At 10:30 A.M. Wednesday, Ev was in his office editing a PowerPoint presentation for an upcoming group lecture-hall class. The secretary called in and said Captain Donovan wanted to see him in his office.
“He say why?”
“Surely you jest.”
Ev smiled and went downstairs to Donovan’s office. When he got there, he was surprised to find a small gathering of the faculty waiting for him. A Coast Guard commander was there, along with the commandant. Captain Donovan deferred to Robbins.
“Professor Markham,” the commandant said, “this is Commander Bell, representing Admiral Johnson, commander of the local Coast Guard district. He has something to present to you for your lifesaving efforts in the bay this past weekend.”
The commander stepped forward to read a citation for a Coast Guard Silver Lifesaving Medal awarded to Professor Everett Markham of the United States Naval Academy. Ev was a little embarrassed when he listened to the citation; he thought the woman he’d saved must have embellished the circumstances somewhat. There was a round of enthusiastic applause, and then Captain Donovan, ever the master of short and sweet, invited everyone to get back to work. Ev asked Commander Bell about the missing husband; the commander shook his head. “No real chance, based on what she told us. She said the mast was whipping around in the waves, whacked him pretty good.”
“I remember that mast,” Ev said. “Vividly. Still have a bruise.”
“Well, it was still a very nice piece of work all around,” the commandant said. “And apparently some smart seamanship on Ms. DeWinter’s part.”
Ev was surprised. And, he wondered, does the dant know that Liz is Julie’s lawyer? As if in answer, the commandant, after a few more pleasantries with the Coast Guard commander, took Ev’s elbow and steered him out of Donovan’s office and into the marble-floored hallway.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” he said. “The Navy would have taken six months to work up that medal. The Coasties do it in a day. Congratulations.”
“Thank you, sir,” Ev said, waiting for the other shoe.
“About the Dell matter,” Robbins said. “We’ve still not made a determination as to what happened.”
“My daughter continues to interest the NCIS,” Ev said. “She’s getting pretty upset about all this, so close to graduation.”
“From what I know about their investigation, she is not the focal point,” Robbins said.
“Let me ask you something. Why is the Academy security officer involved in an NCIS investigation?”
Robbins’s eyebrows rose. “Mr. Hall? I wasn’t aware that he was. Involved how?”
Ev told him about Hall being present at the interviews. The commandant frowned, and then he appeared to remember something. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Jim did mention that. Agent Branner wanted him there to act as sort of an interpreter. Sometimes the midshipmen are a bit opaque in their dealings with civilians.”
“Doesn’t that sort of compromise the independence of their investigation?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Agent Branner doesn’t take orders from me. Or anyone else, based on what I know of her. How’s Ms. DeWinter?”
It was a clear challenge, and Ev met it head-on. “Lawyering as before,” he said. He paused as two firsties walked by them in the hall. “And also wondering about Mr. Hall’s involvement in the Dell investigation.”
Robbins dropped all pretense of amicability. “If your daughter wants to graduate and be commissioned on the appointed day, I’d suggest she be a lot more cooperative. Lawyer or no lawyer.”
Ev unconsciously crumpled the Coast Guard citation letter. He looked down into Robbins’s face. “I’m tempted to give that comment the Washington Post test, Captain Robbins. You okay with that?”
“Don’t fuck with us, Professor Markham,” Robbins growled. “There’s a lot of high-level interest out there in this Dell case. Your daughter is being less than helpful. That may have consequences.”
“Such as?”
“Such as this: The rest of us are all still going to be here the day after graduation. She can be on her way as an ensign, or still be a midshipman. Her choice. Why don’t you pass that on? To her, and to your good friend, her lawyer.”
“If I thought she’d get a fair shake, I would. But I think you’re looking for a scapegoat. I won’t permit that.”
Robbins began to bounce on the balls of his feet. “You are not in a position to permit or not permit. This is an Executive Department matter. We can’t terminate you on academic grounds without a big stink. But we can terminate you for interference in a government investigation. Don’t let that tenure label confuse you. Professor. ”
Robbins stalked away toward the main doors. Ev was furious, but he held his tongue. He wasn’t worried about himself, but he was definitely worried about what they could do to Julie. The Academy’s supposedly benign objectivity was beginning to show its teeth. He headed for his office to call Liz.
At 10:30, Jim met with the chief in his office over at the naval station. Bustamente had his three section sergeants, plus a rep from the Marine gate guards detachment present. He laid out his plan to cover all of the access grates with covert surveillance teams, beginning after the evening meal in Bancroft Hall. The Marines were requested to check out all vehicles leaving the Yard to ensure there were no midshipmen on board. The chief had obtained a radio retransmitter set from the county cops that would get signals up out of the tunnels, giving the entire Yard team a way to establish a radio net with the personnel underground. He had also obtained permission from the city police and campus security to set up a surveillance team in the building on the St. John’s campus overlooking the grating nearest to King George Street. A campus cop would be with them.
“The deal is, the campus cops will arrest anyone coming out of or trying to get into that grating. If it’s a mid, they hand him over to us. If it’s a civilian, we all go downtown to sort it out.”
“This guy has already abandoned one civilian accomplice in the tunnels,” Jim said. “He’s probably capable of sending out another stalking horse to see if anything’s up.”
“Okay,” the chief said. “Let’s do this: If someone comes out of the grating, we follow and apprehend out of sight of the grating. If someone goes down into the system, we report it to the underground team, and you guys nail him when he comes through.”
Jim agreed with that. “That way, he’ll be on federal property. I like that better.”
“Who’s going to be underground, Cap?” the Marine sergeant asked. He’d been there when Jim had been the detachment CO.
“I will, with Special Agent Branner. Actually, she’ll be in charge.” He told them about what had happened to Bagger Thompson, and that they thought this guy might be the one who’d done that. The professional casualness bled out of the meeting. They went over communications and stationing procedures, talked a little bit about deadly force authorization, and then the meeting broke up.
Commander Michaels was rushed, as usual, so Jim briefed him as they walked down the hallway to a department head staff meeting. He told him that he and Branner were setting up a small task force to see if they could capture this runner who was tearing things up down in the utility tunnels. Michaels waved him off, not seeming to care much about that. The Dell case was reaching crisis proportions now that a congressman was asking very pointed questions and the local papers were editorializing about a cover-up. He told Jim that a senior civilian from NCIS, a Mr. Harry Chang, was meeting with the dant and the supe as they spoke.
“I’ve met him,” Jim said. “At the NCIS office. What’s he doing here?”
“The answer to that is way above my pay grade, but apparently there’s a lot of stick and rudder coming down from Washington. As usual. Whatever you’re doing tonight, keep it under the media radar if you can, okay?”
Jim said he’d try, and Michaels hurried into the conference room. Jim went back to his own cubicle and put a call in to the commandant’s assistant, asking for five minutes on the dant’s calendar, preferably before the dant went off to the luncheon being held for the winners of this year’s Naval Institute Prize Essay contest. The assistant said he’d call him. Jim got some coffee, moved some paperwork from his in box to his out box for a few minutes, and thought about what he had put in motion for Julie Markham by getting Branner to call the Honor Committee. Only days before graduation. The summons would scare her to death. The phone rang. It was the dant’s assistant.
“Five minutes. Now, please.”
Jim trotted over to Bancroft, and then had to wait while the commandant took a phone call. Finally, the assistant waved him into the inner office.
“What’s this about an honor hearing on Midshipman Markham?” Captain Robbins asked without preamble.
And a hearty good morning to you, too, Jim thought. “We think-”
“Qualify that,” the dant said. “Who’s ‘we’?”
