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Alan looked for the next cover and their best path to a concrete building some meters off to the left. The effort of lifting himself from the ground seemed to take forever, and more willpower than the actual run. The storm of stray rounds was abating here; there were only a few marks in the stucco of the building’s wall. After him, the white guy came first, and then there was a pause so long that Alan feared he was going to have to go back. Then the black guy. Then, almost immediately, Patel and Craw. Craw was bleeding from the crease a bullet had cut in his head, a long tendril of blood that ran over his face, dividing it, and down the neck of his shirt, making his head look like a Mohawk mask.
They crossed the open ground and reached the edge of a neighborhood of lost affluence. Once, the place had been for British civil servants and their families, later for Indian shop owners; now it was up-and-coming Kikuyu. The little cottages had yards and trees and bushes, although the grass was gone now, worn dead by thousands of feet over the years, and the houses were so widely separated that each one offered a line of vision – and fire – back to the park. There was some cover, and a screen of big trees divided the neighborhood from the park and the square where the shooting still went on. Alan expected to start moving quickly here, but Craw grabbed his shoulder and pointed north, where a knot of men with weapons was moving parallel to them. Even as they watched, another knot left the cover of an old gazebo in the park and ran almost straight toward them.
Either the firefight with the GSU was lost or, worse, the wave front of the violence was spreading. Alan suspected the latter; there were still bodies in the road beyond the house where he was crouched, and the wailing noise seemed unabated.
‘We have to stay ahead of that,’ he said, pointing, and led them to seaward of the first house. There were pilings and a heap of concrete rubble, then a mudflat. The tide was down. Alan thanked heaven for a small miracle. He crawled down the concrete on to the mud, and found that it was firm and held his weight.
‘Smells like the ocean,’ Craw said. His Mohawkmask face was strained. Alan had never seen him afraid. He wondered what he looked like himself. Don’t stop to think. When they had all scrambled down, they began to jog along the mudflat. Mombasa was fifteen feet above them, and it was not until they had gone several hundred yards that Alan realized that he could hear again. The screaming was still there but distant, and his feet made little splashing noises as they slapped down on the wet mud.
Above them was a low cliff topped with trees. He didn’t know where they were; couldn’t remember having seen trees on this part of the island before.
He looked seaward and across to Likoni; he must be at the southern tip of Mombasa. He clambered up the low cliff, raising his head slowly, but there was no motion at the top except the slow flapping of a flag in the wind. He was looking over a sand trap at a fairway stretching off north; the grass was mostly brown and there was garbage everywhere, but no people. The crowd, far away now, sounded like breakers on a distant beach.
Alan waved the rest of his party to follow him up to the golf course.
He hadn’t even remembered that there was a golf course, and he was disoriented by the discovery. None of them had any water and there was none in his helmet bag, but the mental search for water reminded him of other things he did have: a hotel-supplied map of Mombasa and a tiny compass in his Swiss army knife holster. He shook his head, reached into the side pocket and retrieved them both. He opened the map and laid it in the dirt, placed the little compass beside it. He watched it steady down and resolve his problem. North. What he didn’t like was that in forgetting the golf course he had forgotten another mile of open ground and residential area before they could reach the water at Kilindini.
‘If we go that way –’ he pointed north and west – ‘we should cross Mama Ngina Drive and then Nyerere just above the Likoni Ferry. We can catch a matatu there for the airport.’
‘You’re the boss,’ Craw said. The map seemed to steady all of them. Alan noted that it seemed to resolve any doubts the three merchant marine sailors might have had about his leadership.
‘Why the airport, sir?’ the white sailor asked. ‘I’m Matt Jagiello, sir. Engine crew.’
‘I have a detachment, a naval detachment, at the airport,’ Alan said. He looked at the others. ‘I need to know your names. You’re Patel,’ and he motioned at the other man.
‘Les,’ the black man said in a curiously high voice. ‘Les White. I’m a cook.’
Alan subvocalized White, Patel, Jagiello. ‘Glad to meet you.’
Craw took out a somewhat mangled Snickers bar and cut it up into five sections with his big folding knife. They sat for a moment and chewed. It tasted like heaven but left Alan thirsty. They would need water soon, and reliable water was not easy to find in Africa. It was almost funny, to be lost and without water in a major African city. Burton would not have been proud.
