Gordon Kent - Force Protection

‘You’re lucky you didn’t get shot.’

She shrugged. ‘You want me to look at the body or the engine first? They say you shot a sniper. Wow.’ She waved toward the crane. ‘I better look at the body first. He’ll be pretty ripe in this heat. It is a he, isn’t it? I’d hate it if it was a woman.’

‘What do you want to look at the body for?’

‘I’m trained to look at bodies. I took an extra twelve hours in forensics. After law school?’ She wrinkled her nose and looked at the sky. ‘I don’t want to do it in the dark. But I brought a flashlight? So maybe I could. I don’t know –’ She laughed. ‘Or I could look at that engine. Engines have numbers, you know.’

It was just what he needed, he thought – a pale woman in a long dress. A perfect target. Well, nobody was shooting. And dusk was falling. And Rafe had told him to investigate, and she said she knew how to investigate. Oh, he believed her credentials well enough, and he believed her story about using the patently fake police stuff. He’d been tempted to get himself just such crap, in fact – a badge, any old badge, went a long way in some parts of the world. ‘I think I’d like you to start with the body,’ he said. He smiled, not entirely pleasantly. If she worked inside the crane, at least she’d be protected, and the smell was her problem. ‘You can examine the engine with your flashlight later.’

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘cool!’

Right.

Half an hour later, he had a call from Harry O’Neill.

‘Hey, Harry !’ Alan shouted. For this man, Harry O’Neill, he was able to be truly hearty. ‘How the hell’d you find me?’

‘Al, you’re into some bad stuff, man.’ Harry O’Neill had not picked up his tone; instead, he sounded severe. The cellphone connection was suddenly lots better, he thought, if he could recognize severity. ‘This is bad, bad , Al.’ Harry had been a shipmate during the Gulf War, then had left the Navy and joined the CIA, jumped from that when he had lost an eye on a mission; now he ran a private security company in Africa and the emirates.

And he had converted to Islam.

‘I’m not getting you, Harry.’

‘It’s all over the TV and the Net, Al – Islamic terrorists have hit another US target, all that shit. It isn’t Islamic terrorists!’

‘How do you know?’

‘I know ! No, I don’t know, but – fuck, Al, not everything bad that happens in the world comes from Islam! The TV is jumping at it like dogs, like – wolves. It makes me sick.’

Alan turned to look aft. The long sweep of the deck was empty of people, only the containers, jumbled by the explosion, breaking the straight lines. ‘Harry, you’re way ahead of me – I don’t know what you’re saying, man. I’m standing on a ship that’s had a hole blown in it; I’ve got a bunch of people killed, a bunch more injured. What’re you telling me – it didn’t happen?’

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