He thought about it. Her government paycheck came from the NCIS, of course, but her performance ratings would be cosigned, at the very least, by…by-the dant. The dant was the customer. She watched him work it out.
“Who’ve you been talking to?” he asked.
“Ev Markham, for one. Julie’s father. He’s a grad, too, and he’s worried.”
Jim nodded. Professor Markham. “He the one who hired you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, look. I appreciate your insights. But I’m going to continue helping Branner, if she wants me to. I can give you this much: If I see any signs that her investigation is some kind of Kabuki, I’ll call you. Fair enough, Ms. DeWinter?”
“More than fair. And now you can call me Liz.”
“Good deal. Why only now?”
“You just showed a flash of fair play, Jim. Were you by any chance a Marine before you took this security officer job?”
“Aw shucks, does it show?”
“My first ex was a Marine fighter pilot,” she said. “You can take the guy out of the Marines, but you can never take the Marines out of the guy.” She stepped through the gate, being careful of her footing. “Thanks for seeing me this evening, Jim. And if you sense…well, what we talked about, I’d really appreciate that heads-up. Julie Markham doesn’t deserve this.”
“I hope you’re right about that,” he said.
“Meaning?”
“Meaning it might not be a railroad deal here. It might not be the system. It might in fact be Julie.”
She frowned. “Julie what?”
“Has Julie Markham been absolutely straight with you? Completely forthright? No signs of deception? At all times?”
Liz pursed her lips but didn’t say anything.
“Uh-huh,” he said, nodding. “Stay tuned, counselor. We might all be wrong about what we’re seeing here.”
Liz thought about it, then shook her head. “I don’t think so. My bet stays on the Academy trying to whitewash this, find somebody they can pin it on, and then make sincere pronouncements about closure.”
“Well, I guess we wait and see,” he said. “You have a good evening, Liz.”
She smiled up at him and left. He went back down the companionway, closing the hatch behind him.
Goddamned career women, he thought. Lawyer Liz insisting he call her by her first name, Lock and Load Branner insisting she didn’t have a first name. But both world-class manipulators, if not ball-breakers. He recalled the image of Liz steaming up the pier, tiny but definitely sexy, and yet she’d driven right over him. No wonder she was an ex -wife. Maybe it was something in the Annapolis drinking water.
Jupiter let out an unhappy screech when Jim came back into the lounge.
“Don’t you start, feather merchant,” he growled. “I’ve got places to go tonight.”
At 10:50 P.M., Jim stood in the main tunnel. Ten more minutes, he thought, and then the PWC will do its thing. In the past forty-five minutes, he’d walked the entire length of the main tunnel, from the Bancroft Hall sector, where the rocket had been fired, all the way to the King George Street access doors. He’d tested all the electrical access panels, the two doors to that big air-conditioning compressor chamber, and the doors on every one of the telephone equipment cabinets. He’d checked out each of the cross tunnels for signs of intrusion. The only thing he hadn’t done was to pull up the steel deck plates lining the center of the main tunnel, and only because that would have taken all night.
He didn’t expect his runner to be on the move on a Monday night. The town bars would be pretty much dead as the party-hearty crowd sobered up after the weekend. Midshipmen would be grappling with the start of the working week, recovering from Monday-morning pop quizzes and getting some much-needed sleep after the exertions of weekend liberty. The motion detectors were still in place, but he had disconnected the receiver box and had it in his backpack.
He stood at the junction between the main tunnel and cross tunnel that led down to Michelson Hall. He could almost feel the weight of the concrete ceiling and the ground above pressing down on his head from inches away. The by-now-familiar odors of steam, hot lagging, and ozone permeated the air. From off to his right came the occasional clanking of traffic passing over a steam grate out on King George Street. He looked at his watch again: 10:59.
