Hell Ship

by David Wood

  He was in his wheel chair, as he always was when she saw him, and she half-expected him to look up and bark at her for being tardy, but even a casual glance told her that would never happen.

  A tiny dark spot, dribbling red, marked the spot where something about the diameter of a pencil had bored straight through Don’s forehead.

  That was how his life had ended. The uncountable cuts and abrasions on his face and arms told the story of what had happened in the preceding minutes.

  Strangely, she felt dissociated from the horror she now beheld. She felt an urge to rush forward, check for a pulse, find some way to save him, but she knew that was merely the human instinct for denial.

  Don was dead.

  Tortured, she thought. Murdered.

  “Damn it.”

  There was a soft rustle of movement behind her, and she whirled to confront the source.

  In that instant, she saw only the gun. The man who held it was an indistinct shape—dark clothes and blurry features—but the pistol, equipped with a six-inch long suppressor, absorbed her awareness the way a black hole consumes light. As if in slow motion, she saw the weapon come up, swinging toward her like a compass needle seeking magnetic north.

  She overcame the spell, raised her eyes to meet the gunman, and struck before he could pull the trigger. She raked the high-heel shoe across the back of his gun hand. The sturdy molded tip bit deep, gouging a bloody furrow in his skin. The man jerked away, involuntarily triggering a round. The suppressor did its job well; Alex barely even heard the report over the sound of blood thundering in her ears. She felt a spray of hot vapor on her face, and felt a rush of something moving rapidly past her ear.

  The man retreated down the hall a few steps—removing himself from the reach of her high-heels—and raised his left hand to steady his aim for a second shot, but Alex had also moved, hurling herself into Don’s office, removing herself from the gunman’s line of sight. She ducked behind the motionless form of her stricken employer, and as the killer appeared in the doorway, she gripped the rubber coated push handles of his wheelchair and using it like a battering ram, charged headlong.

  The gunman tried to backpedal, but he was too slow by a heartbeat. With her head down, Alex did not see the collision, but she certainly felt it. The wheelchair came to a very abrupt halt, nosing forward and pitching her headlong over the resulting jumble of chair and human bodies. Her foot caught something as she tumbled past, but she recovered quickly, got her feet under her again, and charged through the house. She expected at any moment to feel the burning impact of a bullet, but if the killer managed to get a shot off it came nowhere near her.

  She burst through the front door and never looked back.

  CHAPTER 2

  San Diego, California

  It was a typically quiet Tuesday night in the county lockup and sheriff’s deputy Aaron Conway was looking forward to getting caught up on his homework. Since the department was paying the tuition for his criminal justice courses, he figured they wouldn’t object to him catching up on his assigned reading while on the clock. It wasn’t like there was actually anything to do, aside from glancing at the camera feed every once in a while to make sure that the drunks in the tank weren’t hurting themselves or choking on their own vomit.

  He hated it when they did that.

  Actually, he hated almost everything about lock-up duty. As a very young boy, he’d dreamed of being a cop, but he could not have imagined his career in law enforcement would be like this. He had to keep telling himself that this was only temporary; everyone had to pay their dues. That’s all this was.

  A buzzer warned him that someone had just come in through the visitor’s entrance. It wasn’t unusual for someone to show up, even at this late hour, to bail out one of the “guests.” He set his book aside, straightening in his chair to look more official. He was surprised to see that the newcomer was in uniform—a naval uniform with a pair of silver bars on the collar.

  Aaron Conway, who prior to joining the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department had served three years active duty in the United States Marine Corps and was still a reservist, immediately stood up and assumed the position of attention. He felt foolish at the automatic response, and told himself to relax; inside these walls, he was the superior officer.

  Easier said than done.

  The naval officer advanced to the desk and deftly removed his cap to reveal close-cropped blond hair. Conway did not fail to notice a distinctive badge perched above a rack of ribbons on the man’s chest, an eagle with wings spread above an old-fashioned pistol and a trident.