‘Okay, we’re underway.’ Alan rolled to his feet and started to walk. Jagiello bounced alongside.
‘I can read a map and use a compass, sir. I mean, if you wanted me to. I taught orienteering…’ Alan spared the energy to turn and look at him and noted that his face was very white. Still a little shell-shocked. Every time Alan stopped concentrating on the problem at hand, he saw the broken teeth of the dead girl in the square, so he knew that they were all suffering from it. Too much violence with too little warning.
They needed water. It was easier to concentrate on that. Experience didn’t make violence any easier; it just gave the veteran an idea of what to expect, from his own body and from the violence. Alan was a veteran. He forced his mind to dismiss the broken girl and moved on.
They crossed the pale tarmac of Mama Ngina Drive almost immediately and were back on the short brown grass of the golf course. Alan could see that there were squatters under some of the bushes, but they were not moving much. The crowd noise in the distance was getting close, he thought. Alan suspected that they were moving down Ngina from the park and hoped that the Likoni Ferry wasn’t jammed.
It was. Nyerere Avenue was packed with burning cars, many turned on their sides or rolled right over, and men and women running. They had to stop at a gap in the fence as a knot of schoolgirls in tartan skirts and white shirts pushed past them into the golf course, clearly frightened.
‘We’re going right across. Don’t stop and don’t get separated. If you lose the party, stay on the coast and look for the Yacht Club.’ He didn’t stop to argue, although he could see that none of the men wanted to cross the road. Alan reached into the helmet bag and slipped a clip into his nine millimeter, then cocked it.
‘Ready?’ He forced a smile. ‘Here we go.’
He swung himself over the golf course fence and waited until he heard the thump of Jagiello’s landing behind him, and then he threw himself toward the road. Nyerere Avenue was thick with people; some seemed to be refugees from the rioting, while others seemed anxious to take part. They weren’t Muslims at all, but day workers or unemployed men. There were fewer women. Alan and his group hit the street in an open spot between two burning cars and, choking on the fumes, plunged across. Alan could hear sirens. He didn’t look up or back but kept his legs moving.
They were not going to catch a taxi here for the airport.
There was a small wooded area hard against the Nyerere traffic circle, and Alan pushed into it past squatters, rioters, and refugees. Only when he was safe among the branches did he look back. The rest of his people were right behind, with Craw bringing up the rear.
‘This whole city is a war zone,’ Craw said.
White shook his head. ‘Just a riot,’ he said. ‘Seen ‘em before. Looks worse ‘n it is.’
Alan suspected that it was worse than it looked, but Patel and Jagiello seemed to brighten up at White’s suggestion. He held his tongue.
‘How far to this Yacht Club, sir?’ Jagiello asked. ‘I’m kinda thirsty.’
‘We all are.’ Alan pointed at the sparkle of water ahead. ‘That’s Mbaraki Creek. Yacht Club’s right there.’ His mouth felt as if it was full of sand, and he wanted to sleep. He was worried about Craw’s head wound, too; it was seeping blood again, and he didn’t have a first-aid kit.
They left the wood and came out in a residential area that was obviously still prosperous. Hundreds of people were on the street and on the bare lawns, most sitting or lying down, none armed. Alan’s group attracted their notice, however, and people trailed along after them, asking questions in Swahili and English. They were desperate: he was white and looked like authority. Most of them shied away from Craw and the blood.
‘Pole, tafadhali,’ he repeated over and over. And kept moving.
It took them almost an hour to reach Liwatoni Road and the entrance to the Yacht Club, over two ravines and through a crowd of refugees from the fighting. They could still hear long bursts of automatic-weapons fire and see fire and smoke coming from the town center, but the greatest pillar of smoke Alan had ever seen was rising from the docks at Kilindini, which was closer here. He could see now that the smoke was rising from one of the piers. And then it struck him, for the first time, that the Harker and Laura and Admiral Kessler were all supposed to be pierside at Kilindini.
Alan had visited the Mombasa Yacht Club twice for functions, and he recognized it as a haven for oddball expats and round-the-world cruisers. Now its parking lot was packed with refugees, squatting on their heels and watching the smoke rise from the port. Alan crossed through them and pushed the door open and led his group inside.
