A week later
Ten miles off the coast of San Diego
“The USS Abraham Lincoln is proud to welcome their new commanding officer…”
An audience of some three hundred sat in folding chairs on the flight deck, there to witness the change-of-command ceremony.
“I had the privilege of working with this distinguished gentleman several years ago…” The speaker, some visiting rear admiral, droned on under the hot September sun. Off to his far left, facing the audience, sat Captain Eagleberg, decked out in his finest dress whites, his nose so heavily bandaged it looked like the Mummy had just stepped off the silver screen and lay down on his face.
The captain would be shipping out the next day to the central Indian Ocean, where he would assume command of the Chagos Archipelago’s Diego Garcia naval base. “A capstone to his distinguished career,” the speaker had called it.
Diego Garcia was one of the worst assignments in the navy—a little piss pot in the middle of nowhere. The navy’s way of shuffling him out to pasture without the embarrassment of a court-martial.
Everyone present knew it.
Watching from his seat in back, crutches tucked under his chair, Command Master Chief Robbie Jackson checked his timepiece.
In his own gratefully brief speech, Old Eaglebeak dutifully extolled the virtues of his successor, Commander Arthur Atticus Gaines. Now Captain Arthur Atticus Gaines.
Good for you, Arthur. And may no one ever call you “Artie” again.
Jackson had heard the rumor that they were planning an award ceremony for him, too, but he hadn’t paid much attention. It hadn’t been announced yet; maybe it never would. They probably couldn’t figure out what medal you give to someone for surviving a homicidal attack from one of your ship’s own crew.
The scalpel had not gone into his liver after all, but it had lacerated his spleen and caused massive internal bleeding. Would have killed him, too, if the medical team Gaines dispatched had not arrived so quickly. And Gaines and his corpsmen were not the only ones Robbie had to thank. The sharp sting he’d felt in his trapezium was a hypodermic filled with succinylcholine—a lethal dose, even for someone as big as Jackson.
Except that Lew had been prevented from pushing the plunger all the way in when Jackson went suddenly crashing to the deck. He’d gotten enough sux in him to slow him down and create a near-paralytic state. But not quite kill him.
Sister Mae had saved his life.
Once he got stateside, Robbie had some time off coming.
He’d use it to pay a good long visit to the bayou.
Scattered applause. Finally the ceremony was winding to a close.
Jackson got up and crutched his way across the flight deck to head below to his office.
He’d been up there since an hour before the ceremony, watching as they loaded a series of three black rubber body bags onto Lieutenant Bennett’s big Greyhound for transport: Commander Scott Angler, JAG. Lieutenant Indira Desai, Intelligence. Lieutenant Lewis Stevens, Medical.
He’d thought about all the bodies they weren’t able to recover. Kristine Shiflin. Sam Schofield. Luca Santiago. Willy and Ángel, the two boys from recycling. Commander Papadakis. The crew of four from the ill-fated Knighthawk. Casualties of war—not with a named enemy but with whatever dark imperative it was that animated people like Lew Stevens.
We steam around the world, Jackson mused, offering protection from our enemies. But the greatest mortal threat Jackson had ever encountered came from one of their own.
And that, he thought, was the most dangerous thing about the Terrible Man.
How often he looked just like the good guy.
Jackson checked his timepiece again, then stepped cautiously down onto the catwalk and headed below.