Lilith

by Toby Tate

  “Alright, but I call the shots. Understood?”

  Lisa slowly reached across the desk and Blakely took the drive from her.

  “Thanks,” he said. “We’ve been hoping for some kind of evidence that would give us a clue about what Julia Lambert has been up to. Looks like you found it for us.”

  Lisa shrugged. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  * * *

  Blakely clicked on the flash drive’s icon as Hunter and Lisa stood over each shoulder, watching him work on his laptop.

  “This isn’t even encrypted,” Blakely said. “She probably didn’t bother because she figured if we found out what she was up to we couldn’t stop her anyway.”

  A familiar set of folders popped up and Lisa explained what she had seen in each one. Blakely opened the folder marked “NR” and whistled when the pdf files popped up.

  “Wow, this is some seriously classified stuff. I might have to kill you two just for looking at it,” Blakely said, then turned his head towards Lisa. “Just kidding. But I do have to add that everything we see here doesn’t go beyond this room, understood?”

  Hunter held up three fingers. “Scout’s honor,” he said.

  Blakely brought up the doc file with a list of ship’s personnel and their jobs on board the Ford.

  “Now what would she need these files for? It’s almost like she’s looking to target key personnel aboard the ship—she has certain ones tagged with an asterisk. The operations officer, the weapons officer, engineering personnel, the ship’s surgeon…”

  “Did you say the ship’s surgeon?” Hunter cut in.

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Maybe it’s nothing. It’s just that there was this corpsman that said a seaman in sickbay wanted to see Commander Crane, the ship’s chaplain, earlier today when we were out on vulture’s row.”

  “The ship’s chaplain? Did she say why?”

  “She just said the seaman had some kind of traumatic experience. They found her passed out on the deck in the female head.”

  “Is she still in sickbay?” Blakely asked.

  “As far as I know she is.”

  Blakely suddenly stood up. “Let’s go talk to her,” he said.

  CHAPTER 35

  Lieutenant Commander Sylvester “Sly” Johnson was a big, broad-shouldered Mack truck of a man who could intimidate even the most hardened criminal. An agent with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, Johnson had been in the Navy nearly twenty years and wasn’t about to be put out to pasture—he loved the job too much. The nickname of “Sly” wasn’t just short for Sylvester. He also had a knack for getting to the bottom of things, and being a child born and raised in Harlem, he was street smart.

  After securing the area and questioning what few witnesses there were, Sly stood in sickbay staring down at the young woman who had apparently tried to kill herself. The question was: Why? According to her co-workers and work center supervisor, she was a gregarious and easy-going girl who stayed out of trouble, did her job well and didn’t complain. If she was having problems, she kept them to herself. So did she hang herself or did someone else do it?

  Johnson turned to the corpsman who had found Blount hanging from the water pipes.

  “Petty Officer Hunt, let me ask you this—who was the last person to visit Seaman Blount before you found her?”

  Hunt crossed her arms and shook her head. “Nobody, sir. I mean, she was fine when I checked on her first thing this morning at 0700, then the doctor came in and talked to her, then Commander Crane came down and…”

  Johnson cut her off. “Wait, you said the doctor? Which one?”

  “Commander Jeffries, sir.”

  “Chief Rodgers, get a hold of Commander Jeffries and bring him down here for questioning,” Johnson said over his shoulder.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Sir, I called the commander right after I found Seaman Blount, but he wasn’t in his stateroom,” Hunt said.

  Before Johnson could answer, Captain Phillips stepped through the door to sickbay, followed by MacIntyre. They nodded at Commander Crane and Johnson. The chief stood in the back of sickbay talking to someone on a growler as Hunt snapped to attention.

  “At ease, Hunt,” the captain said. “Is that the seaman over there?” He nodded toward the curtained-off area.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Phillips walked toward the curtain, motioning Johnson to come with him, then stopped and eyed the chaplain.

