by Brandon Webb
Sister Mae had saved his life.
Once he got stateside, Robbie had some time off coming.
He’d use it to pay a good long visit to the bayou.
Scattered applause. Finally the ceremony was winding to a close.
Jackson got up and crutched his way across the flight deck to head below to his office.
He’d been up there since an hour before the ceremony, watching as they loaded a series of three black rubber body bags onto Lieutenant Bennett’s big Greyhound for transport: Commander Scott Angler, JAG. Lieutenant Indira Desai, Intelligence. Lieutenant Lewis Stevens, Medical.
He’d thought about all the bodies they weren’t able to recover. Kristine Shiflin. Sam Schofield. Luca Santiago. Willy and Ángel, the two boys from recycling. Commander Papadakis. The crew of four from the ill-fated Knighthawk. Casualties of war—not with a named enemy but with whatever dark imperative it was that animated people like Lew Stevens.
We steam around the world, Jackson mused, offering protection from our enemies. But the greatest mortal threat Jackson had ever encountered came from one of their own.
And that, he thought, was the most dangerous thing about the Terrible Man.
How often he looked just like the good guy.
Jackson checked his timepiece again, then stepped cautiously down onto the catwalk and headed below.
149
When he reached his office there was a message from the ATO shack.
“Delegation’s on their way below in ten minutes,” it said.
Finn’s welcoming committee, making the hop out from the beach to provide their guest an escort back to WARCOM headquarters at Coronado for a debrief.
Jackson had sent a petty officer up to see if the SEAL would stop in at his office before heading ashore. The delegation would be escorting him from here.
He went back into his inner sanctum to wait.
Earlier that day he’d met with Admiral Kirkland, who’d thanked him on behalf of the US Navy for his heroic if unorthodox efforts to maintain order on the ship and secure the crew’s safety, and apologized for the treatment he’d received at Eagleberg’s hands. She also let him know she had personally cleared him of any wrongdoing or impropriety in connection with his unsanctioned investigation, as well as having all the captain’s charges against Chief Finn dropped—gross insubordination, disorderly conduct, and on down the list.
As they stood to conclude their meeting, she’d asked, did he know anything about some sort of top-secret incident file concerning Chief Finn in Yemen? Apparently a few handwritten notes alluding to it had been found among Lieutenant Desai’s personal effects.
Jackson thought for a moment, then shook his head. Sorry, he lied. First he’d heard of it.
Now he looked over at the God’s eyes on his bulkhead. “So sue me,” he said.
The God’s eyes said nothing back.
Jackson took that to mean God had no problem looking the other way.
“Ah, Master Chief Jackson?”
The petty officer was peering in his half-open door. He was alone.
Jackson nodded at the guy to come on in.
The young man took two steps inside the office and stood there, his arms loaded with a stack of large sheets of paper.
“Go ahead,” Jackson prompted.
“Ah,” the kid stammered. “We, ah, went to get Chief Finn.” He stopped.
“And?” said Jackson.
“We, ah, we found these.”
The petty officer spread the sheaves of sketch paper out on Jackson’s desk. In Finn’s tiny compartment they’d found what looked like a complete set of sketched blueprints of the ship, all drawn by hand.
Jackson leafed through them, one by one, shaking his head in amazement. Every deck, nearly every compartment, all rendered in meticulous detail like an architect’s drawing. He got about halfway through the stack and stopped.
Stared.
Turned the next sheet over. Then the next.
Mixed in among the architectural-style renderings were a few sketched portraits of the Lincoln’s crew members.
Kristine Shiflin, alone in the cockpit of her F/A-18, laughing.
Sam Schofield, at his desk in the ATO shack, in conversation with his assistant, Campion.
The captain, peering imperiously down at the flight deck from Vulture’s Row.
Jackson himself, standing in deckhouse 3 in the midst of a muster, his eyes fixed straight ahead as if staring directly at the viewer.
Jackson felt the gooseflesh rise on his arms.
