L’Étoile and Athena were five hours from Ras Hagar, which by further and more precise extrapolation had proved undoubtedly the landfall, when Holworthy’s south picket reported a large dust cloud at the picket’s four o’clock. It rose from the wadi road at a rate that indicated fast-moving vehicles. The SEALs were roused. Even though their positional advantage could be nullified by a large contingent of enemy, they would stay to fight any number, because to surrender was to die.
Soon enough, a line of more than twenty pickup trucks sped into the village down below. Several men previously unseen by the SEALs emerged from the largest building and fired shots into the air. At first the SEALs thought this was celebratory, but it was a signal. People emerged from their houses en masse, carrying bundles, tools, and children. As if they had done it before, they quickly climbed into the trucks, and after ten minutes, when the only remaining figures were armed men, the trucks drove back to the wadi, and the dust cloud moved south and west. Holworthy reported this in clipped fashion, as before.
When apprised of it, Rensselaer conferred with the XO, Marchetti, and Kenny Larman, the gunnery chief. “The question is,” Rensselaer announced, “do we speed ahead of l’Étoile and destroy the village when it’s lightly manned, with no hostages as shields? Clearly, they want a hardened, defensible position in which to disembark and hold the captives. We could deny them that. Your views?”
Marchetti said, “Yes. Otherwise it would be infinitely more difficult—or impossible—to do so without harming the hostages. And we can do it much more easily if the strongpoints aren’t fully manned, assuming that a hundred-and-five-millimeter shell or two doesn’t score a lucky hit on us before we can take out their artillery. Or, they may have an anti-shipping missile.”
“No report of that,” Movius said.
“It could be hidden,” Rensselaer stated, “but those are the risks we take.”
“We should go in, Captain,” Larman urged, in agreement with Marchetti.
“XO?”
Movius shook his head. “No.”
“Why not?”
“If Hadawi sees that his strongpoint has been destroyed he could do at least two things—kill all the hostages and escape inland, or turn back out to sea, continuing to use the ship as the strongpoint.”
“But if he has the fortified village, with the hostages as shields, how is that better?” Marchetti asked.
“Granted, only slightly. They’d be fixed in position, and if the French get here they, and—who knows—maybe the U.S., could manage a land assault surprising enough to save them. It’s been done.”
“But assuming that they continue the executions,” Rensselaer said, “by the time of the assault, if ever, most would be dead.”
Movius answered, “There’s no clear path, sir. You have to decide, working in the dark. What does your gut say?”
Rensselaer lifted his eyes to the overhead, tilting back, and then straightening. “It tells me to prepare and wait on events. We shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, figuratively or otherwise. How does that sit with you, Chief?” he asked Larman.
“I understand, sir.”
“But when and if we do go in, I want to pour a Niagara of gunfire on those positions. Like the Sahand, but more so.”
“That’s what we’re working on, a broadside heavier than even against the Sahand.”
“How?”
“Cutting and un-bolting the starboard stern fifty, the starboard grenade launcher, and moving them to the port side; maximizing the loads; straining the barrels; using all the remaining Griffins and the Harpoon; maybe, after the first barrage, getting close enough to shore to use infantry weapons with grenade launchers. And the SEALs’ light mortar that they left behind.”
“Wonderfully not by the book,” Movius said.
“Sir,” Larman said, “we’ve been on our own since we left Little Creek. They pushed us out here like this and expect us to work miracles. The book my ass.”
“As the CO, Chief,” Rensselaer addressed Larman, “it would be inappropriate for me to agree with you, if, indeed, I were to disagree with you.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Carry on.”
*
Every one of Athena’s crew had clearly in mind the executions on l’Étoile and was fixed on striking back at ISIS, though even after a little time the horror was abstracted and petrified to a degree that it could be borne. But for the passengers and crew of l’Étoile, fear and despair were as live as an electrical current. Unless they slept—knowing to what they would awaken, it was hard to sleep—they experienced continual terror. They could feel it taking years off their lives just as surely as they could feel their rapid loss of weight occasioned not merely by having little food, but by an unceasing tension more taxing than physical exercise.
The only people on Athena, l’Étoile, and the bluff above the village who were not fairly clear about what was happening were Martin and Petra. They had heard gunshots and screams, but as far as they could be sure, other than the man whom Martin had killed no one had yet died, nor might anyone. Knowing that most piracies ended in ransomings, they tried to reason out the best course of action. Like Rensselaer, they had several uncertain choices, but unlike him they were even less guided by knowledge of the facts. That Martin was grounded in the scientific method and Petra an academic historian, they found, offered little to no advantage.
“If they discover us with this weapon they’ll know that we—I—killed one of them. Surely they’ll kill us then,” Martin said. It was as if he were teaching a class at Paris Sorbonne, where he was an adjunct while working at Sanofi, the drug company, on preserving drugs in tropical climates.
“On the other hand,” Petra said, “if we give up the weapons we’ll be helpless, and if they intend to kill us, why not take some of them along?”
“And what if they don’t intend to kill us?”
“I have to say,” she said—her bravery was vital and vivid—“that I’m enraged about being a captive. Maybe it’s worthwhile to die fighting, to show that we aren’t slaves or sheep.”
