Damage Control Read online

  Fidel fired a burst.

  “Fidel! Fidel, goddamit—stop firing—!” Then, in the silence, “Friends!” he shouted. “American Navy!”

  A long silence, then the woman’s sobs. Not one of his.

  “US Navy!”

  Another voice, calling in an incomprehensible language.

  “US Navy over here! Friends!”

  Then another voice. “Show yourself.” The voice had authority, timbre.

  “Jesus, don’t!” Fidel.

  “Who are you?” Alan shouted.

  “Show yourself.”

  He waited. He was trying to pierce the grasses with his stare, willing them to part and show him who it was. But what difference would it make? His neck hurt from craning upward; he dropped his head forward, stared into the mud. It might, he thought, be almost the last thing he was ever to see. Oh, Rose, what a mess—

  He pushed himself upright. His hands were caked with mud, his uniform shirt filthy, his face streaked. “Commander Alan Craik, United States Navy.”

  He heard the unmistakable sound of a foot being sucked out of the mud, then the swish of grass.

  “Fidel, don’t for Christ’s sake shoot.”

  The man who emerged from the yellow grass had gray hair, a complexion more olive than brown, heavy circles under his eyes. He stood as straight as it was possible for a human being to stand, his look imperious—head a little back, eyebrows arched. “Commander Ramanpur Upadhyay, Indian Navy.” He looked at least as disheveled as Alan.

  Alan bent and picked up the .303, never taking his eyes from the Indian officer. He held the rifle well away from him to show he wasn’t going to use it and, with slow, deliberate steps, crossed on his toes to him. Neither man was wearing a hat: no saluting. Instead, Alan smiled. “Commander.”

  “Commander.” They shook hands.

  “I hope you have no casualties, Commander.”

  “A credit to the depth of the mud here, I daresay.” He had no Indian accent whatsoever, in fact sounded more British than a Brit—an Indian type Alan had learned to recognize. “Most of mine are civilians. Yours?”

  “American naval personnel.”

  “I am trying to take mine to the hospital, where there is an attempt to gather loyal forces. I regret that we thought you were—an enemy.”

  “So it is a mutiny?”

  “God only knows what it is.” He spoke over his shoulder in another language. Alan, looking back, saw Fidel and the others struggling to their feet. Like two tribes meeting in a jungle.

  “We’re trying to get to our vehicle. In the fleet-exercise parking lot.”

  “I hardly know this part of the base. I am a lawyer, actually. We were trying a court-martial in the JAG building when this dustup started. There will be a good many more courts-martial soon, I daresay.” He gave a hint of a smile. “Perhaps you would join us?” He gestured toward his path ahead. It sounded as if he was proposing a stroll with the family.

  Alan thought of what it would mean to get through the mud to the bridge and then try to cross it. “I have to get my people off the base.”

  The Indian commander nodded. “Quite the best plan, I’m sure. However, we had a garbled order to move to the hospital.”

  His people, also filthy and disheveled, had arranged themselves behind him—an enlisted man with an old, wood-stocked AK, two astonished-looking younger officers who were, Alan guessed, also lawyers, and five civilian women, two in saris.

  “Well—” Alan looked around, focusing on where the fence must be. “If we stand out here, we’ll bring trouble.”

  “Quite. Best be moving on.” Again, a hint of a smile. “Our separate ways—ships that pass, and so on.” They shook hands again. “My profoundest apologies for the shooting.”

  “No harm done.”

  The two lines of people passed each other without words, individuals exchanging rueful smiles, especially the women on both sides. Fidel looked disgusted. Alan looked the others over—Benvenuto smiling nervously, Ong bedraggled but oddly calm, Clavers jerking down one side of her mouth in a nervous tic. Never fun to get shot at.

  Fidelio muttered in Alan’s ear, “I fucking didn’t kill anybody this time, okay?”

  “And you did right. Fidel, it’s for the best—they’re the good guys.”

  Fidel frowned, unconvinced. “They all look alike to me.”