Hundreds of photos and plaques adorned the walls, memories of happier days and more robust times. Two terrified black kids were behind the bar, and there was a handful of patrons, two with guns, all drunk. One rose from his chair and pointed a revolver at Alan.
‘Members only, old chap.’ It must have been a rehearsed line.
‘US Navy.’ Alan glared at the idiot, a fat man whose whole arm shook. He retreated. ‘Put the gun down, mister.’
The fat man looked at the gun as if it had just grown out of his fist.
‘We can’t be too careful –’
Alan ignored him and the other whites, and focused his attention on the two Kenyans behind the counter.
‘I need water and a first-aid kit.’ Alan spoke to the nearer one. ‘Baridi, tafadhali.’
Both Kenyans vanished and then bottles of water appeared as if by magic. Alan handed them around, watching to see they all drank before he took one for himself, although the plastic Evian bottle was cold and he wanted it with a passion bordering on lust. For a moment the club was silent except for the sound of five men guzzling water. Then a big, sunburned man leaned past the fat man.
‘Wha’ the fuck is happening out there?’ Aussie accent.
Alan finished his water.
‘Bad riot in Old Town. Lot of dead.’
‘Fucking Muslims.’
‘It was provoked.’ He realized that this sunburned Aussie was used to getting his way, but the man’s manner drove Alan to antagonize him. ‘The Muslims seem to have taken all the casualties, over in Old Town. Seems pretty convenient.’ He looked around.
‘Any of you here own a boat?’ The fat man raised his hand. A woman pointed at the sunburned man. ‘I need a motorboat that will carry five men.’
The Aussie looked away, but the fat man pointed to him. ‘Dirk, here, has a sweet little inflatable.’
Alan looked at him. ‘Good,’ he said calmly. ‘We’ll take it.’ He raised his hand to stifle protest. ‘Listen up, folks. There is a bit of rioting in Old Town. I need to get these men back to their ship. I’m an officer in the US Navy and I’d like to borrow the boat, and stock her up.’ He looked around, unaware that he looked like he had been through a battle or that he was radiating focus and energy. No one in the bar would have stood up to him, anyway.
‘I’ll help you get ‘er started, then,’ the Aussie said.
Alan collected another bottle of water from the bar, zipped his helmet bag, and followed Dirk outside to the club dock. Dirk kept up a constant stream of surly comments while Craw checked the inflatable, and it took the combined efforts of the Aussie and all three merchant sailors to get the engine to come to life.
‘I know all about guns,’ Jagiello said.
‘That’s great,’ Alan said, ‘borrowing’ some sandwiches.
‘No, really. I can shoot. I hunt deer. Well, my dad hunts. I mean, I’ve been with my dad –’
‘Sure,’ Alan said, now carrying the box of sandwiches out to the boat.
He needed to get going; the pause was costing him his edge. He couldn’t lose his own worst-case scenario that the Harker was the target of an attack.
Two minutes later, they were in the boat and headed down the creek to the harbor, the inflatable low in the scummy water, with five of them filling every inch of her hull and her little engine pushing them along.
It was less than a kilometer to Kilindini Port, a simple piece of navigation, given that they had only to traverse the creek and turn north, and that their boat drew less than six inches of water. Alan passed the helm to Patel; the merchant marine sailors were actually sailors, with experience in boats that Alan and Craw lacked. Various technical aspects and a lot of creeping, dirty water occupied Alan’s mind for the first few minutes, but after that he was a passenger, free to let his mind wander on what might be ahead of him and what he had left behind. And then they left the mouth of the creek and turned north, and suddenly all the devastation of the explosion was visible at once.
The Harker lay half on her side in the mud at the end of Pier One, her tops on fire. The gantry crane at her berth was toppled over and afire, and a barge of some sort, probably petroleum from the smoke, was ablaze from stem to stern at a mooring fifty yards out. The smoke from the burning barge was what had made the giant black fist in the sky, and the curtain of black smoke lit with bale-fire cut off Alan’s view of the northern part of the port. There appeared to be another fire up by Pier Six, although whether it was a secondary from the main explosion or a separate device he couldn’t tell.
Already he assumed the explosions were deliberate.
