In the Portland hotel, only Special Agent Kilkenney was awake. He sat at the window, peering at the Jascinski dwelling. Through the earphones on his head he could hear Jascinski snoring. He flipped a switch to the monitor in the kitchen.
From his peripheral vision he caught some movement. He looked at his watch; a midnight walker?
There was something about the man that he recognized. He flipped through the binder on the table next to him. That was it; it looked like one of the det members.
One of the boys coming back for another drink?
Elena hung up on Cam. She stood and pulled her wallet from her pocketbook.
“Elena, for God’s sakes sit down! What’s wrong?” Frances said.
She ignored her roommate’s lamentations and spilled the contents of her wallet onto the table. Money, receipts, scraps of paper, and business cards mixed like straw before her. Violently, she shuffled through them.
“Come on, come on. Where is it!”
In tune with Elena’s panic, Frances was visibly embarrassed. Elena ignored the stares that she did not see, but felt from the other patrons as she looked for Jascinski’s business card.
“Elena, I don’t understand. Let me help you.”
Though she found it in thirty seconds, it felt too late. She dialed the number on her cell phone.
Something interrupted Jazz’s sleep. He did not truly wake up, but he became conscious and opened his eyes. There was a ringing in his ears. Was it from the everclear? No... he did not have that much to drink.
He struggled to return to full consciousness. When he did he realized the phone was ringing. The hands on his watch told him that it was either Mel or a wrong number. It was better to have her talk to the answering machine right now.
Jazz sat up to get some water. His father’s knife was in his hand. He stared at it in the dark. He vaguely remembered holding it as he went to sleep, hoping it could give him some solace of the past year.
When the phone stopped, he heard a sound in the living room. Someone was there. He slipped into the closet behind the door. Just as he did, the door opened.
A large dark figure stepped into the bedroom.
Jazz lunged, turning sideways and jamming his hip into the intruder’s, knocking him slightly off balance. His left hand went around his head and pulled it back while his right hand plunged the knife into the neck on the left side. He pulled and tried to slide it to the right.
The knife did not want to move. He could feel blood spurting onto his hands and forearms. A gurgling scream came from his victim. Jazz pulled him backwards now toward the floor. He tried to move the knife in a sawing motion. There was some movement but not enough.
Now he dropped his opponent on the floor, let go of the knife and sprang for the bed. He reached underneath and pulled out a baseball bat. Clutching it with both hands, he prepared to crack the skull next.
The man lay still, arms at his side. There was little air moving through him.
“Uk, uk, uk,” were the last sounds that emanated from the body.
Jazz turned on the bedside light. He first looked to his hand, which was sticky with blood. He then looked at the man on the floor of his bedroom.
It was Johnny Ashland. Johnny Ashland lay on his bedroom floor, blood draining slower now since his heart stopped pumping, a gun on the floor beside him.
Jazz stared at him for a long time. His teammate did not look real with a Mark III mission knife sticking out of his neck and a pool of blood on the floor.
Then, in true form, Jazz ran to the bathroom and threw up.
When he looked in the mirror, James J. Jascinski gained clarity of thought that he would never again have in his life. In an instant he realized that Ashland was one of the SANPAT terrorists and was involved in killing Martin, West, and T-Ball. He surmised that Ash was connected to the De Luca murder and the detonation of the magazine in Tirane.
Before the moment of clarity washed through him, Jazz took one more action with Ashland’s carcass. He returned to the body and placed his knee on Ash’s chest. With both hands he pulled and removed the knife. The blood did not come off easily under hot water, so he wrapped it in a towel.
Jazz went to the closet and found his kit bag with extra gear stored in the floor of his closet. He put the Mark III knife there and extracted the T-Ball’s K-bar.
It was a struggle to get the knife back into Ashland’s neck, but it worked. There was no way he would allow his father’s knife to end up in an evidence cage. Perhaps there was justice that T-Ball’s knife would be recorded as the blade that killed Johnny Ashland.
