The Med (37 page)

Once again, Lenson was glad Susan and Nan were safe back in Athens. “You think we'll release them? The prisoners?” he asked Byrne.

“They aren't ours, they're the Turks'. We can't do a thing but ask them. And they don't play patty-cake with bad guys. Those are tough bastards, Dan. I've seen them execute their own crewmen. Firing squads, on the fantails of their ships. They hold this little religious service, they shoot the guy, he falls overboard. That's it. Not a lot of concern for what the other ships in formation think about it. No, I don't think we're going to talk the Turks out of much. Plus, they're tied up in Cyprus now—oh, it's masterly timing.”

“You think we should have put the MAU ashore, then?” asked Glazer.

“If we could have done it that would have been the best way,” said the N-2. “But I guess it's a missed chance. We'll be twisting in the wind for months on this one.”

“SACC, flag bridge,” said the squawk box, in Sundstrom's voice. “Dan, are you down there?”

“Yes sir.”

“Let's get some drills going, as long as you're on station. Bring the other ships up on the net, get some comm drills going. I want us to be on stream, ready for any eventuality.”

“Aye aye, sir,” said Lenson. The intercom clicked off. The other officers glanced at each other, rolling their eyes. He ignored them, pulling out a call for fire form. They could laugh, they could be sarcastic, even—in spite of one of the oldest rules in the Navy—in front of an enlisted man.

He would not. He would do his duty, despite fatigue, despite everything. No matter how silly or meaningless things seemed to him, he had to believe that Sundstrom knew what he was doing, that he was right. It did not matter, he told himself fiercely, what he or anyone thought of their commander. Because in the last analysis, if there was not obedience, and respect as well, then this ship, and this squadron, and the Navy, were lost.

Suddenly his pen stopped moving. He sat up.

“Dan? What is it?”

“I just remembered.”

“What?”

“That tattletale,” he said. “The Russian. Snoopy.”

“What about him?”

“He's gone. He left the formation during the night.”

“What's that mean, sir?” said McQueen.

“Nothing,” said Lenson slowly, staring at the map. “Nothing … I hope. Come on, let's start the drill.”

19

Nicosia, Cyprus

They woke her at dawn, for no reason Susan could see. With the others she sat through the morning, huddled, waiting. None of them knew for what. The men, whoever they were, who owned them now leaned with guns casual in their arms as umbrellas, smoking, eyes restless. Outside the shattered windows the drizzle drifted down steadily from clouds low-flying as pigeons, gray as lead.

She held Nan close, and did not dare to wonder what lay ahead.

At a little past ten they were motioned up from the floor and roughly instructed. Outside. Single file. One piece of hand luggage, no talking. She wondered why, but only briefly. One man—the Korea vet, she remembered—attempted to object. No word was said to him in reply; he was simply clubbed toward the exit. After that the hostages got up swiftly, all at once.

As she filed obediently through the shattered gates of the embassy she pulled Nan close, hiding her face from what lay in the dripping rosebushes. Someone had thrown a blanket over the younger marine, but the sergeant lay rigid in dress blues, his face upturned. Rain pooled in the hollows of the opened eyes, ran down the cheeks to drip in the grass.

“Go on! Over street.” “Move, or we shoot!” The shouts hurried them, like whips, along a gauntlet. They clattered into the street between two ragged lines of guards. One of them, shirt clinging translucent wet to his chest, shoved Ms. Freed savagely ahead of him. Shallow puddles of dirty water dotted the roadway. The wind drove ripples across them like miniature oceans. On one shore a red-and-white Lucky Strike package, empty and crumpled, lay hard aground. When the blanket fluttered, Susan caught sight of a dark wrist. The corporal had been black. She bent over her daughter, glancing fearfully toward the nearest terrorist.

“Nan? Are you all right?”

“Cold, Mommy…”

She searched the upturned face. Her cheeks were too red, her eyes blurry with fever. It wasn't imagination. Nan was worse this morning. Maybe it wasn't flu, despite what Stanweis said. She wondered how much medicine the old man really remembered.

