The glass was vacant, but she saw something behind the machine.
The paper had fallen between the copy tray, where it came out, and the wall. It lay curled up just below where the fax was plugged in.
Above it the other outlet was occupied by a square plastic box she recognized as a surge suppressor. But nothing was plugged into it. There was a vacant space on the tabletop beside the copy machine. A square space free of the dust and trash and shed hair that covered every other surface in the apartment.
She glanced behind her, to make sure no one was looking, and reached down. Got the paper in her nails, and tweezed it up into the light.
“Somebody’s been at work here,” Diehl said, behind her. She nodded wordlessly, examining the paper. It didn’t make sense. Curving lines and straight lines. A little crude drawing of a ship, childlike, with pointed prow and matchstick guns pointing up.
“That’s the harbor,” he said, looking over her shoulder.
“Our harbor?”
“Minas Salman. Right there — see? There’s the inner harbor, where the fishing fleet docks. There’s our pier, at the ASU, I mean the NSA.”
“And the ship?” she murmured.
It must have hit them both simultaneously, everything coming together, the deserted apartment, the scraps of wire, the missing explosives, the crude chart. Because she heard him suck his breath in, too.
Dan was shaving when the rapid bong of the general quarters alarm echoed through the ship. At the same moment the phone went off. He snatched it off the hook. “Captain.”
“Sir, Hotchkiss. We just got a call there might be trouble headed our way.”
“What? Another storm?”
The 1MC was saying over her voice, “Security alert, security alert. Away the security alert team and backup alert force.”
“Maybe worse. A boat full of dynamite. Meet me on the bridge.”
The bridge was maybe not the best place to be communications-wise. But at least from there they could see. That went through his mind as he was pounding up ladders, tearing along passageways filled with others who when they saw him coming flattened against the bulkheads and yelled, “Captain coming through.”
He burst into the pilothouse to find Hotchkiss issuing orders to heave around on the anchor, man up all deck weapons stations, and set Condition Zebra throughout the ship.
The first order of business was to verify the warning. He asked the man who’d taken the call exactly what he’d heard. Someone identifying himself as Petty Officer Rossetti of NCIS had called direct to the ship on Channel 16, warning them a small craft with a bomb aboard might be on its way out to them. One minute later substantially the same word came over the Harbor Control net. Dan was digesting this and searching the harbor surface when in the gray predawn the bow of a small boat appeared at the exit from the inner harbor, at the gap between the stone jetties that stretched out from Muharraq Island and Juffair.
“Bridge, forward lookout: dhow coming out of the harbor.”
“Bridge, Mount 51: acquired visual on target.”
“Mount 51, hold fire, and keep that breech clear,” Dan said. The eastern suburbs were clearly visible beyond the emerging boat. He could not fire his main gun; any miss would ricochet over the inner harbor directly into those crowded houses. The missiles were useless, too. He was limited to the chain guns and .50s. He went for the 21MC. “TAO, Captain.”
“TAO Camill here.”
“Herb, I want weapons tight, all weapons tight for the moment. We’re in very close quarters here. I want you working the net for more info on this threat.” He let up on the lever and went on talking, to Hotchkiss this time. “Where’s our patrol?”
A pointing arm. “Two hundred yards out toward the entrance.”
“Pull him in here ASAP. M60s and small arms, flak jackets and helmets. Call away the Blue and Green Teams and get the other RHIB in the water as soon as possible.”
Binoculars up again, he saw the boat had separated from the causeway, was headed in their direction. Movement was visible behind it, sticks and hulls …
With a sudden sense of doom he realized it was the fishing fleet. They were getting under way. As they did every morning. The lofty-prowed, colorful, slow-chugging flotilla that fed the island. That before first sight of sun left the sheltered inner harbor, plowing southward, past where
It was diabolical, and for a moment he grudgingly admired the cunning of the mind that had conceived it. Striking beneath the weapons and sensors of the superior technology. Using his own unwillingness to inflict collateral damage as a shield.
It was time to see how far that shield extended. “I need harbor control.”
“Select five, sir.”
