Darkside

by P. T. Deutermann

  “I’ll have to get the overtime authorized, but, yeah, I’ll have every cop we own on it. Especially when the word gets out that this guy may have taken Bagger down.”

  “Okay, then. Back to Dell.”

  “Right. Dell. And Markham.”

  “You said you had a plan,” she said. Her face was tightening with the anger he’d been expecting.

  “I said I had an idea. Right now, we think Markham is holding back. She’s been able to answer no to every question, which, if she’s playing the honor game, means we haven’t asked the right question.”

  “How do we beat that?”

  “We get them to convene the Brigade Honor Committee. Bring Markham before the committee. Tell her that we are pursuing the Dell investigation as something other than an accident or suicide. And then ask her, in front of them, if there’s anyone who might want her harmed, who might also have harmed Dell. Remind her that failure to tell the truth now would be an expulsion-level honor offense.”

  “Suppose the answer really is no? Or she just lies? Says that no, there isn’t.”

  “Then I’d ask her if she’s ever been involved in the Goth scene, either in Annapolis or elsewhere.”

  “Again, no, or she lies. What have we accomplished?”

  “If she’s telling the truth, we’ve done no harm. If she’s lying, then we’ve put her in the honor box. Either way, what we do then is request that the committee investigate the possibility that there’s something behind the first question. They have to do it if requested.”

  “What’s that get us?”

  “It gets us behind the blue-and-gold wall. Midshipmen investigating midshipmen, with all the clout of the Honor Committee. Honor offenses are the third rail of conduct offenses. A mid might lie or quibble or evade when we come around asking questions, but no mid would lie to the committee.”

  “A liar’s a liar. Why wouldn’t a mid lie to the committee?”

  “Because an honor offense is an offense against the entire Brigade. They’ll bend the rules behind the blue-and-gold wall to protect one of their own from what they see as unfair treatment: The little shit. Ten demerits and two hours marching offenses. But they’ll expose an honor offender and push him, or her, right through the wall and into the system’s claws.”

  “I’m not sure I understand this.”

  “It’s because the system stands for something. Something that’s good and clean and honest and fair. That’s what the honor system is all about. It’s what these kids signed up for when they came here, because it totally distinguishes them from the ‘outside,’ with all its equivocal don’t ask/don’t tell bullshit. The only way they justify the wall is by guaranteeing they’ll draw the line at honor offenses. They’ll play cops and robbers with the officer of the day, or the midshipman officer of the watch, about room inspections, unshined shoes, being two minutes late, after taps high jinks, illegal stereos, nonreg uniform gear, cars in the Yard, even booze in Bancroft Hall-all the game offenses. But not when it comes to honor offenses. And the system accepts that. The Executive Department plays the game with them, for four years. Both sides get pretty good at it. With that one proviso.”

  “If they draw the line at honor offenses, how about that example you cited-the guy coming in and seeing his roomie looking at a compromised exam?”

  “The last time that happened, a hundred-odd mids went down the tubes. Exposed by their own roommates or classmates.”

  Branner thought about it. “There was something else you said, something about the mids always watching. That if they thought the system was playing fuck-fuck, then they would, too, right?”

  And now I know why you are the head of this office, Jim thought. “You’re exactly right. The one thing the administration could do to make them all go deep and rig for silent running is to compromise your investigation, say by declaring a desired right answer: This was an accident, or, worse, suicide.”

  “But isn’t that what they want to do?”

  “Don’t know,” Jim said, wincing inwardly at his own evasion. He knew that was certainly what the dant wanted to do. “But that’s certainly a possibility. If this was indeed a homicide, some hoary cultural tectonic plates are going to tilt around here.”

  “So we need to move quickly, then, with this Honor Committee thing.”

  “Yeah. I’d suggest you contact the deputy commandant, Captain Rogers, and request that the committee be convened. Tell him what you think about the Dell thing, although I wouldn’t emphasize the possible connection between our runner and the Dell case. Ask him to move on it immediately. Within twenty-four hours. Time is of the essence.”

