The colonel chuckled.
“Then, I guess we will find out how these capabilities stack up. And we know about computers, don’t we?”
“Yes, sir.” Major Samir licked his lips nervously.
The colonel smiled as he dismissed the intelligence officer with a curt nod.
“Keep me informed of any changes to the disposition of American forces.”
Major Samir, and the two junior intelligence officers with him, saluted and hastily departed through a side door.
They never say anything, those two, thought Alqahiray, as he watched them leave.
I will be the most powerful man in the Arab world, Colonel Alqahiray said to himself. And even more worshipped than old Saddam, who still manages to hold on to power at his age. He propped his feet up on the metal stanchion in front of him and for the thousandth time began to go through the hundreds of things that could go wrong.
Minutes later he shook his head.
“Steward, bring me another cup of tea.”
Two hours later, a young captain standing near the primary operations console reported to Alqahiray that a supertanker had run aground off Morocco in the Strait of Gibraltar. The erroneous data broadcast from the GPS satellites was confirmed. Alqahiray watched expressionless as they monitored the joint Spanish and British maritime control on Gibraltar shifting transit shipping to the northern channels and closing the southern lanes. Jihad Wahid had claimed its first casualty, even if it was Panamanian registered.
“Damn it!” Captain Duncan James, United States Navy, grumbled. He wadded up the letter and tossed it. It bounced off the hallway wall to land beside a similarly discarded letter that had arrived from the Navy yesterday reminding him that he had to retire in August.
“It’ll be a cold day in hell before I give you money to live with that boy toy, Cathy,” he said.
Duncan James thought of himself as a strong, no nonsense naval officer, but beneath that granite veneer was … a sensitive man?
“Yes, a sensitive, goddamn twenty-first-century male who is going to ring that son of a bitch’s neck when I get my hands on him.”
He stared at the face in the hallway mirror as he straightened his tie. Duncan lightly stroked his chin. No double chin, he noted, thinking to himself that most men would have two by the time they were forty-eight. He squinted at the image in the mirror and leaned forward for a closer look. With two fingers on his right hand he pulled his lower eyelids down.
“Shit,” he said, looking at the bloodshot eyes. He released his eyelids and his gaze drifted downward to his uniform. He leaned back.
“Damn, where did that come from?” He scratched at a stain on the dark tie, feeling a small crusty patch.
“It’s either last Friday’s or this morning’s eggs. Duncan, watch where your food falls,” he said aloud. A slight echo came from the other end of the hall.
He brushed the tie straight and figured no one would notice unless they looked close. He turned sideways, continuing his appraisal. Flexing the muscles of his left arm, he was rewarded with the reflection of a firm bicep. He ran his hand across his head, rubbing the short stubble, noticing — really noticing for the first time — that gray strands far outnumbered the black and wondered how long his hair had been gray instead of black. He leaned closer and lightly traced a receding hairline that was in an impossible race against a bald spot for possession of the top of his head.
His finger touched a faint three-inch shrapnel scar on the left cheek near the jawbone, courtesy of an Iraqi grenade during Desert Storm. His hand moved to his stomach.
“Maybe an inch too much around the waistline, but I still have everything I had when I was in my twenties; it’s just further south now.”
He squared himself toward the mirror and took a step back.
“I’m six foot two, one hundred seventy pounds, and all muscle … well, nearly all muscle. Everything a Navy SEAL with twenty-eight years of service should be.”
The shock of the past ten days hit again. He couldn’t believe that his wife of twenty years had thrown him over for a stock boy at Safeway. Why, Cathy? The son of a bitch is nothing more than an anemic stock boy who can’t be more than thirty! He’s at least thirteen years younger than you are! I love you. But, he thought, maybe love was too strong a word. Maybe their marriage, like thousands of others, had become more one of convenience than love; acceptable friends rather than close lovers; roommates over husband and wife. He rubbed his hand over his head again.
He didn’t know. Maybe if they had been able to have children things would have been different.
Between the letters the two loves of his life had disappointed and left him.
Why did Admiral Hodges want to see him, he wondered for the hundredth time since the yeoman’s call at 0600 hours this morning. There was no love lost between the two. Until he’d talked with Beau, thirty minutes ago, he’d believed the Navy letter was the reason for the unexpected phone call. To rub in the fact that Duncan was going home and William Tecumseh Hodges wasn’t. It would be just like his former classmate. Of course, it wasn’t as if Duncan had done anything to prepare for August. Well, he did buy a tube of sunscreen. Regardless, this being Admiral Hodges, then there was a snowball’s chance in hell it was good news for Duncan James.
This week was starting as shitty as last week.
Last night Duncan had stumbled home from the club to find the dog dead on the front lawn, the victim of a hit and-run driver. He had stuffed the animal in a plastic bag and put it in a trunk in the garage before staggering upstairs to pass out on the bed. He planned to bury it properly after work the next day.
But the next day was here and he woke to another whammy when he found a letter from his wife’s lawyer on the rug beneath the letter drop of the front door. Divorce?
Maintenance payments? She hasn’t been gone two weeks and she’s already hired a shyster talking divorce? If that weren’t enough, his old banger of a car refused to start this morning. Probably would have helped if he’d remembered to turn off the headlights last night.
He tilted his head back as he put in eye drops Duncan rubbed his head, shut his eyes, and hoped the headache would go away. Two quick cups of coffee and several glasses of water had failed to chase the effects of last night’s binge. He was lucky the Virginia State Police hadn’t stopped him. The Reston judge was not known for his liberal views of drunk driving.
He kicked the two letters with the toe of his black dress shoe. Wife leaves him and the Navy’s Selected Early Retirement Board, SERB, reminds him to retire — go home-by August; less than forty-five days away. He stared in the mirror, eyeball to eyeball — the eyewash had done little to stop them from looking like red-lined road maps of New Jersey — and unconsciously began to compare himself with Beau.
Whereas Duncan was forty-eight. Beau was thirty-nine.
Whereas he was married. Beau was a confirmed bachelor.
Considering how life was going, a confirmed bachelor lifestyle appeared the better alternative. Duncan had a scarred, middle-aged, wrinkled face, with too broad a nose between brown eyes. Beau, on the other hand — the asshole — had a smooth, almost Nordic, face accented with neon blue eyes and topped by waves of flowing brown hair — hair that turned blond when exposed to the sun for any length of time. The lieutenant commander’s mischievous ways and his unnaturally boyish good looks drew women like moths to a flame. Duncan rubbed his chin.