Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger (7 page)

The Panache

Procedure

W
EGENER
'
S INSPECTION CAME
before lunch instead of after.  There wasn't much to complain about.  Chief Riley had been there first.  Except for some paint cans and brushes that were actually in use—painting a ship is something that never begins or ends; it just is—there was no loose gear in view.  The ship's gun was properly trained in and secured, as were the anchor chains.  Lifelines were taut, and hatches dogged down tight in anticipation of the evening storm.  A few off-duty sailors lounged here and there, reading or sunning themselves.  These leapt to their feet at Riley's rumbling “Attention on deck!” One third-class was reading a Playboy.  Wegener informed him good-naturedly that he'd have to watch out for that on the next cruise, as three female crewmen were scheduled to join the ship in less than two weeks' time, and it wouldn't do to offend their sensibilities.  That Panache had none aboard at the moment was a statistical anomaly, and the change didn't trouble the captain greatly, though his senior chiefs were skeptical to say the least.  There was also the problem of who got to use the plumbing when, since female crewmen had not been anticipated by the cutter's designers.  It was the first time today that Red Wegener had had something to smile about.  The problems of taking women to sea . . . and the smile died again as the images from the videotape came back to him.  Those two women—no, a woman and a little girl—had gone to sea, too, hadn't they . . . ?

It just wouldn't go away.

Wegener looked around and saw the questions forming on the faces of the men around him.  The skipper was pissed about something.  They didn't know what it was, but knew that you don't want to be around the captain when he was mad about something.  Then they saw his face change.  The captain had just asked himself a question, they thought.

“Looks all right to me, people.  Let's make sure we keep it that way.” He nodded and walked forward to his stateroom.  Once there he summoned Chief Oreza.

The quartermaster arrived within a minute.  Panache wasn't big enough to allow a longer walk than that. “You called, Captain?”

“Close the door, Portagee, and grab a seat.”

The master chief quartermaster was of Portuguese extraction, but his accent was
New England
.  Like Bob Riley he was a consummate seaman, and like his captain he was also a gifted instructor.  A whole generation of Coast Guard officers had learned the use of the sextant from this swarthy, overweight professional.  It was men like Manuel Oreza who really ran the Coast Guard, and Wegener occasionally regretted leaving their ranks for officer status.  But he hadn't left them entirely, and in private Wegener and Oreza still communicated on a first-name basis.

“I saw the tape of the boarding, Red,” Oreza said, reading his captain's mind. “You shoulda let Riley snap the little fucker in half.”

“That's not the way we're supposed to do things,” Wegener said somewhat lamely.

“Piracy, murder, and rape—toss in the drugs for fun.” The quartermaster shrugged his shoulders. “I know what we oughta do with people like that.  Problem is, nobody ever does.”

Wegener knew what he meant.  Although there was a new federal death-penalty law to deal with drug-related murders, it had only rarely been invoked.  The problem was simply that every drug dealer arrested knew someone bigger who was even more desirable a target—the really big ones never placed themselves in a position where the supposed long arm of the law could reach.  Federal law-enforcement agencies might have been omnipotent within
U.S.
borders, and the Coast Guard might have plenipotentiary powers at sea—even to the point where they were allowed to board and search numerous foreign-flag ships at will—but there were always limits.  There had to be.  The enemy knew what those limits were, and it was really a simple thing to adapt to them.  This was a game whose fixed rules applied only to one side; the other was free to redefine its own rules at will.  It was simple for the big boys in the drug trade to keep clear, and there were always plenty of smaller fry to take their chances on the dangerous parts—especially since their pay exceeded that of any army in history.  These foot soldiers were dangerous and clever enough to make the contest difficult—but even when you caught them, they were always able to trade their knowledge for partial immunity.

The result was that nobody ever seemed to pay in full.  Except the victims, of course.  Wegener's train of thought was interrupted by something even worse.

“You know, Red, these two might get off entirely.”

“Hold it, Portagee, I can't—”

“My oldest girl is in law school, skipper.  You want to know the really bad news?” the chief asked darkly.

“Go on.”