  “Sammy, you might as well try to talk to her, since you were the one she called in the first place,” Phillips said. “Maybe you can help get something out of her.”

  All three men filed into the curtained room and stood around the small hospital bed. Blount lay under a sheet and looked as if she had been beaten—both eyes were black and her upper lip was swollen. Her dark hair was matted to her head. Around her neck was a purple bruise made by her own uniform belt. Johnson thought this definitely did not look self-inflicted.

  Sly knew Blount was in frail condition, but he also knew the perpetrator was still running around loose on the ship and needed to be apprehended as soon as possible.

  Phillips leaned in close to the girl.

  “Seaman Blount,” he whispered. “Jessica. Can you hear me?”

  Her dark brown eyes fluttered open. When she saw the CO, she immediately tried to sit up, but he placed a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her back down on the bed.

  “Don’t try to get up,” he said. “You’ve been through hell and you need to take it easy right now.”

  Blount smiled at the captain and actually looked relieved to see him.

  “Yes, sir,” she answered.

  “Do you feel like you have the strength to talk and tell us what happened?”

  Blount nodded.

  Johnson pulled out a small digital recorder, switched it on and pointed it at Jessica. She stared up at the overhead, concentrating her memory on the events of that morning. By the time she was done, Johnson felt like he had been punched in the gut.

  “Find Jeffries and put him under arrest,” Phillips hissed at him. “I don’t care if you have to take this whole fucking ship apart.”

  Johnson switched off his recorder. “Don’t worry, sir. We’ll find him.”

  * * *

  Phillips realized Mac had been right about one thing—they needed to stay away from Manhattan, at least until they could apprehend Jeffries, that crazy S.O.B. He snatched the growler off the wall in sickbay and called the duty officer on the bridge.

  “Megowan, how close are we to docking?” Phillips asked.

  “The tugs are taking us into the harbor now, sir. We’ll be pier side in an hour.”

  “Tell the tugs to stand down for now, and order the engine room to go All-Stop. Then weigh anchor. Tell the tugs we have an emergency on board and we’ll let them know when we’re ready to get pier side.”

  “Aye, sir.”

  Phillips hung up and glanced at MacIntyre, Crane and Johnson. “Now we just have to find the good doctor and ask him why he hung Seaman Blount from a damned water pipe.”

  CHAPTER 36

  Hunter, Lisa and Blakely sped through the ship’s passageways, dodging crew members and ducking through doorframes on their way to sickbay. Hunter had a bad feeling about the story they would hear from the young intelligence specialist and in fact wasn’t sure if he was really ready for it. He didn’t know what was going on aboard the Ford, but whatever it was it gave him knots in his stomach. His wife was pregnant and now he had just discovered his roommate was a CIA operative keeping tabs on his wife’s roommate. What else would he find out? That the ship was being invaded by creatures from outer space? Or worse yet, that there was some kind of mutating virus that could wipe out the entire crew?

  He nearly tripped over a doorframe and decided he needed to pay attention to where he was going. Blakely was in the lead, with Lisa in between the two. Hunter wondered what she thought about all this. Lisa was the one that had found that flash drive and seemed
a little apprehensive about what it might contain. But so was Hunter.

  He still wasn’t sure why Blakely was keeping tabs on Julia in the first place. Was she a spy? She seemed to have some kind of strange effect on Hunter. He had gotten a raging hard-on the last time he had been near her and that was something no one but Lisa had been able to do for the last several years. It was unreal. The woman was definitely hot, though, no doubt about that.

  Hunter found himself thinking about her again and had to consciously force her out of his mind. That was just something he didn’t need right now.

  Blakely stopped abruptly in front of a sailor that was posted in front of sickbay in BDUs and wearing a sidearm. The operative reached into his back pocket, pulled out a shield and flashed it at the man.

  “I need to get into sickbay. Will you let the CO know that I’m out here?”

  The man, well over six feet tall with a neck like a bull, simply nodded and disappeared inside. Probably a master at arms, Hunter thought.