“Special Agent Branner and I,” Jim said, and then paused to see if Robbins had anything to say about that. But the dant just made a gesture for Jim to continue. The phone rang outside, and a light began to blink on the dant’s telephone console.
“We both think Midshipman Markham knows more than she’s telling about the Dell case.”
“So I’ve heard. She lying to you?”
“No, sir, I just don’t think we’ve asked the right question.”
The commandant thought about that. “Blue-and-gold wall?” he asked.
“Possibly. My idea was to use the Honor Committee to get behind the wall. She might play games with us, but not with them if she thinks she’s being set up to take an honor fall this close to graduation.”
Robbins grunted. “Now you’re starting to think like an executive officer, Mr. Hall,” he said approvingly. “But do you think she’s guilty of some involvement in what happened to Dell?”
“No, sir. I don’t. Nor do we have any direct evidence that she’s concealing something. It’s just a hunch. Mostly on my part. In reality, if she stands pat, we’re nowhere.”
“You and NCIS might be nowhere, but I won’t be,” the dant said, and then waited to see if Jim understood.
“You mean,” Jim said, “that if we don’t get anywhere with this, then the Academy will make a ruling?”
“NCIS was told to develop evidence of a homicide-if they could. Doesn’t seem like they can. Our position, therefore, is that it wasn’t a homicide. We need to end this matter, Mr. Hall. We really do. I talked to the assistant director of NCIS today, that Mr. Chang. He seems to agree with our conclusions. By the way, he also told me that their junior agent here in the Annapolis office has died as a result of injuries sustained in that mugging? I didn’t realize he’d been that seriously injured. Did you know about that?”
Shit, Jim thought. He’d forgotten to pass this news up the chain. “Yes, sir, I did. The incident was reported, I believe. You and I discussed it briefly.”
“I don’t recall that,” Robbins said distractedly. “But then, there are a lot of issues flowing over my desk. Anyway, Mr. Chang says that you and agent Branner are working that case, as well. He said they think that you and Branner have a better chance of finding this guy than they would if they brought a horde of agents into it. True?”
“We’re getting closer,” Jim said. “The bad news is that I’m more than ever convinced that he’s a midshipman. Probably a firstie. If we catch him-”
“If you catch him, we get to deal with more shit in the fan.”
“Yes, sir. Especially if we can tie him to what happened to agent Thompson. Lots more shit in the fan.”
“That’s just great, Mr. Hall. Sometimes I wonder if we’re accomplishing anything here at the Academy. But I hope you’re wrong.”
“Yes, sir. I hope I am.” But I don’t think so, he thought.
The commandant was standing, so Jim got up as well.
“Remember one thing about the honor system, Mr. Hall,” the dant said. “We can put that machinery in motion, but it’s the mids who will bring it to conclusion, and we almost always have to accept that conclusion. Your gambit here could end up destroying Markham.”
“Even if she’s totally innocent?”
“She’s not cooperating. And no midshipman is ever totally innocent. You rate what you skate, right? You went through here, just like I did. You know that.”
“Yes, sir, but-”
“Think of it like a tax audit, Mr. Hall. We can always find something.”
“With respect, sir, we’re not the IRS.”
Robbins gave him a cold smile. “Do you know what you get when you put the words the and IRS together? Theirs, Mr. Hall. In that respect, we are very much alike. Keep me informed. That’s all.”
At 1:30 that afternoon, Jim and Branner went into the commandant’s conference room in Bancroft Hall. They’d been waiting for half an hour in Captain Rogers’s office while he signed the necessary paperwork to convene the Brigade Honor Committee.
While they waited, Jim had explained how the system was set up. Each company had four honor reps-two first class, two second class. Midshipmen interested in serving on the Brigade Honor Committee put themselves forward as candidates for selection. If the company officer approved, a vote was held. The top fifteen candidates from the thirty companies went through a further selection process to select ten for interviews in front of a board made up of officers, faculty, and midshipmen. Those ten were further whittled down, ultimately by the commandant and the superintendent, to a final seven. The seven positions on the Brigade board were chairman, vice chairman, education director, deputy in charge of investigations, secretary, academic liaison, and honor program coordinator. They would be meeting today with the chairman, investigations deputy, and secretary. Captain Rogers would sit in.
Branner was dressed more conservatively today. Severe pantsuit, black shoes, almost no makeup. Jim, used to her flashy style, thought she looked positively drab. She also still seemed to be preoccupied with something. She had a brown envelope in her lap, but she had not told him what was in it.
“You sure you want me to pitch this thing, and not you?” he asked.
“You know the lingo,” she said. “We’re agreed on the objective. I’ll get into it at the appropriate time.”
“The dant warned me this morning when I went in to brief him. Said we stood the chance of really damaging Markham once we turn the Honor Committee loose.”
“It was your idea-you want to back out?” she asked.
“I want to know what she knows,” he said. “But she’s so close to graduation-I hate to smear her reputation.”
“If she knows something that bears on a possible homicide, she should have told us,” Branner said, tapping her foot impatiently. She looked at her watch. “What’s the damned holdup?”
“But if I’m wrong? And she really doesn’t know anything?”
“Can’t do this ‘what if’ shit, partner. Our job is to find out what happened to Brian Dell. Nobody else is speaking for him just now, because the little dude’s dead. If this Honor Committee can’t find anything, then we try something else or give it up for lack of evidence. The fact that the committee asks her some questions should not constitute a smear on her personal reputation. If it does, their system here is really screwed up.”
Captain Rogers came out and motioned for them to come into the room. “Apologize for the delay-we needed to get Midshipman Markham’s Academy service records.”
The waiting midshipmen stood up. “The chairman is Midshipman First Class Magnuson. He has the authority to make decisions. The DCI-that’s deputy chairman for investigations-is Midshipman First Class Hays. He will take investigative action, if action’s warranted. The recording secretary is Midshipman Second Class Vannuys.”
He pointed to chairs, and then everyone sat down. Jim started it off by saying that he was assisting Special Agent Branner of the NCIS in an investigation into the death of Midshipman Brian Dell.
“As I’m sure you all know, Midshipman Dell was killed in a fall from the rooftop of the eighth wing. In the course of the investigation, agent Branner determined that Midshipman Julie Markham might be tangentially involved in this matter.”
“In what manner, sir?” one of the midshipmen asked.
“Is this conversation privileged?” Branner asked, directing her question at Rogers.
“Yes, it is,” he replied. “What’s said here stays here. The board secretary will write up summary minutes for the record, which the chairman will approve. But given the possible consequences to anyone who’s being examined by this group, the board keeps it all close-hold.”
“Okay, then,” Jim continued. “Midshipman Dell was wearing women’s underwear when he died. Specifically, underwear that belonged to Midshipman First Class Julie Markham.”
The three midshipmen looked at one another but said nothing. Jim noticed that the DCI, Hays, didn’t seem surprised. For some reason, the name Hays was sticking in Jim’s mind.
“Naturally, the investigation focused on Markham in the context of whether or not she knew Dell, or had possibly even been intimate with him. She denied the latter, but she did state that she knew who Dell was, and that she had had dealings with him.”
“‘Dealings’?” the chairman asked.
“In the course of his plebe summer,” Jim said.
Magnuson nodded and made a note on his legal pad.
“There were two other connections, the varsity swim team, and the discovery of Dell’s clothing in her room.” He went on to describe that.
All three midshipmen took notes. He went on. “We are exploring the possibility that someone may have either influenced Dell to commit suicide or done something that resulted in Dell coming off that roof.”
“You mean you think someone killed him?” asked Captain Rogers in a surprised voice.
