis, and maybe the Sudanese, though we don't seem to have much leverage there, to cough this guy up. Which they probably won't, based on their performance to date.”

“There've been other bombings like this, haven't there?” Ar-Rahim said.

“Let's talk about that in a secure location,” the captain said, and Dan figured what he meant was, not in front of Dan Lenson and the enlisted driver, since he couldn't think of a more secure location to talk than in a huge SUV tearing across the desert at eighty miles an hour.

But he was just the dumb ship driver who wanted to shoot first and ask questions later. But from now on, he was going to pay a lot more attention to security. Marchetti had been right. If the Machete hadn't trained the boarding team and personally led them aboard the dhow, they might all be dust motes floating over the Arabian Peninsula now.

He looked out the window and there was the dog again, or maybe not the same one, just another gaunt-ribbed starving-eyed pariah mutt. If you had to be a dog, Saudi Arabia was probably the worst place in the world to live.

When they'd gotten back to Bahrain, and he was getting out, back inside the compound, the captain had leaned out and put his hand on his arm. “Karnack wasn't joking,” he said.

“I didn't think he was.”

“No independent action. You'll get sailing orders tomorrow. Out of the Gulf, is my guess. You just go play destroyer captain and let us handle the downstream effects. Copy?”

“Yes, sir,” Dan said, although being told again annoyed him. What did they expect him to do? Shell the Saudi coast? Launch a Tomahawk zeroed on the Kaaba?

…

HE was interrupted by Porter with a message responding to Naval Sea Systems Command's request for a shipboard evaluation of the condition of the BLISS. BLISS—he'd forgotten what the acronym stood for—was the water spray system at the top of the stacks that cooled the exhaust plume to where an infrared seeker wouldn't be able to home in on it. Or that was the theory. The reality was that spraying salt water on steel at eight hundred degrees resulted in such horrendous corrosion no one ever turned it on. He signed it and she went away. He sat alone again.

But not for long, because the radio crackled, putting out the new foxtrot corpen, the carrier's new flight course. The very first ship he'd ever served in had been run down and sunk by a carrier on a dark night not unlike this one. He didn't want to repeat that experience. So he kept close tabs on the bigger ship's relative motion.

He was trudging out to make certain they'd pass clear when the radioman chief intercepted him. Dan read the message, then undogged the wing door. He thought about it when he was out there, watching the carrier's sidelights and the pretty deck edge lights, which looked festive but actually filled him with dread, move slowly from starboard to port, then wink out as
Horn
followed her around.

This time around, he'd be in tactical command. That was interesting.

The message said
Horn
and
Moosbrugger
were detached effective 0200.
Horn
would be replaced on plane guard by
Underwood.
The two destroyers, now constituting a surface action group called Task Element 60.1.1, under command of CO
Horn,
would detach and proceed to an area bounded by the lines of 32 and 33 degrees north latitude, and the lines of 32 degrees and 32 degrees 30 minutes east longitude.

The latitude figures told him the center of that area would be about a hundred and forty miles south of their current location. He looked out the window to see that the carrier was still where she'd said she'd be, then checked the big chart of the East Med, Gulf of Sollum to Isk-enderun, that was pinned down under a dim red light.

The rectangle started about forty-five nautical miles off the Egyptian coast, roughly off Port Said, and extended sixty nautical miles northward. It was a strange shape for an operating area. Usually they were constrained by geography, or by depth, if the intent was antisubmarine work. But this one was a simple rectangle, and the boundaries were whole and half degrees.

“What's this about, Chief?” he asked the radioman.

“No idea, sir.”

“Do we have these references?”

“On the clipboard, sir. The ones we got—Ref C's NOTAL.”

