Girl Takes The Oath

by Jacques Antoine

  Just then, Lt. Commander Gangalal, the company commander of the Seventeenth happened by and cast his eye upon the central participants in the little morality play outside the galley. Zaki and McDonough released their grip, and Caspar and Martens straightened themselves up with everyone else. “You there, Mr. Trowbridge, what’s going on here?”

  “Just reviewing the Honor Code for the benefit of the plebes, sir,” Trowbridge replied.

  Gangalal said nothing for a moment, and looked sternly at Zaki and McDonough, who one might deem interlopers in the little family drama of his company. Then he cast a damned disinheriting countenance on Caspar and Martens.

  “Carry on, Mr. Trowbridge,” he said, and walked on.

  Trowbridge turned to face the crowd of plebes and youngsters that had only grown larger in the intervening minutes since they’d arrived, and said, “Next time your ears are tempted by some delicious news about someone in your own or another company, consider the source and draw your own conclusions. Your judgment is your most important weapon in battle. Don’t surrender it so easily to idiots like this.” He sneered at Caspar as he said these last words, and walked away. Zaki patted McDonough on the shoulder and the two of them followed after him.

  ~~~~~~~

  Finding Emily anywhere was never easy, unless you already knew where ‘her’ children were, at least during leave time. But in the Yard, Connie knew it would be more difficult, especially since she’d undoubtedly gone to ground after recent events. She thought going to the Deputy Commandant and flashing an Intelligence ID would probably achieve the desired result. But she also fully expected to have to encounter NCIS at some point in the course of the visit.

  Captain Crichton made some time for her in his office on Buchanan Road, and she wondered what information he might try to extract in recompense for his help. Not that her request required much from him, just a class schedule and a few minutes of her free time. If the girl ever used a cell phone or took emails, his help wouldn’t be needed at all.

  “What, exactly, does Naval Intelligence want from our Miss Tenno?” he asked. That he said ‘our’ seemed like a good sign. At least he hadn’t disowned her yet.

  Connie stared across his desk blankly, determined to reveal nothing through her facial expression. Her training in this tactic had been extensive, and she knew if he thought his question presumed too much, he’d back down before she’d have to respond.

  “From your silence, can I assume that this is a national security matter?”

  Damn, he’s good, she thought. But how exactly had he broken through? Perhaps he just recognized the familiar tones of a fellow admirer of ‘their’ girl.

  “No, sir,” she said. “It’s a family matter.”

  “Are you a member of the family?”

  “No, sir. Just a friend.”

  “Thank goodness,” he said, and ran a hand through his hair. “I mean, it’s just that so much of the mysterious has beset her these last few months. I’m relieved to hear that you’re not here to add yet another layer of mystery.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, but still in the stone-cold expression that had become habitual for her. Too late, she realized he would draw the wrong conclusion, or any conclusion from her manner, and feel the need to press her further.

  “It’s not bad news, I hope.”

  “No, sir. Just news.”

  “I only ask because I suspect she could really use some good news right about now.”

  The more they talked, or the more he talked and she grunted out monosyllabic replies, the more she wished she could trust him. His concern for Emily seemed genuine, as far as she could determine.

  She found Emily outside her last class that afternoon, just inside the east entrance to Chauvenet Hall, and seeing her brought the same emotions to the fore that it had every time in the past: the girl was hard, impenetrable—she couldn’t help respecting that—but also warm, even welcoming. Understanding her was like trying to see through a chunk of obsidian; the surface seemed translucent, but if any light penetrated, it didn’t illuminate anything. The startling thing about her, at least for Connie, is that her inscrutability came naturally to her, not through training.

  “We need to talk,” she said, and pulled her to the side to let a crowd of midshipmen file by. “There’s a private nook in one of the Mahan Hall stairwells.”

  “You mean the ‘make-out’ closet?” Emily said with a laugh. “The top of the bleachers in Halsey is a better choice. No one will hear us up there.”

