In weighing whether to speed the trucks to the coast, thus jarring as opposed to making the sick and injured more comfortable but perhaps dooming them to arrive too late, Rensselaer decided to move as fast as possible. Sometimes the road was so rough that as each truck bumped over it the truck’s back end would lift a few feet in the air, with the front wheels acting like a hinge or the forelegs of a bucking horse, and come down with the force of a battering ram. This was worse than when all four wheels became slightly airborne, as then the shock was distributed more broadly.
Halfway to the defile, a vehicle in the middle of the line used its horn to signal a general stop. Rensselaer and Holworthy both went back and found that one of the sick hostages had died. He was a thin, partially bald, white-haired old man whose skin even when he was alive had been as glossy as if it had been coated with varnish. An electrician from Strasbourg, he had been on the cruise with several fellow retirees and their wives. His wife now held his head in her lap as his former colleagues stayed near, not knowing what to say. “The union paid for the cruise,” she said. “He had such a high fever. He was delirious, and he didn’t know where he was. He asked me, ‘Why is my bed going so fast?’ I told him we were in a truck. He looked completely lost, and then he died.”
They wrapped him up as well as they could, and she stayed with him, even as his body bounced when the truck went over rough ground. The French girls stared numbly at the horizon, and said nothing.
Not long after starting up again, Rensselaer and Holworthy heard the horn of yet another of the trucks they were leading, and once again called a halt. A sailor came running up alongside the column, and when he arrived he turned and pointed up.
“That ain’t no bird,” he said.
Rensselaer and Holworthy, squinting because of the sun, lifted their binoculars and searched. “A UAV,” Holworthy announced.
“Can we shoot it down, sir?” the sailor asked.
“Too high,” Rensselaer answered.
“If we had a Stinger?”
“No. It’s just a little thing, probably made of plastic. They probably got it at RadioShack.”
“You mean COMMS, sir?”
“No. RadioShack was an electronics store. Let’s get going.” They started forward again, and the sailor’s truck picked him up at a run.
“They know we’re going to Ras Hagar, so what does it matter?” Holworthy asked.
“We don’t have time to launch the Stalker, so we don’t know where they are. They’re probably on the track. But if they’re not directly behind us and rather off to the right somewhere, and they know our course and speed, they can plot an intercept. Which is why it matters.”
For the next ten miles or so, they kept watch all around, hoping nothing was on their flanks or, somehow, in front of them.
When the defile came into sight, still low on the horizon and an hour away, the column swept wide and right to avoid one of the wadis that spread from the plateau into a dry delta. As they turned, Rensselaer—in the first truck, with Holworthy at the wheel—glanced to his right and, now that the column had veered, was able to see what had been directly behind it.
At first he thought it was a sandstorm. But the immense, reddish-yellow cloud didn’t rise high enough and was not broad enough to have been a sandstorm. He judged it to be about fifteen miles behind and a mile wide. Ordering Holworthy to stop, he took out the Barrett and peered through its scope. At 14 power, it showed that the cloud was composed of separate pillars of dust raised by vehicles speeding along a wide front. He counted the pillars. By this time, Holworthy was standing behind him, looking in the same direction with his binocular.
“You see what I see?” Rensselaer asked.
“What?”
“Individual columns of raised dust.”
“At this magnification it seems all of a piece.”
Rensselaer put the Barrett back in its case. “It isn’t. I counted. At least seventy trucks, moving at high speed. It’s a whole army.”
“Are you sure?”
“It’s not the Good Humor man,” Rensselaer replied.
“Now I understand,” Holworthy said. “Hadawi was taking the hostages to a real stronghold. We didn’t know that. In seventy or more trucks, he could have a thousand men.”
*
The raised dust of Athena’s convoy was also a pillar in the desert, which Hadawi’s army used as a guide, but it was different. In a narrow column, it rose higher and was yellowish white, because the reddish-colored particles were heavier, and fell back, while the lighter, more ethereal white dust climbed on thermals and shone in the sun like the mitres of light that slice the darkness of a great cathedral. Athena’s column could neither hide nor fade into the background, and would be allowed no peace. As he drove forward, Rensselaer thought this was much like the strategical role of the Navy—to see, to be seen, and to clash with the enemy in the clear, with neither forests nor mountains as shields. Taking fire for the sake of those whom he protected even when they were unaware opened up new worlds of lucidity and feeling, if only because an instant of nobility at the perilous edge could outweigh a lifetime of ease in the sheltered center.