  After a few seconds, the CO stepped out with bull-neck in tow.

  “Nobody told me there was CIA on board,” Phillips said in a flat voice. He sounded pissed. “Can you tell me why you’re here and why no one decided to let me in on it?”

  Blakely didn’t flinch. “Can we step inside?”

  Phillips seemed like he was going to object, but instead moved inside and held open the door. He was about to close it on Hunter and Lisa when Blakely spoke up.

  “They’re with me,” he said. “They have some information that could be pertinent to our problem.”

  “Our problem?” Phillips asked as Hunter and Lisa entered the room. “Do we have a problem, Mr. Blakely? Or is that even your real name?”

  Blakely faced the CO. “Captain Phillips, I know my presence here might be a little disconcerting, but there are things going on aboard the Ford that may not be all they appear.”

  Hunter marveled at the change from Blakely’s goofy personality into this all-business, take-charge undercover operative and wasn’t sure if he liked it. He glanced over at Sammy, who was quiet and seemed to be surprised at this latest turn of events. Beside him stood the young corpsman he had seen earlier, who looked a bit nervous, and another man, an officer that Hunter didn’t recognize. They all were watching the exchange between Blakely and Phillips.

  “What the hell do you mean, ‘May not be as they appear?’” Phillips shot back. “What exactly is going on aboard my ship, Blakely? Is there some kind of virus or something that I don’t know about?”

  Blakely shook his head. “No, captain, it’s not a virus. But it could be something infinitely more dangerous.”

  Phillips looked like he was about to launch into a retort when the door to sickbay opened and three men entered.

  “Captain,” a huge black man in a khaki uniform said, “We found Commander Jeffries.”

  Another man, apparently the ship’s surgeon, stood sheepishly between the black man and another man in khakis, a chief petty officer. Hunter figured he was probably the chief master at arms and the black man the ship’s NCIS officer. The surgeon’s hands were cuffed behind his back. It was starting to get a little crowded in sickbay, Hunter thought.

  “We, uh, found him in a rather compromising position, sir,” the NCIS agent continued.

  Phillips frowned. “What do you mean, compromising?”

  The big man cleared his throat. “Well, sir, a seaman told us he had seen the commander go into a stateroom with a female crew member. When we knocked on the door, we heard noises inside, but no one answered. We kept on knocking, but still nothing. We finally had to unlock the door and we found the doctor and one of the engineering officers having sexual intercourse. Sir.”

  Phillips’ jaw looked like it might come unhinged.

  “You’re shitting me,” he said.

  The black man shook his head in reply.

  The next thing Hunter saw was the ship’s chaplain suddenly lunge across the room and plunge a hypodermic needle into Commander Jeffries’ neck.

  CHAPTER 37

  Sickbay was in chaos. Hunter was having a hard time trying to discern who was yelling at whom as he, Phillips, Johnson, Mac and Blakely stepped in and began prying the doctor and the chaplain apart. Sammy was as stocky as a pro wrestler and it took several seconds before the group managed to get him off of Commander Jeffries, who had fallen to the deck, taking out a cart full of surgical instruments on the way down.

  Hunter saw that Seaman Blount, still looking somewhat weak, had dragged herself out of her bed and through the curtains to see the spectacle of high-ranking officers and civilians scuffling on the sickbay floor.

  “Damn it, Sammy, what the hell’s wrong with you?” Captain Phillips was yelling as Sly and Mac hoisted the chaplain off the floor and Hunter, Blakely and Lisa tended to the doctor.

  Once the chaplain had been pulled away, Seaman Hunt ran to the doctor and grabbed the hypo sticking out of his neck. But the plunger was empty. Sammy was hyperventilating like he had just run the New York marathon. MacIntyre and Johnson each held an arm as he kept his focus on the prostrate Jeffries.

  “Sammy, what was in that vial?” Phillips asked.

