by Brandon Webb
She woke up her computer with a keystroke and clicked through folders to bring up the CCTV footage of the helo’s departure, which she’d obtained back when the investigation was still under way. Fast-forwarded to the point where one purple-shirted fuel handler stood just yards away from the Knighthawk, testing the fuel from the hose.
Looking up at the cockpit: thumbs-up.
Diego in the pilot’s seat, signaling back. Thumbs-up.
Monica hit PAUSE and sat back in her chair.
No problem with the bird.
No problem with the fuel.
So what were they missing?
She set the footage back to the beginning and let it run. The grape rushing in with his big fuel hose, twisting the nozzle onto the pressure seal to gas up the Knighthawk; the brown-shirted PC stepping forward to initiate his takeoff routine; two green-jerseyed handlers running forward to pull the forward-wheel chocks as a few others swarmed over the bird in last-minute checks—
She lunged forward in her chair and clicked PAUSE again.
Who was that?
To Monica, these men were like her Rubik’s cube algorithms: she had each one memorized, knew them so well she could pick out any one of them from a lineup, goggles and all.
Except that one.
She rewound fifteen seconds and played that last bit of video again.
Hit PAUSE.
There. That handler. Thin, lithe, tightly controlled movements. She’d never seen him before. Except…hadn’t she? At least once. But not on the flight deck. Where?
Something pulled her glance down to the cube in her left hand.
Fifty-four onyx eyes looked back at her. Nine groups of six, neatly arranged in three rows of three.
Her hand had run the algorithm by itself.
All at once her blood ran cold.
She remembered where she’d seen him.
110
0533 hours.
Finn was in trouble.
At first he’d tried to ease his way back into those random patches of childhood memory. Slow. Cautious. Carlos Hathcock, the legendary Vietnam-era Marine sniper, once took three full days to slither a thousand yards through heavily defended territory before sending a bullet ripping through a general’s heart. Finn didn’t have three days, but he did his best to slip into the bear’s cave as undetected as Hathcock.
Didn’t work.
Every time he got close the bear lashed out—and he would find himself sitting up, gasping for air, gripped with nausea.
Now it was worse. The dizziness was back. In the dirty red haze of the safety lights the walls of his cell seemed to be slanting inward, crashing into one another at impossible angles. It hurt to keep his eyes open, hurt worse to close them.
The buzzing in his head came and went, a distant police siren having a psychotic episode.
He sat up and leaned against the wall, panting with effort. Consulted the clock in his head. After 0530.
Which left him barely half an hour.
Focus.
The danger was coming at him from three directions. Danger at the beach, when they landed. That could wait. Danger here on the ship. Imminent. Danger from inside his head—worsening by the hour. But he wasn’t making any progress on that last, so that would have to wait, too.
Leave the old memories for now. Deal with the imminent danger.
Which meant a different kind of reconnaissance. He needed more than an unaccounted-for cup of coffee.
He needed to ID the guy.
Assuming it wasn’t himself.
Finn lay back on his prison cell rack, hands clasped behind his head, and closed his eyes. The nausea swept over him like a poisonous wind, rushing up from his legs to his head. He let it run. Breathe in, let it hold, four, five, six, seven, let it empty out, then roll in again…a slow surf of breath, a tidal heartbeat.
He’d already run through footage in his head of the days Schofield and Biker went missing. Ditto Luca Santiago. Ditto the night the two boys from recycling were killed, the night he and the CMC ran into each other patrolling, the night of the full moon. Nothing but gaping holes.
He started unpacking the files of memories of that Beer Day talent show scene, the day of the killer’s big reveal.
Breathe in, four, five, six, seven…
Sitting by the port-side edge of the flight deck, watching the crowd. West Texas, the helo pilot, walks over and sits down. Starts talking to him, asking something about her CO. Finn watches the stage. Master of ceremonies pointing to the rolled-up canvas. A few laughs in the crowd, people guessing at the joke to come. The canvas unfurling. The first scream.
At the time Finn was dimly aware of the poster depicting the two kids being burned alive, but unlike most of the crowd he was not shocked by it. Not even surprised. In fact he hadn’t paid much attention to the poster itself. He was focused on everyone’s response. He began replaying those observations now, subject by subject—the screaming, crying, shouting, vomiting. He didn’t care about any of that. It wasn’t the reactions that interested him.
It was the reactions to the reactions.
Finn flipped rapidly through the mental files, pausing only to examine images of the scattered few who responded proactively—those who, rather than recoiling or freaking out, acted instantly to protect or support the person next to them. The sheepdogs of the group. These were not conscious, thought-out responses. There wasn’t time for that. They were reflexive. Instinctive. And all virtually identical.
Except one.
He rewound the footage in his head, watched it again.
Something was different here. What, exactly? Different how?
He rewound and scanned it again.
And a third time—
There.
One man, an officer, putting out a hand to support the screaming woman standing next to him. Much like a few others.