“Keep up our speed,” he said to Holworthy half an hour on, “and now and then arc to the right so we can take a look back.” When they did this, they saw that Hadawi was gaining. “Snake back, go faster.”
“We can make it to the defile,” Holworthy said when he rediscovered the track, “but if this keeps up, there’s no way we can get to Ras Hagar before they catch us. And we don’t even know if the ship is there or the French have arrived.”
For the tenth time, Rensselaer tried to raise Athena with his hand-held. “I can’t get through. Not in the daytime, not on this side of the escarpment.”
“But probably at the top,” Holworthy said, “like last time. If they catch us before the defile, then what?”
“We die. Increase speed.”
“If you want the hostages bounced out of the trucks.”
“This will cut our time a little,” Rensselaer said, “but swing right again, briefly.”
“Why? That’s crazy.”
“I just have a feeling.”
“You have a feeling?”
“Go right.”
Holworthy arced right again. It was he who then said, “They’ve stopped.” They had.
“They’re praying,” Rensselaer told him.
“How did you know?” Holworthy asked as he swung back.
“I looked at my watch. They have to get out of the trucks, find the right bearing to Mecca, and go through the prayers. We’re going to make it to the defile. When we go through, we’ll take a minigun and grenade launcher up top. Hadawi can be stopped in the narrow passage. Then he’ll have to go around, which will take a few hours at least. I’ll stay to do that, and try to call Athena from the rise.”
“Good,” Holworthy replied. “We can do that.”
“Only one is necessary.”
“You’re wrong. The trucks can’t climb the escarpment, but infantry can, and they’ll be coming for you right and left. If Hadawi gets through he’ll massacre everyone. Obviously, it’ll take at least two to close the passage. Don’t pretend otherwise.”
“I can’t ask you to do this, because there won’t be a way back.”
“Bullshit. We’ll leave a truck on the other side with the key in the ignition and the engine running if you want.” The part about the motor running was said in jest. “And when we’ve hit enough trucks to block the passage we’ll get out of there.”
“You think so? With a thousand men firing at us, and God knows how many technicals with God knows how many heavy weapons? Are you kidding? I’ll be lucky if I can stay alive to cripple enough trucks to block the way.”
“But you will leave one of ours for escape, right?”
“As a gesture. I’m not coming back.”
“Then I suppose neither am I.”
“Mr. Holworthy, this is a direct order. Take the column to Ras Hagar. A direct order. That’s it.”
“I’m not taking that order. What are you going to do, have me arrested? Shoot me? If I stay, I double the chances of stopping them. You can’t court-martial me after we’re both dead.”
*
As their exhausts choked the passageway in gray smoke, they wound through the escarpment, then stopped at the other side. With almost every able-bodied man pressed into service, including the younger French crew and Filipino stewards, they rushed a minigun, a grenade launcher, the Barrett and the Remington, and ammunition to a spot on the escarpment over one of the tightest bends of the defile, with a view north to the plain and as much cover as possible left and right along the top of the rise.
The minigun and its tripod and electric battery alone weighed about 125 pounds. Although its 7.62 round weighed only about an ounce, three thousand of them and their links and containers came in at more than two hundred pounds. The grenade launcher and its tripod were lighter than the minigun, but the grenades themselves were very heavy en masse. And all would be left behind, spiked if possible. If Hadawi were to judge solely by the firepower that would be directed upon him, he might think he was facing not two men but a company.
Once in place in his firing position on the plateau, Rensselaer called Athena. The transmissions were spotty, but Movius heard. “We have . . . -s-tages. Will arrive . . . hours . . . -gar. Over.”
“Is air cover available?” Rensselaer asked repeatedly, unheard. “Have French arrived?”
“What is your position?” Movius kept yelling in reply and in vain at his hand-held. Given coordinates and fire direction, he could have used the remaining Harpoon, but he didn’t even know if Rensselaer was pressed or what the target might be if indeed there was one.
Rensselaer put Pisecki in command of the column. Pisecki took the order and said, “Aye, sir,” certain that he would never see Rensselaer or Holworthy again. He had offered to stay with them, but he knew his greater obligation was to the column, and he left to rejoin it.
The mass of dust had risen again to the north, and was now much closer. Rensselaer and Holworthy set up the weapons and waited in the sun, hardly noticing its heat. After a while, Holworthy said, “What will you miss?”