  Once the hallway had emptied, she threw her arms around Connie and held on a bit longer than she expected.

  “Are you okay, kiddo?”

  “I’ve had to build myself a fortress of solitude over the last few weeks,” she said. “It’s good to feel the warmth of a kindred spirit.”

  The irony of this remark did not escape Connie’s notice. No one had ever called her warm before. What a strange life Emily must lead, if a stone-cold assassin is all she has to turn to for warmth, she thought.

  “Don’t you have anyone you can trust here?”

  “I have friends… at least, I used to. But they don’t know how dangerous it is to be my friend.”

  “And I do, you mean?”

  “Yeah,” Emily said, turning her face up to let Connie see into her eyes. What she saw there was more than she expected, deeper and brighter than even the first time they met, when she’d been sent to kill a high school girl on a college visit, in a bathroom on the campus of the University at Charlottesville. Like the first meeting, she saw pools of blackness she could almost dive headlong in to, and a serenity like no place else on earth. At the bottom, a dark fire smoldered, and a storm threatened to burst through it all; and the tension that held it all in balance seemed so delicate as to defy comprehension. She saw something else this time, and it frightened her, something behind the blackness of the fire and the storm, deeper and darker than the serenity, a night so black as to make the rest somehow visible, the horizon against which everything inside stood forth to be seen.

  That blacker night she saw in Emily’s eyes could only mean one thing: nothing remained to hold her in the light. She’d found her way out. Connie shuddered to think what this might mean for anyone who opposed her, or who tried to keep her in the world through love or pain. Or what might remain for those who loved her.

  Emily had been right about the fieldhouse—nobody troubled them there, or even noticed them, and Connie laid out Jiang’s intel for her, first the bad news, then the worse. The extradition request, which had drifted to the back of Emily’s consciousness, since it now looked like the least of her troubles, and perhaps the scheme all along had been to so overwhelm her with troubles that she’d hardly resist extradition—whatever the goal had been, the Chinese seemed to have lost interest in it with the death of Dong Zhuo and the attempt on Ambassador Zhang’s life.

  “That sounds like good news, right?” Connie said.

  “Not if it provides a motive for me to have killed Dong Zhuo. That it succeeded in ending their efforts suggests that whoever killed him knew he was behind it.”

  “But the Ma family are what they seem,” Connie said, more hopefully, “innocents caught in the crossfire.”

  Emily’s eye’s flashed when she heard this, or so Connie thought. She told her the rest of it, about General Diao, the connection to her grandfather’s work, and showed her the photo of a mysterious, young woman in an evening gown on his arm at some formal event. Before she could fill out Michael’s speculations concerning her, Emily stood up abruptly.

  “What time is it?” she asked. “I have to find CJ.” When Connie said seventeen-thirty hours, she rushed down the bleachers. “Come, hurry.” Outside, practically running, she gave Connie a message for Jiang. “You have to make sure Michael speaks to him tonight. This can’t wait. Go,” she cried, and took off at a sprint for Bancroft Hall.

  By the time Connie caught up with her, a few minutes later, at the south entrance to King Hall, all she hea
rd was Emily say to another girl, a tall blonde, “Do you have a cellphone on you? You need to call Dave right away. Ask him to check on Ruochen Ma. It’s urgent.”

  When Emily glowered at her, Connie said, “It’s done. He’s got your message. Whether he can get through to him tonight is another story.” Now she had questions for Emily—first of all, who is the Ma girl to her? But mostly, how else can she be of assistance?—and she might have had time to ask them, if she hadn’t felt another hand on her shoulder.

  “We have a few questions, Commander Savaransky,” Agent Horton said. “Will you come with us, please?”

  Connie turned and looked this interloper up and down. Almost Ethan’s height, though nowhere near his bulk, he must have hoped his baritone voice would obviate the need for more formal threats. But it was easy to see that the much smaller woman standing next to him carried the water in this partnership. She looked past him to the beady eyes of Agent Everett.