He picked up the portable phone and dialed 9-1-1. Just as the operator answered there was a knock at the door.
“Portland Emergency Services. Can I help you?”
“Uh, yeah one moment.”
He went to the door. Three men in suits were outside.
“Who’s there?”
“FBI, Mr. Jascinski. We know what happened. Please open up.”
FORTY-THREE
Ashland
The conference room and the coffee gave Jazz a sense of déjà vu. He sipped the bitter liquid from a mug emblazoned with the EOD Mobile Unit Six logo, waiting for Elena Cruz to return and finish their debrief. He recalled his telling conversation with Ash on the flightline in Albania.
“I am sick of this shit. Fucking Haiti, sir. Fucking Somalia. Fucking Bosnia, Kosovo, and Albania. The mother-fucking Balkans! What the fuck are we doing here?”
Jazz understood Ash’s frustration; he shared some of his notions. Plus, the det endured a firefight and a narrow escape only hours before. They were all still decompressing.
Jazz would never forget Ash saying, “The purpose of the military in my view is to drain the lifeblood of our nation’s enemies until they either submit or succumb to our will. Anything that detracts from that is pure unmitigated bullshit.”
But it was the tone in his voice that even then set an alarm off in Jazz’s mind.
“Damn shipmate, you sound very angry,” Jazz had said.
“You don’t know the half of it, LT.”
So Jazz’s theory was wrong and Elena’s was right on. Ash was not a Kaczynski, he was a McVeigh.
Elena walked back into the conference room. She set her notebook and a stack of files on the table and sat down. Jazz waited for her to speak.
A moment passed. Finally Elena spoke.
“Well, Jazz, we seem to have it all laid out now.”
“Did you receive confirmation about the explosives from Norfolk?”
“Yes. I was just told over the phone that Ash was Det Norfolk’s Ammunition and Explosive Manager. In that position he was able to draw explosives from the magazine and report them as expended. In reality he was saving them for his organization.”
“Well how are we able to prove that now if not before?”
“We contacted Norfolk and had them compare logs at the demolition range against the det’s internal monthly operation reports, and the monthly inventory sent to the Navy’s explosive managers in Crane, Indiana. Apparently an inspection was scheduled right before Ash transferred here from Norfolk, but the det was away responding to an incident at sea.”
“The helo crash, the one with the test missile. I remember hearing about it and Ash telling us about it later.”
“Yes, well as a result the explosive safety inspection was cut short. They merely checked what was in the magazine versus what Crane said that they should have.”
“And they matched?”
“Yes. We are going to have to look into Ashland’s history, but he may have obtained hundreds of pounds of explosives for his organization.”
“Fuck, well who are they?”
“We don’t know yet. But undoubtedly they are connected by this fundamentalist terrorist cell that we know about in Albania and in Italy. Pucharelli and I are hoping that the cell in Albania is the head.”
“So, Ash was a member of an anti-government organization?”
&nbs
p; “Yes, or a white supremacist group. We suspect that up until recently Ashland was not an active agent, but a merely a supplier of explosives. Who knows, maybe he was not even a full-fledged member, maybe he was only sympathetic to their ideals, or he supplied them only for personal gain.”
“But he obviously joined them recently, otherwise why did he kill T-Ball, why did he try to kill me?”
“That answer brings us back to San Patricio.”
“How?”
Elena pulled out a file and slid it over to Jazz. He opened it. On the top of the file was a mug shot of a man.
“The name there says Marcus Levitt. It is a false identity. First he tried to pass as a Navy lieutenant named James Smith. The Levitt identity passed scrutiny. His real name is Gabriel Miller. Sound familiar?”
“Yeah,” said Jazz flipping through the file.
“He was the owner of the house in San Patricio where the explosives were discovered.”
“Is he in custody?”
“No. Notice that the mug shot says DPS on the ID plate. That stands for Defensive Protective Service. He was caught in the Pentagon parking lot with a trunk full of explosives. Guess where they are from?”
