Code 13

by Don Brown

  OTHER BOOKS BY DON BROWN

  THE NAVY JAG SERIES

  Detained

  THE PACIFIC RIM SERIES

  Thunder in the Morning Calm

  Fire of the Raging Dragon

  Storming the Black Ice

  THE NAVY JUSTICE SERIES

  Treason

  Hostage

  Defiance

  The Black Sea Affair

  The Malacca Conspiracy

  ZONDERVAN

  Code 13

  Copyright © 2016 by Don Brown

  ePub Edition © February 2016: ISBN 978-0-3103-3809-3

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, 3900 Sparks Dr. SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Brown, Don, 1960- author.

  Title: Code 13 / Don Brown.

  Other titles: Code thirteen

  Description: Nashville : Zondervan, [2016] | Series: The Navy JAG series

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015041908 | ISBN 9780310338079 (softcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: United States. Army. Judge Advocate General's Corps--Fiction.

  | Murder--Investigation--Fiction. | GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Christian fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3602.R6947 C63 2016 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041908

  Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. Public domain. The New American Standard Bible®. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org). The Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.®

  Any Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers in this book are offered as a resource. They are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement by Zondervan, nor does Zondervan vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  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—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other names, characters, and places, and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination.

  16 17 18 19 20 RRD 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This novel is dedicated to my mother, Alva Rose Hardison Brown

  (December 9, 1937–December 12, 2015), who, like her mother,

  Marina Roberson Hardison, became one of the sweetest ladies on the

  planet, and who instilled within me my love of classical music.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER 1

  WATERFRONT

  32ND STREET NAVAL STATION

  SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

  THURSDAY MORNING

  The Pacific breeze whipped off the bay, gusting in from her left. The wind, brushing against her ears, blended in with the glorious sounds of the great gray fleet in port.

  Under warm sunshine and magnificent blue skies, bells chimed, seagulls squawked. Smiling sailors turned their heads as she passed by, some grunting catcalls her way as her light-blonde hair bounced off her tanned shoulders and blew in the breeze.

  Sporting navy blue shorts and a light-blue T-shirt that matched the color of her eyes, she jogged past Pier 2 on the final leg of her sprint. Two quick gongs sounded from the loudspeaker on the ship moored at the pier.

  These were the sights and sounds of late spring along the naval waterfront in San Diego, known as America’s City. And on a day like today, who could argue with that description?

  “USS Cape St. George arriving.”

  Two more gongs meant the commanding officer of the cruiser USS Cape St. George had crossed over the catwalk and boarded his ship. The smells and sounds of the fleet produced within her an intoxicating high.

  Lieutenant Commander Caroline McCormick, Judge Advocate General’s Corps, United States Navy, jogged onto Senn Street. Just two days ago, she had been on board the Cape St. George, along with a team of two JAG officers and three legalmen, hosted by the captain himself.

  Her team of Navy lawyers and paralegals had worked into the evening to finish preparing wills and powers of attorney for every member of the crew, who were all preparing for next week’s deployment across the Pacific, through the Malacca Straits, and from there to the Andaman Sea, the Indian Ocean, and finally, the Arabian Sea.

  In grateful appreciation, Captain Paul M. Kriete had offered to buy her a drink at the officers’ club.

  She’d almost accepted.

  Problem was, she was still hung up on another officer. Or was she?

  Lieutenant Commander P.J. MacDonald had transferred to the Pentagon, to the Navy JAG’s prestigious and mysterious Code 13, a selective billet offered only to a small handful of JAG officers.

  Soon they would be shipping her out, too, for her orders were about to expire at the Regional Legal Service Office.

  But where?

  Japan? Guam? Afghanistan?

  Last week the detailer had suggested Italy—Sigonella, to be precise. She longed for a change of scenery. Perhaps a foreign port might provide a nice change of pace.

  Whenever the detailer mentioned a more exotic duty station like Sigonella, or Japan, or even London, he always weaved the conversation back to an aircraft carrier. And one aircraft carrier in particular kept coming up.

  “You know, USS George Washington needs a senior judge advocate,” he would say. “You would be the perfect match. There’re five thousand sailors on board. You’d be the principal lawyer for them all. Plus, you’d be the senior legal advisor for the captain of the ship. If you do well there, punch your ticket on your sea tour, that billet will line you up for deep selection to commander. Perhaps even captain.”

