A thousand things, for whatever reason, had dropped onto my plate at just the wrong moment. I’d only made it home for four hours’ sleep last night, and barely caught six the night before that. Routine responsibilities, including personnel evaluations, patient evaluations, the physical plant report, supply requisitions, the building report, quarterly health and sanitation reports, compliance evaluations, and a host of other administrative tasks were daunting enough.
And then there was Prisoner Alpha.
I’d monitored every minute of her waking hours. Since the tomb on TV, she’d been manic. With frantic competence she’d inspected the electronic parts my guys had scrounged. How could the woman be a natural when it came to electricity, but not understand a key word like watt or ohm?
I had provided her with a circuit tester, demonstrated its use, and watched her experiment for no more than fifteen minutes before she smiled in triumph, nodded to herself, and began scribbling in her notebooks. I’d since deduced that she was converting amperage and voltage into her peculiar code. Then she was back to studying the tomb-wall diagram. That was followed by more scribbling before she began inspecting the pieces of disparate equipment and disassembling them.
Whatever her dysfunction, Alpha’s was a highly organized and almost obsessively focused mind. For the first time, I was on the verge of understanding.
Assuming I don’t get fired, charged, and convicted for giving her a screwdriver and a pair of pliers.
General Grazier continued to be “unavailable” the last three times I had tried to call him. Nor had the general replied to my emails where I’d laid out my latest thoughts about Alpha.
The thing is: if she builds something remarkable, perhaps it will be a key to her identity and the trauma that has manifested in such a devastating and unique pathology.
If pathology it was. The more I watched her, the less certain I was.
The buzzer on my desk jarred me back to the real world.
Janeesha’s voice cheerfully announced, “Chief Petty Officer Raven is here for her ten o’clock appointment, sir.”
“Thank you, Janeesha. Send her in.”
I laid the report to one side, frowning. The way Alpha manipulated and understood electrical equipment was more than just intuitive. She’d been trained. But where? It didn’t matter where a person came from, electrical theory and engineering were universal. Be it a Russian, Indonesian, or Kenyan electrician, they all used the same parts, terms, math, and standards in their designs.
Chief Raven stopped in front of my desk, saluted, and stood at attention, eyes fixed on the “Me” wall behind me with its pictures, diplomas, and certificates.
“At ease, Chief.” The sweatpants and oversized T-shirt she wore barely disguised her supple body. Just being in Raven’s proximity reminds some hibernating part of my limbic system that I’m still male.
“Thank you for seeing me on such short notice, sir.” She dropped into an “at ease” posture.
“Chief, I’ve told you before, unless I’m up to my elbows in alligators, I’ll make time.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now, what can I do for you?”
“We saw the newly discovered tomb on television, sir. The one in Egypt. It caught Falcon’s eye. He noted the inscriptions on the wall, thought he saw a pattern. Patient services was kind enough to print off a JPEG of the inscriptions. After thinking about it . . . or whatever Falcon does . . . he believes it’s a mathematical system. A base-twenty notation, sir.”
I straightened in my chair, pulse beginning to race. “A base-twenty mathematical system? That code is mathematics?”
“According to Falcon, sir.”
Falcon had keyed on that tomb, too? “And you’re here because . . . ?”
“Falcon would like to have Private Edwin Tyler Jones play with the patterns on the computer, sir. Falcon thinks the system is an equation, but he’s not sure of the permutations, or how the different orientation of the symbols affects their numerical values.”
Where on earth did Alpha learn a base-twenty mathematical system?
“Chief, my orders state in clear English that ET is, under no circumstances, allowed to lay so much as a finger on a computer.”
She pulled up, hand rising in salute, figuring she had my decision.
“However,” I blurted before she could touch her brow, “I would be willing to have one of the techs input the data any way Falcon wants.”
Raven’s control, as always, remained perfect. “Thank you, sir.” This time she snapped the salute and started for the door.
“Chief?”
“Sir?” She turned back in mid-pace, head cocked.
“What do you know about those symbols?”
“They come from a tomb in Egypt, sir. Major Swink says they’re not Egyptian. Falcon, he just cued. Um . . . being the way he is.”