  “Honey, unless your questions are about where I parked my car, pretty much anything else you want to ask me is above your pay-grade.”

  “So your interest in Midshipman Tenno is a matter of national security, then?” Everett said with a smirk.

  “It can be if you need it to be.”

  “I’m afraid you’re gonna have to do better than that, Commander.”

  “Fine,” Connie growled, and handed Agent Horton a card Michael had given her for just such an eventuality. “Call that number, and see if you’re cleared to talk to me, or detain me in any way.”

  Connie didn’t know who in the Pentagon would answer that call, or what it cost Michael to arrange it, but within a few seconds of making the connection Horton’s face turned white, and when he handed the phone to his partner, she could make out at least the tone of voice of a severe dressing down. Connie retrieved the card from Horton’s hand and, since Emily had slipped away in the interim, she brushed past him into the galley.

  It only took a minute or so to locate the tall blonde Emily had spoken to, and another minute to get her to open up. She knew how to strike a pose that looked innocent to onlookers, but intimidating to whomever she’d cornered, and with the girl pressed up against a column, and enough ambient noise from the dinner service to make it difficult for anyone to listen in, she pressed her questions.

  “I don’t know much about her,” the girl said, eyes wide and breathing “She’s a student across the street, you know, at St. John’s.”

  “What did you find out from this Dave?”

  “He said no one’s seen her over there since lunch on Saturday. She missed all her classes today.”

  “The other girl, Diao Chan, did he find out about her?”

  “I’m not sure who that is. But if it’s Ruochen Ma’s friend, she’s gone missing, too.”

  With that information, Connie abruptly left King Hall and exited the Yard through Gate One.

  Back to top

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Breath on a Mirror

  “I appreciate what you did this morning,” Emily said. “But it’s really none of your business.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” Trowbridge roared back. “A couple of assholes in my company spreading malicious rumors around the Brigade, it’s bad for everybody.”

  “Fair enough,” she conceded. “I think you lifted Zaki’s spirits, so thanks for that. But, please, keep out of it. You have no idea how dangerous this really is.”

  “I think I have a pretty good idea,” he said. “Whatever it is, it got Bauer sliced up inside the Yard. What’s more, this evening, I found another note in my things over in Nimitz. Whoever’s behind this seems to want to involve me in it, no matter what you think.”

  Emily looked at the note in his hand, almost afraid to touch it. Her name in English letters filled one side—“Turn it over,” she said—and two characters were drawn on the reverse.

  “What’s it say?” Trowbridge asked.

  “Come alone.”

  “Come where?” he asked.

  “No clue. But I’m gonna have to find out.”

  “Do you want me to give this one to NCIS, too?” Emily pondered this question for a long moment.

  “Yes,” she said. “But not until the morning. Okay?”

  “You’re going over the wall tonight, aren’t you?” he asked. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “If I’m not back tomorrow morning, it means I’m dead, or worse, and Stacie, too… and probably Kathy Gunderson. Give the note to NCIS in the morning and tell ’em I went to St. John’s. They should be able to figure it out from there.”

  Easing Trowbridge out of her room got easier once she’d given him a mission. She had problems to solve, like how to sneak out and do a better job of going over the wall than the woman in the security video, and avoid being picked up by the cameras altogether. Not to mention that heightened perimeter security might make going over the wall undetected impossible.

  Of course, she could easily walk directly out of Gate Three onto Maryland Avenue, overpower the guards, and walk the two blocks to St. John’s. The problem with that plan is that she’d be on the run from that moment on, and helping Stacie and Kathy would be that much harder. Not impossible, but the risks would be so much greater, not just for her friends and herself, but also for whoever might track her.

