If it got much worse, he’d try it. But there was one other trick first. At 1400 he set the underway watch, started one engine, and began steaming to the mooring. That seemed to help the pitching, and the motion smoothed out.
The wind whistled. The windows showed only a sand-colored darkness, with shipyard, tankers, the city, only distant outlines, without detail. The harbor creamed, lines of spume lying the length of the wind. A dhow labored, making for safety with agonizing slowness. Sand ground at the glass. Ships returning from the Gulf routinely had their bridge windshields replaced. The anemometer showed forty knots gusting to sixty, to sixty-five. He stayed there for an hour. It didn’t change. He left Hotchkiss in charge and went below.
He was in the in-port cabin going through the traffic that had accumulated over the past couple of days when Casey Schaad knocked. Looking across from his computer station, Dan saw Marchetti behind him, shaven dome unmistakable under the lights of the passageway.
“Yeah, Casey.”
“Sir, Senior’s got a concern about our security.”
He tuned himself out of the CNO’s training goals. “All right, talk to me.”
They squatted on the settee. Marchetti said, “Sir, I don’t like where we are. I brought it up to Weps here, and he said we ought to come up and let you know.”
Dan wondered how difficult it had been to persuade Schaad to surface the issue. “In what sense, Senior?”
“Sitting here at anchor with our thumb up our ass.”
“You don’t like the location?”
Marchetti rubbed his skull, wondering how he could put it. He just had a bad feeling. “There’s too much traffic. We’re too close to the beach. All these dhows going by all the time. What if one of ’em decides to run into us and put some armed guys aboard? We don’t have our deck weapons mounted, or ready ammo. We’d kick ’em off eventually, but it’d take us a long time. We could lose a lot of people.”
Dan swiveled his chair, torn between his own doubts about their readiness and the local regulations that had been explained to him at the base commander’s office. At last he said, “Casey, what’s your take?”
“Well, sir, Machete’s spent a lot more time in the Gulf than I have. This is my first time here.”
Dan swiveled again, reminding himself when it groaned to get it greased. Nothing aboard was new. Everything needed attention. But if they’d given him a new ship, would anything be different? He didn’t think so.
“I won’t say you don’t have a point, Senior. But when I asked Captain Fetrow about it he told me Bahrain’s a safe locale. A low-threat area, and the authorities here want to keep the foreign profile low to keep from irritating the elements that don’t like outsiders.”
“Is that why they made us take the rifles out of the perimeter boat?”
“Correct. The COMIDEASTFOR ROEs prohibit loaded weapons or hostile display.”
“Sir, that’s bullshit.”
“This isn’t our country, Senior.”
“You said that was U.S. regs, not Bahraini.”
Dan had had enough. “It’s not up to me, Chief. Headquarters knows the local conditions, they talk to the local security forces, the host government. We have to go by their call.”
“Sir, I still think—”
“Thanks for coming in to see me, Senior Chief. Lieutenant.”
Schaad got up, but Marchetti wasn’t done. “Sir, that’s just stupid, not being allowed to defend ourselves. Here’s what we ought to be doing.” He went on: boat patrols, the chain guns loaded and trained out, the .50s mounted and manned, antiswimmer precautions with the sonar, pinging intense bursts to disorient anyone approaching underwater.
Dan heard him out. Finally he said, “Tell you what, I think we’re all right just now. The seas are too rough for anybody to board. But you’ve got a point about how long it’d take us to react, if something did happen. Casey.”
“Sir.”
“Look at the quick reaction team procedures again, how fast we can get weapons and ammo on deck. Meanwhile, I’m not sure we ought to be where we are, either. We could go out to the Sitra anchorage, but then it’s a long haul for the liberty parties.”
“A long haul for anybody trying to get at us, too, sir.”
“I have to think about a lot of things, Senior. Security’s just one part of it. Let me ask Port Control about an anchorage farther out.”
“That would help, sir.”
“If you actually see something suspicious, come back,” Dan told him. “If it’s a matter of security, force protection, come right to me or the exec, if I’m not aboard. Casey, same goes for you; if it’s time-sensitive, skip the chain of command and come direct to me. But let’s not get so focused on one piece of the puzzle we forget the rest, okay?”
They left. He tried to get back into the administrative minutiae, but failed. Finally he logged off and went topside.
