Force Protection. Gordon Kent

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ want to know how they got it and who shot it. Get us a copy if you can, unedited if it’s available.’

      ‘Ask or order?’

      ‘Ask, ask, Jesus! We don’t want to get crosswise of them. Anyway, you can’t order media to give up sources, you know that.’

      ‘I know that.’ She smiled; he smiled; the smiles meant that under certain conditions you certainly could lean on the media, but this wasn’t one of the conditions.

      Then Dukas pushed his heavy body to Kasser’s office, summoned by a phone call that to him was three hours late. He didn’t smile this time but shook the other man’s hand, took note of the wall of citations and certificates and trophies without acknowledging them, and sat. He preferred Geraldine Pastner’s dogs.

      ‘Okay,’ Kasser said, ‘it’s this ship at Mombasa.’ He was sixty, a career NCIS man, deputy to the overall honcho.

      ‘Right. I left you a mes –’

      Hand held up to stop him. ‘I got it. You got bumped by CIA and the Bureau.’ He sat back, joined his hands, looked up at Dukas. ‘They want it.’

      ‘Like hell.’

      ‘That’s what my meeting was about: they want it. “Major international incident, part of worldwide movement, big picture; NCIS lacks the facilities, the personnel, the experience, the –”’

      ‘That’s bullshit!’

      Kasser smiled. ‘Not the word I used.’ He had been a special agent for a long time. Now he was polished a lot smoother than Dukas, but he was still a Navy cop. ‘Make your case, Mike.’

      Dukas hadn’t thought he’d have to do so. He thought the case made itself. Still – ‘This is a Navy service ship, considered as Navy property. In this situation – any war or combat situation – it falls under the command of the local authority, who in this case is the commander of BG 9, now the flag on USS Jefferson.’ He tapped the desk. ‘I checked with legal.’ Kasser nodded. Dukas went on. ‘Explosion, cause not yet known, but TV says a bomb, and we got no better information. But that’s what we need to investigate, right? No, this is not, repeat not, an Agency or a Bureau matter! They’ll get the reports; we’ll share with them just as generously as they share with us –’

      ‘Now, now –’

      ‘They think information comes in suppositories and should go up their ass for safekeeping.’

      Kasser grinned and then got serious again. ‘There was also somebody from State at my meeting, plus two guys from the Joint Chiefs. They’d rather work with the Bureau.’

      ‘They’ve got nothing to do with it!’

      ‘They say they have. They’re saying what everybody on the TV is saying – Islamic fundamentalists, Islamic extremists, whatever. There’s already pressure to carry out a punitive strike.’

      ‘Without an investigation?’

      ‘Osama bin Laden. They’ve got a contingency plan.’

      ‘This only happened a few hours ago!’

      ‘It isn’t just this one – there’s a whole string of stuff. They want to use this one as motivation to make a punitive strike.’

      ‘They call for a punitive strike before there’s proof, and they’re wrong, this country looks like shit! What’d they do the last time – they blew up a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan! We’re not goddam Nazi Germany!’

      ‘The Agency and the Bureau say they can have the proof in seventy-two hours.’

      Dukas banged his fist on the arm of his chair. ‘This is a Navy ship; we’re a Navy investigating unit; we do our own work. CIA and FBI stay out.’

      Kasser looked at his hands again. ‘Tell me why I should send you.’

      ‘Because – Because I don’t belong in the office doing routine.’

      Kasser nodded. ‘And because you got shot and you want to prove to yourself that you’re okay.’

      Dukas shrugged.

      ‘You refused counseling, Mike.’

      ‘So would you have. What do I need counseling for?’

      ‘Post-trauma.’

      ‘Bullshit.’

      ‘Statistics show –’

      ‘I’m not a statistic! I want a job!’

      Kasser swung around to look out his window at the tops of trees, blowing now in a warm wind. He sighed. ‘Okay, you got the case for now – for as long as I can fight off the Bureau and the Agency. What’s your plan?’

      Dukas, suddenly sweating, ran through it: team, schedule, forensics, support. ‘I can be there tomorrow,’ he ended.

      Kasser nodded, but he was frowning as if the most important thing hadn’t been said. ‘CIA will have somebody onsite before you get there – they’ve got a station there, can’t be helped. The Bureau, too – they’re international now. We can insist that you’re in charge for a while. But if you find something that doesn’t go along with what they want to find, you’re going to have a hell of a time.’ He pointed a finger. ‘You go, and go as fast as you can. You hit the ground running. I’m not going to be stampeded, Mike, but I think we can hold the line for only a few days. Maybe a week. Okay?’

      Dukas jerked his head. ‘Okay.’

      He held out his hand. ‘Go.’

      Dukas went.

      

      Houston.

      For Rose Siciliano Craik, the television sets were like needles some malign power had left to jab her with. She’d manage to forget her husband and the idea that he might be dead, and then she’d pass a TV and would see some part of the Kilindini footage, and he’d be back at the front of her mind.

      She had dropped the kids off and spoken with their teachers, and she had come on to NASA and spent her obligatory time with a woman in security. The idea that somebody who had blown up a ship in Africa would also reach into a day-care center in Houston seemed absurd. Dukas had said they had to ‘take precautions.’ Whatever that meant. Arm all the six-year-olds? String razor wire around day care?

      ‘I’ve got a weapon in my car,’ Rose told the security officer. ‘NCIS recommendation.’

      ‘Not on the base, I hope!’

      ‘It’s locked.’

      ‘That’s against the rules, very much against the rules, Commander.’ Rose thought that was a peculiar view for a security officer to take, but she was only beginning to glimpse the culture around her. It was more about rules and conforming and looking good than she had suspected. Or, a traitorous voice whispered in her mind, than she liked.

      The security СКАЧАТЬ