  After teasing her with exotic jobs at exciting ports of call, the detailer kept pushing her to a two-year sea billet. Detailers, the officers in charge of assigning officers to their next duty station, were the used-car salesmen of the Navy. The detailer’s job was to fill jobs. Period. The detailer could simply cut her orders to her ne
xt duty station, and that would be that. But jockeying for plum assignments was commonplace in the Navy, and it was better to make the officer receiving the orders believe he or she had “volunteered” for the billet.

  In the give-and-take of the Navy detailer world, the fact was that some commands wanted to handpick certain officers to fill billets, and often the detailer’s job was to serve as schmoozer-in-chief, keeping the commands happy while keeping the officers receiving orders happy, too, if possible. But that wasn’t always possible.

  Many commands called detailers, saying, “I want Lieutenant So- and-So,” or, “I want Commander So-and-So to fill this billet.” The detailers tried to accommodate those requests.

  Commanders in Sigonella, Japan, and London had probably called the detailers already and requested some officer other than Caroline as their first choice, and that was okay. It was nothing against her. It was just that most commanders had their favorites.

  The detailer had tried persuading her to volunteer for the USS George Washington. But she hadn’t yet complied with that, because frankly, her first choice was London, where she hoped to become staff judge advocate for CINCUSNAVEUR—the acronym for Commander in Chief, United States Naval Forces Europe.

  She had heard through the grapevine that Commander Torp Kinsley was the top choice of CINCUSNAVEUR. But she had also heard that Vice Admiral Brewer was pushing the detailer to order Kinsley to Washington to Code 13, the most selective billet in the JAG Corps, where he would work alongside P.J.

  Be still, my soul.

  Deep down, Caroline hoped Kinsley would be unable to say no to the lure of Code 13 and that London would fall into her lap. She had stalled in volunteering for the George Washington for this reason.

  Still, despite the detailers’ used-car salesmen reputation, she knew the George Washington would be a great career move for her, because sea duty, and especially carrier duty, was an absolute prerequisite for the selection board for captain.

  Plus, there was a political push to get women into sea billets, another reason the detailer kept throwing the USS George Washington into the mix. Not only that, but her first cousin, Commander Gunner McCormick, was the senior intelligence officer attached to the George Washington.

  Gunner had grown up in Tidewater, Virginia. Caroline had grown up in Raleigh, North Carolina. And all the McCormick cousins had spent memorable Christmases and Thanksgivings together.

  Gunner was scheduled to rotate off the Washington within the next six months. So their time together on the carrier, if that happened, would be short. But it would be nice to spend some time with Gunner, if only for a few months.

  So going to sea at this point in her career wouldn’t be the worst thing. Still, she could almost hear the sounds of Britain calling—Scottish bagpipes, the long, deep gongs of Big Ben booming down Whitehall and off the banks of the Thames, the precise clicking and flash of the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

  Why not hold out for her first choice? Life only gives you one shot.

  Even so, she would miss this place, and she was lucky to be completing her second tour at the 32nd Street Naval Station.

  At the end of the day, only God—and the detailer—knew where she would wind up next.

  But this she did know: the U.S. Navy was hard on relationships.

  When P.J. left for Washington, she thought about resigning her commission to follow him there. But he hadn’t insisted. At least not to the degree she had hoped he would. A couple of bland suggestions that maybe she could “get out and move to DC” didn’t give her the incentive she needed to resign her commission and forfeit her naval career.

  Now he was on the East Coast and she was on the West Coast. Still, she hadn’t been able to shake him, nor could she forget what they had together.

  In fact, her lingering memories of P.J., and her still-powerful feelings from their romantic whirlwind that had lasted for a year, were what had kept her from accepting the invitation for drinks from the handsome, steel-chinned, charismatic skipper of the Cape St. George.

  Her flame for P.J. still burned in her soul. Until that flame smoldered into smokeless ashes, she couldn’t look another direction, no matter how attractive another direction might appear.

  Her girlfriends had encouraged her to get out, to get her mind off P.J., to turn her heart to a place of new beginnings. “Caroline, you’re crazy,” her best friend in San Diego and fellow JAG officer, Lieutenant Ginger Cepeda, had told her last night at dinner at the North Island Officers’ Club. “Captain Kriete is a hunk. If you’re not going to have a drink with him, put in a good word for me,” she said, half teasing and half serious.

  “I’d be an accessory to fraternization, Ginger,” Caroline had told her younger comrade with a smile. “Your ranks are too far apart. You’ll have to wait till he retires as a captain and you’re promoted to at least lieutenant commander. And if he makes admiral, and he probably will, then it’s hopeless for the two of you.”

