The Command

The supernumerary, Wilson, stood back a few feet, weaponless because he’d told Goldstine not to issue her anything. He waved her back impatiently. Seven men plus himself and Cassidy. It made for a crowded ride but the semi-inflatables could carry more than the old rigid whaleboats. He didn’t miss them. Just the fact the soft side of the RHIB wouldn’t crush your arm or your leg if you got caught between it and the hull paid their way as far as he was concerned.

“Gold team, move out,” he shouted, and swung over the rail.

* * *

The helo was up. Standard when they ran a boarding and search. A close pass, letting the target see the barrel of the gun poking out of the door, tended to meek down your average merchant master. Plus with all the protuberances and gear the SH-60 had fitted it looked even more dangerous than it actually was. It roared low, then curved away, gaining altitude, leaving caramel smoke and a racketing roar.

He pulled his attention back to clinging heavily loaded to a swaying ladder above a turbulent sea. He glanced down to where the RHIB surged and lunged, then dropped. Landed in the floorboards. He un-fouled the sling and moved aft, perching on the gunwale. It got wet back here but he didn’t mind. One by one the guys picked their way down the ladder and dropped. When Cassidy held up a hesitant hand the coxswain gunned it, the bow hook tossed off the painter, and they surged forward so suddenly he almost toppled backward.

From sea level the target looked much farther away than from up on deck. All he could make out between the passing waves was its stack and mast, tilting back and forth. Rolling like a pig in shit. The RHIB jostled toward it, the coxswain taking it slow. The heavy seas shouldered the boat left and right, pushing it around as if it were made of Styro-foam. A sea burst over the gunwale and soaked them. At least you were cooler when you were wet.

He licked sweet salt from his lips, and sucked a heavy odor of burning fuel, different from the familiar smells of Horn. The motor vessel’s exhaust smelled like cheap diesel, like at a truck stop in Georgia, and he started to feel ill again. Sasquatch was already gagging over the side. For a big guy, he got sick easy.

“Hurry it up, God damn it,” he yelled at the coxswain. Who shrugged as the chopper roared over again, a hundred feet above their heads.

But he nudged the throttle up, and they started slamming through the waves, jarring like they were hitting solid banks of gravel. Looking ahead, he saw the target closer now. Weeping rust. A deserted after-deck. The crew was supposed to be up forward, so the helo could keep an eye on them. The painted legend YAZD and beneath that a squiggle he figured was whatever Iranians spoke.

Suddenly it loomed over them, a startlingly high wall of rough, rusty steel and flaking black paint. Marty eyed the rope ladder dangling from the stern. Not the quarter, the stern. Oh, well…. It slipped from sight as they continued ahead, doing a circuit, looking up at the bridge. He couldn’t see into it from this angle, but he didn’t see any heads. Nor any antiboarding measures. Sometimes they tried to make it hard. Welded steel spikes to the hull. Epoxied the bases of busted bottles along the deck line. Wrapped barbed wire along the handrails. As they rounded the bow eight or nine scruffy-headed, swarthy men gazed down at them. Some looked bored, others ticked.

“Horn Gold, this is Horn, over.”

He said into the radio, “Horn Gold. Go ahead, over.”

“They giving you any trouble?”

“Not aboard yet. Over.”

“The master said the French boarded him already.”

“So why we searching them again?”

“Beats me. Commodore said to.”

Okay, great. He said roger, out, and holstered the Saber as the coxswain aimed them for the ladder. The bow hook got it and hung on as Fear seesawed violently. Turd Chaser got his gloves on a rung and swarmed up it, bolt cutters bobbing where he’d slung them over his back. A moment later he stood at the top, hand on holster, staring around. When he beckoned, Amarillo hit the ladder.

When Marty got to the afterdeck, the team was out in their perimeter. But their weapons pointed at nothing but flaking steel and battered bitts and what looked like a metal-mesh goat pen. The vacant, seedy, rolling deck felt creepy, like boarding a ghost ship. But Horn rode a couple of hundred yards off, and the helo clattered overhead. Aside from that, all he could see was mountains, far off to the north.

“Bridge?” said Cassidy He nodded. Shotgun at port arms, buckshot in the tube, he led them forward.

* * *

The master said his name was George. He sounded pissed. In a small, smelly room behind the little enclosed bridge he pulled a folder from behind a bolted-down, corroding typewriter. “I tell you, French inspect already. Two day ago.”

“And we’re inspectin’ you again,” Marchetti told him. “Like having gravy on your cake. You can stay up here or go forward with your crew. Your choice.”