"I couldn't let the boats get too close, sir," Hendricks said miserably. "There were so many of them, grabbing anything they could hold on to. They would have swamped us."

"You did right," Cal said. They were in the captain's quarters. On the bridge everyone would have been listening and Cal wanted to give Hendricks breathing space.

"We threw them PFDs but of course they didn't know how to put them on and they were too panicked to get into them in the water anyway. Most of them kept their heads enough to hold on until we got to them, but some of them just…"

"Matt." Cal had to repeat his name to get his attention. "Matt, listen to me. I want you to grab a shower and some clean clothes. I want you to tell the rest of the boat crews and boarding teams to do the same, and then I want you to take them down to the galley and tell the senior chief that the captain says to fry you all a steak."

An expression of revulsion crossed Hendricks's face. "I couldn't eat, sir, I don't think any of us could after today."

"It wasn't a suggestion," Cal said, and reached for the phone. "I'm calling Senior Chief myself."

The bosun's mate hesitated.

"That's an order, BM2," Cal said again, letting his command voice kick in. The BM went into an instinctive brace. "I'll be down on the mess deck myself in half an hour, and I expect both crews there. Understood?"

Hendricks, looking steadier on his feet, said, "Understood, aye, Captain," and left the cabin. Cal called the chief in charge of the mess and spoke sharply enough that even that temperamental gentleman knew enough to say smartly, "Yes, sir," and no more. New York steaks weren't normally on the standard issue Coast Guard menu, but now and then Cal liked to put his father's money to work for Coastie morale. He was sure the senator would approve of this use of Cal 's patrimony, and in any case he wasn't about to ask him.

A few moments later there was a knock at the door. "Yeah."

The executive officer poked his head in. "All clear?"

Cal waved him in. "Close the door and have a seat."

Taffy doffed his cap and sat across the desk from Cal. "We lost another one. A young woman. According to Baby Doc, she'd been beaten and raped repeatedly, as in recently."

"How recently?"

"Last night. This morning. Since they left port, Baby Doc doesn't know. She's very young. And pretty." He grimaced, and ran a tired hand through his hair. "Well. She was."

"Somebody on the boat," Cal said. It wasn't a question.

"Baby Doc says more than one. Marks on her wrists and ankles where they-"

Cal held up one hand. "Got the picture." He made a conscious effort to relax his jaw. "We should have let the fuckers drown."

"They didn't all rape her, Captain."

"They all know who did, though."

"Most likely someone in the crew. Or all of them. They'd regard it as part of the price of passage." Taffy shrugged. "We've got them segregated from the migrants. Well. We've separated the ones with passports from the ones without. There are only six with passports."

"Find any weapons?"

The XO shook his head. "Passengers say they had them. Probably the first thing that went over the side when they spotted us. They know the penalties for getting caught with automatic weapons on the high seas."

Cal nodded. Piracy carried hefty penalties in the United States, including serious federal time.

"Do you want me to start an investigation?" Taffy said without enthusiasm.

"No point," Cal said. "She won't be the only victim. We've got enough on our hands without conducting a criminal investigation that would likely turn into half a dozen separate cases before we're done. We'll be at the dock tomorrow. Leave it to the authorities onshore." Cal looked up. "You've got them under supervision?"

"Our guests have more military police standing watch over them than Baghdad."

"Everyone's been fed?"

"Senior had the FSs cook up a mess of rice and beans."

"Good." Cal brooded for a moment. "I'm declaring the derelict a hazard to navigation. Do you concur?"

"If I concurred any more I'd be genuflecting."

"Destroy it."

"That'll make the gunnies happy. Nothing Chief Colvin likes more than to get in a little target practice." The XO rose to his feet and picked up his cap. "Anything else, sir?"

"No. Wait, what'd we do with the bodies?"

"Emptied out the reefer and stacked them to the ceiling." Cal grimaced. The XO pretended not to see. "Senior Chief says best speed for port or it's ice cream for breakfast, lunch, and dinner."

"Thanks, XO."

He lapsed into a brooding silence.

"Something bothering you, sir?"

Cal shrugged, playing with his pen. "Nothing. Well. It's something, but it's not something we can do anything about."

"Sir?"

Cal jerked his head in the general direction of the freighter. "How many more got through while we were picking people out of the water? Two? Five? A dozen? How many of these banana boats beached themselves on a Florida beach and their cargo walked ashore?"

"We can't stop them all," the XO said.

"We can't stop hardly any of them," Cal said. "We're spending billions, trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan to bomb the shit out of people who never had a pot to piss in, let alone enough money to buy a one-way ticket on one of these floating coffins. And here we sit, our finger stuck in a dike that is leaking like a sieve in a hundred other places. We can't stop them all. We can't contain them all. God knows we can't make their own countries more attractive so they'll want to stay home."

The XO considered this. "Today was a good day, sir," he said, a hint of a question in his words. "At least most of them are alive to make a run for the border another day."

"Agreed," Cal said. "I just worry about who else is coming into the country on all the boats we're missing. Be pretty damn easy for some bin Laden wannabe to bribe the right skipper, waltz off the ship somewhere north of Palm Beach, and hitch a ride north so he could light off his backpack nuke in the middle of Dupont Circle."

"I'd like to see bin Laden wading ashore at Palm Beach," the XO said meditatively. "All those little old ladies with blue hair and lime green polyester pantsuits would beat him to death with their Gucci bags before his feet were dry."

Cal laughed, as he had been meant to. "Point taken. Anything else?"

Taffy hesitated. "You up for a little crew confabulation?"

"I don't even know what the hell that means, but it's got to be better than people drowning on my watch." The words came out a little harder than he'd meant and he winced. "Sorry, Taff. Talk to me."

"OS2 Riley."

Cal groaned. "Not again."

"Afraid so. And this time it's someone on the ship."

Cal groaned again. "Who?"

"ET3 Reese. He says it was consensual, she says it wasn't."

Cal swore. "Where?"

" Miami. Last inport. Neither of them live there, don't have family there, are pretty much at loose ends when they go ashore. A bunch of the crew rented rooms in a motel. It started out men with men and women with women."

"And it didn't end up that way. Man, his wife is going to kill him this time."

They both considered that eventuality with pleasure. "What I don't get is how such an undernourished, snot-nosed little twerp gets all the girls," Taffy said.

"Does he still have money troubles?"

"Big ones. Too much house, too much car, too many toys. Not to mention the wife and the two kids, ages one and three."

"How did we hear about this?" Cal said.

"She came to see me."

"In Miami? And she's just getting around to tell us about it now?"

"She told her mother, and her mother told her not to tell. Yeah, I know, but I get the feeling Reese comes from a family that's just barely getting by. I think she's sending money home. She needs the job."