Soleck yelled, his adolescent triumph simultaneous with the embrace of Alan’s harness as the three wire slammed the plane to a halt on the deck. Home. Nothing like it in the world; the end to peril and the lure of a rack and a greasy hamburger.
“Three wire and okay!” Soleck shouted.
“Jeez, Soleck, it was a landing. You’re not supposed to be surprised.” Garcia was laughing.
“Mister Soleck, that was slick.” Alan was stripping his harness as he spoke. “Quite an improvement on last cruise.”
Soleck smiled ruefully.
Alan grinned back. “Stay with the plane and get gas and weapons. Ms Garcia, will you be kind enough to go down to the intel center and debrief the tape and all the data on the locations?”
“Roger that, sir.”
“Master Chief? Want to go down to the ASW module and get the latest and greatest? I’ll meet you all in CVIC, okay?”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Alan tossed his empty thermos into his helmet bag, stripped his kneeboard off his leg and pushed it in on top. Under his feet, one of the deck crew popped the hatch in the belly of the plane and let the ladder down. Alan was the first one out.
The deck was empty. He looked around, lost because the island was damaged and there were no marks on the deck. A guy in a flight-deck jersey and a float coat grabbed his shoulder and led him forward, and as he turned he saw a helo turning on the bow. As he watched it, the plane rotated so that her tail showed and he read “USS Fort Klock.”
Alan realized that Captain Lash was already aboard the Jefferson.
His guide went down a ladder that had been cut in the deck and Alan followed, aware of the damage all around him and the repairs that covered it. He saw several bent bulkheads as he went down the ladder well; scorch marks, odd curves where the eye expected a straight line. Like coming home and finding your house had burned; loss, anxiety, anger.
Madje saw him from the passageway, knew he had to be Craik. Craik was thinner than he expected, gaunt. His hair was long for an officer, and his face looked—focused. Set on the next thing. Craik’s glance flicked over Madje, read his collar bars, and moved on. Came back and settled on Madje’s chicken guts.
“I’m Madje, the flag lieutenant. You need to know that Captain Lash is already aboard—”
“I saw his chopper. Madje? We talked?” Craik was clipped, direct.
“Yessir.”
“Let’s get this over with. Take me to Captain Lash.”
“The admiral wants to see you, sir.” Madje reached out to grab Craik’s elbow, anxious to convey how important that was to this focused man. He was surprised when Craik turned on him. It was a different look, as if some angry light had gone out of Craik’s eyes.
“Of course I want to see Rafe—the admiral. How’s he doing?”
Madje smiled. “He’s better. In fact, he’s mad as hell at Lash, and that’s kept him up all day. He tried to go to CIC about an hour ago.”
Craik grinned. “That’s the best—”
“Commander Craik?”
Craik turned. He and Madje were filling the passageway. The newcomer was a short man wearing a rumpled set of khakis with eagles, and he was standing outside the combat information center. Another O-6 ducked past him; the two captains glared at each other, and the taller man hurried forward without a word.
“Yes, sir?” Craik’s voice was gentle.
“What the fuck are you trying to pull, Craik?” The short captain waved a fistful of paper flimsies at him. “You’re trying to go over my fucking head? I’ll have your ass.”
Craik’s voice was quiet. “You’re Captain Lash, sir?”
“Don’t give me that shit, Commander.” Lash stepped forward, right into Craik’s space, nose to nose.
Craik didn’t retreat. “I’m not under your orders, sir. With respect.”
“Like fuck!” Lash said, the last word coming out with a shriek. He seemed to see Madje for the first time. “Get lost, Lieutenant.”
“Sir!” Madje backed away a step and froze; he was about to take the TAO watch and he needed to get past Lash. Very, very quietly he said, “I, uh, need to get—”
Lash ignored him. “I could arrest you,” he said to Craik.
Craik shook his head. Then he looked at his watch. Madje tried to get his hand on the door and failed when Lash pushed forward again.
“What the fuck are you looking at your watch for? You’re done, you hear me? You and your fucking plane aren’t going anywhere. I feel like I’m in the fucking Russian Navy. This is like a fucking mutiny. I’m not taking your shit, Commander. Now get off this deck.”
