The lights glowed red down in CIC, giving the faces of the ship’s division chiefs a satanic cast. Daisy, too, had adjusted her hologram to glow red, rather than its normal flesh tone.
“What do those bastards at the embassy say?” Davis asked of the ship’s XO.
The JAG answered for the XO. “They claim their hands are tied, that we do not have an applicable SOFA agreement. They also act as if they never heard of the American Servicemembers Protection Act.”
“Huh? What’s that?” Davis asked, scratching behind his ear in puzzlement.
“Something the Senate put through early this century,” the JAG continued. “At its extreme it authorizes the President literally go to war with someone who either arrests our servicemen and women for prosecution by some foreign court which we have not signed onto or to go after that court itself. Some call it the ‘Bomb the Hague’ Act. And, it could become so.”
“Okay,” said Davis. “So we can go in and get our people out ’cause of this Act?”
“Sadly, no,” the XO answered. “The President can, or can order us to. We can’t.”
“You can’t,” Daisy corrected, enigmatically, before winking out.
Go back to the invisible room where a couple of svelte multi-thousand ton cruisers had once chatted. It was not so plain now, not so much glowing walls and rolling fog. If anything, it had acquired something of a feminine flavor, nautical but with a woman’s touch. Daisy and Sally often conversed here, unseen and unsuspected. They had come to call it, “the Club.”
“I want my captain back, and I want him back now,” Sally fumed. “A ship without a captain is just so… wrong.”
“I know,” Daisy agreed. “I feel exactly the same way. And I can’t find out a thing. I don’t know where they are. I don’t know what’s happened to them. I don’t even know if my captain is even alive.”
“Wherever they are, it is not very close,” Sally observed. “I have searched out everything within range and they are not there.”
“There is nothing on the telephone system, the cell system, or the local Net either,” Daisy spat in frustration. “There is some radio traffic from various sources that suggests it isn’t our captains alone that are missing.”
“Where is the radio traffic from?”
Daisy projected a map of the country on one wall of the pseudo-room. Red dots appeared marking the points of origin of the questioning radio calls. Even before Sally had a chance to ask “when,” timestamps appeared alongside the dots.
The two stood before the map, both sets of eyes flickering rapidly.
“Air traffic beginning with the first distress call?” Sally asked.
Instantly a series of lines, useless and confusing even to the AIDs’ capable minds, appeared.
“Eliminating those that obviously have no connection to the radio traffic,” Daisy said, as the number of lines dropped by a factor of ten or more.
“Eliminating those that are U.S. Army and Navy flights,” and the map began to show patterns.
“There!” Sally said, pointing to a spot about fifty miles from Panama City.
“That’s it,” agreed Daisy. “Our captains, along with between thirty and forty others, are probably being held at La Joya prison.”
“I think I’ve found them,” Daisy announced, winking back into apparent existence in the same spot in CIC. She then outlined everything she knew and suspected about the capture and the persons and reasons behind it.
“That’s absolute bullshit!” Davis fumed. “Absolute fucking bullshit. You can’t shoot at an enemy if he is not actively trying to kill you at the time you shoot? Who came up with that fucking idiotic rule?”
“That particular portion of Additional Protocol One was forced in by the Soviets back in the ’70s,” the JAG answered. “Interestingly, neither they, their successor states, nor the Europeans who jumped on the bandwagon have ever paid it a lot of attention. The Euros because they do not fight guerilla or counter-guerilla wars anymore. The Russians never intended to pay any attention to it and, from their point of view, it was a useful club to beat the United States with.”
Davis asked, “Miss Daisy, are you absolutely sure they are there at… La Joya, was it?”
“Not absolutely, Chief, no. But it seems most likely.”
“We need to make sure, Chief,” the XO said. “Think you can get to La Joya to find out.”
“Wrong choice, Exec,” piped up Dwyer. He was completely sober, insofar as one could tell. “I’ll go.”
“You’re hardly the Sneaky Pete sort, Chaplain,” the exec pointed out, reasonably.
Dwyer scoffed, “Who said anything about sneaking, my son? I’ll go as a Priest of the Holy Church. Full vestments and all… despite this miserable heat. My Spanish is rather good, you know. And I figure I can borrow a car from the Papal Nuncio. He’s an old pal.”
The guards didn’t recognize the twin flags flying above the long black limousine. The flags were square, half white, half gold with a crest — crossed gold and silver keys of Saint Peter under the papal miter — on the white side.
There really was no need to recognize the flags, though, nor the diplomatic license plates, nor even the stature implicit in the limo. The eyes of the gate guards, the tower guards and even the equestrian patrol between the wire fences, were all fixed on the very large, very imposing, slightly red-faced man who emerged in clerical garb of more than ordinary magnificence from the limo’s back seat.
An attendant, head bowed, held open the door. Father Dan Dwyer, SJ, made a show of blessing the attendant before turning his attention to the guards. Acting as if he owned this world — perhaps more importantly, the next — he walked directly to the gate, followed by the attendant.
The poor guards didn’t know whether to present arms, bow or kneel for benediction. Dwyer didn’t give them time to wonder.
“I am here to see the prisoners.”
“Si, Padre,” the senior of the two guards answered, not even bothering to question the priest’s right. In a moment, the gate was open and the senior guard had dialed the main guard shack for an escort.
All but the two imprisoned gringos and the woman, still delirious with concussion and fever, rushed over to see the priest. One of the gringos, McNair, looked directly at the priest with one raised eyebrow. Dwyer returned the look with emphasis: Act like you haven’t a clue who I am.
McNair understood and placed a restraining hand on Goldblum.
At the door, Dwyer directed the other prisoners to give their names to his attendant. While the attendant was busy scrawling those down in a small notebook, Dwyer asked, “Who is that woman?”
Boyd answered, “She is Lieutenant Colonel Digna Miranda.”
“The heroine of Chiriqui?” the priest asked incredulously.
“Her.”
“What is wrong with her?”
“Beaten. Tortured. Raped. She has a fever. I’m not sure what the exact cause of it is.”
Dwyer walked over bent to feel the woman’s head. Maybe 103 degrees. Maybe 104. Not life threatening but not a good sign either.
The priest stood erect as the commandant of the prison entered the barracks.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded of the priest furiously. “This is a secure facility. You have no right…”
“Are you a Catholic, my son?” the priest interrupted, calm and imperturbable.
“Yes. So wha — ”
“Then, for the sake of your immortal soul, get a doctor for this woman.”