Acts of Vengeance

CHAPTER TWO INCIDENT IN DUBAI

Incoming fighters.

Josh Dunn looked up from the flight deck and saw them — sleek gray shapes, low on the water, almost invisible in the morning haze. He could make out the long pointed noses, the missiles mounted on each stubby wing tip. They were aimed directly at the carrier’s six-story island superstructure.

Dunn said nothing.

He kept his eyes on the fighters as they flashed across the harbor. The sun glinted from their wings. As the jets approached, the combined thunder of their engines rolled over the water, gathering momentum like a summer storm.

The timing was perfect. As the four F/A-18 Super Hornets swept down the length of the flight deck, the band swung into a spirited rendition of “Anchors Aweigh.” Every head in the crowd, even the assembled air wing officers standing at parade rest, turned to follow the low-flying formation.

Vice Adm. Joshua Chamberlain Dunn nodded in approval. In his long career, he had endured dozens of these change-of-command ceremonies, including several of his own. This one was special. The young Navy commander standing at the podium in his service dress white uniform, though not Dunn’s own son, might as well have been.

Prior to the official change of command, it had been his honor to pin on Sam Maxwell — Dunn had never gotten used to his Navy call sign, “Brick” — the Distinguished Flying Cross. In a coordinated air strike against targets in Iraq, Maxwell was credited with destroying a major weapons assembly plant at Latifiyah. On the same mission he shot down a MiG-29 flown by a legendary Iraqi squadron commander.

Now Commander Maxwell was taking command of a strike fighter squadron, the VFA-36 Roadrunners, based aboard USS Ronald Reagan. The ceremony was brief, deliberately so because the outgoing skipper, Cmdr. John “Killer” DeLancey, was absent. DeLancey was listed as killed in action during the same strike over Iraq.

A crowd of nearly two hundred occupied seats on the flight deck, facing the podium. On a raised dais were the guests of honor — Vice Admiral Dunn, Rear Adm. Tom Mellon, who commanded the Reagan battle group, and the ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, an ebullient Californian named Wayne Halaby.

Maxwell took the podium and greeted the guests. Out of respect for the deceased former commanding officer, he omitted the customary speech new skippers usually delivered. In keeping with naval tradition, he read the orders giving him command of Strike Fighter Squadron Thirty-six. Then he turned to the Reagan’s Air Wing Commander, Capt. Red Boyce. “Sir, I am ready to assume command.”

He and Boyce exchanged salutes. The officers then turned to the two admirals, Dunn and Mellon, who stood at the edge of the dais. Again they saluted, and the admirals returned the gesture.

The ritual was complete.

A cluster of officers and guests gathered around the new squadron skipper, shaking his hand and clapping his shoulder. Josh Dunn watched from the edge of the group, thinking again how proud he had always been of young Maxwell. He had always been a good-looking kid, Dunn remembered, but now that he was nearly forty, he had a more mature look — that dark mustache, tall, rangy build, piercing blue eyes. He was the kind of son Harlan Maxwell ought to be immensely proud of — if he had any sense.

Dunn walked over to Maxwell and clasped the younger man’s hand. “You’re going to be a great skipper, Sam.”

“I’m flattered that you came, Admiral.” That was the protocol between them. In public, it was Admiral. In private, he had always been Josh.

“Wild horses couldn’t have kept me away,” said Dunn. “I just wish your old man were here to see this.”

Maxwell nodded. “He could have been.”

“You two have got to patch this up.”

“Maybe someday. We don’t seem to be ready for that yet.”

Dunn shook his head. Adm. Harlan Maxwell was his best friend, academy classmate, and naval colleague of nearly forty years. He was also a pigheaded fool, thought Dunn.

He didn’t even remember the exact cause of the rift between the elder Maxwell and his son, and he doubted that they did either. It was one of many such clashes the father and son had had over the years. They were two bulls in a pasture. For some reason, they couldn’t acknowledge the underlying love and respect each had for the other.

Dunn reminded himself to talk to Sam about that.