If she got wet and cold now, even flu could turn into … she hated to think. Where were they going? Nan needed warmth and food and sleep. Where were these people taking them? Didn't anyone know that this was happening?

“Where are the police?” she whispered fiercely.

Moira, just behind them, was holding the pulpy remains of a Greek-language newspaper over her head. She looked pale and frightened. “I don't know, Betts,” she said, her voice pitched under the aural cover of the rain. “Probably waiting for the Turks.”

Of course. She had forgotten the impending invasion. But the takeover of an American embassy could not be overlooked, even at the edge of that abyss. “Somebody has to know what's going on here,” she whispered.

“I don't,” said Michael.

“I mean, outside of us. Somebody's got to be thinking about what to do, how to get us away from …
them.
”

She flicked her eyes past Moira and went silent. Arms folded over his rifle, shirt open to his waist, a young man watched them go by. He looked no older than sixteen. His eyes were both wary and repelled, as if those who passed carried some disfiguring disease. The green armband was dark with rain. A knife was thrust into his belt. He was only a boy … but it must have been just so, Susan thought suddenly, that the blond young fanatics of the SS had regarded those they called subhuman. They passed him and she whispered again, “Don't you think so? They can't just let them
do
this.”

“I think Persinger might have got a message off, just before they came in the gate,” said Michael. He seemed about to say more, but just then one of the guards, as they plowed by him through a puddle, reached out suddenly for the radio.

Cook grabbed for it, but too late. Plastic shattered, and the pieces subsided back into dirty water. Cook stared at the Palestinian for a moment—this one was short, ugly, and thirtyish, with crooked teeth and a crazy smile—and then reached out. He had his hands on him when Moira pulled him back by his shirt, putting him off balance. The man smiled even more then and stepped into him and stroked him to the roadway with the automatic pistol he carried. The sound of steel on bone was just like a baseball bat connecting.

“Michael!”

“Oh, mommy, he hit Mikey!”

For a moment she could not move. It was the first time she had seen a man strike another like this, not caring if he killed. For a moment she seemed to go far away. Then she came back, called by her daughter's cry. But the world was different now, and something in her, too, had changed.

“Help me get him up, Susan! Damn you,” Moira spat at the small man. He stood watching, grinning down at Nan, but keeping the pistol pointed at Cook. Behind him two other terrorists stepped up, their faces closed.

“Majd say no radios,” the small man said, still grinning.

Susan set Nan down and reached for Michael. A thread of blood showed at his ear. The women got the archaeologist out of the water and up on their shoulders. He stood, with an effort, and tried to push their hands away.

“I'm okay, you don't have to drag me … he just got me down for a minute.” He waggled his head.

“You're bleeding.”

“Harrach!”
said one of
them,
moving forward.

“Let's go,” muttered Moira. She wrapped Cook's arm around her shoulders. “Come on.”

“Mommy, carry me. It's cold,” whined Nancy, putting up her arms to be carried. With a wrench of her heart Susan saw how small she was, standing in the empty street, armed men around her.

The small guard reached out then. “You have pretty girl,” he said. Presumably he meant only to pat her head, but Susan bent hastily, scooped her up and backed away, watching craziness well up in his eyes. Her heart began to thud, but after a moment he turned away, laughing with the others.

“Michael, you sure you're okay? You're all wet—”

“Yeah.” He glanced back, eyes narrow. The collar of his shirt was turning pink, blood mixed with rain. “That snaggletoothed little sucker sure hits hard.”

They were headed, it seemed, across the square, and again she wondered why they were being moved. If, as seemed most likely, they were being held as hostages, why should the terrorists move them? Wouldn't there be more symbolic value, for whatever point these people were trying to make, in holding them in the American Embassy?

The leader, the young one … he had ordered it. He … what had the guard called him? “Majd.” That was it.

At that moment she saw him. He was standing to the side of the line of march, with three swarthy, mustached men. Rifle slung over his back, hair slicked wetly over his forehead, he was smoking a cigarette and listening gloomily to one of them. As she watched, he nodded, once, took a last puff, and flicked the butt toward the passing Americans. He looked off, toward the embassy.

