The flag lieutenant, resplendent in whites and chicken guts, cut straight to the head of the morning line in the hotel lobby. “Is Admiral Pilchard in the hotel, please?” he asked. A full commander in the line glared at him, and Spinner smiled back. You may be some shit somewhere, pal, Spinner’s look said, but not with me. Not right now.
“He’s in the pub, sir.” The woman behind the desk smiled. Spinner was used to that smile, but right now he had other fish to fry. Ignoring the outraged stares of the line, Spinner marched across the lobby of the Gulf Hotel and into the pub.
Pilchard was planning to play a round of golf with the new ambassador and an old buddy; he was wearing an ancient navy sweatshirt and jeans and Spinner thought he looked old and undignified. He and his buddy were laughing, the only patrons in the bar; just two ill-dressed old men drinking coffee.
Pilchard’s head came up as soon as he saw Spinner’s uniform.
“Sorry to interrupt, sir.” Spinner paused for dramatic effect. This was what he liked best, center stage. “There’s been a serious accident on board the Jefferson.”
“How serious?”
Spinner felt as if he were watching Pilchard age, as if it was some cheap horror movie. The laugh was gone; the face looked gray. Time to retire, old-timer. “We don’t know for sure, sir, but the first look is that a plane, possibly Indian, hit the deck of the Jefferson. Her flight deck is on fire and she has fires on the O-2 level and above. Captain Rogers is dead and Admiral Rafehausen is badly injured. Captain Lash of the Fort Klock has taken command. He’s ordered the fleet exercise canceled.” Spinner was keeping his voice very low.
“Jesus,” Pilchard’s guest murmured.
“I have to go,” Pilchard said, pulling a windbreaker from the back of his chair. “You drive?” he asked. Spinner winced.
“Yes, sir.” Kiss the afternoon goodbye.
“Get me out to HQ.” Pilchard waved to his friend and started out to the lobby, Spinner hurrying to keep pace.
Pilchard had his phone open and was dialing. He glanced up at Spinner, who pointed at the waiting car. “Shelley?” Spinner wished he could hear Captain Lurgwitz on the other end. She was Pilchard’s flag captain and she didn’t like Spinner, thus kept him out of a lot of good information. “Yeah, Spinner’s here. I got it. Was it Indian? What do they say?” There was a pause. By now, Spinner was at the wheel and Pilchard was folding his height into the cockpit of Spinner’s BMW. He nodded at something.
“How long have they been off the air?” A low buzz as Lurgwitz spoke. “You tried calling Al Craik at Mahe?”
Spinner’s stomach growled at the mere mention of Craik, who had reprimanded him for some trivial message attachment once and didn’t seem to play the game the way the other staff officers did. Blow-hard glory hound.
Pilchard glanced over at him, and Spinner wondered what showed on his face. The admiral was still gabbing on the phone. “I’ll look at the rest when I’m in. No press till we know, right. Yeah, Shelley, I remember the Forrestal. If you can’t get Mahe, get me HQ Delhi or even their attaché here, okay? And get me Al Craik.”
A cell-phone tower rose from a dusty plain like a damaged tree. A poorly paved road ran by it. A motorbike came down the road, two people on it, a man and a woman, the woman riding behind.
The motorbike stopped by the cell-phone tower, and the driver dropped it in the dry grass. He looked up and down the road — people walking, four cyclists, a distant truck — and removed two blocks of C-4 from the bike’s saddle bags. The woman was already wrapping wire around two of the tower’s supports.
They attached the C-4 and connected wires buried in it to a cellular phone by alligator clips. Then they got back on the bike and putt-putted along the road for half a mile, where they stopped and made a cell-phone call, and the tower collapsed. Joke: the tower handled the call that triggered the explosives.
Admiral Pilchard came up a corridor in Fifth Fleet headquarters with his flag captain beside him and his flag lieutenant running interference. All three looked grim: they had just come from a meeting about the Jefferson.
“Spinner!”
“Sir!”
“Get me the Public Information Officer — my office. Now!”
“Sir!”
That’s what Spinner seemed to do best — do things to please people. He was almost running in his eagerness to get the PIO.
Pilchard turned into the flag deck, waved a hand at people who were perfunctorily rising, and banged right through into his private office, a whirlwind pulling Lurgwitz in his wake. She was a stocky, intense woman who would one day have stars on her collar like Pilchard’s.
“What d’you think?” he demanded, throwing himself down in his chair.
“I don’t see the pony yet.”
Pilchard put his forehead on the heel of one hand. “What a mess! Jesus, Shelley—” He looked at her. “Sit down, for Christ’s sake!” He blew out breath. “Okay. I want CAP for the carrier, even if we have to go to the goddam US Air Force for it. Two, I want liaison with the embassy about the Indians and whatever the hell is going on over there. A, there’s the question of relations with their navy — get their attaché, what’s his name? Roopack, Jesus, what a birdbrain, but he’s what they sent — calm him down if need be, make sure he gets the message and relays it home that we deeply regret, etcetera, not our doing. A full investigation — make that a full joint investigation — will follow. Don’t mention the Jefferson unless he does; if he does, not word one that we think it’s one of their birds that went into our deck or whose fault it was. Okay? B, put intel on finding out what the hell is going down in India itself. Find out why we haven’t heard from Craik and get on his ass if you can find him. Then—”
He looked up at a knock, bellowed to come in. Spinner put his pleasant face around the door, waited to be signaled in, and then let the Public Information Officer go first. Then, even as the admiral started speaking, Spinner was arranging chairs, making sure there were notepads, and fetching coffee from the admiral’s pot.
“We have a situation,” Pilchard said to the PIO. “Your job is to put a wall around it.”
The PIO, a commander with degrees in journalism and mass communications, nodded.
“The Jefferson, that’s the BG flagship, has had an accident. It’s bad. We don’t know how bad, but the boat’s crippled and people are dead. Right now, the deck’s closed and she’s got no air cover.” Pilchard picked up a pen and tossed it back on the desk. “We can’t let word about it get out until we know just what we’ve got and how we can cover. If the media pick up on it, we’re going to have every hardhead in the Middle East trying to pick off the BG. Understand?”
“You want a soothing-syrup story or no story at all?”
“No story today. Maybe syrup tomorrow. No press briefing.” He picked up the pen again. “Can we keep five thousand sailors on the Jeff from phoning home about it? So far, maybe — acting BG CO is ‘taking steps.’ If that holds, we’ll be okay for a day.” He cleared his throat. “If the story gets out — if you’re asked, volunteer nothing — then you say that the ship is underway and doing its job. Got it? That’s the bottom line — the ship is still the biggest piece of force projection in the world, on station and on duty.”