  When the straggling line of Indians had vanished into the yellow grass, Alan gathered the others close, their faces strained, eyes wary. “I think the car’s about a hundred yards along. We’ll probably have to go over another fence to get to it. Everybody ready?”

  He took silence for an answer.

  “Let’s go.” It would hardly have made any difference if they’d said they weren’t ready. It was get to the car or die—and then get to the hotel or die. And then—

  Bahrain

  In the parking lot of Fifth Fleet headquarters, Spinner could hardly wait until he was out of the building before he was on his cell phone to his father in Washington. The other times he’d passed information along, he’d sent e-mails because he’d heard they were more secure, but now time was everything. If he could scoop the intel agencies with his dad, he’d score points, and his father would score points with the White House. Scoring points was very big medicine with both of them—Spinner because he felt in his gut that he never pleased his father, and the old man because he loved power.

  “Dad!”

  “Hey, boyo. How’s public service?”

  “Listen, Dad, are you watching the news?”

  “I’m in a meeting.” The implied comment was that he was doing something too important to be interrupted but could make time for his son.

  “Dad, turn on CNN. There’s something going down in India.”

  “Ray, I’m in a meeting—” Warning sign. Dad was not a patient man, as Ray’s mother had discovered.

  “Dad, this is more important!” Spinner had the windows of his car rolled up despite the heat, his cell phone clutched to one ear. “Dad, now hear this: an Indian fighter jet just crashed into the deck of a carrier called the Jefferson. The doomsayers are telling the admiral it could have been deliberate. Pilchard is asking his staff for scenarios for intervention in India.” Spinner grinned. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  There was a pause at the other end of the line, and Spinner could picture his father waving apologetically at somebody powerful and walking out of the leather-upholstered meeting room in the Mass Avenue office and heading to the staff lounge down the hall where the TV was.

  “The President doesn’t want to waste resources on a country like India.”

  “Yeah, Dad, no kidding. Like, that’s why I called.”

  TV sounds bled through the digital connection.

  “Okay, India’s in chaos. What’s Pilchard up to?”

  “He has people on the ground there because of a fleet exercise, and they’re panicked that the carrier accident might have some connection. Plus just now we got a report that a destroyer may have been fired at by an Indian vessel.”

  “I think this goes right to my guy.” His “guy” was a deputy to the National Security Advisor. “Call me the instant you know more.”

  “You bet! Out here.”

  He punched off and looked around the parking lot. Had anybody seen him? Would anybody be suspicious, seeing an officer with a cell phone at his ear, at this hour? No, everybody had his own problems to think about. And everybody used cell phones all the time. And a plane had hit a carrier, so who gave a damn about a phone call?

  And he was Ray Spinner. Born to win. Born to make out. Born to rule.

  Mahe Naval Base, India

  The fleet-exercise parking lot was a trapezoid that held about eighty vehicles. They had reached the back of it—yellow grass and livid green weeds, black mud and the odd scrub tree. The mud ran almost to the fence, and the walking was worse. Clavers and Fidel plodded ahead, but Benvenuto and Ong were holding each other up, staggering, no longer cari
ng about mud or grass or firm ground.

  Alan knelt where there was bamboo and some kind of thorned cane. “I’m going to do a recon up the far side to see if I can check out our vehicle and if there’s anybody at the gate. If the gate’s down, we’ve got another problem.”

  “Go through it,” Fidel muttered.

  Alan shot him a look but said nothing. “Meanwhile, I want you guys to look for a way in without going over the fence.”

  Benvenuto, who was lying flat, said, “Don’t raise the river, lower the bridge.”

  “Talk English,” Fidel growled.

  “Like, dig—dig?” Benvenuto giggled. “Go under, get it?”

  Alan made himself sound confident, trying to pump them up. “Use whatever works. Only big enough for the biggest of us to squeeze through—I guess that’s you, Fidel.” He stood in a half-crouch. “I’ll be back.” He glanced at Ong, who was next senior to him and should have been told to take charge. Nothing.

  Fidel got up. “I’m coming with you.”

  “Better alone.”

  “Unh-unh—sir. By the time you get that antique into firing position, you’d be in two pieces. You go; I cover you.”