“That’s spectacular, Petra, and it makes me love you all the more. You are magnificently barbaric. But don’t we want to calculate our chances and live?”
“Martin, keep the gun.”
Martin thought about this, and agreed. “You’re right. Maybe we’ll die, but to hell with them: we’re not sheep. We’ll take them with us.”
*
Had they come to a logical, safe, quiet decision, it would anyway have been countermanded by what happened next. While they were finding their courage, one of the hijackers had been unable to suppress his lust for Sophie, who had been taken and raped by another. He wanted her. Her red hair and her youth worked upon him, especially since he was very ugly and his head was shaped somewhat like an eight, with a pronounced cerebral swelling; his beard was dirty; and he had never been wanted by any woman, even within the constraints of the system in which he believed, in which what the woman might want was entirely immaterial. He knew his position.
So when the rapes were ended by order of Hadawi, he wanted nonetheless to take Sophie for one more, and he tried. When the sentry at the door to the corridor that led to the deserted cabins stopped him, he crossed the room, with Sophie—numb and hardly alive—in tow, and approached another guard, who was standing at the door leading to the areas below decks: the kitchens and crew quarters.
“No,” the guard said. “By order.”
“Here,” the man with the swollen skull and dirty beard told him, proffering a fistful of money. The guard took it, and Sophie was dragged down the stairs to the kitchens. She made no protest. It was as if she were in a dream.
Once in the central corridor, he sought a more private space, took her to the hallway where the crew’s dressing rooms were, and threw her to the floor.
Hearing the first instance of someone intruding on their refuge, Martin cocked the M4 and released the bolt. “You know how to use that?” Petra asked, quite aware that these might be her last words.
“I was in the army.”
“A cryptologist.”
“They trained us on rifles like these.”
Something took hold of Sophie, and, instinctually, she began to fight. Her attacker threw his weapon down and knelt beside her, grabbing her arms. She struggled and cried. The sound was unmistakable.
Martin pulled the door inward. He saw the ISIS terrorist kneeling in front of Sophie, pulling at her underwear. He saw the Kalashnikov beyond. And he pulled the trigger on the M4. A single round only. The bullet went straight into the heart, after which the eight-shaped head flipped backward and to the body’s right, taking the would-be rapist and killer cleanly off Sophie and depositing him conveniently on his back. The only blood he would shed soaked his shirt and magazine carrier, and because the bullet had failed to exit, not a drop went to the floor.
Petra went to Sophie, enfolded her in her arms, and rushed her into the changing room. “Stay there,” she said, and closed the door. “Lock it.”
Martin removed the ammunition magazines from the vest-carrier and placed them in one of the empty changing rooms. He picked up the body under the arms. Petra lifted the feet. “No scuff marks,” Martin said as he led, backward, to the kitchen. They moved as fast as they could.
As he stuffed the corpse into the incinerator opening, repeatedly casting glances down the wide hall, he said, “This is getting to be a habit.” Being German, Petra took his statement literally.
“Do you mean putting bodies in an incinerator?” she asked.
“It’s a joke.”
“How can you joke at a time like this?”
“Because I’m not German.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t.” After he pushed the green, mushroom-shaped button, the jets of flame began to roar.
They ran back. Martin retrieved the ammunition he had stored, they knocked at their door and told Sophie who they were, and, once in, locked it quickly after them. Martin washed the blood off the magazines and dried them. Picking up the Kalashnikov, he saw that the lever had been left on automatic and the rifle was loaded and cocked. “Very dangerous,” he said, handing it to Petra. “Be careful. All you have to do is pull the trigger and it will shoot. If they come before we decide what to do, we’ll have to fight. We’ve killed two of them already. No mercy for us.”
He turned to Sophie. During the cruise, he and Petra had said that they would love to have a daughter like her. Just the sight of her reading in one of the lounges or on a deck chair filled them with the benevolence that an as-yet-childless couple feels when at the dawn of parenthood they encounter children. “What are they doing up there?” he asked.
Her eyes seemed glazed. Martin and Petra realized that she hadn’t said anything in the minutes she’d been with them. “Sophie?” he asked. “Are you okay?” No answer. “We have to know, so we can decide what to do. It depends on what’s going on above. Are they treating you—apart from this”—he gestured at the lower half of the door—“well?”
Emotionless, she said, “They cut off people’s heads. They throw babies into the sea. They raped all of us.”
After a long pause out of decency and shock, he had to continue. “How many are there?”
“I don’t know. Twenty or thirty. They execute one of us every hour.”
“What was all the firing about before?”
“There was an American ship. It couldn’t do anything. Now it’s gone.”
“What can we do, Martin?” Petra asked.
“This is as good a hiding place as any. If they find us, we’ll fight. Then we’ll find another place deeper below decks. Or we can wait for night, go on deck, throw a life raft over the side, and jump into the sea.” He turned to Sophie. “Can you swim?”
“Yes. They hit Madame Eugénie with a rifle, and she never got up. They just left her there, and then, after a while, they threw her from the ship. No one said anything, because we no longer speak.”
