NCIS Los Angeles

by Jerome Preisler

  Contents

  Cover

  Coming soon from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Prologue 1

  Prologue 2

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Coming soon from Titan Books

  Coming soon from Titan Books

  NCIS Los Angeles™: Bolthole

  (November 2016)

  For SWP, YWP, HWP and SMP

  —with a plan.

  NCIS Los Angeles: Extremis

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783296316

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296323

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: August 2016

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © & ™ 2016 CBS Studios Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  PROLOGUE I

  Port Hueneme, California

  May, 1945

  Lieutenant Elias P. Sutton stood on the wooden dock gazing northward at the two red-and-white escort tugs and their large, low slung captive. They had appeared to him just minutes ago, rounding the Channel Islands, wending their way toward harbor over the clear blue Pacific water. Behind them, specks of gray in the middle distance, were the two destroyers that had intercepted the U-boat at sea.

  Sutton raised his binoculars to his eyes for a better look, the breeze snapping his uniform shirt around his broad six-foot frame. As he understood, the USS Linette and USS Phillips had sailed from Pearl Harbor shortly after the German skipper radioed his intention to surrender. He had also heard the U-boat, a Type IXD2 longrunner, was cruising somewhere out near Malaysia when Doenitz gave his fleet the order to surface and raise their black flags. The Nazis had finally called it a war.

  “Ever do any fishing, Lieutenant?”

  Sutton lowered the field glasses and turned toward Holloway, thinking the OSS officer walked like a ghost on tiptoes. He made no sound at all coming up behind him.

  Tall, lean and in his mid twenties, Holloway regarded him through the lenses of his aviator sunglasses. He was wearing expensive, perfectly tailored civvies—a tan sport coat with a monogramed pocket square, cuffed brown pants, and a snap brim fedora with a pleated silk hatband. The tops of his polished leather wingtips gleamed in the abundant sunlight.

  “I’ve caught my share of brook trout,” Sutton replied. “That sort of thing.”

  “I mean big game,” Holloway said. “Marlin, tuna… the kind of deep-water fish that puts up a serious fight, so you think it might pull your arms right out of their sockets.”

  Sutton looked at him. “Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of that experience,” he said.

  Holloway chuckled mildly. Then he reached into his pocket for a pack of Camels, shook out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth.

  “The gratifying part is when you finally haul in one of those bastards,” he said, holding a lighter to the tip of his smoke. “You see a nine foot, five-hundred pound marlin come up in the rigging, and know it’s something exceptional. A creature that God put some real work into.”

  Sutton considered that. “Are you telling me size is the measure of something’s value, Tip?”

  “No,” Holloway said. “But it sure as hell doesn’t hurt.” He came up beside the lieutenant, poked his chin out at the approaching vessels. “ULTRA hit a goldmine with this one. I have a stack of cables between Tokyo and Berlin. I have the sub’s crew list and unofficial passenger list. And I have a full cargo manifest… unless there was an eleventh hour change of plans.”

  Sutton looked around at the quay, where about two dozen seamen in blue denim working uniforms stood at ease. Beyond them, a large group of print and newsreel journalists waited in the shadows of the tall shipyard cranes, their camera gear ready. Gathered behind a rope, they’d arrived to take pictures of the prisoners as they disembarked.

  “We’ve instructed the news people that they can take their snapshots, but are not to ask any questions, or speak to the prisoners at all,” Holloway said. “The Germans are being brought to NAS Point Mogu, where they’ll board a plane for Washington. The other four will remain on the boat and be debriefed separately. And I’ve personally selected the agents who will conduct the interrogations.”

  “Do those agents all dress to kill like you?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Sutton said.

  Holloway blew out a stream of tobacco smoke.

  “I’m confident Reynolds will keep his end of the arrangement,” he said. “We don’t want the beast. Just what’s in its belly.”

  The lieutenant was silent a moment. Then he turned toward the channel again, bringing the goggles back up to his eyes. The group of vessels was now less than a half mile from port, and he could see some of the American sailors who’d boarded the U-boat standing on its foredeck.

  “‘Strange things have happened like never before’,” he mouthed under his breath.

  Holloway looked at him. “What’s that?”

  “They’re lyrics,” Sutton said. “From an old phonograph recording.”

  “On one of those Edison cylinders you collect?” Holloway chuckled. “I remember you recording on your parents’ gramophone when we were boys. You were quite the young performer.”

  Sutton nodded. “I enjoy my music,” he said. “‘World Is Going Wrong’… that’s the song’s name.”

  Holloway gave a shrug. “Sounds depressing,” he said.

  “Not when you pay attention to the words.”

  “I never listen to the words, Elias. To me music is about a randy, long-legged girl, a dance floor, and hot swing trumpets playing into the night.”

  Sutton was silent. It occurred to him that might be everything there really was to say about the differences between them.

