by Brandon Webb
As Finn would be, too, within seconds.
Being this close to the ship’s wake was like jumping into a black hole’s event horizon. Finn knew this from countless exercises off the San Diego pier. There was a point where you still had enough energy to break free. And a point where you’d be swallowed. He executed an impossible turn and began swimming away from the ship—but he’d gotten too close. Even as he powered forward, away from the ship, he was being sucked backward by the churn.
Event horizon.
Stickman was now six meters away and getting closer. Bad move. Damn him. If he tried to grab Finn’s flight suit they would just get sucked in together.
Stickman grabbed Finn’s flight suit.
For what felt like a span of minutes they seemed to hang motionless, suspended in space between the pull of the ship and the force of their own efforts in the opposite direction.
In this tug-of-war there was no way the ship could lose.
Yet, foot by watery foot, swimming in tandem now, Finn and Stickman pulled steadily away from the carrier’s hull until they finally reached the lip of the furiously bobbing rescue basket. Grabbed at it over and over, snagged it on the fourth try.
Pulled themselves over and in.
Collapsed.
Let the hoist do its work.
As they reached the hovering chopper, Finn looked over and gasped, “Thanks—Stickman—owe you—one.”
The kid’s face flushed with pride—but only for a moment, before being overtaken by the horror of what he’d just witnessed.
West Texas navigated her Knighthawk back over to their landing spot.
When they touched down, a second pair of masters-at-arms stood waiting for them.
With cuffs.
99
“By your rash actions, you put lives in jeopardy! By what Christforsaken delusion did you imagine you had the right to take matters into your own hands and risk the safety and welfare of my crew?”
The captain sat at the fore of the bridge, gripping the arms of his big pedestal chair, the one with COMMANDING OFFICER stenciled on the back in gold letters.
“Your guys wouldn’t have made it in time,” said Finn, standing in cuffs between the two MAs. “Sir,” he added.
“And you felt it was your divine prerogative to insert yourself into the situation?”
“I’m a rescue swimmer. It’s what we do. We rescue.”
Captain Eagleberg’s face turned a shade whiter while his ears turned a simmering red.
“Well, I’m the commanding officer on this ship, mister, and that’s what we do. We command.”
Finn shrugged.
The captain shook his head in disbelief. He turned to his XO. “Artie, our guest seems awfully casual about the situation he’s put us in, doesn’t he? Perhaps he thinks running this ship is like cooking a small fish.”
He swiveled back to face Finn. “That right, Chief Finn? You think running this ship is like cooking a small fish?”
Finn gave no reply. He was looking at the captain’s nose.
It looked like a lily’s pistil, swaggering and self-important.
The captain leaned in and dropped his voice to a tone of soft menace. “You have anything to say in your defense, Mister Finn? Because right now would most assuredly be the time.”
Finn nodded. “I do, sir.”
The captain sat back in his big chair and spread out his hands. “Well, I can’t wait to hear it.”
Finn waited a beat before speaking. He glanced at Arthur Gaines, then around the compartment at the rest of the staff, then back to the captain.
“Sir,” he said, “you are an asshole.”
Every face froze.
“Possibly the biggest asshole I have ever met,” Finn continued, “and I have met my share of assholes. Worse than that, you’re an asshole with power, and that’s dangerous. The slipshod way you run this place, you’ve put six thousand lives in jeopardy. You’re a stain on the US Navy. Sir.”
For a long moment the captain sat stone still, a tremor of rage playing over his features. Then he rose from the chair and closed the distance between them in three long strides, got right in Finn’s face, staring down at him nose to nose.
Pistil to nose.
“I could have you court-martialed! I could bury you under a rock you’ll never crawl out from under!”
“I don’t know.” Finn frowned as if thinking it over, then shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
A guttural sound rose up from the captain’s throat and erupted into a roar of fury, and as it did his arm whipped around and delivered an open-hand roundhouse slap to Finn’s face.
Without taking his eyes from Finn he addressed his chief of security. “Mac, please have Mister Finn escorted below to the brig to be remanded into solitary, where he will be held until we make port in Hawaii…” As the two MAs took Finn by the arms the captain continued, shouting his last few words after them as they hustled him off the bridge. “…pursuant to a general court-martial WITH THE MAXIMUM PENALTY!!”
He wiped the spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand and turned to face a half circle of stunned faces.
“What are you looking at?” he snapped.
* * *
—
Once inside the brig Finn was thoroughly frisked—once again, by Frank, exactly the same way as before: torso, then each arm, then each leg.
Trained rats.
“Back for a return engagement, Chief Finn,” said Frank. “Couldn’t stay away?”
“Encore performance.”
Frank laughed quietly as he finished at Finn’s left foot, carefully checking the ankle. “Hey, Dewitt said to ask, you master the getting-out part yet?”
Finn called out to the main section of the brig, where Dewitt was seated. “I’ll let you know, Dewitt.”