*
When during the regular scan of the horizon with his binocular Holworthy saw a vague black stain in the otherwise intensely blue sky, a disturbance of the consistent azure not even as strong as a light, accidental, pencil stroke, he kept on returning to it until he could see that it was smoke carried on rising heat in wavering air. He alerted the others. Not long after, as if straight from a geography book, the mast was visible just over the horizon, and then, slowly, the all-white superstructure of l’Étoile. Holworthy informed Athena.
On the bridge of l’Étoile, Hadawi ordered the Danish captain to state the ship’s maximum speed.
“Twenty-three knots.”
“Possibly more?”
“Why?”
“You don’t ask. You answer.”
“Depending on wind, current, load, type of fuel, and disregard for the engines, maybe twenty-six.”
“There,” Hadawi said, pointing to the reddish cliffs ahead. “Ras Hagar. Twenty-six knots.”
The captain said, “If you want to try to dock at the pier on the chart we have to begin deceleration now. It would be impossible at twenty-six knots.”
“I said twenty-six knots.”
The captain hesitated, but then called for maximum speed. Queried from the engine room, he confirmed that everything was out of his hands.
As the SEALs watched l’Étoile racing to the coast, Holworthy said, “She’s going to run aground. Unless she turns now, she’s. . . .”
Gaining speed, l’Étoile never veered from a direct perpendicular to the beach just north of the village. ISIS soldiers ran to the pier and shot into the air.
“Please allow me to warn the passengers and crew,” the captain requested. “We’re going to crash.”
“No,” Hadawi said. “If they’re hurt too badly to move, we can shoot them.”
The helmsman looked anxiously at the captain, and the captain said, “Steady on.” Given the situation, he was rather nonchalant. When one is fairly certain one is going to die, nonchalance takes on a different character, and seems like something it would have been wise to embrace long before.
*
The SEALs were amazed to see the massive l’Étoile pick up speed and push on toward the beach. Though they didn’t stand, they raised their heads higher than before, knowing that every eye in the village would be focused on the oncoming ship. As they watched it cleave the waves into white foam thrown from its bows, they forgot to breathe. Even when a ship or a ferry is so mishandled that it bumps its prow against a dock, it almost always does so slowly. At flank speed, l’Étoile had not the slightest hesitation.
First, she skidded over a sandbar a hundred feet out from the beach, slowing from twenty-six knots to perhaps twenty, and then her bows were raised as she hit the beach itself. The keel slowed and stopped her, but not until she was a third of the way out of the water. The sound of sand and scree scraping against her steel sides roared up the cliff face like thunder. Her seventy-two-foot mast bent forward and collapsed over the forecastle. The lifeboats broke from their davits, some falling into the sea near the stern and then pushed shoreward by the surf, some resting at crazy angles on deck; some even flew through the air and landed on the beach. A spark-filled cloud of black smoke was belched from the stack along with the sound of an explosion muffled by the spaces between the engine room and the outside air. As the propellers tried to turn, and did, a little bit, the SEALs heard the grinding of metal.
“The propellers can’t disengage,” Holworthy said. “Cut the goddamn engines.” Flame issued from the stack, and didn’t subside. Horns, klaxons, and fire alarms sounded. The fuel lines had ruptured, and diesel fuel was sprayed at high pressure in the engine spaces.
After a while, the first of the hostages appeared at an opening in the side, about twenty feet from the ground. The still-intact accommodation ladder was lowered by the crew, and it almost made it to the sand, its platform coming to rest five feet above. The hostages were herded down these stairs at speed. Though too many crowded the hanging structure, it held. When they got to the bottom, they were forced to jump. Though most were old, they were at gunpoint and they jumped. About one in three of these limped or were helped away, one in five or six fell to the ground, and everyone was hit by the rifle butts of angry, nervous guards who treated them, including children and aged ladies, like cattle.
As flames issued from the upper decks, the wind blew smoke against the ocher cliffs and into the otherwise blue sky. “Sir!” a SEAL yelled. “Starboard side, toward the stern.”
Holworthy looked through the scope on his Barrett. Three figures were running on the promenade deck. Two were women, a blonde and a redhead, their hair ablaze in the sun. One of the women, and an obviously European, very tall man, had rifles. What to make of this?
As far astern as they could get, they went to the rail. A number of life rafts had been inflated automatically after they were thrown into the sea during the grounding. The three figures mounted the rails. “Cover them,” Holworthy ordered.
The SEALs took aim. As they clicked their scopes into proper range it sounded briefly like a field of crickets. All of them saw two captors burst onto the promenade deck. “We fire, we give away our presence,” someone said, compressing the words.
“Take aim,” Holworthy said. “My decision.” And a quick decision it had to be when the captors stopped and raised their weapons at Sophie, Petra, and Martin as they climbed the rails.
“Fire,” Holworthy commanded. The shots were simultaneous. They dropped the two men and echoed off l’Étoile, over the village, and back up the cliff. “Shit,” said Holworthy. “Cover.”