Apparently, he had not heard the rumors, Jim thought, although the three midshipmen did not seem surprised by this information, either. “Yes, sir, that’s a possibility. Because one of the things that’s come out of the investigation is that no one who knew Midshipman Dell thought he was suicidal.”
“Could it have been grab-ass up there on the roof?” the chairman asked.
“With a guy wearing panties?” said Vannuys, the recording secretary. This produced a faint smile on the chairman’s face. Branner slapped the brown envelope down on the conference table, startling everybody. She slid it across to the chairman.
“Those are some pictures of Brian Dell,” she said. “After he hit the concrete. Take a good look, Mr. Magnuson. See if you still think this is funny.”
The chastened midshipman stared at the envelope and then at Captain Rogers, who nodded. Magnuson fished the pictures out, took one look, blanched, and passed them to his left. Hays looked at each one before passing them to Vannuys, who was visibly aghast at what he saw. The recording secretary got up and gave the pictures to Captain Rogers, who avoided looking at them, tidied them into a neat pile, and slid them back across the table to Branner.
“That’s what we’re here to talk about, gentlemen,” she said. “In barracks terms, this is serious shit, in case you didn’t notice. And that puddle of human flesh was not what Chief Petty Officer and Mrs. Dell expected from their son’s Academy experience, okay?”
All three nodded, almost in unison.
“Here’s our problem,” she continued. “Based on interviews, it is our opinion that Midshipman Markham does know something about what happened to Dell. Either something that would explain why he’d jump or something that would point a finger at someone else who might have been involved. The cross-dressing means something. Grab-ass, homosexual activity, or even sadomasochistic behavior. We don’t know. But we think Markham does.”
“And you want us to do what, exactly, ma’am?” the chairman asked. Branner glanced sideways at Jim.
“Make the fact that she knows something but isn’t telling an honor issue,” Jim said. “Do what you guys do in such a manner as to find out what she knows.”
“But it’s not,” the chairman said.
“Not what?”
“An honor issue. What she knows is not an honor issue. You’re confusing us with West Point. Their code doesn’t tolerate anyone who lies, cheats, or steals, or who has knowledge of those who do. Our code stops at the word steals. ”
“Knowledge might constitute a conduct offense,” Rogers said. “Knowing of an honor offense and not saying anything constitutes an offense against the Academy’s regulations.”
“But that’s not an honor offense?” Jim asked.
“No, sir,” said the chairman.
Jim, surprised, didn’t know what to say. Branner leaned forward. “What if she said she knew nothing pertinent but she actually did?”
“That would be a lie. That could be an honor offense.”
“Then once again, how about you finding out what she knows?”
“Did she tell you that she knows nothing about what happened to Dell?” asked Hays.
“Yes,” Branner said. “So if you could find an indication that she knows something about this, other than what we’ve told you and shown you, then-”
“Agent Branner, ma’am,” Midshipman Magnuson said, “with all due respect, I have no idea of how to do that, or if we even should do that.”
He looked over at Captain Rogers as if for moral support, and the captain indicated he should go on. “Ma’am, the Honor Committee investigates actions. Someone tells a lie and gets caught out. Someone steals something. Someone is seen cheating on an exam-crib notes written on his forearm-again, actions. But we don’t investigate anything until there’s been an accusation made, and the matter’s already been discussed between the accuser and accused. That’s step one: Approach and discuss. I don’t know how we would prove that she knows something about the Dell incident. DCI, you want to comment?”
“I do,” said Hays. Of the three midshipmen, he was the largest. Jim figured him for a varsity athlete. Wide shoulders, big, rangy physique. That look of watchful aggression.
“Go ahead,” Rogers said.
“Normally, I’d assign a BIO,” Hays said. “That’s one of our Brigade investigative officers. But given that,” the DCI said, pointing at the pictures, “I think that I should talk to Midshipman Markham.”
“How would you proceed?” Branner asked. “I mean, why should she talk to you?”
“Because of who I am on this board,” Hays said. “And because of what I can do. I’m the DCI. I can call in everyone who knows her. Her roommates, past and present. The other members of the swim team. All the firsties in her company. The people in her academic classes. Her instructors. Her extracurricular activities officers. I’d tell ’em we’re doing an honor investigation, and that I want to know what they know about Midshipman Markham.”
“That’s a lot of people,” Jim said.
“That’s the point, sir,” the DCI said. “If there’s anything weird about her four years here, one of those people will reveal that. And she’ll know that. Everyone here has some bones in his locker.”
Jim remembered the commandant saying basically the same thing. “And you think she’d tell you what you want to know?”
“I happen to know Julie Markham,” the young man said. “Actually, we’ve dated. So ordinarily, I’d recuse myself. Someone else would have to do it. But seeing as we’re this close to graduation, I’d feel comfortable getting the ball rolling. And because we have, um, history, I think I could find out something faster than anyone else.”
Jim finally recognized the name. Tommy Hays, the ex-boyfriend. Branner leaned forward. “If she knows something about the Dell case, then you’ll declare an honor offense?” she asked.
“No, ma’am. If she tells me something, I’ll take that to the chairman here.” The DCI looked over at the chairman, sending a silent message, Jim thought. “The first thing he’ll do is to take it to you and Mr. Hall. Then it would be up to you to come before the Honor Committee and make an accusation that she lied to you. An action constituting an honor offense. Then we’d formally appoint a BIO, and handle it as an ordinary honor offense.” He stopped for a moment. “Assuming that’s what you really want,” he added.
Jim sat back in his chair to consider what Hays was saying. If he understood the subtext, Hays was letting him know that if they let him do it his way, they might get what they needed without tagging Julie Markham with an honor offense.
“Deal,” he said, looking sideways at Branner to confirm that she was going to go along. Branner nodded but said nothing. “But time is of the essence. You need to have that discussion today. This afternoon.”
“No problem, sir,” Hays said. He nodded at the recording secretary, who got up and left the room.
“Then we’re done here?” Branner said.
“Yes, ma’am, I think so, unless you’ve got something else for us,” Magnuson said. Jim sensed tension in the air, but he couldn’t be sure. The perplexed look on Rogers’s face made Jim think that Hays’s offer might even have been rehearsed.
The meeting broke up, and they followed Captain Rogers out of the room. The midshipmen remained behind. Rogers said that the chairman would be in touch as soon as they had something, and that he would have to brief the commandant on what had transpired. Branner had no problems with that.
Once Rogers left, Branner looked at Jim. “What happened in there?” she asked.
Jim explained what he thought was going on.
“Okay, I’ll buy that, unless, of course, she’s an accessory.”
“If she’s an accessory to a homicide, she’s got bigger problems than an honor offense. Those guys are pretty smooth, aren’t they? Let’s step outside.”
They went through the waiting room to the executive corridor, and from there to the rotunda. To Jim’s surprise, the big midshipman, Hays, was already there, obviously waiting for them.
“Yes?” Jim said as he approached them.
“Sir, I need to speak frankly?”
“Shoot.”
“Like I said, I know Julie Markham, so I’m not exactly, um, unbiased. I like her a hell of a lot is what I’m saying. Most of her classmates do, too. But here’s the thing: If what she knows is because somebody else has something he’s holding over her, would you go after Julie or the somebody else?”
Jim was tall, but he still had to look up to measure the young giant’s expression. Hays seemed sincere. Before he could answer, Branner chimed in.
“We’re not after Julie Markham, unless she threw Dell off the roof, or stood by and watched, okay?”
“No fucking way,” Hays said quietly. “Ma’am.”
“You sure?”