  Alan grinned. “Okay, Mom, I’ll take the pistol.” He handed Clavers the .303; she looked hurt, but she turned over the CZ. Alan grinned at them. “Dig good.”

  He and Fidel went along the rear of the parking lot to the corner and turned up the long side. They hadn’t gone ten yards when Alan stopped, hearing a sound he knew he shouldn’t hear, an anomalous clink, then silence, then a soft sound of two things brushing together. He motioned Fidel back, knelt. Seconds later, an Indian noncom in fatigues appeared inside the fence thirty yards away, a new, black-plastic-stocked AK in his hands.

  “Shit.” He pushed Fidel down as a signal for him to stay there and hurried, crouching, back the way they had come. When he reached the others, Clavers and Benvenuto were scraping in the earth with their pocketknives, a pile of dirt between them.

  “Bag it!” he whispered. “Guy coming inside the fence. No shooting!” He looked down at the pile of dirt. “Kick it out of the way, push grass over it—!”

  He waited with them until the noncom had come into view, come down the fence in a crouch, and gone past. The man was edgy, worried more about what was ahead of and behind him than what might be outside the fence.

  “He see them?” Fidel said when Alan rejoined him.

  “You think I’d be standing here if he had?”

  At the far end of the fence, they knelt and studied the gate. An officer and three EMs were there, all armed. The arm of the gate was down and two cars had been parked bumper to bumper across the road.

  “Iffy.”

  Fidel grunted. “Maybe they’re good guys.” He was being sarcastic.

  Alan watched. And waited. Nothing happened—and then the officer’s cell phone must have rung, because he took a device from a pocket and put it against his ear. An alarm went off in Alan’s head: these guys somehow had a cellphone net that was still functioning. And then the officer reached inside his shirt and withdrew something, the gesture alone telling Alan that it was on a chain or lanyard. The thing gleamed in the sunlight. Then the officer took it in his fingers and connected it to the cell phone.

  “Bingo,” Alan said. Fidel pulled his brows together. Alan felt for the thing he had taken from the Indian commodore and put, yes, right there in his left-hand pants pocket. He had pretty much forgotten it in everything that had happened; now, he took it out. It lay, golden, shell-like, in his palm, the USB-port connection a small extrusion at one end.

  “What the hell’s that?”

  “Something that tells me those aren’t the good guys. Come on.”

  Bahrain

  Admiral Pilchard banged his secure phone into its cradle and opened a desk drawer and then slammed it shut with all the force he could muster. He buzzed. “Get the flag captain in here!” he shouted.

  He tried to do paperwork while he waited, but he couldn’t, and she was there in thirty seconds, anyway. When she came in, he stood up and put his fists on the desk and said, “Washington knows! I just got my ass chewed by the President’s personal political cocksucker because I didn’t inform them first about the Jefferson!” He banged a fist on the desk and took two strides away. “Not a word about the danger to the fleet—not a word about the kids who may be dead or dying—!” He swung into a vicious parody of Southern smarm. “‘Don’t you ri-uh-lahze the po-li-ti-cal potenshee-al foah damage heah?’ He’s reading me out because I didn’t call him personally so he can do political damage control!” He stared at her. “Well?”

  “Well, sir—” She spread her hands. “I think we’ve got somebody who’s leaking top secret information.”

  Mahe Naval Base, India

  The hole under the fence was big enough for Fidel to wriggle through on his back. Clavers followed, then Ong, pulled through by the two inside. Benvenuto went in on his belly, jumped up and brushed himself off with a surprising burst of vigor.

  “Save it; you’ll need it,” Alan said. He wriggled through, face up.

  They crouched between two cars in the row nearest the fence. He looked at Ong. “Lieutenant? Can you make it to our vehicle?”

  She nodded. Tears were running down her cheeks. She looked like a very dirty Oriental doll that would cry if you put it on its back.

  “Okay.” He motioned Clavers and Benvenuto in closer, put a hand on Fidel’s back to get his attention. “There are four guys at the gate, plus the guy walking the perimeter. Maybe more, but we didn’t see them. We’re going to try to take them without shooting. Hear me, Fidel?”

