Damage Control (38 page)

“I got him!” Soleck shouted.

“Maybe twice.” Garcia had the roller-coaster-ride voice again.

They were turning hard again. “Three-inch rocket might not hit anything important,” Simcoe insisted.

“Cleared their fucking bridge, though,” Soleck exulted. “I think I see smoke.”

The surfaced sub flashed by under Alan’s window.

The plane was turning again, getting the lineup for the torpedo. The torp needed some run time to arm the warhead and get a clean look at the target. Their wings were level. The active sonar put out another pulse.

“I see him.” Garcia finally sounded tense. And then, “Movement on the bridge.”

They were flat and level and a few feet off the water. There was a loud clunk and the plane was suddenly lighter. “Torpedo away,” Simcoe said.

“Launch!” Garcia warned.

Alan had toggled the launcher to flare-chaff-flare; his arm moved of its own volition and the spike of pain came a moment later. He pulled the toggle down and held it, listened to the reassuring sound of the cartridges’ firing. The aircraft
was more than two miles away from the sub, and Soleck was turning into the sun.

“Torpedo running!” Simcoe shouted. Alan could hear him on his headphones and also over the sounds in the cockpit. He was that loud. Alan breathed out, kept his hand on the launch toggle.

Thud, thud, thud.

“Missile one in the water.”

The tail lifted, as if they had encountered turbulence. “Missile two found a flare,” Garcia said, her voice flat. “Sub’s still on the surface,” she added.

“Get us out, Soleck,” Alan said. He hadn’t contributed much, but he’d thought it through. Had to be ready for the next step. “Soleck, I want twelve miles between me and that sub.”

The plane leaped forward. “On the way.”

“He’s still on the surface.”

Simcoe was looking at his watch. He had the Kilo on the surface just a few hundred yards from two passive buoys from the pattern and his active buoy was a few dozen yards astern of the target. He could track his own torpedo as well as the target. He said, “Torpedo’s going deep.” His voice was breaking as he said it.

Alan already knew the torpedo had failed.

Alan nodded. “Sinking?”

“Maybe.” The word sounded like a cry. “Why are they staying on the surface?”

It came to Alan then—they were on the surface because they could shoot one of their payload, maybe more. Never Mecca; not from here, but Pakistan might be in range. And perhaps—

Alan hit his press-to-talk switch. “Wagonmaster? This is Chuckwagon, over. Do you have us in the link?”

“Roger, Chuckwagon.”

“Wagonmaster, give me a far-on circle from this datum
and tell me if a TLAM-C can hit Karachi? Or Bahrain? My screen is fried, over.”

“Roger, Chuckwagon. Wait one.”

Static silence; time to think about two children and many friends and thousands, perhaps millions, of civilians.

“Torp’s still running. It went right under their stern.” Simcoe was sobbing with frustration. “Goddam it. Under. Under.”

Soleck made a turn; they drove on, four miles a minute. A minute passed.

“Chuckwagon, this is Wagonmaster. Karachi for sure. Bahrain’s right on the edge of range.”

“Roger, copy all. Torpedo went Tango Uniform. Chuck-wagon out.”

“They’re going to shoot a missile,” Alan said to the cockpit. He had another trick to try, and then he’d have to face the final options. Like asking Soleck to fly the plane into the conning tower. He looked at his watch. “Soleck?”

“Thirty more seconds, skipper, and you’ll have your twelve miles.”

Alan had the Harpoon hot; it had been hot since the opening of the first engagement. He didn’t have a screen. He spent ten seconds thinking it through.

“Garcia.”

“Sir?”

“See your screen? On your armrest?”

“Yessir.”

“Put the cursor on the sub.”

“Done.”

“Bring up the Harpoon targeting menu. Got it?”

“Roger.”

“Put the Harpoon on the Kilo.”

“Got it.”

Alan looked at his watch. “Range?”

“Thirteen nautical miles.”

Simcoe said slowly, “His bow’s coming up.”

To fire a missile.
“That’ll get more of his superstructure clear of the water. Garcia? Know how to put in a waypoint?”

“Roger that, skipper.”

“Bring the missile into the target from 120. Full broadside, biggest return.”

“Done.”

Alan looked at the red Lu cite cover on his missile. The light was green. He wished there was time to crawl up front and check her work. There wasn’t. “Turn us into the target.” He reached up and lifted the Lucite cover against its spring. The plane turned under him, his extended arm heavier in the acceleration, as if the missile switch weighed ten pounds. He kept it there, his back and arm unnoticed.

“Opening his torpedo tubes,” Simcoe commented.

“Bow on,” Soleck called.

