Dana Stabenow - Prepared For Rage

"You have the money," the boat's master said.

Akil handed it over. The master tossed it through the open door of the boat's cabin. "Don't you want to count it?"

The master's teeth flashed white. "If it's short, your people are going to

have to walk to the U.S. from the middle of the Caribbean. And unless they're related to Jesus Christ…" He chuckled. "Quickly, now, before the rest get here."

He showed them to a stateroom in the bow. It had four sets of bunk beds and its own bathroom. It was very crowded with the ten of them, but except for the weapons they were traveling very light and had no belongings to find a place for.

Yussuf was left standing in the center of the room, looking very solemn. The boat continually dipped beneath their feet as more people boarded from the slip. Muted voices could be heard speaking in Haitian through the bulkheads. A small child whimpered, quickly hushed.

They looked at him expectantly. This was the moment where he gave (to paraphrase something he'd once seen an FBI agent say on television) the "come to Allah" speech, when he spoke the words that made them truly feel that they were on a mission graced and blessed by God himself, a God who held them in his hands and would welcome them to paradise when their task was done. This was the last time he had to make them feel that their task was worthy of their deaths, for surely they would all die. "You are about to embark on a sacred quest," he said. "You will strike a blow at the very heart of the Far Enemy, this godless infidel and friend to the Jews, whose abhorrent secularism has led to abominations like homosexuality, feminism, drinking, gambling."

They looked at him, waiting confidently. There was more. There had to be more.

There was. "I am coming with you," he told Yussuf, and beneath that young man's astonished gaze went to a corner and sat down with his back to the wall, crossing his legs and closing his eyes.

Outside, he heard light footsteps pad down the deck as the lines were loosed, and canvas flapped as the sails were pulled up. Under sail power alone, they slid slowly and silently away from the dock and out to sea.

MIAMI

Doreen and Nicholas Munro came aboard the day before Munro left the dock. Cal had intended to hand them over to the XO after the initial greeting and dinner in his cabin, but somehow it didn't turn out that way.

He liked them, for one thing. Mrs. Munro was a short, round figure with thick glasses that gave her the look of a blue-eyed owl. Her hair was completely white and had a tendency to stand on end, and she wore polyester plaid bagged out at the seat and knees with an air of insouciance. "I'm a housewife, wife and mother, plain and simple," she said breezily, "so don't ask me what I do for a living, thanks."

Mr. Munro was a tall man with amused brown eyes and hair even thicker and whiter than his wife's. He wore a gray sport coat over an open-collared shirt and jeans worn white at the seams. He was an aviator and as Cal had learned the main influence in his daughter's life. He was very affable-"It's Nick, Captain." "It's Cal, Nick."-and Cal offered him a ride in the helo when they got out to sea, warmly seconded by Lieutenant Noyes.

He gave them the dollar-and-a-quarter tour, after trying to fob them off on the nickel tour didn't work. They were insatiably and flatteringly curious about life and work on board Munro, and on instantly easy terms with every crew member they met, from FS2 Steele in the galley to MPA Molnar in Main Control to MK3 Fisher doing fuel soundings on the main deck. "We have two diesel engines and two gas turbine engines. The diesels are locomotive engines, the turbines are Pratt & Whitney's, essentially the same thing they built for the Boeing 707s."

"Really," Kenai's father said. "I'd like to hear a little more about them."

"When you get settled in, I'll have MPA come get you and give you a more detailed tour. He can print out some specs for you, too, if you'd like." Cal closed his mind to what MPA's probably profane reaction would be to that much time pulled away from his precious engine room and said, "If we're using only the bow prop we can still make five knots. We can go twenty-nine if we're up on both turbines."

Grinning, Mr. Munro said, "She throw up a rooster tail when you're going that fast?"

"No, sir," Cal said, grinning back, "but she'll put up a pretty impressive wake. Until Deepwater, which is the program building the new 410s, the Hamilton class 378s were the largest cutters built for the Coast Guard. When they were built, back in the sixties and seventies, they were all about speed and endurance, which meant they sacrificed a lot of utility and ease of access. We've got twenty-two different fuel tanks, and it is a genuine exercise in Newtonian physics to get her fueled properly."

"How far can you go on a full tank? Or tanks?"

"Fourteen thousand nautical miles," Cal said, and added, "at twelve knots, that is, on one diesel."

"More than halfway around the world without stopping for gas," Mr. Munro said.

"How many crew members on board?" Mrs. Munro said.

"A hundred and fifty-one." Normally. While many of the crew members were excited about watching the shuttle launch from offshore, many others had opted for leave during what they considered to be at best a public-relations exercise. Munro was running north with a crew of sixty-five, well under strength. Fortunately, all the chiefs except for GMC had elected to forgo liberty until their return. He could run the ship with the chiefs alone if need be, long enough to get her into port, if need be.

He wound up taking the Munros through virtually every compartment from the bow prop room to aft steering, and he was absurdly gratified when they understood the tac number system identifying each individual compartment the first time he explained it to them. "Excellent," he said. "If you understand this system you'll never be lost."

"Good luck," Mr. Munro said.

They all enjoyed a good laugh at that.

Kenai's father had a near miss with the Darwin sorter on the boat davit, and Cal got another big laugh when he described the little PA so blinded by love for Kenai that he'd run right into it. Mrs. Munro-"Call me Doreen."-demanded more news of Kenai's visit.

"What's involved in offshore security for a shuttle launch?" Nick said.

"Now, there's a question," Cal said. They were on the bridge. "Let's go down to the wardroom and get some coffee, and I'll walk you through it."

They disposed themselves around the wardroom table and Seaman Trimble was sent down to the mess deck for some of FS2's baked goodies while Cal made them both americanos. "You have an espresso machine on Munro 7." Nick said.

"Well, of course," Cal said with a poker face. "It's probably one of the more important contributors to crew morale."

"It's the single most important contributor to your morale, sir," Seaman Trimble said.

The Munros laughed. "You're on report for insubordination, Trimble," Cal said. "Dismissed."

Trimble grinned and saluted. "Aye aye, sir," he said, and departed.

The baked goodies were found to be snickerdoodles, which Doreen pronounced divine.

"Okay," Cal said, "security on a shuttle mission. To begin with, there's an eight-mile security zone around the launch pad. Nobody unauthorized in or out for the duration."

"That's boats," Nick said. "What about aircraft?"

"There is a no-low-fly zone of twenty nautical miles. Believe it or not there are some private pilots out there who think they can do a flyby of a shuttle launch."

"Oh, I believe it," Nick said. "So, is the Munro the only sea-based security presence during the launch?"

"God, no," Cal said. "There are four small boats, two twenty-five-footers, and two shallow water boats. They're working from the shoreline to two nautical miles out. Then there are two forty-seven-foot MLBs- motor life boats-working two to six nautical miles out. A CPB-a coastal patrol boat, an eighty-seven-footer-usually acts as OSC, or on-scene commander, of all the Coast Guard assets working the mission. They're usually the offshore enforcement and response vessel."