Craik had backed up this time. He had his back to a steam pipe and a red battle lantern and his face looked as if it was as red and gray as the paint on the bulkhead. A vein on his temple was pulsing. Madje thought that he was scarier than Lash.
“Sir. I don’t have time to argue priorities. There’s a sub out there with three nuclear warheads mounted in missiles. We have about four hours to find it and sink it. That’s our job, sir. Anything else is just ass-covering.”
“Listen to me, you pompous bastard—” Lash began.
Watching Lash sweat and swear, it suddenly came to Madje that it was Lash who was afraid, not Craik. It was a revelation.
“You listen, sir. I’m getting the sub. It’s my duty. It’s your duty too; you can ignore it and cover your ass, or you can do it.” Craik’s voice was still level; he looked at his watch again.
Spittle flew from Lash’s lips. “Jesus. You prick. That’s the end of your fucking career, so help me—”
Captain Hawkins appeared in the red gloom behind Craik. “Admiral Rafehausen would like to see you, gentlemen.”
“Fuck off, Hawkins.” Lash was turning back toward CIC. Madje tried not to meet his eye.
“Captain Lash, your immediate presence was required by the admiral. Shall I tell him you refused?”
Hawkins sounded like nothing would please him more, and his over-educated tones and exaggerated patience made every word an insult.
“The admiral is a medical—basket case,” Lash spat out, but Madje heard the minute hesitation.
Alan Craik was already walking forward to see his friend.
Rafe looked worse than Alan had expected. In fact, he looked worse than Alan could have imagined. His skin was dead white, his hair was a mass of sweat, and he looked very small in a bed surrounded by support equipment. His head was raised a couple of inches by a pillow. His eyes glittered with life. That was all there was of him, there in the eyes.
“Sir,” Alan said.
“Where’s Lash?” Rafe whispered.
“He’s resisting arrest.”
“That—fucker,” Rafe sighed. “Wants—me medevaced.”
“Yeah. I’d say he was on a power trip.”
Rafe’s upper body trembled. For a second, Alan thought he was in pain, until he realized Rafe was laughing. Rafe’s hand reached out and touched his. “This is my battle,” he said clearly.
There was a commotion behind them, and then they all trooped in—Lash, an angry doctor, Hawkins, some junior lieutenant with SWO wings who was probably with Lash. “I want you to pronounce him medically unfit,” Lash was saying to the doctor.
“See how you feel when I wake you up at one in the morning, Lash.” Rafe’s voice was thin, but strong.
“I’m not dealing with his interference again.” Lash ignored the admiral, spoke only to the doctor.
“Lash, like it or not, I’m in command. TAO, I want Commander Craik’s plane armed and out of here before I can say ‘Tail Hook.’ Got me?” Rafe’s voice was still strong.
“Yessir!” Hawkins said.
“And, Hawkins? I want you in as Flag TAO until this is over. Clear?” Still strong.
Lash turned on Alan. “I’ve had enough of you and your asshole buddy, Craik. I am not taking orders from an admiral doped to the gills and whispering lines you taught him. You are under arrest—”
“Shut up, Lash! I’ve had it!” Rafe’s voice sounded like a pistol shot. There wasn’t a noise in the sick bay except the sound of Rafe’s heartbeat monitor. “That’s better,” he said more quietly. “Lash, go back to your ship. I’m ordering you, and every man here, to see to it that my orders are obeyed. Commander Craik is to be afforded every support this goddam battle group has to offer. You know why, Lash? Because it’s our duty. That’s all.” He slumped.
The doctor looked at Lash. “That clear enough for you, sir?”
Lash looked at Rafe for the first time; intimidated and angry. “You could start a war, Admiral. You could start a war and lose the lives of every man in this battle group. For what? You’re doing a foolish thing for the wrong reason, Admiral.” Lash shook his head. “You’re going to start a war with India.”
Rafe’s eyes were on Alan’s now, and they had a bad glitter to them. “We’re—already—war,” he said. “Carry on!”