“She’s tougher than you might think,” Hays said. He frowned as he thought for a moment. “And she’s deeper than I thought. But she’s no killer.”
“Okay,” Branner said evenly. “Then we’re looking for who did throw Dell off the roof. Assuming someone did. Our target is not Markham, unless we see evidence-hard evidence-that she did something to Dell.”
The midshipman nodded, then exhaled. “Got it,” he said. “I’ve got to talk to some people. And exams start this week. Makes it harder.”
“Call this number,” Branner said, handing him a card. “And remember those pictures.”
“Yes, ma’am. Serious shit. And ma’am?”
“What?”
“The officers are always saying not to confuse the Academy with the fleet, the real world? You shouldn’t confuse the mids with the officers, either, okay?”
Branner looked at Jim, who nodded. “Got it,” he said.
“Yes indeed,” Branner added.
Hays nodded, squared his shoulders, and walked away.
“And thank you,” Branner called after him, her voice echoing in the rotunda. She turned to Jim. “That was interesting,” she said. “So they do know something?”
“I think he does.”
“Then why the hell hasn’t he come forward before this?”
“Because they’re so close to getting out of here. So close to achieving what they’ve all worked their asses off for these past one thousand four hundred and sixty days, and they do count them, every day. And up to now, they probably thought the investigation would find the answer.”
“So what’s changed?”
“Maybe now they’re sensing a cover-up in the making?”
“Why would the firsties care?”
“Because Dell, even if he was only a plebe, was a mid. One of them. Remember what I told you about the rules of the game here. This is going to get very interesting.”
By 3:30, Jim and the chief, accompanied by an elderly PWC engineer, were walking the ground behind the tennis courts, trying to match the tunnel maps with a possible location for the top end of the shaft that led down into the old ammunition storage room. Branner had gone back to her office to update her case file with her notes from their meeting with Captain Rogers and the midshipmen. Jim had scheduled a briefing for the entire tunnel surveillance team, including Branner, for 4:30 at the Academy police building over at the naval station.
“There’s nothing that we’re using that would go down that far,” the PWC engineer said. “This whole area was recovered from the river forty years ago and filled in. That ammo bunker’s gotta be thirty feet down.”
“Well, there was a ladder going up, but I couldn’t see how high, and I wasn’t going to climb up in there by myself.”
“Shit,” the engineer said, looking at the diagrams. “I won’t go down there at all. That old brickwork’s like marzipan. One good vibration, the whole damn thing would come down.”
“Well, there’s nothing around here that looks like a ventilator shaft or storm drain or any other thing,” the chief said. “I wonder if it connects underground to something that goes into Bancroft Hall.”
They studied the diagrams. There were no utility tunnels or even lines anywhere near where they were standing. There were only the eighty-foot-high light towers, which illuminated the courts at night.
“Okay, I give up,” Jim said. “That whole ammunition bunker complex should be beyond the eighth wing’s foundations. If that shaft comes up, it has to be around here somewhere.”
“Hold on a minute,” the engineer said. “The eighth wing is built entirely on landfill. The original Bancroft had six wings, and a street between the end of the fifth and sixth wings and the seawall. I was here in 1956. The seventh and eighth wings weren’t here, nor was the land they’re built on.”
“Which means this diagram’s wrong,” Jim said. “Fort Severn couldn’t have been where this diagram shows it. It would have had to be back alongside the-what, sixth wing, right?”
The PWC engineer nodded. The chief was confused by the wing numbering. Jim explained that the wings were numbered second, fourth, sixth, and eighth on one side of Bancroft, and first, third, fifth, and seventh on the other side. “Like channel buoys used to be-right side were even numbers, left side were odd numbers. Naval tradition stuff.”
“Okay, then, if Fort Severn was back here,” he said, pointing on the map to the building right behind the eighth wing, “then that vent shaft would be coming up…very near the eighth wing. Not out here in the tennis courts. So we need to get into the basement of the eighth wing.”
They folded up the maps and walked back toward the eighth wing. “I wonder how many other errors there are in these diagrams,” Jim said.
“The diagrams of the active utility tunnels are correct,” the engineer said. “The Fort Severn stuff goes back over a century and a half. I’m not surprised it’s been displaced. Someone was probably supposed to survey it, and got scared.”
“And then faked it,” Jim said.
“Yeah, probably. Can’t blame him.”
They entered the eighth wing through the doors beneath the sixth wing-eighth wing overpass bridge. There were dozens of doors in the eighth wing’s basement. They led to storage rooms, utility bays, extracurricular club rooms, and laundry and trash collection areas. “Hell,” Jim said, “This’ll take a week to search.”
“We don’t have to search this,” the chief said. “All we gotta do is catch the sumbitch coming out of that oak door into the modern tunnels. Do we really care how he gets into the Fort Severn tunnels? Now that we know it’s probably feasible?”
“You’re right,” Jim said. “We don’t. Let’s go.”
Using the access grate near Dahlgren Hall, they went down into the main utility tunnel and examined the oak doors again. They were still locked, and there were no further signs of anyone using a key or a jimmy to work the locks.
“I’ve got my surveillance team setting up motion detectors throughout the tunnel complex,” the chief said. “We’ll set one here, pointed at this door. They’re low-level lasers. Break the beam, it sends an alert and its location number to a central station. Size of a pack of cigarettes. We can track him through the tunnels, take him where we want to.”
“How will these things communicate with the outside?”
“They don’t; so we’ll need a comms node underground. I’ll cover all that at the briefing.”
“All right, I guess we’re done here,” Jim said. He turned to the engineer. “We need this whole op to stay hush-hush, so please ensure that there’s nothing about it on your internal LAN, okay?”
“Gotcha covered,” the engineer said. “The Public Works officer knows about it, but that’s it.”
“Good. Chief, I’m going back to my office. I’ll bring Agent Branner over with me at sixteen-thirty. See you at the briefing.”
Ev didn’t get through to Liz until just before five o’clock. He told her about his run-in with the commandant.
“Did he directly threaten to do something to Julie?”
“Yes,” Ev said. “He threatened to delay her commissioning. That would put her date of rank permanently behind her entire class. I’d call that a threat.”
“Because he thinks she’s withholding information?”
“I think someone’s telling him that, yes.”
Liz didn’t say anything for a moment.
“I mean, I don’t know what the hell to do about this. Julie’s not listening to either one of us.”
“That’s the problem,” Liz said. “Maybe I’ll have another go at that security officer, Jim Hall.”
“You think he’ll talk to you?”
“Maybe. He’s a graduate. He might be sympathetic to Julie’s situation.”
“This is really frustrating,” Ev said. “You should have seen Robbins. One minute all sweetness and light in front of my colleagues, presenting me this stupid award certificate, the next acting like some sort of gestapo director.”
“They’re under a ton of pressure,” Liz said. “Media, congressional, the Secretary of the Navy, probably. Let me see if I can talk to Hall. Want to get together later tonight?”
“I’d probably be lousy company,” he said. “I want to smack somebody.”
“Go for a long run. Or take your boat out. Push it hard. I have to go out to a chamber of commerce dinner. I’ll be back by ten. If you’re still all stressed out by then, we’ll figure something out.”
Smiling in spite of the tension he felt, Ev promised her he’d be there. He hung up and thought about how direct she was. He couldn’t imagine Joanne being so forward. And bedtime with Liz was also very different, although, to be fair, he and Joanne had been married for a long time. But Liz was exciting, direct, challenging without being threatening. He couldn’t imagine being in the mood for sex right now, given everything that was going on with Julie. But Liz was right: Go beat up your body, bleed all this stress into the river, and then go see her. As long as Julie was being obstinate, there wasn’t anything he could do to help her. So he’d go do something about his situation. With Liz. There, he thought. That wasn’t even hard, was it?