  “Technicalities, technicalities.” Ginger smiled, sipping a glass of pinot noir that was nearly as red as her hair. “Okay, I’ll have to put in for deep selection to close the gap within two ranks. But seriously, Caroline, I support you no matter what.”

  Caroline smiled at the thought of Ginger’s words. At thirty-one, Caroline was three years older than Ginger, but Ginger had been her best friend ever since she had been in the Navy. The thought of leaving Ginger was nearly as painful as the memory of P.J. getting ordered to Washington.

  Ginger meant well. She almost talked her into accepting the captain’s invitation. But of course, even if she did accept the invitation, he, too, would be gone within several days, commanding his powerful cruiser on a voyage to the far side of the world.

  What was the point?

  The Navy was a jealous mistress—but strangely, in a way she could not understand, a jealous mistress she had grown to love.

  Anyway, nothing cleared her head more than a run along the naval station waterfront.

  Caroline leveled out her run, picking up the pace for the final stretch of two hundred yards, straight up Penn Street. With the sparkling waters of the San Diego waterfront to her left, she jogged north toward downtown San Diego, toward the northwest corner of the naval station. As the cool, refreshing breeze swept in from the bay, she fixed her eyes on the USS Cowpens, an Aegis cruiser identical to the Cape St. George, which was moored at Pier 1.

  Just across the street from Pier 1 and the Cowpens, two flagpoles, one bearing the American flag, the other the blue-and-gold flag of the United States Navy, stood in front of the one-story, yellow stucco building known as Building 73, housing the Navy’s Regional Legal Service Office.

  The wind whipped into the flags, bringing them from gentle fluttering to full-fledged flapping. The sight of the flags energized her, igniting her quick-paced run into a full-on sprint.

  Caroline kept her eyes on the flagpoles and pushed harder. Faster.

  When she broke past the imaginary finish line she had drawn in her mind from the American flag on the right side of the street to the bow of the Cowpens moored at Pier 1 to her left, she decelerated from a furious sprint to a galloping stride, then to a slower jog, and finally to a stop, prompting her to bend over and grab her knees.

  All the decelerating, from her furious sprint to now gasping for air, had taken place over a few seconds. She should have taken it easier, slowed more, jogged a couple of minutes after the sprint.

  But she was running short on time. She needed to be across the bay by 1330 to meet with a group of sailors on the USS Ronald Reagan, the supercarrier that would soon be deploying to the Indian Ocean, leading the battle group with the Cape St. George.

  She needed to get into the building quick, take a shower, then drive across Coronado Bridge, all within the next forty-five minutes.

  Too much work.

  Not enough time.

  The life of a naval officer preparing the fleet for deployment.

  “Commander McCormick.�
�

  Caroline looked up toward Building 73. Legalman Master Chief Richard Cisco was walking across the grass toward her. “What’s up, Master Chief?”

  Cisco was the command master chief and the highest-ranking enlisted person at the RLSO, which, as a practical matter, made him the third-most-respected member of the command, behind the captain and the executive officer. “Skipper wants to see you, ma’am.”

  She looked up, her hands still grabbing her knees, and squinted at the tall, graying officer.

  Great.

  Another sidetrack before heading to North Island for her meeting.

  “Great. What time?”

  “Now, ma’am.”

  “Now?” She stood up, allowing her pulse to slow a bit. “I’m not even in uniform.”

  “Skipper knows you’re p-teeing, ma’am.” P-teeing was military jargon for physical training. “But he says he wants you to report immediately. Says it can’t wait.”

  What could this be about?

  Whatever, it couldn’t be good.

  “Okay, Master Chief. Tell the skipper I’m on my way.”

  “Aye-aye, ma’am.” Cisco saluted, then did an about-face and walked back into the building.

  Caroline checked her watch.

  12:30 p.m.

  This would be a tight squeeze. But if she were late getting to the Reagan, she would just have to be late. The orders of her own commanding officer took precedence.

  She gathered herself for a second, then walked across the luscious green grass to the shell-and-concrete walkway leading to the quarterdeck of the RLSO.

  Just as she stepped onto the first step leading to the outside entrance, a swishing sound arose from all over the front lawn. The lawn sprinkler system sprayed her ankles and calves with a round of cool water drops.

  Fantastic. Now I’m sweating and dripping from the knees down.

  She ascended the four concrete steps, opened the front double doors, and stepped into the command quarterdeck, past the U.S. flag on the left and the U.S. Navy flag on the right.

  “Afternoon, Commander,” the duty officer said from behind his desk just to her left.