At precisely eleven o’clock, all the tunnel lights winked out. The main tunnel and all its branches went completely dark. He didn’t move, but he did close his eyes. The only sound now was the hum of a nearby electrical panel. After a few minutes, he opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. The first thing he noticed was that the darkness was not complete; he could still see. Up and down the tunnel, there were small lights, most of them green but some amber, mounted on the front of the electrical panels. The green lights indicated conditions normal, while the amber lights indicated that power was present in the panel. There was a red glow in the far distance to his left, which probably came from the transformer bank recessed into the tunnel wall next to the telephone amplifier vault.
Okay, he thought. Only partial success. He had wanted to see if it was possible to put the tunnels into complete darkness on command. He had talked to the PWC people and they had figured out a signal that could be detected on their utility control panels in the Academy’s power plant. All Jim had to do was to go up to any electrical panel, open the main breaker, and then close it again. An alarm indicating a power interruption would flash on the PWC’s control console, and that would be the prearranged signal to kill all the lighting circuits in the tunnel for fifteen minutes, as long as the alarm popped up during a designated time period. Jim had designated the time window before going down into the tunnels.
His objective had been to lie in wait for the runner, using his motion detectors. Once he detected movement, he’d plunge the tunnel system into darkness. Then with night-vision goggles and whatever faint ambient light came from the indicator lights on the electrical panels, he would have the advantage over his quarry. The problem was that there were too many indicators producing too much ambient light. He might have the advantage for the first minute or so while the runner’s eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness, but then the runner would be able to see, at least well enough to react. Jim couldn’t get away from the feeling that the runner knew this labyrinth better than he did.
Okay, he thought, I’ll have to get some electrical insulating tape. Go down the tunnels and tape over all but a very few of these lights. But that’s going to take a lot of time. Shit. This isn’t going to work. Unless he got some backup. He could always call in the Yard cops, but the tunnels didn’t lend themselves to having lots of people operating down there. The runner had always managed to sniff out Jim’s presence very quickly, so more cops meant fewer chances of surprise. Assuming the vampire had some place in town to ditch the costume, he could always go back through the main gate if he had to. That would mean risking being hit with a conduct offense, but there would be no way to tie him to what had been going on out in town.
Think, Jim told himself. You’re after one guy. You’ve locked him out of one of his main avenues of escape, at least until he figures out how to get through those locks. You know the way he’s been coming back-through that grate on the St. John’s campus. So put a surveillance team on the grate? But that would mean Yard cops operating out in town, on the St. John’s campus, where they had zero jurisdiction. He didn’t want to bring Annapolis cops into this, either, in case it was a midshipman. The Ops boss had made it very clear they didn’t need another scandal popping up just now. Which meant he needed to take this guy on federal property.
The lights all came back on in a hum of fluorescent starters. He blinked at the sudden brightness and realized he’d been thinking in circles. He had an idea, but first he wanted to check something. He walked down the tunnel toward the King George Street access doors until he came to the shark tag drawn on the concrete wall. There had been no change since the last alteration, after he�
�d put his own tag down. He fished for the can of spray paint, which was still in his backpack. Standing close, he sprayed ONE-ON-ONE, followed by the numerals 2400. Below the shark figure, he sprayed on IF YOU’RE MAN ENOUGH. Then signed it HMC.
He stood back and examined his handiwork. He’d have to alert PWC to make sure they didn’t clean off the tag now that it was getting bigger. Then he’d come back tomorrow night, around nine or so, to see if there’d been some indication his runner had seen it. Some kind of a reply. Then maybe aim at Wednesday night to set up for his first real try. Get some backup, but put it in the Yard, out of general sight but close enough to the major grates within the Yard for quick response time.