  “Those tugs will have that boat here before we know it,” he said after a moment, nodding toward the seamen on the pier. “We better prepare.”

  * * *

  Forty minutes later Sutton hopped onto the submarine’s puddled, seaweed-draped foredeck. Holloway followed right behind him on the gangway, holding onto his hat in the gusty breeze. Three hundred feet long, pulled horizontal to the pier, the boat listed gently on the water, held fast by her mooring lines.

  A young officer approached the lieutenant, snapped him a crisp salute.

  “Boyd, sir… USS Linette,” he said. “Welcome.”

/>   Sutton returned the salutation, noting the expression on his face. Boyd seemed downcast, somehow, even grim. It was unusual for a sailor looking forward to two weeks of shore leave in the States… and whose ship had netted a significant prize. But, Sutton thought, maybe he was reading him wrong. Misinterpreting his weariness after an extended stint at sea.

  According to Holloway, U-437 had gone on one hell of a trip of her own. After embarking from northern Germany in January, she’d made her only stop in the Atlantic at Kristiansand, Norway, where the ballast in her keel hold was replaced with her secret cargo. From there, she looped southwest around the English coast, crossed the equator into the South Atlantic, rounded the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean, and then sailed south of Madagascar to Kobe, Japan.

  Quite the journey, indeed, Sutton thought. All told, her crew had traveled almost two thousand nautical miles, and spent three months in a cramped steel tube without setting foot on land.

  “Okay, Boyd,” he said now. “Show us below decks, will you?”

  “Amen,” Holloway said before he could respond. His hand still on his hat, he sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “What’s that awful stink?”

  Old salt that he was, Sutton had barely noticed.

  “Life on a submarine, Tip,” he said. “Rotting seaweed, dead fish—they get stuck on the rails antenna—you name it. And count on it being even smellier down below.” He glanced at the OSS man’s feet. “You might want to clean those fancy puppies of yours before they stain.”

  Holloway looked down at his shoes, then frowned in disgust. Wet ribbons of kelp hung limply from his laces.

  “My God!” he said, and leaned forward to pluck them off.

  Sutton looked at Boyd. “All right,” he said. “Lead the way.”

  “Yes sir,” he said, nodding. Then hesitated. “There’s something you should know. About the scientists.”

  Sutton stared at him.

  “Tell me,” he said.

  Boyd told him.

  * * *

  “I don’t understand how this could happen,” Holloway said, his face pale. He turned from the dead men on the bunks, pulled his handkerchief from his pocket, and covered his nose and mouth. “These prisoners were supposed to be under constant watch.”

  “They were, sir,” Boyd said. “To the best of our ability.”

  “And you call this your best?” He waved his free hand at the bunks without looking back at them. “The fact remains you were under strict orders.”

  Boyd looked uncomfortable. “It’s a tight fit in here. Seventy-five German seamen, plus all the cargo and supplies… As you can see, it didn’t leave us much room. We managed a detachment of twelve guards, besides myself.”

  Holloway breathed through the handkerchief, staring at Boyd in the dimness of the crew compartment. He seemed at a loss for words.

  Or maybe he was just trying to keep his stomach down, Sutton thought. Walking aft between the stacked wooden crates that lined the hull from stem to stern, he’d smelled metal, machine oil, stale sweat, and above all the diesel smoke that had left a dark coat of soot over everything around them. That was typical eau-de-pigboat; Sutton had commanded one for a full year and hadn’t been surprised.

  But four men poisoning themselves to death left a different kind of smell. From the looks of their contorted bodies and soiled hammocks—and the sickening puddles on the floor underneath them—Sutton knew they hadn’t gone gently. Or held a lot inside their bowels and bladders.

  “Run through everything for us,” he said to Boyd. “I think we could both use some clarification.”

  Boyd nodded.

  “The U-boat’s officers told us their Japanese guests demanded privacy for their sleeping area,” he said, and motioned to the canvas hanging he’d yanked down from an overhead pipe. “They had this fabric aboard, and let them use it as a curtain.”

  “On a German boat that amounts to five-star accommodations,” Sutton said.

  “Yes,” Boyd said, glancing at the occupants of the hammocks. “They were ranking officers. A major, a full colonel, and two lieutenant commanders.”

  Sutton knew better.

  None of them were military men. Their uniforms and ranks were assigned for the journey, so they would not be prosecuted as spies if captured.

  “All right,” he said. “Go on.”

  “A week ago, the German Naval Command radioed out orders for its whole submarine fleet to surrender. When these officers insisted that the sub take them to Japan, there was a dispute about it, and they lost…”

  “I think that’s plain,” Holloway said through his handkerchief. He made an impatient winding gesture. “Can we cut to the chase?”

  “The Japanese insisted their country was still at war, and refused to give up,” Boyd said. “They finally asked for two bottles of luminal tablets and some extra drinking water… and then pulled the curtain.”

