The Aden Effect (14 page)

The valet drove the SUV around the next corner, with the Benz still following. As Golzari turned the corner to follow them, another vehicle pulled in front of him, its driver clearly in no hurry. Golzari could only fume as the two cars disappeared from sight. Unwilling to let the fool inside the restaurant meet the end his stupidity deserved, Golzari decided to find an inconspicuous parking spot and wait outside. He hadn't been prepared for this stakeout, and he had to piss. He pulled an empty plastic water bottle from his bag and considered its narrow neck, which was too small to ensure a tidy release. He pulled a penknife from one of the bag's pockets and widened the opening, then filled the bottle to the brim, furious when an errant drop landed on his trousers. He considered the full bottle he now held. Having cut off the top, he had no way to close it. Unwilling to open the car door and dump its contents lest he call attention to himself, he tried to secure the full open bottle in the car's cup holder. That idiot in the restaurant would pay for this, if someone else didn't get to him first.

Two hours later—two hours of sitting in a stuffy car with a bottle of stinking piss—the American finally emerged, escorted into the evening by a Yemeni man. They kissed on both cheeks and separated. When Golzari finally saw the American's face in the light of the lamp beneath the restaurant's awning, he
almost lost control of himself. It was the Navy commander he'd seen at RAF Lakenheath.
A stupid damned reservist wandering around alone in a dangerous city. I am going to have his ass
. He was about to get out of the car to get the sailor and take him back to the embassy in his own car when both the SUV and the Benz approached the front of the restaurant. The commander quickly got in the SUV and drove away. The Benz followed again. And still the idiot driver hadn't caught on. Golzari switched on his own car's ignition and followed.

The Benz was close behind the SUV. That meant there was probably no car bomb, unless whoever was in the Benz wanted to be a martyr. He also noticed another unusual thing about the Benz—it didn't have tags. No diplomatic license plate, no Yemeni license plate. Golzari made up his mind and decided to preempt whatever the occupants of the Benz were up to.

He sped up and passed to the left of the Benz. When he was just behind the idiot commander's SUV, he turned hard right and hit the brakes, causing the Benz to T-bone his car's passenger side. He quickly got out of the car and pulled out his 5.56-mm Sig, facing toward the Benz jammed against the side of his car. Behind him he heard the SUV come to a screeching halt. What was that idiot commander doing now? The driver and passenger doors of the Benz swung open and two men emerged, weapons drawn, and took cover behind the doors.

“Hey!” he heard from behind him. The Navy commander was trying to get his attention. Golzari ignored him and remained focused on the Benz gunmen. He shouted, “Drop your weapons,” in Arabic. No response. He was about to fire on the man closest to him when he was tackled from behind. He hit his head against the rim of the car's roof as his gun flew out of his hand. It was the idiot—now about to be dead—Navy commander.

“What the hell are you doing?” Golzari yelled, this time in English, wiping away the blood that was trickling into his eyes. “Get off of me, you bloody troll!”

Connor Stark recognized the face from Lakenheath. “You?”

The other two men raced around each side of Golzari's car, keeping their guns trained on him.

Stark loosened his grip on Golzari and picked up the gun he had dropped. “A Sig 228? What agency are you with?”

Golzari, now leaning against the car, pulled out his badge. “Diplomatic Security.”

At Stark's nod the two men reholstered their weapons.

Stark handed the Sig back stock first. “Can you drive half a mile?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Let's get back to the embassy before the police show up.” Golzari nodded in agreement.

Stark looked over to the two men. “I'll contact you if I need you again. Thanks for your help.”

“Anytime, sir,” responded the driver.

The four men returned to their respective vehicles, the Benz going in a direction that was definitely not toward the embassy.

Golzari shook his head, wishing he had just turned into the embassy compound in the first place and minded his own business. He was doubly pissed off because the steering wheel of his rental car was now covered with his blood and his pants were soaked with urine from the water bottle that had broken free during the collision.

“I'll have a salad.” Bobby Fisk was sitting at one of the three smaller tables along the bulkhead rather than at the long central table where the captain and executive officer traditionally sat with most of the other officers. He waited for the dinner ritual to begin.

“I'll have a salad” had quickly become the most despised words in the wardroom—the signal that the captain had arrived and that all normal conversation had ended. The only discussion from that moment forward would be the captain's doltish questions. First he would ask the chief engineer how much fuel they had.

“CHENG, what's our fuel status?”

And that, thought Bobby, sealed their fate for another day. Fuel status. That meant the CO would continue to issue his standard order: “Trail shaft,” the operating condition that maintained maximum fuel efficiency. The cruiser would run only one of its four turbines to turn only one of its two shafts and propellers. The other shaft would remain unengaged, its prop spinning freely by virtue of the ship's speed.

Bobby knew the CO's next question would be about the ports they might visit, though they had yet to make a single port call. The crew had started to refer to this as the “Flying Dutchman” cruise, after the ship of legend that never made it to port.