How much did I dare tell her? “Were you aware that Prisoner Alpha uses similar symbols?”
“I don’t understand, sir.”
“If Falcon is correct, Alpha’s using the same mathematical system and symbols here, in Ward Six, that were scribbled on that Egyptian wall back in whenever.” I paused. “Off the record, Chief?”
Her gray eyes narrowed in acknowledgment. “OTR, Skipper.”
“And confidential,” I added just to be sure she understood. Taking a chance, I rose and walked over to the monitor that showed Prisoner Alpha’s room. The tawny-haired woman was fiddling with one of the electric parts.
“That’s Prisoner Alpha. Gray, as you call her. And, as we’ve discussed in the past, she’s an enigma. Now you stroll in out of the blue and tell me those symbols she’s drawn on her walls are mathematics.”
Karla shot me a sidelong glance. “Why are you showing me this?”
“Because I’m desperate, Chief. I want to help that woman. She saw that news report on the Egyptian tomb, and it was the first crack in her armor. That diagram painted on the tomb wall almost had her in a manic state. So, I took her a copy of it, probably from the same website that Falcon’s came from.”
I pointed. “You see the device on her desk? General Grazier calls it ‘the doohickey.’ We don’t know what it does other than generate a sort of electromagnetic field. Seems pretty harmless.”
Catching a faint whiff of Raven’s scent, I forced my brain back to the problem. “She wanted to make her doohickey stronger, more powerful. As part of her therapy, as goodwill, as research, whatever you want to call it, I’ve allowed her some random electrical parts. And now, right out of the blue, you bring me part of the puzzle. The symbols she uses are a mathematical system.”
She studied me through a sidelong glance. “Why share this with me, sir?”
“Because I can count the number of people I trust on one hand, Chief. You’re one of them.”
I caught the beginning of her startled expression, a hint of panic, then her control was back. “I don’t understand, sir.”
“My nephew was a SEAL. He died in Syria. Turned a Humvee over in a ditch. All that training, dedication, and skill. Just gone because he was going too fast for a corner.”
I kept my eyes fixed on Alpha as she used the tester on circuits. “I wrangled a study. Wanted to see if there was a way to keep SEALs at the kind of peak performance they need to do the job but ameliorate risk-taking in noncombat situations. I was attached to a team as a ‘medical observer.’ I took blood pressure, periodically looked in guys’ ears, tested reflexes with rubber hammers, and in general did just enough to justify my presence and become invisible.”
I took a steadying breath, uncomfortable with offering a patient such an insight. “I lived with the team for nearly a year. I know as much about what it takes to be SEAL as anyone alive who hasn’t earned his Budweiser.” That’s in-speak for the eagle-trident-and-pistol insignia of the SEALs. The name originated from the BUD/S, or Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training.
Raven was giving me her full attention now.
“I’ve seen what goes on behind the clubhouse door. I know about the hazing, the violence, the ceaseless testing, and how relentless it is for males to constantly reinforce the notion that they’re the best of the best and that they can take any kind of shit anyone can dish out.”
I paused. “Yet you survived the cauldron, made even hotter because you’re the first woman. Honestly, what you achieved defies my understanding of human endurance.”
Her gaze went a little distant. “I couldn’t fail. Took me three roll backs, you know what those are?”
“Yeah, you’re pulled from a SEAL class until the broken bones, torn muscles, or head injuries can heal, then you’re allowed back into the grinder.”
A sliver of smile crossed her lips. “What I didn’t have in upper-body strength I made up for in other ways. They want mental acuity and agility, an ‘I’m going to do this and fuck you’ attitude. I had tons of endurance—and a whole lot of wrath—to keep me going. The time they soaked my tampons in Tabasco sauce? I sneaked in and got to the manuals that were going to be handed out the next day. Cut out the section on remote-detonating IEDs and inserted a section on female reproductive anatomy. They thought that was pretty funny until the next day when the Master Chief asked why I was the only one who knew the material. Straight-faced, I told him the rest of my team had spent the night devoting themselves to the study of vaginas.”