Except that this one started putting out his hand a split second before the poster unfurled.
He knew what was about to happen.
He knew before it happened.
He was the guy.
111
0533 hours.
“Dalton Mosley here.”
A small sigh escaped Lew’s lips. It had taken him more than two hours, but he’d finally tracked the man down to a remote municipality north of Bozeman, Montana. And more’s the wonder, had found a working number and got the man himself on the line.
“Detective Mosley! You’re a tough man to find.”
There was a wheezy laugh on the other end. “That’s more’r less the idea, son. And you are?”
“Lieutenant Lewis Stevens, sir, with the US Navy. At sea, as a matter of fact, right at the moment somewhere in the Pacific.”
“That right?” The wheezy laugh again, like a rusted-out gate. “What’s the US Navy want with an old former back-country bull?”
Lew explained briefly what he was looking for, and the old cop told him the whole story, or at least the part of it that he knew.
Two boys were involved; parents evidently not at home when the incident occurred. Older boy’s name was Ray, Mosley remembered; wasn’t sure about the younger boy. Frank? Phillip? Something like that. Older boy was in the parents’ gun closet, showing his kid brother one of their handguns, when it accidentally went off.
“Damn fool kid shot himself straight up through the head. Body fell across the closet door, blocking egress. Result being, the younger boy sat there on the floor, trapped and in shock, for more’n twenty-four hours till neighbors found him and called the cops.”
The line went silent for a moment.
“And that was you?” prompted Lew.
He heard the man draw a breath and let it go. “Oh, yeah. That was me. For about twelve hours, till the Feds showed up and shut that whole shit show down.
”
“Feds?”
“Parents were known anarchists, wanted in three states for gun-running, arson, armed robbery, had themselves a whole rap sheet of subversive and violent activities. Never did see what any of that had to do with our situation. We had one dead kid, ’nother one just about comatose. Didn’t matter—we were roped off and out of the picture.”
Ah. That explained why Lew hadn’t been able to find any further reports after that first day; the media were shut out, too.
“I followed the case, best I could. Parents never showed, no doubt spooked off by the alphabet boys. Surviving kid became a ward of the state. Hospitalized for weeks, had to be sedated when he came around, which didn’t surprise me one bit. I wouldn’t lay odds that poor kid’d ever come out of his briar patch.”
“You saw him?”
“That I did. Oh, yeah. Heard the first call come in, got there just a few minutes behind the uniforms. There when the EMTs carried him out of that hell hole. Spent ten, maybe fifteen minutes in that closet myself. Felt like a God damn lifetime. Blood all over the floor, flies all over the blood, stink of cordite still hanging in the air after God knew how many hours. Older boy’s body’d started to go, too, you know? Like a God damn torture chamber, son, some serious Stephen King shit. Tell you something, Lieutenant. I was not a young man, been on the force more’n two decades at that point, seen more death and ugliness than most. But that closet, that morning? Gave me the God damn willies.”
Lew had said as little as possible, not wanting to interrupt the man’s flow, but there was one detail he was curious about. “So, what happened to the parents?”
“The parents? Ha. Nothing. Not a God damn thing.”
“I mean, how did they die?”
The voice laughed, that rusty wheeze again. “Who says they died? Feds tracked those pieces of shit for years, never did pin ’em down. All I know, they’re still out there somewhere. Probably hiding out from the law and plotting against their government.”
Lew heard the man breathing heavily as he paused. His mouth must have been right against the phone. Finally he spoke up again.
“Always wondered what happened to that poor kid.”
“He joined the navy,” said Lew.
“That right? Sonofabitch. Good for him.”
Lew thanked the cop and hung up, then sat back in his chair and looked up at the masks on his wall.
Gave me the God damn willies.
Lew Stevens was not a man who cursed with great frequency, but there were times when nothing less would do.
“Ho-lee shit,” he said.
112
0545 hours.
Monica sat staring at the freeze-frame image on her computer monitor.
She had to tell someone.
She put her hand on her phone, then stopped.
Would he listen?
She had to make him listen.
She looked up his stateroom number, punched in the four digits. No answer. Shit. She’d have to leave a message on his office line. Looked up that number.
The phone picked up on the first ring. “Scott Angler.”
It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t a recorded voicemail prompt. “Scott? You’re there?”
“Long night,” said Scott. “What’s up?”
“Listen, it’s about Kris—” She heard his hiss of exasperation. “Please—don’t hang up. This is important!”
She heard him pause. “What,” he said, not disguising the impatience.
“The night she went missing, after we talked in the passageway, she went out to be by herself for a bit. Right?”
“Okay.”
“That night, there was a guy in the passageway, in goggles and a green jersey, a guy I didn’t recognize.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Scott—I don’t think he was a genuine handler.”
She heard him sigh. “Monica. You can’t expect to recognize every single—”
“I know them, Scott! I’m telling you, this guy was not a handler, he was just wearing the outfit! Scott—I think he may have been following Kris.”