Bobby finished his dinner just in time for the CO to ask the next question on his unvarying list: when was the
Bennington
scheduled for its next
underway replenishment (UNREP). During that process the cruiser and its supply ship would match speeds and courses and run parallel, close enough to throw a baseball from one to the other.

“Tomorrow, sir; 0900,” OPS said simply before viciously stabbing the pork chop on his plate.

When he initially arrived aboard the ship, Bobby had thought dinners in the wardroom would be a real-world continuation of his education at the Naval Academy, where his course subjects had ranged from international relations to low-intensity conflicts, from the theories of Mahan and Corbett to ship architecture. He had hoped to take advantage of the senior officers' experience and knowledge. At this point, though, even a simple discussion about baseball scores would have been a welcome break to the monotony of the nightly wardroom script. The change of seats hadn't helped.

Bobby had had enough. A ship's officers were supposed to converse over dinner, sharing ideas in a civilized manner. It was a navy tradition—or so he had been led to believe. He spoke up, his fair skin flushing in embarrassment when every face in the room turned toward him. “Sir, Admiral Zumwalt advocated a high-low mix of ships for twentieth-century warfare. Shouldn't the Navy consider this for the twenty-first century too? What about using small coastal patrol boats for dealing with pirates, sir?”

The wardroom fell silent. The only sound came from the galley, where the mess specialist was working furiously with a metal spatula scraping the remnants of the meal from the grill.

The CO looked across the room at Bobby, who until then had always sat toward the bottom of the long center table, and offered a simple and final answer: “No.” The CO then turned to the supply officer. “Make sure we get enough fresh vegetables this UNREP.” And Bobby, as the
Bennington
's other officers had done before him, decided never again to utter a word about naval strategies or force structures in the wardroom. Lacking the appetite for dessert, he stood with the obligatory “Excuse me, Captain,” and promptly left the wardroom.

“Hey, Bobby. Nice try. Join me for a smoke in five minutes,” said OPS, who had followed him out into officers' country.

They met at the only space on deck where smoking was allowed. OPS, a lieutenant commander on his fifth deployment, handed Bobby a cigar and a lighter. He then reached back and retrieved a book that had been tucked into his khaki belt at the small of his back.

“This is the book I mentioned the other day. Check it out. It'll give you something else to think about when you go off duty.”

Bobby took the book and turned it over to read the cover. “Thanks.”

“What's your duty station tomorrow during the UNREP?”

“I have to be in the landing safety officer shack during ops on the VERTREP for one of my quals,” Bobby replied. The VERTREP—or vertical replenishment—transported pallets of food and material from one ship to the other using helicopters. Bobby was required to participate in at least three VERTREPs on this deployment in order to complete part of his qualifications as a surface warfare officer.

OPS grinned. “Great. You'll have a perfect vantage point. I want you to pay really close attention to the third trip our helo makes to the supply ship tomorrow. Do not take your eyes off that helo. And don't say anything about it to anyone. Got it?”

“Got it, sir.”

Bobby shaded his eyes against the brilliant sun as he walked toward the LSO shack the following morning. The heat was already ferocious. He greeted the LSO and picked up a headset. The ship's SH-60B helicopter—call sign Batwing 57—had already completed two VERTREPs carrying heavy pallets from the supply ship to the
Bennington
. Batwing 57's pilots had demonstrated their skill on this difficult evolution. The skies were clear and the water calm, but even a slight breeze or shaky handling of the dangling packet could set it swinging, sometimes to such a degree that it could take a helicopter down.

On his headset Bobby heard Batwing 57 report that it had secured pallet number three and was en route to the
Bennington
. Midway across, Batwing 57 announced to the LSO and the bridge: “The load is unsteady . . . very unsteady . . . we are cutting the load.”

The aircrew on Five-Seven pulled the manual release that opened the cargo hook and released the pallet, which fell eight hundred feet until it hit
the water and broke apart. Bobby heard a commotion somewhere on the ship, then a voice from the bridge over comms.

“LSO, Bridge. What was on that pallet?”

“Bridge, LSO. SUPPO listed that cargo as fresh produce.”

The LSO put his hand over his microphone and turned to Bobby. “The captain's salad,” he said in mock sadness.

For the first time in days Bobby smiled.

C. J. reviewed her notes as the technician prepared the feed to Washington. He muttered something that she ignored as she continued to rehearse the request she was about to make. She had worked with Eliot Green when he was Becker's chief of staff in the Senate. Speaking to him now, however, was like addressing the president himself. She checked her watch: 9:50 a.m. in D.C. The technician muttered something else, which shook her out of her distraction.

“I'm sorry, what?”

“We're ready, Madam Ambassador,” he said, “The feed is live. The White House will initiate.”

A few seconds after the technician left the room the screen crackled to life. “C. J.”