But a gut feeling told Franken that it wouldn’t be that easy. He didn’t know who the other two men were, and they also could have guns—loaded ones. If he stopped them now, maybe they’d come after him. After all, Nader did call them murdering bastards. Maybe they’d wait until he least expected and then slip a shiv between his ribs while he slept.
This drug stuff bothered Franken. This suicide stuff knotted his stomach. This treason stuff scared him shitless. And this whole confusing mess caused his skin to break out in cold sweat. Surely, these bastards will give the boy some room.
“Just give me the damn gun, Nader!” The larger man approached to within arm’s reach.
The calmer man got excited. “Don’t crowd him!”
“Screw you. Rot in Hell!” the young ensign said as he brought his other leg over the elbow-high wall, forty feet of air between him and the hard steel, main deck below.
The big figure bolted. He grabbed for the gun. They wrestled briefly.
Nader yanked the pistol away. His momentum brought his body too far over the side. Nader’s left hand groped, searching empty air for a hold as he began to slip.
The larger enemy slapped at Nader’s arm, trying to grab it. He snagged Nader’s wrist.
Nader worked his open hand and stared at the man gripping his forearm.
The big man held for a moment—then let go.
Nader expelled the air from his lungs in a sort of shocked whimper. He fell.
The other guy stepped up quickly, arms reaching. Too late.
The world seemed to pause, silenced by the implications of what had just happened.
A sound like a sack of potatoes striking the deck made Franken cringe and his cigar rolled from his fingers. Then excited voices came from the two noisy sailors below on the main deck.
“What the hell?”
“Good God, it’s Mister Nader!”
On the signal deck, the calmer man pulled the big guy back from the side.
“You big asshole!” he said. “Why’d you let him go? We could have taken care of him and thrown him overboard like the others.”
“Dumb shit was going to do it anyway. He was just playing us. He wasn’t in the deal—he was a fuckin’ snitch.”
“Forget it. I figured that cokehead Ingrassias would come in handy someday. Get your ass down to his berth and back up to Nader before Doc gets to the body. I’ll get those two away from him.”
Both men turned to leave. But the larger man paused and seemed to be looking directly at the chief. Franken couldn’t make out his face or his features, not even his rank, but he could recall only two men near this guy’s size on the ship. Both came on board at the last port. One a Marine Captain and one a cook. But the ship had taken on so many new crewmembers and officers in the last month, there could be others he hadn’t seen yet.
The big man surely couldn’t see Franken. It was too dark. Franken was mostly hidden by the mast. But the guy lifted his face and sniffed the air. The course changes hadn’t been helpful in keeping Franken unnoticed.
He smells the cigar!
The evasive maneuvers the ship had been going through had brought the cigar smoke to the big man’s nose.
Franken turned and ran aft to the edge of the small, steel platform he’d been tending, not attempting to be the least bit stealthy. Whatever kind of game these two were playing was a deadly one and he wanted no part of it. If it was drugs, it wasn’t small change. It must be a major operation. For now, he’d save his own skin and avoid any confrontation. But he had to get away without being recognized. He could report what happened to the captain or the executive officer later.
The chief jumped down eight feet to a catwalk leading to the fantail, ducked into a hatch and hurled himself down four flights of steps to the noncommissioned officers’ berthing area. Within thirty seconds, he was inside his quarters with the hatch dogged.
Leaning against the steel door, chest heaving, Senior Chief Petty Officer Gustauve Franken suddenly caught his breath and wondered. It’d been too dark for them to recognize him. But then realization gave him a stinging slap to the face. He rolled his eyes and let out a ragged sigh. He’d left something they could identify him by. They’d be coming for him next.
He’d boasted to half the crew about scoring the hard to come by Cohiba Robustos. He was so proud of them that he’d leave the cigar bands on while he smoked them for the sole purpose of gloating to himself. And sometime during the excitement—he’d lost the cigar.
