by Cliff Happy
Great, the silent treatment. I’ve had worse.
“Stand at ease, Lieutenant,” he finally said in the same calm.
Kristen slipped into a modified position of parade rest, but didn’t relax. This wasn’t a joke. This was him. This was Sean Brodie, her captain. The man who would decide her fate aboard this vessel.
“I see the weatherman finally got it right,” he offered, still watching her as if he were a jungle cat sizing up his next victim. His tone stayed relaxed, but she had the distinct feeling it was the calm before the storm.
“Pardon me, sir?”
“The Navy Weather Station in Bangor forecast an eighty percent chance of showers today,” he said offhandedly. Still seated in his chair, he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, his appraising eyes never leaving her. “In the future, you may want to consider checking the weather, Lieutenant, and perhaps investing in an umbrella.”
As her uniform continued dripping on the tiled floor, she clenched her jaw, feeling more foolish by the second. She secretly chastised her fickle memory. Of the many things in her life she wished her perfectly ordered brain would forget, an umbrella hadn’t been one of them.
“Yes, sir.”
His right hand reached out toward her. “Your orders?”
Kristen had forgotten about the official orders still in her briefcase. She fumbled for a few seconds, trying not to spill its contents onto the cabin floor and make an even bigger fool out of herself. She removed her orders and record book then handed them over. He resumed his previous posture and went through her orders.
More silence.
She watched him methodically read through her orders as if searching for any flaw that might allow him to send her away. She assumed he—like everyone else—didn’t want her on board. As a result, she expected him to use any excuse to be rid of her. Just what game he was playing she wasn’t certain, but she wasn’t going to let him get to her. Over the past few years she’d become immune to the hazing, the ridicule, the taunts, and threats issued by her superiors and peers. But the silence was grating on her nerves. She listened as he slowly went through every page of her orders and then her record book.
After what felt like an hour, he set her record book and orders aside. He then leaned back in his chair with casual grace, his eyes once more falling upon her. She resisted the urge to wipe the rainwater from her chin.
“Why are you here?” His voice was barely audible, almost soft. Certainly not what she expected.
It had been so quiet in his cabin while he’d read through her orders and file, that the sound of his voice startled her. “Sir?” she asked as if she hadn’t expected the question.
He repeated himself, speaking a little slower and pausing between each word as if she were a child or hard of hearing, “Why…are…you…here?”
Painful thoughts flashed through her mind, and her jaw tightened. “To be part of something bigger than myself, sir,” she lied. It was a canned answer. Far better than the truth, and she assumed it would suffice. But she’d never been a good liar. She had many talents, but deception wasn’t one of them.
She stood blankly before him, and another agonizing period of silence ensued.
“I mean the real reason you’re here,” he explained after several moments of uncomfortable stillness.
Kristen hesitated again. The answer she’d given had been sufficient since her earliest days at Annapolis, yet here it had fallen short. She dismissed the possibility of honesty, knowing she couldn’t resort to it, but this caused her to hesitate, and apparently her captain saw something… a weakness he now wanted to exploit.
Brodie changed tack. He asked six questions in rapid succession regarding the ship’s reactor. No sooner did she answer one then he fired another, giving her no time to think, no time to truly develop her answers. They were relatively simple questions any graduate of Navy Nuclear Power School (NNPS) should know. Kristen answered each of them as fast as they were asked. But the rapidity of his verbal assault was unexpected and had somehow unsettled her. She suddenly felt like a first year midshipmen back at the Academy being grilled by a dozen upper classmen.
Then, without any hesitation in his tempo of questioning he again asked, “Why are you here?”
Again Kristen hesitated, no satisfactory answer coming to mind. Another pause of uncomfortable silence settled in the cabin. Kristen bit her lip unconsciously and heard the XO shift slightly behind her.