Martin, Petra, and even Sophie were surprised by the shots. Before they leapt, they looked back and saw the two terrorists fall as if they had shot themselves. But with no time to wonder, they threw themselves out into the air forty feet above the sea. Holworthy was the only one who peeked out. He watched them hit, swim a fair distance, and climb onto a raft.
Everyone was on the port side of l’Étoile, marching the hostages and crew to the village. The raft was on the starboard side. As soon as what looked to Holworthy like a father, mother, and daughter were on it, they found paddles and worked furiously to gain and clear the small promontory, namesake of Ras Hagar, far behind which the SEALs had hidden the RHIB.
“Watch the village and the gunmen to see if they’ve spotted us,” Holworthy commanded. “I’ll cover the raft and the beach north of the ship.”
As Holworthy kept his eye on the beach, he heard, “Commander, a bunch of guys are looking up here and pointing. We’ve been made.”
“Not good,” Holworthy said. “At least the family seems to be getting away.” And they were. They rounded the promontory unnoticed. “Do we have—”
He was interrupted by the cry of, “Dust cloud in the wadi.”
“So soon?” Holworthy said, thinking that the trucks were coming onto the plateau. “We missed them while we were watching down below.”
The same kind of trucks that had moved the civilians didn’t turn toward the SEAL position but sped from the wadi into the village, enveloped in white dust that mixed with smoke from the burning l’Étoile. They had brought a hundred or more men armed with infantry weapons, including dozens of RPGs projecting upward like bee stingers.
Dismounting, they were met by the soldiers already there and those from the ship. After a great commotion—chaos, really—the hostages were fully loaded onto the trucks. It took no more than fifteen minutes, and then all but nine of the vehicles—two of which were “technicals,” one with an antiaircraft gun and the other with a large recoilless rifle mounted in back—drove into the southern wadi.
A hundred and fifty men were left. The SEALs saw that many were arguing. That is, until Hadawi appeared with his officers and the disputes stopped. He deployed about a hundred to the artillery, the technicals, the huts, and the trenches. Standing among the roughly fifty left, he turned toward the cliff, and pointed.
“That’s it,” Holworthy said. “They know for sure. Drop him, get the others as well as you can. Careful shots. Save ammo.”
The clicks returned, and the SEALs fired at the ranks around Hadawi. Holworthy aimed his .50-cal and hit the man next to him. Because ISIS uselessly returned fire they were exposed long enough so that the SEALs killed about ten. But Hadawi disappeared, and the forty men left ran toward the wadi. While they were yet exposed before they rounded the ridge on the wadi’s north side, the SEALs dropped another four.
“How far out are the Claymores?” Holworthy asked when the firing stopped.
“As far as we could.”
“How concealed?”
“As best we could. The ground’s hard, and not much scrub.”
He turned north and called his men in. “Redeploy and take ammo.” The two SEALs who had been north moved south and west and took cover behind shallow folds in the terrain. Their line extended about fifty yards, matching the spread of the Claymores.
Holworthy called in to Athena. “E2C to base.”
“Go,” Velez responded.
“They made us. We can talk in the clear now. The hostages and civilians were moved inland on trucks. The village is occupied by a hundred men, and an additional thirty or more are on their way to assault us. They’ve manned the trenches, huts, and artillery. We’ll try to keep them from the bluff, but we may call in targets up here if we’re pressed. The village is a free-fire zone. Repeat. Free-fire zone. No civilians. The ship is grounded on the beach. A couple of hostages escaped on a raft, so watch that you don’t plow into them. Where are you?”
“We see the ship,” Velez said. “Keep your heads down. We’re coming.” Everyone on the bridge heard this. Athena was already at battle stations, in condition Zebra, all set to fight. A single battle taught more than a dozen drills, and this would be the fifth. No one was nervous.
“Helmsman increase your rudder to left full, steady on course two-twenty,” Rensselaer ordered.
“Increase my rudder to left full, steady on course two-twenty, sir.” Athena turned southward.
Then Rensselaer: “Rudder amidships.”
“Rudder amidships, aye sir.”
Athena straightened.
“My rudder is amidships, sir.”
“Steady on course. Increase speed to thirty knots.”
“Steady on course, thirty knots, aye sir.”
After ten minutes that seemed like hours, Rensselaer commanded, “Be prepared to come about to course forty on my order.”
“Aye sir.”
Two miles south of the salt pond and only several hundred yards out, Rensselaer ordered, “Helmsman come about, right full rudder to the stops.”
As Athena leaned over and skidded its stern, everyone aboard knew the battle was about to begin.
“My rudder is right full to the stops, sir.”
“Steer course forty.”
“Course forty, aye sir.”
Athena straightened once again.
“My rudder is right full, coming to course forty, sir.”
“Rudder amidships.”
“Rudder amidships, aye sir.”
In a few moments, Athena stopped even the slightest swing and the needle was right on 40 degrees. “Steady as you go.”
“Steady on course, sir. Checking course.”
“Increase speed to forty-five knots.”
“Increase speed to forty-knots, aye sir.”
Athena shot ahead, at first lifting slightly out of the water. Rensselaer went on the 1MC. “This is the captain. We’re making our first pass. There are no hostages or civilians near the target. Free fire, but find your aim.”