Chapter 1
NAUGHTY AND NICE
April 30, 0655 - Naval Criminal Investigative Service, US Navy Shipyards, Washington DC
IT WAS THE last thing on her short list, but time was running out. Special Agent Janelle “Spurs” Sperling bit her lip as she went back over the six items:
1. Pack uniforms—she put a check beside it, hoping a full year and five pounds wouldn’t make a noticeable difference in their fit.
2. Water the plants—check. She’d managed that on the way out the door of her apartment at 0500 this morning. Mrs. Walton, her neighbor from down the hall, would take care of them twice a week while she was away.
3. Call the Admiral—bad idea. As in the past, she wouldn’t know what to say to her father. She lined it out.
4. Get tampons—check. Surely they had such provisions on a modern naval vessel, but to make sure, she’d picked some up at the Gas’n Go on the way to the shipyards.
She took a sip of tepid convenience-store coffee and glanced around the side of the fabric-covered partition of her workspace. The other fifteen cubicles were eerily silent. In another hour, the large room would fill with a clamor of voices and the beeps, whirs, and zips of printers, fax machines and photocopiers that could drive you nuts.
Numbness came over her. She’d been too busy getting ready before, but now it was finally starting to sink in. Not only was she embarking on her first undercover assignment, but it was a seagoing job to boot. Somehow, her minimal training as a weapons officer while in the Navy Reserve had been a more important factor in her being assigned to the case than her lack of experience as an undercover agent.
She set the Styrofoam cup on her white-veneered desktop and pushed back from it. Her gaze rested on a thirteen-year-old photo pinned to the wall behind her computer monitor. It had been taken at a time that seemed so distant that sometimes she questioned if it actually had ever been. A time when her mother was alive. She smiled at the picture of a twelve-year-old girl holding the reins of a beautiful white stallion. The horse seemed huge in comparison to the small girl. As she gazed at the photo, her mind journeyed back to the red hills of Oklahoma.
* * *
She rode like a Rough Rider up a steep hill, around outhouse-size boulders, and into the darkness. The night called her in, as it had so many times before, its cool caress against her flushed cheeks. She rode into it, deeper and deeper, feeling as if she were gliding through a passageway into another dimension where the effort of thought was unnecessary and the world around her was uncomplicated and made sense. Just a slight thing, even for a twelve-year-old, someone who didn’t know better would have thought she wasn’t near big enough to even mount the horse she managed bareback. Her sun-set-gold hair streamed behind her as her tears flowed, and lightning played across the heavens. She coaxed the horse on with her heels and tugged at the two-year-old’s mane in rhythm with her bony legs slapping against his flanks.
“Take me away, Rocket,” she pleaded, bleary-eyed into the big white stallion’s ear. “Take me far away from here.”
It was only a rabbit she’d killed, not a person. But still, it was a harmless little bunny, and she’d done it showing off to her schoolmates. She swore she’d never show off again. Never in her whole, entire, forever life, would she ever show her vanity again— she’d vowed to God—or he could strike her as dead as Grandpa Dover’s ass. That was what her mother always said when she made a promise—and Spurs was sure the Lord would hold her to this one.
She�
�d been showing off her calf-roping abilities to her school chums by lassoing a tree stump, when out popped a little gray bunny. She couldn’t pass up the opportunity to demonstrate her roping prowess on a live subject and quickly threw the lariat around it, pinning it to the tree.
But then, when she jerked back on the rope, as she would to tighten it around a calf’s throat, it slipped from the stump and yanked the rabbit off its feet by the neck. The faux bovine was suddenly lying lifeless at her feet. The other children laughed, and she laughed too, not because it was funny, but because she was so surprised and confused, then suddenly embarrassed and ashamed.
