Darkside

by P. T. Deutermann

  “So why the provocative clothes?” he asked. “More dazzle?”

  “Yep,” she said. “It works, too. That’s why I’m the boss of my own little resident agency, such as it is, at age thirty. What you see is what you get. That’s my approach.”

  “But they don’t get it, do they?” he said with a grin.

  “Nice one, Mr. Hall,” she said. “Does that shower work down there, or is there some special maritime incantation to make it produce hot water?”

  “It’s complicated, but you can do it. Turn the left-hand knob, the one marked with the H, to the left and you’ll be good to go. In fact, you’d better turn the right-hand knob, too, or you’re going to be red all over. So to speak.”

  She cocked her head at him, finished her wine, and gathered herself to go below. “Thanks for the company,” she said. “And thanks for not making some clumsy pass. You’re a very attractive man.” She stopped, as if wondering if she’d said too much. “I’m really bummed about Bagger, and I have this feeling that the Dell case is falling out of my hands.” She smiled up at him. “Takes the romance right out of it, you know?”

  “I understand,” he said. “If you get bored later…”

  “Yeah? What should I do if I get bored later, Mr. Hall?”

  “Jupiter here plays a mean hand of gin rummy,” he said with a straight face.

  She straightened and slowly smoothed the front of the exercise suit over the contours of her body, letting him watch as she did it. “I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. Then she went below.

  Jim relaxed in his chair and poured some more scotch. He tried to think about the case of the tunnel runner, but his mind kept coming back to Branner. He wondered what it would take to get through all that armor. And then he realized that nothing would get through all that armor until and unless she decided to take it off.

  “She’s a tough one, bird,” he said. But Jupiter already had his head under his wing. Bird, he decided, had the right idea. He gathered up the sleeping parrot and went below himself. He put Jupiter into his big cage, doused all the lights, set the alarm system, and then went into his own cabin. He read for fifteen minutes before the rack monster sounded its siren song and he turned off the light. He couldn’t quite figure Branner out. It was as if she were appraising him, as if she hadn’t made up her mind whether or not she liked him. Actually, like was the wrong word. Respect. Branner was all about respect. He drifted off.

  He woke up to the sounds of somebody moving around out in the lounge. He looked at his watch and saw that he’d been down for no more than half an hour. He lay still, wondering if Branner was looking for something. There was some light coming through the portholes on either side of his cabin, enough to let him see the door clearly. The boat was moving gently in tune with the harbor’s tidal currents.

  The alarm panel light was steady, so it wasn’t an intruder. Had to be Branner. A moment later, he saw the door handle turn down, but the door did not move. Then the handle moved again, and the door slowly opened wide. It was Branner. She appeared to be wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt, which didn’t reach much below her hips. She stood there for a long moment, barely visible in the dim light, her hair down around her shoulders, the curves of her hips and thighs lovely. She had an expression he hadn’t seen before. He didn’t move, curious to see what she’d do.

  “You awake, Hall?” she asked softly.

  “I am now. You want a light on?”

  “No,” she said, coming over to the bed. She sat down sideways on the bottom edge, tentatively, as if she didn’t trust the bed to hold her. “I need to know something.”

  “Shoot.”

  “You said you got in trouble, over in Bosnia, when you were in the Marines. I’d like to know what really happened. If you want to tell me, that is.”

  He lay back on the pillows and put his hands behind his head. “It was a blue on blue-friendlies firing on friendlies. I was the spotter-the guy who can see the bad guys when the friendly artillery can’t. My job was to call artillery fire down on this fifty-seven-millimeter cannon some Serbs were using to pick off schoolchildren trying to get across a street. Serbs’ idea of sport.”

  “Who were the friendlies?”

  “An Italian peacekeeper squad. They were emplaced on a hillside below the Serbian position. Serbs didn’t know they were there, but the Italians couldn’t do anything about the cannon.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t?”

  “Couldn’t. It was going to take artillery of some kind-mortars, bigger guns. The Italians had rifles. Anyway, I called the mission ‘danger close,’ meaning there were friendlies close to the intended target. The Brit radio operator told his arty people that it was danger, but not danger close.”

