Navy Orders

by Geri Krotow

  Miles reminded Ro of the Cheshire cat as he sat between her and Reis. She had to concentrate on not being distracted by the heat she swore she could feel coming off his body.

  “So, are we ready to talk?” Miles picked up a mussel and started to eat.

  “Yes. I’m sorry if this was a bit of a drive for you, but I feel better talking about these things away from work.” Lydia’s face was calm but her eyes relayed a level of sorrow that Ro hadn’t noticed before.

  “You wanted to avoid other ears, too. We get it.” Ro sipped from her glass of Washington State sauvignon blanc.

  Lydia Reis sighed.

  “I’m not sure how to begin, except to tell you that this is completely off the record. I’ll deny telling you any of this if you take it to a higher level.”

  Miles put his fork down.

  “You know we can’t guarantee that, Master Chief. You play by the same rules as we do.”

  “And you know that this is off the record, so the rules don’t apply here. Besides, it would be my word against yours.”

  Miles raised his eyebrows. “Okay, shoot.”

  “Petty Officer Perez came up to my office the first day he reported aboard. He had to—we’d known each other before.”

  “Before?”

  She bit her lip.

  “I was downrange, living in a base camp for almost a year. I had one R and R to Rota, Spain. I went to the mixed bar in civvies.” She referred to a club where enlisted of all ranks could grab a drink and relax.

  She gazed out at the water, as if that memory was so much happier than the present.

  “We hit it off right away. He said he was also a senior chief, from an east coast command. I had no reason to question him. A lot of wine and a great meal later, I ended up in bed with him. It was the most spectacular night of my life.”

  Lydia’s candor mesmerized Ro. This wasn’t the command master chief she was used to working with at the wing.

  “You can blame it on all those months in a war zone, having to live with guys and act like one. You can blame it on the wine, my poor judgment. But to me, it was real—not just a one-night stand. I actually believed—” a tear slid down her cheek “—that it was, we were, special.”

  Miles kept his expression open, his hands in his lap.

  “The next morning we had breakfast on an oceanview hotel balcony. It was so Hemingway. A fluffy omelet, mimosas, another...” She broke off and clutched at her napkin. Compassion squeezed Ro’s lungs.

  “I had the hotel for two more nights, but he had to leave, said he was due to go back downrange and then return to his unit in Norfolk. He told me his name was Juan Garcia—can you believe I fell for that? He took down all my information and promised to contact me via email and Facebook as soon as he could. Then he left.”

  She sighed heavily and flashed them a smile full of chagrin.

  “I never heard from him again. No surprise, right?” She fingered her cloth napkin. “I’d almost convinced myself that it was for the best—that he hadn’t been who I thought he was. I’d made a huge mistake. At least I’d done it in private, away from the prying eyes of my command.”

  She took a swig of her ice water.

  “I reported to the wing and settled in. It seemed like I was going to be able to make a clean slate of it for myself. Until Juan Garcia walked into my office and told me he was really Petty Officer José Perez.”

  Both Miles and Ro leaned forward.

  “What did you say to him?” Ro wanted to hear that Reis had read him the riot act, threatened to blow his farce.

  “Nothing. He’d come up to see me so I wouldn’t be publicly shocked when I saw him. Said that he was sorry he’d behaved so badly—that he never thought scoring a one-night stand would find him in love with a woman he could never have. “

  “Did he tell you he was married?” Ro asked.

  “No, I knew that from his service record. I’d read it over before he came into the office, like I do for every meeting with one of my sailors. I saw that he had two children. Believe me, it took me a while to process the fact that the mystery lover I’d given my heart to in Spain was the aviation structures mechanic and family man who stood in front of me, under my command, on Whidbey Island.”

  “You started to see him again?” Miles asked the question quietly. They all knew the weight her decision would have carried.

  “No, not romantically. I found I was still in love with him, however, against all odds. He claimed he loved me, too, wanted to be with me. I told him that unless he was divorced and willing to get out of the navy when I retired we had nothing to talk about.”

  She wiped her mouth with her napkin. Ro noticed that Lydia’s hands were shaking.

  “I didn’t hear from him for a few months, until earlier this spring. He told me he’d moved out of his house. I realize now that he’d never moved back into it—his wife had started divorce proceedings before he came back from his latest deployment. He hadn’t told me he was living alone because he was busy scoring every junior enlisted ass he could get his hands on.”

  There was no scorn in Lydia’s tone, only resignation.

  “Seems he’s been a ladies’ man for a very long time. But there are his kids—I would have thought he’d make more of an effort to save his marriage for their sake. Anyway, I agreed to talk to him, be his friend.

  “I asked him where he was getting the funds to be able to afford an apartment and also child support and he said I should know—I worked for him.” She paused. “Have you ever wondered how our maintenance records remain the best in the Pacific fleet, yet our maintenance department is always working, around the clock, on airplanes that can’t ever get completely fixed?”

  “The P-3C is an old frame. There’s no such thing as a ‘perfect’ aircraft.” Miles said what Ro had been thinking.

  “Oh, but if you check our stats, on paper, we have airframes that don’t seem to have aged one bit!”

