Alan waved and pressed the earphone to his right ear.
“Craik here, sir.”
“Stand by for Captain Beluscio.”
He had already had two nonsecure conversations with the chief of staff. Alan had heard the man’s tension even over the raspy radio link, remembered Beluscio’s reputation for nerves. Beluscio had been an F-18 pilot, and a good one, they said; the tenseness hadn’t showed until he had got a squadron command. Then it had got worse with each promotion. Odd.
“Craik! Captain Beluscio.”
“Sir.”
“Are we finally secure?”
“My comm man says so, sir.”
“Christ, at last. Any news on the admiral?”
“Negative.”
“What’s the situation?”
Alan told him pretty much what Barnes had told him and added that the Kenyans now had the gate under control and the sporadic firing out there had quieted.
“That’s only local,” Beluscio said. “We’ve got reports of massive rioting elsewhere in the city. Naval attaché says intel there is sure this is local Islamic fundamentalists — something called the Islamic Party of Kenya.”
Alan wanted to laugh, didn’t, and too late realized he should keep his mouth shut, because by then he was saying, “Pretty unlikely, sir; IPK isn’t fundamentalist and they aren’t the kind of—”
“These people are experts, Craik! Don’t argue with me.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I want the area cleared of everybody but my Marines as soon as humanly possible. Evacuate people to your det area at the airport if you have to, otherwise, send them back in the choppers. You in touch with your det? I want them back here, too.”
“Sir, they’re in a secure area at the airport—”
“Goddamit, I said don’t argue with me! I’m dealing with the big picture here! You get your ass out of there and organize removal of all personnel but my Marines, period! Got it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Then Beluscio made him repeat it all. Alan didn’t say that he had secret orders to stay in Mombasa from a level higher than Beluscio’s. Well, he’d deal with that when he got himself to the det spaces at Mombasa airport. One thing at a time.
“Anything on the admiral?” Beluscio said.
“They’re cutting in with acetylene. They should know something soon.” He didn’t bother to say that if the admiral was in a space so close to the blast that they had to use acetylene, he was gone. Well, maybe he wasn’t there. Maybe he was — somewhere. And Laura?
Nobody was sure where they had been on the ship, but a wounded sailor had seen the admiral, an aide, the captain, and a woman heading down a ladder one level up and slightly aft of what was now the point of maximum damage. Where there was now a large hole in the hull; where, two levels up, the side was bent in as if a fist had punched it; where, along the deck, rivets had popped and steel plates had been lifted into the air, to land on the dock and in the water, dozens of yards away. Where they had found the mangled bodies of two crewmen.
When he spoke now, Beluscio’s voice was bleak, the voice of a man who knew that he was in over his head. “Keep me informed.”
Alan started to say something then, because he saw activity around the hatch by which the medics were getting down to the worst area. He started to tell Beluscio to hang on, that some news might be coming, and then he decided it was better to wait. No point in adding to the man’s tension. Instead, he handed the comm set to Patel, and he went to the forward rail of the bridge and looked down at the scene below. Overhead, a Kenyan Navy “gunship”—an ancient Westland Wasp retrofitted with gun pods — whupped and chuffed its way landward, hunting for shooters.
Beside him, Barnes was leaning a lot of weight on the same rail. Trying to follow the chopper’s progress, he looked distinctly worse — eyes hot, skin pasty, sweat only a thin film despite the Mombasa heat.
“Patel!”
“Sir.” Patel’s cinnamon skin seemed chiseled, his lean face intent.
“Take Mister Barnes aft to the medic station and get him immediate attention.”
“Hey—” Barnes protested.
“Do it!”
Below him, a black medic had pulled himself out of the distorted hatch opening. He glanced up at Alan, then looked away as if guilty. Another man was looking down into the hole, reaching forward. A third medic appeared, and together they began to wrestle a litter up from below. It held a body bag.
The black medic, the one with the guilty look, made his way to the ladder and began to climb toward the bridge. Alan watched the litter and the body bag come out. Two men were straining from below, two lifting from above. Finally, they got it over the edge of the hatch and hauled at it until more than half was beyond the edge and the two on the deck could rest, part of the body bag still sticking over the open hatch, and they stood there, bent over, panting, looking at each other, waiting for the others to come up from below.
“Commander Craik?” the medic said behind him. He knew what they had been looking for and what finding the admiral would mean. Only a young man, maybe twenty or so, he had seen blood and injuries, and he knew what death was; like a nurse or a doctor, he had a manner to protect himself from other people’s pain. But now he was moved, barely able to speak. He said an odd thing, holding out a hand for Alan to see: “I’m sorry.”
Alan thought it was a piece of wood, then realized it was too thin to be wood. Leather, maybe — the sort of thing they bought for the dog to chew on. Then he touched it, and he knew it was cloth, blood-soaked cloth. Half of the collar of a Navy warm-weather uniform shirt that had been khaki and was now deep brown. Hidden by the medic’s darker thumb, as if he didn’t want them to exist, were two silver stars.
“Shit,” Alan said. He looked at the medic. “I’ll have to identify him.”
“No, sir.”
“I have to”—his eyes went to the man’s name tag—“Green.”
Green shook his head. “Nothing to identify, sir.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” And, because it had sounded harsh, he said, “I have to try. They can’t just take my word for it.”
He moved past the medic and went down the ladder to the deck. They had marked out a safe lane with yellow tape, and he went along that, stepping over cable that they hadn’t had time or hadn’t been able to remove. The smell of fire was stronger, the smell of the sea, too, the offshore breeze shifting as the end of day came near. The four medics who had pulled the body bag out stood a little away from it. As he came near, one stepped forward; he checked the man’s tag: Hyman, First Class.
Alan indicated the body bag. “The admiral?”
Hyman’s shoulders rolled, a kind of shrug, maybe a suppressed shiver. He was wearing a T-shirt that was brown with rust and smoke. “We got what we could. We think there’s, um, parts of four people in there.”
He absorbed that. “Is there more to get out?”
“Well — not without— Maybe with a — special tools, like that.”
Alan nodded. “Open it.”
Hyman unzipped the bag. A smell of overcooked meat burst up. Most of what he saw was unrecognizable, but he made out the shape of a skull, the hair burned off, the skin black. Teeth plain where the lips were gone. He saw a hand. Ribs.
“You sure there are four people in here?”
“Sir, I’m not sure of anything. There’s at least three, I know that. We tried to count, you know? But there isn’t enough — you know? There’s pieces of metal everywhere — sharp as hell — they were cut to pieces.”
Alan jerked his head. Hyman unzipped the bag the rest of the way. At the bottom, another hand, browned, shriveled, seemed to reach up from the mass. Above the wrist, it was wearing the stained remains of Laura’s pink shirt.