It was also only about twenty miles from Dubai City. But after a talk with the husbanding agent — and how Mr. Hamid loved to talk, droning on eagerly about all the flag officers he knew, all the U.S. ships he’d serviced — Dan decided, reluctantly, against granting liberty. The crew deserved R&R, and he wouldn’t have minded seeing the fabled city himself. But there was just too much to do — inspecting the damage to Mitscher, then getting his after-action report sent off. After that, arranging for sewage disposal, fresh food, currency exchange, line handlers, fenders, refueling, repainting the scorch marks from the launches, and offloading garbage and onloading ammo. Plus taking generators and pumps down for maintenance and maybe getting a freshwater washdown, if they could get enough water pierside.
Not to mention a thousand other details… all to be completed in forty-eight hours. Fifth Fleet wanted them under way again as soon as possible for a transit the other way, outbound. He didn’t look forward to that. The Revolutionary Guard had been able to study his tactics. Now they could game it out and, maybe, come up with something unexpected.
Also, after what had happened to USS Cole in a supposedly safe port, Dan was loath to leave his command half-manned, no matter how secure the locals assured him the place was. Aside from a UAE gunboat, he and Mitscher, moored on the far side of the basin, were the only two gray ships there. The security net, and the RHIB patrols both ships had out, made him feel a little safer. But if a terrorist decided to kamikaze alongside in a speedboat loaded with explosives, Savo wouldn’t be hard to find.
After a talk with Cheryl, he’d agreed to let the guys and girls spend down time in the Sand Pit, a fenced, air-conditioned, U.S.-only facility where they could phone home, listen to music, and play video games. Surrounded on three sides by oil field supply yards, tank farms, and container warehousing, it was unglamorous, but there was a pool, a shaded picnic area, a volleyball court.
And a bar, with American and local beer, below even commissary prices. That should cheer them up a bit.
He went over the last evening in port, maybe for a burger and fries that didn’t come off the mess decks. It was only three hundred yards from pierside, but he stopped a few steps up the shore and stood with fingers tucked under his belt, watching the water. Under the frosting of dust and scum it looked inviting. Small silver and black fish flickered in and out of the riprap. Familiar, but he couldn’t put a name to them. He lingered for several minutes, sweating, mind echoing as hollowly as a house after the movers have left. Just watching the fish.
By the time he got to the Pit his khakis were soaked and the airborne grit sticking to the sweat made every step a chafing torment. Rit Carpenter was sprawled with several chiefs and first class in lounge chairs in the bar. Some he didn’t know, likely Mitscher men. They fell silent as he came in. The yeasty, malted smells of booze and beer didn’t feel entirely comfortable. He’d had to stop drinking years before. But he didn’t feel out of place, the way he had when he’d first gone on the wagon. The idea of voluntarily ingesting a toxic chemical just seemed weird now. He said, only half joking, “Telling on me again, Rit?”
The old sonarman waved a longneck. “Hell, Skip, we been through some shit, right? I can’t tell a sea story, what’s a deployment for? Hey, guys, it’s oh-beer-thirty. What say, let’s buy the skipper one.”
“Maybe in a minute. After I check out the store.”
“We’ll be here.” Chief Slaughenhaupt looked drowsy, already half in the bag. “Hey… Lois says she got your message out to the dependents. They appreciate it.”
Dan nodded. “Thank her for me, Chief. I’m gonna check out the store, then grab a burger. Join you after, if you’re still here.”
“Where else could we go?” Carpenter muttered. He drained the longneck and signaled for another. Dan took the slender, ponytailed bartender for a girl at first, then realized at a second glance he wasn’t.
He checked out the little store, bought postcards. Looked over the tourist-trap trinkets, the heavy gold jewelry. Not Blair’s style, nor his daughter’s, either.
Then he noticed, against the wall, stacks of colorful cloth.
Shemaghs, desert-style cotton head-wraps with distinctive stitched designs. The clerk, who was Pakistani or Bangladeshi, spread them out on the counter, said they’d just come in. He explained how they protected the face from sun, the lungs from dust. Dan asked what the various colors and designs meant, and got more explanation than he needed, plus a demonstration of the various ways to wear one: a turban, a face-wrap, a bandanna.
There were bales of the things, and the prices were reasonable. He bought one in olive and black, after the clerk assured him this didn’t belong to any particular nationality or tribe. The postcards went to his brothers and his daughter, a few words apiece on the back of a glossy colorful shot of Dubai. When they were stamped and in the blue U.S. Mail box he slid into a diner booth and ordered a cheeseburger and fries. The waiter talked him into a Lebanese nonalcoholic beer. At the first taste, he grimaced at the unexpected bite of lemon. Well, he wouldn’t have to worry about scurvy.
He kept glancing at the phone booths. On most the handsets dangled, the international signal for “out of order.” He’d e-mailed Blair almost every day, though of late his messages had been short, as had her replies. But all at once, he yearned to hear her voice. He checked his watch as he sipped the lemon beer… okay, so it grew on you. The time difference was eight hours… so it’d be around seven. She was usually an early riser.
To his surprise, his Verizon card worked. She picked up on the third ring. “Who’s this?”
He smiled, picturing her lying in tumbled sheets. A little grumpy and disoriented, the way she was first thing, before her coffee. Maybe in the black silk pajamas he’d given her, practically see-through, breasts and nipples and the swell of her mons all perfectly outlined in glossy, sheer fabric. Shit, he was getting hard.
“Dan? I almost didn’t pick up. Where’re you calling from? God, there’s a huge delay.”
“Someplace hot and dry. Here for two days. Under way again tomorrow.”
A pause, which he broke with “How’ve you been doing? Any progress on the fund-raising?”
“Oh, we’re all right… ugh, the fucking fund-raising. I spend two hours every morning calling people and asking for donations. They all want something for their money. Guess I can’t blame them for that. They’re talking about redrawing the district… oh, let’s not talk about that. I guess the big news is we have a new member of the family.”
Dan blinked. “What?” Had Nan gotten—
“He’s black and white. And cute as hell.”
“He’s a… what? A puppy?”
“Puppy? No, you’ve always got to be there for a dog. I learned that from Checkie, and his Labs. So fucking needy. No, a kitten. I got it from Ina.”
Ina was her English girlhood friend, who lived several miles away in Maryland. “Well, I guess that’s good. Has he, she — has it got a name?”
“It’s a ‘he,’ and his name is Jimbo. How’s your cough doing? Your throat?”
“Not too bad. The dust irritates it, though. You remember what it’s like out here.”
“Yeah. How’s your crew?”
“Oh, fine… We’re still seeing that respiratory bug. But they’re holding up. Actually, I’ve been trying to think of things to weld them together better, give them a little more esprit.”