“You think he’s fit to command?” Lash asked the doctor.
“Yes!” said the doctor, who was also a captain.
“You people are fucking dangerous,” Lash said. He rubbed his hands together, as if washing them. And then he left.
When they had gone, Alan found that he was sitting with Rafe again; this time, he was holding Rafe’s hand.
“How—was I?” Rafe asked after a while.
“Scary,” Alan said.
Rafe choked a little and coughed. “Exc—ellent,” he whispered.
Alan found that he was crying. The tears started as a pain in his eyes and suddenly there were tears pouring down his face. “I might be wrong,” he blurted out. “What if I’m fucking wrong?”
Rafe squeezed his hand. “Not—my—problem, bud.”
Alan thought of Rafe, tall, arrogant Rafe, who had tormented him at his first squadron and taught him how to fly. Who lived to lead his men in the air. Who would spend the rest of his life in a bed like this one, far from the smell of the sea and JP-5 and the bark of the ready room and the kick as the catapult puts you out on the edge. He couldn’t stop his tears. He couldn’t say anything.
Rafe squeezed his hand again, as if Alan was the one who needed the comfort. “Hey, Spy,” he said in a whisper, “go do your fucking job.”
Mike Dukas made himself uncomfortable in a borrowed office at Fifth Fleet HQ, not the environment he’d have chosen but all he could get under the circumstances—he’d had his chat with the admiral; he’d got an okay; he’d put things in motion. And here he was, in a borrowed office in the middle of the night, ready to be a sonofabitch.
He had a large coffee, a tape recorder, and a file labeled Spinner, LCDR R. L. He tried the desk chair, walked around, placed a straight chair across the desk and sat in it, then got up and pushed the desk a foot to the left and tilted a desk lamp toward it. When he sat again in the straight chair, he thought that the glare was now about as much as he could hope for.
He tried the tape recorder. He sipped coffee. He checked his watch. “Okay, send him in.”
Dukas folded his hands over the file and sat there, wishing he looked more like Hollywood’s idea of a Mexican drug lord.
Ray Spinner came in. He looked like hell despite his crisp uniform.
“Siddown.”
Spinner didn’t siddown. He slitted his eyes up as if he, too, wanted to look like Hollywood’s idea of a Mexican drug lord. “You’re the asshole at the phone booth.”
“You’re Lieutenant-Commander Raymond Laurence Spinner?”
“What the hell is this? I’m not going to be pushed around, you get me? I’m not some sailor!” But he was trembling.
Dukas flipped on the tape recorder and told it his own name, the date, and the time. “Location is office B314, Fifth Fleet Headquarters. Your name is Raymond Laurence Spinner?”
“Cut the crap. Who the fuck are you and what is this—a rerun of Law and Order?”
Dukas turned off the tape recorder. “Commander, your security officer has been told of multiple security violations. I have fourteen other pending issues in this file. We can deal with all of them pretty quickly if you get off your high horse and cooperate.”
“You going to read me my rights next?”
“You’re not under arrest.” Dukas folded his hands again. “We read their rights to people who are under arrest.”
“Then what the fuck am I doing here?”
“I believe that Captain Lurgwitz ordered you to be here. Am I right? And you’re in the military, so you obey orders.”
Spinner sat in the straight chair. “I don’t want anything recorded.”
“I can understand that, but unfortunately for this interview to be of any use to anybody, and that includes you, we have to record it.” He turned the machine on.
“I want a lawyer.”
“You’re not under arrest, I told you.”
“I demand a lawyer.”
Dukas addressed the tape recorder. “Lieutenant-Commander Spinner has ‘demanded’ a lawyer. I have explained that he is not under arrest and that therefore, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, he neither needs nor will get a lawyer.”
“I’m getting out of here.”
“I don’t advise that.”
“I know my rights!”
“I believe that Captain Lurgwitz ordered you not only to appear for this interview but to cooperate with it.”
“She can’t order me to incriminate myself!”
“In what?”
“The—” Spinner motioned with his hat at the desk. “Whatever you said.”
