by Brandon Webb
Either way, he was dead.
“A little unsteady on your feet there. Have you been drinking, F/X?”
The faint echo gave the voice a ghostly quality, as if it were coming from inside his head.
Fighting back the nausea, Finn pulled a small flare from its containment. Couldn’t fire it from here, too far to the opening. He’d only blast the inside of the magazine.
“Ha-ha, kidding. I know you’re not a drinker. No, you’re a claustrophobe, aren’t you, F/X?”
He strapped the flare to his side and began to climb.
Focus on the breath. In through nostrils, four, five…
“My gosh, the willpower it must have taken, plowing through all those training scenarios, keeping your little secret. But you still can’t stand enclosed spaces, can you? That’s why you’re always out on the sponsons and catwalks and not in your little bedchamber.”
Finn was nearly halfway up now. A little farther and he’d take the shot. At worst it would distract the target, buy him time to scuttle up the ladder and out.
“I put something in your little bedchamber today, F/X. A green jersey and goggles. They’d look good on you. Make you look a little like, I don’t know…a pollywog?”
Breathe out through pursed lips, pause, in through nostrils—
The voice started softly chanting.
“Pol-ly-wog…Pol-ly-wog…Pol-ly-wog…”
Finn froze.
Felt the color drain from his face, his jaw clench.
He scrabbled at the flare and pulled it free—
The voice picked up in pace and volume.
“Pol-ly-wog! Pol-ly-wog! Pol-ly-WOG! Pol-ly-WOG!”
His hands went numb and he felt himself starting to slip—the flare fell from his fingers, clattering down the ladder.
“Pol-ly-WOG! Pol-ly-WOG!!”
Finn jammed his arms and now useless hands through the rungs to hold him in place, his body dangling from the ladder like a broken shutter. His throat locked.
“Pol-ly-WOG! Pol-ly-WOG!”
He felt water licking at the soles of his feet, tickling his ankles.
“I know what happened in the gun closet that day, F/X, the day that made you what you are.
“Ray never shot himself, did he. When that handgun went off, it wasn’t in his hand, the way everyone assumed.
“It was in yours.”
A billion wriggling tadpoles came swarming up through the water, up through his gut, into his throat, all of them shrieking in unison with that leering voice…
Pol-ly-wog! Pol-ly-wog!
“You shot him.”
POL-LY-WOG!! POL-LY-WOG!!
“You killed your brother, F/X.”
POL-LY-WOG!!! POL-LY-WOG!!!
“You killed Ray.”
141
Ray was a god. He knew everything. When the boy grew up he wanted to be a big brother like Ray.
It was a sunny day but there were thunder rumbles, and he thought that was weird but Ray said, that’s Oregon for ya, and the boy felt like a smarter person knowing this wise thing. That was Oregon for ya!
They spent the morning out in the woods tracking deer and elk and hanging out by the millpond, and when they got back Ray showed him how to make grilled cheese sandwiches. Their parents were gone for the day—again—or maybe a couple days, the boy didn’t know and didn’t really care, the longer the better as far as he was concerned, things were better anyway when it was just him and Ray.
Just Ray and him.
When they were down by the millpond Ray showed him that place where the stream twisted around a bend and you could lie on your stomach and watch the water, the minnows and goldfish, the water-skeeters and mayflies.
And tadpoles. Billions of them, wriggling and swarming in the water.
Those’re also called pollywogs, Ray told him as they sat in the kitchen and ate their grilled cheese. In ancient Egypt hieroglyphics, they used one tadpole to stand for the number a hundred thousand, Ray said. In some parts of the world, people ate them for food.
The boy thought they looked scary.
All big heads and no arms or legs.
They gave him the creeps.
Ray took a fat slice of Duncan Hines Devil’s Food chocolate cake out of the fridge for his little brother and set it on the card table in the kitchen to let it warm a little. He said it would taste even better when it wasn’t totally cold.
While they waited for the cake to warm, Ray said, hey, you wanna see something really cool?
The closet was locked, but Ray knew where the key was.
They had guns in there. A bunch of them. Ray took one out and held it in his hand. This is the coolest one, he said, it’s an H&K, they’re the best there is. Ray held it out to Finn. Check it out! The boy wasn’t so sure he wanted to touch it. It looked cool, all right, but it also looked big and cold. It’s not loaded, goofball, Ray said, just feel the weight of it in your hand.
He took it, felt the weight of it in his hand. It was really cool.
His brother beamed at him.
His big brother.
His world.
BOOM!
The boy wasn’t aware of squeezing anything or pulling anything. He wasn’t even sure exactly which little piece of metal was the trigger.
It was like it just exploded in his hand.
They were watching TV one day, him and Ray, and they saw a big hotel in Portland that was condemned and they were televising the demolition, the TV guy explaining how they wired the whole thing with explosives, and all they had to do was press a little button and BOOM, a whole bunch of explosions would go off at the same time and the building would just collapse—and then right as they were watching it happened, just the way the man said, this big humungous hotel just melted down into itself, collapsing like a puppet when you cut all its strings.