“How about joining us for lunch in Dubai?” said Dunn. “The ambassador and Admiral Mellon and I are going to the Carlton.”

Maxwell nodded across the deck to where a tall, chestnut-haired girl stood watching them. She was wearing a summer dress, a silk scarf at her throat. With the breeze ruffling the light dress, Dunn could see that she had a smashing figure.

She saw him and smiled.

“Thanks, Admiral, but I promised the lady I’d spend the day with her. We have some catching up to do.”

Dunn grinned. So that was the girl he had heard about. Claire Phillips. She was a network television reporter assigned in the Middle East. According to the scuttlebutt, she and Maxwell were on their way to being an item.

“You’re released on one condition.” He took Maxwell by the arm and steered him across the deck. “You have to introduce me to the lady.”

Hassan Fayez and Yousef Mudrun watched in astonishment as the four jet fighters swooped over them. For a terrifying instant, Hassan thought that the warplanes were coming for them.

Not until the jets were gone did he realize that it must be some sort of demonstration. Another American show of power.

The two men looked like any of the hundreds of boat people afloat that morning. Their ancient lateen-rigged dhow, with its large triangular sail, drifted in the outer harbor. To all appearances, the two sailors were fishing or perhaps diving on one of the sunken wrecks at the bottom of the channel.

Through his binoculars, Hassan studied the great gray mass of the American ship three kilometers in the distance. They were close enough. He had been told the American Navy maintained a screen of surveillance boats around their flagship. He was sure, too, that they deployed sensors and weapons to discourage underwater intruders. It would not be easy to attack the Reagan, even though the vessel lay at anchor.

Looking at the immense size of the aircraft carrier, noting the array of guns and missiles and the massive deck filled with warplanes, Hassan felt a wave of fear pass through him. Why had he volunteered for this mission? The answer came to him immediately. He hadn’t. The Leader himself had given him this assignment. There was no alternative. To refuse the Leader’s order meant an abrupt departure from this life.

“Is it time yet?” asked Yousef. He, too, was a new recruit. Like Hassan, he had been assigned by the Leader.

Hassan trained the glasses on the blunt aft end of the ship. A stairway descended from the fantail to a boarding platform, where a boat was moored. “Yes,” he said. “They’re leaving.”

He laid down the binoculars. “Rig the sail.”

Yousef scrambled across the deck, swinging the suspended mast around so that it blocked any view of the dhow’s deck from the ship across the harbor. The triangular sail hung like a curtain in the windless air. That was the way Hassan wanted it. He would be concealed behind the sail. “Bring up the launcher,” he said.

Yousef ducked into the open hatch, then came back up with the Chinese-made weapon. Hassan busied himself affixing the launcher tube to the shoulder mount. Then he attached the reel of guidance wire to the base plate of the weapon. He tried to screw the threaded end of the wire to its connector on the missile but he was unable. His fingers were trembling.

“Be careful,” said Yousef. “You’ll blow us up.”

“Shut up. I know what I’m doing.” Hassan had performed this task only once before, practicing with an inert round while the Leader observed his performance. It had been easy then.

Now it wasn’t easy. The live round weighed several kilos more than the inert dummy. He drew a deep breath, clenched and unclenched his fist, then tried again. This time he succeeded. The threads caught, and the wire was attached to the connector. “There. It’s done.”

He peered across the channel. He had assembled the weapon just in time. Raising the launcher to his shoulder, he braced the tube across the lowered mast. He aimed the weapon toward his target.

From the fantail, Brick and Claire watched the admiral’s gig pull away from its mooring. At the helm of the polished wooden boat stood a boatswain’s mate in white uniform. Standing on the aft deck were Dunn, Halaby, the ambassador, and the soon-to-be-relieved Reagan Battle Group Commander, Tom Mellon.

Dunn waved from the deck as the polished wooden boat turned and pointed its bow toward the Dubai shoreline. Brick and Claire watched the boat churn across the Dubai channel. By the time it was a mile away, they could still see the tiny figure of Dunn standing on the aft deck next to the coxswain.

“He tries to act gruff,” said Claire, “but that old sailor loves you.”

