by Brandon Webb
Finn slipped the go bag off his shoulder and set it on the parquet mahogany coffee table. Approached a big bookshelf set against one bulkhead and surveyed its contents. Crouched down to examine the big leather-bound volumes on the bottom shelf.
Carl Sandburg’s six-volume biography Abraham Lincoln: The Prairie Years and The War Years. Evans and Grossnick’s United States Naval Aviation, 1910–2010, the definitive two-volume work on the subject. John Darrell Sherwood’s War in the Shallows: U.S. Navy Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam, 1965–1968. Off to the right a few lesser paperbacks, popular leadership stuff.
Curious, he pulled out one of the cheaper books. Patton on Leadership: Strategic Lessons for Corporate Warfare. Dozens of pages were marked with meticulous underlinings and marginal notes. The paperback fell open to a page with this gem highlighted:
You are not beaten until you admit it. Hence don’t.
Captain Eaglebeak’s bedtime stories.
He slid the book back into place, stood, crossed over to the mahogany sideboard. A crystal brandy set. Looked expensive. He removed the stopper and sniffed. Cognac. Nightcap of champions.
A faint glint from floor level caught his eye. He replaced the crystal stopper in the decanter and bent down to take a closer look. Tucked down against one of the sideboard legs was a tiny shard of glass. He fished it out with the corner of his Navy Cash card, stood up, and examined it. Looked over at the crystal brandy glasses again. Three of them. Finn was pretty sure glasses like these would come in sets of two, or four. Not three.
Which meant one broke.
He thought back to a scene he’d observed a few days earlier, Jackson emerging from the Lincoln Room looking steamed. Must have been quite the argument.
Finn walked slowly along that bulkhead, examining the various wall hangings. The nineteenth-century navigational maps. The Andrew Jackson portrait. A framed deployment patch with three lines of lettering:
WestPac 2003
CVN-72 CVW-14
GET OVER IT!
He’d heard the background.
In the late fall of 2002 Eagleberg was serving as ship’s XO right there on the Lincoln, supporting the one-year-old effort in Afghanistan. They steamed down to Australia on their way home—exactly as they were doing right now—and pulled into Perth for a well-earned port call, at which point they got new orders: they weren’t going home after all. They were turning the boat around. It was time to go back and kick Saddam’s ass.
The crew was upset. They’d been at sea long enough. Their strike group commander got on the 1MC and addressed the grumbling head-on. “We don’t need to be back home holding our loved ones,” he barked over the ship-wide PA system. “We need to be right here holding the line. So get over it!”
The Lincoln’s official motto was “Shall Not Perish,” from the Gettysburg Address; it was painted onto the side of the ship in ten-foot letters. Ever since that announcement, though, this had become their other motto, the unofficial one.
“Get Over It!”
Hence the patch.
This mattered to the captain, mattered enough that he’d had it framed and placed here. Finn bent close, looked at the frame tops of the hangings on either side, then back at the framed patch again. The dust on this one had been disturbed.
The piece had been recently handled.
The captain wanted to relive the glory days of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
And down in the bomb assembly room, Tom Sawyer and his pals were running drills. We’re supposed to pick up the pace, Tom had said. Warheads on foreheads.
Those steel-gray eyes, that eagle’s claw of a nose.
The captain had a hard-on for some action.
His deployment was going to shit. His leadership style, if you could call it that, had made the crew brittle. Vulnerable. Now people were dying.
He was losing control of his ship and he knew it. Solution? Reassert control. Go to war.
You are not beaten until you admit it. Hence don’t.
Whatever mess was happening on the captain’s watch right now, taking part in a major military action would overshadow it. History—and his superiors—would overlook this tour’s first eight disastrous months and he would be the navy’s equivalent of a made man.
Finn thought about the delay in getting out of the Gulf, the talking heads on CNN. Was the Iran threat real? Didn’t matter—the captain wanted it to be real. He was hoping to be called up, have his ship pressed back into service. That’s what the change of course was about.
That’s what the argument was about.
The captain wanted to haul ass to Australia, replenish, then turn around and steam back to the Gulf to go kick Khameini’s ass. And bury his shitty record in a fireball of glory.
The CMC had probably wanted to bring someone in to investigate the “suicides.” NCIS. FBI maybe. The captain said no. He wanted his crew to get over it.
The master chief wanted to protect his people.
The captain wanted to protect his record.
Which made him dangerous.
Small men in high places.
Finn began moving through the space again, examining every shelf and drawer, nook and notch. When he was finished he slipped back out and into the passageway, go bag back on his shoulder, leaving everything exactly as he’d found it.
Or almost exactly.
64
Monica was in the open space of hangar bay 3 going over a helo when she heard Scott’s voice, a single clipped syllable. “Hey.” She pulled her head out of the engine. One look confirmed what she’d heard in his voice: he was furious.
“Somewhere we can talk?” He practically spat the words.
She nodded in the direction of the stern, then walked aft through the hangar bay and into the empty jet engine shop. She pulled up a stool, turned to face him, and sat. “Hey?”