That’s what Ray did now.
Ray just stared at him, and then collapsed like a puppet, his knees slammed into the floor, and then his body crashed down too—
a big THUD!—
then a second, smaller thud—
and then a million billion trillion pollywogs came surging up into the boy’s throat and burst out through the top of his head—
142
Finn screamed.
The cry of something primordial, a banshee wail, the howl of a dozen dying wolves, a thousand tortured souls, a train whistle shrieking into the mouth of Hell—
And took a breath—
And he screamed again—
A roar of pain and grief and anguish—
for Schofield,
for Biker,
for Luca—
for Kennedy—
for Ray—
for that terrified boy sitting frozen in his blood-soaked closet forever—
the scream ripped through the hangar deck and startled the man standing at the top of the tunnel, causing him to rear back—
Finn surged up the ladder like a geyser—
His arm shot out and over the lip of the magazine and plunged the steel ring knife into Lew Stevens’s right foot.
143
Bellowing in pain and fury, Lewis tugged the knife out and hurled it away. He staggered, caught his balance, and lifted the sidearm to shoot—
But Finn was gone.
Shit.
Where?
Somewhere out there in the darkened hangar, among all those sleeping aircraft.
Lewis lowered his head and half closed his eyes, straining to hear something, anything, even the slightest movement. Nothing. There was no one in the hangar but himself and his prey—and neither was making a sound.
If “prey” was still the right word.
Shit!
Ten seconds ago Lew was standing on the outsid
e of the rat cage looking in.
Was he now the rat?
Recalibrate.
He was at a disadvantage. Finn could be anywhere, could jump him from any direction.
He took off at a sprint, making for open ground, knowing Finn would pursue, giving Lewis a clean shot.
Timing, that’s all. Just a matter of timing.
Lewis ran.
144
Finn shook all over, his body trembling with the aftershocks of an epic earthquake. He’d poked the bear, all right, and it hadn’t just whacked him back, it had lashed out at him with both paws and ripped the flesh off of him, left him naked and bleeding.
But he was still there.
Still here, Ray.
I’m sorry, Ray.
I’m so sorry.
He had to move.
Breathe.
Still wracked with tremors he couldn’t control, he started across the hangar deck, slipping from craft to craft, reaching out with his ears and instincts far ahead of his feet, moving silently, monitoring in all directions.
The ship was rocking hard now, the storm in full swing. He didn’t care. Didn’t affect him. The police siren was silent now, the dizziness gone.
He was on the stalk.
Fighting to tamp down the full-body shakes, he worked his way aft through hangar bay 2, past the maintenance office and on through hangar bay 3, through the jet engine shops and finally out onto the fantail—
Where Psycho Doc stood off to the port side, back to the rail, struggling to keep his footing on the storm-rocked deck. Leveling his unsteady handgun at Finn.
Every security detail had gone below to join the others in their wild-goose chase. The fantail was empty.
There was no one there but the two of them.
Finn stood in the doorway facing Psycho Doc from about four meters’ distance. Empty-handed.
The wind howled. The sea pitched up fifty-foot waves, some washing up over the rail and sluicing over the deck.
Psycho Doc was having trouble holding his aim. Still, from that distance his chances of a center-mass hit with his first shot were decent. Maybe better than decent.
On the other hand, the first shot could just as easily be a miss—and shot meant recoil, which meant a few precious seconds to retake aim, which upped the odds of Finn successfully rushing him between shot 1 and shot 2.
Finn had played those odds before, and won. But that was no guarantee.
Time slowed to a halt, each man taking the other’s measure.
Both weighing the options, calculating the odds.
Would Psycho Doc shoot Psycho SEAL—or would Psycho SEAL explode into a sudden feint-and-lunge and try to get the jump on Psycho Doc?
Finn would never learn the answer.
Because right at that moment a third possibility presented itself.
145
Finn felt it more than heard it—a whisper of hot air darting past, barely an inch from his side, as the missile found its target.
Thwonggggg.
The crossbow bolt buried itself in Stevens’s solar plexus and pinned him against the rail.
Monica let the crossbow fall clattering to the deck and stepped uncertainly out onto the fantail, both arms out for balance, her face gone white.
Shaky but still standing.
Sitting on the deck some five meters off, legs asprawl, Monica’s lethal shaft protruding from his solar plexus, Lew Stevens heaved a strained grunt.
Finn and Monica both stared at him.
His face twisted into something not recognizable as Lew Stevens. A grin so lewd it didn’t look human. He twitched once, then again, then went still, his face still twisted in that fey leer.
Like a mask.
Which was when they both heard the distinctive shuck-shuck of a sidearm chambering a round.
146
He saw them both freeze in place the instant he racked the slide on his Beretta 9mm. “Hold it right there!” he shouted over the wail of the wind.
