Now Stevens rattled through the landing checks, Soleck hardly able to keep up with his responses. The wonder of it was that Stevens was actually checking the stuff that he seemed to be hurrying through.
“Fuel—”
“Right tank uncertain—” Soleck started to say.
“Eight thousand,” Stevens said, and went into the break. “Going dirty,” he muttered, hitting slats and flaps, and the big, fat aircraft slowed as if it had been grabbed by the tail. Around it came, settling into the approach as steady as a kite towed behind the CV, losing altitude and speed and touching down to catch the two wire. Soleck thought how it must look on the Plat camera, how the LSO would rate it — another okay — and all the guys in the ready rooms saying Nice job. Jeez, that guy can fly. “Nice landing,” he said.
Stevens watched the yellow-shirt below him as they rolled to a stop. “Hey, coming from you, that means a lot to me.”
Three minutes later, loaded with helmet bag and kneepads and MARI tapes, Soleck was heading over the nonskid for the catwalk and a slider.
Why does Stevens have to be such a prick? he was thinking.
To his surprise, Stevens was waiting for him at the hatch. “Been thinking about your wetting-down party,” he said. “Just buy everybody a beer.” And went into the light lock without holding the door for the overburdened Soleck.
“We need goddamn muscle!” Alan shouted into his cell phone. “Get us some cover, for God’s sake!” He had managed to raise LantFleet intel in Norfolk — a number he knew by heart — on his new, supposedly international, cell phone, but the signal was weak and the reception spotty. On the other end, a confused duty chief was trying to figure out why somebody was shouting at him from somewhere in Africa.
“Sir, this isn’t a secure line—”
“Fuck security! We’re dying here!”
“Sir, I got no authority.” Over the satellite, it came through as Sir — got — o—auth — ty.
“Chief, pass the goddamn message, will you? Mombasa, Kenya; USNS Harker, hit by an explosion and under fire, I have a Navy admiral and an NCIS special agent missing—”
“There’s ships in your area, sir—”
“Chief, our comm is down to one mayday frequency! Pass the fucking word for us, will you!”
“I can notify Ops—” I ca — tify — ps.
“And then call the naval attaché in Nairobi; he’s got to get us some onshore support here — cops, the army, whatever — we’re pinned—”
“Choppers and Marines, sounds like what you need.”
“Choppers’re just more targets until we can secure a perimeter! Chief, we’re a decoy — we’re helpless, we draw in choppers, they shoot them down. No choppers yet!”
Then he really started to break up: “You telling me the — sage — to — there, sir? Sir — me get — straight—”
At that point, his voice faded and the line began to crackle. Alan shouted, “You’re breaking up!” and he heard incoherent babble from the other end. He punched the phone off, watching the battery signal flash at him. How much time left?
He looked at the Harker’s radioman. “I’ve gotta have a radio link.” He threw the cell phone on the tilted desk. It had been shoved into his hand, still in its plastic wrapping, when he had left Norfolk — memory empty, ability to find satellites untested. Now he was concluding it was a piece of crap.
The communications man looked barely out of his teens. He had come through the explosion with a forearm slashed by flying glass, had stayed at his post, put out his calls for help. “I’m working on it. Can’t you make a local call someplace?”
Alan thought of local friendly assets. There used to be an air force unit at the airport, but they had been pulled out, and it was their abandoned hangars that his detachment was to use. The British had had a regiment up the coast for decades, but they were gone now, too. He thought of the two Kenyan officers he had fought alongside in Bosnia — what the hell were their names? And where were they now? And how would he reach them? The last thing he wanted to have to depend on was a third-world cell-phone network in the middle of a citywide riot. Would rioters tear down cell-phone towers? he wondered. Why not? As useful as burning cars, wasn’t it?
Suddenly, he said, “The Kenyan Navy — Jesus, they’ve got to be here somewhere! There’s got to be a Kenyan naval facility at Mombasa!” He picked up the cell phone and punched in a number that he hoped was right. “NCIS, Washington — they can find the Kenyan Navy for us. Shit—!” He looked around a little wildly; the cell phone wasn’t connecting with a satellite. “All this fucking metal—!” He stared at the communications man. “You got any local telephone numbers?”
The man opened his hands in helplessness, then gestured around them. The comm office was a mess; the ship had tilted, and what hadn’t been shaken by the blast was now tipped on the floor — pubs, gear, a cup of long-forgotten coffee.
“What’s your name?”
“Uh, Hansen — Joe.”
“Hansen, we’ve got to get a number for the Kenyan Navy.” He punched the numbers for NCIS Washington into the cell phone. It was ridiculous: he was halfway around the world and he was calling home. “If it doesn’t work, try a local operator. Try directory assistance, whatever the hell they call it here. Try our embassy; that’s in Nairobi. Try—”
A dark head popped in the broken door. “Fireboat is pumping water in — they think they got the fire limited now—” It was Patel, the Indian who had come down from the riot with him.
Alan ran out to the catwalk that curved around the superstructure. Water began to fall on him like rain: the fireboat.
“Great—!”
A bullet pinged off the steel bulkhead.
“Oh, shit—!” Instinctively, his wounded hand contracted into what was left of a fist.
Somebody had started shooting from one of the warehouses along the dock. Not a very accurate shooter, but real bullets. The few men available to do damage control on the Harker were belowdecks, thus safe from sniping; the wounded were up on the main deck now, protected for the moment by the ship’s list to port. But up here on the superstructure, they were exposed.
Three levels above him, Jagiello, another who had come with him from the city, was supposed to be sitting with the rifle Alan had taken from the sniper. He was a deer hunter, he had said. He’d drill anybody who tried anything.
Well, why wasn’t he shooting?
Alan crouched behind the solid starboard rail. “Hansen!”
“Sir—?”
Alan looked up, waved him down. “Get down on the deck—!”
“Get out here but keep down!” When the younger man appeared, apelike on toes and fingertips, he shouted, “Get down! Way down — that’s it. Try that cell phone out here.”
“I’ve got to get a radio hookup.”
“Try the cell phone — that’s an order.”
Neither of them was sure that Alan had official authority on the Harker, but Hansen seemed to recognize that Alan had authority of a different kind. He rolled on his elbow and began to punch the phone.
Alan drew the H&K and tapped two quick shots in the general direction of the sniper. “Fat lot of good that’ll do,” he muttered. Where the hell was the guy with the sniper rifle? He peered out through the gap between the steel plates of the bulkhead. The warehouse had a long row of clerestory windows, the glass blown out of every one by the blast. The shooter could be in any of them. It hardly mattered; the range was ridiculous for a pistol, anyway. Still— He saw movement, aimed quickly, fired. Behind him, Hansen was muttering into the cell phone, his long hair plastered to his head by the falling water.