He started back toward the Mahan Hall interchange. Just for the hell of it, he began counting indicator lights. He’d seen thirty-seven by the time he reached the interchange. Far too many. Plus, the night-vision headset would make for a cumbersome hand-to-hand situation. But he still might use the lights-out maneuver. Mask out his own eyes for five minutes, then send the signal, see how well he could function. The question he still hadn’t answered was where his runner was getting into the tunnels. Had to be down at the Bancroft Hall end, although those tunnels were jam-packed with pipes and cables. The only other tunnels down at that end were the old Fort Severn magazine tunnels. Wait a minute, he thought. The night of the rocket, Bagger had pointed out some bright metal scratches on the lock of one of the doors to the Severn magazine tunnel. In the excitement, Jim had forgotten that. He decided to go down there and look again.
The splotches had been cleaned off the concrete where the rocket had gone ricocheting down the S-turn. When he got to the alcove leading down to the magazine doors, he found the overhead light was out. There were no lights in the alcove, which ran for about ten feet before reaching the two doors. He turned into the alcove, went down three stone steps, crossed the ten feet, and knelt down in front of the oak door on the left-hand side. He shone his Maglite on the antique lock. Hard to tell. It was humid enough down here to encourage corrosion, so shiny metal scratches could have dulled down by now. He couldn’t see any scratches, and yet they had been visible before. He put his finger to the keyhole and rubbed it around. Something came off on his finger, some gooey-gray substance. And there were the shiny scratches.
Well, hello, he thought. Someone has been covering his tracks here. Then the hair went up on the back of his head. He sensed the presence of someone or something behind him. Not right behind him, but very close. His heart began to pound slightly. The ambient light seemed to be different, but the bright beam of the Maglite made it difficult to tell. He worked to control his breathing and the urge to whip around to take a look. He kept the Maglite on the keyhole but focused all his senses on what was behind him. A vision of that terrible vampire face floated up in his mind. Trying not to make any sudden moves, he dropped his right hand casually to his ankle, as if to scratch an itch, and began to lift the hem of his coveralls to get at the Glock. When he had his hands on the butt, he yanked it out and spun around in place, pointing it up at the arched entrance to the alcove. But there was nothing there. Just a rectangle of dim light framed by the old stone walls.
He swore and stuffed the Glock back into the ankle rig. Goddamned place was spooking him. He stood up and exhaled. He’d have to get keys to these oak doors. He didn’t care about the right-hand tunnel-it didn’t go in the correct direction. But the left-hand tunnel might get close enough to the Bancroft Hall basements that this could be his runner’s access point. No, on second thought, he’d do this the right way, the safe way. He’d get the PWC guys to open the doors, make sure the atmosphere was safe down there, and then he’d get proper gear to make an exploration. With the PWC people knowing he was down there, time in, time out, and preparations in place to retrieve his young ass if something went wrong. Those old brick tunnels were dangerous as hell, and the magazine complex appeared to be surprisingly large. Go into that by yourself and probably nobody would ever know what became of you.
He started back up the alcove, climbed the three steps, and emerged into the modern tunnel. He stopped to listen, but there were only the familiar sounds of the utility lines. Nothing from above ground penetrated this sector. There wouldn’t be any vehicle traffic on the Yard streets above, and the mids would all be in their respective trees for the nights, excepting the poor bastards who were failing courses. They’d be in their closets with flashlights, or in their racks with a blanket over the flashlight, desperately memorizing the Gouge as they tried to get ready for the next morning’s pop quiz.
As he came to the S-turn under the front of Bancroft Hall, he thought he heard something. He froze and reached down for the Glock again. The lights in this sector were all working, but the S-turn would make an excellent place to start some shit. Then he definitely heard something. He recognized it as the unmistakable sound of a tennis ball being smacked right in the sweet spot of a racket, and then bouncing along the concrete floor from side wall to side wall, through the S-turn, until it rolled out practically at his feet. It made a surreal sound down among all the pipes, cables, and concrete. He heard a clang and felt a pressure change in his ears as he scooped it up and discovered that there was something written on it. Two words.
YOU’RE ON.