“Katy. She’s middle-aged, you know, just like me, but you can’t see it. She’s beautiful, strikingly so, and as I always say, sharp. That is, her appearance, her intelligence, her wit. And yet, despite all that, when she smiles she has the charm of a young woman, the sweetness of a girl. I was going to marry her. It’s strange. I almost feel as if I have, that we’d spent many years together. That’ll have to be enough. What about you?”
Holworthy thought. “My sister.” It was all he said.
“What about your parents? Are they still living?”
“No. I’ll be seeing them, too.”
*
When Hadawi’s brigade was three miles distant, its trucks, which from the escarpment and with the naked eye could now be made out individually, began to form into a column in preparation for threading the passageway. At two miles, this was half accomplished, and Rensselaer and Holworthy had gone prone and fitted their shoulders to the butts of their rifles, spare magazines of ammunition laid out to each man’s left. They could only guess the ranges, but they were pretty good at that, having in Rensselaer’s case trained over many years of watches in which he would sight a ship or a point on land, guess the distance, and then compare it to what the radar or the electronic chart said. And in its featurelessness the desert was much like the sea.
Loaded with high-explosive, incendiary rounds and aiming at the radiator/engine block of the two lead trucks, Rensselaer fired off his first two shots. Both were high but spectacular, exploding in the cabs and blowing them to pieces as the trucks veered off to the right and burst into flames. The trucks following them accelerated, thinking they had encountered RPGs and would close on and kill whoever had fired them. Of course, there was no one.
Instead, Rensselaer’s close-on second shots, now that he had the range, were armor-piercing rounds that went through the radiator into the engine block of the truck in the lead, and then the one that replaced it. The first one veered off to the right and rolled over. As the next one’s engine seized up, its wheels stopped turning, and the trucks immediately behind it, weighted with antiaircraft guns and following too closely, piled up in a huge wreck. But all the vehicles behind these hooked left and kept coming.
Once in range of Holworthy’s Remington 700, drivers were picked off one by one, faster than Rensselaer could take the heavier shots from the Barrett. For both of them, the closer the column came, the surer the shots. Neither stopped until, firing on a flat trajectory and using the last of his ammunition, Rensselaer blew up two technicals from which heavy machine guns were raking the rock face, raining shards, every single one of which missed both him and Holworthy. They had directly knocked out more than a dozen vehicles.
Confident in his numerical superiority, Hadawi could think of nothing but to press on. With the object of luring what he called a Crusaders’ army and wiping it out, he had assembled and trained almost a thousand men. His intention had been to surprise a rescue expedition and kill or capture every last man, executing those whom he captured together with the remaining hostages in a mass slaughter that would terrify the world. When an even larger relief expedition arrived, it would find hundreds of bodies, the carcasses of helicopters and vehicles, and decapitated soldiers and civilians alike littering the battleground and rotting in the sun.
His force, meanwhile, would have dissolved, and would remain inactive for a year with absolutely no communication, only to reassemble on a set date at a specified place to carry out the next mission. These plans had gone awry. The Western powers would now know the size of his army, and respond accordingly. The least he could do was to pursue, recapture, and execute his former captives. If not, the whole of his venture would fail.
Wanting desperately to get through the defile, he sent fifty men to ascend the gradual incline to Rensselaer’s and Holworthy’s right, and a hundred to the left on the other side of the divide. Counting on force, momentum, and his attacks from the flank, he assumed that he would break through, though it might be costly, and ordered his column to proceed into the defile. How many men could the Americans have left to block him? Had he known there were only two, he would have surely been more frustrated than he already was.
Both Rensselaer and Holworthy understood that in daylight, absent a muzzle flash against the darkness, Hadawi had not been able to ascertain where the firing had originated. Even so, they wondered why almost all of his effort was directed to the other side of the defile, on their left, and accepted this as mere luck in their favor. But when they heard the trucks below and moved to man the minigun and grenade launcher, they understood. A brightly colored flash of color, moving languidly in what little wind there was, astonished them at first. Far from them, on the other side of the gap, the American flag, it’s deep red and pure white impudently visible against the absolutely clear sky, had been Hadawi’s target.
“Pisecki,” Holworthy said as he gripped the minigun, grateful for what Pisecki had done.
Just before Hadawi’s lead vehicle reached the tight bend in the defile, Holworthy said, “And he knew we wouldn’t leave it here either—if we get out.” Then they opened fire.
The grenade launcher sounded like a mortar as it shot out its charges, but when these reached the floor of the defile among the trucks and on the truck beds themselves or on their hoods or cab roofs, the explosions—more than a hundred—echoed against the rock walls like a thunderstorm in the Alps. The cacophony was stitched together by bursts from the minigun, with which Holworthy poured several thousand rounds along the stalled column to suppress its defensive fire.
