The Med (49 page)

His roommate snored on, the ship creaked around him as steel bent under the impact of the sea. The lamp hummed. He worked on.

At last he finished the basic oporder. He stapled the scribbled pages and they followed the rest into the ready maw of Radio. Next: the schedule of fires. He stretched in his chair and grinned. At last, something he was supposed to be doing.

The warning order from Admiral Roberts had said, prepare for an “opposed” landing. That meant, against hostile forces, ready and waiting on the beach. If you did that right, he thought, if you really expected the landing to be resisted, Sixth Fleet should have ordered preparatory fire. Destroyers and cruisers, standing offshore, would begin pounding that unlucky section of beach two hours before the first amphib came over the horizon. Gun after gun would spout flame and smoke, sending tons of explosive in to carpet the beach, destroying emplacements and driving any defenders deep to earth. The barrage would be continuous, and carefully calculated to make it impossible for anyone to move or aim a gun for the whole time the boats and tanks churned their clumsy way in from the sea. Only when the first marine was a hundred yards from land would the curtain lift, draw back, moving ahead of the troops at a walking pace to keep a wall of fire and steel between them and the enemy.

And overhead, at intervals, aircraft would come in to strafe and bomb any pockets of resistance.

That was the way it was supposed to go. In reality, a World War Two-style landing was impossible for the Mediterranean Fleet to support anymore. The gun-heavy old destroyers and cruisers were all but gone. Their replacements were missile escorts or antisubmarine units, not gunfire-support ships. Their high superstructures were crammed with electronics and computers, not weapons. They carried one or at the most two automatic five-inch rifles, with a high rate of fire, but too complicated for the hours of continuous bombardment you needed to soften a heavily defended beach.

But in the Navy you got used to making do with what you had. He had two escorts, and if the raid got into trouble ashore, he had best be ready to use them no matter what Roberts' message said about limited force. Then he remembered:
Ault
was no longer with them. Christ, he thought, I hope she gets here in time. She's ninety percent of my fire support.

Pulling the chart toward him, he subdivided the landing areas (“green” and “gold”) into sixty-four rectangles of varying depth. These would be the target areas. Checking the coordinates of each corner, he cleared off another part of the desk and transferred the numbers to a fresh sheet of paper. This would be the beach blowup, included in the oporder as direction to the destroyers' gunnery plots.

That done, he began the tedious process of calculating how many shells per square meter per minute would suffice to keep the beach neutralized. That took half an hour, even skipping the finer points, but when it was done he had five columns of figures, each subdivision broken out by number of shells, projectile type, fuze type, and providing ship.

The radioman took it out of his hands and Lenson went on. Byrne had given him the locations of known militia forces and observation posts in Northern Lebanon, areas along the road where ambush was possible, and the disposition of the Syrian Army between Homs and the coast. These he began translating into preplanned targets, assigning numbers and coordinates so that fire could be called down instantly. Dan sweated. One wrong number could mean firing on their own troops. When it was done, that, too, followed the rest into the roaring teletype-writers.

He was working on the last section, communications, when the phone buzzed. He jerked it from its rack. “Lenson here,” he said rapidly, continuing to write.

“Red, on the bridge. Commodore wants to know how you're doing.”

“Well, kind of hurried, but almost finished. They've been typing it up as I went so tell him he'll be able to sign it off for transmission in about ten minutes.”

“Okay, will do.” Flasher paused for a moment, then said, in a lower voice, “Dan, you might be interested in a flash priority we just got. Sixth Fleet and Naval Forces, Europe just went to ReadCon Orange.”

He searched his dulled mind, then remembered. “Nuclear alert?”

“You got it. First time since the Six-Day War.”

“Somebody's taking this seriously.”

“That's a no shit, Charlie.”

“Okay, got it.” He hung up and thought for a moment. Then he began writing again.

