The Command

But now, this helicopter. He had no idea where it had come from. Only that with each pass it edged closer. He could see the pilots’ faces now. Looking down through the windscreen.

A door on its side slid back, revealing an open blackness as the aircraft yawed. It banked away, flying out in a wide turn. Then wheeled back crossing ahead of them. A helmeted crewman aimed.

The clatter of an automatic weapon, and bursts of white foam sprang up in their path.

Rasheed leaned from behind the wheel. “They want us to stop,” he called uncertainly.

Stroking his beard, he said softly, “Stop weaving. It only wastes time. Steer south by your compass, and put your throttle full ahead.”

* * *

In the roaring interior of the helicopter, Marty was still thinking about Cassidy How he’d grown up. How he was probably gonna be all right.

He didn’t usually think about zeroes much. They only came in four sizes anyway. There were the ones he called brown-asses. They wanted to be your buddy, but never stood up for the troops when it counted. The second kind were the micromanagers. But some of them were teachable, once they figured out you were as smart and committed as they were. Then there were the ROAD scholars. Retired on active duty. A waste of a uniform and a paycheck, but with a little diplomacy you could run the division around them.

Then there were the real officers. They listened to the chiefs, but they had the conn. Like Captain Lenson. He listened, but he made his own decisions, and they weren’t just what’d make him look good at the next promotion board.

Thinking about that, Marty remembered how the CO’d told him to put Spider Woman on the team. Listened to what Marty had to say, then given him his marching orders. And goddamn if she wasn’t doing okay … not folded like he’d thought she would … Wasn’t that a kick in the ass?

He was thinking that over when he heard the door gunner shouting something to the pilot. Then Snack Cake was leaning down. Lifting his cranial to yell in his ear, “Pilot says the sumbitch won’t stop. Wants to know if we can drop on him while he’s under way.”

“Tell him Gold can do, if he’s not swerving around too much.” But he started to sweat nonetheless. They’d never done this for real. Just practice sessions down the cargo elevator. But, fuck!

“All right, melonheads. Mister Machete’s going for a walk,” he bawled.

* * *

The great bird completed its wheel and returned to hover over the wake. He thought it would stay there, as it had before. But this time it kept coming, growing larger, louder, its bulbous body teetering suspended from the whirling disk. Smoke blasted out of its engines. A mist whipped off the sea, brewing over the afterdeck. It was cool and salty. Rasheed cursed from behind the wheel, looking back and up.

A line dropped, uncoiling, and the end hit the water. Then lifted, water running off it. It hung in a curving arc, shivering in the downblast. Then began moving forward. It dipped into the wake, skimming up a fine thin peeling of spray. Dancing along the wavetops toward them.

The little man with the lazy eyelid shaded his eyes, looking up. The man in the doorway was pointing the machine gun directly at him. Behind him another reached out and grabbed the line, snapped something to it.

His eyes went to the gratings beneath Rasheed’s bare feet. There were rifles beneath the floorboards. But the steady eye above the machine gun promised they’d never live to point them. Not these ragtag martyrs, these unemployed losers. They’d be shot down. These marines, military, whatever, would descend and capture the ship. Find what lay waiting in her hold.

A sadness swept over him, cool as the blowing mist. He wouldn’t retire, or marry, or grow rich. To a devout man, prison was nothing. He could pray, devote himself to Islam. But he’d never been devout, though he’d learned to feign devotion, and face to face with the end, he realized the only thing he’d truly miss and regret. More than the struggle, or the Sheikh, or even service to God. What his heart had truly delighted in was the making of the bombs. The perfection of his deadly expertise. The craftsmanship, and then the bloody harvest.

This, at the end, was the truth, and he trembled at it and bowed his head.

Then, beyond the hovering machine, he glimpsed on the horizon a shape that had not been there before.

He shaded his eyes again, studying it. Still a distance off. But clearly cutting across their path, barring their flight. He studied it for some seconds, watching it gradually close. Until he could make out the numerals only just visible on its side.

He smiled, suddenly filled with a dawning wonder.

He knew this ship.

He recognized its lofty sides and proud towers. Its guns and antennas. The fortresslike power, arrogant and foreign, that had intimidated him when he walked beside it, when he’d stepped aboard.

The one he’d tried to destroy in Bahrain. Delivered back into his hands, as if by some incredible sorcery.