  The man was a Navy SEAL.

  Sometimes the Shore Patrol would send a petty officer to round up sailors who’d tied-on one too many while on liberty and wound up in the lockup, but this was an altogether new experience for Conway.

  “Can I help you, Lieutenant…” He shifted his gaze to the name plate over the man’s right shirt pocket. “Maxwell?”

  The officer didn’t waste time with pleasantries or even courtesy. “You arrested a man earlier this evening. Big guy… tall. Dark hair, dark complexion.”

  “Uh…” Conway glanced down at the roster even though he knew immediately who the lieutenant was referring to. “You mean the Indian?”

  A faint head shake. “He’s Pakistani. That’s a common mistake. So he is here?”

  Conway’s eyebrows drew together. He thought maybe the SEAL officer had misunderstood him, but he wasn’t about to argue with the man. “We have someone who matches that description. No ID and he refused to give his name. Had a few too many and started breaking chairs at one of those beachside bars.” He didn’t add that the chairs had been broken over the heads of a few other drunken rowdies, all of whom were repeat offenders and probably deserved their lumps.

  The lieutenant nodded and then heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness you’ve got him. There might still be time.”

  “Time? For what?”

  The SEAL ignored the question. “Deputy, I need to take custody of your prisoner.”

  “Take custody? I—”

  The officer leaned closer, as if preparing to share some profound secret. “Look, I’m not supposed to tell you this—hell, I’ve already said more than I should have—but this is a matter of national security. I don’t—no, make that we don’t have time to pussyfoot around with ‘proper channels.’” He made quote marks with his fingers. “Where I’m taking him…well, it’s somewhere rules and proper channels won’t be a problem.”

  Conway gaped. “Is it really that serious?”

  Maxwell shrugged. “Officially? I can’t comment on that. Unofficially, let’s just say that if you don’t turn him over to me ASAP, tomorrow’s headlines might be…memorable.”

  The deputy’s first impulse was to pick up the phone and call his department head at home. The navy man seemed to read his intention. “Tick tock, son. If you don’t have the cojones to act decisively, then you’d damn well better call someone who can.”

  Conway bristled. “Screw that, sir.” He picked up the phone, but instead of dialing an outside line, he called the deputy stationed in the holding area. “Rex. Bring out the Indian.”

  “He’s Pakistani,” the SEAL insisted.

  Conway didn’t pass along the correction. Instead, he added: “Wait for me. This guy could be trouble.” He set the handset back in the cradle and turned to Maxwell. “You want to come along?”

  “Right behind you.”

  Conway pushed a button on his desktop to temporarily disable the electronic door locks, and led the SEAL into one of the holding areas. They’d given the Indian—or rather, the Pakistani—his own cell instead of locking him up in the drunk tank. Once the responding deputies—four of them in all—had subdued the man, he’d been cooperative enough. Now, a few hours closer to sober, he appeared completely docile, offering no resistance as a deputy ushered him out of the cell. But when the tall prisoner caught sight of the man in the Navy duds, his expression hardened. He l
ocked his gaze on the SEAL. “You.”

  Before the prisoner could elaborate, the lieutenant spoke. “Deputy, if he so much as looks at me cross-eyed, you have my leave to use your baton on him until he’s a quivering puddle of Jello on the floor. Do I make myself clear?”

  Although he was addressing the deputy, his eyes never left the prisoner.

  “It would be my pleasure,” Conway answered, resting a hand on the grip of his nightstick.

  The big man raised his hands, but his swarthy face twisted into something that looked almost like a smile. “You win, paleface. Let’s bury the tomahawk, or whatever the hell that saying is.”

  Conway threw a perplexed glance at the SEAL; he was pretty sure that wasn’t the sort of thing a Pakistani would say. Maxwell however kept his stare fixed on the prisoner. “If you know what’s good for you, you’ll keep your trap shut.”