  “Captain, if you’ll wait about five minutes, I believe you’ll get your answer. If I’m wrong, you can lock me in the brig and throw away the key.”

  But they didn’t have to wait five minutes. Even as Sammy finished his sentence, the doctor, who appeared comatose, began sweating large drops of white liquid out of his forehead. Hunter and Lisa, who were crouched next to Jeffries, stood abruptly and Hunt threw a hand over her mouth to stifle a scream.

  “Oh shit,” Seaman Blount said. “He’s got that stuff inside of him. Just like I did.”

  “What’s happening to him?” Phillips asked. No one answered.

  The liquid soon covered Jeffries’ face, oozing out of his eyes and nose like rivers of white blood. It ran down the side of his face and onto the deck, gathering itself together as if running downhill. The rush of fluid abruptly stopped like the faucet had been turned off and it stood on the floor in a perfectly round puddle. The puddle began to move and undulate like a living organism in its death throes. It suddenly stood up on the deck, a solid mass shifting and mutating from one bizarre shape to the next like some living abstract art exhibit, wet tentacles reaching out, probing the air around it, a parasite looking for a host. Finding none, it slowly melted back into a puddle.

  Then, the liquid evaporated into nothing.

  Several seconds of dead silence filled the room.

  “Well, one thing is for sure,” Sammy finally said. “The serum works.”

  * * *

  Hunter, Blakely, Lisa and Mac helped put Doctor Jeffries, who was still out cold, onto a gurney and wheel him into the room that had been occupied by Jessica Blount. The ship’s senior medical officer, Captain Dunhill, and the general medical officer got the bizarre details of the day’s events from Petty Officer Hunt. Neither of them had any idea what had happened to Commander Jeffries and decided it might be best to fly him to the nearest medical facility in New York City.

  But they still had not discovered what was in the syringe that Sammy had jabbed him with. Sammy stood between the big NCIS agent and Commander MacIntyre, his hands in flexi-cuffs behind his back, waiting to be thrown in the brig.

  Phillips, who had known Crane from their time aboard the USS Eisenhower several years ago, was worried that his friend might be losing his mind.

  “Sammy, this isn’t like you,” he said. “You just don’t go around jabbing people with needles. Do you have any kind of explanation at all for your actions?”

  But instead of Crane, it was Blakely who answered.

  “Captain, I think it’s time we all went and had a little chat in your stateroom,” he said.

  Phillips raked a hand across his thick, graying hair and nodded at Blakely.

  “Yeah, I think we’d better do that,” he said.

  CHAPTER 38

  Phillip
s sat behind the oak desk in his stateroom with hands folded in front of him. Hunter stood with his arm around Lisa. After the day’s events, it was an attempt to comfort her, and perhaps himself as well. He could feel the tension in his body rising, seeping into his brain like a slow leak. He was growing ever more concerned for the welfare of his wife, and the affect it might have on her pregnancy. If only he could get her the hell out of all this right then and there.

  “Alright, Blakely, enlighten me,” Phillips said. “What exactly is going on aboard my ship?”

  The CIA operative uncrossed his arms, drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Captain, I know you’re going to find all this a bit unbelievable, but hear me out before you pass judgment.”

  Phillips’ expression remained stoic. “I’ll do my best, Blakely. Just don’t tell me we’re being invaded by aliens or some bullshit.”

  A few chuckles echoed through the room.

  “We’ve been monitoring someone for the past several years that is a member of what we consider to be an eco-terrorist group. They call themselves the Ecological Victims of Evolution.”

  Phillips raised his eyebrows. “EVE? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No sir. The acronym is probably an attempt to make the organization seem more benign. Believe me, they’re anything but. It also alludes to their ‘Earth first’ ideology.”

  Phillips sat back in his leather chair and it squeaked from the weight shift. “So what does that mean to us? Are you saying those people are onboard my ship?”

  “We believe there is only one onboard. The leader of the organization, who we think came aboard as part of the media group.”