The Command

George spat on the dirty deck. He threw the folder down contemptuously. “You take us off bow soon,” he said. “Too much sun.” And left.

Marty picked them up and fanned the documents out. She was registered in the Grenadines, wherever that was. “We got lucky,” Deuce said, pointing to an ancient photocopy machine.

They could see the crew through the windows, sitting with backs against bulwarks and wildcats in the eyes of the ship. Bedraggled, unshaven, in torn denims and dirty field jackets. They were all smoking. Dead in the water, the vessel careened back and forth with a long pendulum roll that set Marchetti’s teeth on edge. From below came shouts as the sweep teams went through the next deck down. He had three teams of two. Amarillo and Crack Man were on the bow guarding the crew. Sasquatch and Snack Cake were going through the crew’s quarters and mess decks, and Turd Chaser and Lizard had headed for the engine spaces. After they made sure all the crew was topside, they’d move them somewhere they could keep an eye on them — most likely the mess decks. Then start the actual search, opening holds and tanks, taking soundings and samples. He wondered again why they were reinspecting if the French had really given them a clean bill on the inward passage.

Cassidy pulled himself up into the pilothouse as the helo buzzed past in a blast of sound. A close pass down the starboard side. “Got the sounding log,” Marchetti yelled to him.

It showed a ballast tank, four cargo tanks, and two fuel oil tanks, along with fuel oil service and settling tanks and freshwater tankage. All quantities were given in square meters. He handed it to Deuce along with registry, manifest, bill of lading, a crew list, and a sheaf of individual licenses and documents. The crew was Iranian, Syrian, Pakistani, Greek, Russian-Ukrainian. Some of this was in squiggly writing, and he told Deuce to see what he could make out of it. There didn’t seem to be any UN form and they had to call the master back to scowl-ingly retrieve it from another folder.

The 986 form showed clearance for a cargo of animal feed, Indian tea, bagged flour, and raw jute. He compared it to the printout that had come over from the Maritime Interdiction Center. Yazd had been inspected many times before. It looked like this was her regular run. The database from the previous inspections, bumped against the log and the other onboard documentation, gave them a benchmark to check on crew changes or out of the ordinary cargo or itineraries.

The photocopy machine hummed. Light chased across the bulkhead. Marchetti passed a hand over his wet forehead. The enclosed quarters, the extreme roll was getting to him. Changing from one ship to another in midocean set off bad things in his inner ear. He went outside and gripped the handrail, looking across to Horn until the nausea backed off. Down on the forecastle the crew laughed, making gestures up at him. He made a gesture back at them. They stopped laughing, then got up unwillingly as Crack Man motioned them up.

Back inside, he grabbed the copies of the tankage diagrams and went below, planting his boots carefully on worn steel rungs.

Belowdecks was dim and spooky. He flicked a switch but nothing happened. The crew had turned off the generator, or else it was broken. He looked into the mess decks, wrinkling his nose. Insecticide, curry, greasy meat, old cigarette smoke. A movie poster showing an Indian woman dancing with a bear. A flash of the woman in that afternoon’s dream, dark-haired, wide-hipped, full-lipped. Scattered newspapers in incomprehensible alphabets. A gray cat stared insolently from the sideboard, where it was licking a plate.

A central ladder well wound into the depths. He pulled his .45 and worked the slide. Fuck the rules. The passageways creaked as the steel fabric rolled around him.

Two decks below he glimpsed one of the teams moving past the lad-derway, the lead man ahead, pistol drawn. Then the other, covering him from the other side.

He was watching the roaches scatter in a deserted stateroom when he heard shouting, scuffling, a thud. “What’s going on down there?” he yelled, rounding the ladderway, sliding down on the greasy handrails without touching the treads.

Snack Cake and Sasquatch stood over a guy lying on the deck. “He jumped out at me,” Snack Cake said.

“So you coldcocked his ass?”

“Only a little bit.”

“Fuck, man.” Marty bent over him, helped him to his feet. The Iranian, or whatever he was, wasn’t very big. He wasn’t young, either. Blood streamed from matted hair into a gray-streaked beard. He looked to be about sixty, and not a lot of tread left. “Shit. This ain’t gonna look good.”

“Asylum,” the geezer said, perfectly plainly.

“Huh? What’d he say?”

“Asylum. I want asylum in U.S.” He smiled through the blood. He had terrible teeth.

“We’re not in that business, Pop,” Marchetti told him.

“You give me asylum, I tell you where it is.”

“Where what is?” said Lizard.