Everyone was surprised, but not that surprised, when over every loudspeaker and bullhorn on the ship, turned all the way up, they heard Wilson Pickett and “Land of 1000 Dances.” All the fight in them was focused by the music, which banished fear entirely and choreographed every movement so that not a single one was wasted, out of place, or awkward. It took them from themselves as if they were Celts amid a hundred bagpipes. The gunners, grenadiers, and mortarman were amazed and delighted. As the rhythm and the beat syncopated perfectly with the waves, the wind, and the motion of the ship, their senses heightened and aligned. They were very far from home it is true, but suddenly everything that was home flooded into them. They knew who they were. They felt their history. And as Athena passed the salt pond, her crew was alight as perhaps they had never been in all their lives.
Not having seen Athena, the artillery crews on the beach were unaware of her until from beyond the salient south of the salt pond they heard the deep rumble of her engines and the unmistakable sound she made at high speed through wind and waves. They had been smoking, making tea over a little fire, and looking straight out to the horizon.
As soon as they understood that a ship was approaching from the south, they started to move and yell. The flimsy tripod dangling their kettle was knocked over into the sand. Both crews struggled to pivot their guns southward and, at the same time, depress the barrels to a flat, point-blank trajectory. The loaders and the men trying to turn the azimuth wheel were screaming at the men pivoting the guns, because as the guns turned it was hard to load and to change the azimuths. Getting ammunition into the breech and both adjustments were vital, and both groups understood this, but couldn’t work together. The pivoters came out with less in the end because the loaders insisted that they stop so a shell could be rammed into each gun.
Athena appeared, and, as Rensselaer had planned, the sun was in the eyes of the artillerymen, who, before the ship moved into their firing window, had about fifteen seconds when all they could do was wait. Unfortunately for them, the first of Athena’s guns to find its own firing window was the MK-46 30mm mounted on the bow. In those fifteen seconds before the southernmost artillery piece could fire, the 30mm pumped out eleven airburst rounds, perfectly aimed and ranged in anticipation that the first task was to silence the artillery. Hundreds of shell fragments rained down upon the sand, the guns, their crews, and the ammunition. The northern gun crew, however, had largely escaped.
The fragmenting shells had made the beach look almost the way it might have looked in a rainstorm, except that the shrapnel was much heavier and forceful, and pushed eruptions of glittering sand toward the sun. The men were pressed down and killed silently, and the metallic sound of the rain of projectiles hitting the guns was heard all the way up the bluff. That is, until the MK-46 gunner aimed directly at the ammunition dump, which exploded with flame, sound, and overpressure that both swept through the village and knocked down the other gun crew. Bravely, because, like good soldiers throughout history, and perhaps being in a real battle had cleansed them for a moment of whatever it is that makes terrorists terrorists, they got back on their feet and managed to get off a round competently aimed at Athena. It struck the stern right below what would have been the RHIB’s midships, and blew the steel apart above the waterline, severing a high-pressure hydraulic feed to the rudder and setting the hydraulic fluid on fire.
In the few minutes it took Pisecki to reach and choke off the line, pressurized fluid was sprayed into the wind, and it burned in a red-orange plume thirty feet high and almost as wide. The .50-calibers at the stern had to be abandoned. One of the sailors manning them was slightly wounded. The other gunners dragged him forward out of the fire as .50-caliber rounds began to detonate.
From shore, it seemed to anyone unfamiliar with the strength and redundancy of a warship that Athena was fatally afflicted. Her appearance was such that ISIS in the trenches, thinking the battle over, climbed out, raised their weapons, fired in the air, cheered, and danced. The gun crew that had scored the hit was stunned at its success, and froze in pride.
The next minute and a half, however, would prove this a mistake. Athena was not seriously damaged, not insofar as her capacity to fight, and as she passed broadside, all her guns except the two blown .50s in the stern opened up copiously and full-throated. The noise had to have been heard deep into the desert and out to sea. It was a shock not only to the enemy but to Athena’s crew itself and the SEALs on the bluff: ten .50-cal barrels firing theoretically at a collective pace of 10,000 rounds per minute, but actually at about half that, or 70 rounds per second; the MK-47 blasting out 50 rounds per minute; the miniguns sweeping the village with 100 rounds per second; the mortar lobbing shells that whooshed-in every ten seconds, and the grenade launchers in a single minute dropping 600 grenades over the trenches and huts.
Smokeless powder or not, Athena was shrouded in a white cloud. Hot brass, the shell casings, began to pile up on the deck. If they hit a gunner’s neck, lodged between his shoe and his foot, or, worse, between his neck and his collar, he would be burned and carry the scars for the rest of his life. But he wouldn’t stop firing. Even sailors not on deck had to plug their ears lest they lose their hearing, as Wilson Pickett, most uncharacteristically, sang in silence. All the firing from the port side actually pushed the ship slightly to starboard, not quite uniformly, forcing the helmsman to steer a minor vector to remain on course. It was impossible to hear the rain of enemy small-arms fire pinging against the ship, but it pock-marked everything. No one was hit, no bridge windows broken, but afterward they would count more than 150 fresh holes and dents.
