Frowning, she waggled the fingers of her other hand.
"Let's see. What haven't we kicked around? Oh! Hey! How about whether or not I've hopped in the sack with Sloan?"
Donovan didn't take his gaze from the road. "That's your business."
"You're right. It is. And how you feel about the possibility is yours."
She waited. Threw an idle look at the skinny pines whizzing by. Searched the dunes on the other side of Route 17 for a glimpse of the ocean. Turned a questioning face back to the man at the wheel.
He'd shed the sport coat he'd worn yesterday and rolled up the cuffs of his shirt. The gold-tipped hairs on his forearms glinted in the morning sun. Thinking about how those arms had not reached for her last night made Cleo feel downright peevish.
"C'mon, Donovan. We both know you got tight-assed when Sloan dropped that bit about us having breakfast together. Your cheeks still haven't unclenched. Why don't you just ask what's going on between him and me?"
Jack wanted to. He'd picked up the phone a half dozen times last night, itching for an answer to that exact question. The same restraint that had stopped him then put an edge in his voice now. "We're both working cases here, Cleo. Important cases. How I feel about you jumping in the sack with Sloan doesn't play in either of them."
"Bullshit."
"Is it?" He ripped his gaze from the road. "Then what about the little speech you made the last time we jumped in the sack?"
"The one about keeping the door open?"
"That's it."
Her chin jutted. She looked like she was spoiling for a fight, but Jack suspected he'd struck a nerve. "You're right," she conceded with something less than graciousness. "The best we seem to be able to manage is once in a while."
Yeah, Jack thought. And that was the problem. "Periodic" and "infrequent" just didn't hack it over the long term. He had the scars to prove it. The truth came hard, but he forced it out.
"'Once in a while' doesn't afford me much basis to come on strong about Sloan, does it?"
The steam went out of the woman beside him. Sighing, she folded her arms and slumped in the bucket seat.
"No, it doesn't."
He kept his eyes on the road. He didn't have to look at Cleo to know she was chewing on the inside of her lower lip. She did that when she needed to think through things. One of her personal quirks.
He could make a list. There was the lip business. The surly temper when dragged from sleep. The absolute loathing of anything that resembled paperwork. The descriptive-and often libelous- private labels she assigned witnesses and suspects to keep them straight in her mind.
The snuffling little snorts she made in her sleep.
The way water pearled on her long, sleek thighs when she came out of the shower.
The groan that ripped from the back of her throat when she climaxed.
Sweat pooled on Jack's palms. The fists he'd forced himself to relax just moments ago went white at the knuckles again.
They stayed white as the last few miles sped by. Sunlight shot dizzying patterns through the tall pines crowding the two-lane road. Coastal dunes gave brief glimpses of the green, rolling Atlantic. The quaint fishing village of Southport, North Carolina, fell behind them.
A few miles past Southport, Jack turned off onto NC 133. The two-lane road followed the Cape Fear River to where it emptied into the sea. It also led through mile after mile of marshy, undeveloped coastal backwater to the largest munitions depot in the United States.
Mountainous sand berms surrounded the entire 18,000-acre site-to protect unsuspecting passersby from a catastrophic explosion, Jack guessed. That wasn't a completely improbable event, as he'd learned in the research he'd conducted last night.
One of the links he'd followed had referenced the 1917 explosion in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia. A ship packed with munitions to support the war in Europe had collided with another cargo ship. The resulting explosion leveled the entire north end of the city, killed almost two thousand residents and injured nine thousand more. That horrific accident remained the single most devastating loss of life due to man-made weaponry until Hiroshima.
The details of that incident were vivid in Jack's mind as he pulled up at the south entrance to the Sunny Point Military Ocean Terminal. The civilian guard at the gate scrutinized his ID and called to verify his appointment with the noncommissioned officer in charge of the air force contingent on site. The guard also had Jack sign Cleo in, thereby delegating to him full responsibility for her conduct on post.
First Barnes, he thought wryly. Now this guy. The whole world seemed to think he could accomplish the impossible.
"Here." He passed her a plastic-coated visitor's badge. "Clip this on, stay close to me once we get to the port and don't go looking for trouble."
"You wound me, Donovan. I never look for trouble."
"You never seem to avoid it, either." He thought of the Halifax explosion again and shuddered. "We're going to be around bombs, Cleo. Big bombs. Lots of 'em. Just stay cool."
She whipped up a knife-edged salute. "Yes, sir! Whatever you say, sir!"
Once they were inside the gate, it was another five miles to the main complex. Cleo eyeballed the sign welcoming her to the home of the 597th Transportation Group, United States Army, and shook her head.
"This is an army post? Silly me. For some reason, I thought the navy would run a port facility."
"Actually, it's a joint-use facility. The army's Transportation Command acts as executive agent for the overall movement of military supplies and equipment to a transshipment point. That can be either an aerial terminal or, as in this case, a deep-water port. If it's a port, the navy contracts for cargo ships. Handlers from each of the services then oversee loading of their own cargo packages. Merchant-marine crews man the ships at sea."
She slanted him a considering look. "You've done some research."
"I don't like going into a case blind." "Or into a potentially hostile situation. You always had an escape route mapped out before the bullets started flying. Saved our butts down in Honduras," she remembered with a small smile. "We made a good team on that op, Donovan."
He dragged his gaze from the road cutting as straight as a spear through the mounded sand berms.
"Yeah, we did."
USAF Master Sergeant Harry Stevens waited for them at the small building that housed the on-site air force contingent. A tall, tanned Californian in battle-dress uniform, Stevens was more than a little curious why an air force OSI agent had requested a tour of his operation.