It was uncanny how lifelike they were, how the personalities leapt from the page. These were not simply photographic, they were somehow even more real than photographs—as if the artist had captured the very essence of each subject. Like psychological CAT scans.
“Mère de Dieu,” he murmured. Looked up at the petty officer. “And the man himself?”
“Ah, we haven’t quite located him yet, Master Chief.”
There was a brief silence, heavy as granite.
“You haven’t quite located him?” repeated Jackson.
The young man looked like he wanted to crawl onto Jackson’s desk and hide inside the stack of drawings. “He doesn’t seem to be, ah…anywhere, Master Chief.”
Jackson lurched to his feet and bellowed at the man: “You search every compartment, every locker, every trunk line, every toilet, shine a flashlight up every sailor’s butt if you have to, but find that goddamn sonofabitch!”
The petty officer blanched. He’d never heard Master Chief Jackson raise his voice before, let alone use that kind of language. No one had. “We already h-h-have, Master Chief. He’s just, he’s just not there!”
“WELL, SEARCH IT ALL AGAIN!!”
“Aye, Master Chief! On the double!”
The petty officer turned and fled.
The big man lowered himself gingerly back into his leather chair, swiveled around to his desk, and took a sip from his coffee mug. Set the cup down. Made a face.
Dieu, that was some bitter brew.
Perfect, to his way of thinking.
He pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk, the one that locked, and pulled out a thin sheaf of stapled papers. Five sheets, single-spaced.
He dropped it in a burn bag and sealed it. Thought about the SEAL, who at that moment was probably miles from there, slipping in among the rocks and onto shore somewhere on the Southern California coast. Imagined that within another hour or two, half of San Diego’s military security forces would be looking for him.
They’d have their work cut out for them.
A smile stole over Jackson’s broad features.
And then he laughed and he laughed and he laughed.
150
Two days later
Lummi Island, Washington
She checked all the locks. Lowered all the lights. Brewed herself a cup of oat straw tea, added half a teaspoon of local wildflower honey, took it to her couch. Remote in hand, flicked on the news. Felt with both hands on the couch’s surface beside her in the dark, triple-checking.
Phone and tactical flash on one side, HK P2000 9mm on the other. She liked the P2000. It had no safety, which suited her just fine.
Flipped through the news channels, taking time to assess each story’s basic information. Switched to the Internet, did a series of searches, found nothing worth tracking further. Back to the news to pick up on any back-page items. Then called up the show she was currently watching, a documentary on aquatic predators of the Antarctic. Whale, squid, albatross, and so forth. She was rooting for the krill.
Her phone lit up.
Message.
She muted the set and looked at the phone’s flat surface.
“I’m here,” it said.
For my dad, Jack, always the little voi
ce in my head, nudging me to untether the sailboat and take the journey. —B.T.W.
For Ana, who always believed; for two decades you’ve been telling me I should write novels, until I finally believed it too. —J.D.M.
Note from the Authors
Prior to becoming a SEAL, Brandon did two six-month WestPac (Western Pacific) tours as a search-and-rescue swimmer, one on the USS Kitty Hawk and one on the USS Abraham Lincoln—much like Finn in the book. The idea for this novel was inspired by an actual serial-molester event that occurred during his tour aboard the Lincoln in the mid-1990s, when the US Navy had just integrated women on board. The identity of that serial molester was never discovered.
A ship’s crew is ill-equipped to deal with a complex crime, not to mention the external political forces that would come into play. At the time, Brandon thought, What if these were murders?
It took twenty-five years and a writing partnership with John to bring that idea to the page.
While the characters of Steel Fear are fictional, the USS Abraham Lincoln is as real as blood and bones, as Finn would say, and we’ve sought to depict the ship as accurately as possible. For example, the décor of the captain’s “Lincoln Room” really was remodeled based on the set of Spielberg’s 2012 movie. (And yes, that little spot just behind Elevator 4 is in fact called “The Finger.”) That said, there are certain features, locations, and other details of the ship’s layout that we have intentionally changed, simplified, or obscured for security reasons.
