The Command (34 page)

The sailors watched him without interest. As he stepped off, actually standing now on the deck—it was all steel, he saw, every bit of the ship was heavy, thick, welded steel, unlike the Vietnamese shrimpers, which were of thin metal, or his dhows, which were built of wood— one left the shade and sauntered over. He was large and pale, with a round face and blond hair under his white hat.

“Help you with somethin'?”

“Here's my card. I'm a doctor. I wished to offer my services, should any of your crew need medical attention.”

The man had a southern, southwestern accent; al-Ulam guessed Texas. It brought back unpleasant memories. He trembled, keeping the hatred from his face. Smiling, an inoffensive, inquiring little man, trying to drum up a little business. Who glanced only for a moment at the empty machine-gun mount, at the padlock that secured the ammunition locker beside it.

“That's nice of you, buddy, but we got a corpsman aboard. And if it was something serious, we'd send 'em over to base medical.” The sailor handed the card back and slapped him on the shoulder. “But thanks for stoppin' by, Doc.”

At the head of the pier the same woman watched him approach. Another sailor stood with her now, a black man, large and imposing. The shape of his head and of his features looked Sudanese, though he was lighter than most Sudanese. Centuries before his ancestors had most likely been Muslims.

For just a moment he felt doubt. He remembered Americans who'd treated him well. The college friends he'd drunk and partied with. The tanned girls like the houris promised in Paradise.

Then he remembered those who'd thrown beer cans at him from pickup trucks. The humiliation on the beach. Their wars on Arabs. Their support of the Jews. And now their arrogant thrust into the heart of Islam.

Looking back at it, he realized the great gray machine was not a ship but the idol of a people so arrogant they had denied God.

What had the Qari said? “Bones must break and limbs must fly.” The thought made him lick his lips, feel as if he'd just drunk several cups of coffee.

He'd attack neither the naval station, nor the apartment building.

He would destroy this monstrous
Horn.

“You didn't take long,” the woman guard said. She made no move to stop or detain him, though.

They trusted everyone. They were vulnerable, soft, and afraid. Weak inside their steel shells.

“They did not require me, after all,” he said to her, a quiet, polite little man in a gray suit. “Unfortunately, it was the will of God that the sick man die.”

T
HE guys had stripped to bare chests, Cobie to a skivvy shirt. Even with shore power, the air-conditioning didn't work too good when you had an open access all the way up to the main deck.

Just getting the engine out of the module took two hours. Then it jammed athwartships. They had to slide it back in to free the beam clamp and shift it around a cable run. Then they reattached it and swung the inlet end out, took a strain, swung the aft end out, et cetera, et cetera. There was a lot of chain-hoist work. Manual hoists, not power ones. Pulling many yards of rattling greasy chain hand over hand before the turbine rose an inch. She was soaked through by the time they got it to the escape trunk.

Helm gave them a break there, and though she didn't smoke, she went up to the 01 level with those who did and stood looking out at the city. Across the water some guy was taking their picture from the end of a finger pier. She had absolutely no desire to go ashore. What had gotten into her, to sign up for four years of this? Kaitlyn would be ten by the time she got out. She'd have missed her kid's whole childhood. And for what? To float around the world with buttholes and turkeys, dipshit officers and asshole chiefs. She got so worked up she bummed one of the Porn King's Marlboros, and puffed angrily with her hands stuck into the back pockets of her dungarees.

When they went back down, Helm had gotten the Allison swung around until its intake duct was poking inside the scuttle hatch. He told her to take the seventy-foot chain fall up to the 01 level, to the scuttle in front of the data processing room, and rig it to the overhead and drop the fall down to him. And to make sure it was solid; he didn't want the engine coming back down on top of him. She smiled. He trusted her! She took Sanders and Akhmeed and went up to rig it.

They dropped the hook down seventy feet to where Helm caught it. She could bend over and look all the way straight down five decks to
the terra-cotta bottom of Main One. She told the guys to stand well back when they got on the chain hoist.