  “What are you saying, Lydia?” By using her first name, Miles made it clear that they were speaking person-to-person, in private. Off the record, as Lydia had requested. Ro gave him points for his savvy.

  Lydia looked each of them in the eye before she replied.

  “Perez had taken a total of twenty-two thousand dollars from Commodore Sanders to falsify maintenance and repair documents. So that Sanders’s wing, our wing, had the best record in the fleet.”

  Ro swallowed. Hard.

  “Do you have proof?” Miles stayed on task.

  “Of course not. Nor do I have proof that he gave Sanders back the money, but I know he did. I gave Perez ten thousand dollars of my own funds so he could replace all the cash he’d taken from the commodore. He asked me to help him get clean of Sanders’s dirt. He regretted ever entering into the agreement with the commodore.”

  “Why ten thousand dollars?”

  “He’d spent ten thousand dollars on a down payment for the townhome he planned to live in after his divorce, so he’d be close to his kids but also be able to provide a place for us to live. He had half the original twenty thousand left. With my money he was able to repay Sanders. Completely.”

  “Were these transactions all in cash?” Ro knew from her work with LEAs that criminals kept to cash whenever possible.

  “Yes, all cash. The last one was two mornings before Perez died. José went into the commodore’s office at 0430 and waited for him to arrive at 0600—Sanders always comes in early. Perez handed him the funds and said their agreement was null and void.”

  “How do you know this?” Miles sounded incredulous.

  “I was on the other side of the commodore’s door, listening. I knew Perez would need backup if the commodore decided to go ugly on him.”

  “Go ugly?”

  Lydia sighed. “Get physically violent. It
’s no secret that the commodore has a temper. You’ve seen him lose it in the AOMs. Imagine if he’s being told by a junior that his gig is up. Then he doesn’t have his shoe-in for his admiral’s star.”

  Ro drank some ice water. She needed a clear head to process what she was hearing. A week ago she would have discounted all of this as crazy talk. It was frightening to accept that Lydia might very well be telling the truth.

  “What did Sanders say?”

  “Not much—just that Perez would regret it, when he needed the money later.” Lydia put down her napkin. “You think I’m nuts, don’t you?”

  “No.” Ro’s response came out sounding too harsh. She saw the shrewd glance Lydia threw her. Lydia clearly knew she sounded like the proverbial other woman.

  “This is interesting, Lydia.” Miles leaned back in his chair. “Sanders gets put in his place by someone he considers a lowly staffer and he didn’t pitch a fit? It doesn’t sound like him.”

  “Agreed, but remember, he didn’t want to draw attention any kind of special relationship with Perez. As the CMC I’m the one who deals with the enlisted folks and all their problems. The commodore is there to be either the benevolent dad or the bastard who has to kick them out of the navy.”

  Lydia had lines of exhaustion on her face and her shoulders slumped. Ro couldn’t imagine the personal burden she must have carried these past months.

  “Still, this is a strong accusation, Lydia.” Miles pressed on. “You’re saying Sanders was paying off a sailor to make his numbers look good. Now that sailor is dead. Why don’t you come out and say that Sanders killed Perez?”

  “Because I’m not sure he did. He had motive, but I think there’s another woman involved in this.”

  “Another woman?” Ro gasped. “I thought he was getting things set up for you and him?”

  “I did, too. At least, I wanted to believe it.” She squirmed in her seat. “I wouldn’t have sex with him, wouldn’t see him until he was free and clear of his marriage, and out of his predicament with Sanders. I know, I was love-blind. I’m as ashamed and horrified as either of you will ever be.”

  Lydia bit her lip before she continued. “Perez was a hound dog. He screwed anything in a skirt. He really got off on seducing women he thought would ordinarily be ‘out of his class.’” She sighed.

  “We met after work a couple of times, by accident. Or so I supposed at the time. On the jogging path, at the gym or even in the mixed club. One evening a few weeks ago, he came in with that just-got-laid look. He even told me he’d ‘scored.’ When I asked who it was, he told me he’d bagged the highest ranking lady yet.”

  She looked at Ro. “I thought it was you.”

  Ro slid a glance at Miles. Lydia’s story lined up with Anita Perez’s too closely. Shivers ran down Ro’s back.

  Miles gave her a discreet, slight shake of his head.

  Be quiet. Don’t let on that we’ve heard any of this before.

  “No, it wasn’t me. My only relationship with Perez was talking to him on the hangar deck a couple of times. He said he was interested in switching to intel but it was too late in his career to do it.”

  “I don’t believe for one minute that he wanted to change to intel, Commander Brandywine. He wanted to get in your pants, or he wanted to make sure you didn’t know about his deal with Sanders, or both.” She offered them a shaky smile. “I loved him despite his faults, but I did know him, through and through. He was the kind of man who’d never settle down.”

  “He did at one point—he got married and had two kids.” Miles’s voice was low but Ro didn’t miss the disgust in his tone.

  “True, but let’s face it, those kids and his wife were way better off without him, no question.” Lydia shuddered. “So was I once I realized what kind of man I’d slept with in Spain.”

