She couldn’t believe he didn’t know. “Their police frequency, Bob. If we want to know what’s going on up ahead—”
“Yeah, but what’s the use? We can’t understand what they’re — oh.” He made a face. “I guess you could, though. Yeah. Four-forty?”
The voices overlay one another, cut into each other’s transmissions. She gathered police were already in the dock area. Someone was asking if they could radio all the dhows, order them to turn back. Another man replying most of them didn’t carry radios. Then a voice came through clear and strong.
“What’s he saying there?” Bob wanted to know.
She said, slowly, “He says there’s no way they can check all those boats. And anyway, they’ve already sailed.”
Dan watched the leader come on, fingers tightening on the glasses. It did not slow or alter course. Beside him Hotchkiss said, “Twenty-fives and fifties manned, loaded, and tracking.”
She sounded collected, and he was glad because he didn’t feel that way himself. This had all the earmarks of a bad situation. He couldn’t keep his attention both on the oncoming dhow and on
Nor, he suddenly remembered, did he need to. “XO, take over getting the engines started, take the conn!”
“This is Commander Hotchkiss, I have the conn!”
A chorus of acknowledgments from helm, quartermasters, boatswain’s mates, officers. As it died, the talker said, “Main control requests permission to start main engines.”
Hotchkiss, crisply: “Start them ASAP. Verify ITC at ‘stop.’”
“ITC verified at ‘stop.’ Engine room reports engines started, ready to respond to all bells.”
“Very well.”
“Rudder test complete: I have rudder control from the bridge. Bring in the anchor, Captain?”
Dan nodded. As desperately as he wanted to be under way, to have at least the option of choosing where an oncoming boat hit him, he hadn’t dared to before he was sure he had power. Being adrift and out of control, possibly on fire, after an explosion close aboard could be much worse than being hit at anchor. He lifted his glasses again, returning his sight to where his attention had never left, the oncoming boat.
Which now, a bare hundred yards short of the waiting RHIB, suddenly put its rudder over. It heeled, tracking around, and steadied on course for the channel entrance, leaving a patch of whirling foam where it had turned.
He eased air out. So that wasn’t it… then, almost immediately, held the next breath in his throat.
A second dhow had appeared behind it, replacing the first as if popped out of the same mold, like some hellish video game that kept feeding him the same image. The same upswept bow and stern and enclosed pilothouse. The only difference was a blue hull this time. Men stood on the deck, watching him curiously.
He focused, trying to get faces, expressions. If these were fanatical self-immolators, suicide bombers, wouldn’t they be overjoyed on the long-awaited day of martyrdom? The bearded visages he scanned looked more like underfed toilers on their way to another exhausting day in the broiling sun. No jolly baseball-hatted guys with coolers of beer here, the kind of fishermen you passed in the channel out of Pascagoula or San Diego. Their clothes were ragged and dirty, their “turbans” rags wrapped around their heads.
Hotchkiss, at his side. “We’re under way. Shall I head for the channel exit?”
“No! Back and fill. Just stand fast. Be alert for wind drift and don’t get any closer to the shoals.”
“Aye, aye.”
“Have you got somebody working the radios?”
He meant, to their tactical superiors, the only ones, according to the rules of engagement, who could authorize him to fire on suspicion of attack. Of course, any ship had the right to fire in self-defense. But in U.S. usage, that meant returning rounds once the other side had started the firefight.
In its simplest terms, and as he well knew after their experiences in the Red Sea, ROE interpretation was anything but simple.
He knew the answer, and it was unforgiving. Not an eye for an eye, but an even crueler resolution. An eye before he was mutilated himself; a tooth, before his own was knocked out; a life, before his own was taken.
Hotchkiss said, “I’ve got McCall on the net, trying to get somebody who’s willing to make a decision.”
“Carry on then. And keep an eye on the bow, the wind’s pushing it around.”
She said aye, aye, and put the port engine ahead. Giving him time to think next about exactly what he was going to do if one of those dhows marching out, a long line of them visible now behind the first two,