“Right. You can’t be ordered to incriminate yourself. If I did allow you to incriminate yourself, I’d be hurting my own case. That’s why it’s to your advantage to have this on tape.” Dukas gave him a little smile.
“All right, cut the bullshit. What’s going on?”
Dukas took out his badge wallet and handed it across the desk. “I’m Special Agent Michael Dukas, Special-Agent-inCharge of the Bahrain office of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.”
Spinner’s face showed increased concentration, interest—perhaps recognition. He put the wallet down. “Oka-a-a-y. So?”
“We have a telephone call on tape that you made last night to your father at his office in Washington. No, don’t say any-thing—I don’t want you to incriminate yourself. Just hear me out. In that call, you can be heard passing information that was given to you by Captain Lurgwitz. As you now know, that information was false and was told to you to test if, in fact, you’d pass it on.”
“That’s entrapment!”
“Your home computer’s hard drive has an e-mail sent to your father in Washington some weeks ago about a supposed failure on Admiral Pilchard’s part. What I guess we’d call privileged information on a sensitive matter.”
“Computer was seized illegally—inadmissible!”
“Your laptop had six pieces of classified material on it when it was examined by the Marine guards at the base gate. Plus your home computer had eleven pieces of classified material, including correspondence, a manual on the coding of personnel files, and other—”
“Everybody’s got classified material at home, for Christ’s sake! Come into the real world, Mike!”
Dukas looked up from the file. “’Special Agent Dukas,’” he said.
“I was trying to relax the atmosphere a little, do you mind?”
“Yes.” Dukas looked at something in the file. “Twenty-seven pieces of pornography were also found on your home computer.”
“Oh, get a life!”
“Two seem to fall within the definition of child pornography, but we’re checking on the ages of the people in the images.”
“Oh, great! Is this what you guys do while the world is being overwhelmed by the enemies of democracy? Boy, we can sleep safe in our beds, the NCIS is on the job!”
Dukas folded his hands again. “Last night, you used the telephone of a foreign national—”
“She’s Canadian!”
“—to call your godmother’s house in Washington in order to discuss the passing of classified information with your father. Thus implicating your godmother.”
“In what?”
Dukas folded his hands. “Sedition.”
It was clear that Spinner didn’t remember what sedition was. He turned red, opened his mouth, and then scrambled out of the chair. “I’m outa here. I’m not going to listen to this. You’ve got nothing—nothing! A mass of, of lies you’ve put together with Lurgwitz, well, it’s well known she hates me because she’s a lesbian, that’s a fact! And you! Talking to me about pornography, about child pornography, for Christ’s sake, you’re shacked up with some pretty young stuff yourself, for Christ’s sake, you think you’re so goddam moral, you knock up your little sweetie and she trots herself down to kill the baby! Is that the moral high ground that you defenders of freedom are coming from? Is that the NCIS uniform code of porking, you can stick it to your girl but nobody else can? I’m outa here!”
If Dukas was surprised by anything that Spinner had said, his face never showed it. His hands, still closed over the folder, made no movement. Instead, he said, “I think you’d better hear what I have to offer.”
“What the fuck does ‘offer’ mean? I didn’t ask for anything!”
“You will.” Dukas gave him the little smile again. “If you’re charged with the things I mentioned, you’ll be asking for a lot.” He kept his voice low and even. “Sit down.”
Spinner slapped his hat against his thigh several times and looked at the doorknob and then sidled toward the chair. “I’m on to any legal tricks,” he said. Dukas bobbed his head and Spinner sat down.
Dukas said, “I won’t go to legal prosecution. No court-martial.”
Spinner’s face broke into a huge grin.
“You won’t have the ordeal of a military trial with the severe punishments that might lie at the end of it. No hard time, no dishonorable discharge—none of that.”
“Hey—” Spinner stood. “All r-i-i-ght.” He put out his hand. “Sorry I got a little over-wrought there. I’m sure you can understand, Mike, this has been kind of trying for me. Bygones be bygones?”
Dukas ignored the hand. “However—”
The grin faded. Their eyes locked, and when Dukas bobbed his head again, Spinner sat.