Jagiello said something in a choked voice. Patel’s knuckles were white where he gripped the tiller.
‘Holy shit,’ White muttered. He looked to Alan for direction. ‘We going there?’
Alan thought of the admiral’s inspection tour; of how he had dropped Laura at the Harker less than two hours ago.
‘Yes,’ he said tersely.
Patches of oil, some burning, heaved on the water. Alan directed the boat to the empty side of Pier One, whose bulk would protect them from the heat of the burning ship. A ladder ran up to the pier. He could see movement on the Harker’s superstructure, probably a fire party, but crouched down now in the lee of the structure.
Craw pointed up beyond the giant cranes and port offices to the blue metal of the main gate. GSU trucks and a crowd – difficult to see whether they were protestors or rioters, but then Alan saw the flash of rifles. The crowd was being swelled from the rear by people coming down Moi Avenue; some in front were trying to climb the fence. The man on the wire fence closest to him wore a Chicago Bulls T-shirt, and his head was bare. He was not a Muslim. The riot had become general.
The inflatable kissed the base of the ladder and sat there, rising and falling in the turbulence of her own wake. Alan tucked his pistol into his waistband at the back and grabbed the ladder with his maimed hand and hung. Then he reached up with his right hand and took a firmer hold and began to climb as Craw grabbed on below him. He had to climb slowly because his left hand couldn’t bear weight – climb, pause, climb, pause. At the top at last, he pulled himself on to the pier. It struck him an instant later that it was a shambles.
Whatever had hit the Harker had spread paper and cloth and jagged metal and several waiting cargoes over the pier. Fresh vegetables, probably intended for the battle group, had been stacked here by the ton; now they and their thin-walled wooden crates made a decomposing carpet.
A wave of heat from the burning oil barge struck him, enough to suck the air from his lungs. The stench of petroleum was overwhelming.
The fire crew on the Harker was yelling at him, but there was so much noise he couldn’t hear them. He turned and helped Craw up the last step of the ladder. Craw’s face showed the same shock that Alan assumed his had at seeing the orderly pier they had left that morning turned into a giant garbage heap. Oddly, where the superstructure of the Harker had stood between the pier and the blast, a few stacks of pallets still stood as reminders of what the pier had looked like before the explosion. Their survival told him that the explosion had occurred between the Harker and the oil barge.
‘That’s gon’ take a damn sight of cleaning,’ Craw said, his hands on his hips.
Something whickered through the petroleum-laden air between them. Alan was slow to grasp what it was, and Craw looked up at the superstructure of the Harker.
‘We got to call the Jefferson, Commander. This looks deliberate.’ He was taking in the angle of the explosion and its shadow.
Alan heard a high-pitched whine behind him, and his mind, filled with the fire, the damage to the ship, and the chaos on the dock, failed to understand it. If he thought about it, he marked it as another spent round, perhaps from the GSU up at the main gate. He was reaching into the helmet bag, rummaging for his international cell phone, when Craw leaped into the air and fell full-length on a heap of cabbage. Alan bent down: Craw’s face was ruined. A bullet had entered at his right temple and taken his lower jaw as it exited. But it didn’t matter. Craw was dead. Martin Craw was dead. Alan finally grasped that a sniper was shooting at them, had been shooting for three or four shots. His hand closed on the cell phone and it all made sense: the fire crew huddled behind the superstructure, trying to get their attention, the little signs of bullets in the air. He flattened himself in the garbage and a saw-like scrap of the crane ripped into his ribs. White’s head came up over the edge of the pier.
‘Sniper!’ Alan yelled. White ducked. Another round hit just to the right of Alan’s head, which he had thought was in cover.
Martin Craw was dead.
USS Thomas Jefferson.
The flag communications officer laid his hand on Peter Beluscio’s arm and interrupted him in mid-sentence. Beluscio, flag chief of staff and a captain with a recent date of rank and the touchiness to go with it, whirled, his eyes fierce. Beluscio was a tense man, at best; with the admiral ashore, he was right at boiling point. But the comm officer didn’t budge; instead, he pulled him away from the intel officer with whom he’d been talking. A rating who was watching expected an outburst but there was none: the chief of staff, seeing the other officer’s set, white face, let himself be led aside.
