Free The Crisis by David Poyer Page B

would serve as a concept test bed. They’d landed and caught this taxi into town. Their driver had said not one word, just chewed something endlessly, his red-rimmed, spacey eyes hanging in the rearview mirror like a shot from a horror movie.
    The pier area, at last, the upperworks of ships ahead. They pitched forward in a painful screech of steel on bare steel. The driver turned slowly. They stared into
Night of the Living Dead
eyes, and he spoke. “Now you give five tousand Djibouti franc.”
    Twice what they’d agreed on. Dan handed him the original amount inthe damp worn bills he’d changed at the airport, added a generous tip, and got out, ignoring the outraged shouts as McCall and Henrickson bailed too. He hoisted his AWOL and the black nylon sling of his notebook computer, torn between wishing he’d brought more and not wanting to carry what he had.
    As soon as he stepped away from the taxi the beggars were on them. One scooted after them along the ground, wooden clogs rattling on his hands. His legs ended at the knees. Another hobbled upright, but with milky vacant eyes and ankles like willow sticks. “Sir. Sir,” they muttered, plucking at their clothing. “God
damn
,” Henrickson muttered. Dan fumbled in his pockets, handing out dollar bills he’d reserved for tips and baksheesh, one bill to each supplicating palm.
    â€œFive tousand,” shouted the driver behind them. “Five tousand!
Ooji, adoon!
”
    Dan guessed those were not complimentary adjectives. The halt and the lame desisted only at the head of the pier, where a guard with a slung rifle shouted them away. He led his little party past USS
Mount Whitney
, a gray steel cliffside whose sponsons overhung the pier, whose antennas cast gnomon shadows. He’d report aboard, checking in with the task force commander; but not just yet.
    McCall’s heels clicked down the asphalted pier as a gaily painted fishing dhow nodded its way out to sea. The glare reflected off the water so brightly Dan had to squint to see her swaying hips, straight back, slender neck. She’d caused him more than a few worries aboard
Horn
, where she’d been the combat systems officer. She was good, but he couldn’t always detach her professional performance from the fact that she was a knockout. Tall, professional, smart women were his weakness. McCall wasn’t any more attractive than his wife, but she was
here.
    Ten thousand miles away from Blair, he promised himself sex would not rear its ugly head.
    Henrickson shambled behind, bent under cases, computers, binders, and what little personal gear he carried. Dan had been amused on previous trips to discover that the little analyst washed his underwear and socks in the sink, dried them on shower bars, and in general, lived like a persnickety stoic. His personal comfort came a distant second to the data.
    â€œThat’s her, I guess,” McCall said as they rounded a shed. Dan pried his gaze off the tight fabric as it stretched and relaxed over her rump, and lifted his eyes to snapping flags.
    USS
Shamal
, PC-13, was moored across from several tin-roofed open-sided sheds. A containership with a bright green hull, flying the Saudi flag,was tied up on the far side. Speedboats and fishing craft motored in and out of the inner port through a half-mile-wide entrance. More dhows and smaller patrol craft lay across the inlet, in a basin from which sailboat masts jutted, though he couldn’t see their hulls.
    The shed was covered with graffiti and colorful hand-painted signs advertising jitney buses and local restaurants. At least fifty locals, all male, sat or stood pierside. Lanky dark men in thin, worn-out short-sleeve button-up shirts, cut-off slacks, some sandaled, others with bony bare feet. They leaned against pilings or walls. A few smoked, but most were doggedly chewing sticks of something green. Part-time cargo wallopers and line handlers, Dan guessed, waiting