The ship pitched and vibrated around him, fighting its own battle with the sea. But his mind was not with her. His mind was forty miles ahead, on the dark coast that now waited, silent under the overcast. In a few hours the southern sky would flicker with the light of gunfire, the ships, darkened, would begin their approach. He did not think of this. He did not think of hostages, of terrorists, or of hostile militia. His attention was on the numbers. They had to be done now, and they had to be done right. Only after that would there be time to wonder whether the raid would succeed.

As to what might happen if it failed, he did not dare think at all.

26

Ash Shummari, Syria

They waited through that evening for the promised food. Susan was worried. Nan had rested since their confrontation with the terrorists. Quietly; but this quietude she did not like. For hours the little girl lay motionless on her side, hugging the pillow, eyes open yet unresponsive to the fading light from the window. She did not speak, even when Moira told her stories and tried to play.

The bread came finally well after nightfall. Hard, round loaves several days old. The hostages had no idea where it came from. They knew only that two of their guards went from room to room, tossing them out from a blanket as one feeds animals. They left, too, a basin of water at the end of the corridor. Susan gnawed at a chunk and drank as much water as she could. It had been a hot day, despite the overcast, and the small reserve in the toilet was exhausted.

“Look, Bunny!”

Nan turned her head listlessly to see her mother, cheeks stuffed full.

“I'm a chipmunk. Want to be a chipmunk, too?”

But she only turned her face wordlessly back to the window. It was all Susan could do to make her eat a little soaked bread from the center of the loaf.

She went into the bathroom, alone, when she could put off crying no more.

After the meal they gathered near the window. Open now, it admitted a cool wind, doubly welcome after the day's heat. Silently they looked out over desert hills shrouded in night. The distant, sad rumble of artillery had come from them all afternoon, on and off, nearer and farther away. Tricks of the wind? They did not know. A campfire glowed where Cook had seen the Syrians. To the south, from time to time, they could make out flashes, like distant lightning.

“Sure sounds like a war,” muttered Cook.

Susan sat with Moira on the bed. Nan lay between them, asleep at last. Susan had given her the last dose of aspirin, rinsing out the powder in the bottom, and the bottle lay empty on the floor.

“Moira…”

“Yeah?”

Her roommate's voice—funny, they were roommates again, half a world away from Georgetown—was soft in the darkness. Comforting. She reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. “I was wondering … do you think anyone will be able to get us out of here? Will they do
anything?
”

“I don't know, Betts.”

“We don't have anything to go on, Susan,” said Michael, staring out. “There must be something going on, but what? Is the Majd negotiating with the Syrians? Are they supporting him or surrounding him? We don't know. Are the Turks going to release the prisoners? What kind of leverage does the States have? Since that bastard busted my radio we don't know a thing.”

“So, I guess we just look on the bright side,” said Moira. “He's feeding us, anyway.”

“Stale bread,” said Susan.

“Wait a minute,” said Cook then.

“What, Michael?”

“Quiet. Come here.”

They got up quietly, not jostling Nan, and went to his side. He pointed, and their eyes followed his finger downward, into blackness.

The square below had been a handful of night, cupped by the shadowy masses of the other buildings. Within it now a yellow circle bobbed, lengthening and shortening across the pavement. The lantern showed them three men. Two wore the white shirts and makeshift brassards that seemed to be Wihdah uniform. The other, held between them by pinioned arms, was bare-chested.

“What are they doing?”

“Jeez, Betts, we don't know any more than you do,” said Moira. “Watch.”

The wind eased itself through the opened window, stirring her hair. She leaned forward, into the jamb, to see around Cook.

The shadows halted in the middle of the square. The bobble of light halted too, then contracted as the man carrying the lantern set it down. The two in shirts paused then, conferring. The clouds flickered, and long seconds later, the sound of a heavy barrage reached them. The other one, the one with tied hands, looked around; looked back, it seemed, at the lobby entrance.

The two men stepped up to him, unslinging the rifles. The man cringed, then, and tried to run; but they caught him easily.

“Oh, God,” whispered Moira.