By 10:00 P.M., the entire team was in place. The topside surveillance people were set up at all the Yard grates and were up on a tactical radio net. Jim and Branner were down under Stribling Walk in the main tunnel complex, set up in a telephone switchboard vault. The motion-detector string was in place, ready to transmit alerts via a separate radio frequency, which would be detectable underground. The chief and one radio operator were set up in a mobile CP in the radio van they’d borrowed from the Annapolis cops. The van was hardwired to the retransmitter underground.
The switchboard vault was ten feet by ten feet and filled with equipment cabinets, which kept the room at a humming ninety degrees despite the air-conditioning. Branner was in her NCIS tactical field gear, and Jim was similarly outfitted. Both wore shoulder transceiver mikes provided by the chief. There were no chairs in the switchboard vault and very little room to move around, so Jim and Branner sat shoulder-to-shoulder against one of the equipment racks. The door to the main tunnel was almost closed, but open enough to show a slit of light from the main tunnel.
“This is cozy,” Jim said. “But kind of a boring date.”
“If you and I ever go on a date, that’s a word you’ll never use,” she replied, looking at her watch for the umpteenth time. Jim wondered if she’d get the ballpoint out pretty soon and start tapping again.
“It’s after twenty-two hundred. Did Midshipman Hays ever get back to you?” he asked.
“Nope,” she said. “You think our vampire’s going to make his move tonight?”
“It’s a Wednesday. They’re not allowed off the reservation on Wednesdays-sort of a reminder of who grants them liberty. The rest of the time, he could just walk out the gate after evening meal.”
“The Annapolis cops said there hadn’t been another vampire mugging since Bagger,” she said. “So maybe he got scared.”
Jim remembered the brief look he’d had into the guy’s face. “I don’t think scared ’s in his lexicon,” he said. “This is one big game to him; the more danger, the bigger the thrill. Plus, the fact that Bagger died isn’t common knowledge here at the Academy.”
“Maybe we ought to announce it,” she said. “Let the fucker know what he did.”
“If anything would force him into deep cover, that would certainly do it. We need him to keep doing this.”
She didn’t say anything, just looked at her watch again. Then she leaned back and closed her eyes. “You pretty confident Hays will give us something?” she asked.
“It might take a little longer than he thought. At some point, he has to talk to Markham. She may go ballistic, or just clam up. But, yeah, he’ll come back with something. He wasn’t exactly ambivalent about the whole thing.”
They waited some more. Then the radio squawked quietly in their shoulder mikes. It was the chief, making a comms check. There were seven teams in place, including themselves and the team out on the St. John’s campus. The chief’s call sign was team zero. Each team responded with its number. Branner answered for both of them. “Team three, in position, no contact.”
“Team four, no contact.”
“Team five, no contact.”
“Team six, no contact, no nothing.”
“Team seven, no contact, no vampires.”
“Okay, people,” the chief came up. “Remember, this is surveillance. No contact just means the game hasn’t started yet.”
There was an instant of silence, and then a new voice came up on the circuit. “This is station eight. I’ve got lots of contacts.”
Another moment of silence, and then the chief was back on. “Who’s fucking around?” he called.
No one answered. Jim looked at Branner. Station eight? Not team eight? Neither had recognized that voice as being one they’d heard on previous comms checks. Then the motion detector board lighted up.
“We have motion in the cross tunnel under Buchanan Road,” Jim announced to the net. A second light came up. “Going past the supe’s house. Moving toward Dahlgren.”
Branner leaned down to study the light panel. Using a grease pencil, Jim had drawn a rough diagram of the tunnel complex onto a piece of plywood. He’d put numbers next to X ’s on the diagram, indicating where the chief’s team had placed motion detectors. Then he’d coded a map of the streets and major buildings above ground to indicate where each numbered detector was. Each team had a copy of the coded street map.
“Team four, watch your grate,” the chief ordered.
“Team four,” came the laconic acknowledgment. As in, What do you think we’re doing?
“He’s past four’s grate,” Jim announced on the net, still puzzling over the “station eight” call. “Four, you’re now in position to get behind him.”
“Roger that; say when,” four answered.
A third light came on, indicating that something had turned the corner at the dogleg turn and was now headed up the main tunnel.
“He’s going pretty slow for a runner,” Branner said, watching the lights. “And what was that ‘station eight’ bullshit about ‘lots of contacts’?”
“Don’t know,” Jim said, concentrating on the lights. “But when he passes team six, that’ll give us two teams behind him and us in front. That’s when we go.”
At that moment, there was a loud clicking noise as all the lights out in the main corridor went off, followed a moment later by the lights in the switchboard room. The PWC watch officer, who had been monitoring the tactical net, came up and announced that the tunnel lighting breakers had been thrown in the vicinity of the dogleg turn.
Branner had her flashlight out, pointed into a tight white cone at her feet so as not to reveal their position to anyone out in the passageway.
“Where exactly is that breaker box?” Jim asked.
The PWC watch officer described the location, and Jim pointed down to the diagram. “The lights indicate he’s here, but that breaker is behind that position. Two of them?”
Before Branner could answer, they both felt a movement in the air, and the door to their vault swung open on silent hinges. The air moved again, as if a pressure differential had been created somewhere down the tunnel.
“Team four,” Jim ordered. “Enter your grating, head toward the river and turn left up under Stribling now. Possible contact a hundred feet in from your entry position. Team six, stand by.”
“Four, roger, coming in now.”
“Six, standing by.”
“Let’s go,” Jim said to Branner. “Whatever’s coming up the tunnel’s only a hundred and fifty feet away.”
“Suits me,” she said, getting to her feet and checking her stun gun. They’d elected to equip each team with the stun guns, rather than take chances with ricocheting bullets down in the maze of concrete tunnels. Given some of the things the runner had already done, however, everyone still had a sidearm.
Jim pulled the shoulder mike into his left hand and kept his Maglite in his right hand. Branner could cover both of them if there were shooting to be done. That station eight business was still nibbling at the edge of his mind. ‘Lots of contacts’? Then he had a thought: Was it him? Had their runner broken into the tactical net?
They stepped out the opened door and felt a definite movement of air in their faces. Almost a draft, not too strong, but coming toward them. Why? Where was the air coming from? Jim tried to review the tunnel layout in his mind, but the darkness had his attention. They stood just outside the telephone switchboard vault, and the light board down on the floor was still visible. He glanced back and saw yet another light blink on. Whatever was coming up the tunnel was closer by fifty feet.
“This is zero, what’s happening, three?”
“This is three; stand by,” Jim said, and then nudged Branner. “Lights,” he said, and they both shot bright white beams down the main tunnel in the direction of what was coming. What they saw startled them both. It looked like a huge metal sphere. It filled the tunnel and was rolling right toward them. Their flashlights reflected off the smooth surface as if it were glass, but it was definitely moving.
“We have a metal sphere coming down the tunnel right at us,” Jim announced to the net, wondering why the sphere wasn’t making any noise.
“What the fuck is that thing?” Branner whispered, pointing her stun gun even as she realized it would be useless. The huge sphere kept coming, not too fast, but not slowing down, either, rolling right at them. Jim felt the weight of the concrete ceiling bearing down on him as he just stood there watching this thing.
“Three, this is team four; where are you?”
“Standing just outside our hidey-hole. There’s this thing going up the tunnel. Where are you?”
“Right behind it, three,” the other voice said. “It’s a big metal ball of some kind. Rolling all by itself.”