Running a military vessel like the Lincoln takes a vast crew of talented and dedicated people whose tireless efforts often go unseen and unsung.
Turns out, the same is true of making a novel.
The authors send their abiding thanks:
To Alyssa Reuben at the Paradigm Agency for brilliantly shepherding our maiden voyage as novelists every step of the way (and for her Ninja-level editing skills).
To Anne Speyer, Jennifer Hershey, Kim Hovey, and Kara Welsh at Bantam Books for being our enthusiastic partners-in-crime; we could not have conceived of a more ideal publishing partnership.
To Carlos Beltrán for his stunning cover design, and Virginia Norey for the perfection of her book design.
To Hilary Zaitz Michael and Jack Beloff at William Morris Endeavor, Ben Smith and Adam Docksey at Captivate Entertainment, writer Aaron Rabin, and Alex Sepiol and Jake Castiglioni at Peacock for their dedication to bringing Steel Fear to the screen.
To Captain Putnam H. Browne, commanding officer; Command Master Chief James W. Stedding; Captain G. Merrill Rice, senior medical officer; Rear Admiral John F. G. Wade, commander, Carrier Strike Group 12; Lieutenant Charlie Koller, Lieutenant Christian Litwiller, MC3 Amber Smalley, and MCC Mark Logico, all from the USS Abraham Lincoln; and at Naval Air Force Atlantic in Norfolk, to Commander Dave Hecht, Deputy PAO Officer Mike Maus, MC2 Kaylyn Jackson-Smith, MCCS Dustin Withrow, MC Alan Lewis, and Ensign Clara Navarro for their generous assistance in John’s visit aboard the Lincoln.
To David Krueger, M.D., George Pratt, Ph.D., and J. T. Swick II, M.D. for lending their psychiatric, psychological, and medical expertise.
To Nick Coffman, George Hand, and Sean Spoonts for sharing their technical and military expertise.
To Geoff Dyer, author of Another Great Day at Sea; Cary Lohrenz, author of Leadership Without Fear, and Icon Productions, producer of the documentary Carrier, for their outstandingly informative descriptions of life on an aircraft carrier.
To Harry Bingham and Hal Croasmun for their expert guidance in how to put one word in front of another and have it all go somewhere (these two guys are SEAL-level in the writing sphere!); and to Eve Seymour (aka G. S. Locke) for her life-savingly expert critique of our first draft.
To Michael Ledwidge for his generous early endorsement.
To Deb and Charlie Austin, Dan Clements, James Justice, Ana Gabriel Mann, and Abbie McClung, for soaking up every word of early drafts and offering their own words of critique and encouragement.
And finally to you, the reader following these words right now, for coming with us on this journey. Don’t unpack your bags just yet; if you’re willing, we have more travels still ahead of us.
Read on for a sneak peek at the next explosive thriller by WEBB & MANN
COLD FEAR
Coming soon from Bantam Books
Prologue
A deserted city street. The distant ruckus of drunken revelers, laughter, Christmas carol fragments. Under the faint glow of streetlights a flurry of snowflakes drifts to the frigid cobblestone surface, then swirls aside as a girl sprints past.
Bare feet. No coat. Mid-twenties.
She darts through an intersection. Then another. Street names she can’t pronounce. On a wild guess she takes a left at the next corner and runs another block before stopping, bent over, hands on knees, breathing like a trapped animal.
There’s nothing but the silence of the snow and her own rapid panting. She looks around, frantic.
Has she gone too far?
Takes off running again. Squinting at the street signs, pleading for them to make sense. Fighting back the urge to stop and scan the darkness behind her.
The sound of her feet slapping the slick street surface drums against her ears….Images explode through her mind—
the mines…the Englishman…the lake house—
She pushes them away. Her feet are bleeding, but she has to keep going. She has to—wait. Was that a glimpse of someone passing on the far side of the street? She slows long enough to peer back through the murk. No one there.