When Athena came about, Rensselaer scanned the battlefield with his binocular. He couldn’t see everything, but he did see scores of bodies, the two wrecked guns, and shattered and smoking buildings. No one was moving, because, not yet under assault, the SEALs on the bluff picked off anyone who did. The SEALs were dumbfounded at the result of Athena’s single pass. None of them had ever witnessed naval gunfire support.
Rensselaer saw that, though draped with bodies, most of the technicals were intact, if windshieldless, and one had been blown on its side and was burning. He ordered Athena to slow to five knots, the gunners to remain at the ready, and Pisecki to report damage. Pisecki did. The rudder lines were redundant, and Athena would have no trouble steering. The port-side stern above the waterline was blown apart and blackened, and looked like hell. The ramp for recovering the RHIB was completely out of commission, so when the RHIB came back it would have to be towed. But Athena was still fighting. Rensselaer took the hand-held and called Holworthy. “What have you got?”
“That was unbelievable.”
“One pass,” Rensselaer said. “I thought it might take ten. Report.”
“The village is done for. About twenty escaped to the wadi. Everyone else is dead or wounded, although if you land, you’d better pick your way carefully as you clear.”
“What about you?”
“We have yet to see them. They may not know what happened to the village. They wouldn’t, I expect, so they’ll press the assault. We may need fire support. We left the mortar.”
“I know: we used it,” Rensselaer said. “We’ll try to do better than a mortar. Give us the coordinates when you’re ready. How’re your batteries?”
“They’re okay. We’re going to have quite a fight up here, I think.”
“We can dock and send up a shore party to hit them from behind.”
“Probably not necessary, and the village hasn’t been cleared. Why do you think they wanted to defend it so badly?”
“So we couldn’t follow the hostages into the interior.”
“You think they’re dumb enough to think that ships go on land?”
“No, I think they’re smart enough to know that we’re crazy enough to get off the ship and chase them down.”
“Are we?”
“You are, and I certainly am.”
*
Rensselaer was still holding the hand-held when Holworthy’s message came through not that long after they had last spoken. “They’re here, at least fifty of them, coming from the southwest and the wadi. They’re moving slowly, leapfrogging from cover to cover. They’ve actually got an antiaircraft gun—looks Russian—mounted on a technical. They passed the abandoned village, where it might have concealed itself, and are heading toward us. I guess they want a closer shot, which is stupid. Lots of RPGs, at least two heavy machine guns. There are a lot of Somalis, but foreigners, too. Chechens and Uzbek-looking. Some are Europeans for sure. It’s like the United Nations of shitballs. I’d appreciate it, when the technical gets into firing position, if one of your Griffins pays it a visit. Over.”
“Do you have a functioning designator?”
“Affirmative.”
“We’re ready. What are the coordinates?”
“Hold on. He’s still moving. Slowing.” Holworthy put down the radio, determined the coordinates, and came back on air. “Given the terrain and how we’re being approached, the center of the box would be nine degrees, two minutes, twelve point two eight seconds north, and fifty degrees, thirty-five minutes, eleven point zero six seconds east. Send it our way if you can. Once I see it, it’ll see the laser.”
“Repeat the coordinates.”
Holworthy did. “Confirm.”
Rensselaer read back what he had. “Right.”
“On your command,” Rensselaer said.
“Yes, sir. And can you cover that area, upon request, within a radius of three hundred yards, with airbursts from the thirty mil?”
“I’ll order a firing solution. Let us know when you want it.”
“Soon. We are”—he watched as scores of men and the technical approached—“rather outnumbered and outgunned.”
One of the SEALs asked, “What’s gonna happen, Commander?”
“What they usually do with the technicals if they can’t find sufficient cover is charge at full speed. That’s what the gunner’s shield and the steel plate over the windshield are for.”
With not a shot yet fired, the approaching force stopped. An order was given. They dropped to the ground—even those on the flat with no cover—and began firing. The SEALs (who had been waiting for them to come even closer) fired back, with the Barrett .50, a light machine gun, and two M4s, all careful shots. Next to Holworthy as he fired were the radio and the designator. When he turned to them, first he called for the 30mm. The thump at 50 rounds a minute was heard seaward, and the shells exploded in the air above the assault force, which had no protection from the bursts above.
“Go lower,” Holworthy spoke calmly into the radio.
“We can’t, because of the trajectory,” Rensselaer answered. “Is it having an effect?”
“Not as much as we need, but keep it up.”
“Right.”
“The technical is moving.” The antiaircraft gun on the technical began to fire, throwing up huge sprays of rock and earth in front of the SEALs’ positions, then adjusting so as to walk the rounds in to target. But the fire was inaccurate as the truck bounced over the rough ground.
Despite the noise of scores of rifles and the exploding 30mm shells above, the technical was close enough to the SEALs that they heard the gunner’s shouted command—unintelligible to them—to stop so he could zero in on them.
“Give me the Griffin,” Holworthy shouted above the firing, into the hand-held.