  The prisoner barked a derisive laugh, but the SEAL was done talking to him. He gestured toward the exit. “Put him in my car. I’ll take it from there.”

  He led the procession through the building and out the visitor’s entrance to a non-descript sedan with government motor pool license plates. Once there, he opened the rear door and gestured for the prisoner to get inside.

  Conway frowned. “Sir, I know you SEALs are all badass and everything, but are you sure it’s safe for you to escort him by yourself?”

  Lieutenant Maxwell cast an appraising eye at the hulking prisoner. “I don’t think he’s going to be any trouble. But on second thought, maybe you’d better put him up front where I can keep an eye on him.”

  Once more, Conway got the sense that the SEAL had missed the point, but surely the guy knew his business, and despite being a little unsteady on his feet, the big drunk Indian—Pakistani, Conway corrected himself—did not resist in the least as he was guided into the passenger seat. With the door firmly closed, the officer donned his hat and circled around to the driver’s side.

  He lingered behind the open car door for a final exhortation to Conway. “Thanks for your assistance, deputy. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that what happened here tonight needs to be kept under wraps. National security, you know.”

  Conway nodded. “Where you taking him? Leavenworth?”

  The SEAL’s craggy expression cracked into something almost like a wry smile. “Trust me, where I’m taking him makes Leavenworth look like a vacation resort.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Deputy Conway had been right about one thing; the drunken prisoner was indeed an Indian—not an “India, Indian” but rather a Native American, a Cherokee to be precise. He had the unlikely name of Uriah Bonebrake, but most of his friends—those few who were willing to tolerate his acerbic, politically incorrect, and too often unfunny jokes, not to mention his weakness for strong drink—simply called him “Bones.”

  More than three hours had passed since his arrest, slightly more since his last drink, and the passage of time had lowered his blood alcohol level a little; he was no longer falling-down-drunk, but merely just mean and disinhibited.

  “I suppose you think I’m supposed to get down on my knees and thank you, right?” he snarled at the man in the officer’s uniform behind the steering wheel. “Keep dreaming, Your Holiness.”

  The driver, who was in the process of removing the plastic name tag from his shirt pocket, looked over at Bones with thinly disguised contempt. “I don’t want thanks or anything else from you, Bones.” He braced the steering wheel of the moving sedan with one knee, quickly affixed a different name plate to his uniform; this one read: Maddock. “I didn’t do this for you. Personally, I would have been happy to let you rot in there, but unfortunately, when you make an ass of yourself, it embarrasses the whole team.”

  Bones snorted. “You’re one to talk about the team.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Bones gave him a long hard stare. “The team is the guys on the field. You don’t want to be part of the team; you want to be the star. An army of one, or a navy of one. Whatever.”

  Dane Maddock stifled his impulse to deny the accusation, partly because he knew that Bones was still half-plastered and that any argument would be wasted on him, and partly because the big man’s underlying premise wasn’t entirely incorrect.

  Bones wasn’t finished. “Dude, don’t you get what it means to be part of a SEAL team? Work hard and play hard…only you’re so uptight that you can’t ever just let down and relax with the rest of us when the mission is done. That’s what being part of a team is all about; if you’re gonna be willing to die for your swim-buddy, you’ve got to be willing to hang out with him. We all get that. Except for you, mister tight ass. I thought I’d managed to chill you out on our trip to Boston, but you wouldn’t stay loosened up.”

  “We were off-duty.” Dane shifted in his seat. “Besides, I’m impersonating an officer for you. I should get some credit for that. Do you know what will happen if Maxie finds out?”

  Bones stared at him for several long seconds and then broke into a guffaw.

  Dane hadn’t meant it as a joke, but decided he was glad Bones had interpreted it that way and happier still with the silence that followed.

  Bones wasn’t wrong. Dane had been questioning his place among the hard-fighting, hard-playing SEAL team, particularly since their return from a four-month deployment.