Captain Eagleberg was aghast at what he’d just witnessed. The SEAL he’d expected—but holy Mary mother of God, the young helo pilot…was his accomplice?
He stepped out from the doorway at the far side of the fantail, a good six meters from where the two assassins stood. Close enough to shoot.
And Eagleberg was trained.
He stood, legs well apart and knees slightly bent to brace himself from the pitch and roll of the deck underfoot, and held his pistol out with both hands, aimed in their direction. “I’m placing you both under arrest, Article 31, UCMJ,” he shouted, “for the murders of Lewis Stevens, Sam Schofield, Kristine Shiflin, Luca Santiago, Ángel Cristobal, and William Chavez.”
The pilot stared at him, openmouthed.
The SEAL didn’t seem surprised, just frowned, as if he were concentrating, aiming a weapon. Though he clearly had no weapon to aim.
He had nothing.
He was empty-handed.
They both were.
“Or,” said Eagleberg. “Or I could save the navy the time and expense, and put you both down right now. Bring the killers to justice. Not the NCIS, not the FBI, not Angler, not Jackson. Old Eaglebeak.”
He lifted the pistol to chest height, aiming at a point between the two of them.
“Self-defense,” he said. He sneered. “You think anyone will doubt it?”
147
Finn was too far away to get to him before the gun went off, and from the look of his stance the captain was a far better-trained shot than Stevens. Finn had given his primary to Monica and left his secondary sticking in Stevens’s foot.
No primary. No secondary.
This, he thought.
This was why you always deployed a tertiary.
A backup to your backup.
And then the helo pilot did something neither Finn nor the captain expected. She slowly began to turn around. Hands out to her sides. Putting her back to the captain.
Finn understood what she was doing an instant before Eagleberg did. If she turned all the way around she would force his hand.
Tough to claim self-defense when you shot the other person in the back.
“Stop it!” His voice cracking, gun hand trembling. “Don’t move!”
She froze again, then resumed her painfully slow turn, shouting over the wind as she did. “It wasn’t Chief Finn, sir!” she shouted. “It was Stevens. Stevens killed them all.”
“I’m warning you, Lieutenant—stop moving, that’s an order!”
She kept turning. If he really meant to go through with it, this was his last chance.
“Stop, goddammit!” he screamed. “I will shoot you!”
Finn believed him.
Endgame.
He moved like a flash of lightning—a slingshot twist of his body and flick of his left hand.
The captain cried out in pain and surprise.
He dropped the sidearm, both hands flying to his face, and fell to his knees with blood pouring through his hands. He stared up in horror at Finn. Then looked down.
On the deck in front of him sat a bloodied, silver-plated Rubik’s cube.
“Shuck! Shuck!” he screamed.
He looked up at Finn in disbelief.
“You jush broke my shucking nozhe!”
Captain William James Eagleberg sat kneeling on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln and began to cry.
Epilogue
148
A week later
Ten miles off the coast of San Diego
“The USS Abraham Lincoln is proud to welcome their new commanding officer…”
An audience of some three hundred sat in folding chairs on the flight deck, there to witness the change-of-command ceremony.
“I had the privilege of working with this distinguished gent
leman several years ago…” The speaker, some visiting rear admiral, droned on under the hot September sun. Off to his far left, facing the audience, sat Captain Eagleberg, decked out in his finest dress whites, his nose so heavily bandaged it looked like the Mummy had just stepped off the silver screen and lay down on his face.
The captain would be shipping out the next day to the central Indian Ocean, where he would assume command of the Chagos Archipelago’s Diego Garcia naval base. “A capstone to his distinguished career,” the speaker had called it.
Diego Garcia was one of the worst assignments in the navy—a little piss pot in the middle of nowhere. The navy’s way of shuffling him out to pasture without the embarrassment of a court-martial.
Everyone present knew it.
Watching from his seat in back, crutches tucked under his chair, Command Master Chief Robbie Jackson checked his timepiece.
In his own gratefully brief speech, Old Eaglebeak dutifully extolled the virtues of his successor, Commander Arthur Atticus Gaines. Now Captain Arthur Atticus Gaines.
Good for you, Arthur. And may no one ever call you “Artie” again.
Jackson had heard the rumor that they were planning an award ceremony for him, too, but he hadn’t paid much attention. It hadn’t been announced yet; maybe it never would. They probably couldn’t figure out what medal you give to someone for surviving a homicidal attack from one of your ship’s own crew.
The scalpel had not gone into his liver after all, but it had lacerated his spleen and caused massive internal bleeding. Would have killed him, too, if the medical team Gaines dispatched had not arrived so quickly. And Gaines and his corpsmen were not the only ones Robbie had to thank. The sharp sting he’d felt in his trapezium was a hypodermic filled with succinylcholine—a lethal dose, even for someone as big as Jackson.
Except that Lew had been prevented from pushing the plunger all the way in when Jackson went suddenly crashing to the deck. He’d gotten enough sux in him to slow him down and create a near-paralytic state. But not quite kill him.