Frank chuckled again, then stood and faced his prisoner. Shook his head and sighed. “Okay, then, you know the drill.” He walked over to the cell door and held it open. “Your suite awaits.”
Finn stepped into the cell, turned to face Frank, and sat down on the steel bunk.
Frank hung his head inside the door for a moment before closing it. “You know they caught the guy who did all the killings, right?” He shook his head. “A pilot. You believe that?” His voice dropped a notch. “Guy took a footer, they said, ate the prop.”
Finn looked at him and nodded. “That’s what I heard.”
“So what are you in for this time?”
“GCM. Maximum penalty.”
Frank’s jaw dropped. He spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Are you shitting me?”
Finn lay back on the thin mat, fingers laced behind his head.
“I shit you not,” he said.
Maximum penalty for a general court-martial, if the captain could make it stick, was death.
100
Midnight.
Flight ops had been called off for the night; they were skirting some sort of tropical storm system and the sea state was getting too rough.
Monica sat in the pilot’s seat of her Knighthawk, staring out through the helicopter windshield at the darkened space of hangar bay 3, tears of fury and frustration running down her face.
Do you cry when things don’t go well?
“You better fucking believe it,” she said. A mechanic in the helo next to hers glanced over at her, startled, then looked away again when he realized she was talking to herself.
Everyone on board had breathed a huge sigh of collective relief. Murders solved, killer found, case closed—and that terrible curse was finally behind them. In just two days they’d be docking at Hawaii—port call at last!
And then, that time-honored Navy tradition the whole crew had been looking forward to for weeks: Tiger Cruise! The final leg of the deployment, where crew membe
rs would be joined in Hawaii by friends and family, who would be allowed to come on board and finish out the ship’s last few days as they steamed homeward. Finally.
There was good news for Monica, too: late that afternoon, after all the drama was over, she got word that she’d aced her checkride. Her HAC was in the bag.
She should have felt triumphant. She didn’t.
She felt drained and defeated.
Papa Doc had been telling the truth. She was sure of it. He was a petty, angry man with a nasty history, and he’d chosen suicide rather than face his crimes. But he hadn’t killed Kristine.
“Shit!” she muttered.
She didn’t want to accept the idea that her best friend really had taken her own life. It made no sense. But maybe the truth didn’t always make sense.
Maybe sometimes there was no X to find.
If Monica had forced the issue, sat Kris down, looked her in the eye, and got her to open up about what was really going on for her, might things have turned out different?
She’d never know.
In any case, Papa Doc didn’t kill her. And now Papa Doc was dead himself.
Thanks to her.
Never back down.
And she hadn’t.
No, she sure hadn’t.
Scott warned her. Rickards pushed back. The SEAL flat-out told her that her CO had not done what she was convinced he had. Even Master Chief Jackson, when he questioned her, put it right out on the table. Can you tell us something you actually observed, any specific behavior or exchange, anything at all? No, she couldn’t—but she still wouldn’t back down, and she had pushed her way into the investigation and handed them a convenient suspect for their bullshit theory. Not that she could really blame the investigators.
There was only one person to blame here.
Her own damn self.
101
Midnight.
The mood at midrats was celebratory. Practically giddy. Tiger Cruise!—the navy’s version of We’re goin’ ta Disney World!—and then home again, home again, jiggity fucking jig.
He’d watched his compadres yak and stuff their faces and tell one another sophomoric jokes for as long as he could stand it. And now here he was, back in his cramped, gray office space where he had spent the past two weeks with Mac and his people, grilling half the boat, and to what purpose?
He balled up a meaningless meeting memo from his desktop and tossed it across the little office space toward the five-inch hoop he’d taped to the back of his door. The shot missed.
To most people who knew him, the USS Abraham Lincoln’s JAG officer was a hero. A kind, patient person, solid officer, compassionate leader.
The truth?
Scott Angler was all those things, yes.
But he was also an angry, bitter man.
In the gun battle that took his leg and his friends’ lives, Scott had also lost a core part of himself, the part that answered to the hero’s call. He’d thought becoming a JAG officer would help him get that back, but it hadn’t. And he missed it sorely, every bit as much as his leg. More.
He didn’t like SEALs. He saw them as gunslingers, swinging dicks, egomaniacs who believed the rules applied to everyone but them. Yes, he was a SEAL himself, or used to be, but that only meant he knew what he was talking about. Scott Angler didn’t like SEALs. And he especially didn’t like this one.
No last name. Give me a fucking break.
He was also irritated as fuck at Harlan “Robbie” Jackson. A damn good CMC, he’d give him that, and that mattered to Scott—but that didn’t mean he had to agree with the man.
Captain Eagleberg? Scott wouldn’t cross the street to piss on that one to put out the proverbial fire. A grade A dick and one of the shittiest leaders Scott had ever come across—but he was a smart man with some serious family pedigree and he was, for better or worse, the commanding officer of this vessel. It had never sat well with Scott, the way Jackson had gone behind the captain’s back to initiate his own investigative team. And then to top it off, refusing to consider the SEAL’s obvious guilt?