“However, as I’m sure you remember from a course somewhere, Commander, a captain’s mast is not a legal proceeding. It’s an administrative proceeding. People appearing at captain’s masts have no right of counsel, and the commanding officer is judge and jury. Of course there’s a right of appeal, but then everything becomes public, and the appellate officers can in fact then look into all kinds of stuff.
“On lesser included offenses, you can be brought before a captain’s mast on altogether—let’s see—eighty-one things. Staff security officer wants to proceed on sixteen of those having to do with security violations; the others can be explained to you if you really want to go that way.” He held up a hand. “Not my doing—NCIS would be out of it if there’s a captain’s mast. Only one thing we’d add, and that would be, because it’s on the tape, conduct unbecoming an officer.” Dukas smiled. “What you said to me a couple of minutes ago—very unbecoming. And the remark about Captain Lurgwitz—you’d be dead on that one, and the security stuff is open and shut, I think. The others—who knows?” Dukas stared at him. “So you can have the captain’s mast.” A long pause. “Or you can resign.”
“Why would I do that?” Spinner’s voice was breathy, whiney.
Dukas sat back, the swivel chair squawking under his weight. “Captain’s mast can’t do much in the way of punishment—few days in the brig at worst, stuff like forfeiture of pay for a month, loss of liberty. You can take all that. Problem comes with the nonjudicial results. At the very least, I’d say, a letter in your file. In this case—you know what you’ve done, Commander—the kind of letter that means no more promotions. End of career. You’re a smart guy; you’ve been around; you know what one letter like that can do. And then there are the fitness reports—well, you can imagine the fitness report that’ll come after all this.”
Spinner stared at him, then looked around the room as if he hadn’t seen it before. “That isn’t fair,” he said.
Dukas mumbled something into the telephone and Captain Lurgwitz, the flag captain, came in. She was forty, smart, political; she had big hips and narrow shoulders and she looked as if she fought a battle with weight, but her face was engaging in its cheerful intelligence. She pulled a chair up to the end of the desk and sat down. Dukas leaned over toward her and said, “I’ve been explaining to LieutenantCommander Spinner that NCIS will not prosecute but that I thought there was the possibility of a captain’s mast here.”
“It’s more than a possibility. Ray, you’ve really screwed up. I can convene a captain’s mast on this stuff in a heartbeat.”
“You’ve had it in for me ever since I reported here!”
“Has Special Agent Dukas explained the outcomes? You know there’ll be a letter of severe reprimand, come what may, Ray. Come what may! Plus, I’m now ready to say on your fitrep that you’re the worst officer I’ve ever served with.” She sounded almost sad. “You’re never going to make full commander, Ray.” She put her arm on the back of the chair, turned toward him with her fingers joined just below her right breast. “I heard you make a joke once about somebody who’d been passed over. ‘Like a castrated dog with a hard-on,’ was I think the way you put it.”
Spinner tried to study Dukas’s face through the glare from the lamp. He seemed to refuse to look at Captain Lurgwitz. Finally, he said to Dukas, “What’s this about resigning?”
Lurgwitz opened the clipboard she’d carried in and detached several pages from it. “You resign from the Navy, effective immediately. I can tell you that the resignation will be accepted—usual separation allowance, airfare to CONUS; you keep points toward your pension. However, the fitrep will be the same.” She didn’t say that such a fitrep might affect any notions he might have about blessing the Naval Reserve with his abilities. “Sign where the check marks are.”
“And if I don’t?”
“The mast, and whatever comes out of that. The letter of reprimand. And immediate transfer as assistant fuels officer to the gator freighter that’s now in the Indian Ocean. It’s normally a jg’s billet, but we’ll make an exception for you. You’ll love it at sea.”
Spinner didn’t say that he knew nothing about fuel; she of course knew that, meant that his ignorance would be part of the hell of being on board ship. For six months.
“Does my father have to know?” he said, reaching for a pen.