“Norfolk.”
“...also just recently confirmed. Gabriel Miller was released by DPS shortly after taking that photo. Eventually we would have connected him to San Patricio. So it seems that we were closing in on them, albeit from their own clumsiness and our good fortune. First we lucked upon Miller’s factory, then the incident in Italy, followed by the factory in Albania. Add to it that Miller was detained... they figured it was only a matter of time that we put all the pieces together. So in order to cover their trail as best as possible...”
“They decided to take out T-Ball and me,” Jazz paused. “Well, then Ash had to be an active member.”
“How’s that?”
“How else would the group have known that T-Ball and I were helping the investigation?”
“Mmmm. I had not considered that.”
Jazz and Elena exchanged pleasantries before she left. She tried to hold onto his hand a little longer than normal.
He has no idea, she thought.
Jazz tried to burn her image in his mind as she walked out the door to Det Ingleside.
Elena held her breath until she drove out the gate of the naval station. Then she wept.
Guido’s photos of Detachment Four and Benny Ironhorse curled, melting in the fire warming Nasih’s feet. It was the last of the physical evidence connecting him to his pupils in Texas. He knew that their fear of him far outweighed any threats or promises the FBI could inflict upon them. Nasih felt fortunate. Once again, Allah demonstrated that there was still work for him to do.
Soon enough the United States would be looking for him in Albania. But it was no matter; he would be back in Afghanistan.
FORTY-FOUR
Eglin
He almost took it to the hill in Annapolis where the Admiral was buried. The ground above his father was still fresh. It would have been easy to perform a small midnight excavation and return the knife to its original owner.
After considering it for a long time he realized his instincts in the funeral parlor were correct, that such an action would have violated his father’s intentions. The man was finally free of the damn thing; he needed to let the Admiral rest in peace.
But now Jazz also needed to be free of it. He wasn’t going to pass it to his sons.
The consolidation of the whole of NAVSCOLEOD at Eglin Air Force Base made sense to Jazz. The facility at Indian Head simply could not be modernized any more. It was time to rebuild.
Hundreds of NAVSCOLEOD graduated recently received a letter from Horace Pickney that included an artist’s conception of the new memorial. The pillars from Indian Head, Maryland were moved to Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. A walkway and pavilion of red brick would be added. Charitable donations would be recognized by adding an engraved brick into the walkway.
The memorial was now in place. They were almost finished with the landscaping and the brick walkway. Jazz wondered if the workers understood what they were erecting.
Fortunately he was not too late. Several of the bricks in front of the memorial were not in place yet and the crew was not working on a Sunday.
Many of those already laid had names etched in them.
In Memory of
Pvt 1/C Charles McCann, USMC
By his family
BM2 Thomas Sharpe, USN
Jun 1945 - Apr 1970
Capt. Aidan Case, USA
From his loving wife, Maria
Jazz looked at the four obelisks, though not closely. He did not want to see the names on them. Not now.
He drew out the Mark-III dive knife one last time. With it he quickly scraped a shallow grave for it, just deep enough to not be noticed. He cleaned the blade and placed it in the sheath. He laid it to rest and covered it back up with his hands and then stamped on it with his feet.
He stood a moment in silence and thought of T-Ball.
Then he said out loud, “In memory of Boatswain’s Mate Second Class Theodore Ball, United States Navy. From his friend and shipmate, Lieutenant James J. Jascinski, United States Navy.”
Jazz turned as he heard someone approaching from behind him. A kid of about eighteen walked toward him and the memorial.
“I’m sorry, sir, do you need a moment?”
“Zero eight five eight.”
“Uh, excuse me, sir?”
“Zero eight five eight.”
“Are you alright, sir?”
“Zero eight five eight. You are a student right?”
“Yes, sir. I’m Private Schaffer. I’m going to graduate soon. You’re a grad I take it.”
