The Command

The woman couldn’t be serious. Cobie wondered for a second if she’d have to turn her in. Then knew she couldn’t. But she was ruining it for all the girls. Once they got into port, the guys would talk to the other crews, too. She knew how this worked. She tried again. “Look, you’re my friend. But you’ve got to exercise some restraint. Keep it off the ship, at least.”

But Wilson’s face had gone white. “Look, bitch, I’ve been in the navy too long to have some fireman call me a slut.”

“No, I just—”

“I like a guy, I show it. What their wives don’t know won’t hurt them. They’re having just as good a time at home. And I don’t need you telling me what to do. Not the way you and Helm keep mooning at each other.”

“We don’t—”

“Just shut the fuck up, all right? You see this?” She flicked her third-class insignia, the eagle above the stripe they called a crow. “I tell you what to do, Fireman Kasson. You don’t tell me. So fuck the fuck off.”

Cobie said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, “That’s how it is, huh?”

“That’s how it fucking is. Yeah.”

Wilson got up and went into the head. Leaving Cobie sitting at the table, looking after her. Wondering what she was going to do now.

17

Marty could not fucking believe it. Now they had to take not just Cassidy along on boardings, but a staff puke, too. An untrained fucking Down Under staff puke, to keep the rogue outlaw Gold Team from ass-raping the poor sonofabitching smugglers. He could not believe it.

But that’s how it was.

A piss-ass little Australian butterbars they called Booger. Actually his name was Berger, but they called him Booger when they were out of hearing of the other officers. It made him swell up like a toad, which meant it was the right nickname. Yeah. Booger fit.

Marchetti stood suited up by the stern, watching the ocher tint of boiling sand gradually turn the sun the color of dried blood. Waiting to go over on yet another boarding. He wasn’t sure why, but things were getting tense aboard the old Blade Runner. Over sausage and grits in the chiefs’ mess the quartermaster said the skipper and the commodore didn’t talk anymore. They stayed at opposite ends of the bridge and sent notes back and forth. The fire in the engine room had blown the shit out of the plant, so they had to cut down on the electrical load. Which meant the forward half of the ship had to go without air-conditioning. In hundred-and-twenty-degree heat this did not make for happy campers. Bendt said they should be heading for Rota or Sigonella, to get a new generator. The chief radioman set them straight as to why they weren’t: The new president was getting set to kick ass, and they had to stay on station till the word came down to shit or get off the pot.

Meanwhile it was same-same routine. Today was hazy, and that old-brick tint to eastward meant they’d be eating sand soon. He patted his coveralls, checking the extra bottles of water. He made the guys carry at least two liters when they boarded. Searching was hot work, and you didn’t want to drink the water aboard these tramps.

This morning’s objective rode between them and a dry-looking shore fringed with that reefish green. It had been slipping inshore on the Sudanese side, but the blip weenies had picked it out of the clutter. The skipper had run in and put the lights on it, the helo had circled it, and finally it had come reluctantly out into this burning dawn. Not large, couple hundred feet, with a rust-stained green hull and what looked to this Montana boy like tractor tires hung along the gunwales. A stumpy superstructure aft and two sawed-off masts. He’d heard its name, but forgotten it. Its running lights were still on, glowing like fireflies through the sandstorm dim. Funny, he thought, scuffing at the gritty deck. The wind was up, but it was still hot as hell.

Cassidy came out of the hangar, Berger trailing him. The Australian looked confused, like always. “Take extra water,” Marty told him. Berger smiled foolishly, as if he didn’t understand what he’d just been told.

They stood waiting for word. Marchetti kept glancing down. At the sea. As the square stern moved over the oily-looking surface it left a roiling road of bubbling jade wide as three lanes of traffic.

From nowhere at all he thought about how it’d be going down into it. Your hands zip-tied behind you. Maybe out cold already from somebody stroking you with a shotgun as you went back through the clapped-out lifeline. Hitting, and going down, and down … it was deep here … somehow the green water looked cold. Sweat was rolling off him. No wonder, with the float coat and coveralls, all the fucking gear. The green followed the stern for a hundred yards, then faded back into inky blue.

Fuck it. He was cool with it. Fucking raghead just had bad luck, that was all.

As the sky darkened he wondered why they called it the Red Sea. He’d never seen anything but that deep blue. And green, where it shallowed around the jazirats and reefs.

Drifting around down there, the sharks taking a taste….