Scott took his time pulling over a stool and sitting before he looked at her. “So,” he said after a brittle pause. “I just came from a brief chat with your flight surgeon. Who just came from having a brief chat with Alan Rickards.”
Monica closed her eyes. Shit.
“Monica. Just what the fuck were you thinking?”
“Hang on a sec—”
“Are you actively trying to torpedo your fucking career? Can you even imagine what kind of hell your life would be if Alan had gone straight to Papadakis instead of your flight doc? Who by the way deserves a fucking Albert Schweitzer humanitarian award for keeping this between us and not taking it to CAG!”
Monica felt her face flush—shame? fury? maybe both? “Listen, I’m sorry this blew back on you—”
“You’re sorry? Christ, Monica, this was way, way over the top—”
Monica raised her voice to speak over his. “I’m sorry this blew back on you and I’m grateful for their discretion—” Scott wasn’t listening to a word, just shaking his head “—but all I was doing was asking—”
“Monica, you’ve got to stop this—”
“All I was doing was asking about a rumor I’d heard!”
They both stopped and glared at each other.
“A credible rumor,” she added.
Scott closed his eyes and kept them closed as he spoke, low and measured. “Listen. I know how much this whole thing hurts. She was your friend. I get it. But you’ve got to leave it alone. Besides,” he lowered his voice even more, “Papadakis is not a credible suspect.”
“Well who is?”
“Jesus, Monica, I can’t tell you that, and you shouldn’t be asking!” He paused. “No one is. There are no suspects, not at this point. It’s just a theory, and a damn shaky one. The more we look for hard evidence, the more there’s none there.”
“No you don’t, goddammit.” Now it was Monica’s turn to shake her head. “You don’t drop this ten-megaton
bomb on me and then come back twenty-four hours later and try to take it back!”
“I’m not—” He stopped, took a breath, and lowered his voice again. “I’m not trying to take anything back. I’m just—Christ, I shouldn’t have said anything.” He sat back on his stool. “I couldn’t stand to see you sitting around blaming yourself. But I’m not kidding, the whole idea is no more than a sketchy hypothesis based on evidence that’s about as strong as a piece of wet Kleenex. There’s nothing there.”
“No.” She shook her head again. “I don’t care what evidence you have or don’t have. I’ve been thinking about this for the past twenty-four hours, and it’s the only thing that makes sense. Swallowing a handful of pills, that I can see her doing. Putting the barrel of a sidearm in her mouth and pulling the trigger—”
“Jesus, Monica—”
“No, listen to me, dammit! I can see those or a dozen other scenarios. But jumping overboard? Intentionally committing herself to the water? Kris?” She started poking him in the chest to punctuate the words. “No. No way. She would have been too terrified.”
“Didn’t seem to me like she was afraid of anything.”
“You didn’t know her!”
Scott put up both hands. “Hey.”
“Sorry.” She realized how loud she’d gotten and lowered her voice to a hush. “I’m sorry. But you didn’t know her, Scott.” Her eyes welled up.
Scott put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey,” he said softly. “Listen. We’ll figure out what happened to Kris. Trust me. But the most important thing right now is securing your HAC. Right? And not doing anything that jeopardizes that. Okay?”
Scott leaned in closer, gripping her arms.
And kissed her.
Monica was so caught off guard she didn’t react, or even know how to react.
The kiss went on, and it went deeper, his tongue exploring the inside of her mouth, the warmth of his lips intoxicating, the smell of his skin filling her nostrils. His hands were behind her now, pressing into her back, his arms encircling her, and she felt herself dissolve into the inexpressible comfort of being held. A part of her longed to let go altogether and be wholly consumed. She couldn’t breathe. She didn’t want to breathe.
She placed both hands on his chest and gave a push.
Scott backed away, putting his palms up in that Hey I surrender gesture again. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”
It was the apology that did it.
And that gesture—all innocence and plausible deniability.
He was sorry? What, he momentarily lost control? No—anyone else, maybe, but not Scott. She knew him well enough to know that “Oops, I didn’t mean to” was not a gear in his drive shaft.
It was the first thing he’d ever said to her that rang false, and it hit her like a slap in the face. He was placating her again. Trying to get her to back down.
Not a gear in her drive shaft.
All at once that messy tangle of feelings fell away, all sorted and clear now.
She was not about to flirt with disaster by slipping into some kind of onboard romance. She couldn’t afford the distraction. She liked Scott, liked him a lot. But she needed to stay focused and on task.
Someone had killed her friend, goddammit. And if Scott wouldn’t help her nail the bastard, she’d find someone who would.
“Scott,” she said, her voice husky with emotion. “You’re a wonderful man, and a good friend. But…back off.”
65
Lew Stevens was late to work that morning, and because of it he nearly missed what would prove to be a highly consequential phone call.
Normally Lew was in at 0700 sharp, a half hour before the medical offices opened. This morning, though, he’d spent some time meeting off-site with a junior pilot who was having anxiety issues and wanted to avoid a recorded visit to medical.
