The Command

But gradually as the after level lowered, a patch of paint came into view. Same color as the rest of the hold, but cleaner. New.

He sent Crack Man topside for a fire axe, and took a roundhouse swing in the middle of the painted area.

Plaster or concrete flew apart with a cracking sound. “Son of a bitch,” Lizard said.

Marty grunted. He hacked around the edge till he was tired, then handed the axe to Sasquatch. Clouds of white dust filled the thick air. Finally Marchetti told him to back off. He crept forward, pulling his Maglite off his belt.

The beam showed him a void extending back under the fuel oil service tanks. Its inner walls were dark steel. He looked back to where his shotgun was propped and felt to make sure the .45 was still at the small of his back.

Then bent through the hole, and duckwalked into a space maybe four feet high.

Carefully dunnaged into the space with baulks of piny-looking wood were perhaps two dozen cylindrical brown objects. As he crept closer, he saw the brown was a thick impregnated kraft paper wrapping material. He slit it with the Ka-Bar. Beneath was … he couldn’t quite made out what.

He rapped it with the knife, but that didn’t tell him anything. Just that it was a shiny metal tube a foot in diameter and maybe eight, ten feet long. There were no markings on it, although there was writing on the paper. Too faint to read, but he thought it might be German or Dutch. They didn’t look like much. If he’d fallen over them stacked outside the engine room he wouldn’t have given them a second look. But they were hidden so there was probably a reason. He backed out and climbed out of the hold and reported back on the radio.

* * *

Dan was on the scrambled freq to Commodore Strong for the fourth time that afternoon. He was telling him he’d decided to leave his search team aboard that night. The master, expostulating fiercely he’d known nothing of any contraband, had been told to start the engines and steam back toward the mouth of the gulf. She lay now directly ahead of Horn, plodding along at nine knots. Dan told the officer of the deck to check in by radio with Ensign Cassidy every fifteen minutes and warned Cassidy and Marchetti to keep Yazd’s crew under close supervision.

Strong was saying, “Make sure your men keep close control. Once you lay hands on them, these smugglers will scuttle rather than turn over evidence. Especially if they’re Iraqi and have families in country.”

“Aye, sir.”

“I’ve reported our discovery up the line. Laboon will relieve you off Ras Muhammad, after you transit the strait. You’ll escort your detainee to Jiddah, where the Saudis will take him to a security area off Bahrain while his case is decided.”

“Aye, aye, sir. What happens then?”

“They off-load and evaluate the cargo. Eventually the ship’s auctioned as a captured smuggler. To deter the next owner the Iraqis approach.” He heard the commodore clear his throat off-mike, then come back. “Unfortunately, our best customers at the auctions are the other smugglers, the ones who’ve made it and gotten paid. They buy the captured ships, and the whole cycle repeats itself.”

“That doesn’t sound too productive, sir.”

“Well, one hopes we are putting something of a dent in Saddam’s rearming. At any rate, a well-done to you and your crew. MIC out.”

“Horn, out,” Dan said, and hung up the red phone. He looked out at Yazd again, plodding along against the backdrop of the mountains. Thin high clouds hovered above the distant peaks, growing darker as the day closed.

“Now all chief petty officers, first class petty officers, assemble in the chiefs’ mess. All chief petty officers and first class petty officers, assemble in the chiefs’ mess.”

He glanced at his watch. Swung his legs down, and went below.

* * *

Dan had asked Forker to get the enlisted leadership together. He stood in his in-port cabin, steadying himself against the sway of the ship. Debating, in the last minutes before he faced them, what would be the best approach.

Hotchkiss wanted to take it outside the skin of the ship. The criminal investigators. Commander, Mideast Force. But he still thought Horn could do this herself. If she found her own answer, it’d be a hell of a lot healthier than one imposed from outside.

Because if it broke outside, she was lost. She’d be shattered for years, if not forever. Another repeat of Tailhook, another reek of cover-up and U.S. Navy closed-mindedness.

Nick Niles would rub his beefy hands. But from what Blair had told him, Dan didn’t think this clock ran backward. If the Horn experiment blew apart, the extreme feminists in DACOWITS and Congress would take over Women at Sea and kill any chance of proceeding with any semblance of goodwill. Splitting the service down the middle, with quotas, lawsuits, years of bad publicity. He could kiss his career goodbye, too, but that didn’t seem as important as what it’d do to all the guys and gals who’d striven to turn the ship around after Ross’s lackluster regime.