The Command (27 page)

She asked him, “Is this gonna be a big job, Mick? Replacing the GTG?”

“You're gonna see it, Cober.”

Cober? Well, it was better than Sugar Mama. “Ever done it before?”

“In Barcelona, in the yard. I don't think anybody's done it out here before.”

Osmani came by as they were putting beam clamps in the overhead,
setting up the chain falls. He asked how much the rotor weighed. Helm told him twelve tons.

“Twelve
tons?”

“You'll see. This is a solid piece of copper wiring and stainless shaft as big as your desk in the log room.”

Cobie was looking at Osmani, kind of admiring his eyebrows and his skin. He wasn't hairy, like a lot of the guys. He gave her a smile, and she switched her eyes away.

And found herself looking at Patryce. She'd come back down from the compressor where she'd been talking to the guys.

Maybe it was seeing Cobie looking at him. She didn't want to think that was it. But Patryce started to try for Osmani's attention. Cobie didn't notice at first. She just thought Wilson was acting silly. Then suddenly she realized what was going on.

Patryce was coming on to the Wiz. And, true, he was OK-looking, with that smooth brown skin and dark eyebrows and kind of twisted smile. But he was an O. Not only an O, but in their chain of command. But there Wilson was coiling herself around a stanchion like some hot-tie at the Full Moon A Go-Go. Asking him where he was from and how he got to be an officer. Then, God help her, she lay down on the deck and gazed up at him. Cobie couldn't believe her eyes. Even Helm was staring. “Wilson,” he said, “don't you have something to do back in the Aux spaces?”

“I'm off watch. This is how you learn, working on the gear. Isn't that right, sir?”

“Definitely,” Osmani said. Smiling down at her, like he didn't know what was going on. Or else did, and didn't mind. “You have to cross-train to get the big picture.”

Cobie gritted her teeth, watching her play coy.

But eventually Osmani drifted out, like the Os did when you were working and obviously didn't want to talk to them, and after that Patryce didn't want to help out as much, and finally left. Then the word came over the 1MC, early meal for watch reliefs. She asked if she could eat. Helm said yeah. She went back to the berthing space. Wilson wasn't in her rack, but she found her at the table in back reading an old
People.
She pulled out a chair. “Patryce, what were you doing with Osmani?”

She looked up, startled. “Me?”

“Coming on to him like that? Jeez.”

“ 'Zat a problem? If he's yours, I'll get off the bus.”

“He's not
mine.
He's not
anybody's.
You can't fuck every guy on the ship!”

Her face set. Sounds like fun to me. What's the fucking problem, Kasson? Can't you stay in your rate?”

She scratched her forehead, trying to think. But her fingers hit the bandage and her mind slid off whatever it was she was trying to put together. Then she had it again. “Look. We're going places we never could before. Like on this ship. Like, someday my daughter's going to be grown-up. When guys look at her, what are they going to see? Just another piece of ass? Or somebody who can do a job, too?”

“You are so weird,” Wilson said, examining her like she'd grown horns and a tail. “Do you have any idea what you're talking about?”

“I'm talking about—Never mind. Look, you just can't hook up with everybody aboard who wants a quick lay. The whole ship's talking about it.”

“I don't ‘hook up with everybody' Where the hell are you getting this shit?”

“All right, I'll tell you. You know, like in the helo with the helo crew? And the weight room, the guys you give massages to? Bartlett, from the ship's store? I saw that. At the Daiquiri Palace. You can't tell me I didn't see that.”

“So I made some guy's day, so what.”

“Guys don't keep secrets, Patryce.”

“So what? Let them talk.”

The woman couldn't be serious. Cobie wondered for a second if she'd have to turn her in. Then knew she couldn't. But she was ruining it for all the girls. Once they got into port, the guys would talk to the other crews, too. She knew how this worked. She tried again. “Look, you're my friend. But you've got to exercise some restraint. Keep it off the ship, at least.”

But Wilson's face had gone white. “Look, bitch, I've been in the navy too long to have some fireman call me a slut.”

“No, I just—”

“I like a guy, I show it. What their wives don't know won't hurt them. They're having just as good a time at home. And I don't need you telling me what to do. Not the way you and Helm keep mooning at each other.”