It took more hours to rig the turbine up the escape scuttle. Hours of pulling on the chain hoist, bent over at the waist above the drop with the hot air from below coming up in her face. She couldn't do it for more than ten or eleven minutes, had to step back and let one of the guys take over. But finally the inlet end came up and Ina and Lourdes helped her rig another lifting point. Then Chief Bendt and the guys from the log room tailed on and they eased it on over and laid it down on a dolly and after that just rolled it down the p-way and out the starboard side of the ship.

It was much hotter outside now. She gasped at the heat and the dust. Gritty stuff you could feel scouring its way into your skin. Trails of it lifting from the streets. What a hellish fucking place. She went aft to the helo deck as a crane plucked a container off a beat-up truck and set it down next to her.

Standing there on the flight deck, Cobie looked down on a woman. At least she thought it was a woman. She was walking along the street where the pier ended. Completely in black. Completely covered. A meshwork mask so you couldn't even see her eyes. The woman saw her, though. Cobie could tell. She stood with her arms folded and her wet skivvy shirt cooling in the dry air, suddenly conscious of how much she was showing. Did she see Cobie as a threat? A devil woman, come to seduce her men? Or as what her daughter might be someday, the way she thought sometimes about Kaitlyn? Cobie thought she probably couldn't even imagine what the woman was thinking. She wished she could go down and talk to her. It would be like meeting an alien from another planet.

The mess decks were empty, two duty sections being ashore. She shoved her tray along and got pork chops and mixed veggies and bread and carried them around the corner. Most of the girls sat on the port side forward. Cobie got one of the plastic tumblers you had to drink from—the ship didn't trust enlisted people with mugs—and filled it with weak coffee and got another glass of water to stay hydrated.

Patryce and two tough-looking cornrow-braided black girls were sitting at one of the four-man tables. Lourdes and two guys from Main Two were at the other one. The Mexican girl pointed to the empty chair, but Cobie put her tray down right across from Wilson. To her surprise Patryce said hi, like nothing had happened. Like she hadn't been spreading stories about her. She acted friendly, but now Cobie was wary. She didn't say any more than she had to, then went back and
got pudding and ate it quick, standing up, turned her tray in at the scullery, and left.

Topside, Lieutenant Porter and Chief Bendt were looking at the documents that came with the new engine while Helm and the other guys were taking the leads and parts off their old one. Making sure they didn't ship anything out they'd need. She asked the chief about the new engine. He showed her the log that came with it. It was an Allison 501-K17 like the old one, serial ASP-1188. She asked if it was new, and Bendt said no, they came out of a rotating pool. This one had been on
Cowpens
and then on
Bunker Hill,
Ticonderoga-class cruisers, and rebuilt in Alameda and shipped around the world to meet them here. Their engine would go back to the factory in California and get refurbished for some other ship. She asked how long they lasted, and Bendt said forever, the navy operated them at one-seventh their max output ratings.
Horn's
three GTGs could power the whole city of Galveston, they put out that much juice for the combat systems and the rest of the ship. She asked what happened if the new one didn't work, and Bendt got a grim look on his grizzled old face and said it'd fucking work, all right. It might not start right away, they'd have to get the air lined up and wire it right, but it would run.

The replacement engine didn't look ten years old. It looked shiny and nice. All the new stainless bleed air valves and polished tubing. It'd be a pain in the ass getting it back down the scuttle, but after that she was looking forward to firing it up. Getting power for the ship, so everything ran.

Lieutenant Porter came over and asked her if she was getting along okay in the department. Cobie said she was.

“The guys treating you okay?”

“They treat me fine.” She didn't add most of her troubles were with the girls, not the guys. Porter asked how she was doing on watch station qualification.

Then she threw her one Cobie wasn't expecting. “How'd you like to get out of Main One?”

“Out,
ma'am? That's my work center. I work there.”

“I know that. But I heard you asking questions. How would you feel about working in the engineering office? I need somebody who can keyboard and data process. Somebody who's got a curious mind and can figure things out.”