She always laughed when confronted with uncomfortable situations; it was the way she had dealt with confusion and pain ever as far back as she could remember. Everyone thought it was a sign of strength—her mother said she was tough. She could recall her mother tucking her into bed one night, leaning over her, her mama’s eyes intense and glazed with tears. “You’re damn tough, Janelle,” she’d said. “Tough as Oklahoma red mud. You can’t get it out of your clothes. It sticks to everything so damned tenaciously you can hardly ever get it all scraped from your shoes. Tough like Janelle. I wish I could be that tough, girl.” Her mother looked away. Her voice began to tremble. “But I can’t. I give in too easy. But you just go ahead and stick to it, Janelle.” Her mother turned back to her, this time her eyes flooding over. She took Spurs by the arms and gently shook her, then finished what she had to say in a sobbing, sort of urgent whisper. “Stick to anything you start, any commitment you make and see it out. You keep laughing when they tell you that you can’t do it, and you just stick to it like that old Oklahoma red clay. Don’t you be like your mama. You start to do something, you see it through. You make a promise, you stick to it.” Her mother then ran from the room.
Spurs never really understood what her mother meant—what commitments or promises her mother hadn’t kept. She supposed it didn’t really matter.
* * *
The annoying buzz of the clock radio alarm Spurs had set for seven a.m. snatched her back to the large empty room and away from the smell of Rocket’s lathered body and the chilly breeze on that Oklahoma night. She’d taken this memory trip before, countless times. She never knew why. It was such an insignificant memory of a time that seemed too distant to have been real. But this was the first time she remembered why she had ridden off in tears on that particular night. Of course, it had been the rabbit.
She should now be heading for the door to make an 8:30 flight to Madrid, Spain via New York. A slap on the top of the radio silenced its insistent reminder and she went back to her notepad and the last two items on her list.
5. Interview the dead man’s parents—check. Her visit with the Naders the night before had provided little information to help the investigation. But with her she’d carried away a deep sadness for their loss and a determination to find out the truth about Charles Nader’s death.
And last;
6. Question Henry Dubain.
She lifted the telephone receiver, pushed her strawberry-blonde hair behind her left ear and dialed the number beside the name. Twice before, there had been no answer. Normally she’d be more considerate than to call someone so early, but in this case, it was the last chance she’d have to talk to the man. Besides, a Navy man—even an ex-sailor, should have been up and done with morning chow by now.
This time, after the fourth ring, it picked up. Spurs leaned forward.
“Yeah?” The voice was groggy.
“Mr. Dubain?” Spurs asked, checking off the last item on her list.
“Who wants to know? It’s seven a.m. Somebody’d better be dead.”
Spurs had to assume a name, now, incase Dubain would rat on her to his buddies on the USS Atchison, the ship on which she was to conduct the undercover investigation. Her boss seemed to think her being known to be Admiral Sperling’s daughter aboard the ship could be an asset. Spurs wasn’t pleased with the idea, but she figured Director Burgess knew what he was doing. She’d come up with a name using her own initials and had decided—ignoring what she was sure Sigmund Freud or any of his psycho-analytical cronies would have said—to use her former fiancée’s last name.
“Mr. Dubain, my name is Jill Smith. I’m with. . . .”
“Did you hear me? I don’t wanna buy anything. Shove off!”
“But, Mr. Dubain, someone is dead.”
Spurs heard nothing from the other end and wondered briefly if Dubain had hung up. Her eyes caught Ensign Nader’s Annapolis graduation photo pinned to the gray fabric in front of her. She said, “Ensign Charles Nader.”
More silence.
“Mr. Dubain, are you still there?”
“Damn. I knew it. I just fuckin’ knew it!”
“Knew what? That Ensign Nader would die?”
Once again silence. He was choosing his words. “Hey, what is this anyway? I’m out. I got off the Bounty and rotated back over three weeks ago. I’ve been out of the Navy for—thirty-nine hours now. Who the hell are you?”
“My name is Jill Smith. I’m a special agent with NCIS.”
“Jeez, leave me alone. I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
She’d hoped for a more cooperative lead to gain insight into the recent past of the Atchison. “Please, give me a minute of your time, Mr. Dubain. We—I need your help.”