“We don't—”

“Just shut the fuck up, all right? You see this?” She flicked her third-class insignia, the eagle above the stripe they called a crow. “I tell you what to do,
Fireman
Kasson. You don't tell me. So fuck the fuck off.”

Cobie said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, “That's how it is, huh?”

“That's how it fucking is. Yeah.”

Wilson got up and went into the head. Leaving Cobie sitting at the table, looking after her. Wondering what she was going to do now.

M
ARTY could not fucking believe it. Now they had to take not just Cassidy along on boardings, but a staff puke, too. An untrained fucking Down Under staff puke, to keep the rogue outlaw Gold Team from ass-raping the poor sonofabitching smugglers. He could not believe it.

But that's how it was.

A piss-ass little Australian butterbars they called Booger. Actually his name was Berger, but they called him Booger when they were out of hearing of the other officers. It made him swell up like a toad, which meant it was the right nickname. Yeah. Booger fit.

Marchetti stood suited up by the stern, watching the ocher tint of boiling sand gradually turn the sun the color of dried blood. Waiting to go over on yet another boarding. He wasn't sure why, but things were getting tense aboard the old Blade Runner. Over sausage and grits in the chiefs' mess the quartermaster said the skipper and the commodore didn't talk anymore. They stayed at opposite ends of the bridge and sent notes back and forth. The fire in the engine room had blown the shit out of the plant, so they had to cut down on the electrical load. Which meant the forward half of the ship had to go without air-conditioning. In hundred-and-twenty-degree heat this did not make for happy campers. Bendt said they should be heading for Rota or Sigonella, to get a new generator. The chief radioman set them straight as to why they weren't: The new president was getting set to kick ass, and they had to stay on station till the word came down to shit or get off the pot.

Meanwhile it was same-same routine. Today was hazy, and that old-brick tint to eastward meant they'd be eating sand soon. He patted his coveralls, checking the extra bottles of water. He made the guys carry at least two liters when they boarded. Searching was hot work, and you didn't want to drink the water aboard these tramps.

This morning's objective rode between them and a dry-looking shore fringed with that reefish green. It had been slipping inshore on the Sudanese side, but the blip weenies had picked it out of the clutter. The skipper had run in and put the lights on it, the helo had circled it, and finally it had come reluctantly out into this burning dawn. Not large, couple hundred feet, with a rust-stained green hull and what looked to this Montana boy like tractor tires hung along the gunwales. A stumpy superstructure aft and two sawed-off masts. He'd heard its name, but forgotten it. Its running lights were still on, glowing like fireflies through the sandstorm dim. Funny, he thought, scuffing at the gritty deck. The wind was up, but it was still hot as hell.

Cassidy came out of the hangar, Berger trailing him. The Australian looked confused, like always. “Take extra water,” Marty told him. Berger smiled foolishly, as if he didn't understand what he'd just been told.

They stood waiting for word. Marchetti kept glancing down. At the sea. As the square stern moved over the oily-looking surface it left a roiling road of bubbling jade wide as three lanes of traffic.

From nowhere at all he thought about how it'd be going down into it. Your hands zip-tied behind you. Maybe out cold already from somebody stroking you with a shotgun as you went back through the clapped-out lifeline. Hitting, and going down, and down … it was deep here … somehow the green water looked cold. Sweat was rolling off him. No wonder, with the float coat and coveralls, all the fucking gear. The green followed the stern for a hundred yards, then faded back into inky blue.

Fuck it. He was cool with it. Fucking raghead just had bad luck, that was all.

As the sky darkened he wondered why they called it the Red Sea. He'd never seen anything but that deep blue. And green, where it shallowed around the jazirats and reefs.

Drifting around down there, the sharks taking a taste….

Cassidy's radio snapped, “Gold, in the boat and cast off. Sound off when you're on the deck opposite.”

“Senior, you like the looks of this?” Lizard Man muttered. He pointed at the approaching bank of dust.