Between the grenades, the showers of minigun bullets, the explosions of gas tanks and munitions in and on the trucks, and the echoes and ricochets from the walls, the defile was turned into a deafening, flaming junk-yard. It would have taken half a dozen tow trucks and bulldozers a day to move the wreckage, and Hadawi had not even an hour. The tires of the trucks burned, leaving wheel rims that dug into the sand, so nothing could roll. There would have been no traction for tow trucks anyway. Hadawi’s force, with now only two-thirds of its vehicles and leaving behind many dead and wounded, would have to go around the escarpment, which would bring it an hour and a half south and require another hour and a quarter to follow the hypotenuse back to the line of travel. The battle itself, which was not over, would set it back at least another hour. So, in staying, Rensselaer and Holworthy had given the escape another four hours at least.
When it became clear that Rensselaer’s fire was coming from the northeast side of the defile, Hadawi directed all his guns there, and, judging that his overwhelming numerical advantage made crossfire unnecessary, called his men off the southwest side, where they had been approaching the flag. Rensselaer and Holworthy turned their weapons toward the men advancing toward them from east on the plateau. Their grenades cut them down like cannon fire, and the minigun killed or wounded most of those who had not already fallen or been able to seek cover among the folds of rock. Only about twenty were still able to fight, and they were fifteen hundred feet away, pinned.
Hadawi’s antiaircraft and machine-gun fire from the plain was useless. It shattered the lip of the escarpment but couldn’t crest over it to hit Rensselaer and Holworthy. “Now we can get to the French,” Rensselaer said. “I didn’t think we could do it. I’ll cover you while you go back, and then you cover me. Go.” They leapfrogged, with the one left behind using his M4 to force any one of the enemy who advanced to find cover or get hit.
“I’m going to get the flag,” Holworthy said.
“Are you crazy? Leave it.”
“I can’t.”
Rensselaer knew there was a place where the defile was narrow enough between two overhangs at the top for a spectacular jump. “You can’t clear that,” he said as he fired off suppressive rounds. “Don’t die for the sake of the flag.”
“Right,” Holworthy said, and took off at a run.
“Idiot,” Rensselaer said into the air between him and the enemy, for Holworthy’s idea of valor had now decided Rensselaer’s chance of remaining alive. But Rensselaer was too busy suppressing enemy fire to dwell on this. Again their shots were undisciplined and badly aimed, as if their purpose was mainly to make noise.
Holworthy reached the narrows, put down his rifle, and shed his magazine carrier. He looked at the gap and realized that he had never jumped that far. Terrified, he half moaned and sang, and half grunted, in a concert he would never repeat. Thinking he was going to die for symbolic bravery, he pulled back nonetheless and set out at a furious run toward the rim. And as he was running he thought not of the flag, or his life, or anything noble to suit the end, but of Evel Knievel in the Snake River Canyon. Then he left the rim, flying, not knowing if he would make it. For, among other things, such as being shot at, the length of the gap, and explosions now in back of him on the plateau, the southwest rim was slightly higher.
His right foot landed on the edge, but the left foot did not, which forced him back. He bent his body forward to fight his backward momentum, and fell onto the rock, catching the upper part of his chest, his chin, his hands, and forearms. The rest of him was moving back and down. He clawed at the rock with his fingernails and his chin until both were bloodied and had arrested his fall. Then, mainly with the muscles of his core, he was able to pull himself forward and to safety. At first he couldn’t move, and his abdomen seized into so tight and painful a spasm that it took five minutes for him to recover.
Even before Holworthy made the jump, Hadawi had realized that direct fire would do no good. He had no idea how many Americans were on the plateau, as the radioman with his northeast force had been killed and no one had taken up his radio. And he had no mortars or mortar-men. But he did have RPGs, hundreds of them, and he gathered several hundred of his men and evenly distributed them in a rectangle roughly 200 by 100 feet. Each one had an RPG launcher and five grenades. Hadawi directed them to point skyward at various angles, so the charges would travel upward in an arc and then come down on the plateau. These were the explosions that Holworthy had heard before he jumped.
As aiming them was only a guess and determining their trajectory only a prayer, they went wild, but there were a lot of them. At first, Rensselaer thought Hadawi had mortars, but then he figured it out. Some of the charges fell among Hadawi’s own men, to what effect Rensselaer couldn’t see.
