Defiance

by Don Brown

  It is unclear what, if any, information the United States gleaned from the last-minute "life-for-information" plea bargain. The Pentagon remains mum on the subject. Just as mysterious -- Brewer's self-imposed disappearance from the public limelight. As tabloids drool for information on his personal life, Brewer seems content secluded behind the walls of the 32nd Street Naval Station, where the press can't reach him. Except for occasional forays out to dinner with either Wendy Poole or Shannon McGillvery, Brewer hides from the camera, leaving curiosity seekers to feast on rumor. Speaking of which, the latest Brewer rumor has America's most available naval officer headed to an aircraft carrier next year.

  Where better could the publicity-shy Brewer seclude himself from the press? But is this true? Will the hero of the Olajuwon and Quasay courts-martial soon sail the seven seas? Or will he reconsider Senator Fowler's offer and get involved in the senator's presidential campaign?

  With Fowler in a tight race against Vermont Senator Eleanor Claxton for this year's Democrat nomination, rumors are again flying around Washington that Brewer may accept a high-level position in the campaign, where his presence could help Fowler defeat Claxton in several primary battleground states in the South, where moderate and even a few conservative Democrats tend to outnumber liberals in the northeast and western states. Brewer has reiterated his disdain for politics, but the rumored trade-off in this case -- a possible nomination as Attorney General of the United States -- may be too sweet a carrot to keep Brewer in his beloved United States Navy.

  "We'll see about that," Chris mumbled to himself. "If this naval pretty boy thinks he can quit the navy and help swing that Neanderthal oaf Roberson 'Pinkie' Fowler into the White House, he's got another thing coming."

  "You said something, sir?" asked the cute brunette working behind the cash register just a few feet away.

  "No, nothing -- "frowning, he returned to the article. He flipped a few pages, away from the Brewer garbage, and saw her picture. Her photogenic smile electrified him.

  Eleanor Claxton would become the first woman president of the United States. And his destiny was to be a part of her election.

  He would stand near her at the presidential podium next January for her oath of office. She would raise her right hand, and rather than placing her left hand on the Bible, that antiquated book of bigotry, she would place her hand on the U.S. Constitution and vow to preserve, protect, and defend it.

  The thought of it! Eleanor renouncing the Bible for the Constitution, eliminating that offensive phrase at the end of the presidential oath, "so help me God."

  During her oath, their eyes would meet as she placed her hand on the Constitution. She would smile at him, acknowledging his vital role in her new administration. This administration would change history. And he would be there with her.

  Forget that they had never met.

  Soon they would.

  He would prove himself to her.

  Nothing could stop them.

  Not Brewer.

  Not anyone.

  Rue Charles de Gaulle

  Paris

  Sometime before midnight

  Jeanette ducked into a small alleyway between Votre Jupe, an upscale skirt shop, and La Maison du Vin, a popular wine-tasting hangout.She prayed they hadn't seen her.

  The alley was pitch-dark. The odors of fermented wine and rotting garbage hung in the air. She squinted, searching for her bearings. She scurried deeper into the alleyway, away from light cast from the street. Something sliced her foot. She reached down and felt warm blood.

  Five minutes passed.

  Then ten.

  The sound of French police cars -- their sirens blaring middle C, then F, then middle C, then F --grew louder. Perhaps someone had heard the burst of machine-gun fire and called. Perhaps she was a suspect in the murder of Jean-Claude.

  A scampering across her foot. She reached down. Something furry squealed.

  A rat! Dear God, help me. A chorus of rodent-like squealing rose from the blackness around her feet. A nest of them! She suppressed the urge to scream. She gritted her teeth. She would live with the rats or die.

  Cars zoomed by on rue Charles de Gaulle, their headlights painting bright horizontal streaks in the dark.

  The killers would reach her position in a moment, she calculated. Silhouettes of two men jogged past the entrance of the alley. They ran from right to left. From the direction of Jean-Claude's offices.

  It was them.

  It had to be.