It is always surprising to see how fast a Griffin launches. Larger missiles seem almost to move in slow motion, initially so much so that one wonders for a fraction of a second if they will fall over, or if the huge cloud of orange flame that arises from the vertical launch module will spread over the whole ship. Not the Griffin, which leaves its launch box with the speed of an arrow leaving a bow, and then speeds up faster than a fighter jet making a pass over the ship, climbing almost beyond sight, and bears down with shocking rapidity upon its target.
The first of Athena’s four remaining Griffins launched with its characteristic whoosh. Holworthy kept his laser on the technical, which was firing toward him and raising geysers of red earth and dust. He worried that the thick dust between him and the technical would diffuse the laser. But he knew that, given the speed of the Griffin, he would not have to worry long.
Almost like a bird of prey, the missile saw the laser dot on the technical and dived toward it with unhesitating, suicidal speed. If nothing else, it was decisive. And it proved accurate as well, homing exactly to the dot, which then disappeared as warhead, propellant, and the technical’s anti-aircraft rounds and gasoline tank exploded, blowing the pickup truck, its heavy gun, the driver, and the gunner twenty feet into the air while simultaneously separating it into three or four big pieces and hundreds of little ones. For a moment, all firing stopped.
Then it resumed. The SEALs and the bombardment had already killed half the assault force, but those who remained pressed on. The closer they came, the easier they were to hit, but their high rate of fire had already wounded two of the SEALs, and they were closing rapidly on the SEAL farthest inland.
“I need another Griffin,” Holworthy shouted into his hand-held. “Launch!”
Up it went, and he put a laser on the small group threatening his right flank. The missile exploded in their midst, flattening what was left of their bodies in a circle around the point of impact. “Another one,” Holworthy said, and another was launched. It knocked out yet another group. Now the rest began to retreat, and the SEALs dropped them, firing carefully and accurately, even with the machine gun. As about ten survivors came together at the beginning of a little ravine, they took cover and began ineffective fire at the SEALs. This surviving force was shaken, and their marks-manship, perhaps never properly developed, was extremely poor.
Nevertheless, Holworthy, seeing that they had grouped together and that bullets were still whizzing by him, called for one more Griffin.
“The last one,” Rensselaer said. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah. They’re still shooting at us.”
“Ready?”
Marchetti nodded.
“Launch.”
The Griffin killed everyone remaining, after which, as the SEALs tended their wounded and took stock, they “heard” the after-battle silence that rings in the ears.
Its shore party fitted out and loaded up, Athena prepared to dock. As she made a careful approach, Rensselaer said to Movius, “What the hell year is this anyway? It might as well be nineteen forty-four, or the Battle of the Somme.”
*
After Athena docked, the air was different. Where the sea mates with the land the scent is fecund and particular. Like the scent of a freshwater lake in the last weeks of July, its signature is neither sweet nor foul but strong and unique: wet sand and rock, plants, seaweed baking in the sun.
The gunners stayed at their stations as the shore party prepared to clear the village, and the whaleboat went to retrieve the RHIB. Nothing stirred, but nothing ruled out hidden survivors, snipers, and traps. The SEALs descended the slope, their heavy packs weighing upon them. They could have come around by the wadi, but they didn’t want to pass all the dead. The battlefield was still, and had any of the enemy had a chance to live, Athena lacked the resources to care for or imprison them. Although Rensselaer had spoken only to Holworthy about what might follow, somehow it was generally assumed that everything had to be husbanded for the campaign to find, fight for, free, and evacuate the hostages, and to keep them and Athena’s crew alive. To leave to die even those who moments before had been trying to kill them was a terrible thing, so the SEALs chose not to know of survivors. Because they saw no evidence of movement, they believed there weren’t any. They hoped not.
Their first priority was the more than 150 passengers and crew of l’Étoile, especially the women and children now somewhere in the interior and at the mercy of medieval psychopaths so violent and depraved that the sheltered populations of the West could not for long hold in mind the depth of their conscienceless cruelty. The men on Athena had no such luxury.
When Rensselaer told Movius that Movius would stay behind and in command while Rensselaer led the shore party, Movius said, “You’re also going to go inland, aren’t you?”
“Yes. We’ve been long on the deep blue sea, and now it’s time to chase down the Devil.”
“With all due respect, it makes no sense. Holworthy and I should do that while you stay in command. It’s your ship.”
“You’re an SWO and you haven’t had infantry training or experience. You can’t really tell Holworthy what to do, and I can. Besides, if it’s my decision to do this, I have to go. Only those who volunteer. What would it look like if everyone gets killed and I’m on Athena, doing paperwork?”
“They’ll think you’re grandstanding.”
“They can think whatever they want, and I may never know it anyway, in which case, tell Katy I love her.”
“Now I know her first name. But that’s all. How am I supposed to tell her.”
“You’ll see in my things. If I lay dying I’ll be thinking of nothing else but her, because I have nothing else but her. Until then, I can only focus on the tasks at hand. That’s what affords us the best chance of survival. No one should be a hundred percent a soldier—except in battle, when no one should not be.”
A younger man might have decided more easily. War and everything like it appears differently with each advancing decade. The French word for retirement is retraite, retreat. The fight goes out of you as you age, and then the only means that allow you to continue until the light goes out, too, are the lessons of experience. But these are limited as to how far they can carry you, and Rensselaer had drawn them down so much in the recent battles that he wondered if they would still serve him.