  “And that made a difference?”

  The boat rocked gently as something went by in the darkened channel. The curtains swayed, changing the light in the cabin. “Yeah, that made a difference. ‘Close’ means the artillery folks hedge their bets with the fall of their rounds. Remember, they can’t see the target, so they shoot the first one near the target. My job was to watch to see where it fell and then adjust their fire-control solution. Danger close, that first round is always fired long, or beyond the target, just to make sure.”

  “And?”

  “They dropped a one-oh-five round on top of the Italian position. Got ’em all. I wasn’t sure they’d been hit-I was three thousand meters away-but it looked bad. Not knowing, I went ahead and adjusted the fire onto the Serb position. They got on in three rounds, and then fired ten for effect. Hamburgered ’em pretty good. But the Italian local commander couldn’t raise his people, so they sent some folks to go look.”

  “And they blamed you?”

  “Well, there was an inquiry, of course. I had been up there solo. My radio operator was in the rear with the gear, down with Tito’s revenge. The Brit radio operator said I called danger, not danger close. The Italians were furious, in their inimitable style. They went up the UN chain of command, looking for blood. My bosses were terribly embarrassed-Marines are supposed to be experts at this spotting business. It got public.”

  “Could you prove your story?”

  “Not initially. He said/they said, deal. But then, after I’d been relieved of all duties and sent out of theater, a British signals intelligence outfit came out of the weeds and said they’d had a multitrack tape recorder monitoring the local tactical circuits. They had me on tape. They took it to the Brit artillery people, who fessed up. Like I said, the Brits did the right thing, but by then, my bosses had publicly hung me out to dry, and they weren’t willing to admit they’d screwed up twice. The Marine Corps had been getting ready to court-martial me. Instead, they gave me the choice between the court or taking the ceremonial detail posting to the Academy. Naturally, I took it.”

  “How many people died?”

  “All nine of them. Direct hit. The Marine Corps kindly made me go face the families. Not fun.”

  “God. And afterward? After it came out that it wasn’t you?”

  “Came out? Nothing came out. And no one was going to convince the signoras. That damage was well and truly done. Bosnia, Kosovo, that whole peacekeeping scene was a major cluster fuck. I still feel guilty, even though I didn’t cause it to happen. I was part of it.”

  “So your career in the Marines went permanently south.”

  “Yup. The Corps never forgets.”

  “Did the people here at the Academy know the story?”

  “The Marines did. I assume somebody briefed the supe. Oh, and did I tell you the Italians had some kids up there? Some local kids-they ran wild over there-had climbed down into the Italian position, begging for food, hanging out. Ground them up, too.”

  “Oh shit.”

  “Yeah, shit. So that’s why I’m in this ‘nothing’ job.”

  She was quiet for a minute. “You associate a career with the chance to get into another mess like that?”

  Jim thought about it. “I guess I d
o. Sometimes, when I get to brooding, I refocus on what’s right in front of me. A pretty day in the harbor. The pleasure of polishing my boat. A nice wine. A pretty lady. Keeping it simple, here, boss.”

  She nodded. “I appreciate your telling me this. It explains a lot. Now I just want to cry.”

  “When I think about all that, so do I, Special Agent. You better get back to bed.”

  She gave him a long look, then nodded and quietly left the cabin. Jim didn’t know what to think, so he went back to sleep, hoping not to dream about that ravaged red hillside far away.

  Went bowling last night. Not duck pins-more like fuck pins. It was really kind of funny, watching those cops doing the funky chicken trying to get away from my little surprise. Running around down there like scared rabbits. And then I talked to them on their own radio circuit-that was perfect. They still don’t get it. Those are my tunnels, not their tunnels. They think they can catch me with motion detectors, and then they come up on a clear tactical radio frequency and let me listen. Keystone Kops. They ought to be making movies. And when it was all over? They just leave. I think they don’t like it down there. I saw a couple of the Yard cops, and they were spending more time looking around at all that concrete than they were looking for me. I could have reached out and touched two of them once I put the lights out. Too bad I didn’t have my vampire rags. Tap one of those fat bastards on the shoulder and give him a quick look and a big old friendly hiss? Would have had two moving sewage leaks.