Holworthy didn’t have time to think. When he could move again, he ran toward the flag, leaving a trail of blood from the cuts beneath his chin. The flag was on a tent pole stuck into a crack. At first, because of the blood from his fingers, his hands slipped as he tried to pull the pole from the rock. Then he found purchase, and the flag came up.
Running with it in the sun and the wind, with powerful explosions coming from ahead, he was cast back into other wars in which things were different and yet so very much the same. He was magnificently aware of the sun, the air, the light, and sound. When he reached the gap, despite the flag, he was going much faster than during his first jump, and he flew across the open space, the flag stretched out by his forward course. Upon landing, he stayed upright. But then he put the flag down, not caring that it was on the ground—he had just risked his life for protocol, enough for that day—and took up his rifle to cover Rensselaer.
When Rensselaer heard Holworthy’s shots, he fired a few himself and ran as fast as he could to Holworthy. Seeing the flag, and momentarily delighted, he was too busy to say anything but “Go!” They resumed their leapfrogging, this time amid the RPGs, some small fragments of which, or perhaps pieces of rock, hit them with a stinging spray that made them bleed in dozens of places. There were so many bullets, shell fragments, and rock splinters flying that Rensselaer thought he was like a bee in the rain, and could not imagine how he would get out alive. He thought, what happens when a bee is struck by a large raindrop? Does he fall to the ground? Does he get up again?
Near the beginning of the descent, but still high on the plateau, Holworthy said, “You go first this time.” They couldn’t see Hadawi’s men anymore, but the RPGs were still hitting randomly all over.
“Okay,” Rensselaer answered, and, seconds later, Holworthy looked back and saw Rensselaer on the run. They were soon to descend. It seemed good. But as Holworthy watched, an RPG came down close to Rensselaer’s left, exploded, and lifted him into the air and sideways toward the edge—over which he flew.
Holworthy ran back. The RPGs were still coming, but no rifle fire. He looked past the edge. Forty feet or so below, Rensselaer lay face up, his body folded-in along the length of a V-shaped depression that had developed over the ages as a ledge had pulled away from the cliff wall. His mouth and eyes were open. Blood flowed in a pool from his head and multiple shrapnel wounds. He didn’t move.
“Captain!” Holworthy yelled, with no response. “Stephen!”
Rensselaer was unreachable from above or below. Holworthy waited as long as he could, the RPGs still coming. Then he saw a dozen men advancing toward him. Once more, he called to Rensselaer. There was no question in his mind. Rensselaer was dead. So he slung his rifle, took up the flag, and ran down the slope to the truck.
From halfway down the eastern face of the escarpment, the remnants of Hadawi’s northeast force fired at the truck as it sped along the track. The flag was stretched taut in the wind—a bright target that received not a single hit.
*
On the long drive to Ras Hagar, Holworthy felt regret and determination. Doing what he had been trained to do, he pressed on. At a very early age, his father had observed him walking in the rain, his head bent in the way most people bend into a storm. “You won’t get any wetter if you walk upright,” his father had told him, “but it’ll teach you how to face life to come.” From that day, Holworthy had been primed to be a soldier, although this had not been his father’s intention.
When he reached the south wadi at Ras Hagar, knowing that the sea would soon come into view, he was elated. Yearning for the sight of the sea as the wadi opened onto it, he was prematurely relaxed when, as if from nowhere, machine-gun fire raked the sand in front of his truck. He braked to a stop and looked toward the top of the wadi. A hundred and fifty men were lined up, most standing confidently, some with anti-tank rockets beside them, almost all with weapons pointing at him. At first, he threw open the door in preparation for seeking cover. But there was no cover. It was almost dusk, and the sun was directly behind him, illuminating the small army and deepening the colors of its uniforms. He saw that the patches on them were tranches of blue, white, and red. The tricolor, the French.
Why had they stopped him? He put his hands up. Their weapons were still aimed. He turned only slightly and gestured toward the flag flying from the back of the truck. In the absence of a breeze it had embraced the pole to the point where it could not be made out unambiguously, and the sun was in their eyes. He called out. “Athena! SEAL!”
“Okay,” they answered, and pointed their weapons down. Somewhat irritated, Holworthy got back in the truck and drove the last few hundred yards to the beach. The view didn’t disappoint, as the blue of the ocean was deepened by the gold of the setting sun. Resting on the sea were three warships. It was as if home had come to embrace him. One was Athena, battered, dirty, and proud. And two were French; one an enormous dock landing ship, the Siroco, the tricolor flying (strangely, he thought) from the starboard stern corner; the other, the frigate Guépratte, its tricolor at the bow.