  “Shit,” she said. “Maybe you had the right idea-bring in the Feebs. They love hairballs like this.”

  “They’ll push you right out of the room,” he said. “And they’ll never get behind the wall. You have a chance. To solve both incidents.”

  “And what about you?” she asked. “What do you get out of this?”

  “I owe it to Bagger,” he said. “And if some psychopath made it into this place, I want his ass found and burned, preferably before he gets to the fleet or the Corps.”

  She looked at him. “You believe in all this, don’t you? This duty, honor, country stuff?”

  “Yes. More of us do than don’t.”

  “I wonder,” she said. “Especially when I hear the dant wanting a ‘right’ answer. When the big dogs get their paws around a ‘right answer,’ it’s often best for the little dogs just to go along.”

  “That what you expect me to do?” he said, a little anger in his voice.

  “Don’t get pissed off. It’s just that if this thing recoils in our faces, you might get burned. I work for NCIS. You work for them. You could find yourself out of a job.”

  “Well, Special Agent,” he said as evenly as he could, “you keep telling me it’s a nothing job, right?”

  She smiled and said, “Touche.” Then she went to look up Rogers’s phone number. Jim tried to figure out why he was mad. Was he just possibly looking for some payback of his own?

  Jim checked in with the PWC before going down into the tunnel at 10:00 P.M. Tuesday evening. He’d previously briefed the chief that he was going to make another recon, and that he was still looking for a direct access between Bancroft Hall and the tunnel complex. The PWC people had been requested to call the chief if Jim didn’t surface within two hours. He’d also asked the chief to alert the Yard police patrols that he was down there, and for them to be alert to any suspicious activities around the principal access gratings in the Yard until midnight.

  He first checked the shark graffiti: No changes. The atmosphere in the main tunnels was normal, permeated with the scent of steam and ozone. Some of the burned-out lightbulbs had been replaced, so the light was more homogeneous than before. The door to the King George Street city utility vaults was locked. On the way back, he checked his motion detectors, but they did not appear to have been disturbed.

  As he walked through the main tunnel, he realized that the guy might not ever come down here again, the little note on the tennis ball notwithstanding. Assuming it was a firstie who’d been doing this shit, he would have to know they were going to keep trying to catch him. Graduation and commissioning were only days away. Why put all that in jeopardy just to satisfy some macho pride? How about because the guy was a nutcase?

  He came to the intersection of the Stribling Walk tunnel and the hinged flaps of the big storm drain leading down to the Severn River seawall. No sign of intrusion there, and besides, half the time the drain’s mouth was underwater. No, this wasn’t the way in. He had to find something that was physically under Bancroft Hall, something bigger than those electrical cableway lines. This guy had been tracking him when he threw the tennis ball. He had to have a direct way back into Bancroft in order to just disappear like that.

  After verifying that he was in the vicinity of the Bancroft Hall foundations, he spent the next hour checking out every equipment cabinet, utility va
ult, steam pipe, and chilled water transfer plenum. Every one of them led into Bancroft somehow, but it was all via cableways, piping bundles, and wire conduits-nothing big enough to accommodate a human. Twice he passed the big oak doors leading down into the buried remains of Fort Severn. He touched the keys in his pocket, knowing he did not really want to revisit that crumbling brickwork anytime soon. He explored the branch tunnels that ran out to Lejeune Hall, the field house, and the city harbor utilities, but the farther he got from Bancroft, the less useful they would have been. He retraced his steps, ready to call it a night. As he passed the oak doors for the third time, he noticed that the gas-free engineering equipment was still there, piled in an alcove across the passageway from the big doors. He stopped.

  He had never resolved the problem of the painted-over scratches. The PWC people had not done that. Only someone trying to conceal the fact that the door had been unlocked would do that. Ergo, someone had been using that old tunnel for something. Had to be.