  The security guy is the one behind all this. Messing with my tag. Bringing that redhead agent down there with him. You know who I mean. The one that goes around here showing off her legs while shining that untouchable attitude. She’s not even pretty, not like some of my classmates, right? No, she’s a hard case. Talks tough. Hell on wheels when it comes to hassling mids, but not so good when she comes down into my part of our dear old Academy. I’m going to have to deal with her, too, I think. Word is, she’s hassling the hell out of a bunch of firsties. Over that Dell thing. Well, shit. I guess they have to go through the motions, don’t they? I mean, plebe does a Peter Pan, God, I love that line, and at least they have to seem like they’re doing something about a mess like that. Have you seen the newspapers? Banging on about the hazing, how it’s getting out of hand. Hell, that wasn’t hazing. I think it was like the ultimate come-around. You know, like the TV show? Come around, plebe. Or maybe, Come on down! Damned if he didn’t. And dressed for the occasion, too.

  I can read the Executive Department E-mails. Did you know that? Can’t read the ones from NCIS-they’re encrypted, so that’s that. Too hard. But I can read everything the little dant’s efficient assistant is sending out, and isn’t he a regular motormouth. I think my little deal here is going to work. I think someone’s going down-ahem, that was a poor choice of words, I guess. I think someone’s going to be blamed for what happened to Baby Brian Dell. Not the precious system, either. I think someone’s going to be “responsible” in part-yes, that’s the term they’re using. Responsible in part, so they can point and say, There he is. Or is it, There she is? Yes, I think this is going to work. But first, I need to attend to a loose end. Someone who knows a little more than he should. Probably because someone else talked too much. People shouldn’t talk so much. Either way, I’m going to up the ante somewhat. Try my hand at some electrical work, right here in Mother Bancroft. You’ll know what I’m talking about when you hear about it. Yes, you will.

  Meantime, I think I’ll go sharpen my dress sword. Now there’s a thing of beauty. It doesn’t talk, doesn’t make phone calls, doesn’t send E-mails. It just hangs there in my closet along with my Marine dress blues. I put my gloves on before I handle it. Keeps it nice and shiny. I’ve got one right-hand glove that’s got a dozen cuts across the thumb where I test the blade. It’s not really supposed to be sharp, you know, or maybe you don’t. It’s just for ceremonies. But then, I know some ceremonies that aren’t in the drill manual, if you catch my drift. I can shave with that thing; that’s how sharp it is. Actually, I can’t shave myself-a little awkward. But I can shave somebody else, and I did, just once.

  Some little guy. Into occasional high-risk gymnastics. Said he wanted to fly. And so he did.

  12

  On Thursday morning, Jim went upstairs to the supe’s office to see the commandant’s schedule for the day. He wanted to back-brief him on the previous day’s events. The commandant, however, had gone to Washington for the day with the superintendent. Admiral McDonald’s executive assistant declined to share with Jim the purpose of the trip. Jim took the horse-holder’s rebuff in stride and went to find some coffee at the mess table. Two junior officers were talking there, so he poured a cup of coffee and then joined them.

  “So where are the elephants off to this morning?” he asked no one in particular. One of the JO’s said he’d heard that the supe was briefing SecNav on some personnel issues. “You know, this Dell mess. And something about an NCIS agent getting beat up? Like out in town?”

  Jim pretended this was all news to him and headed for his office, where he put a call in to Branner. “You hear from Midshipman Hays yet?” he asked when she picked up.

  “There’s a message from him,” she said. “Wants a meet at twelve hundred.”

  “Want me there?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. “What’s the word from the head shed?”

  “Big and not so big are in D.C., briefing the SecNav on ‘personnel issues’ scuttlebutt here is that it’s the Dell case and what happened to Bagger.”