“Missile away,” Alan said. He pulled down on the missile release switch and let go the toggle. Nothing happened. Time stretched.

Whoosh. Loss of weight, a kick in the starboard wing, an audible roar and a heavy vibration. Then gone.

“Missile in the air.” Alan hunched forward, shoulders set as if he were flying the missile. He had time to thumb the releases on his shoulder harness and lean across to Simcoe’s computer. None of that safety crap mattered now.

“Follow it in?” Soleck asked.

“Yeah.”

On the screen, Alan watched the missile turn away from the submarine and fly east; plenty of room, longer range, more chance for the warhead to arm. Well out to the east, it turned; perhaps the computer exaggerated it, but it seemed to skid uncertainly, and Alan found that his adrenal gland did have something left. His breath stopped.

The missile began to curve back west. The curve straightened, and the missile ran faster.

Ahead of them, there was a flash so bright that it jumped through the cockpit to the back.

“Hit,” Garcia shouted.

Allahu Akbar.

Mike Dukas and Leslie Kultzke were married in the relative cool of the morning in the Navy chapel, Bahrain. The Episcopal chaplain married them—the closest to a Greek Orthodox clergyman that they could get.

For Harry O’Neill, the ceremony was a clash of feelings. He had been raised as an Anglican; now, as a Muslim, his presence at the familiar service brought back memories, some old, some more recent—old worship, recent fights with his father. That he wore a Muslim cap with his beautiful suit merely externalized that conflict—a life split into a before and after. Yet he smiled, ignored a few startled looks at his headgear, kissed the bride and shook the rather rattled Dukas’s hand.

Now, standing under a broad tent in the Craiks’ garden, he sipped papaya juice. A sense of separation from the event remained, but he smiled; the separation would always be there now, he knew, more so since he had broken with the Agency and they had responded by canceling two big-money contracts with his company. Still, he smiled; others smiled. It was a wedding.

“So,” he said to Henry Valdez. The red-haired Mavis was a dozen feet away. Harry looked toward her and said, “Your turn next, Valdez?”

“No way, man. I’m too young to die.” He might have
elaborated on that, but Mavis swung to his side. “Right, Mave?” he said.

“Right, whatever you said.” She was drinking champagne, perhaps not used to it this early in the day; her eyes looked dazzled and her pale skin was flushed. “Harry, when do I get on the magic list at Fifth Fleet with all you
guys?”

“Hey, Mave—”

Harry waved Valdez to silence. “You don’t, Mavis. Nobody does. We’re bad people at Fifth Fleet now.”

“I thought you walked on water over there! If that isn’t an offensive ecumenical mixture of religions—is it? Anyway—” she sipped champagne—“I was pissed off when I wasn’t allowed into the sacrosanct precincts of the American Navy along with my Latin lover, here.”

“That’s history, Mavis. The special relationship has been canceled.” He sipped his juice, looked over the top of the glass at her. “Want to leave my employ for a good Christian?”

“Oh, darlin’, damned few of the Christians pay as well as you do, and anyway, you got Rickie.” She was holding Valdez’s hand, now leaned against him and giggled. Then she looked back at Harry. “Weddings make me sad, so I drink too much. Don’t worry, Harry, I won’t make a scandal.” She stared around her in the tent. “It is awfully early in the day to be drunk, though, isn’t it.”

Harry whispered “Take her home” to Valdez and ambled off. What Valdez and Mavis did was their business, unless they did it in public, when it became his business.

A Bahraini jazz trio—guitar, keyboard, sax—was playing oldies with the odd bit of soft rock thrown in. The music, volume kept deliberately low, floated in the warm air like a scent. Harry saw people he knew, smiled, waved, said a word or two and moved on. He wanted to find Dukas and Al Craik and to settle at their sides for a little, and then he would go. Spotting Dukas and Leslie—like Valdez and Mavis, holding hands—on the far side of the tent, he made his way toward
them, moving around groups, squeezing between people. A
lot
of people, he reflected; half the Navy seemed to be there, although the group at the actual wedding had been quite small. He saw one of Alan’s pilots, a gangly kid named Soleck with a pretty woman in a uniform with wings. He saw an NCIS agent he knew named Rattner, with him somebody newer named Greenbaum and a pretty woman he had been told was a Canadian nurse whom Greenbaum had met during an investigation. He smiled at both men, unable, unwilling to get close enough to talk, saw the pretty woman lean in tight to Greenbaum to whisper in his ear, her eyes on Harry. Asking who he was.
Oh, yeah, the black Muslim. Isn’t he supposed to be really, really rich?
Both Greenbaum and Rattner leaned toward her to tell her about him, but not, he thought, to tell her that he had lost his ticket to the ball, wasn’t one of them anymore.