Once more Brodie unleashed a barrage of queries, each more difficult than the last. He gave her no time to think. Answers she hoped were correct rolled off her tongue. She felt herself struggling as the intensity and difficulty of the questions increased. After what seemed like an hour of grueling questions, he again asked, “Why are you here?”
Memories she’d successfully locked away for years threatened to overwhelm her. Her unflappable exterior, the thin façade of calm she’d created and cultivated over the years was crumbling. She could feel it. This man, this stranger and his cold, steady voice was trying to break her.
“I want to serve my nation, sir,” she managed, not believing it herself.
Apparently intrigued by her inability to answer such a simple question, the captain, who’d remained seated the entire time, now stood. He stepped to the side of her, his hard eyes boring into her. Once more, with the rapidity and grace of a jackhammer, he assaulted her with questions of ever increasing complexity regarding her job. She knew the reactor down cold, having actually taught at the Reactor Prototype School for a year as her petition for joining the submarine forces was considered.
Realizing he wouldn’t trip her up on the reactor, he pummeled her with questions about more obscure systems on board. Kristen could feel sweat joining the rain drops running down the small of her back as she answered question after question. Initially, she’d answered his questions confidently. Her incredible memory had been her shield, and she’d used it to protect herself from his intensity, but she felt her confidence slipping, her defenses weakening.
The interior temperature of the submarine was maintained at a comfortable sixty-nine degrees Fahrenheit, and she’d been a little cold in her wet clothing when she’d first entered his cabin. Nevertheless, she felt sweat on her forehead.
“Why are you here?” he asked. His voice hadn’t changed in volume or tone, but there was now an edge in it. Sharp. Cutting. Relentless. He was like a cat playing with a mouse, slowly torturing it. But, like before, Kristen couldn’t—wouldn’t—answer the question. No one would ever know, because no one could possibly understand why she had to be here.
Behind her, Jason Graves, the ship’s XO was no longer watching with amusement. He’d seen Brodie intimidate men with just a glance, a slight gesture of his hands, or with a few choice words. Brodie had never been a screamer or a man who liberally used profanity. Instead, Brodie possessed an ability to read people and discover their particular weakness, their specific ghost he could use to test them. Sometimes, he found the weakness after thirty minutes of questioning. But with this new officer, Brodie had discovered her Achilles’ heel immediately, and he’d shaken her from the very beginning. Whether or not Brodie had learned something during the normal research he conducted on all new officers, Graves couldn’t be sure. But what was certain was that Brodie now had the woman staggered, almost punch drunk.
It was obvious something was preventing her from answering the question he kept asking. It was an incredibly simple one, a question that any fool should be able to answer, and she was certainly no fool. Graves had seen her record and knew she’d been a Trident Scholar at the Naval Academy, an elite group of truly gifted midshipmen. Her file rated her IQ at over one hundred seventy, and she’d answered every one of Brodie’s increasingly difficult questions without fault, something Graves had never witnessed before. But he now watched, more out of curiosity’s sake than anything else, as Brodie continued.
“Come now, Lieutenant,” Brodie asked, “surely someone as smart as you knows why you’re here?�
�
Graves watched impassively as Brodie began to slowly circle her, almost as if stalking her.
“Why are you here, Lieutenant?” he asked again, his hard eyes seeming to see right through her. “Perhaps you think you’re the twenty-first century’s Susan B. Anthony?” he asked. “Are you going to start the next wave of feminism?”
Whitaker found her voice again. “No, sir! Not at all, sir.”
“What then?” Brodie asked and paused, still staring at her, watching every minute movement of her facial muscles. “Oh, I know what it is....” Brodie said accusingly, suddenly nodding his head as if in understanding. He leaned in close to her, the hint of a smirk on his face. “You want to be famous. That’s it, isn’t it?”
“No, sir,” she insisted. “I don’t care anything about that.”