Though the lights of the three ships were suppressed by the rich light of the declining sun, still, they sparkled. Landing craft were motoring back and forth between the beach and the Siroco, and the village was crowded with trucks. Two French armored cars with anti-tank missiles guarded the end of the wadi, and even from a distance the infantry on the ridges seemed comfortably dominant and assured. Holworthy saw the hostages in lines waiting to board the landing craft. The wounded were already aboard Siroco. Martin, Petra, and Sophie had transferred to it immediately when it had arrived. From near where the RHIB was pulled up on the beach, Movius and Pisecki were running toward him.
“Where’s the captain?” Movius asked.
“Dead.”
Movius closed his eyes and briefly covered them with his hand. He asked, accusingly, “You left him?”
“He fell onto a ledge forty feet down. Even had no one been shooting at me I couldn’t have gotten to him.”
“We’re going to have to get him,” Movius said.
“Hadawi’s got almost a thousand men between us and him.”
Movius gestured to the swarm of French. “They’ve got helicopters.”
“But will they?”
“We’ll see.”
“Where are our guys?” Holworthy asked.
“Except for Monroe and Minorkis, they’re all okay. So are the sick hostages. The Siroco,” he said as he pointed to it, “has a hospital aboard. Two operating rooms, forty-seven beds, surgeons, doctors, nurses—unbelievable.”
“I have to see my men.”
“Sure. Then we’ll talk to the French commodore. If he doesn’t give us a helicopter, we’ll stay. We’ll get the captain one way or another.”
“What are our orders?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I would imagine they’re pissed.”
“You would be right, but I’ve never felt better in my life, or prouder.” Movius looked at his watch, and then at the operations on the beach. “The idea is to get everyone onto the ships by nightfall. Siroco is supposed to leave immediately for Djibouti. The Europeans will be airlifted home, our wounded to Landstuhl, our dead to Dover. The Guépratte will stay to cover, but I don’t know for how long. With its guns and some luck, we could wipe out Hadawi. If they were Americans, they would stay with us. But we don’t know about the French.”
“If Siroco goes, what about the helicopters?” Guépratte was turned, bow landward, so that Holworthy couldn’t see its stern.
“Guépratte has a helicopter deck, and a light helicopter on board, but they can’t handle an NH90, their big helo.”
“What are our orders?”
Movius smiled tightly before he answered. “Our orders . . . are to return to Djibouti immediately, as soon as Siroco gets underway. In Djibouti a relief crew will replace us and take Athena home.”
“Immediately?”
Movius nodded.
“Not without the captain. But they don’t know.”
“They don’t. And if they still insist that we leave immediately we’ll have to get a good lawyer to parse what immediately means. You know, like what the definition of is is. But right now I’m in command, and given where we are and how we got here, I have some discretion and I plan to exercise it—even if it takes us a week to get him back and ten years in the brig.”
*
The French commodore on Siroco spoke excellent English, which helped a great deal, as Movius and Holworthy spoke little French. He received them at dinner in a very American-looking dining room, with a counter upon which sat an expresso machine, condiments, and a glass-enclosed model of a fairly ancient brigantine. He wore the same workmanlike uniform as everyone else on the ship, with reflective material across the chest that caught the light from lamps recessed in the overhead, and which to an American suggested a skunk in the headlights. Holworthy quietly asked Movius, “Do they have skunks in France?”
Because Movius had donned his whites, he felt out of place. Holworthy had changed to clean fatigues, but his face and arms were blistered with sunburn and dotted with minor wounds that made him seem quite fierce. He and Movius were struck that, like a corporate worker bee or a White House staffer, the French captain wore a photo ID badge. And they marveled at the cleanliness and order of Siroco, which seemed to have not a single dent or streak of rust. Athena in contrast was as beaten up as Holworthy. The French ships were like fresh troops on their way to the line who pass the filthy, bloodied, silent veterans streaming back. Even though the veterans were once new, they can no longer comprehend what that is like. The lightness of being has been driven out of them unbearably.
The captain of Siroco, commodore of the French squadron, was bearded, bald, and heavyset. They were seated at a table for four, with tablecloth, flowers, and bentwood chairs.
“Our captain died,” Movius began, “while staying behind with Lieutenant Commander Holworthy to delay Hadawi’s troops at a narrow defile. Two men”—he paused—“versus perhaps a thousand with heavy weapons. He’s still there. We need a helicopter to retrieve him.”