Marchetti ignored him. Sand, dust, fuck's the difference. “Let's go, go, go,” he yelled. Sasquatch levered over the rail and dropped down the jacob's ladder.
Fear
rocked as he stepped into it. The coxswain yelled, “Next man,” and Snack Cake let go. Marchetti looked around at
the ship, then heard the yell from below. He hitched the Mossberg on its sling, grabbed with both hands, and swung his boots lightly over.

DAN sat in Combat, scanning the message again.

ZZZZ TTTT 9007WW——WUUUT-RHUALLQ-PZZZZ

Z 200010Z JUL 93

FM COMFIFTHFLT

TO COMIDEASTFOR

CTF 50

USS LABOON

USS HORN

USS PETERSON

USS CARON

USS OKLAHOMA CITY

USS DEYO

INFO USCINCENT MCDILL AFB TAMPA FLA//00/01/J3/J31/J32//

CINCUSEUCOM VAIHINGIN GE//J00/J01/J3/JFACC//

BT

T O P S E C R E T//FLAGWORD-DESERT SCORPION//

MSGID/A L E R T O R D E R/FEB/001//

REF/A/NCA/DOC/31JAN93/NOTAL//

REF/B/USCC/ORDER/312345ZJUN93/NOTAL//

NARR/REF A IS EXECUTIVE ORDER 12349, DIRECTING CINC

OPERATIONS

AGAINST NATION OF IRAQ. REF B IS USCINCENT ORDER

DIRECTING COMUSNAVCENT TO CONDUCT OPERATIONS.//

RMKS/1. (TS/FW-DS) NCA HAS DIRECTED ORIG TO CONDUCT

MILITARY OPERATIONS AGAINST THE NATION OF IRAQ, IN

RESPONSE TO ACTIONS OUTLINED REF A.

2. (TS/FW-DS) CINC AND NCA HAVE DIRECTED TLAM ATTACKS

AGAINST THE FOL TGTS:

3. (TS/FW-DS) DESIRED TIME ON TOP IS NO LATER THAN 022300Z21JUL.

4. (TS/FW-DS) TAKES REF B FORAC.// ENDAT

NNNN

He folded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket, glancing angrily at the clock. Only two hours away. Not enough time to finish the current boarding and reembark the team. The launch window was critical for a simultaneous time on target. Ships in the Gulf would launch later than
Horn
and
Laboon,
since they were closer to Baghdad. He had to scoot north to the launch basket. Why couldn't they stick to the original plan? He told the tactical action officer to come right and bring her up to flank three for the launch box.

“Sir, the MIO team's still over there. Shall I call them back?”

He reflected. The seas were fairly calm; the sand in the air reduced visibility, but it wasn't a storm in the sense of high winds and seas. “No. Tell Cassidy what's going on. Tell him to board and start the search. We'll be back to pick him up as soon as we launch.”

The original launch order and time and clearance had come in Top Secret just after midnight. Shaken awake by Kim McCall, Dan had passed the word for Condition One, Strike, then gone down to Combat. The mission was now in a control by negation mode, meaning they'd launch on time, unless told not to.

McCall had gotten her strike team together around the chart table. “Okay, this is a real-world contingency strike into Iraq. What we get paid for. Let's get busy.”

The fire controlmen had rigged the top secret curtain and signs around the consoles. It was hot already in Combat, with the air-conditioning down, and it'd get hotter. McCall and the petty officer at the launch control console had begun entering the verification codes for the mission data already on the hard disk. As the system began retrieving landfall data—what the missiles had to know to cross the coast, so the operators could plan the overwater leg of the flight path—everybody had settled in for a hectic and busy several hours. Since then, he and McCall and the chief fire controlman had
validated the launch order, number of missiles targeting, and salvo spacing.

Which was good, because with this new message everything had just been moved up. Launch was now set for 1510 local time. Giving the time of flight and the evasive pattern the missiles were programmed to fly, they'd reach their targets almost exactly at dusk. Arriving simultaneously with those fired from the Gulf, they should overwhelm and saturate the Iraqi antiair defenses.

He blinked in the dim coolness, sweat suddenly icy on his back as he remembered some of those defenses. Like the antiaircraft crew they'd had to crawl past on the banks of the Tigris, on their way to planting a flag on Saddam Hussein's ultimate deterrent.