  “Really,” she said. “Maybe I better pulse my network again; I called headquarters this morning, but nobody told me that.”

  “Maybe that’s the message,” he said. “They’re getting ready to do something. Did you report what happened last night?”

  “Not exactly. Left a message for Harry Chang to call me.”

  Jim thought for a moment. “If the seance concerns what happened to Bagger, I’m surprised you weren’t pulled in.”

  “Probably some of our heavies from the Navy Yard were pulled in. Chang’s out of pocket, and they wouldn’t tell me where. The dant knows what we’re doing, right?”

  “I’ve been back-briefing since it started,” he said. “But I can never tell what the hell the real agenda is when I talk to Robbins. We’d better catch some real deal progress at this noon meeting, or I think we’re gonna get sidelined.”

  “Meaning they’ll slap a lid on it and declare the thing solved. The Dell thing anyway. Bagger’s case, they’ll probably turn over to the city cops. You know, cop got clipped. Let ’em enjoy a little urban frenzy.”

  They were both silent for a moment. “Hey?” he said. “I enjoyed your company last night. It was nice just to talk.”

  “It was nice. Even without the gin rummy.”

  “If you want to come over again, the access code is four-three-two-one-five, as in four, three, two, one, fire.”

  “Four, three, two, one, fire. Got it. See you at noon.”

  Jim spent the next half hour on paperwork, then signed out for the Public Works Center and drove over to the power plant to meet with the utility supervisors. They pored over the system maps while Jim made a new map, this one of the grating entrances to the entire underground area. They talked about the fact that the Fort Severn diagrams were wrong, but no one seemed to get too upset about that. It was a no-go area, and that was that. Jim didn’t enlighten them about the fact that the one magazine had been rigged to appear flooded.

  “I’ve been asking about the ways into the underground system,” he said. “What about the ways out of it?”

  That provoked some blank stares, but then the senior engineer got the sewage-handling and transfer-system maps out. “This is a system that goes out of the underground area, but naturally, it stays sealed.”

  “We fervently hope,” offered one of the engineers. Everyone smiled.

  “What else-how about smoke evacuation in the case of an underground fire?”

&nb
sp; “Big exhaust fans in parallel with each of the grates,” the engineer said. “Depending on where the fire is, we’d try to close some fire doors to isolate it, then exhaust the oxygen supply. But the system’s been added onto for so long, it’s pretty porous.”

  “How big are the exhaust ducts?”

  “Four by four, but they’re filled with fan blades and vent screens. Nobody could get through one of those.”

  “Any other ways out?”

  They all thought about it for a moment. “There’s the storm drain,” another engineer said, then pointed it out on the main map. “In case there was flooding, the water would flow down to the river-gravity.”

  “Could our guy get in or out that way?”

  “Tough,” the chief engineer said. “Permanent, big grating on the seawall. Submerged except at really low tide. Plus, the flaps here open only one way, and only with water pressure on the tunnel side.”

  Jim nodded. “So, the sewage system is completely sealed, and there’s just the one storm drain? No direct connections between Bancroft Hall and the utility tunnels?”

  “No, sir. Everything going from the tunnel into Bancroft is a pipe or a wireway. Nothing big enough for a human.”

  Jim thanked them and took his annotated maps with him. He drove back to the office, where he left the truck. Then he walked down across the Yard from the administration building, passed between Michelson and Chauvenet halls, then crossed the Ingram track field and went out onto the wide expanse of Dewey Field, right along the Severn River. If the diagrams were correct, that storm drain ought to be in the middle of the seawall bounded by Dewey Field.

  He was operating under the old Sherlock Holmes principle: When all the other possibilities have been eliminated, the one staring you in the face, however improbable, has to be the answer. They had had teams on all the gratings last night. Assuming his guys hadn’t been asleep at the switch, the runner hadn’t used a grating. He hadn’t flushed himself down a toilet, and he couldn’t morph through the exhaust fans. The route through the old magazine was a possibility, but until he actually found a surface exit, he didn’t know that the thing actually led to the Yard. That left the storm drain.