Steel Fear

by Brandon Webb

  Ray taking him down by the millstream, showing him the place where you could lie down by the bend in the stream and watch the minnows and goldfish, with their rainbow colors and bugeyes, the water-skeeters and mayflies and dragonflies, the frogs and salamanders…

  the frogs and—

  His eyes jerked open. The biting odor of ammonia carbonate—smelling salts—in his nose. Eyes tearing.

  He was on the office floor curled on his side, no sense at all of how he got there, Stevens kneeling over him and holding a damp washcloth against his forehead.

  His jaw ached.

  He touched it, massaged it. Tasted blood. He looked up at the other man. “How long?”

  “Maybe twenty minutes.”

  Stevens helped him to a sitting position, back against the bulkhead. Then sat down next to him while he took a series of long slow breaths.

  Finally Finn looked over at him.

  “Looks like you poked the bear,” said Stevens.

  90

  After Finn left his office Lew thought about what Master Chief Jackson had said that morning. Just a man. And we’re gonna find him.

  Maybe so, thought Lew as he woke up his computer. But his own quarry—the childhood version of Finn X—was proving difficult to track down. He had not heard back from Harry Holbrook, the old psychiatrist at Great Lakes, who apparently was still on his fishing trip. And even Indy had not yet been able to unearth anything further about the man’s pre-military background.

  Lew figured it was time to go on a fishing trip of his own.

  Unlike the rank and file of the Lincoln’s population, key personnel in medical had access to the ship’s dedicated high-speed Internet service, which enabled them to conduct efficient online research on medical, pharmaceutical, and other topics.

  Lew began looking.

  No last name. No arrests, no police record. No known hospital stays or prior medical records. Schooling unknown.

  Lew thought back over what Van Ness had said.

  Drug kingpins. Chinese mafia.

  He began combing the San Diego newspaper archives for pieces on the street trade, starting a few years before Finn enlisted. For the next hour, he kept reading, finding nothing.

  Then, a story. A sixteen-year-old, arrested in connection with a DEA raid on a known Triad connection. In a sidebar titled “Teens on the Docks” the writer mentioned a few of the kid’s associates, including another sixteen-year-old who went by “F/X.”

  The Hollywood term for “special effects.” Classic SoCal nickname.

  He looked back at Jackson’s notes from his original interviews. His observation about how the SEAL had replayed that altercation he’d witnessed outside Shiflin’s ready room with such startling precision. An uncanny skill of mimicry. Special effects. It fit him.

  F/X.

  Finn X.

  For the next two hours he searched every archive, every database, every story on the drug wars or life on the docks or troubled teens that he could find for references to a kid going by the tag F/X.

  Not counting the Triad-related drug bust story, he found exactly three.

  First up was a story about the shady goings-on alleged to be taking place on several Santa Catalina Island boat tours. According to that piece his quarry had done an eight-month stint at age fifteen on a dive boat called “the Frieda.” No details.

  The second was another drug-related story that mentioned that same teenage associate. This one provided no new information, but it did at least offer independent confirmation that this kid had existed.

  The third was a puff piece about a summer swim contest for youngsters. One of the day’s races was won by a thirteen-year-old identified in the story as “going by the name F/X.”

  This story had photos.

  Lew manipulated the browser, enlarging the window in an effort to see the boy more clearly. The crude, pixilated quality of the scanned newsprint didn’t help.

  He sat back in his chair and squinted at the image.

  Chief Finn at thirteen?

  Possibly.

  He copied the photo and pasted it into a separate file, then sat back to think.

  As far as he could tell the trail went cold at that point. He’d found no trace of the boy before that swim race at thirteen. Not in Southern California anyway. It was as if he’d dropped out of the sky at the age of thirteen.

  He sat back again and thought about the SEAL’s odd reaction to the Line Crossing ritual up on the flight deck.

  “Where did you come from, F/X?” he murmured. “And what happened to you?”

  91

  Command made an effort to keep the lid clamped down tight, but the story was as uncontainable as an oil spill. Within hours everyone on board knew the basics. No trace of Chavez and Cristobal had been found in the recycling chamber. A half-smoked cigarette; that was it. There was no way the two could have gone over the side; too much extra security that night. For three straight days a crew conducted a lengthy search of the entire boat.

  The boys did not turn up.

  When the admiral returned and learned what had happened, she immediately got on the horn with the mainland and arranged for them to take on a joint NCIS-FBI task force when they reached Hawaii. The threat of which greatly increased the pressure on Eagleberg—and therefore on Jackson and the others—to wrap up this investigation before then. The captain grew increasingly paranoid.

  Finn followed it all through his bugged Lincoln Room conversations.

  The week dragged past like Marley’s chain.

  Flight operations were resumed, along with their attendant daily FOD walkdowns, the unspoken message from command being, See? Everything’s back to normal!

  No one was fooled.

  “Nothing like a crisis to bring people together,” so went the popular wisdom—but this particular crisis seemed to work in exactly the opposite way. Every petty conflict was magnified, every rift driven deeper. Fear, withdrawal, and distrust—they became the new normal.

