Steel Fear

by Brandon Webb

  Finn heard a voice bellowing, “Cut it down! Cut it down!”—the chief of security, fighting his way up onto the stage, shoving people aside as he went—but nobody was listening.

  “QUIET!” That was the air boss, whose voice carried like a thunderclap even without his PA system. The screaming and crying stopped as if someone had yanked the power cord. “CUT IT DOWN! NOW!!”

  Three guys scrambled up onto the stage and managed to wrench the canvas free from its moorings.

  The two incinerating boys crumpled and folded to the deck.

  The talent show was over.

  VI

  Rubik’s Cube

  95

  The weather that day looked foul from the start.

  Like everyone else on board, Monica spent the morning trying to put the horror of the day before out of her mind.

  Was it ridiculous to expect they’d all go about normal business in the face of what had just happened? Of course, but that was the navy for you. Semper fortis, semper Gumby. Always strong, always flexible. Hooyah.

  And today was the big day, make or break.

  Her HAC checkride.

  Which, thanks to Alan Rickards, she was pretty sure she’d already flunked.

  When she reached the flight deck the sky had turned an ugly, splotchy gray with green striations. As she climbed into the Knighthawk with her crew she tried to read the NATOPS officer’s face. “Okay,” was all he said, once they were all strapped in and he’d gotten tower clearance.

  Monica lifted them off the flight deck, then banked them to port as they climbed into the gray sky and out over the open sea. For the next two hours the officer pushed her through her paces, checking every move she made, every response to every simulated emergency, Monica reacting, adjusting, adapting, drenched in sweat.

  And then it was over.

  She lowered the Knighthawk to brush the flight deck, kicked the engines back to idle, and sat dreading her instructor’s feedback.

  “Okay,” he said without looking at her. “This is my stop.” He abruptly hopped out of the chopper and someone else climbed in his place.

  “Lieutenant,” said Papa Doc with a curt nod, as he buckled himself into the co-pilot seat. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  —

  Monica sat frozen. What was happening here?

  Papa Doc strapped on his helmet and spoke into his comms. “Gents,” addressing Stickman and Chief Harris in back, “we’re taking her up again for a brief spin around the block.”

  Monica heard Harris and Stickman behind her, buckling back in. She still hadn’t moved.

  “Let’s go,” Papa Doc repeated without looking at her. “Already cleared with the tower.”

  What the hell? What was this, some sort of checkride postscript? An extra punishment round?

  “Lieutenant?” he said.

  She pushed the Knighthawk’s rotor blades back up to full power, got the plane captain’s signal for takeoff, and once again lifted the bird off the deck and banked away to the left.

  As they angled up and away from the ship she shot a glance at her CO—and was thrown by what she saw. He looked terrible: haggard face, sunken eyes, his normally olive skin now a faint gray-green.

  Like a man who’d seen his own ghost.

  Once airborne he reached over and switched the internal comms to front-seats-only, an option that allowed pilot and co-pilot to speak privately, without being heard by the crew in back. Monica steeled herself for whatever tongue-lashing her superior officer was about to unleash.

  Yet for a full minute he said nothing at all, just stared out the windshield as Monica, for lack of any other instruction, settled into the standard D-loop. When he did finally speak it was in a low monotone.

  “The rumor you’ve heard is accurate.”

  Did he just say…accurate?

  “It was my senior year,” he continued in the same monotone. “She was a frosh. Wide-eyed at being asked out by an upperclassman. At the time I thought—” His voice faltered, then caught and continued. “At that time, in that circumstance, I thought she was saying ‘yes.’ Or that’s what I told myself. It was not—” again that brief stumble and recovery “—it was not my proudest moment.”

  Good Christ. That’s what they were doing here? He wanted to make a confession? Monica felt her pulse pounding in her throat.

  “It happened a second time. Different girl…”

  Monica’s breath stopped. Sloane had talked about one assault. There were more?

  “The second girl—woman—tried to speak up about it. But I’d covered my tracks and again, I was an upperclassman. And of course, a man. Nobody believed her.”

  He paused for a sickening eternity, like the nausea of free fall, then droned on, staring out the Knighthawk’s windshield as he spoke.

  “Third girl—woman…”

  Jesus. Monica thought she might throw up.

  “That one tried to kill herself. Ended up dropping out. After that I stopped. No more. That was it. It all happened years ago.”

  Stickman and Harris had to be wondering what the hell was going on up there in front, but she didn’t dare make a sound, didn’t dare even look Papa Doc’s way. She just kept flying the D, wishing she weren’t there, wishing she weren’t hearing any of what she was hearing.

  Papa Doc took a shaky breath. “I just wanted you to know, you were right.” He looked away, out the far side of the helo. “Of course I’ll deny this conversation ever took place. Though I expect it’ll all come out now anyway.” He nodded toward the Lincoln below. “You can take ’er in.”

  As she began her reapproach, Monica debated furiously whether to ask the question. Better not to say a word. But she had to. It wasn’t enough to know. She had to hear him say it.