  She turned away from the boulevard and crept deeper into the alley, feeling for a way out the back. She paced one foot in front of the other, holding her breath. Ten paces later, she felt the brick wall. There was no way out, except back on the street.

  The sounds of the police sirens faded in the distance.

  A third black-clad man appeared from the right. He stopped at the entrance of the alleyway. He peered into the alleyway, the whites of his eyes glowing like the full moon.

  She felt the cool, aluminum lid of a garbage can just to her left. She reached into the trash can. She felt the glass curvature of an empty bottle.

  She slipped down onto the ground, sandwiching herself between the trash can and the brick wall. Curling her body into a ball, she waited, prayed that the rats and the man would disappear into the streets, and clutched the bottle.

  A beam from the pursuer's flashlight flooded the alley. Shadows danced across the filthy concrete as his footsteps grew near.

  Click, click, click... The sound of his shoes echoed off the brick walls. Click, click, click.

  Silence. His spotlight flooded the trash can. She froze against the brick wall, hiding in the shadowy eclipse.

  Click, click, click. The edge of the flashlight protruded just beyond the trash can, shining light into the back of the closed alley.

  Maintenant!

  She sprung at him, swinging the bottle at the silhouette of his head. Smashing glass reverberated off the brick walls of the alley. Blood gushed from her hand. The flashlight bounced off the concrete, then went black. His silhouette staggered in the moonlight, first to the left, then to the right, then down to the concrete.

  She reached for the flashlight. As she fidgeted with the switch, the beam sputtered, then intensified. The man's features were Arabic. Blood gushed from a cut over his ear. A bruise on his temple protruded just above that. She searched him for identification. Nothing. Only a pistol wedged under his belt.

  He moaned and moved.

  She thrust the jagged bottleneck into his Adam's apple. He flinched. Blood spewed from his neck. Mon Dieu, what have I done?

  She had to escape. But the street was too risky. She swirled the flashlight up and around the back of the alley. There was an open window, in the building housing La Maison du Vin.

  If she could move the trash can into place below it, then maybe... just maybe... She climbed onto the trash can. Reaching for the ledge, she pulled herself through the window and tumbled into darkness.

  She landed in some sort of storage room. She killed the flashlight and tiptoed to the closed door. Music, muffled conversation, and the sound of clinking glass flowed from an adjacent room.

  She gripped the doorknob, cracking the door into a dimly lit back hallway.

  A dozen or so swankily clad couples in the room to the left sipped wine and laughed, paying no attention to the direction of her temporary refuge. The hallway was empty.

  Perhaps she could mingle with the crowd as she slipped to the front door. But what if they were still out on the streets? She had no option but to exit from the rear of the building.

  She tiptoed into the hallway toward the back exit. A woman's eyes caught hers. She sipped her wine and then turned back to her companions.

  Jeanette stepped into the night. No one seemed to notice.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Embarcadero

  North Harbor Drive and Ash

  Seaport Village

  San Diego, California

  4:30 p.m. (PST
)

  As the sun descended over the aqua waters of San Diego Bay, wave-lets reflected its light, sparkling like a thousand multicolored jewels. With the mighty aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower moored just across the bay at Naval Air Station North Island, Shannon McGill very rounded the last bend along southbound North Harbor Drive.

  Stretching her legs to a gazelle-like pace for the final two-mile stretch of her late-afternoon waterfront run, she glanced at her stopwatch. She had maintained an eight-minute pace for the first four and a half miles.

  Good.

  So far.

  Now was decision time.

  To sprint or not to sprint. That was the question.

  She should push it for the last couple of miles. After all, San Diego's annual Rock 'n' Roll Marathon was fewer than sixty days away. And Shannon was determined to finish in less than three and a half hours. And in doing so, she would kick the derrieres of a couple of obnoxious, chauvinistic SEAL buddies from Coronado who were giving her some lip.

  "Law enforcement is a man's game," they boasted last Saturday night at the North Island Officer's Club. "Plus, women weren't designed for the military."

