She glanced back to find the crew eyeing her again. Germans. They’d kept their distance the whole time she’d been aboard. Not one offered to help, though she was burdened. And not exactly in the best of shape to be climbing around anymore.
Special Agent Aisha Ar-Rahim was in one of her traveling outfits. Under the long embroidered tunic, not quite an abaya, she wore cargo pants and a long-sleeved knit shirt, with Merrell hiking boots. And, yes, she was heavier than she should be, according to the NCIS. Her blood pressure was pushing the limit too. Not uncommon for black women her age, but her diet made her so hungry for salt that she dreamed about potato chips and Virginia peanuts. At her feet squatted a bulging carpetbag purse, a suitcase, and a black multipocketed 5.11 backpack. A second backpack held a high-resolution digital camera, a sixteen-inch expandable baton, and her “case cracker”—a laptop with an external video camera, for recording interviews. Also her SIG 9mm, with a spare magazine of 115-grain +p hollow-point rounds.
A clatter floated across the sea, and she straightened. A wasp-shape lifted, canted, and swiftly grew, trailing a sinking haze of exhaust. A rape case, following incidents of groping and sexual harassment. A ship in trouble, in the middle of a world in even bigger trouble. But being at war didn’t mean you stopped investigating crimes.
She edged back out of the way as the helo lined up into its approach.
Aisha had grown up in Harlem and graduated from CCNY. She’d been a Naval Criminal Investigative Service agent for seventeen years. The NCIS looked into any crime involving naval personnel, grand theft to murder. It conducted criminal and counterintelligence investigations, ferreted out contract fraud, and did counter-narcotics work. At first, as one of the few agents who spoke Arabic, she’d worked counterterror, and helped bring to justice the leader of an insurgency in a country on the Red Sea. Then, based out of Bahrain as the Yemeni Referent, she had been part of a joint FBI/NCIS team assisting in the interrogation of a suspected Islamic Jihad member. She held two Civilian Service Awards and the Julie Cross Award for Women in Federal Law Enforcement.
But the director’s commitment to promoting Muslims had seemed to fade. As had Aisha’s wedding plans. She was shuttled to force protection, then back to Washington, in the Communications directorate. Where she pushed paper and wrote releases.
She’d hit the glass ceiling, which had never been high for agents who wore hijab. For a time, she’d contemplated resigning. But having a daughter starting school made you think twice about leaving a federal job.
Usually, GS-13s with her years in didn’t go to sea. But if she volunteered for a float, they’d let her pick her next assignment. She could be the assistant resident, in Manhattan. Retire from there, and collect her pension while she and Tashaara lived in her mother’s rent-controlled apartment on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. And then, maybe, start an online fashion business. “Plus Size Muslima”; she’d already submitted a trademark application.
She’d been comfortably ensconced on the carrier, doing clearance interviews, investigating the occasional locker theft, and teaching an introductory Arabic class, when the message had come in from Savo Island. Agents routinely flew off the carrier to do investigations. But instead of five or six thousand men and women, the population of a carrier, a cruiser had a crew of fewer than three hundred.
She doubted it would take long to close this case.
There was one debarking passenger. His name tag read SCHELL. He nodded to her in the waiting area. “You’ve just come from Savo Island?” Aisha asked him.
“That’s right.”
She examined the caduceus on his lapel. “Medical?”
“Dr. Leo Schell. USAMRIID.” They shook hands. “You must be the special agent they’re expecting.”
“I must be. Aisha Ar-Rahim. And what did they need a germ-warfare specialist for?”
Schell bared his teeth. “That’s not all we do.”
“So what were you doing over there?”
“No secret. They had an outbreak of legionellosis. We finally traced it to the hot-water systems.”
“Ah. Should I not take showers, then?”
“They steam-cleaned everything. Pretty thoroughly. I think you’ll be safe.”
One of the flight-deck crewmen came over. He held out a cranial, a flight-deck helmet with ear protection, while looking doubtfully at her head scarf. “Fraulein Ar-Rahim? It is time to board. Please put this on.”
“Thank you. Can I… possibly get some help carrying my gear?”
The crewman looked pained, but reluctantly took two of the lighter items. “I’ll give you a hand,” Schell said, and picked up one of the backpacks.
Outside, wind and sun. The familiar scorching stench of turbine exhaust. She and Schell heaved her luggage up the fold-down steps, where a flight-suited crewman took them. The doctor shouted something, head bent close to hers. She shook her head, shrugged, and patted his shoulder. Then grabbed the crewman’s hand, and let him pull her up into the aircraft.
The helo was settling toward the cruiser when it canted abruptly, making her grab for the edge of her seat. The pilot corrected, a bit wildly, Aisha thought. He set the bird down so hard her chin slammed into her chest. The fuselage swayed and creaked. The crewman seemed to be absorbed in whatever was coming over his headphones. Only when their gazes met did he come to life. He sprang to the exit and dropped the ramp. “Out, we need to get you out!” he shouted, unbuckling her belt and shoving her toward where the sun flooded in. “We got to get back in the air.”
When she looked back toward the ship she’d just left, she understood why.
On Savo’s bridge, Dan felt it as an attenuated jolt, a distant thump that arrived through steel first, then air.
“Torpedo detonation, bearing one seven five,” Rit Carpenter said on the 21MC, at the same moment the lookouts reported an explosion. Dan wheeled, raising his glasses, to witness a black column mushrooming above the replenishment ship’s afterdeck. It seemed to be on the far side from Savo, which would make the attacker—
Dan said rapidly, “OOD: Breakaway, breakaway! Right hard rudder. All ahead flank as soon as the stern clears. Stream the Nixie. Helo controclass="underline" get Red Hawk back in the air. Vector to Stuttgart, then out along one five zero. Sonobuoys, MAD run. Boatswain: Sound general quarters! Set Zebra, Aegis to active, Goblin alert. Sea Whiz in automatic mode.” He wanted his radars aimed low, alert for sub-launched missiles.
The boatswain, Nuckols, put it out over the 1MC, adding “This is no drill” as Savo heeled hard, building up speed.
Dan hit the 21MC lever. “Rit, why didn’t we get a ‘torpedo in the water’ report?”
“Negat detection, Skipper. Some of these new fish have a quiet setting. They run slow, practically no screw noise. First thing you know, their nose is up your ass.”
“Just fucking great… Can you hear additional incomers now that you’re alerted?”
“No guarantee. We’d have to go active.”
“Start pinging. He’s in torpedo range; we should be able to pick him up. Find this guy and let’s kill him. Before he tries again.”