“Happiness to the bride,” he said, and he kissed Leslie for the second time that morning. She looked a little overwhelmed, a little nervous, but almost pretty.
Women never so radiant as when they are brides and when they’re pregnant, and she’s both.
He knew that, too. “Congratulations to the groom,” he said, shaking Dukas’s hand. Dukas rolled his eyes and made a face. “You know what this shindig cost?” he growled.

“He doesn’t really mean that,” Leslie said. “He’s pretending to be a cynic.”

“I don’t have to pretend; I am a cynic. Gloom, doom, and no hope.”

“You married me—that seems pretty hopeful.” She had an arm around Dukas’s waist and she looked, Harry thought, possessive and sure of him. “You didn’t bring your wife?” Leslie said after a quick look around the tent.

“Yasmin is very shy. She doesn’t speak English and she feels out of place among—” He hesitated too long before saying “people she doesn’t know,” and the words overlapped with Dukas’s saying “Christians.”

“Oh, you should have brought her anyway! Rose and I made a women’s room in the house—we could have visited in there and she never would have had to come out here.” She meant it, he saw. He told her that she would have to come visit Yasmin at their home; Yasmin would love to meet her.

“Oh—” Leslie glanced at Dukas. “We won’t be here so much, I’m afraid.”

Dukas grunted. “We’re doing the honeymoon bit in Italy. Househunting. I’m going to be the SAC at Naples.”

He waved a hand. “Spinner got a job in DoD, you know that? Nice to have connections. You screw the Navy, leak classified information, you get a better job in the Pentagon. Really swell.” He was more than angry. Leslie said something; he stirred, shoulders and upper arms, part shrug, part shiver. He seemed to have calmed, and then he said in a bitter voice, “You hear about Pilchard?”

Harry had heard about Pilchard—the admiral was already back in the states, they said, pulled out of his command of Fifth Fleet and called home for “reassignment.” Then the Craiks found them, Rose beautiful and beginning to look a little pregnant, Alan drawn a little fine, his smile just a shade thin. “I heard you mention Admiral Pilchard,” he said when they had finished greeting each other, and Rose was done telling Harry how gorgeous he looked. “You know what happened?”

“He got bounced.”

“Yeah, right out of the Navy. Retirement—for letting me fire on a sub that was carrying WMDs.”

Rose gave Harry a look. “Honey, it’s a wedding—lighten up!”

Dukas grunted. “Like me.”

The two women started to tell their men how happy they should be—look at the day, listen to the band, watch the pretty girls—and Rose said, “Be like Harry!
He’s
happy.
He
knows how to behave at a wedding.”

“Absolutely. I’m so happy at weddings I’m thinking of having another myself.” He smiled at all of them. “I’m allowed four wives, you know.”

Then they all laughed, not entirely merrily, and the talk turned to other people, lighter matters. Harry told them about flying Mary Totten and the lugubrious Bill back to the maharajah’s palace and the gathering of CIA people there in the past weeks. “Sort of like flies on a pile of shit—they’ve got thirty people there at last count. The hotel is full.”

Alan said that Fifth Fleet had had to lay on an every-other-day flight, but how did Harry know so much?

“I have sources, m’man.” He grinned. “The maharajah and I rather hit it off, don’t you know.”

“And Mary’s in charge? A dream come true. Now all she’ll need is a guy who’ll stay in one place for a few hours.”

“Actually, I think she found one.” His smile was slow, secret. “You’d have to ask Dave Djalik.”

Alan looked stunned. “Djalik?” He looked at Rose, then back at Harry.
“Djalik?”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell. But the maharajah is a fount of information.”

Other people came up and began to talk to the bride and groom. Harry muttered his congratulations again and then made his goodbyes to them and said that of course they’d be seeing each other again—somewhere, sometime—and then he and Alan were moving toward the garden gate. Neither of them said anything, and when they were at the gate, waiting for Harry’s driver to bring up his car and its escort, they stood looking out at the street, the celebration behind them muted and almost distant. Finally, Harry said, without looking at Alan, “How bad is it?”

“I don’t know yet. You?”

Harry drew himself up. “The Agency threatened me, but I know things they don’t want spread around. I think they
had some idea they’d out me—convince other Muslims that I was a wholly owned CIA subsidiary. Get me killed. Or worse. Now, they won’t—a Mexican standoff.” He watched his car pull in close to the gate and a bodyguard get out and look up and down the street. “But it’s different now.”

“Yes, it’s different now.”

The bodyguard nodded, and Harry put his hand on the gate. “But not between us.”

Alan put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, and then Harry opened the gate and went out.