  Of course their ribbing was all in good jest.

  When she, in equally good jest, flashed her badge as a special agent of the Naval Criminal Investigative Ser vice and threatened to arrest them for harassing a federal officer, she grinned just enough to make them wonder if she was serious or joking. Then she watched them swig their beers and concede that women make better NCIS agents.

  But the SEALs, they boasted, were the world's greatest athletes.

  They were probably right about that. But she would never concede, at least not publicly, that she agreed with anything they said.

  Shannon McGillvery, a good Irish-Catholic girl from Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts -- via Boston College -- wasn't about to concede that Lieutenants Jeremy Bevins and Brad Miller were athletically superior to anyone -- especially not a Boston College coed who had gone to school on a women's field hockey scholarship.

  "Your money where your mouth is, guys," she said, folding her badge back into her purse. "The Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. Three months. Be there. Watch this five-foot-five Catholic girl leave both of you buffoons in the dirt."

  They cackled and slopped their beer. But their special-warfare, supersized male egos would not allow them to ignore her challenge.

  "Fifty bucks says you can't crack four hours, pretty lady," Lieutenant Bevins snarled, then flexed a huge bicep as he curled a bottle of Corona to his lips.

  "I don't bet, Lieutenant," she said. "Against navy regs." That brought more guffaws. "But I do kick butt. And if I were a betting woman -- one hundred fifty bucks says that I leave both of you in the afterburners... and crack three and a half hours."

  "I love a pretty lady with a huge ego," Lieutenant Bevins shot back through a thick Texan drawl. "Let's make this real interesting -- "He snapped his fingers for another Corona.

  She drew closer to him and peered into his sparkling bloodshot blue eyes. "Yeah? And how do you propose that, Lieutenant Rawhide?"

  "Here's the deal, Special Agent McGillvery." A smile formed on his rugged face. "Unless you beat me in the Rock 'n' Roll" -- a gulp from the next Corona bottle -- "I get to take you out on a date." Laughter cascaded from the grunting chorus of Bevins's SEAL shipmates now gathering around.

  "Don't think I need to worry about that, Tex."

  "Ooohhh," jeered half of SEAL platoon Bravo.

  "And if you beat me," Bevins said, "you arrest me for harassing a federal agent?"

  Howls and the clanking of bottles.

  "Deal," she snapped. Then she'd shaken his hand and scooted out into the night.

  Why?

  Why couldn't she resist the urge to challenge arrogant chauvinism?

  Why get roped into this? She raced into the setting sun and crisp breeze, passing the Star of India, the clipper ship permanently moored in San Diego Bay, on her right. It wasn't as though she had any particular romantic inclination toward the world's deadliest warriors.

  Sporting a fourth-degree black belt herself, the SEALs' Rambo mystique didn't impress her the way it did other women. Sure, Lieutenant Rawhide Bevins was downright handsome. But date him?

  Nah.

  Her sights were on another naval officer. More of an intellectual type. A JAG officer, in fact.

  But whom could she tell of her interest in Zack Brewer? He'd never gotten over Diane Colcernian. Or so she suspected. Besides, she'd rarely seen him in the months that had passed since the Quasay prosecution. And despite the talk on the streets, he'd never shown any real interest in her.

  Zack was every woman's dream, she decided as she turned left at the base of the Broadway Pier. Leaving the gorgeous San Diego waterfront behind her, she increased her pace. She'd maintain a six-and-a-half-minute pace for the last couple of miles. She had to push it. Anything to whip Lieutenant Rawhide.

  Minutes later, panting in a controlled fury, Shannon sprinted past NCIS headquarters at A Street and Sixth Avenue. Slowing her pace to a jog, then a slow walk, Shannon checked the black Olympia Sports stopwatch on her left wrist.

  Good. A sub-eight-minute pace for the ten-kilometer jaunt along the waterfront and through the downtown area of "America's finest city," as the locals called San Diego. To finish at less than three and a half hours, and keep Rawhide off her back, she would need to hold an eight-minute pace over the course of the twenty-six-mile run. Doable, she thought, hands on hips, elbows akimbo, as she headed toward the shower in the NCIS locker room. Tough but doable.