The drugs are too strong.
She can’t tell what is hallucination and what is real.
Keep going.
Her feet slapping the cobblestones…the mines…the Englishman…
She won’t make it. It was a crazy idea. Should have known it was pointless to try. She reaches the next corner—
And there it is. Spread out before her like a banquet.
She stops again, hands on knees, gasping, the Arctic air searing her lungs. Squints into the dark and feels a rush of bitter relief. Not a hallucination. Really there.
A patch of open water.
The driver told her about this the day she arrived. In December the lake is covered in ice, he said, ice so thick they hold hockey matches on it. Except right here, at this spot. The city keeps this northeast corner heated year-round. “For the ducks!” he chortled.
And sure enough, through the gloom she can see their little bodies, tucked into themselves for warmth, still and silent. Living, breathing ducks, asleep on the water.
How do they survive the winters here?
How does anyone survive the winters here?
She whips her head around, suddenly alert, eyes and ears straining in the dark. There’s no one behind her. The only sounds she hears are her own hard breath and the faint splish-splash as she steps into the shallow.
From her pocket she pulls a stick of lipstick, blood red.
Stares at it, her heart pounding.
Hands trembling from the cold, she twists the lipstick open, pulls up her shirt with one hand and with the other scrawls a single word upside-down across her abdomen.
Then lets the lipstick fall from her fingers.
She strips out of her clothes, tossing each item behind her. Stark naked, she takes a few more steps into the water. Another flurry of snowflakes falls around her, the air a blast freezer on her skin. Teeth chattering, she kneels. Places her palms down against the shallow lake floor. Slides down onto her stomach and pushes herself away from the edge with her feet, propelling with her arms, each stroke drawing her further toward the lake’s center. After a moment her outstretched fingers find the lip of the ice sheet.
She slips underneath the ice, then twists around so that her back is to the lake floor, her face to the ice above. Stretches out her arm
s as wide as she can.
And pushes farther in.
I
Sunday
1
Gunnar slipped out of his family’s town house and closed the front door, soft as a spy. He wasn’t supposed to be out there on his own, but his parents wouldn’t notice. And anyway, he’d be back inside in just a few minutes. Quick as a flash.
It was past ten in the morning but still dark out. The sun wouldn’t come up for another hour. He looked around at their street. It snowed in the night! Only a little dusting, but snow was snow. It looked just like the powdered sugar on the Christmas cookies his Danish au pair made the day before, on Christmas Eve.
Gunnar descended the steps and trudged around the corner, scooted across the street and out onto the ice. He knew it was safe. In fact, he’d be out there later that day with his parents to watch the college kids play hockey. Right now, though, there was no one on the lake, no cars on the streets. Christmas Day. Everyone was at home eating oatmeal and staying warm, or still in bed (“sleeping it off”) like his parents.
He ventured farther out onto the ice, halfway to the middle of the lake, then lay down on his back, gazing up at the gray clouds against the violet morning sky, imagining bears and dragons and brave men with swords chasing them. He made snow angels. Laughed at the fresh tickle of snowflakes on his face.
After a few minutes of this glorious fun, Gunnar rolled himself over to get on his feet. Gotta be home before they noticed him gone. He slipped on the ice and fell flat on his frontside. Good one, klaufi! That takes talent! That’s what his big brother would say if he saw that clumsy move.
Taking it slow and careful now, Gunnar got back up onto his hands and knees—and stopped.
This couldn’t be real. Could it?
He was looking down at the ice, and someone underneath was looking back up at him.
He stared into the ice.
Into her eyes.
The Little Mermaid was Gunnar’s favorite story. His au pair had read him all the Hans Christian Andersen stories, and that was the one he fell in love with. He’d seen the Disney movie, too, but that was different. It felt fake. He liked having the story read to him better. Closing his eyes and hearing the words, in her voice, it all came alive. He never admitted this to his big brother, or to anyone, not even his au pair, but in his heart of hearts Gunnar believed that mermaids were real.