  Miles’s expression remained steady. Ro felt she could read his mind. Perez still had a responsibility, a debt, to his children, not to mention the wife he’d led on for years.

  But Ro had a hard time mustering any sympathy for Anita Perez. Her face was still too sore from the punch.

  “What do you expect us to do with this information, Master Chief?” Ro held her breath after she asked.

  “I want you to use it however you have to. The most important thing is that Perez doesn’t get pegged with suicide—there’s no way he killed himself. He doesn’t—” she paused “—he didn’t have an altruistic bone in his body. He wouldn’t have killed himself to provide the life insurance to his wife and kids, especially since his wife was soon to be an ex.”

  “And the information on Sanders? If what you’ve said is true, it’s enough to put him in Leavenworth for the rest of his life.” Miles paused. “And you, too, Lydia, for failing to report a crime you witnessed.”

  Lydia shook her head. “Use it however you have to. It’ll be impossible to prove, I’m sure. Unless Sanders was sloppy in how he got his money, and Perez was equally careless depositing it in his own accounts, I don’t see how there’ll be any way to trace it at all. Even if you did, it’d be hard to prove that Sanders was bribing Perez. It’d be my word against the commodore’s. Without Perez here, Sanders will come out clean.”

  Unfortunately, what Lydia said was all too true. While senior officers didn’t normally bribe their subordinates to mess with operational readiness statistics, there was always an element of political maneuvering when it came to numbers. Once officers were at this rank of operational command, they were on track to be flag rank and wouldn’t allow anything to get in their way.

  Sanders had simply cleared his path with some cash.

  Extortion, bribery, fraudulent reporting—offenses that were felonies in the civilian world became court martial–worthy in the navy. But just as in the civilian courts, the evidence had to be there.

  Lydia reached for her purse.

  “I’m sorry, I’ve got a massive migraine coming on. Can I leave my portion of the bill with you?” She pulled out her wallet.

  Miles put his hand on hers.

  “No, Lydia, this one’s on us.” He glanced at Ro and she nodded her agreement. “It sounds like you could use a break.”

  “I can’t.” She raised her head and saw the expression on Miles’s, then Ro’s, face. “Okay. I’ll accept the dinner as a favor from one sailor to another.”

  “Deal.” Ro gave her a smile. “This wasn’t easy for you, Lydia. Thanks for having the courage to tell us what you know.”

  “Courage?” Lydia snorted. “This has nothing to do with courage. It has everything to do with making sure Perez doesn’t get blamed for his own death. He’s done enough other things that were completely wrong. He didn’t kill himself, though. Of that I’m certain.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “HOW TRUTHFUL DO you think her story is?” Miles posed the question as if he were asking her about the weather.

  Ro shifted on her couch. They’d come back to her place after dinner, and she’d invited Miles in for a drink.

  He was drinking decaf coffee and she had a cup of rooibos tea. Long workdays and early mornings didn’t lend themselves to a cocktail every night.

  “She doesn’t have anything to lose. Unless she’s hiding something else from us.” Ro held the mug with both hands. The air still had a definite chill to it, and it was damp in her living room. Maybe she should light her woodstove.

  “I’m on the same page as you. I think she really cared for him, against all odds and despite the facts. She’s got no love for Sanders, but then again, most of us don’t.” Miles stretched out his legs on her ottoman.

  “She accused him of some heavy stuff, Miles. Let’s say it’s all true. Then the onus is on us to find the evidence before Sanders figures out we’ve discovered his game.”

  “And if we’re wrong, and Reis is playing us, we’re in trouble
for not defending him—and not reporting what she’s told us right away.” He gazed past her to the French doors and green garden outside. “But it sure makes sense that Sanders is involved in something ugly. Why else was he so eager to get us doing an ‘unofficial’ investigation?”

  “I don’t want to toot my own horn, or yours.” She blushed as soon as she realized the connotation her last words could have. “You’ve lost a leg. Your operational career is over. In his eyes, you’d have nothing to lose by coming forward with any suspicions you have.”

  “Right. But what about you? Intel types are known for playing their hands close to their chest.” His gaze wandered down to her breasts and her slight embarrassment transformed into all-out lust.

  “Stop looking at me like that.” She sipped her tea. “A lot of operational types, if not most, have a basic disrespect for intel. Tell me you don’t, Miles. Tell me you’d take my tactical interpretation of a weapons situation over what your team dug up on its own when you’re downrange.”

  He let out a long breath.

  “Yes, you’re right. It’s not just the information dominance deal with intel.” He referred to the umbrella classification that intel, cryptology and other information-based careers fell under. “It’s all types of support staff and traditionally shore-based units that operators take issue with. But it comes down to personal connections. If you were out in the field with me I’d trust you.”

  “You always have a choice and you know it, Miles.”

  “I’ve worked with you for the better part of a year now. I’ve seen you in action. You know your stuff, Ro, and you don’t bullshit when you don’t have the answer. You go find it.”

  “Why, thank you, Warrant. I do believe I’ve made you eat crow.”

  “Careful. We have to rehash all of this before you start distracting me with your womanly wiles, Commander.”