She glanced back too, to see the last of the hostages filing out. When they were clear two of the guards lingered by the gate. As she watched, one pulled a bundle from his shirt, bent, then threw a piece of cloth over the twisted ironwork. A flag, red and green. Then, to her amazement, the other aimed a camera. The first posed, grinning, his weapon at port arms. Then they rejoined the rest.

She was wondering about that when they came out onto the main plaza, and saw the buses.

And the police. There weren't many. A handful of men in khaki, sitting in open vehicles in the drizzle, about two hundred yards away. They were faced on her side of the square by four of the terrorists, bareheaded, wet, and armed. The file of Americans turned as they came into the open, away from the motionless soldiers, and headed for the buses. The guards kept them to a slow walk. It was as if they were being displayed.

In the distant gray, behind the police cordon, she caught the slow pan of a lens.

The buses were silver-and-blue Mercedes, new. The same ones that had been waiting, diesels idling, to ferry Japanese and German tourists around the island, when she and Nan had arrived at the Nicosia airport. Now their route signs said, cheerily,
PRIVATE PARTY
.

As they came abreast of the police, still distant, she noticed the terrorists move closer to the Americans, pointing their weapons at their heads. It was done without words, visually, but the message was unmistakable. Keep back, they were telling the police. Do as we say. Or these people die.

She felt ice touch her spine. They weren't being held in secret. People outside knew. But they couldn't help.

No one could help.

*   *   *

The plane was a three-engine jet. Beyond that she could not tell, nor did she much care. But she was briefly heartened to see the big red letters gleaming shiny-wet on the vertical tail. TWA. At least, she thought, it should fly all right.

They were herded aboard quickly, single file, forced to run across the tarmac. The drizzle broke long enough for her to see the mountains to the west.

“So long, Cyprus,” muttered Moira as they bent at the top of the ramp.

The interior was a madhouse. Screaming, the terrorists (now, she wondered, were they hijackers, too?) shoved their way through the aisles, pushing men and women into seats with the butts of their rifles. She half-sat, was half-thrust into a seat midway along the fuselage, right side, just aft of the wing. She held Nan on her lap. Moira was two seats back, Freed a few forward of her; she'd lost sight of the others. The seat beside her was empty and she wondered why. She found out when one of
them
sat down beside her. He was one she hadn't encountered yet, a rotund fellow with quite a bit of stubble. She knew immediately he had been doing some sweating. By no means pleasant company, but he neither struck anyone for the time being nor gave Nan more than a single uninterested glance.

They sat on the ground for about half an hour. Midway through that the seated passengers heard voices raised from the flight compartment. At last two men in blue uniforms came down the aisle, still arguing, and being shoved by the Majd himself. He spoke in English, as he had the night before, and this time she caught a slight British intonation.

He jerked open the hatch and shoved them out. One pilot almost fell, saving himself only with a grab for the ramp handrail. “And tell them we want others within five minutes!” he shouted after them.

Ah, she thought, imagine the headlines in
Time:
PLO DEMANDS BETTER-QUALIFIED CREWS
. “Latest from embattled Nicosia is word of a safety initiative by terrorist leaders—”

Get a grip on yourself, Susan.

When the new pilots (this time in lighter blue and looking more frightened than the first pair: Turkish? she wondered) came aboard there was more palaver. At last the door to the cockpit closed. Susan glanced the length of the passenger compartment. There must be no more than a dozen of
them,
she thought then. No room for more than three in the cockpit, and she could count eight spaced along the aisle. They had reserved seats for themselves, but most were still standing, scanning the ranks of heads and filling the air of the compartment (still unventilated) with cigarette smog.

The announcement system came on at last, and simultaneously with it the engines began to whine. Through her window she caught a glimpse of a man in coveralls pulling away a cable. Yellow trucks trundled back. “THIS IS CAPTAIN SPEAKING,” it began.

Then came a yelp. A crackle, and then the voice resumed.