The Command

The exec had gone stiff. Her green eyes were narrow now. “You’ll obey orders. Like everybody else aboard.”

But he’d had enough. Getting up, he said, “Commander, you can’t order me to take anybody I consider dangerous to the team. I’ll take that one to the captain. And I don’t think he’ll go your way.”

* * *

“Now muster Blue and Gold boarding and search teams in the helo hangar with GMGCS Marchetti,” said the 1MC.

He waited, arms folded, as the last few men came up from the locker where the small arms and ready ammo and boarding party equipment were kept. They fell into loose ranks, pointing weapons at the overhead as they checked actions, buckled on pistol belts. Seven guys in each team. When he was a seaman, they’d have just been called port and starboard. Now they were the Blue Team, the Gold Team. It did sound better. Goldstine and Sandoff came hustling forward with the M-60 for the RHIB.

The army had gotten rid of the .45 Colt automatic and the M-14 rifle years ago, but that was what the navy still carried aboard ship. “Machete” himself toted a black pump-action Mossberg with ghost-ring sights and a full-length magazine of triple-ought buckshot and solid lead slugs he could switch between in a fraction of a second. Along with a Ka-Bar strapped to his thigh, a handheld Saber radio, his boarding clipboard, a police-style D-battery Maglite, cuffs, chemical agent, and a canteen of water. The team wore steel-toed combat-style boots and blaze orange float coats and dark blue coveralls. Their Horn ball caps were all the same, no gold braid, no chief’s anchors, no rank insignia. No name tags, and they didn’t call each other by their real names, either. Just to give the shitsuckers they boarded less of a handle on them. He went down the line, doing an inspection arms, making sure each man had all his gear and a full canteen.

Then he sat them all down in a circle on deck and started passing out paper. Boarding and search wasn’t all rappelling and pointing guns at people. You had to know basic math, first aid, restraint, legal stuff. He had a Farsi speaker this time, who said he knew some Arabic, too. Seaman Second Barkhat, a little dark wiry guy they called Deuce.

They were going to do tanker inspections, stop fuel and weapon smuggling into Iraq. So he started off by telling them what he knew from doing the same thing in the Gulf. What to look for: recently painted areas, fresh concrete, hidden tanks in the chain lockers, tanks with water made to float on top of the oil somehow. But most shippers didn’t get that cute. He told them to take out their conversion tables.

“So, say ship’s records list a fuel tank capacity of two hundred metric tons and it topped off two days ago in its last port of call. The question’s gonna be, how much tank stowage, in cubic feet, is the ship going to need to hold this much fuel? Because if he’s smuggling fuel or crude, the only way we’re going to find it is to match the tankage we find and what’s in it against his constructed or installed fuel tankage and what’s supposed to be there for his legal fuel to get wherever he’s going and back. The difference will be what he’s trying to smuggle. If they can hide it in amongst the fuel tankage, they can walk past us with two thousand tons of contraband crude.” He took a breath. “Now, how do we know what he tells us is diesel fuel is really diesel fuel? Who knows the specific gravity of gasoline?”

“Point seven three five is gasoline,” somebody said behind him. “Point nine is heavy crude. Point nine five is bunker C oil.”

The stocky blonde in coveralls had baby blue eyes and a round face. “Patryce Wilson,” she said, grinning at the guys on the deck. “GTE third. XO sent me.”

He put his hands on his hips. “Sorry, lady. We’re full up.”

“You the senior chief? The one they call Machete? She said all I had to do was pee up a rope.”

The men grinned at each other. Marty cleared his throat, unsure how to take this but not liking it. “I said you had to climb a rope, not piss up it. That one.”

He pointed to the two-inch hemp line that went up to the ceiling of the hangar. Every time they mustered he made the team climb the rope. At first without gear. Then, as they got in shape, with full gear. It might save their lives to be able to get up, or down, the side of a ship, a stack of containers, an escape scuttle. Just getting aboard a rolling trawler in heavy seas took a lot of physical strength.

Wilson looked at it. She wiped her hands on her coveralls, then took a jump. She got a few feet up, then stalled out. Hung there.

A chuckle, a snigger went around.

She twisted her legs in the rope, resting. Then hauled herself up, inch by inch, locking the line with her boots at each hitch. Marchetti didn’t know where she’d learned that one. She grunted and farted, and the guys groaned, but now they weren’t laughing.

She got to the top. Way up in the overhead. Hung there, puffing. Then started to slide.