“I’m gonna shoot it,” Branner growled, reaching for her Glock.
“Negative,” Jim shouted, batting her hand down. “Four’s right behind it. I know what that is-it’s a balloon! It’s a Mylar weather balloon. That’s why we can’t hear it.” He called out on the net that the thing was a weather balloon. When it reached them, Jim put his hand out. His finger pressed into it, and then the huge sphere bounced off his hand and stopped rolling.
“If I can’t shoot it, I’m gonna pop it,” Branner said, angry now that someone had been screwing around with them. She pulled a knife and jabbed at the balloon, which popped with a dull bang and then deflated. They were left facing the flashlights of team four, two Yard cops who were staring down at the puddle of metallic plastic between them.
“Okay,” one of them said. “What’s up with this shit?”
At that moment, the radio went off. “Hey there, boys and girls,” the station eight voice said. “Are we having fun yet?” This was followed by laughter, and then silence. Then the lights flashed back on in the main tunnel. Jim looked down at the mike in his hand and swore.
The teams convened back at the naval station police building thirty minutes later for a debrief. Branner kicked things off.
“It’s obvious those tunnels belong to this guy as much as they belong to PWC,” she said. “He was into the retransmitter freq from the git-go.”
“It almost sounds like he has a closed-circuit TV system down there,” the chief offered. “I mean, it’s like he could see what was happening, where people were.”
“How the hell did he control the lights?” one of the cops asked.
“The lights are on lighting transformers,” the PWC engineer said. “They’re set out in blocks along the tunnels, so you don’t lose all the lights if one fixture has a ground or other problem. It’s marked LIGHTING TRANSFORMER right on the box.”
“Did you guys have lights when you came down?” Jim asked the men on team four.
“Yeah. It only got dark when we came around the corner. We were confused when our lights reflected off that balloon thing.”
Jim looked at Branner. “I think I want to go back down there,” he said. “I want to see where the lighting transformers are that control the passageway lights near where we were holed up.”
The chief, conscious of his overtime budget, asked if the rest of the cops were done for the night. Jim said yes, and the meeting broke up.
Jim and Branner went back over to the Yard, and down into the main tunnel from the Stribling Walk grating entrance. They retraced their steps to the telephone vault, then looked around to see if they could find the control box for the passageway’s overhead lights. Just past a point where the main tunnel did a small zigzag, they found the nearest electrical panel marked LIGHTING TRANSFORMER and opened the front cover. They found a surprise inside-a message written in black grease pencil on the inside of the box cover. HMC: YOU SAID ONE-ON-ONE – READY 4 THAT ANYTIME. The message was signed with a smaller version of the shark logo from the big tag down the passageway.
“And this means something to you, right?” asked Branner.
“Yup. And he had to have been right here, outside the vault door. These switches look like local control to me.”
“He knew where we were, and he was able to get down here, kill the lights, set that big balloon in motion, and be gone by the time we came out and those other cops came down here looking for us,” Branner said.
Jim looked around the empty tunnel. “If he was gone,” he said. “Hell, he may have been hiding in one of these utility rooms the whole time. None of us searched the place after that balloon thing.”
“So how come the motion-detector string didn’t tag him if he was moving around out here?”
“Good question,” he said. “I asked the chief to leave all those things in place and just take the control box back with him. Let’s see, the nearest detector set should be down there, where the flap doors for that big storm drain are.”
They walked down the tunnel in the direction of Bancroft Hall. The tunnel expanded into a vestibule area next to the storm drain access, the flaps of which sloped down from the floor at a forty-five-degree angle. The flaps, hinged and spring-loaded, would open with water pressure on the tunnel side, but otherwise they’d remain closed to any access from the drain itself. They searched the cableways, lighting fixtures, and electrical junction boxes until they found the diminutive detector-transceiver. It was taped to the underside of a telephone system amplifier and pointed out into the main passageway. The mirror was in place directly across from it. There did not appear to be anything amiss with the installation-the wires were in place and the box was intact, its tiny laser aperture pointing correctly across the passageway at the receiver.
“This thing should have worked if he came up the tunnel this way from Bancroft,” Jim said.
“But if he knew where it was, couldn’t he have simply crawled under it?” Branner asked.
“Yeah, but these lasers are not in the visible light range. It’s not like he could see little beams of light shining across the tunnel. Unless he had a detector of his own. And there’s no way he could have that.”
Branner shook her head. “ I’ve got one,” she said. “On the dash of my car.”
Jim thought about it. “You mean like a police radar detector? But he’d still have to be in the beam to get a detection.”
“Not necessarily,” she said. “That thing shoots a laser beam across the tunnel. The mirror here reflects it back. Something intrudes, the detector sends an alarm. But there has to be some scattering of the refracted light. Down here in a concrete tunnel, that would go everywhere. All he’d have to do is carry a laser detector in his hand to know that these things were down here. Then he could go looking for them.”
“And getting on our tactical freq-all that would take is a police-band scanner. It wasn’t as if we were encrypted.”
“Right. Not much magic to it, once you think about it.”
“But at least some familiarity with electronics. So we’re looking for some whiz kid in the double-E lab.”
“Got any of those here at the Naval Academy?” she asked.
“Only a couple hundred,” he said. “And the thing is, he’s had time, lots of time, to rig his own shit down here if he wanted to. For all we know, he’s got a motion-detector net of his own. These mids have access to real radars, advanced computer networks, acoustic transducers, video-based fire-control systems-you name it, they’re taught it.”
“Let’s get out of here,” she said. “This place is giving me the creeps.”
Jim had been thinking the same thing. The silence, the strange-smelling atmosphere, the feeling of being pressed in by all the bare concrete, and a mental image of that vampire face had been working on him ever since they had come back down. That and a feeling of helplessness when confronted by the fact that their quarry could just as easily be their hunter.
Once back outside, they both took a moment to breathe in some fresh air. The night was clear and almost warm, with a small breeze carrying a hint of salt air in from the bay. Bancroft Hall was lighted up as usual as the midweek press of the regular academic load and the impending approach of exams kept the midnight oil burning.
“So how’d he do the balloon?”
“Inflated it in the tunnel-they use a cylinder of helium. Not very big. And then he wedged a grating door open to create a pressure gradient toward us. It wasn’t rocket science.”
“This guy’s defeating us,” Branner said.
“There’s still one window open,” Jim replied, heading for his truck. “That one-on-one challenge. I started that with a mark on his tag. He replied that night when he sent that tennis ball down the passageway. Now he’s come back with it.”
“What’s the HMC bit?”
“I put that over his tag-Hall-Man-Chu. HMC. Tagger bullshit.”
“You’re not seriously thinking of going down there alone, are you?”
“I’m seriously thinking of making it look like I’m down there alone.” He grinned at her. “You up for an adventure?”
“I’m up for getting him down there and then filling the tunnels full of carbon monoxide,” she growled.
“He’s probably got a detector for that, too. Wal-Mart sells them, as I remember. Where’s your Bronco?”
“Out by the Maryland Avenue gate. Assuming the locals haven’t boosted it.”
“My ride’s right over here, in front of the supe’s quarters. Want to come back to the boat for a nightcap?”
She stopped and looked around at the Yard. Globed streetlights shone through the spidery branches of black trees. Down along the river, the big academic buildings were still fully illuminated. Behind them the looming silhouette of the chapel blacked out an entire chunk of the night horizon. “I feel really shitty about what happened to Bagger,” she said finally. “I should go back to the office. Check voice mail, messages. The thing is, I don’t much want to go back to the office. Or to my apartment tonight.”