  Both men were elite US Navy SEALs—the acronym stood for Sea, Air and Land, and represented the environments in which the highly trained and exceptionally fit warriors operated with deadly efficiency—and had been for almost two years, which also happened to be the length of time Dane Maddock had known Uriah Bonebrake. They had met during BUD/S—the Navy was fixated on acronyms; this one stood for Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, which technically made it a two-stage acronym—and survived the capstone event of the course, a five day long marathon of grueling physical activity and sleep deprivation known affectionately as “Hell Week,” to earn their SEAL trident. There had been some friction between them during the course, culminating in a brawl that might have cost both men their careers if not for the intervention of their commanding officer, Hartford Maxwell. “Maxie” had the brilliant idea of shackling the pair of wayward young SEALs together, figuratively speaking, for a weekend of rest and relaxation that had unexpectedly landed them in the middle of a murder investigation and a search for a priceless relic with the potential to rewrite the nation’s history.

  After that, things had gone a lot smoother. Over the weeks and months that followed, they finished their training and were integrated into Maxie’s SEAL team, based out of Coronado Naval Amphibious Station. Dane was put in charge of a platoon, and Bones had been assigned to oversee a squad comprised mostly of guys who had come through BUD/S with them, including Willis Sanders and Pete ‘Professor’ Chapman. With their skills honed to razor sharp perfection, they eagerly embraced the challenge of that first deployment, and everything had gone flawlessly.

  And then, it was over and everything had gone right into the toilet. Almost as soon as they were back in the States, Bones had started drinking…a lot.

  Bones liked to joke about his heritage, sometimes playing to deeply ingrained stereotypes. Dane was pretty sure he did it as a way of making people feel uncomfortable around him, though why Bones felt the need to do that was anyone’s guess. Maybe it was a defense mechanism, but it was hard to imagine what could possibly make the six-foot six-inch tall Bones feel threatened. Regardless, there was one stereotype that Bones seemed intent on fulfilling: the drunken Indian.

  Dane and the rest of the platoon had covered for him to the best of their ability. A lot of the bars around Coronado were on friendly terms with the teams, and knew how to be discreet whenever a sailor tied on one too many. But Bones had blasted through all the familiar watering holes in the first month back, and been 86’d from each and every one. After that, it had been a lot harder to keep tabs on him. Tonight, he’d escalated things…maybe gone too far.

  Bones�
� drinking was only part of a much bigger problem. The big Indian had, however inarticulately, hit the nail on the head; Dane was becoming more a coach than a player, managing his team rather than leading them. Of course, that was increasingly necessary as Bones and some of the others were constantly pushing the boundaries.

  Further complicating the situation was a letter he’d received from Rear Admiral Long—one of his former instructors at Annapolis and currently overseeing the Navy’s Bureau of Personnel—recommending him for a slot as the executive officer of the USS Valley Forge.

  When he’d graduated from the Naval Academy, he’d been firm in his decision to become a SEAL and make a name for himself in the elite Special Warfare field, but the Navy was, first and foremost, about ships, and it was expected that the goal of every officer was to one day have a ship of his own. Being recommended for the XO slot on a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser was the equivalent of a career catapult; from there, it might be only a couple more years before he was given his own command.

  It wasn’t really what he wanted, but if he refused, there was no telling when or if such an opportunity would come again.

  Maybe the universe was trying to tell him something.

  Bones stayed quiet for the rest of the drive back to Coronado, his head turned away from Dane, as if to stare out the window. When they arrived back at their team room, Dane discovered that the big man had passed out.

  As he got out, Willis and Professor came out to meet him. Both men looked exceptionally subdued, which Dane attributed to being up at two a.m. to cover for their wayward teammate.

  “He’s out,” Dane said in a stage whisper. “Come on and help me carry him inside.”

  The two SEALs looked at each other and then started forward. “We got this, Maddock,” Professor said. “You should probably head inside.”