  “And Kristine?”

  She waited for a reply, then realized he hadn’t heard her.

  “And Kristine?” she repeated.

  He turned back and looked at her vaguely. “What?”

  “Kristine,” Monica said again, quietly. “What about Kristine?”

  He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Shiflin?”

  She stared at him.

  “You think…God, no. What are you saying?” He frowned at her—and then his face congealed into an expression of horror. “You think I had—?” He slumped back in his seat and stared forward at the darkening sky. “You think I had something to do with…”

  He was silent for a moment. “God, no,” he repeated. “When she disappeared, I was heartsick.”

  Heartsick? Her CO, Papa Doc, the arrogant self-confessed rapist prick…was heartsick?

  She wanted to believe he was lying. She wanted to believe that with all her heart. She wanted to scream at him, go at him with her nails, rip his lying face off.

  She began their descent.

  As they neared the deck she saw a small knot of men gathered by their landing spot just forward of elevator 4.

  Papa Doc’s face curled into a frown.

  “Christ,” he said. “Is that what they’re saying I…?”

  Now they were close enough to see the men clearly. There was Mac, the chief of security, and two masters-at-arms.

  One held a pair of cuffs.

  “Christ,” he repeated softly. “They’ll crucify me.”

  96

  The library was empty today. Finn sat at the first PC station and fired it up. Since his coded warning from “Stan L” and “Smitty” he’d returned once a week. So far there’d been no more messages. He didn’t expect any.

  He tuned out the CNN talking heads and went directly to Gmail, starting with the two anonymous accounts he hadn’t yet deleted. Nothing. Next he opened one of his regular Gmail accounts and checked that one. Nothing. Opened the other account.

  Something.

  Not a reply fr
om Kennedy nor from any of his teammates. Not another coded note from “Stan L.”

  It was an email from squidink28@gmail.com, time-stamped less than half an hour ago.

  The Lincoln was passing through the Baker Island time zone; it would be five hours later for Carol. Which meant she would have sent this in the evening, when she would be at home, probably triple-locked into her darkened houseboat, watching television.

  No subject line.

  Finn clicked on the entry to open the body of the email.

  Carol’s messages were always brief to the point of telegraphic, rarely more than one line. Still, this one was short even by Carol’s standards.

  It consisted of a single word.

  Run

  Finn stared at the screen. What could have given Carol the sense that he was in danger? She wouldn’t have had any contact from “Stan L.” They didn’t know each other.

  Run

  Run from what? And how would Carol know it was headed his way?

  The television droned on. Something caught his eye on the TV screen. His brain had caught it through his peripheral vision, something meaningful but which he hadn’t yet consciously registered.

  He consciously registered it now.

  The news crawl along the bottom of the screen.

  He stopped breathing.

  …HUNDREDS MORE TURN OUT FOR BOSTON MEMORIAL SERVICE, LT MICHAEL JOSEPH KENNEDY TO BE POSTHUMOUSLY AWARDED MEDAL OF HONOR NEXT WEEK AT…

  Finn sat stone still.

  Kennedy—dead?

  97

  He fumbled out one hand to pull the PC’s keyboard toward him. Forced himself to focus on it. Called up Google.

  Key by key, he punched in a search string. Then sat staring at the screen as he waited for the snail-slow browser to serve up its results.

  He scanned the first few stories. They all said the same thing. Lieutenant Michael Joseph Kennedy had been killed on an unnamed mission, location classified, on August first of this year. In excess of one thousand people showed up for the memorial services…

  Finn’s brain was on fire, sparks flaring in all directions but one thought outshouting all the others.

  August first.

  His first day on the Lincoln.

  Was it possible that they’d flown out of Bahrain early that same morning, just hours after Finn’s departure, and deployed to some Middle Eastern hot spot where they’d immediately come under fire and Kennedy had taken a hit?

  Sure, it was possible—in a world where pigshit could fly.

  “Unnamed mission”? “Location classified”? Bald-faced lies, fabricated for public consumption.

  So what really happened?

  They last saw each other on July 31, the day that started with a busted satphone and ended with an escort off the island and on to the Lincoln.

  Give me twenty-four.

  Why had he steered Finn outside that day to finish their conversation?

  To avoid the possibility of eavesdropping, electronic or otherwise. Because Kennedy knew they were being surveilled.

  By whom?

  By whoever executed those Yemeni families. And then silenced Kennedy. Because he knew. And they would have suspected Finn knew, too.

  Hence the busted satphone.

  If Finn hadn’t been whisked away onto an aircraft carrier, would he have been the second casualty of that “unnamed mission”? Had Kennedy himself somehow engineered Finn’s hasty exit, for Finn’s own protection?

  Now Finn understood.

  Saw the whole thing.

  They were set up that night. The people who did this planted that false intel. The people who did this wanted Finn and Kennedy out of the way so they could take out that settlement. No doubt because someone who lived there could finger them for the murder of the American journalist. Who no doubt had stumbled onto the rest of their dirty little criminal enterprise.