This was a delicate matter. Visits to the staff psychologist were supposed to be a disclosure item for the squadron’s flight surgeon, but any psychological issue could be viewed as cause to temporarily suspend one’s UP status for flight. A career killer. Lew understood this, which was why he didn’t mind spending a quiet hour with someone out of the office—and off the books—when such situations arose.
He was still thinking about the young man’s disquiet when he heard his phone ringing through his office door. He hurriedly keyed in the four-digit code, let himself in, set his tall Americano down, and picked up the phone on the fourth ring. “Stevens.”
“Lew? Van Ness here,” said the voice.
“Dan! Thanks for getting back to me.” He did the quick calculation: 0830 there meant it would be 5:30 p.m. on the West Coast. He was surprised Van Ness was still in his office.
“Well, you almost missed me. Heading out in a few minutes. For good, in fact.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Hey. Put in my twenty, figured I’d get out and go into private practice while I still have a few marbles rolling around. So, not to be rude, but may I cut to the chase? Got your man’s enlistment records in front of me.”
“Fantastic,” said Lew.
“Don’t get too excited,” the voice replied. “I’ll give you what I have, but there’s not a lot and what there is isn’t great. No family background. Finn X, listed as an orphan on his sign-up papers, no extant contact info for foster homes. Kid had been on his own for a few years, in and out of trouble on the Southern California docks. Worked as crew on a few dive boats, in between stints on the streets.”
“Tough life for a teenager.”
“Tough.” Van Ness snorted. “That’s one way to put it. Street life in those neighborhoods? In those days? Jesus Van Christ. Picking your way through a 3D chessboard of drug kingpins, Chinese mafia, and bent cops. Most of the kids he hung with would’ve ended up in jail, chronic rehab, or the morgue.”
“But not him.”
“Not him. He managed to stay straight and vertical.” He paused.
“But?” said Lew.
He heard the other man sigh. “There’s something fractured about the guy, Lew. Jesus, I’d love to run an fMRI on that brain.”
“Fractured, how?”
“He’ll go into these lulls where he seems zoned out, almost comatose, like there’s nothing going on inside. Only the feeling you get is it’s really the opposite, right? Like everything’s going on in there. Tick, tick, tick. Part of what made him such a phenomenal operator.”
Lew thought for a moment. “Weren’t you on the board that made recommendations on DEVGRU candidates during that time?”
“Sure was.”
“So you recommended him?”
“Sure didn’t. I recommended in the strongest terms that he be flushed. I don’t know what unit he ended up in, where he is or what he’s doing now, but I can tell you this: it ain’t good. The guy is damaged, Lew.”
Lew nodded to himself. “Any ideas on what’s behind that?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, that’s all I got. You might want to talk to Harry Holbrook, the shrink up at Great Lakes who would’ve been on staff when he went through basic.”
He gave Lew the man’s name and number.
After hanging up with Van Ness, Lew tried the Illinois number, asked for Harry Holbrook, and learned that the man was off on a late-summer fishing trip. Lew left a brief message and his callback number, and hung up.
Lew Stevens spent a good deal of his time inside other people’s heads, which could be a strange place to explore, even terrifying at times. But Lew enjoyed the adventure of charting the shadowy territories, puzzling out explanations for the inexplicable. Identifying the monsters that lurked under people’s beds.
And right now what interested him most was whatever monster lurked behind the puzzle of Finn.
The guy is damaged, Lew.
Just how damaged?
66
He’d been out on the big port-side Gatling gun mount for about an hour, watching the ocean and sketching, when West Texas pushed her way out through the door behind him and plunked herself down on the narrow catwalk a few feet away.
“Just so you know,” she said, “far as I can see all SEALs are arrogant, self-absorbed pricks. Worse than male fighter pilots.”
They both sat silent for a minute. No sounds but the wind and the faint scratch of his charcoal pencil on the paper.
“Glad we got that out of the way,” said Finn.
She seemed to hesitate a moment, weighing her next move. Finally she said, “I need your help.”
“I doubt that,” said Finn. “You didn’t need any help with that big guy in the gym.”
“Tucker? He’s not that big.”
Finn couldn’t help smiling. He watched the ocean and sketched. Whatever it was she came to say, she would say it eventually.
“On the ranch, when I was little, there was this particular horse. A little blue roan. Amelia. For most of my childhood she was my closest companion on the planet.”
On her twelfth birthday, she told him, they were out riding when a rattlesnake spooked them both. Amelia reared up and came back down hard. Too hard. It broke her leg and she had to be put down. Monica’s daddy was up in Amarillo for the day, so her big brother, Sloane, did it. Monica was heartbroken—and spitting mad. She took a machete and went after the snake on foot.
“At twelve you knew how to hunt with a machete?” said Finn.
“I’m a fast learner.”
She tracked down the snake, whacked off its head, then hacked its body into pieces. Her mother was horrified. Her daddy didn’t say a word when he got home, but a week later she overheard him telling his friends about it. “And that’s how we do it in West Texas,” he said, and they all laughed with him.
Finn went on sketching, eyes never leaving the horizon.
“There’s a rattlesnake on board this ship,” said Monica. “I want it.” She glanced at him. Then she said, low and fierce: “He killed my friend.”