Brodie rolled his eyes, clearly not believing her. “Come on, Lieutenant,” his tone was filled with doubt. “Your face was on the cover of Navy Times. Hell, you met the President and the First Lady. I watched it all on CNN.” He resumed circling her, but his critical eyes stayed on her. “I saw you seated in front of Congress testifying about how you’re being oppressed! How the whole world is against you! Those fools swallowed it all, hook, line and sinker, didn’t they?”
“That’s not true, sir,” she insisted, and Graves heard something unusual in her tone, something he’d never heard any new officer use toward Brodie: anger.
“Bullshit,” Brodie snapped crisply with a whip-like voice. “I saw you,” he reminded her. “The whole world saw you sitting there giving your pitiful little ‘woe is me’ tale to those congressmen. You enjoyed every minute of it. Didn’t you?”
Graves was beginning to feel a little sorry for her. He’d seen Brodie turn full-grown men into pools of emotional jelly, and for a few moments it seemed like Brodie had her on the verge of tears. Graves hadn’t been too happy about having her on board. It had nothing to do with her being a woman; he could care less about her sex. But the sub was on an incredibly compressed turn around schedule. Nearly a third of the enlisted men on board were fresh out of basic submariner training and were just learning the ropes. Added to these difficulties, the Commodore, the Admirals, and the CIA were screaming louder every day for the Seawolf to put back to sea, and they didn’t have time to deal with this “female experiment.” Now, despite the pressure they were all under, Graves was no longer comfortable watching Brodie’s almost brutal interrogation of her.
Brodie stopped circling and was now beside her, staring at her, watching for her reaction. Graves could see Brodie had made her angry and he knew it. She seemed on the edge of either breaking down or slapping him. Brodie looked almost curious as to which response she would choose.
Then, she turned her head to look at him. Her eyes no longer showed any hint of nervousness or intimidation, only cold fury flickering in her own icy glare. “Are you mad?” she asked him bluntly and turned her head back to look straight ahead.
Graves watched in fascination as a slightly pleased smile crossed Brodie’s face, knowing he’d hit his mark. Graves knew this was what Brodie had been waiting for. Not the prim and proper, well-rehearsed new officer, but the real person underneath the skin. Brodie was a fighter, and detested weak-kneed officers who were easily cowed.
But the lieutenant was just warming up.
“Do you honestly think I enjoyed being dragged before Congress and publicly humiliated by having to justify myself as a woman before the whole world?” she asked angrily. “Do you truly think anyone would enjoy being vilified, ostracized, and having her reputation and career—a career I’ve worked my entire adult life for —thrown under the bus in front of God and everyone?”
She was literally trembling with rage, and Graves saw her fists clenched tight. For a moment he thought she might swing at Brodie, and he briefly wondered if that was exactly what the captain wanted.
Again, she turned her head to look at Brodie, who was motionless beside her. Her eyes were filled with barely contained rage. “I’m fourth generation Navy, Captain! Do you honestly think for one moment I relished knowing my ancestors were rolling over in their graves when I dared question the almighty men in the admiral’s mess?” Her chin rose slightly, her left hand now pointing toward him. “Can you, for a moment, imagine what it is like to be told you’re incredibly qualified for the job you’ve dreamed of, fought for, and sacrificed for, only to be told in the next breath you aren’t good enough because you had the bad manners to be born the wrong sex?”
Graves took a tentative step forward. Her tone had gone from anger to rage and she was on the verge of becoming disrespectful; he felt he needed to intervene. But Brodie raised a barely noticeable finger and stopped Graves in his tracks.
Her anger and resentment had boiled over, just as Brodie had hoped all along. “Do you have any fucking idea how utterly dehumanizing and humiliating that is?!” she demanded, her voice sharp and irate. “Do you?!”
Brodie shook his head and replied softly, “No, I don’t.”
Brodie glanced toward Graves, a slightly amused look on his face. Brodie had baited her, and she’d taken it. Graves shook his head, not having expected this. No one raised their voice to Sean Brodie. No one.
Yet this mere Lieutenant JG had. She hadn’t folded and wilted before him as most junior officers did. Instead, she’d come out with her guns blazing.