  He stood in front of the door and considered his options. For getting into Bancroft Hall, the right branch wasn’t possible. It had to be the left-hand tunnel. He felt for the keys, tried one, then the other, and the big door on the left side swung inward slightly with a creaking noise. Half-expecting a vampire to leap out at him, he pushed the huge door all the way open. Light from the main tunnel spilled down the steps, but no farther. Beyond was the familiar darkened arched ceiling. He pulled his Maglite and shone it down the dusty passageway. No snowfall of mortar dust-yet. He checked his watch. He had about twenty-five minutes before he was supposed to call in. Time enough to walk down the magazine tunnel to the powder room and take another look. He wondered if he should pull some of that air hose with him, but the Red Devils weren’t set up. Besides, it would take too much time.

  He stepped down into the alcove below the floor level of the main tunnel. Then he went back to the door to see if it could be unlocked from the inside. It could. He tried it, then adjusted the bolt, leaving it protruding to prevent the door from closing if some back draft occurred out in the tunnels. Then he set out for the magazine room. He walked quickly this time, although as softly as he could, not wanting to set up any significant vibrations. The skin on the back of his neck crawled with the anticipation of falling dust, but actually the mortar seemed to be undisturbed this time. He looked behind him as the arched frame of dim light back at the entrance diminished into a smaller and smaller block. Then the tunnel bent slightly to the left and the light bled away. The only light now came from his flashlight, and it seemed to magnify all the cracks in the mortar joints between the old bricks. Once again, he thought he could feel the massive granite weight of the buildings above bearing down on him.

  When he reached the magazine anteroom, he saw the glint of railroad rails embedded in the stone floor. He hadn’t noticed them before. He rubbed the dust off the rails with his foot and saw that they led under the heavy metal doors. Probably for ammunition wagons. The rails went on up the sloping passageway to the intersection with the gun pit tunnel. He shone the light around the entire anteroom but noticed nothing else of significance. He still couldn’t see any clearly defined footprints in all the mortar dust, not even his own from earlier that day. He stood there, thinking. This area was certainly near the foundations of Bancroft Hall, if not under the eighth wing. But he had to be at least twenty, thirty feet down underground, so how the hell…

  He went back to the doors and felt the cold steel with his bare hand. Cold steel. He glanced at the manometer again, then ran his hand up the door to about where the air-water interface should be inside. No discernible temperature difference. Wouldn’t the water be colder than the air? Or, after all these years, would they simply be in equilibrium? He looked at the hinges, which were huge round pin-type fixtures, four per door. The doors must weigh a thousand pounds each, he thought. He thought he felt the air shift around him, and he listened carefully. He heard nothing, not even the subtle vibrations from street level that could be heard out in the main tunnels. He studied the hinges again in the harsh white light of the Maglite. The rivets holding them to the door were rusted. They probably had used dissimilar metals, not understanding the corrosive effects of galvanic cells.

  He stared at the doors. He was missing something. He was sure of it, but for the life of him, he-Wait, he thought. There was a crack visible between the door frame and the door itself, especially next to the four hinges. Not much of one, but definitely a crack. He put the Maglite right up to the crack and tried to look through it. He couldn’t see anything. He fished for his pocketknife, unfolded a flat blade, and poked it into the crack. It slid right in.

  So where was the water?

  He walked back over to the manometer and then figured it out. There were two isolation valves, one at the top and one at the bottom. He tried to turn first the top and then the bottom valve to the right. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, he said to himself. The valves didn’t budge. That’s because they’re not open, he told himself. They’re shut tight, Einstein.

  The clever bastard. He’d closed the bottom isolation valve, filled the manometer with water, and then closed the top valve. Any passing inspector would see the full manometer, assume the space behind the door was flooded, and never open the doors. But of course it wasn’t flooded. On the other hand, he’d better check.

  He opened the bottom valve on the manometer, then the tube’s drain valve. Then he cracked the top valve. The water quickly poured out into the dust, forming tiny glittering beads in the white lime carpet before disappearing. Then he fully opened the top isolation valve. If the space behind the doors had been flooded, there should have been an arterial stream shooting out of the bottom of the manometer. But there was nothing. Not a drop. The clever bastard.