The rifle butts swung quickly, heavily, and the half-naked man staggered. A scream came faintly up to them. At the third swing he fell, but the others did not stop or even slow. The crunch of blows came up clearly to them.

“Oh, God … who is it? I can't see down there—”

“It's Snaggletooth,” said Cook.

“But what are they
doing?”

“It's terrorist justice,” said the archaeologist grimly. “Pretty rapid court procedure, wouldn't you say?”

Susan watched. She could not reply. She did not know what to say, or what to feel. A part of her wanted to laugh, wanted this man to suffer. He deserved it. For one moment, when she had seen him with her daughter, she had wanted him to die. She would have shot him herself if she had held the gun.

But watching it, hearing the steady thudding of metal into bone and flesh, was different.

It seemed a long time until the beating ended. The small man lay in the flickering circle, motionless save for a slow twitching of the legs. They could see dark stains spreading on his back.

The man with the lantern picked it up. They paused for a moment, looking toward the entrance; then one of them slung his rifle and grasped the prone man under the arms. His legs dragged.

The light bobbed onward, out of their sight.

Cook closed the window and drew the ragged curtain. They sat touching close in near darkness, each grateful for the warmth of the others.

“He got off easy. They should have shot him,” said Moira tentatively, glancing at her.

Susan could think of nothing to say in reply. She had seen a man beaten almost to death. She wanted to vomit. But behind that, alongside it, an older and more savage persona gloated. Revenge—yes; she had wanted that, demanded it, in the heat of the moment.

This calm, unhurried punishment, that could leave a man a cripple—she could not accept that as right. She remembered the terrible fear in the short man's face. And then her mind recoiled from pity.
Not pity but hypocrisy,
it said.
You have the right to hate, even the duty;
and she saw again the way Nan had looked toward the door as she burst through it. The terror of that lone search. The minutes when she feared her daughter gone, and knew that her heart would break.

But she could not enjoy this revenge. She couldn't. And then, suddenly, she knew why.

To almost kill a man so deliberately … to do that, to order that … what kind of person would it take?

She found herself suddenly in Moira's arms. “It's okay, okay. Betts, he had it coming.” She felt a hand on her hair, stroking it as she stroked Nan's.

“Ox … if he can do that to his own men,
what will he do to us?”

It was as if, she thought blindly, not until now had she realized what was going to happen to them—to all of them. What protection, what safety could there be here? They were alone with this madness, this terror. Alone.

Oh, Jesus, God … my father … Dan … she thought blindly, rage and fear knotting heavy beneath her breastbone. Why have you abandoned us to this?

“Okay, okay,” she heard Moira whisper in the dark. And then, a caught sob of shared fear. “I don't know, Betts. I really don't.”

After a moment she pulled away, and drew the arm of her T-shirt across her face. The room was quiet for a time. “I'm going to sleep,” came Moira's sobered mutter, then, “Mike, you coming?”

“Yeah.”

Susan sat in the dark, on the bed, for a long time, long enough that she heard the Ox begin to snore.

She was thinking.

At last she got up and pushed her feet into her sandals. She was surprised to find them still damp from the morning's rain. Nicosia, that morning, seemed weeks distant. She adjusted the strap, hesitated, and then went out.

In the hallway the air stank of burning, and fearing fire she glanced quickly around. The guard was at the far end, near the stairwell. He had a kerosene lamp beside him, the same kind the men in the square had carried. That was what smelled. The Arab watched her by its buttery light as she went to the bucket and dipped up a cupful of water. Perhaps an inch more remained. Drink as much as you can, and take some back for Nan, she thought. If they don't give us any more in the morning, she won't cry from thirst—

“Ahlan.”

Startled, she almost spilled the precious liquid. She caught the cup in midair, though, and tossed back her hair, looking toward the light.

He had come up the stairwell, out of the shadows, so stealthily that there had been no sound at all. He stood now motionless beside the guard, his face in shadow above the smoky flame of the candle he shielded in his left hand.