  The rain that had dogged them since arriving at Fremantle finally stopped. At first the weather turned sunny and balmy with a warm dry breeze, then the breeze stopped and it grew blisteringly hot.

  The AC system failed, was fixed, failed again.

  Humidity hung in the air like wet woolen blankets, itchy and pestilential.

  An outbreak of food-borne bacterial illness swept the ship, sending sailors by the hundreds through sick bay and back to their racks. Work hours were stretched, nerves frayed. Scuffles and fights broke out, with several violent assaults. All at once the brig’s genpop was busy.

  Back in Fremantle Harbour the ship had reminded Finn of a floating prison. Now it felt more like a floating death row, everyone on board wondering when and where the killer would strike next.

  But he was already striking, throughout the ship.

  As Finn knew all too well, a sniper could function as a precision instrument of psychological warfare, crippling an entire battalion by sowing confusion and chaos among its ranks. That’s what their killer was doing. The dead and missing were his victims—but not his targets.

  No, his real targets were the thousands of crew who were still alive.

  By now everyone on board had twigged to the rhythm of the first three murders. Assuming the killer’s six-day plan was back on track, after being interrupted by Finn’s incarceration, the twenty-eighth should be the big day.

  Finn could feel the crescendo of anxiety.

  The twenty-eighth arrived.

  Six thousand people held their breath.

  Nothing happened.

  Nobody went missing.

  Yet no one felt relieved.

  In fact, the anxiety deepened.

  Another day went by.

  And another.

  Everyone waiting for the other shoe to drop.<
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  92

  Monica was going crazy.

  The chief of security and his team were still interviewing people, but they hadn’t called in either her or Papa Doc. Whatever theory they were pursuing, apparently they were interested mainly in talking to enlisted crew.

  To her the truth was so obvious it practically screamed itself.

  When Kris called Papa Doc “a classic male chauvinist, fucking racist, and unreconstructed homophobe,” she’d hit it right smack on the nose. It was no secret, either, everyone in the air wing knew it. And wasn’t that a precise description of the kind of person who would seek out these particular victims? Talk about finding for X! Add on a history of assault (even if unproven), plus that hostile encounter between the two of them the night Kris disappeared, and wouldn’t you have enough to warrant an arrest?

  She thought about asking Scott, but they hadn’t spoken since she told him to “back off,” and she was sure he’d want nothing to do with this conversation.

  She itched to tell someone about Papa Doc’s alleged date rape, to give up Alan Rickards’s name. Rickards knew something, she’d seen it in his eyes. The man was a loose thread; one good yank and the whole sweater would come unraveled.

  But did she dare? She had no way of knowing whether whoever she told would keep her confidence. Whistle-blowers were supposed to be protected—but this was the military: short of high treason, there was no sin greater than ratting out a superior officer. She would be gambling her career.

  Besides, even if nobody revealed what she said, if they hauled Rickards in for questioning immediately after talking to her, wouldn’t it be obvious that it was Monica who’d steered them his way?

  And anyway, who would she tell? The chief of security was too close to Scott—and as much as she wished she could, she couldn’t trust him. Could she trust Master Chief Jackson? She didn’t know. He was already skeptical about her testimony from their brief interview.

  Monica lay on her bunk, running her fingers over the patches and seams of Kris’s quilt, which she had quietly pilfered and slipped into her own locker just minutes before the warrant officers arrived for their wordless sweep.

  August 31. It was just a number, she told herself, the end of one calendar month and start of another. Still, somewhere in the course of that month, Kris had been stolen away, and now the month itself, the last month in which the two of them had been here in this stateroom together, talking and laughing, was zipping itself shut. Like a body bag.

  “Shit fire and piss on the goddamn matches,” she muttered.

  She threw aside the quilt and hopped down.

  Two minutes later she was knocking on the door to an office she’d never visited before. “Come in,” said a voice from inside. “It’s open.” She turned the handle and stepped inside.

  “Can I help you?” said Commander Gaines.

  93

  On September first, halfway into its northeast passage to Hawaii, the USS Abraham Lincoln crossed both the Equator and the International Date Line at the same time, a juncture that the captain, determined to pull ship-wide morale out of its funk, had seized upon to commemorate with a Beer Day and a talent show.

  The concept of Beer Day was simple: everyone on board who was not on essential work detail got one beer to drink—quite a luxury, given that alcohol was otherwise forbidden on board and they hadn’t had a single port call in over half a year. There would be those who opted to sell their beer to some other swab, which meant there’d be some lucky sailors drinking multiples. Things would get a little rowdy. Add a talent show into the mix and the hilarity would only escalate. Count on it.

  The crew loved it.

  Monica could give a shit.

  She’d told Gaines everything—about Kris’s state of mind those last few days, the missed breakfasts, the weight loss, the drawn look, the paranoia. Her concerns that Kris might have been assaulted. That altercation between Kris and Papa Doc. The Academy rumor. Rickards. She should have felt unburdened—but now, waiting to find out what she’d stirred up, was somehow worse.

  And that remark the SEAL made, last time they talked. It was driving her nuts.