References, A and B were both boilerplate and left him no wiser than before he read them. He looked for Ref C but then remembered, as Gerhardt had just told him, it hadn't been addressed to him—that was what NOTAL meant. So everything was as clear as shit, but that didn't matter. His orders were clear: Take charge of
Moosbrugger
and get both destroyers down there. He signed to acknowledge and asked the chief to tell Lieutenant Camill to give him a call on the bridge after he'd read it. He told the officer of the deck what was going on and told the quartermaster to let the chief QM know.

At 0100 he called the screen commander and requested permission to depart on duty assigned.
Horn
accelerated smoothly out of station into her southward turn. Dan noted the lights of a Perry-class frigate crossing from port to starboard miles astern.
Underwood,
taking the plane bitch slot. At the same time
Moosbrugger's
CO came up on the horn, reporting in. His name was Bill Brinegar. Dan didn't know much about him; The Moose was based out of Charleston. He made sure Brinegar was on the same sheet of music and gave him a course of 165 and a speed of twenty-two knots. And gradually the other lights faded into the darkness of the night sea.

S
HE could barely sit still. The briefing was unbelievable … and all too familiar. Rival agencies fighting over credit for frustrating the attack in the harbor. The Americans, so sure they'd performed miracles for the incompetent locals. The Bahraini police, pointing out their helicopter-borne team had been in position for an assault that wouldn't have put every innocent fisherman in Manama in danger. The SIS, pushing their counterintelligence work as the key to frustrating the plot. Each hungry for credit, and through it, appropriations and promotions and power. It was disgusting.

Still, it was instructive. Maybe she should just look at it that way. As Allah's will she should be enlightened as to how things actually went behind the scenes of smiling diplomats and smoothly worded joint communiqués.

As if He were answering her thought of Him, Aisha heard the
adhan
from outside, the call to prayer. It was time for
asr.
She said “Excuse me,” to Hooker and Diehl, who looked surprised, and followed the other Muslims out of the room.

Down a hallway, past a bearded cleaning man shutting off his buffer to follow them into a large empty room with rugs thrown over the polished parquet. The Arabs glanced at her in surprise. Some frowned. Others, observing her pulling hijab over her hair, murmured a welcome. Since she was the only woman, she separated herself from the men, choosing a corner where she could pray with them, but not as one of them.

The general didn't lead the prayers, but rather the bearded older fellow who'd been running the floor buffer a moment before. He stared at her, seemed about to say something; glanced at the general; then smiled. Then they all did the ritual ablution and began murmuring through the
rakas.
Like most African-American Muslims she knew the
prayers in both English and Arabic, so joining in wasn't a problem, now or anytime she'd gone to
masjid
here on the island.

“God is greater than all else.”

“God is greater than all else,” they repeated, generals, colonels, civilians, waiters, all together facing God and setting aside the world and its temptations.

“Praise be to Allah, Lord of the universe. The Compassionate, the Merciful, Master of the Day of Judgment. Only You do we worship. Only to You do we cry for help. Guide us to the straight path. The path of those on whom You have bestowed Your grace, whose lot is not anger, and who go not astray.”

She emptied her mind, going through the bows and prostrations. Feeling her heart empty of the resentment she'd felt moments before.

You couldn't expect perfection from human beings. The only perfection was in God. She added her own prayers and intentions: for her mother; her father. That she herself might act in the cause of justice against those who intended evil. And further, act with modesty and without thought of praise or reward. They ended in the sitting position, with the central affirmation of Islam, the
shahada.

None has the right to be worshiped but God, and Muhammad is His Messenger.

THE day after the raid, Diehl had put her on a flight to the States, to report to Washington about the attack on the
Horn,
how they'd averted it, and to present a threat assessment as far as the possibilities of other attacks on units and personnel in Central Command. There'd been high-level interest, he said.

But by the time she got to the new NCIS building in the navy yard, it seemed to have dissipated. She saw the new director, but only for five minutes. He said he'd read her report on the dhow bombing, complimented her on their work, and asked her to “share her expertise” with the agent who ran the Antiterrorist Alert Center.