*
The twelve infantry-trained volunteers waited in full battle dress on the quarterdeck. Outfitted the same way, Rensselaer came down from the bridge. “All volunteers, is that correct?” They answered that they were. “Checked your weapons?” They had. “Full kit, meaning extra magazines, two grenades, blood stop, bandages, morphine?”
“Yes sir.”
“All right. You can shoot and you can fight. Don’t forget that. You’ve had infantry tactics only in theory, but by the end of the day or sooner you’ll get the hang or you may be dead. Don’t shoot the SEALs; they’re on our side . . . kinda. For all intents and purposes, you’re now Marines. Follow me, spread out, move carefully from cover to cover, and use all your senses and then some.”
He led. They moved one or two at a time, running from one defensible position to another, always backed up from behind. At first, in clearing the huts, every kicking-in of a door or pulling back a curtain was terrifying. But upon learning that most were deserted, attention turned to their squalor, the smell of open latrines, the relics and evidences of deep poverty. The SEALs cleared the western half of the settlement while the shore party took the eastern. Both worked northward. Not a shot had been fired until, halfway in, machine-gun and RPG fire erupted from the large building that was evidently the enemy HQ, and which straddled the two sectors.
They were all pinned down at once. Rensselaer used the radio to call Holworthy. “Have you seen the back of the building?” he asked.
“We have. No windows or firing ports, just a blank wall.”
“Clear approach?”
“As far as I can tell. I’ll take care of it. We didn’t use the Claymores.”
Heavy-machine-gun fire came from the sandbagged HQ, cutting channels in mud-brick walls and paralyzing the shore party. But two of Holworthy’s men, covered by the rest, walked undetected to the back wall. One cupped his hands and gave the other a leg up so he could pull himself onto the roof. Once this was done, the Claymore they had brought was passed up and put face down on the portion of the roof above the firing ports. As the wire was run back and down, an RPG was fired from inside and collapsed a wall near where Rensselaer’s sailors were crouching.
The SEAL on the roof, one of those who had been slightly wounded, lowered himself, and he and the other one ran the wire to Holworthy. Attaching the wire to the detonator, Holworthy said, “One good turn deserves another,” turned the handle, and pushed it down. The roof blew in and the rear wall and a side wall collapsed outward. Into a cloud of dust that blocked any view of what was left inside, the SEALs shot two grenades and two blasts of automatic-weapon fire, then waited in silence until the dust sank or blew away. No one inside was still alive. In fact, only some body parts—a leg with the boot still attached, a helmet still holding a head, but no one wanted to check—were visible. The roof had buried most of everything and the grenades had done the rest.
SEALs and shore party resumed their progress through the village. It was so hot that all their uniforms were soaking wet and sweat ran down their faces. Despite the unlikely chance that anyone might still be in hiding after the surprise from the HQ, every breach was as tense and almost as draining as if someone within would detonate a suicide belt and blow everyone to hell, because at each house this was still possible.
At the very last hut, Rensselaer kicked in the door. Inside, it was deserted but for things: an empty sardine can hosting a crowd of flies, a wooden bed frame without even the webbing that may have supported a mattress of some sort, a wicker broom from which half the bristles had broken off probably long before. “At least we didn’t find a doll,” Rensselaer said.
“What do you mean?” Pisecki asked, but then caught himself. “Oh, kids.”
The village was clear, but sentries were posted on the cliff tops, and gunners on Athena manned their stations and kept watch on all sides. Now and then casting a glance at the darkened ruins of the village, the crew worked through the night to prepare the little expeditionary force. Only by first light would they part with it and take Athena to safety offshore.
*
That night, Rensselaer dreamt that he was a matador, though not dressed in a matador’s ancient and, to an American, incomprehensible costume of tights, pompoms, and silly hat. He had no costume, or, if he did, he was unaware of it, as the dream played out solely from the matador’s eyes. He saw the bull not as spectators do from a safe distance but from a few feet away.
The bull’s nostrils were wide and flaring, and because of visible moisture, grayer than his black nose. Condensed vapor came from them when the bull snorted. His eyes were active, changing, calculating, burning with anger. Head and horns were bent, the muscles of the neck unyielding. It was clear that the bull would do nothing but fight to the end. The distance between the horns was narrower than the width of a man’s trunk.
Rensselaer knew the bull would charge, and that he himself wouldn’t run. The bull hurtled forward. Rensselaer, too old, too stiff, and no longer light enough for such acrobatics, was hardly athletic enough to grasp the horns and, like Minoan youth, vault over the animal’s back. He took the blow. The horns pierced his abdomen on each side and he was lifted into the air as if he weighed no more than a sheet of paper. Powerless and in exquisite pain, he watched the world blur around him, and felt the velocity of the bull as it approached the wooden wall of the arena. Rensselaer’s blood, driven by the wind, blinded and choked him.
Gasping and covered in sweat, he awoke. After switching on his desk lamp he stared at his cabin door until his pulse and breathing returned to normal. In the shadow of the lamp, the cabin door was as black as a bull.