  She’d spent the past hour trying to hunt him down. He wasn’t in his quarters or any of the mess facilities. Not in the library, not the gyms. Not out on the gun mounts or fantail. Time to check up on the flight deck, where the day’s festivities were already under way. Oh boy.

  Traversing the port-side main artery on the gallery deck, she passed two sailors who already reeked of beer. Monica shuddered inwardly. The smell, the swagger, the up-to-no-good sparks in the eyes, it all reminded her of her Academy days…which made her think of Papa Doc back in the day, Papa Doc as an upperclassman, Papa Doc plying some semi-willing cadet with drinks and more. Movie-star good looks, frat-boy intentions.

  The moment she pushed open the hatch to the catwalk she heard the ruckus from above: hooting, clapping, laughter, a screech of distortion from a jury-rigged PA system. She climbed the familiar five steel steps to the deck’s surface where all the action was happening.

  The first person she bumped into—literally—was Rickards, mid-joke with a few pilot pals. When he turned to see who it was the easy grin vanished.

  “You,” he said.

  So much for confidentiality. “Alan! Hi,” she began. “Listen, I hope you—”

  “Fuck you, Halsey.”

  She stopped as if she’d been slapped.

  He took a step forward and leaned in close, deliberately invading her space, his face inches from hers, and spat the words.

  “Fuck. You. Halsey.”

  Without waiting for a response he turned back to his friends and laughed at whatever joke they’d just told. She no longer existed.

  Monica walked a few steps, shaken. She knew what it was to be cursed at, yelled at, verbally attacked; she’d been through that a hundred times, a thousand times. Par for the course. It was the deliberate leaning in that had got to her. The unalloyed venom. She felt like she’d been physically assaulted.

  How had she not seen this before? Rickards and Papadakis. Classmates. Buddies. Of course.

  She wanted to go take a shower.

  She took a breath and looked around—and there he was. The SEAL, sitting off by himself. People avoiding him like the crazy neighbor’s pit bull, which she could well understand; she’d heard the rumors. She’d seen the guy in action herself, down in the gym.

  The SEAL seemed focused on whatever was going on up onstage. She turned and looked. The flight deck was now home to a crowd of maybe a thousand, most of them nursing plastic cups of beer, heckling and laughing at whatever lame skit was happening. She couldn’t see any reason why he’d be watching so intently.

  She turned back, walked over to the SEAL, plunked herself down next to him.

  “You remember what you said about my CO?”

  He turned his head to look at her but said nothing.

  “You said, ‘It wasn’t your CO.’ How did you know that’s what I was thinking?”

  The SEAL turned back to watch the stage. After a moment, he said, “I see where you’d get that. Decent theory.”

  “But wrong?”

  “Yup.”

  All at once she felt irritated. Why couldn’t the guy have a normal conversation? And why was he so convinced of Papa Doc’s innocence? He’d witnessed that confrontation in the passageway himself. How could he say there wasn’t something suspicious about that?

  “Whoever’s doing all this,” the SEAL replied as if she’d voiced her thoughts aloud, “is putting on a hell of a show. Not this.” He gestured toward the stage. “I mean the killings. That takes imagination.”

  “Oh? And why is that not my CO?”

  “This is not a guy with a rich interior life.”

  Monica thought that was the lamest reasoning she’d ever heard. My c
lient couldn’t have done it, Your Honor. He doesn’t have a rich interior life.

  Had the SEAL ever even spoken with Papa Doc?

  She was about to ask him about that when someone screamed.

  94

  Finn had just watched as the master of ceremonies gestured with his cane to a rolled-up canvas affixed high up at the back of the makeshift stage.

  Some in the crowd who guessed what was coming were already starting to laugh. Even though the gigantic poster’s exact content was a closely guarded secret, they knew what it would display: something truly, insanely ridiculous. A photoshopped image of the captain in drag, maybe, riding on top of Master Chief Jackson, rendered as a tank in a tutu. Or who knew what. Whatever the crew who put this on thought they could get away with.

  With a soft thoop! the poster unfurled.

  The laughter stopped. A thousand sailors froze in place as if God Almighty himself had just hit PAUSE.

  Then someone near the stage let loose with a bile-curdling scream.

  Others joined in, a wave of screams ripping through the crowd like a fire in a dying forest.

  “Shit! Oh, shit! Ohhh, SHIT!” one guy moaned. “Ohhh FUCK!”

  Another voice: “What—Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, Willy! WILLY! Oh, Jesus! Fuck me, man, FUCK me!”

  “Holy mother of God,” murmured someone near Finn. The person next to him vomited, right there on the deck.

  It was not an image of the captain, or of Jackson, or of any other subject of lighthearted ridicule.

  It was a diptych of two high-definition photos, side by side, each depicting a nearly identical scene: a squarish opening in a wall of charred steel, blazing fire inside, like a pizza oven. What looked like two logs jutting in through the narrow door.

  Not logs.

  Legs.

  An iron shovel pushing in the prone figure of Seaman Willy Chavez in one shot, Seaman Ángel Cristobal in the other, the skin on their faces starting to bubble and smoke, wild eyes staring at the camera as they were fed feetfirst into the ship’s jet fuel–powered, two-thousand-degree incinerator.