  Exhaling, she walked into the entrance of NCIS Southwest Field Office and flashed the ID card that hung around her neck.

  "McGillvery!" It was the gruff voice of the special agent in charge -- SAC -- of NCIS Southwest, Barry MacGregor, booming from just inside the security checkpoint.

  The potbellied New Yorker, his federal agent's badge clipped to one side of his belt, wore a nine-millimeter Beretta holstered on the other side. Sporting a white golf shirt with slightly-too-tight khaki slacks, the ruddy-faced MacGregor had that I've got a job for you look on his face.

  "Why do I get the feeling that I'm not going to just go inside and shower and then drive home for a quiet dinner tonight?"

  "Love your instincts, Shannon." He tossed her a towel. "That's why you're my best field agent."

  "What's up, Barry?" She swiped the towel across her forehead. "Another drug bust on the Amphib base?"

  "It's Brewer."

  She choked on her bottled water." Zack Brewer?"

  "One and the same," the SAC said.

  "So what's up with him?" She tossed the towel back at him.

  "NCIS Command thinks there's a heightened threat to his safety. So does the FBI." He waved her past the security checkpoint, then walked with her down the familiar antiseptic hallway toward his office.

  "What threat?" She followed him into the office.

  "Listen, we're getting intel out of Europe that there's been a shooting. Tied to the Quasay court-martial."

  "A shooting? Who?"

  "That French lawyer, la Trec. Just a few hours ago, according to our intel."

  "Not good. Anything else?"

  "Yep. More death threats to Zack. Spawned from that People magazine article."

  "I was afraid of that." She polished off the bottled water. "Suspects?"

  "Not yet. Usual crackpot stuff. Probably nothing. But we've gotta respond."

  "What can I do?"

  "Hit the shower. Then get to the helo pad at North Island. Zack's gonna meet you there. Then don't let him out of your sight until I say so. Got it?"

  "Got it."

  CHAPTER 4

  Pacific Ocean

  Two miles east of Point Loma

  San Diego County, California

  Saturday, 5:30 p.m. (PST)

  Lieutenant Commander Zack Brewer, in orange swim trunks and tanned from his recent leave in Hawaii, turned the Sunfish into the breeze. He tugged on
the jib line and yelled, "Duck!" The aluminum boom swung around the aft of the boat.

  Zack's companion, a well-figured blonde in a royal blue one-piece, dropped down, squealing as the sail swung over. She dove for the tiller as salt water sprayed over the bow. He already had hold of it and laughed as she wrestled him for control.

  Zack glanced into her Ray-Bans and saw the reflection of his face. He was surprised, almost stunned, to glimpse his joyful expression mirrored in the glasses. After mourning the loss of Diane for so long, he thought he'd never smile again.

  But now this.

  Another whitecap drenched them with cool Pacific water, and Wendy shrieked with delight.

  "You're going to get us capsized, Wendy!"

  "But I'm a sailor!" She laughed again, the tiller still firmly in her hands.

  "You're a Navy JAG officer!" He splashed salt water in her face. "You know as much about sailing as I know about flying an F-18."

  She pushed him playfully. "Oh? And I'm supposed to trust your navigational abilities?" A white smile flashed across her face. "You think you're Popeye the Sailor Man?" She stroked his chin. "How did I talk you into this, anyway?"

  Another wave sprayed the boat, sloshing them with cool water. "You talked me into it because you're crazy." He laughed. "We never should've sailed out here in the ocean! We're too far out."

  More water sprayed over the gunnels. More laughter. They abandoned their playful fight over the tiller. The rudder could flap in the wind if it wanted.

  "What's the matter, Zack?"

  "Nothing." He released her from his arms. The bulb nose of a Los Angeles class submarine broke the surface about a half mile across the rolling swells of the Pacific.