”Carondelet was hit. Two wounded, but it looks like they’ll make it. We lost Chief Tehoa, though.”
“Damn!” The Marine let the single bitter exclamation hang in the air for a long moment before speaking again. “That is a forever crying shame. He was one of the good ones.”
“He was,” Amanda replied softly, neither sure nor caring if anyone else heard her.
“How about the gas and boats, Skipper? What do you want us to do with them?”
“Burn them. Burn them all!”
The sun heralded its rising with an azure and tangerine curtain of light to the east, mare’s tail clouds glowing incandescently above the horizon. Holding off the Union coast, the small U.S. squadron completed the night’s tasks.
The Sirocco and Santana had arrived on scene. The former took the crippled Carondelet under tow for the long haul back to Floater 1, while the latter served as a transfer platform, the last of the wounded Union survivors being winched from her decks to a hovering medevac helicopter.
Closer inshore, the Queen of the West and the Manassas oversaw another duty.
Topside aboard the Queen, Amanda maintained a solitary lookout. The bloodstains on her shirt and on the backrest of the cockpit gun ring had dried, but there were others that were going to remain fresh for some time to come.
Lifting her binoculars to her eyes, she swept the seaward edge of the salt swamps, noting the stealthy hints of movement within the verdant undergrowth. Union army patrols were arriving on scene, seeking the fate of their navy comrades.
She lowered the glasses. Let them come. Her Marines were all safely embarked and away. The Union troops could only look on as the last act played out. Let them see and let them take word back to General Belewa that not one fragment of good would come to him from this night’s work.
The twoscore-odd pirogues and pinasses of the smuggling fleet had been rafted together and anchored in half a dozen clusters strung parallel to the shore. The dawn’s light shimmered and rainbowed on the water as petroleum slicks spread around each raft, gasoline and diesel from punctured cans and drums overflowing the sides of the low-riding boats.
Amanda heard movement on the access ladder. Glancing back, she saw Scrounger Caitlin emerging from the weather deck hatch. The whole crew had been hit hard by the death of Chief Tehoa, but none more so than the female turbine tech. Amanda could sense a difference in the quiet and pale girl, a sudden new-grown maturity as if some grim wisdom welled up within her.
“We just got a call from the last medevac helo, ma’am. They say they’ve got room aboard for… for the Chief. They’re asking if we want them to make pickup.”
Amanda studied the young sailor thoughtfully. “Well, Sandra,” somehow using a nickname didn’t seem right at that moment, “you’re our new chief of the boat, and you knew Ben just about as well as any of us. What do you think he’d want?”
Caitlin hesitated, then shook her head. “He’d want to ride back with us, ma’am,” she said. “He’d want for us to bring him home.”
“Then make it so.”
“Thanks, Captain.” The girl hesitated for a moment, looking out toward the sunrise. “I was talking to the Chief about something just before the fight. I wonder now if I’d…” Her voice trailed away.
“You wonder what?”
“Nothing, ma’am. Nothing that would have made any difference, I guess.”
Amanda returned her attention to the anchored clusters of smuggling boats. She lifted her arm, then brought it down in a sharp chopping gesture.
Two hundred yards away, the coxswain of the Queen’s miniraider lifted his own arm in acknowledgment. Gunning the engine of his small craft, he started a pass down the line of rafted boats. In the bow of the small RIB, a Marine grenadier crouched with his M-4/M-203 combo weapon. As the raider passed each moorage, the Marine lobbed a flare round into the center of the cluster.
Fire blossomed on the sea, flames radiating outward, engulfing and consuming the small craft. Exploding oil drums thudded like a ragged artillery barrage and dusky smoke boiled into the sky. The separate plumes merged into a single column, trailing away in the offshore breeze as if marking a warrior’s funeral pyre.
Christine climbed into the briefing trailer to recover some notes she’d forgotten. She also took a moment to stretch and yawn, wondering if she would ever be able to restore herself to a normal human day-night biorhythm again.
Reclaiming the hard copy from the head of the conference table, she turned to go. But then she noted the words written on the blackboard beside the wallscreen. Amanda Garrett had chalked them there many long months ago at that first big mission briefing when the task force had gone on the offensive. The three strategic missions being undertaken by the Union navy:
POWER PROJECTION
MAINTAIN SEA LINES OF COMMUNICATION
MAINTAIN FLEET IN BEING
Amanda herself had drawn a line through POWER PROJECTION on the night they had destroyed the Union’s boat hides along the Guinea coast. Now Christine Rendino took up the chalk and slashed decisively through the second.
Brigadier Sako Atiba knocked at the door of General Belewa’s office. At one time it would have been a needless formality, but of late, a formality had returned to his relationship with his commanding officer.
“Come in.”
The Premier General sat at his desk, his elbows propped on the blotter, the heels of his hands pressed into his eyes as if the pressure would ease a great pain. Atiba came to attention before the desk, his hand flicking up in his morning’s salute.
“The Chief of Staff reporting as ordered, sir.”
Belewa did not look up. “You have been to Operations? You have heard?”
“Of the failure of the convoy, sir? Yes, sir.” The temptation to emphasize the word “failure”was strong, but Atiba resisted.
“We lost them all, Sako. I lost them all. And for nothing.”
Belewa dropped his arms to the desk, and for the first time Sako noticed the typewritten sheets on the desk before the General. It was the operational outline he and Umamgi had submitted those weeks ago. Belewa looked up into Sako’s face and smiled a tired, saddened smile. The smile of a man weary to his soul.
“You were right, old friend. And bitter though the thought might be, so is Umamgi. A soldier cannot afford too much pride, and the leader of a nation even less.”
The General tapped the operations plan with his finger. “Set up a meeting with the Algerians. Now we will talk about this.”
Dear Mary and Cassy:
I know you have been told by now that your father will not be coming home. As your father’s captain, I am writing to you on behalf of myself and all of his other shipmates to say how very sorry we are. I know this won’t make things hurt any less, but we hope it will help for you to know we are thinking of you and your mother at this time of great sadness.