There was a silence, so long she thought she’d lost her connection. Finally Scott said, “Papadakis ran, Monica. Guilty men run.”
Monica said nothing, just waited.
After another silence he said, “You’re sure about this?”
Monica swallowed, her throat dry as leather. “I am.”
“And you don’t know who it was?”
“No. But definitely not Commander Papadakis.”
“Okay.”
“Okay? That’s it?”
“I’ll look into this, I promise. I mean it. All right?”
“All right.” She felt hollow, the rough emptiness that followed an adrenaline rush. “Scott—”
“Hmm?”
“I’m sorry. For what I said.”
“Tell me over breakfast in Hawaii.”
He disconnected.
Tell me over breakfast in Hawaii. That would be nice. Monica almost smiled, but her face was too tired to make the shape.
She sat still for a moment, looking at the freeze-frame on her screen.
It occurred to her that she hadn’t told Scott just how she stumbled upon the unidentified handler in the first place. In fact, she’d been so focused on her revelation that this man was in that passageway the night Kris disappeared, she hadn’t stopped to ask herself the obvious question—
What was he doing there on the flight deck, just moments before Black Falcon 204’s final flight?
“Oh, God,” she murmured. A fresh stream of adrenaline surged through her body.
She reset the footage and went through it once more, this time frame by frame, following the movements of the unidentified handler. She saw him emerge from the right side of the frame and approach the bird. Duck under the main deck, by the fuel lines.
Wait.
She isolated a single frame. Something in his hand, something he was holding to the fuel line. A wrench? Screwdriver?
A pen?
Not a pen.
A hypodermic.
“Oh!” Monica gasped and jerked back, sending her chair rolling back a few feet. She stared at the screen in horror.
Not pilot error.
Sabotage.
She snatched at the phone and dialed Scott again. No answer. She hung up and immediately dialed back. It rang four times, then went to voicemail.
113
0545 hours.
Finn squeezed his eyes shut in the darkness, gazing inside his mind at the Beer Day scene, trying to zoom in on the man’s face. Impossible. At the time, he’d been positioned way back and to the left and had only a momentary glimpse of him from behind.
Still, he thought he recognized him.
From where? When? He couldn’t quite pull it up.
He slowed his breathing down.
Slowly at first, then picking up speed, he began flipping through thousands of mental files, one by one: his walks through the ship, forward and aft, starboard to port, deck by deck, starting back at his first full day on the Lincoln. Jittery Abe’s. Yo, Billy, you in? FOD walkdown. Library. Midrats. Scanning, scanning, watching the faces, the shoulders, the gaits. Searching for the guy.
Day 2. The lower decks, The Jungle, Tucker, Jittery Abe’s again, Tom the ordie, Frank and Dewitt. CIWS mount. Library again. Flight deck. Searching, sorting, cataloging. Midrats at general mess. Mukalla memories. A hot prickling up the back of his neck. This was the night Schofield went missing. The people he saw passing in the passageways. Unrated E-1s and E-2s, swabbing and polishing. Air traffic and intel crew heading to their berthing compartments after a long day. Flight deck crew and mechanics heading above to the flight deck or below to the hangar deck to service their aircraft. There went Schofield him
self, heading in the direction of the fantail. A pair of yellow shirts, laughing quietly over some private joke. Another handler in his green jersey and goggles. Dozens of faceless individuals all going their separate ways yet all—
Wait.
He hit the PAUSE button in his head and scrubbed backward, frame by frame, then hit STOP.
Another handler in his green jersey and goggles.
Why was an aircraft handler wearing deck goggles when he was below, on the gallery deck, well after flight ops were done for the night?
And with that it all snapped into place.
He remembered where and when.
He knew the face behind the goggles.
“Hey, Frank!” he called. “Need to get another message out.”
He needed to warn Jackson. The lead Finn gave him might have put him and his intel person in jeopardy.
“Sorry, Chief, no can do,” Frank called back. “No more messages. Sheriff’s orders.” He sounded fried. Half the security staff was still out sick. He and Dewitt had been on duty now for more than twelve hours.
Finn lay back on the hard bunk, felt the heave and pitch of the boat.
He had to get to Jackson.
He consulted the clock in his head: 0556.
Four minutes to go.
114
0556 hours.
It took Scott no more than a minute to locate the place, a cramped little compartment tucked in a port-side corner just below the flight deck. Not much bigger than a broom closet.
The door had no lock.
The search took only minutes. There was a small secure locker; he broke into it and found what looked like an improvised bugging/recording setup. He listened to a minute of what was stored on the thing, just long enough to identify it as taped conversations from the captain’s parlor.
Set the device down on the bunk.
Continued looking around.
Pulled out the locker under the rack, rifled through it. Lifted out a folded deck crew jersey. Green.
Underneath that, a pair of goggles.
“Fuck, I knew it. I knew it! Motherfucker.”