In CVIC, they gave him a shiny photograph showing the north side of the bay at Quilon. The Kilo-class sub was clear as day, her two white life rings like target circles and her fat bow obvious. On shore, two heavy derricks showed as long dark shadows stretching like grasping hands over the submarine’s hull. One had had a fat white arrow laid over it by an analyst at DNI, and an inset box showed the highest possible resolution, with the derrick arm repeated in grainy black and a white blob like a maggot dangling in the air. The computerized annotation said “Pos Missile.”
Yeah. Alan’s hands shook as he looked at the picture. He tossed it back on the briefing table in front of Garcia. The closed-circuit television camera was on him, recording him for Donitz in Trin.
“So,” he said. “We have no time. If they leave on the ebb, we’ll maybe catch them in the estuary. You and Soleck bring us in low.” He tried to ignore the camera. “Donuts stays high, over the radar horizon to the south. The only thing that matters is the sub, but the surface ships have AAA and SAMs that can reach out and get us while we chase the sub. The sub will try to get out by going under the ships. So we come in low from the west, lay a pattern here—” he pointed at the electronic map—“before they see us. And pop. Okay?”
Off-camera, he placed a dot from a borrowed laser pointer on a spot to the west of Quilon, well off the coast. “We go up and they see us. We’re thirty miles south of them, and maybe they shoot, and maybe they call for air, and maybe they do dick-all.” He found that he was staring at the blank eye of the camera. He went back to looking at Garcia. “We pop. They take an action, we shoot.” He glanced at Simcoe, who was nodding. “My intention is that our harpoon or Donuts’s HARM nails the southern picket ship immediately. If they take no action, we start looking for the sub, laying our second buoy line inshore. If there’s enemy air, Donuts makes the call. Worst case, we’re conducting an inshore ASW exercise under their guns while we wait for them to shoot.”
Simcoe shrugged. “That would suck pretty hard.”
“They’ve been fighting Indian Navy loyalists for three days. The moment we radiate a radar, they’ll shoot.” He spoke with an assurance he didn’t have. Too many guesses.
Garcia raised her hand. “There’s what, five, maybe six SOE ships? And we have one Harpoon and the Hornets have a HARM?”
“We’ll get support from the battle group,” Alan said. His natural tendency to secrecy was overcome by logic. Whom would they tell? “Admiral Rafehausen had a card up his sleeve from the beginning of the exercise. It’s still there, ready to be played.”
Soleck got it immediately. He grinned and looked at Garcia the way a smart kid looks at the next smartest kid. “The Canuck, Garcia.”
She made a V with her fingers and pointed it at her crotch. Universal aviator sign language. Fuck yourself.
Alan held up a hand. “The Canadian frigate, HMCS Picton. What we have to do, with a little help from our air cover, is take out the southern picket ship; it’ll be the only one able to see the Picton when she radiates. Everything else will be over the horizon; we’ll pass the targets to Picton, and she’ll take them. Okay?”
Garcia shook her head.
Soleck raised his hand. “The kid in Stevens’s plane said the sub got them.”
“Yeah, okay,” Alan said. “So they have a SAM system on the sub.”
“Gotta figure.” Soleck shrugged. “Hey, I’m not saying we don’t go. I’m just saying we need to be ready to put out chaff and flares.”
“Flares. Has to be a MANPAD.”
Soleck nodded. “Be prepared, that’s my motto.”
Garcia smiled at him. “Think of that yourself?”
Alan turned to the CVIC guy running the camera. “That’s it. Send it to Trin.”
“Yes, sir.”
It took a lot to shake Dukas, but he was shaken. Ray Spinner had shouted that Leslie was pregnant—“knocked up,” in his words—and Dukas hadn’t reacted. Not on the outside. Inside, part of him cringed. Since he had heard it, he had kept it inside, and he had tried to compartmentalize it but had failed. He had tried to make it unimportant. Why should he believe a creep who’d lie about anything and everything? How could Spinner know such a thing, anyway? Why should Spinner know such a thing when he didn’t?
But the terrible thing was, he did believe Spinner.
“I’m knocking off,” he said to Captain Lurgwitz.
“Lucky you,” she said.
Lucky me.