“Josh is like a father to me.”

“What about your real father? Why isn’t he here?”

Brick didn’t answer right away. He continued watching the boat as it headed into the choppy waters of the channel.

The reporter in Claire wanted to know more. She was about to ask another question; then she stopped. She saw something in Brick’s face. He was staring at the harbor. Squinting against the morning sun, she followed his gaze out over the water.

Then she saw it.

It looked like a fast-moving bird, zigzagging low over the water, gathering speed as if it were seeking something. The object, whatever it was, seemed to be trailing a plume of fire.

“Oh, no!” she heard Brick say.

Claire didn’t know what it was, but her instinct told her it was something bad. In the next three seconds, she knew she was right.

The low-flying object struck the gig amidships. The main fuel tank exploded, and the boat erupted in an orange ball of flame. Fragments of teak and mahogany and brass and human bodies cascaded into the morning sky.

Several seconds after the flash, the sound of the explosion reached the Reagan.

Stunned, Claire stared at the cataclysm. Pieces from the ruined boat were raining like shrapnel back into the water. “My God, what happened?”

As a journalist she had seen only the aftermath of war and terrorism. Never had she witnessed such violence close-up, while it occurred.

Maxwell was shaking his head. His hands clenched the steel rail. “No idea. Some kind of missile.”

A klaxon horn was going off. From the ship’s public address loudspeakers, a voice boomed: “General quarters! General quarters! This is not a drill! All hands man your battle stations!”

“What does that mean?” Claire asked.

“We’re going to combat readiness. Whoever fired that missile may be shooting at the Reagan. He grabbed her arm and hauled her away from the rail. “We’re going belowdecks, down to the ready room.”

From across the water they heard a siren wailing. On the Reagan’s flight deck, the blades of the SAR helicopter, a turbine-powered HH-60 Seahawk, began to rotate. Sailors ran across the deck, donning helmets and vests.

Before they ducked through the door that led onto the enclosed hangar deck, Maxwell stopped to peer out at the harbor. An oily slick was spreading out from where the gig had exploded. Flotsam littered the surface of the channel.

“I can’t believe it,” he murmurred. “They’re gone. Josh, the ambassador, the boat crew, Admiral Mellon.”

Claire began to shake uncontrollably. “We could have gone with them.”

Even before the debris had finished splashing back into the water, Hassan Fayez was dragging the launcher back toward the open hatch. On the deck lay the three extra missiles that he had not needed. Not yet.

“Move!” he yelled at Yousef. “Get the motor running! We’ll run for the fishing wharf.”

They had lied to him. They had assured him that the wire-guided missile was invisible. They said no one would know where it had come from. Their escape would be easy because it would be hours before anyone understood how the gig had been destroyed.

The instant he launched the missile, he knew they had lied. The ungodly thing looked like a signal flare. Any idiot who happened to be watching the harbor would have seen it, and he would deduce that it had come from the dhow out there in the channel.

Yousef had the diesel motor popping and growling. Even at full throttle the puny engine pushed the dhow through the water like a barge.

The fishing village was their only haven. Once they reached the wharf, they could melt into the throng of boat people. Their dhow looked just like any of a hundred other such vessels. They could abandon it and scramble across the cluttered decks of the boats that were moored to each other. The inhabitants of the floating village could be counted on to feign ignorance when they were questioned. The only loyalty the ancient cult of Gulf sailors had was to each other.

The harbor was buzzing with new traffic. Hassan saw a helicopter lifting from the deck of the aircraft carrier. It was headed toward them. He wished now that he had not been so quick to stow the launcher and the extra rounds. The helicopter would be an easy target.

The helicopter was keeping its distance from the dhow. That was bad, Hassan thought. It meant they had already concluded that he was a threat. They would be summoning help on the radio.

He tried waving to the crew of the helo. They didn’t respond. The helicopter maintained its distance, hovering a hundred yards from the dhow.

“What will they do?” asked Yousef, standing at the tiller.

“Nothing,” Hassan lied. “They don’t know who we are. We are just fishermen.”