I allowed myself a smile, delighted to have her talking freely. Alpha and Raven? Two birds with one therapy?
“The time seven of them jumped me in the shower and choked me down? I wasn’t so forgiving. Each time I started to come to, they’d choke me down again. They took turns raping me. One of the last things I heard before coming to on that shower room floor was someone asking ‘Hey, what’s par for this hole?’”
“Did you report it?”
She shot me a look of loathing. “SEALs don’t rat, Skipper. They don’t ask for other people to give them justice. We get it on our own.”
Her grin bent slightly. “The next day? Everyone knew. They were waiting, wondering. Officer in Charge had heard something, asked me specifically if anything was wrong. Took six months to catch each of those guys alone, beat the shit out of him, and shove a golf tee a couple of inches up his urethra. Should have heard the stories they tried to tell the doctors about how that tee got up there. But word got around. No one ever ‘fucked with me’ that way again.”
“No retribution?”
“If they’d tried, they’d have got the crap beat out of them.” She looked smug. “Two of them ended up on my team. One under my command a couple of years later. I called him ‘Golf’ and the nickname stuck. People on the outside don’t understand.”
Her expression tightened. “He died that day. I failed him.” A pause. “Just like the rest.”
“When are you going to stop blaming yourself?”
“When I can go back and bring my people home.” She turned steely eyes on mine.
“It was an IED.”
“I looked right at it.”
“And you knew it was an IED?”
“I should have.”
“They put a shaped charge in a spilled basket of clothes.”
“What woman would have just left a clean basket of clothes in the dirt like that?”
“A woman scared for her life?” I asked softly. “I know you, Karla. You have survived and come to terms with trauma that few other women could. What should have destroyed you only made you stronger. You sacrificed everything you ever were to become a SEAL. That’s what they do. Beat the identity out of you and see if you can construct a new one. And when you did, you pushed yourself even harder. You signed up for SEAL sniper training. Fifty percent of SEALs can’t cut it. You excelled, finished your class as ‘the honor man.’ And went on to rack up fifty-four confirmed kills in combat. Nominated for the Congressional Medal of Honor. Nominated for the Navy Cross. Picked up a Silver Star and a couple of bronze ones to go with it. Earned enough commendations to paper the wall. They kicked you up to an E7, Chief Petty Officer, and let you handle a little admin and tactical planning. You commanded your own sniper platoon, were on the fast track. You can’t blame yourself for an IED.”
She stared woodenly at Alpha on the television.
“And you’d have come back from that if that fool doctor hadn’t ordered a psychiatric evaluation.”
She’d pursed her lips, cheek muscles knotted.
I hesitated. “Now . . . there’s a difference between us. I’ve got a PhD, and you’ve got a Trident. That means when it comes to the two of us, I’m smarter, and you’re tougher. Being the smart guy that I am, I’ll always bet on Chief Petty Officer Karla Raven. I know who she really is, even when she’s deluding herself into thinking she’s someone she’s not.”
“Nice try, Doc. But you know I can’t help stealing stuff.”
“It serves a purpose. If the world could just up and take your self-identity away, kleptomania provides compensation. Down deep, you’re taking things back.”
“I don’t even know when I do it.”
“But you experience a sense of exhilaration each time.”
She gave me a speculative glance. “I never told you that.”
“I’m the psychiatrist.”
On the screen, Alpha was humming some tune, the melody completely unfamiliar. “You know that song, Chief?”
“No, sir.”
“We’ve recorded all of her songs. Can’t place a one of them.”
“Why are you doing this, sir?”
“Doing what?”
“Running Ward Six. Spending your time locked away at Grantham Barracks. You could be making a fortune in private practice.”
“Why did you spend two tours in Iraq and three in Afghanistan?”
“Because by killing bad guys I was saving American lives.”
“There’s your answer, Chief.”
“Wish you didn’t trust me, sir. That’s a hell of an obligation to place on someone.”
“Sorry.”
On the monitor, Alpha was wiring the part she’d been working on into the doohickey. She moved with sure dexterity, as if she’d been wiring things together all her life.