‘Maybe a terrorist act at Mombasa.’
The two men stared at each other.
‘A US ship called the Harker has had some kind of explosion in the harbor there. Comm just got a message from their radio, pretty garbled. Asking for help. Sounds like mass confusion there – something about rioting on the dock, gunfire; it isn’t clear.’
The chief of staff’s thin face was drawn very tight. ‘The Harker’s the ship the admiral was supposed to visit today.’ His face had lost its color, too. ‘You heard from him?’
‘You were the last one to talk to him – 0600 or thereabouts? Since then –’
‘Jesus. Check with his hotel. Bilton’s with him, flag lieutenant. See if he knows anything.’ He shot his lower jaw forward, always a sign he was near panic. ‘Jesus.’ He looked up quickly. ‘What kind of help they asking for?’
‘It’s still coming in. Radio guy said there’s wounded. Something about being hit by glass himself, plus there’s a sniper – it’s a real mess –’
Beluscio wiped his hand down the sides of his mouth. ‘Jesus. Oh, Jesus –’ He strode out of his office and along the passageway. ‘Walk me down to Flag CIC.’ He put his head in a doorway. ‘Dick! Come with me!’ Then he was out again and moving, his presence opening a path before him. ‘Get everything you can on this ship, why it’s there, the ball of wax. Get intel to prep a brief on known threats in the area, in case this was really terrorism. Also local facilities – Jesus, what’s the hospital situation there? – better put our hospital on alert in case we have to bring wounded here. Jesus, with AIDS and all, what’re the local hospitals like? There must be an advisory on that.’ His face was a deep scowl. He was thinking that he was six hours’ flank speed from Mombasa; should he order part of the BG there for a show of force? Christ, his ass would be grass if he did that and he was wrong. He needed information, more information, lots of it. ‘Check for local contacts – didn’t there used to be an air force unit there? And the naval attaché at the embassy, but, shit, he’s in Nairobi. He may have something, though. Now, this ship, the Harker, what’s the crew size? How many potential wounded we looking at? Get on it –’
Mombasa.
Alan raised his head and tried to take his bearings. The pier stretched away like a nautical garbage dump in front of him and, although the first crane was a wreck, toppled by the direction of the blast, the second and third still stood. Even as he looked at the cranes he saw a flash of movement in the cab of the crane by berth number two. The sniper. He was changing magazines. Alan rolled over the edge of the pier and grabbed the ladder with his good hand and found himself on the same rung as White.
‘Down.’
‘Where’s Mister Craw?’
‘Dead. Now, go down!’
Alan followed him down the ladder and fell awkwardly into the boat. He turned to Jagiello, now at the tiller. ‘Farther down the pier. Opposite berth three, if there’s a ladder.’
The little boat chugged into the shadow of the warehouse that dominated the north end of the pier and cut off any view of the main port. There was a ladder below berth three; the crane at Pier Two was invisible now on the far side of the pier. Alan set himself to climb the ladder; this time, he barely thought about it. White and Patel made to follow him. Alan waved them back.
‘Stay here. Try to raise somebody on the cell phone; I’ve got numbers for the Jefferson in memory.’ White nodded; he already had the phone in hand. ‘If I don’t come back in half an hour, get back to the Yacht Club and hole up there.’
‘Our mates are on the Harker.’
‘The Harker is on fire and your mates can’t reach it because of a sniper. You can’t help them unless you can find a way to get them off.’ Alan looked up the ladder. ‘Frankly, if I’m not back in half an hour, I don’t really give a shit what you do.’ He started climbing. Bad command style.
He raised his head over the edge. He was on the other side of the sniper’s crane now, and unless the man actually read minds, he was unlikely to switch his focus from the Harker to the empty end of the pier. Alan moved as quickly as possible, headed for the base of the third crane. As he rounded it he saw motion, and without volition he had his automatic in his hand and on the man’s center of gravity, and then he froze and forced the muzzle up and away from him. The man had a fixed smile on his face and everything about his posture said ‘no threat.’ He was big and very black, almost blue, naked to the waist, stinking of sweat even above the petrol fumes.
He put his hands up, but he smiled. ‘Hakuna matata, bwana!’ he said through very white teeth. ‘No problemo, man! I ain’ got no gun.’