She stood on the flight deck and thought for about two seconds. The air-conditioned log room, instead of the roasting engine room. Key-boarding instead of fixing shit. Not busting her nails and getting oil all
over her hair. Helping the chief and the L-T, going to planning meetings and making up watch bills and helping with the department budget. It didn't take her long to decide which sounded better.

“Ma'am, I think I better finish my monitor quals. And I need to learn a lot more about the engines and switchboards an' shit. Is it okay if I just stay in the hole? I really think I'd rather work with the machinery than that other side of things.”

Porter nodded a couple of times. She didn't seem pissed off, Cobie thought. She might even have looked pleased. “Sure. Sure. Up to you. Just thought I'd ask, Fireman Kasson. Just thought I'd ask.”

T
AKE a seat,” Aisha told Childers. “You can smoke if you want.” “I don't smoke.” The storekeeper glanced at the brown paper bag she'd brought in with her, but didn't ask about it. He had a black toothbrush mustache and dimples in his cheeks. He wore the working uniform with the sleeves rolled, exposing forearms like slabs of baker's chocolate. A cough outside; Diehl was guarding the door. She'd persuaded him to let her try this one on her own. He hadn't wanted her to, but she'd pointed out the senior agent hadn't gotten anywhere with the suspect.

Aisha hoped she wouldn't end up looking foolish, and tried to keep her voice offhand. “Pepsi?”

He didn't want that, either. He sat in the folding chair in the break room of the armory, hands on his knees. She flashed on her classes in interrogation and interviewing. A classic posture of resistance. Often, of hiding something. Whatever it was, Diehl hadn't been able to get it out of him. The senior agent had had him back three times, along with the others with access to the explosives storage. Nothing. As far as these men knew, a Marvel Comics superhero might have walked through the concrete walls of the secure area, loaded up with weapons and explosives, and walked back out again.

She didn't think that's what had happened to it.

She arranged herself opposite him, pulling down the hem of her abaya. Normally at this point she'd read him his Article 31 rights. The military version of the Miranda warning: the right to remain silent, that anything he said could be used against him, the right to a lawyer, and so forth. But if she could pull this off, no lawyers would be necessary. So she told him in a friendly voice, “We need to talk about this shortage, Petty Officer Childers. It's really important we find out what happened to this missing stuff.”

He just sat there. “I done told you and Diehl both already, I don't know anything about it.”

She gave that a beat, pretending to consult her notes.

“Why do they call you Jaleel?”

“Childers was my slave name. I got papers in to change it, but they ain't gone through yet.”

“Nation of Islam?”

“We don't make that distinction no more. They did once, but we been led back to the True Faith. Everyone who turns to Islam is the same. White, black, yellow, brown. There is no distinction in Islam.”

“That's true. The whole earth is the
masjid.
Do they let you make salat here? Sometimes it's hard to slip away and do it in private. But Allah sees the heart. He blesses the effort, if we try sincerely.”

Childers looked at her. “You putting me on?”

“I was raised Muslim.”

“Where? Over here?”

“No. In Harlem.”

Childers, or Jaleel, relaxed as she chatted about the trials of maintaining faith amid a community of unbelievers. His Arabic was out of a phrase book, but he tried to impress her with it. When she thought they had trust established, she said, “About these stolen pistols. Who would want guns like that, Brother Jaleel? If you had one to sell, who would you get in touch with?”

“Can't help you, Sister. Would if I could, I knew anything. But I don't.” He turned stony again.

She opened the paper bag. Inside was a large plastic Ziploc, labeled with the date and place of discovery and an evidence log number, and an evidence tape with Peter Garfield's name over the seal. Clearly visible inside was a black Beretta. She left the custody document in the bag and laid the handgun on the table between them. His eyes narrowed.

She slid a sheet of paper toward him, forcing him to pick it up, to participate. “The serial number inventory of the weapons stored in this building. The missing serials are highlighted in yellow.”

“What about it?”

She held it out, but didn't let him touch it. “Read the serial on the gun. Then compare it to the list.”