“There are two guest cabins on the boat,” he said. “C’mon back with me. You can take your pick. We’ll get some wine, sit up on deck until the dew gets too heavy.”
She gave him a brief, weary smile. “Why not?” she said. “Can’t dance.”
“Follow me,” he said, suddenly happy for her company. “I’ll give you a lift to the main gate.”
An hour later, they sat watching the lights across the harbor from the cockpit of his boat. It turned out she kept an overnight kit in her Bronco, and she’d changed into a loose-fitting workout suit. He’d given her a sweater and a ball cap, and he’d changed into jeans and a sweater. Jupiter was in his cage, partially covered against the night breeze coming in from the bay. Jim had some single malt; Branner had opted for wine.
“Where are you from originally?” he asked.
“Omaha,” she said. “My parents were both cops. He was a detective before he retired, and she worked for Internal Affairs.”
“If she’s was as good-looking as you are, she must have been downright lethal.”
“Thank you, sir. And she was. Lethal, I mean. She could drink any man under the table and they’d tell her anything. Not that we had a big police corruption problem in dear old Omaha.”
“You do college?”
“Creighton, right there in town. Jesuit school. Took a prelaw curriculum.”
“Wow. So what happened?”
“Met too many lawyers,” she said. “Even married one, just for grins. Big mistake. All fixed now, though.”
He decided not to ask what “all fixed” meant. He told her about growing up in Pensacola at his father’s boatyard. He admitted to her that he didn’t really enjoy going very far out into the Gulf.
“Truth be told, I’m prone to seasickness,” he said. “Which is why I don’t take this beauty out on the bay, either.”
“I’m with you,” she said. “Being from Omaha, the ocean was just about the biggest damned thing I’d ever seen. And then a marine biologist told me one day at the beach that they called the first two hundred yards out into the water ‘the feeding zone.’ So now I just look at it.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty of sharks out there in the bay,” he said. “But the big threat around here are the damned jellyfish.”
“There you go,” she said, settling into the sweater, which she had thrown loosely over her shoulders. “Another reason to stay on nice dry land. I don’t like the water, and I don’t like confined spaces, either.”
“Like tunnels.”
“Exactly.”
He was a little surprised. After all that redhead bluster, Branner was actually scared of a couple things. Although, he had to admit, she’d gone right down there with him.
“You date much around here?” he asked.
“Nope. Mostly work. I was seeing this guy up in D.C. for a while, but he faded. A couple of Sunday nights getting home on Route Fifty during beach season took the fun right out of it. How about you?”
“Nobody special. The female mids are too young, and most of the tourists are too old. I party with the marina people once in awhile, but that’s a pretty wet-drunk scene after about eleven at night. Occasionally, things work out.”
“Never married?”
“Nope. Not against it, mind you, but…”
“It’s overrated,” she said, but did not elaborate. She looked smaller now, all tucked into his big cable-knit sweater, her legs curled under her in the soft deck chair. If he closed his eyes, he could still visualize those legs when she was decked out for business. Copper hair, green eyes, small, almost pug nose, pale white skin with a few freckles. In-your-face sexy.
“Where’d you go, cowboy?” she asked, and he opened his eyes and saw that she was smiling at him. It dramatically softened her face.
“I was thinking,” he said.
“Uh-oh,” she said. The challenge was back in her voice.
“Yeah. Of how pretty you are, sitting over there. And how tough and hard-boiled you are in your day job. I was going to say, how tough and hard you try to be, but the fact is, I think it’s not an act. I was wondering why?”
“Simple,” she said with a small sigh. “I’m a redhead.”
“Uh, yeah?”
“What do think of when you see a redhead?”
He thought about being diplomatic. Nah. “Trouble?” he said.
“There you go. Men expect nothing but trouble from a redhead. So I oblige ’em. That way, they think they have me figured out, and when the occasion calls for it, I can surprise them.”
“Is all that necessary?” he asked. “In the NCIS business, I mean?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “Most male agents meet a reasonably attractive female agent, or any government professional, they get hung up on the reasonably attractive parts.”
“Go on.”
“You meet another guy, you put a pleasant expression on your face and you shake hands, and that’s that, right? Guys meet me, they check out my face, legs, my front and back, legs again, and then ask, after I’ve already told them, what I do. It takes everything I’ve got not to tell them I’m a nine-hundred-dollar hooker, just to see what they’d do.”
“I think I might hit the ATM machine myself.”
She laughed out loud. “Studly guy like you?” she said. “Tell me you’ve never paid for it.”
“Only as a Marine in WestPac, and of course, over there, as we all know, it doesn’t count.”
She laughed again and sipped some wine.
“So why the provocative clothes?” he asked. “More dazzle?”
“Yep,” she said. “It works, too. That’s why I’m the boss of my own little resident agency, such as it is, at age thirty. What you see is what you get. That’s my approach.”
“But they don’t get it, do they?” he said with a grin.
“Nice one, Mr. Hall,” she said. “Does that shower work down there, or is there some special maritime incantation to make it produce hot water?”
“It’s complicated, but you can do it. Turn the left-hand knob, the one marked with the H, to the left and you’ll be good to go. In fact, you’d better turn the right-hand knob, too, or you’re going to be red all over. So to speak.”
She cocked her head at him, finished her wine, and gathered herself to go below. “Thanks for the company,” she said. “And thanks for not making some clumsy pass. You’re a very attractive man.” She stopped, as if wondering if she’d said too much. “I’m really bummed about Bagger, and I have this feeling that the Dell case is falling out of my hands.” She smiled up at him. “Takes the romance right out of it, you know?”
“I understand,” he said. “If you get bored later…”
“Yeah? What should I do if I get bored later, Mr. Hall?”
“Jupiter here plays a mean hand of gin rummy,” he said with a straight face.
She straightened and slowly smoothed the front of the exercise suit over the contours of her body, letting him watch as she did it. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. Then she went below.
Jim relaxed in his chair and poured some more scotch. He tried to think about the case of the tunnel runner, but his mind kept coming back to Branner. He wondered what it would take to get through all that armor. And then he realized that nothing would get through all that armor until and unless she decided to take it off.
“She’s a tough one, bird,” he said. But Jupiter already had his head under his wing. Bird, he decided, had the right idea. He gathered up the sleeping parrot and went below himself. He put Jupiter into his big cage, doused all the lights, set the alarm system, and then went into his own cabin. He read for fifteen minutes before the rack monster sounded its siren song and he turned off the light. He couldn’t quite figure Branner out. It was as if she were appraising him, as if she hadn’t made up her mind whether or not she liked him. Actually, like was the wrong word. Respect. Branner was all about respect. He drifted off.
He woke up to the sounds of somebody moving around out in the lounge. He looked at his watch and saw that he’d been down for no more than half an hour. He lay still, wondering if Branner was looking for something. There was some light coming through the portholes on either side of his cabin, enough to let him see the door clearly. The boat was moving gently in tune with the harbor’s tidal currents.
The alarm panel light was steady, so it wasn’t an intruder. Had to be Branner. A moment later, he saw the door handle turn down, but the door did not move. Then the handle moved again, and the door slowly opened wide. It was Branner. She appeared to be wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt, which didn’t reach much below her hips. She stood there for a long moment, barely visible in the dim light, her hair down around her shoulders, the curves of her hips and thighs lovely. She had an expression he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t move, curious to see what she’d do.
“You awake, Hall?” she asked softly.
“I am now. You want a light on?”
“No,” she said, coming over to the bed. She sat down sideways on the bottom edge, tentatively, as if she didn’t trust the bed to hold her. “I need to know something.”