“We get these characters to port—well, the helo brings them in tomorrow—and they ask for a lawyer, right?  Anybody who watches American TV knows that much.  Let's say that they keep their mouths shut till then.  Then their lawyer says that his clients saw a drifting yacht yesterday morning and boarded it.  The boat they were on headed back to wherever it came from, and they decide to take it to port to claim the salvage rights.  They didn't use the radio because they didn't know how to work it—you see that on the tape?  It was one of those gollywog computer-driven scanners with the hundred-page manual—and our friends don't reada da Eenglish so good.  Somebody on the fishing boat will corroborate part of the story.  It's all a horrible misunderstanding, see?  So the U.S. Attorney in
Mobile
decides that he might not have a good-enough case, and our friends cop to a lesser charge.  That's how it works.” He paused.

“That's hard to believe.”

“We got no bodies.  We got no witnesses.  We have weapons aboard, but who can say who fired them?  It's all circumstantial evidence.” Oreza smiled for a grim moment. “My daughter gave me a good brief last month on how all this stuff works.  They whistle up someone to back up their version of how they got aboard—somebody clean, no criminal record—and all of a sudden the only real witnesses are on the other side, and we got shit, Red.  They cop to some little piddly-ass charge, and that's it.”

“But if they're innocent, why don't they—”

“Talk very much?  Oh, hell, that's the easy part.  A foreign-flag warship pulls up alongside and puts an armed boarding party aboard.  The boarding party points a bunch of guns at them, roughs them up a bit, and they're so scared that they didn't say anything—that's what the lawyer'll say.  Bet on it.  Oh, they prob'ly won't walk, but the prosecutor will be so afraid of losing the case that he'll look for an easy way out.  Our friends will get a year or two in the can, then they get a free plane ticket home.”

“But they're murderers.”

“Sure as hell,” Portagee agreed. “To get off, all they have to be is smart murderers.  And there might even be some other things they can say.  What my girl taught me, Red, is that it's never as simple as it looks.  Like I said, you shoulda let Bob handle it.  The kids would have backed you up, Captain.  You oughta hear what they're saying about this thing.”

Captain Wegener was quiet for a moment.  That made sense, didn't it?  Sailors didn't change much over the years, did they?  On the beach they'd work mightily to get into every pair of female pants in sight, but on the question of murder and rape, the “kids” felt the same way the old-timers did.  Times hadn't changed all that much after all.  Men were still men.  They knew what justice was, courts and lawyers to the contrary.

Red thought about that for a few seconds.  Then he rose and walked to his bookshelf.  Next to his current copy of the Uniform Code of Military Justice and The Manual of Courts Martial was a much older book better known by its informal title, “Rocks and Shoals.” It was the old reference book of regulations whose ancestry went back to the 18th century, and which had been replaced by the UCMJ soon after World War II.  Wegener's copy was an antique.  He'd found it gathering dust in a cardboard box fifteen years before at an old boat station on the
California
coast.  This one had been published in 1879, when the rules had been very different.  It had been a safer world then, the captain told himself.  It wasn't hard to understand why.  All you had to do was read what the rules had once been . . .

“Thanks, Portagee.  I've got a little work to do.  I want you and Riley here at fifteen hundred.”

Oreza stood. “Aye aye, sir.” The quartermaster wondered for a moment what the captain had thanked him for.  He was skilled at reading the skipper's mind, but it didn't work this time.  He knew that something was going on in there.  He just didn't know what it was.  He also knew that he'd find out at fifteen hundred.  He could wait.

Wegener had lunch with his officers a few minutes later.  He sat quietly at the end of the table reading over some message traffic.  His wardroom was young and informal.  Table talk was as lively as usual.  The talk today was on the obvious subject, and Wegener allowed it to go on as he flipped through the yellow sheets generated by the ship's printer.  The thought that had come to him in his stateroom was taking shape.  He weighed the pluses and minuses in silence.  What could they really do to him?  Not much, he judged.  Would his people go along with him?

“I heard Oreza say that in the old days, they knew what to do about bastards like this,” a lieutenant (j.g.) observed at the far end of the table.  There were affirmative grunts all around the table.

“Ain't 'progress' a bitch?” another noted.  The twenty-four-year-old officer didn't know that he had just made a decision for his commanding officer.