“He’s dead, yes?” the commodore asked.
“Yes.”
“Even if we can get permission, it will be delayed. I’ll explain later. First, we’ll eat, then we’ll talk.”
Though U.S. Navy food is fairly good, it could not always be so on Athena, especially after provisions had run low. And it could not in any form compare to what the French had. Neither the water of the Île-de-France nor a brick oven nor the atmosphere and humidity of Paris were available here, but the bread was just as good, which deepened the mystery of French baking.
The commodore kept the conversation to a minimum as his guests, eager to get Rensselaer back, ate fast. Then they walked to a sitting room and sat on couches around an oval coffee table.
The commodore began. “What your captain did, remarquable. Horatius Cocles sur le pont Sublicius.”
“Exactly,” Movius confirmed. “Horatio at the bridge. It gave the trucks four more hours to bring your people here.”
“For which we are very grateful, believe me.”
“We need your help,” Holworthy said. “An RPG blew him off the escarpment into the defile, where he landed on a ledge about ten meters down. One helicopter sortie, that’s all.”
The commodore was deeply sympathetic. “I want to do it. But it isn’t up to me. Let me explain. First, very soon, ISIS will arrive. Everyone is aboard except the covering force, who are on their way. As Commander Movius,” which he pronounced Muhve-yuz, “knows, we will then pull offshore and observe. If from the beach and the village they fire at us, we have permission to shoot back. That is already cleared. If they don’t, we cannot.
“I can’t send out a force to retrieve your captain, even a small one, until I receive permission. The way things are, such an order will not arrive—if it does—until tomorrow at the earliest. And as we do not know if Hadawi has MANPADS—that is what you call them?”
“Yes, man-portable air defense systems.”
“Probably your Stingers, we cannot fly helicopters over unreconnoitered territory in daylight. So tomorrow night would be the earliest.”
“What are the chances, do you think,” Movius asked, “for the go-ahead?”
“It’s difficult to say. Our people are safe. The country and the world think the crisis is over—and it is. Everyone is relieved and has gone on to other things. Our civil authorities will not want to spoil the good result with the loss of an NH90 and its crew just when people are celebrating. And, then, France is and has been involved all over Africa since colonial days. We have both resistance and encouragement for this from other nations, and of course we ourselves are divided about it and always have been. We deal with it in two ways. First, there is the Foreign Legion, which tells the French that foreign mercenaries rather than Frenchmen are at risk. This trick we borrowed from the Romans, and it works. Second, we try to limit our involvements as much as possible.
“Here, we are authorized to retrieve the hostages, but once they are on board, the authorization is no longer, and we are forbidden to operate on the soil of yet another state in Africa—or, if you like, yet another anarchic territory in Africa. I will ask, and they will deliberate. All of France is grateful to Athena. You are quite famous there, you know, for the moment.”
“We didn’t know.”
“Yes. The name of the ship has been a great help. It suggests to the French the classical world, beauty, and wisdom, none of which they associate with America. This week, they do, until they will forget. But of course I will request permission to retrieve Captain Rensselaer’s body. Commander Holworthy,” which he pronounced Ole-vohr-tee, “you can guide us?”
“I can.”
“And if we go, you understand that although you will be with us, we will be in command.”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Good. Perhaps almost as much as you, I want not to leave him.”
“We won’t do that. If you can’t help us, we’ll find a way to bring him back ourselves.”
“I understand, although, knowing your orders, I will make no comment.”
A subaltern knocked, and was told to enter. He announced that the covering force was aboard, and the last ones in had reported that far to the northwest a dust cloud rising in the setting sun looked like it was on fire. The enemy would probably arrive in less than an hour.
*
Hopeful that the commodore’s request would be favorably received, Movius and Holworthy returned to Athena as it and the two French ships moved offshore out of range of Hadawi’s guns but hardly so far as to make their own weapons ineffective. After the RHIB was dragged up Athena’s damaged ramp and lashed down, resting on its side, Movius ordered general quarters. Though this time there was less urgency than previously, it was done on the double.
Soon, several score trucks and technicals burst from the south wadi and flooded into the village and over the beach. It was not quite dark enough for them to use their headlights, or for the gunners and officers on Athena, Siroco, and Guépratte to resort to night vision.
Movius, Holworthy, and Pisecki, who was once again the OOD, stood on the starboard bridge wing observing through their binoculars the puzzling, frenzied activity on shore.
“What are they jumping around for?” Movius asked. “There’s no one there and nothing they can do. I don’t get it.”