“Yes. Ten Bravo Ninety Eight.”
“A Navy guy.”
“Zero eight five eight, private. Write it down. It is the number in the Combined Federal Campaign for the EOD Memorial Scholarship fund.”
Jazz stared at the kid hard while he stood there a little confused.
“You need a pen?”
“Uh, no, sir.”
“Get out a pen and write it down.”
The private fumbled in his shirt pocket and extracted a pen. He pulled out his wallet and took out a receipt.
“Sorry, sir. Say it one more time.”
“Zero eight five eight.”
“...five eight. Got it, sir.”
“Give what you can. The families of our brothers on that wall need our help.”
“Do you know any of these men, sir?”
“Well Private, I’ve only met two of them, but I know all of them.”
Jazz got in the car and left with a singular purpose; to find Melanie and his family. As he left the memorial and the schoolhouse behind Jazz realized he had changed. With each mile, the car seemed faster and Jazz felt lighter. His guilt for the deaths of Martin, West, and T-Ball left him. The weight of the Admiral and his expectations was gone. Jazz had buried it all.
Acronyms and Abbreviations
1140 – (“eleven-forty”) Special Operations Officer
AFFF- Aqueous Film Forming Foam
AGE –Arterial Gas Embolism
ATF- Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms
CDO – Command Duty Officer
CDR- Commander
CIC - Combat Information Center
CMC – Closed Metal Container
CNO – Chief of Naval Operations
CO- Commanding Officer
CP – Command Post
CQB- Close Quarters Combat
CSO – Chief Staff Officer
DCA – Damage Control Assistant
DESRON – Destroyer Squadron
DPS – Defensive Protective Service
EMR - Electromagnetic Radiation
EOD – Explosive Ordnance Disposal
EODMU – Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit
EODTECHDIV – EOD Technical Division
FADL – Fly Away Dive Locker
>
FARC – Fly Away Recompression Chamber
FBI – Federal Bureau of Investigation
GOMEX – Gulf of Mexico Exercise
GPS –Global Positioning System
GW- George Washington, as in USS George Washington
HDR – Humanitarian Daily Ration
HRST – Helo Rope Suspension Team
IED –Improvised Explosive Device
INCTASKGRU – Inchon Task Group
LCDR –Lieutenant Commander
LCPO- Leading Chief Petty Officer
LPO – Leading Petty Officer
LT – Lieutenant
LZ - Landing Zone
MCM- Mine Countermeasures, also used to denote Mine Countermeasure ship
MCMRON – MCM Squadron
MCS- Mine Warfare Command Ship
MER – Missile Ejection Rack
MHC- Mine Hunter, Coastal
MNV – Mine Neutralization Vehicle
MRE – Meal Ready to Eat
MU- Mobile Unit
NAS – Naval Air Station
NAVSCOLEOD – Naval School Explosive Ordnance Disposal
NCIS –Naval Criminal Investigative Service
NGO –Non-Governmental Organization
OOD –Officer of the Deck
OIC – Officer in Charge
OPCON –Operational Control
P1 – The primary Tech working on a problem
P2 – The secondary Tech working on a problem, assists the P1
PD – Police Department
PERSTEMPO – Personnel operational Tempo
POTUS- President of the United States
PQS- Personal Qualification Standards
PT – Physical Training
READIMPT – Readiness Improvement Training
RHIB –Rigid Hull Inflatable Boat
RONEX- Squadron Exercise
ROV – Remote Operated Vehicle
RSP – Render Safe Procedure
SEAL – Sea, Air, Land commandos of Naval Special Warfare
SCI- Secret Compartmentalized Information
SMUT –Small Unit Tactics
SOP –Standard Operating Procedures
SWO – Surface Warfare Officer
SWOS –Surface Warfare Officer School
TACON –Tactical Control
TECHDIV – Technical Division
TEU TWO- Training and Evaluation Unit TWO
Proximity: A Novel of the Navy's Elite Bomb Squad Page 32