  He saw the back of Fidel’s head move in a nod.

  “We’re going to get as close as we can—the front row of cars, with the cars as cover—I’ll already have stood up and said something. Okay? The signal is ‘friends.’ You hear me say ‘friends,’ you’re behind cover, weapon cocked and locked and ready to shoot.”

  “You don’t want us to shoot, you said.” Fidel’s voice was like rocks rattling together.

  “I don’t, but I don’t want us to get killed, either. If they shoot, then we shoot.”

  Fidel turned his head. “You gonna let them shoot first?”

  “If they try to shoot, we shoot.”

  Fidel grunted. “You stand up, you say, ‘Friends,’ they shoot you, we shoot them. Okay, if that’s the way you want it.” He shrugged—quite an elaborate shrug.

  “It’s a matter of timing.”

  “Sure is.”

  If they’d been alone, he would have read Fidel out. He took a breath, exhaled, said, “You got a better plan?”

  “Yeah—waste ‘em.”

  Alan looked at Clavers and Benvenuto. “The goal is to take the gate with minimum damage on either side. Clear?”

  Both nodded.

  “Fidel?”

  Fidel nodded as they had. “When I see your head blown apart, I can feel free to waste them.”

  Alan looked at him. Hard. “If you don’t like my way of doing things, give me the gun and I’ll do it alone.”

  “A-a-a-h—shit, I’m just mouthing off, Commander. I’ll do it your way. But it’s going to be a split-second thing. If our guys were trained snipers, it would be one thing—” He turned on Benvenuto. “How good are you with that rifle?”

  “If it shoots okay, I can hit a paper plate at a hunnerd and fifty yards.” He swallowed. “I hunted a lot of deer. With my dad.” He looked from one to the other. “Honest!”

  Fidel looked back at Alan, raised his eyebrows, shrugged. “He’ll be a lot closer than a hundred and fifty yards. Maybe a hundred and fifty feet. My idea is, Benvenuto aims at the officer. He makes any move when you pop up, he shoots him. The officer’s down, the other guys may fold.”

  Alan cocked his lower jaw forward, thinking about it. “Can you do it, Benvenuto? Shoot a man, not a deer?” He tried to make it as brutal as he could, so the kid would get it. “A man’s head is about the size of a p
aper plate.”

  Benvenuto swallowed again. “Yes, sir. If that’s the plan, sir.”

  “Okay, that’s the plan. But—” How to make it clear to a twenty-year-old who wasn’t really a warrior? “You’ve got to watch him. If he doesn’t make a hostile move, don’t shoot. But Fidel’s right—if he goes for a gun or orders the others to shoot me or—anything, then you shoot. Okay?”

  “And don’t think,” Fidel said. “You think, you’re too late. Just do it.”

  Alan thought it was a big order for a kid who had been told all his life to think.

  8

  Mahe Naval Base, India

  Alan’s mixed bag of troops—a former SEAL, a boy, a woman, an officer who didn’t like shooting people—trickled down the parking lot between the cars, moving so that they couldn’t be seen from the gate. They had left Ong hunkered down beside their van, halfway down the lot.

  The gate was off-center toward the end of the lot, so that Alan was the only one to its right; the others were staggered up the line of cars on the other side. Alan lost them after they crossed the last roadway, and he pulled up in the lee of a Honda sedan and waited, using the front wheel to mask himself from the gate. He had said he would count to sixty to give them time to get into position. Now that he was there, he saw how difficult it was going to be for Benvenuto, who would have to aim—and shoot, if he made that judg-ment—in a split second. Maybe it would have been better if Fidel had taken Benvenuto’s role, using the AK, but then they’d have no automatic fire ready if the others opened up. Well, Fidel was right—if you were going to do this in a combat situation, you’d give no warning and you’d want only to kill.

  As if this wasn’t a combat situation. No, the trouble here was that Alan was trying to apply an ethic that came from a place outside combat and that was, unless you were an idealist, irrelevant.