  He went to the center of the two doors. There were iron ring plates bolted to the doors, and he pulled on one. It didn’t move. He pulled on the other. He thought he felt it move a fraction of an inch. He stooped down to check the bottom and found a vertical latch disappearing into the thick dust. He grabbed it with both hands, expecting it to be rusted shut. To his surprise, it lifted easily, almost too smoothly, and the huge door actually edged out toward him. He backed away from it, not wanting to catch a foot or hand underneath, but even the big rollers operated smoothly. The door was perfectly balanced, and it came open with hardly any effort at all. On greased hinges, no doubt, he thought. He pulled it all the way open and shone the light inside.

  The powder room itself was about fifty feet square, with a smooth, twenty-foot-high domed ceiling that appeared to be made of concrete. No, he thought, it only looks like concrete. White cement had been parged over the brickwork of the roof, although imperfectly, as patches of brickwork shone through when he put the light on it. Heavy wooden racks lined the four walls, but they were all empty. In the two back corners of the ceiling, there were dark holes, about three feet square, which he figured had either been ventilation holes or pressure-release pipes in the event of a fire in the powder magazine. The hole on the left had a steel grating. The one on the right was open, and the steel grating was down in the dust on the floor, leaning up against one of the racks. What looked like the bottom of a wooden ladder protruded down out of the right-hand hole and rested on the top shelf of the closest rack.

  Bingo, he thought. That hole leads up the surface. Or probably into the basement of Bancroft Hall. He couldn’t be sure of where he was in relation to the surface. He felt another subtle change in the air pressure and stopped to listen again. He heard nothing, only the sound of his own pulse thumping in his ears. He walked over to the hole and shone the light up the ladder, but he could see only blackness above the top of the ladder.

  He looked at his watch. Only ten minutes left. No time to climb the ladder, and he didn’t particularly want to climb into yet another, smaller hole. He’d taken the maps of the Fort Severn tunnels home but then forgotten to bring them with him tonight-he’d had no intention of ever coming back down here. But the
maps should tell him where this pressure-release pipe came out up on the surface. Now he had a decision to make: He could climb up there and pull the ladder down. Then somehow lock those steel doors from the outside. Or touch nothing and close the place up. Leave everything as it was. That way, if they secured the other possible routes into the tunnels from the Yard and then watched the oak doors, they’d have a better chance of catching their quarry. As long as he didn’t see Jim’s footprints in the dust, or notice that the manometer was now empty.

  He decided to leave it as he’d found it. Turn the old Fort Severn tunnel into a trap. He backed out of the magazine and got the door shut and latched. Wait-the latch. It was outside the door. So how did the runner unlatch the door from the inside? He opened the door back up and checked behind it. Sure enough, there was a block magnet, probably lifted from a large stereo speaker, stuck to the door halfway up. Okay, that’s how. He closed the magazine back up, then went over to the manometer. He closed all the valves and then used his penknife to tap the glass in the lower half of the tube until a small crack appeared. If the runner checked, this would explain the loss of the water. Then he took off his shirt and swept it over the floor of the anteroom, trying to obliterate his footprints in the mortar dust. A low cloud of dust coiled up from the floor like a fat white snake. He made a final check of the latches and then headed back up the tunnel to the intersection with the entrance to the collapsed gun pit tunnel.

  Once at the intersection, he turned off his flashlight to see how far the anteroom light penetrated. It didn’t. The darkness was absolute. The curve-you’re forgetting that the tunnel curves, he told himself. He snapped the light on again; then, holding the tight white beam down at his feet, he walked toward the oak doors. His feet made no sound in the flourlike dust. When he figured he had rounded most of the curve, he turned the flashlight off again. To his surprise, the dim arch of light he’d been expecting to see as he neared the doors wasn’t there anymore. Jim stopped dead. No light meant one of two things: Either the door he’d bolted open was now closed. Or the main tunnel lights had all gone out.