The Command

Which was good, because with this new message everything had just been moved up. Launch was now set for 1510 local time. Giving the time of flight and the evasive pattern the missiles were programmed to fly, they’d reach their targets almost exactly at dusk. Arriving simultaneously with those fired from the Gulf, they should overwhelm and saturate the Iraqi antiair defenses.

He blinked in the dim coolness, sweat suddenly icy on his back as he remembered some of those defenses. Like the antiaircraft crew they’d had to crawl past on the banks of the Tigris, on their way to planting a flag on Saddam Hussein’s ultimate deterrent.

That of course had been after he was tortured. He regarded the numbers scrolling across the panels to his left with alternate flashes of fulfillment and horror. He told himself again that to have to resort to violence meant that someone, somewhere, had failed.

But faced with a lying and ruthless tyrant, maybe violence was the only answer. Litigation, friendship, trade, suasion, threats, even war, all had failed with the man with the mustache.

“Report from the Gold Team.”

“What is it?”

“Completed the loop. They’re alongside now.”

“Alongside us, or—?”

“No, sir. Alongside the merchie.”

“Did they get the message, where we’re headed? That they’re on their own for a while?”

Camill said they had, and Dan let them go. He’d done all he could. All that remained was to wait.

* * *

Two scruffy-looking dudes glared sullenly down from the bow. Marty glimpsed another face at a bridge window. Where they weren’t supposed to be. If the bridge was manned, the target could get under way, leaving the team stranded aboard and the RHIB panting after.

Which might not be so cool at the moment. Cassidy had just gotten off the radio with the Camel. They were going to get left aboard for a couple of hours, while the ship went north, shot, and then came back. Marty nodded, wondering why the melonheads at the top couldn’t do anything the way it was planned. Anything to make it tougher for the dumb snuffies who had to actually carry out the orders. He wasn’t worried, though. They’d just start the search while they waited for the ship to come back. No problemo.

The first indication things weren’t going to be that simple came as Fear purred around the slowly rolling ship. As they rounded the stern, he suddenly smelled something shithouse horrible. Something rotting. But underneath that was another smell, a familiar one. One that made him look significantly at Cassidy

Oil. Just looking down he could see it welling up, weeping through the riveted plates, the waving sea moss. A sheen wavered on the clean sea.

The quarter looked like a junkpile. Rusty pipes, cables dangling over the side. “Barbwire,” Crack Man said, pointing.

No shit, Marchetti thought. There it was, skanky-looking wire tangled along the handrails. No ladder, either. The rusty hull-steel looked shiny a few feet down from the deck. Leakage? The world was going dim. Something began stinging his face. Sand. The faces looking down did not respond until Deuce yelled up in Farsi.

“What’d they say, Barkhat?”

“You don’t want to know, Senior.”

“Tell them to clear that wire away from the rails. Then get the fuck up on the bow where they’re supposed to be.”

For answer they vanished, leaving the team bobbing below with no way of getting up on deck. Marty looked around at the rocking waves, the swiftly reddening light, the empty sea. Son of a bitch. Now he wished he’d piped up when Cassidy told him the ship was taking off. Well, they’d better get aboard. Even a shitty ship was safer than riding out a sandstorm in the RHIB. “Grapnel,” Marchetti said.

“Wait, Senior Chief,” said the staffie.

“What, Booger?”

“We’re supposed to call the SEALS if it’s an opposed boarding.” The guy looked at the ship. “They’ve got antiboarding measures in place. Isn’t that resisting?”

“Fuck that. We’re here.” He said to the coxswain, “Give me your life jacket, melonhead.”

“Fuck you, I need my jacket in the boat.”

“Fuck you, give it here!”

Berger said, “The rules of engagement say we need backup.”

Marchetti ignored him and he mumbled to a stop. Sasquatch had the grapnel out. He gave it a couple whirls, nearly taking the staffie’s head off, and up it went.

It flew over the rail and caught. He threw the life jacket over his back, balanced on the soft gunwale, and stepped off, letting his weight come onto the line at the same time he jackknifed his boots up against the rusty rolling steel.

By main force, he walked himself up the vertical face till he got almost in reaching distance of the gunwale. Then his boots hit the shiny patch.

It was grease, black grease, and his steel-toes shot out from under him. He grunted as his biceps took two hundred pounds of fighting senior chief and forty more of weapons and gear. The tanker rolled and he went face to face with it, grinding his cheeks into greasy iron frosted with sand. Then it rolled back and his kicking boots swung clear above the sea.