was just as worried as he was about the way the country was going. And when they finally got through the initial fear and anger, they were in complete agreement about what they would do. If it ever came to that.
FOUR
Lance Corporal Barry Griffin, USMC, was on his first deployment as a member of a recon team. His first assignment after boot camp had been as a member of the security force on board USS
Oh, sure, he understood that the new kid had to pay his dues, and he wasn’t the only one on security duty. Still, as the cruise stretched on, he found himself determined to find a more active, a more — well, Marine — job within the United States Marine Corps. At his first opportunity, he applied for reconnaissance training.
The year of schooling had been alternately boring and everything he’d dreamed of. Over a twelve-month period, he’d earned dive, jump, and reconnaissance sniper certifications. The practical classroom sessions he found useful only so far as they would support the actual practice of his new skills, but he quickly discovered that knowledge was power. Jumping out of airplanes or drawing a bead on a bad guy’s head, he found himself in his element. During the simulated graduation exercises from reconnaissance and Ranger training, he knew he was in his element.
His orders to the USS
His first mission to shore had sounded like a piece of cake. He and a first sergeant went in by rubber raft to a remote part of the Iraqi coast. Evading the military patrols, both friendly and enemy, as well as a host of smaller fishing vessels and massive commercial tankers, they went ashore in the dead of night. From there, a quick overland hike to check out the suspected terrorist training camp. They snooped around the perimeter, scurrying for cover in the barren land, and found little more than abandoned tents and bunkers.
Inside one of the bunkers was where the real surprises were. From a seemingly innocuous Quonset-type construction, the bunker spread down two levels. In the lower levels, they found caches of weapons, rations, and one other surprise — an Iraqi soldier, dead, desiccated, awkwardly sprawled on the concrete deck. They checked out the weapons first, including an abundance of medium-range ground-to-ground attack projectiles and a number of sets of MOPP gear.
As Griffin searched what appeared to be the barracks, he was surprised to find that whoever had occupied that area had left behind a good deal of personal gear. Not just clothes and uniforms, but also the pictures of families, toiletries, books — most of them appeared to be the Koran, but he couldn’t be certain of that. The sort of stuff you expected a man to take with him even if he was in a hurry.
“Maybe they bugged out,” he suggested to the first sergeant, who hadn’t spoken a word since they’d started searching the barracks. “Those bastards didn’t even give them time to get the pictures.”
“Maybe.” The first sergeant’s voice held a note of doubt. “Come on. Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“But we’re not done yet.”
“Yes, we are. Move, asshole.” Griffin followed the first sergeant up two levels and out of the bunker, blinking as he emerged. The sun was just starting to come up, and already he could feel the temperature soaring.
“Over here.” To Griffin’s surprise, the first sergeant was standing under what appeared to be an outside shower and was stripping off his gear. The sergeant turned the handle, and water gushed out. Stripping down, the sergeant stepped under the water, shut his eyes, and washed down, rubbing hard at his skin. He motioned to Griffin to follow suit.
What was this, some sort of initiation ritual? So far, the first sergeant had offered not one word of explanation.
Seeing his hesitation, the first sergeant unfroze slightly. “Wash down,” he said. “I don’t know what that guy died of, but we sure as hell don’t want to carry it back to the ship.”
Even under the hot sun, Griffin felt his blood run cold as he considered the implications. It hadn’t occurred to him immediately, but it had to the first sergeant. The man left dead on the deck, the hastily abandoned barracks — the weapons. They’d been briefed on the possibility of biological and chemical weapons in the Iraqi arsenal, but all the reports said that any weapons, if they did exist, were stored far inland. Nobody had said anything about biochem at this site, nobody. But the first sergeant was acting as if…
“You think that’s what it was?” Griffin asked, his voice quiet as though to avoid alerting any deadly virus that happened to be around. He started stripping down, following the first sergeant’s lead, figuring he knew what he was doing. The water, when it hit him, was cool, and for a moment he luxuriated in the sensation, forgetting how dangerous the situation might be.
“Maybe. Maybe not,” the first sergeant said, his voice under tight control. “No point in taking chances. Soon as we get back, we go to Medical to get checked out.”
Griffin felt a rush of nausea. “I think I’m feeling — I’m not feeling so good.” He imagined he could feel the first signs of a disease creeping into his body, invading his lungs and worming its way into his blood through his skin.
“Bullshit,” the first sergeant said, in a not unkindly voice. “If it was chem, we’d already be dead. If it’s bio, we won’t know for a while. Best place for us is back on the ship.”
The no-nonsense tone of the first sergeant voice reassured Griffin, if only slightly. Still, he was relieved when they finally headed back across the sand, the sun now hammering at their backs and casting long shadows in front of them.
But somehow, deep down in his gut, Griffith knew it was not.
Dirty brown water moved sluggishly past the hull, leaving a thin sheet of oil behind it as it lapped against the steel. The Suez Canal was not much more than a large ditch dredged out between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.
Coyote stared out at the water from the Admiral’s Bridge, fighting off the feeling of claustrophobia. All aircraft on deck with none airborne, the constrained waters, his escorts strung out before and after the carrier in a sitting- duck formation — every war-fighting instinct in his body was screaming warnings. But this was an international waterway, and there were conventions to be observed. All nations were supposed recognize the rights of transit for the canal and forgo exercising attacks. At least that was the theory among civilized nations, and Coyote wasn’t so sure that particular description applied to any of the countries with a thousand miles of them.
They’d entered the canal just after dawn, in a queue of ships waiting for daylight. Several miles ahead of them, two supertankers trudged their way toward the oil refineries, empty now and riding high in the water. All around them, fishing boats and other smaller craft seemed determined to commit suicide under the bow of the massive aircraft carrier.
The attack on the USS