Liz helped Ev clean up after a supper of cold steamed crabs she had brought from the harbor market. They took their wineglasses out to the back porch and settled into chairs. It was fully dark, with the only lights coming from inside the house and across the shimmering black waters of the creek.
She had told him about visiting Jim Hall at the marina, and that she was still bothered by his involvement in the NCIS investigation. He wasn’t so sure that it was all such a bad thing, understanding as he did the difficulty civilians would have getting through to the inner workings and hidden mechanisms of life in the Brigade of Midshipmen.
“It’s a strange world in there,” he said, pouring them both some more wine. “Stranger than even I remember it, because now there are women on board. It was probably a whole lot easier when it was all guys.”
“You don’t think women belong in the military?” she asked.
“Now there’s a loaded question.” He laughed. “But the truth is, no, I don’t. I mean, I understand the equal-opportunity issue-that women shouldn’t be denied the right to serve their country as officers or anything else. And I’m very proud of what Julie’s managed to do, getting through and doing it well.”
“So?”
“Well, I just don’t think that military service is suitable for women. I think their role in life has more to do with nurturing a family, bearing and having children, and acting as the sanity counterbalance to the aggressive and often dumb-headed things we men do to screw up their lives and other people’s. Like charging off to war, drawing lines in the sand, getting even, showing off. Women are too valuable to waste in military service.”
“Not all women want to do the things you just mentioned.”
“Agreed. And I know my views are not politically correct these days.”
“But shared perhaps by more people than you know,” she said. “I often wonder if it’s fitting for the nation’s women-folk to be on the front lines. But maybe now that the front lines have come to downtown America, we’ll have to reevaluate. Personally, though, I’d rather see women in the professions. How does Julie feel about it?”
“She’s going Navy air, so it should be obvious. But I’m not sure I know how she really feels.”
“Trying to be the son you didn’t have, perhaps?”
“It’s possible, although I’ve never laid that rap on her. Besides, look at her. A tomboy she’s not. But she’s been somewhat remote since, you know.”
“I grew up the elder of two children. My brother always gravitated toward our mother when it came time to let hair down, and I gravitated toward my dad. How was it with Julie?”
“Her mother,” he replied, sipping some wine. “I wasn’t really aware of that until…�
��
“Until Joanne died?”
“Yes.”
“You shouldn’t be afraid to say the word, Ev.”
“I know.”
“Anyway-Julie? Maybe being remote is her way of grieving.”
He was silent for a moment. “She was pretty torn up by the whole thing. And then suddenly, she seemed to take an emotional deep breath and ploughed back into her life. Kids are strange.”
“Someone over there in Bancroft Hall may have asked the same thing your minister asked you, ‘Whom are you weeping for?’”
“Yeah, probably.”
“Do you miss Joanne?” she asked.
He thought about what to say. They’d started something yesterday, and he didn’t want to derail that, not now. “I think I miss the life we had. The stability. What seemed like predictability. My career was on track. She’d been taking courses to get back to speed in the financial-planning world. Julie was making it through the Academy. Our house was paid for. It looked like all we had to do was keep on trucking and life was going to be all right. Then it wasn’t.”
“But now it can be,” Liz said. “You can choose to come out of the cave. Like you did yesterday. And I’m awfully glad you did.”
He smiled across at her. “It was a pretty irresistible package,” he said. The phone began to ring in the house. Ev got up and went into the kitchen to get it. It was Julie.
“Dad,” she said.
“Himself,” he replied. “What’s up?”
“I went to that interview today. Did Liz tell you?”
“Yes,” he said, glancing at the silhouette of Liz’s head through the kitchen window. “She said we watch and wait.”
“I guess,” said Julie. “And I read in the Capital about what you did yesterday-saving those two people? That was shit-hot.”
“It was worse for them than for me,” he said. “All I had to do was swim fifty feet through a medium chop, twice. They’d been hanging on for an eternity. And they lost a husband and father, it looks like.”
Darkside Page 27