  “Tojo must have a shortage of cyanide,” Sutton said. “That would have been quicker, and probably a little neater.”

  “I wouldn’t say the Germans were hunky dory with it,” Boyd said. “The men stayed alive for three days… and it wasn’t pretty.”

  “That’s more of the obvious, Lieutenant,” Holloway said. “Did your crew search the bodies for documents?”

  Boyd did a quick side-to-side head wobble.

  “I assumed it would be done when we brought them ashore to be processed.”

  “Listen,” he said in a low voice. “Before the crews of the Linette and Phillips come ashore, they will be sworn to secrecy about the details of this submarine’s capture. In writing.” His eyes narrowed. “It isn’t to be discussed with anyone. That means wives, girlfriends, barroom floozies… nobody, but nobody, including their pet cocker spaniels. Under penalty of court martial.”

  Boyd was quiet a second. Then his eyes went to Sutton.

  “May I speak freely?”

  The lieutenant nodded. “Go ahead.”

  “This is very irregular. I can’t presume to respond for my captain.”

  “And his name is…?”

  “Taylor, sir.”

  Sutton felt some empathy for the lieutenant.

  “I’ll get it squared with Captain Taylor,” he said. “In the meantime, you’re excused.”

  “Sir?”

  “Return to the control room and stand by. I’ll let you know when we’re done in here.”

  Boyd hesitated a beat. Then he saluted, spun around, and moved back toward the nose of the submarine, his footsteps clanking dully on the riveted metal floor.

  Sutton waited until he passed through the forward hatch to break his silence.

  “He’s Navy,” he said to Holloway. “Stay out of my area. I won’t stand for it.”

  Holloway met his gaze and shrugged.

  “I’m not here to start a fight,” he said. “We’re in this thing together.”

  Sutton nodded. “Tell me what you intend to do with the bodies.”

  A pause. Then the agent gave another shrug.

  “I’m going to undress these sons of bitches, then search them inside and out,” he said. “Feel free to help.”

  Sutton folded his arms across his chest.

  “If it’s all the same,” he said, “I’ll stand lookout.”

  Holloway stuffed his handkerchief into his pocket, clearly irked. Then he went to work on one of the corpses, his face creasing in revulsion as he bent to unfasten its pants.

  Thirty seconds later, he vomited on his shoes.

  Sutton gave the agent credit.

  He hadn’t expected him to last more than twenty-five.

  PROLOGUE 2

  Santa Barbara, California

  Present Day

  The old man’s wife had always insisted he was a creature of habit, and he understood her reasons for believing it. But even now, with Mara gone five years to the day, he would have said she was wrong, arguing the difference between habit and routine.

  She never quite understood, he thought
, and in many ways that exemplified their years together. Theirs was not so much a conjugal bond as a cold, comfortable peace—the archetypical marriage of convenience, a passionless merger between families. The top-of-the-class Annapolis grad with political aspirations, and the beautiful, young socialite with her Vermont roots, social connections, and horseback riding trophies. Each gave the other entrée to new worlds, and the arrangement had worked to their mutual benefit.

  He had enjoyed his share of peccadilloes, of course—a man of responsibility needed the occasional diversion. Most of the women were married, the wives of officers and gentlemen, with no intention of leaving their spouses. He had selected his partners as carefully and sensibly as he’d chosen his bride.

  When she died, his tears were real—and mostly for himself. Already in his eighties, he had wondered how much of his life he would have traded for true love’s embrace. But it was a fleeting regret.

  It was four-fifteen in the afternoon when he returned from the cemetery. Swinging off the main road that climbed uphill to his Montecito cape house, his driver Ronald eased into the palm-lined access drive, then brought the BMW to a halt in the shade of his porte-cochere.

  “Can I see you inside, Admiral?” Ronald said over his shoulder.

  The old man reached for the cane beside him on the backseat, his fingers closing stiffly around its silver eagle’s head handle.

  See you, he thought. Not “help you.”

  His staffers were careful—some might even say gun-shy—choosing their words around him.

  “That’s okay, I’m fine.” He shifted around to his door. “Angie’s here if I need anything. You go on over to the filling station and gas up… and please be so kind as to bring back today’s paper.”

  Ronald nodded, waiting with his hands on the steering wheel, his expression saying he understood his employer’s stubborn independence all too well.

  The old man got out of the car slowly, leading with the cane and then boosting himself to his feet. His painful left hip, his cranky knees, and worst of all his thickened, arthritic knuckles… there was a good deal of wear and tear on his parts. But he would never carp. It had been quite the journey from his boyhood in landlocked Illinois to his commission as the youngest submarine commander in U.S. naval history, to the action in the South Pacific that had marked his path to the Admiralty—and, with Mara’s ties, eventually propelled him to a three-term stint on Capitol Hill. Things could have turned out far, far worse.