The Command

It looked as if six bulky shapes filled out their gray plastic shrouds. But when the commander ordered the sniveling guard to pull them back, only five of the oblate cylinders met the eye. Where one had rested on a transport dolly, cardboard ration boxes had been stacked and cleverly shaped. The dolly was gone, too.

Staring at the remaining weapons, at the ranting, reeling trooper, the broken strands of rope and skid marks on the concrete floor, only one conclusion remained to the commander: where there had been six 203-millimeter nuclear artillery shells in his custody, there were now only five. Behind him more guards poured in, pointing rifles, shouting in a babble of Kazakh, Uighur, and Russian.

“These shells weigh a metric ton,” the captain said, wringing his hands. “This took many men. A truck. A crane. Someone knows how they got in here, who they are, where they took it.”

The old sergeant came in, and snapped to attention in the rigid Soviet style. He reported that the guard company was present and accounted for except for two men. He gave their names.

“Chechens,” the captain said, face paling. “Oh, God is great, God is great. It was the Chechens.”

“We must report this at once.” The commander’s voice was outraged. “Close the gates instantly. Post double guards. Muster patrols in trucks to search the town. Get me the Defense Ministry. Also the Russian liaison. We will find who did this, and where the thieves have gone.”

A truck engine faltered, then roared into life. A shot cracked as a stumbling recruit dropped his rifle. As his troops scattered, shouting, the commander slid his hand into the back pocket of his uniform trousers.

To feel the tight thick roll of American currency nestled there.

I

DUST AND SMOKE

1

Pier 8, Norfolk,Virginia

Glancing through the porthole in the at-sea cabin, the tall man in choker whites checked the sky. Overcast but clearing. The wind light, the air warm. He rubbed his mouth. It might turn out to be a good day after all.

Daniel V. Lenson, Commander, U.S. Navy, had spent most of his career in destroyers and frigates. Some of those tours had been enjoyable. Others had not, and he’d seen shipmates die, had killed other men, and come close to dying more than once. Five rows of decorations were pinned above his breast pocket. The topmost was light blue, set with small white stars. His sun-darkened face was beginning to show the years at sea. Sleepless nights and tension had crimped crow’s-feet around the gray eyes and scattered silver in his sandy hair.

His watch gave him ten minutes until he took command of USS Thomas Horn, a helicopter-capable Spruance-class destroyer. Just now he was having weak coffee and sugar cookies with the skipper he was relieving. For someone who was turning over command, normally a time to celebrate, the balding little man seemed tense and disappointed.

“You heard about the three envelopes?” Ross said, turning his cup in gnarled fingers. Dan wondered why he was so nervous, as if in the waning minutes of his watch some disaster might still overtake him. As to his own feelings, the less said the better.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, the civilian shrink had called it. From being caught and tortured by Saddam’s Mukhabarat. That was behind the icy sweat, the breath-stopping sense of impending doom. When he declined her prescription, she said he could try to go on without drugs. But if he gave in to his fears, avoided stressful situations, or showed panic, the terror that hunted beneath his conscious mind would take over his life.

He cleared his throat. “Three envelopes?”

“Fella comes on board to relieve, the outgoing CO gives him three envelopes. He says, when you get in trouble, open the first envelope. When you get in real trouble, open the second envelope. And when you’re ass-deep in gators and there’s no way out, open the last one.

“So sure enough, the fella screws up and he opens the first one. It says, ‘Blame your predecessor.’ So he does, and it works. Then later on he gets in real trouble. He opens the second envelope, it says, ‘Reorganize.’ So he does that, and he’s out of the shit. But then at last he gets in real, real deep kimchee and can’t see any way out short of a court-martial. He opens the third envelope.”

“So what’s it say?”

“‘Prepare three envelopes.’”

Dan chuckled, but then the silence came back. They’d gone over everything they had to talk about. Unfortunately, what he’d learned hadn’t contradicted his first impression, which was of a ship that needed attention.

He’d heard things were less than rosy during his precommand training. The regional engineering training and readiness inspectors said Horn’s engineering department lacked leadership. A master chief told him the ship got a present when it passed its reexam for certification. The second recurring theme was sexual fraternization. Dan took waterfront tales with a grain of salt, but the fact they were going around wasn’t good.