“All passion, no reason,” Holworthy added. “Look at it. They’re insanely worked up, shooting in the air, shouting. They’re literally jumping up and down.”
Pisecki observed, “Notice, they’re looking at us. Look at that guy to the left, near the technical—see him?”
The others slewed their binoculars until they did. “Yeah,” they said, one after the other.
Pisecki went on, incredulously. “He’s screaming himself hoarse, threatening us, pointing his AK.”
“The bulk of this force are Somalis from Puntland and who the hell knows where,” Holworthy added. “They’re not, like Hadawi, educated Levantines with one foot in modern times. You’re witnessing tribal warfare thousands of years old.”
“The question is,” Movius stated, “are they stupid enough to open fire on us with no effect except to allow us to open fire on them? Even though our lights are doused they see our silhouettes. They’ve got to know that we’re out of range.”
“I wouldn’t bet on their geometry,” Holworthy commented.
“Why would Hadawi be so stupid?” Pisecki asked.
“You’ve got to consider,” Holworthy answered, “that to keep his men loyal he has to make them happy. And don’t forget that Hadawi is someone who cuts off people’s heads and throws babies into the sea. No matter how clever he might be, he is, by our standards, insane. You have to respect him only in the same way that you respect a cobra.”
The captain of the Guépratte seemed to have a sixth sense informing him of the answer to the questions the Americans had been discussing, and as all waited and as the moon was just rising on a calm sea that lapped gently against the sides of the ships, he ordered his four-inch gun to slew landward in preparation for a broadside. Everyone on Athena heard the sound (a cross between grinding and whining) and turned to look. They understood the balance of forces, and were intensely curious about what might happen.
Five miles out, the ships were well beyond the range of anything on the technicals. Their lights were extinguished not because they needed to hide—they could have been blazing like those of the floating amusement parks called cruise ships—but rather out of adherence to the requirements for combat even if in this situation these were irrelevant and the little fleet invulnerable.
Hadawi, however, was not invulnerable. The Guépratte’s four-inch gun had a ten-mile range and could fire eighty rounds per minute. That is, from the unfortunate point of view of a totally unarmored infantry force on the receiving end, a thirty-pound high-explosive shell landing every three-quarters of a second. In addition, the Guépratte’s two 20mm cannons had just the range to target, and were capable of dropping albeit far-less-damaging shells but at the rate of twelve rounds per second. Fire control and direction were so quick and precise that it was possible to pick out individual trucks quite easily. But given the concentration of the enemy and the volume of fire, a general salvo was all that was needed.
Though Movius had allowed for a dash in, and running broadside as before, now the Americans would likely be only spectators held in reserve, which, given what they had done and what they were used to, was hard to take.
Instead of subsiding, the frenzy of Hadawi’s troops swelled, feeding upon itself until thousands of muzzle flashes from AKs lit the beach like Satanic fireflies spitting sulfurous flame. Very soon the entire shore was covered in orange sparks. The whole of Hadawi’s army was firing out to sea and to no avail. Within seconds of the chorus of AKs reaching its full volume, the heavy guns on the technicals began to fire as well. This was a different provocation, and was treated as such.
The commodore gave the order to fire at will, and Guépratte opened up. As its heavy shells hit, the span of their destinations both in time and space allowed them to overlap into what seemed like a continuous explosion further magnified by echoes from the cliffs. Village and beach were lit in yellow and orange light that illuminated not only the buildings and the escarpment but columns of heavy black-and-white smoke that had formed above the chaos in an immense cloud which reflected the light of explosions back upon their source.
In less than a minute, Guépratte had turned Ras Hagar into hell once more, this time more dramatically than ever. Hadawi’s army had stopped firing. Anyone still alive ran for the few trucks that hadn’t been hit, flew aboard, and raced toward the south wadi.
Observing this, Movius said, “I wonder if the Guépratte will drop some shells on the wadi to block the exit.” Because the noise was so great, he had to repeat this.
“The trucks are escaping,” Holworthy announced, and, rather more enthusiastic than Movius, blurted out, “Come on Frogs! Redirect!”
The French, however, did not. Perhaps they were too astounded by the power and effect of their barrage to act further. The firing stopped, and if anyone was left alive, by next light he would have limped out or he would be dead.
With the sunrise, the officers and crews of Athena and the French ships saw through their telescopes and binoculars the rubble of buildings, the burned carcasses of trucks, and scores of bodies lying on the beach. The vultures had not yet descended, but, higher than the cliff tops, thick swarms of them wheeled in the air.