  No wonder Finn’s team couldn’t find the terrorist cell they’d been hunting. The ones doing the stealing, the ones terrorizing locals and assassinating civic leaders.

  There was no terrorist cell.

  Never had been.

  It was men from that third squad, the one hanging back to cover their flanks. Only they didn’t “hang back”—they took off to go carry out their own bloody mission five klicks to the east.

  They murdered the journalist.

  They murdered the Yemeni families.

  They murdered Kennedy.

  His team.

  His own guys.

  It’s the assholes who keep their contradictions hidden you have to worry about.

  RUN.

  And they would be waiting for Finn, too, when he set foot off the boat.

  Yes, there would be a welcoming committee of navy cops, or FBI, or DOD, there to escort him to HQ for a classified debrief. To get him in a room and ask him just what the hell happened out there. But there would be someone else there waiting, too.

  A second welcoming committee.

  With cuffs.

  Maybe someone inserted in HQ with a needle on his person. Or someone at the dock, tucked behind a tenement window or on an office building rooftop, some retired Teams guy who wasn’t exactly retired. Someone as skilled as Finn.

  Special assignment.

  Finn would never make it to that briefing alive.

  He looked up again at the TV screen. The news crawl had moved on to other headlines.

  Carol would have seen the same item. She would have known immediately that it was a whitewash. That Finn was in danger.

  Suddenly the images flooded his head again—

  the shattered door—

  the child’s sightless eyes, black pooling blood—

  the flies—

  A wave of nausea slammed into him like a car crash. He bolted upright so abruptly he flipped over the PC keyboard.

  He lurched to the door, stumbled out into the passageway. Made his way to a ladder at the far end, hauled himself up, paused at the top and gripped the rail, waiting for the nausea to subside.

  It didn’t.

  He pushed through the exterior hatch and emerged out onto the starboard-side catwalk, where he steadied himself and took several long breaths of the thickening ocean air.

  The images faded.

  He mounted the five steps to the flight deck and stood, leaning on the railing. Took a few more steadying breaths. His vision finally came into focus.

  There was some sort of commotion happening on the deck, over on the port side. A Knighthawk had just landed, the crew standing half in and half out of the bird, staring.

  Two masters-at-arms had Movie Star in cuffs.

  98

  Finn watched as the pair of MAs ushered the helo squadron CO aft onto elevator platform 4 to take him below. He glanced over at West Texas, sitting frozen in the pilot’s seat. She looked like someone who’d just struck and killed the family dog with her car.

  “Hey!” A scuffle.

  Movie Star had just shoved one of the MAs off his feet. Now he swung his cuffed fists at the other, whacking him in the head, and took off at a run. Where did he think he could run to? Maybe he wasn’t thinking at all. Maybe he was acting out of pure panic.

  Or maybe he’d do anything—literally anything—to avoid prison.

  Hands still shackled, Movie Star made a dash for the far side of the elevator.

  And leapt off.

  The helo crew scrambled back into the bird, their plane captain frantically clapping his outspread arms over his head, giving them the “cleared for liftoff” signal.

  But Finn saw all this only after he was already in motion.

  He took off like a rifle shot—

  Ran full tilt across the flight deck—

  Accelerated when he reached the
edge—

  And flew off the ship.

  The sea state was now belching up ten- and twelve-foot waves, the water a deep burgundy.

  Falling feetfirst, eyes on the horizon for clean entry, Finn pierced the surface like a lance and plunged twenty feet under before the water resistance slowed his momentum. He pinched his nose and blew out to equalize the pressure in his ears—at this depth he was at nearly double normal atmospheric pressure—then executed an instant flip and ripped back toward the surface, searching as he swam, scanning for Movie Star.

  There!

  Finn had experience swimming in cuffs; not elegant, but doable. And Movie Star knew what he was doing.

  First thing you did in this situation was put distance between yourself and the ship to avoid getting sucked into its churn. Every experienced sailor knew this. Finn willed his thoughts to reach the man. Swim away from the ship!

  Movie Star swam toward the ship.

  Toward—and aft.

  Cresting the surface, Finn was vaguely aware of the Knighthawk above and behind him, Stickman leaning out the side door and shouting directions back into the cockpit, helping West Texas navigate the helo to a spot where it could safely hover and drop him.

  Don’t do it, Stickman. You’ll only die here too.

  Finn homed in on Movie Star’s trajectory like a heat-seeking missile, closing the gap, churning gallons of the Pacific with the most powerful strokes he could muster—but Movie Star was still a few dozen meters ahead and closing fast with the ship’s stern.

  Heading for the propellers.

  Behind him Finn heard Harris shout “Go!” and Stickman make the dive.

  Movie Star was a determined man. He made it to his destination just a dozen strokes ahead of Finn.

  Into the propellers.

  One moment he was there and the next he was gone, sucked under and into the blender-blade chop of those massive brass screws.

  Commander Nikos Demetrius Papadakis was now a cloud of blood, tissue, and bone fragments.