He paused again, then said, “How’d it happen? How’d Nader get it?”
“He fell from the signal bridge. It’s officially being called a suicide. Tell me, Mr. Dubain, why did you just call the Atchison the Bounty?”
“Why do you think? Everybody’s gone crazy on that scow.”
“How do you mean?”
“I’ve said enough. It ain’t my business anymore. Leave me alone.”
“Mr. Dubain, I need your help. Just a few more questions.”
More silence. His tone mellowed. “You’ve got kind of a sexy voice. What do you look like?”
She’d been afraid of that. According to Dubain’s military records, he hadn’t exactly been an angel during his four years of enlistment. He’d been called on the carpet a number of times for minor infractions—those things happen, but it was the second of two serious charges he’d been acquitted of that bothered her the most. The first was a marijuana possession that had been dropped because the evidence turned up missing.
Then, the biggie. He’d been acquitted of attempted rape after the victim changed her story. Notes from the investigating agent indicated the young yeoman had decided that Scumbag-Third Class Dubain had been three sheets to the wind and it was due to the alcohol that he’d molested her. Just a poor, misunderstood, drunken sailor. He didn’t mean any harm. Poor boy. Out there at sea for such a long time. He just needed a friend—some affection. Stereotypical. Expected. Bullshit!
“Mr. Dubain, please.”
“All right. But not over the phone. And not at my place either.”
“According to the address I have for you, you’re not far away, a fifteen-minute drive.” Spurs tapped her pencil on the desk as she considered taking a later flight. She didn’t want to. It would mean a longer layover in Madrid. But this interview was important. “Would you be able to come to the shipyards?”
“Hell, no. Someplace neutral, real neutral. The Sleepy Eye, down on East Franklin.”
“A motel?”
“That’s right. Come by yourself—and dress like a hooker.”
The Navy released hundreds of nice guys from active service every week. She had to get a sleaze ball. “Mr. Dubain, I see no reason. . . .”
“I do! Otherwise, it’s no deal.”
Even if Dubain had very little of importance to tell her, just finding out why he thought the secrecy was so necessary could be an important insight into what was happening on the Atchison.
Spurs checked her watch. She might have just enough time. Between the drive to the motel, maybe fifteen minutes interviewing Dubain and then the drive to Dulles Airport,
she’d have only the next ten minutes to appear as a prostitute—but that was if the traffic was good. She glanced at her sea bag and remembered the three-foot-square, silk scarf she used to bundle up what little valuables she kept. Her father had brought it home from Singapore and gave it to her mother the week before her mother drowned.
Dubain was impatient. “Too long,” he said. “No deal.”
“No, wait. I’ll meet you there in thirty minutes.”
“All right then.” He sounded too pleased. “But I might not have time to take a shower. If you don’t mind, I don’t.”
His flirtations told her she’d be in for more than she was interested in, but she figured she could handle former Petty Officer Third Class Henry Dubain.
“How will I know what room?”
“You’ll know,” he said and hung up.
Chapter 2
DOWN AND DIRTY
0735 - Sleepy-Eye Motel, Washington DC
THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES later, Spurs stepped onto the curb a block down from the Sleepy-Eye Motel. The size seven and a half, lime-green pumps she’d borrowed from Miss Barnes the receptionist were a size and a half too big, but matched the green and red scarf she wore as a dress much better than any of the military issue footwear she’d packed. A couple of Kleenexes in the toe of each shoe helped the fit.
The street was deserted except for a wino polishing off his brown-bag breakfast on the steps of a large house next to the motel. Most likely a halfway house, it had torn window screens and flaking white paint. Another man lay prostrate on the porch. Under her breath, Spurs gave thanks that their meeting was during daylight.
“Turn the car around and wait across the street, will you?” she told the young, civilian-dressed petty officer driving the unmarked, dark blue Chevy sedan.
“What happens if you need help?” the driver asked with true concern in his voice.
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