  More practical questions presented themselves, like what she should wear. Something dark, of course, and her taste inclined to one of her running suits. She hesitated, thinking that it might confirm Everett’s suspicions if she dressed like the woman in the video again. But what else did she have to wear? A uniform wouldn’t do, and her Marine fatigues weren’t dark enough. The Newari outfits she’d brought back from Kathmandu were both too fancy, and perhaps a little too constricting. She didn’t have any jeans, just khakis.

  She settled on a black t-shirt and her black leather Moto jacket, and a pair of black training shoes. Down a flight of stairs, and two hallways later, she knocked on CJ’s door.

  “I need your black jeans. Please don’t ask why.” Thank goodness she was alone in the room.

  “Who was your friend?” she asked, rooting around in a drawer.

  “What friend?”

  “The one who interrogated me against a column in the galley. You know, the scary-ass blonde, early forties, five foot ten or so, huge hands.”

  “Oh, crap,” Emily said. “What did you tell her?”

  “Pretty much whatever she wanted to know. She’s very persuasive.”

  “I’m sorry about that, CJ. Really sorry. Did you tell her about Dave and the girls at St. John’s?”

  “What do you think?” she asked, and handed her the jeans.

  “Thanks. I gotta go.”

  “Are you going to get Stacie?” The turn of CJ’s eyes as she asked this question made it difficult not to answer. Emily nodded.

  “One way or another, I’ll be with her soon,” she said, then went back up to her room. Sorting out the rest of her plan took up another hour, which also conveniently gave the moon enough time to drop below the horizon. It took several, large plastic storage bags to sort out her gear.

  She didn’t care for waterproof packs, since in a swim they eventually get sodden and weigh you down. A mesh pack with light shoulder straps suited her better—Perry had sent her one last summer, part of an elaborate inside-joke between them. “You’ll need this for the SEAL trainer,” he wrote on the card, even though they both new regulations wouldn’t allow her to apply. He also knew she would never even consider it anyway, since she thought of the SEALs as assassins. She’d never said as much to him, but he knew how she felt.

  Shortly after twenty-three-thirty hours, dressed in her darkest running suit, she slipped out a stairwell window on the Arcade Road side of Bancroft Hall, and ran as stealthily as she could manage through a parking lot, and along Holloway Road, stopping here and there to avoid the security cameras. She needed her departure to go unnoticed for at least an hour.

  At the far corner of Sim
s Road, crouching next to the hedge that bordered the last athletic field, she stripped off the running suit and stuffed it into the last plastic bag along with her running shoes and socks, which she fitted into her pack. She lowered herself into the water from the end of one of the little piers that cleared the College Creek shallows and swam for all she was worth.

  The shortest route would be to follow College Creek directly to the St. John’s Boathouse, probably not much more than a half mile. But it would pass under several bridges, and the chance of detection seemed too great to her. Instead, she headed northeast, out into the Severn River, and headed for Woolchurch Cove. It wasn’t the closest point on the opposite shore, but a nearby swamp had discouraged development in the vicinity. The swim-distance was the same, though the river currents posed a greater challenge, and then she’d have to run a roundabout route, picking her way through backstreets and sleepy neighborhoods to avoid coming in sight of the Academy walls.

  “Tell me I can’t pass the damn SEAL screener,” she muttered as she swam. The pack caused some drag, but nothing she couldn’t manage.

  On the other side, she changed into dry underwear, and put the running suit back on, and ran off along Homewood Road, and then Baltimore-Annapolis Boulevard. Past the Severn Inn, she turned left on Rt. 450, and crossed the bridge. No crabbers at this hour—no one to see her now.

  A bit less than an hour later, she crept through the shrubbery along the east side of Chase-Stone Hall, and tapped on Dave’s window, hoping (for CJ’s sake) he was alone. As luck would have it, he didn’t turn on the light before sliding the window up.

  “It’s me,” she whispered. “Michiko Tenno. I need your help.”

  “Holy crap,” he said, then took a deep breath and reached a hand out to help her up. “When CJ called, I had no idea…”