It would work, Wegener decided.  He glanced up from his messages to look at the faces of his officers.  He'd trained them well, the captain thought.  He'd had them for ten months now, and their performance was as nearly perfect as any commander could ask.  They'd been a sorry, dejected lot when he'd arrived at the shipyard, but now they sparkled with enthusiasm.  Two had grown mustaches, the better to look like the seamen they'd become.  All of them lounged in their hard-backed chairs, radiating competence.  They were proud of their ship and proud of their captain.  They'd back him up.  Red joined the conversation, just to make sure, just to test the waters, just to decide who would play a part and who would not.

He finished his lunch and returned to his cabin.  The paperwork was still there, and he raced through it as quickly as he could, then opened his “Rocks and Shoals.” At fifteen hundred Oreza and Riley arrived, and he outlined his plan.  The two master chiefs were surprised at first, but fell into line quickly.

“Riley, I want you to take this down to our guests.  One of 'em dropped it on the bridge.” Wegener fished the cigarette pack out of his pocket. “There's a vent in the brig, isn't there?”

“Sure is, skipper,” the bosun answered in some surprise.  He didn't know about the “Calverts.”

“We start at twenty-one hundred,” the captain said.

“About the time the weather gets here,” Oreza observed. “Fair enough, Red.  You know you wanna be real careful how you—”

“I know, Portagee.  What's life without a few risks?” he asked with a smile.

Riley left first.  He walked forward to a ladder, then down two levels and aft until he got to the brig.  The two were there, inside the ten-foot-square cage.  Each lay on a bunk.  They might have been speaking before, but stopped when the door to the compartment opened.  It seemed to the bosun that someone might have included a microphone in the brig, but the district legal officer had once explained that such an installation would be a violation of constitutional rights, or a violation of search-and-seizure, or some such legalistic bullshit, the chief thought.

“Hey, Gomer,” he said.  The one on the lower bunk—the one he'd cracked across the bridge rail—looked around to see who it was.  He was rewarded with widening eyes. “You guys get lunch?” the bosun asked.

“Yes.” There was an accent there, but a funny one, the master chief thought.

“You dropped your smokes on the bridge awhile back.” Riley tossed the pack through the bars.  They landed on the deck, and Pablo—the chief thought he looked like a Pablo—snatched them up with a surprised look on his face.

“Thank you,” the man said.

“Uh-huh.  Don't you boys go anywhere without letting me know, hear?” Riley chuckled and walked away.  It was a real brig.  The designers had gotten that part right, the master chief thought.  Even had its own head.  That offended Riley.  A prison cell on a Coast Guard cutter.  Hmph.  But at least that meant you didn't have to detail a couple of men to guard the gomers.  At least not yet, Riley smiled to himself.  Are you boys in for a surprise.

Weather at sea is always impressive.  Perhaps it looks that way sweeping across a uniform surface, or maybe the human mind simply knows that weather has a power at sea that it lacks on land.  There was a three-quarter moon tonight, allowing Wegener to watch the line squalls approach at over twenty knots.  There were sustained twenty-five-knot winds in there, and gusts almost double that.  Experience told him that the gentle four-foot swells that Panache rode through would soon be whipped to a maniacal series of breaking waves and flying spray.  Not all that much, really, but enough to give his cutter an active ride.  Some of his younger crewmen would presently regret dinner.  Well, that was something you had to learn about the sea.  She didn't like people to overeat.

Wegener welcomed the storm.  In addition to giving him the atmosphere he wanted, it also gave him an excuse to fiddle with his watch bill.  Ensign O'Neil had not yet conned the ship through heavy weather and tonight would be his chance.

“Any problems, Mister?” the skipper asked the junior officer.

“No, sir.”

“Okay, just remember that if anything comes up, I'll be in the wardroom.” One of Wegener's standing orders read:  No watch officer will ever be reprimanded for calling the captain to the bridge.  Even if you only want to check the correct time:  CALL ME!  It was a common hyperbole.  You had to say such things, lest your junior officers be so afraid to bother the skipper that they rammed a tanker by way of protecting his sleep—and ending his career.  The mark of a good officer, Wegener repeatedly told his youngsters, was willingness to admit he had something yet to learn.