Interesting.
Kristen felt the rage leave her as she realized it had been Brodie’s intent the entire time to provoke her, and she’d allowed it to happen. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d allowed her temper to get the better of her. She’d worked for years to keep her volatile nature under wraps. Over the past three-plus years, no one had managed to get her blood boiling the way her new captain had, and she hated herself for letting him get to her. But the damage was done.
She’d stepped way over the line with him. He hadn’t said or done anything to warrant her outburst. She’d not only raised her voice to him, she’d cursed him. And all of this in front of a witness. He could easily get rid of her now. It would take nothing but a simple phone call, and she would have no defense.
Kristen took a steadying breath and resumed staring at the far bulkhead. “No sir, I don’t imagine you do. Otherwise you could never have asked me such a question,” she finished, knowing she’d gone too far but, for the moment at least, not caring. Her temper had always been her greatest weakness, and even after years of trying to control it, she hadn’t quite mastered it.
Brodie nodded thoughtfully as he stepped in front of her, his eyes settling on her once more. But the hard eyes were gone, as was the smirk. Instead, he looked calm and almost reserved. “Sit down please, Lieutenant,” he told her easily enough. He took his previous seat and motioned for her to sit across from him.
Kristen stood motionless, still reeling from the rollercoaster of emotions she’d experienced during the last few minutes. Brodie looked back up at her and again motioned toward the seat across the small table. “Have a seat, Lieutenant. Please don’t make me have to order it.” Brodie then looked at Graves and nodded, “Spike can come in now.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” the XO replied smartly, and then the door opened behind her.
Kristen took a tentative step, her legs trembling slightly. She did as ordered and took a seat. She placed her left hand into her right, clenching them together tightly to stop them from shaking. She didn’t dare look across the table. She was still angry and assumed he was about to inform her that her services were no longer required. She’d given him the perfect excuse to be rid of her.
Bastard.
The door opened and the fireplug of a chief petty officer stepped in. He glanced at the XO and his expression seemed to ask, “How bad was it?”
The XO cringed in response.
Kristen didn’t know if these two were in on the game as well, and she no longer cared. As she was considering her fate, the captain slid a folded hand towel across the table to her. He’d retriev
ed it from a drawer built into the bulkhead.
“Why don’t you dry off some, Lieutenant?”
Kristen looked at the towel and then glanced up at him. He was again leaning back in his seat, looking quite comfortable, his right forearm resting on the table and his fingers tapping gently on the surface. Kristen took the towel with a trembling hand and dried the rainwater from her face. The XO straddled a chair facing her as COB leaned against the bulkhead with a satisfied expression, his powerful arms folded across his barrel chest.
Kristen took a few breaths, still feeling the after-effects of the adrenaline coursing through her veins. It had taken all of her control not to strike the stupid smirk off her captain’s face. She sat up, putting the towel back on the table between them, cursing herself for allowing him, or anyone, to make her lose control
She looked around the small cabin. Behind the door, folded up and out of the way, was a Versaclimber workout machine. She hadn’t noticed it when she’d first come in because it was stored against the wall behind the door. Otherwise, the cabin was, as she’d first observed, devoid of any other memorabilia or personal effects.
She forced calmness back into her voice as she spoke, knowing she had to apologize. “Sir,” Kristen said as she glanced back up at her captain, “please allow me to apologize for my outburst. It was uncalled for and disrespectful.”
Brodie glanced down at his fingernails, studying them for a moment. Kristen noticed there was some dirt under them. “I certainly wouldn’t make a habit of it, Lieutenant,” he replied almost casually.
“No, sir,” she managed. She had never been good at reading people’s expressions, and his was even more of a mystery. He didn’t look angry, nor did he look offended by her outburst. What game he was playing she could only guess, for surely this was a game.
“Spike,” Brodie said as he looked over at COB, “please have Gibbs come here.”