It was then that Hassan saw the boat coming from the shore. A police boat, moving fast, trailing a high rooster tail in its wake. As the boat drew nearer, Hassan saw the machine gun mounted on the bow. A helmeted crewman crouched behind it.

Yousef saw it too. His face went pale. “They have us trapped, Hassan. We must surrender. We will go to prison.”

Hassan knew about Dubai’s criminal justice system. He and Yousef would never reach the barbed wire of prison. Their crime, by Islamic custom, had earned them a public beheading.

Hassan pulled the launcher back up through the hatch. He picked up one of the unused missiles and quickly affixed the guidance wire.

“No, Hassan! We must surrender.”

Hassan ignored him. He slid the missile into the launcher tube. Bracing the tube on the lowered mast, he pointed the muzzle toward the police boat.

“Hassan! It’s too late. We must—”

Whooom! The missile left the tube, trailing a torch of flame and smoke. With the guidance stick, Hassan steered the missile, trying to keep it superimposed over the police boat.

The boat was turning. The police crew saw the missile coming, and they were trying to elude it.

Hassan struggled to keep the missile directed toward the boat. This was more difficult than shooting the gig, which had been a steady target, moving away from him at a quartering angle. The police boat was dodging.

The missile missed the boat.

Hassan’s heart sank. Yousef dropped to his knees, praying. Hassan struggled to affix the guidance wire to another missile. Glancing up, he saw the boat bearing down on them. A voice boomed over a megaphone, giving them an order Hassan didn’t understand.

He finished affixing the wire, and he fumbled with the missile, getting it into the tube.

Bullets were already splintering the deck before he heard the staccato burp of the machine gun.

He saw something red spraying the deck.

It took Hassan a full second to realize that he had been hit, that his torso was ripped open, that it was his blood gushing over the ancient wood of the dhow’s deck. His vision blurred and he toppled backward into the water.

Claire watched the port of Dubai slip into the distance.

“What’s happening, Sam?” She nodded toward the captain’s bridge high above them in the island superstructure. “Where are we going?”

“Back to sea. Captain Stickney is the acting Battle Group Commander, and he’s getting out of Dodge.”

Forty-five minutes had passed since the admiral’s gig was destroyed. They stood inside a door in the island structure that led to the open flight deck. Claire and her camera crew and four other reporters were the only civilians left aboard.

She looked out to the harbor. “Do they know who blew up the admiral’s boat?”

Maxwell shook his head. “Not yet. There have been other attacks. Someone gunned down four of our sailors in a bar in town. Another guy tossed a bomb into the entrance of the embassy. Must have been a bungler. He wounded a marine sentry, but no one else was hurt. They caught him, and they also captured one of the shooters from the boat that fired the missile.”

“Was it some kind of reprisal action against Americans?”

Maxwell shrugged. “Who knows?”

Claire tried to read his expression. She was sure that he knew more than he was telling her. They both knew the rules — that she could report what he told her, but she was not to read anything between the lines. Just the facts, ma’am.

That was what was odd about their relationship. With her many other sources inside the military establishment, anything she picked up was free game. Journalism was a cutthroat business. Claire Phillips was masterful at piecing together stories from the tiny snippets of information gleaned in innocent conversation.

With Sam Maxwell, it was different. She had never violated their rule, not once, and she concluded that there could be only one reasonable explanation for this behavior — she was in love with the guy.

After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry about Josh.”

Maxwell kept his eyes on the harbor. “Thanks.”

“You’ll miss him, won’t you?”

He nodded.

“Was he a friend of your father?”

“Best buddies. Academy classmates, then squadron mates. Josh was my godfather…” His voice trailed off.

Claire tried to read his expression. His face was a mask, his eyes burning like coals. He seemed to be staring off into the desert. “You’re thinking about who did this, aren’t you?”

He nodded.

“Do you think there will be a retaliatory attack from the Reagan?” She knew the question veered outside the lines of their protocol. But she had seen that look on his face.

He didn’t answer for a moment. His eyes were focused somewhere off in the Arabian peninsula. “There’d better be.”