“Shoot.”
“You said you got in trouble, over in Bosnia, when you were in the Marines. I’d like to know what really happened. If you want to tell me, that is.”
He lay back on the pillows and put his hands behind his head. “It was a blue on blue-friendlies firing on friendlies. I was the spotter-the guy who can see the bad guys when the friendly artillery can’t. My job was to call artillery fire down on this fifty-seven-millimeter cannon some Serbs were using to pick off schoolchildren trying to get across a street. Serbs’ idea of sport.”
“Who were the friendlies?”
“An Italian peacekeeper squad. They were emplaced on a hillside below the Serbian position. Serbs didn’t know they were there, but the Italians couldn’t do anything about the cannon.”
“Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”
“Couldn’t. It was going to take artillery of some kind-mortars, bigger guns. The Italians had rifles. Anyway, I called the mission ‘danger close,’ meaning there were friendlies close to the intended target. The Brit radio operator told his arty people that it was danger, but not danger close.”
“And that made a difference?”
The boat rocked gently as something went by in the darkened channel. The curtains swayed, changing the light in the cabin. “Yeah, that made a difference. ‘Close’ means the artillery folks hedge their bets with the fall of their rounds. Remember, they can’t see the target, so they shoot the first one near the target. My job was to watch to see where it fell and then adjust their fire-control solution. Danger close, that first round is always fired long, or beyond the target, just to make sure.”
“And?”
“They dropped a one-oh-five round on top of the Italian position. Got ’em all. I wasn’t sure they’d been hit-I was three thousand meters away-but it looked bad. Not knowing, I went ahead and adjusted the fire onto the Serb position. They got on in three rounds, and then fired ten for effect. Hamburgered ’em pretty good. But the Italian local commander couldn’t raise his people, so they sent some folks to go look.”
“And they blamed you?”
“Well, there was an inquiry, of course. I had been up there solo. My radio operator was in the rear with the gear, down with Tito’s revenge. The Brit radio operator said I called danger, not danger close. The Italians were furious, in their inimitable style. They went up the UN chain of command, looking for blood. My bosses were terribly embarrassed-Marines are supposed to be experts at this spotting business. It got public.”
“Could you prove your story?”
“Not initially. He said/they said, deal. But then, after I’d been relieved of all duties and sent out of theater, a British signals intelligence outfit came out of the weeds and said they’d had a multitrack tape recorder monitoring the local tactical circuits. They had me on tape. They took it to the Brit artillery people, who fessed up. Like I said, the Brits did the right thing, but by then, my bosses had publicly hung me out to dry, and they weren’t willing to admit they’d screwed up twice. The Marine Corps had been getting ready to court-martial me. Instead, they gave me the choice between the court or taking the ceremonial detail posting to the Academy. Naturally, I took it.”
“How many people died?”
“All nine of them. Direct hit. The Marine Corps kindly made me go face the families. Not fun.”
“God. And afterward? After it came out that it wasn’t you?”
“Came out? Nothing came out. And no one was going to convince the signoras. That damage was well and truly done. Bosnia, Kosovo, that whole peacekeeping scene was a major cluster fuck. I still feel guilty, even though I didn’t cause it to happen. I was part of it.”
“So your career in the Marines went permanently south.”
“Yup. The Corps never forgets.”
“Did the people here at the Academy know the story?”
“The Marines did. I assume somebody briefed the supe. Oh, and did I tell you the Italians had some kids up there? Some local kids-they ran wild over there-had climbed down into the Italian position, begging for food, hanging out. Ground them up, too.”
“Oh shit.”
“Yeah, shit. So that’s why I’m in this ‘nothing’ job.”
She was quiet for a minute. “You associate a career with the chance to get into another mess like that?”
Jim thought about it. “I guess I do. Sometimes, when I get to brooding, I refocus on what’s right in front of me. A pretty day in the harbor. The pleasure of polishing my boat. A nice wine. A pretty lady. Keeping it simple, here, boss.”
She nodded. “I appreciate your telling me this. It explains a lot. Now I just want to cry.”
“When I think about all that, so do I, Special Agent. You better get back to bed.”
She gave him a long look, then nodded and quietly left the cabin. Jim didn’t know what to think, so he went back to sleep, hoping not to dream about that ravaged red hillside far away.
Went bowling last night. Not duck pins-more like fuck pins. It was really kind of funny, watching those cops doing the funky chicken trying to get away from my little surprise. Running around down there like scared rabbits. And then I talked to them on their own radio circuit-that was perfect. They still don’t get it. Those are my tunnels, not their tunnels. They think they can catch me with motion detectors, and then they come up on a clear tactical radio frequency and let me listen. Keystone Kops. They ought to be making movies. And when it was all over? They just leave. I think they don’t like it down there. I saw a couple of the Yard cops, and they were spending more time looking around at all that concrete than they were looking for me. I could have reached out and touched two of them once I put the lights out. Too bad I didn’t have my vampire rags. Tap one of those fat bastards on the shoulder and give him a quick look and a big old friendly hiss? Would have had two moving sewage leaks.
The security guy is the one behind all this. Messing with my tag. Bringing that redhead agent down there with him. You know who I mean. The one that goes around here showing off her legs while shining that untouchable attitude. She’s not even pretty, not like some of my classmates, right? No, she’s a hard case. Talks tough. Hell on wheels when it comes to hassling mids, but not so good when she comes down into my part of our dear old Academy. I’m going to have to deal with her, too, I think. Word is, she’s hassling the hell out of a bunch of firsties. Over that Dell thing. Well, shit. I guess they have to go through the motions, don’t they? I mean, plebe does a Peter Pan, God, I love that line, and at least they have to seem like they’re doing something about a mess like that. Have you seen the newspapers? Banging on about the hazing, how it’s getting out of hand. Hell, that wasn’t hazing. I think it was like the ultimate come-around. You know, like the TV show? Come around, plebe. Or maybe, Come on down! Damned if he didn’t. And dressed for the occasion, too.
I can read the Executive Department E-mails. Did you know that? Can’t read the ones from NCIS-they’re encrypted, so that’s that. Too hard. But I can read everything the little dant’s efficient assistant is sending out, and isn’t he a regular motormouth. I think my little deal here is going to work. I think someone’s going down-ahem, that was a poor choice of words, I guess. I think someone’s going to be blamed for what happened to Baby Brian Dell. Not the precious system, either. I think someone’s going to be “responsible” in part-yes, that’s the term they’re using. Responsible in part, so they can point and say, There he is. Or is it, There she is? Yes, I think this is going to work. But first, I need to attend to a loose end. Someone who knows a little more than he should. Probably because someone else talked too much. People shouldn’t talk so much. Either way, I’m going to up the ante somewhat. Try my hand at some electrical work, right here in Mother Bancroft. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you hear about it. Yes, you will.
Meantime, I think I’ll go sharpen my dress sword. Now there’s a thing of beauty. It doesn’t talk, doesn’t make phone calls, doesn’t send E-mails. It just hangs there in my closet along with my Marine dress blues. I put my gloves on before I handle it. Keeps it nice and shiny. I’ve got one right-hand glove that’s got a dozen cuts across the thumb where I test the blade. It’s not really supposed to be sharp, you know, or maybe you don’t. It’s just for ceremonies. But then, I know some ceremonies that aren’t in the drill manual, if you catch my drift. I can shave with that thing; that’s how sharp it is. Actually, I can’t shave myself-a little awkward. But I can shave somebody else, and I did, just once.
Some little guy. Into occasional high-risk gymnastics. Said he wanted to fly. And so he did.