Unbefuckinglievable.
Except that he’d been right. It wasn’t the SEAL, after all.
And Monica had been right, too, right about her CO all along. And Scott had refused to listen to her, refused to take her instincts seriously.
And because of it, three more murders had happened before they finally caught the guy.
Some hero.
He balled up another memo, this one from Mac’s summary conclusions, and one-handed it at the hoop on the door. Another miss.
“Fuck me,” he said.
102
Midnight.
“Here’s to fair winds and a following sea,” Jackson said aloud to the empty office, and he hoisted a mug of hot coffee from midrats.
Earlier that evening he had officially disbanded the team, quietly thanking Lew and Indy for their service and their trust in him and repeating his promise of confidentiality concerning their clandestine formation. Now he was taking a quiet moment to, what? To mark the passage of an era, he supposed.
Savoring the victory. If you could call it that.
He sat brooding into his mug.
Trying to shake the thought twisting in his gut.
What if Papadakis wasn’t the guy?
What if he was set up? What if the killer went out of his way from the start to target victims in a pattern that would point toward a bigot, to throw any investigations off the scent? In a couple days they would be in Hawaii, and the mainland a few days after that. The boat would empty out. The killer could walk away free.
And that finger. If Papadakis was playing out some kind of vigilante fantasy, Keeping the Navy Pure for Straight White Males, okay—but why leave a finger? Why take a finger? And if it was Papadakis, how did that fit with Lew’s whole piece about the killer wanting to create a reign of terror?
It made no rational sense.
He took a hot sip, made a face, set the mug down. Weak as piss tonight.
Jackson had talked to Scott that afternoon, tried to anyway. It was a brief, strained encounter. He didn’t ask, but Jackson had wondered if Scott still liked Chief Finn for the murders.
But that made no sense—not after today. Let’s just say Finn was the perpetrator of these crimes and had set up Papadakis to take the fall. Then why in God’s name would he try to save the guy’s life?
Okay…but did he really?
The man was a SEAL, and not only a SEAL but a top operator. And before that he was an SAR swimmer. You didn’t get any more capable. He could imagine exactly what Scott would say: If he wanted the guy’s life saved, it would’ve been saved.
An excellent point.
And Jackson had to admit, the circumstantial evidence against the SEAL was impressive. The killings started right when he came aboard. Then stopped while he was in the brig, and started again the night he got out.
And it couldn’t be easy to track and kill someone, then dispose of the body, all completely without detection in such tight quarters as an aircraft carrier. Let alone do it four times. (Or five, depending on whether you were going by incident count or body count.) All that had to take some skill.
No, not some skill. An extremely high level of skill.
All of which pointed guess where.
And speaking of pointing, there was that damn finger, too. A trophy. Just like in Mukalla. Which Scott didn’t even know about.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his phone. He stared at it. The last time he’d gotten a call at such an unexpected hour it had been the morning they found the two incinerator kids missing. He didn’t much care for the reminder.
It was Indy, calling from her office up in CVIC.
“You’re still up?” said Jackson.
“I can’t sleep.”
<
br /> “No. Neither can I.”
“Well,” she said. “Even if you could, you won’t after you read this.”
“This?”
“That incident file you asked about? I have it.” She paused. “It’s ugly.”
103
Midnight.
Finn did not feel things the way other people did. But that didn’t mean he didn’t feel them. In fact, it was precisely because he didn’t feel things “normally” that when he did, he felt them far more acutely than most. Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe it was the very fact that he felt those things to such an unbearable depth that had led him to forge different, more indirect emotional pathways.
He had never stopped to think about it, didn’t think about it now. All he knew, lying on his back in his darkened cell, was that there was a two-thousand-pound weight crushing down on his chest.
Kennedy?
Gone?
Kennedy had been more than his OIC, more than a teammate. A brother.
And Finn knew what a brother was.
One January night in the middle of Hell Week, Finn’s BUD/S class had spent hours on and around the rocks of the San Diego coast, navigating out and back again in Zodiacs, rigid-hulled inflatable boats that could carry a dozen men each. They were soaked to the bone, covered in sand, bare degrees from hypothermia. Bleeding in a dozen places. Every move felt like being rubbed all over with coarse-grade sandpaper. The task was to ignore all that and focus on the rolling sets of incoming waves to avoid having their rafts—and themselves—sliced to ribbons on the rocks.
That’s what this felt like right now. Bleeding in a dozen places.
Groaning with the effort, he pushed away thoughts of Kennedy, fighting the sense that he was betraying his brother by doing so, and tried to focus. He heard his own breathing, coarse and heavy, forced himself to take a long, even inhale, then let it out. Slow. Controlled.
Focus.
Think it through.
Naming Movie Star as their perp might have satisfied the chief of security, and it might satisfy the captain, but it wouldn’t wash with the CMC. He was too sharp, too conscientious. Same for Supercop. They would keep at it, both of them, more so than ever, now that everyone else considered the problem solved. They wouldn’t stop till they had their man.