Jack hadn't advised him of the possible APP database breach when he'd called for this appointment. That information would come from Stevens's superiors when a
nd if they determined he had a need to know. For now, all he could do was feed him the standard line.
"I'm working a preliminary inquiry concerning one of the cargo ships retrofitted for the air force."
"Which ship?" the NCO asked as he escorted his guests into his one-room operations center.
"The Pitsenbarger."
"The Pits? She was just in for replenishment four months ago."
Cleo's ears perked up. This was her first indication Jack was interested in a specific vessel.
"The Pits," she commented. "Interesting name for a ship."
"It's named for Airman First Class William H. Pitsenbarger."
Stevens led her to a wall featuring three framed photos and thumped one of a young troop in helmet and flack vest standing beside the hatch of a chopper.
"Pits was a PJ."
He looked like a pararescueman, Cleo thought. Cocky. Self-assured. Tough as boot leather. Her few encounters with PJs during her years in uniform had engendered a profound respect for the breed-and a sincere hope she never had to make use of their combat rescue skills.
"Pitsenbarger flew almost three hundred missions in Vietnam," Stevens was saying. "On his last mission, his crew responded to an army squad under intense fire from the Viet Cong. He went down on the hoist and treated six wounded. While the chopper ferried the first load back to base, Pits stayed on the ground to administer to more."
Cleo's stomach began to twist. She guessed what was coming. The air force honored dead heroes by naming bases after them. It was beginning to sound as though they did the same for their small fleet of ocean-going cargo vessels.
"When the helo returned for a second load," Stevens continued, "it took a hit and had to leave the scene. Instead of climbing into the basket and leaving with his crew, Pits stayed with the ground troops. He treated the wounded, gathered ammunition clips from the dead when the defenders ran low, and grabbed a rifle himself to help hold off the Cong. When they recovered his body the next day, he was still clutching the rifle in one hand and a medical kit in the other."
Cleo's throat went tight as she stared at the grinning young PJ. "How old was he?"
"Twenty-one. He was awarded a posthumous Air Force Cross for that action. It was upgraded to a Medal of Honor after a special review in December 2000. The award came through just in time for the navy to name one of the new cargo vessels they dedicated to air force use after him."
He nodded to the framed photos flanking the young airman's. "Our other two ships are the Major Bernard F. Fisher and the Captain Steven L. Bennett. All three are named for men I'd be proud to go into combat with."
Cleo never missed the military-except at moments like this. During her years in uniform she'd balked at doing things by the book and bent more rules than she'd followed. But she'd never found anything in the civilian world that came close to the camaraderie she'd experienced in the air force. There was a fraternity, a brotherhood of arms that came with the absolute certainty you could trust the troop next to you to do his or her job even under intense enemy fire.
With a last look at the young PJ, she accompanied Stevens to meet his crew. The four NCOs who came forward to shake hands possessed a combined total of more than sixty years' experience in munitions, transportation and logistics planning.
"This is only a small slice of our team," Stevens advised. "Since it takes up to a year to prepare for a replenishment operation, most of my troops are at Ogden, working the logistics for the next round. They'll load the requirements in the database, source the weapons packages, then make the buys."
Jack didn't comment. Cleo, too, kept her mouth shut.
"The entire APP team will assemble here on-site a few months before the ship is due in port," Stevens explained. "I'll have fifty, sixty people counting pallets and working cranes as the munitions arrive by truck or train. We'll get everything sorted and packaged before the ship docks, then work round the clock until it's loaded and ready to go back on station."
"How long does the ship stay on station?" Cleo asked.
"They're contracted for five years, but they can come in whenever the air force directs."
The NCO then proceeded to give his visitors a crash course in the three-tiered munitions-supply system. Cleo pretty much grasped the concept of starter, swing and replenishment stock. Stevens lost her, though, when he described the three air force munitions ships as rapid swing stock.
He tried again, using terms she could understand. "Our ships bridge the gap between the munitions we can get to a location immediately via airlift and what's needed to sustain a long conflict. Given their dispersed locations, they can pull into just about any port and off-load their cargo within hours."
His chest puffed out. "That's what happened in Afghanistan. One of our ships went in with the first strike and kept our planes supplied with bombs and missiles throughout the attack."
Cleo remembered the TV clips of bombs burrowing into caves and blasting terrorist strongholds. She also remembered how she'd cheered every bunker-busting blast. Master Sergeant Stevens and his crew deserved to puff out their chests.
"There's an army ship in port," he told them. "I can't take you aboard, but I can drive you down to the dock. You'll get a better feel for what we do if you see it for yourself."
Jack didn't need a second invitation. "Let's go."
***
Cleo began to get a sense of how big this operation truly was during the trip to the dock.
Stevens drove them past acre after acre of crated weaponry and equipment. Forklifts rumbled back and forth as crews opened the crates, sorted the material and repacked it in shipping containers about half the size of train boxcars.
"Every item you see is bar-coded," Stevens explained. "And each of those shipping containers is tagged with an electronic identifier. We track which items go into which container and where that box is stored in the ship's hold. We can even follow the container's movement by radio signal as the ship crosses the ocean. If necessary, we can off-load different packages at different locations."
"Pretty impressive," Cleo had to admit, eyeing the endless strings of mini-boxcars.
"It is when you consider a vessel like the Pits can haul more than nine hundred of those containers-seven hundred twenty below deck, the rest above deck in air-conditioned, dehumidified pods to protect the ammunition. That equates to about twelve thousand short tons of cargo, or about five million pounds of explosive weight."
"Five million, huh?"
She was still trying to wrap her mind around the notion of sailing across an ocean sitting atop millions of pounds of explosives when Stevens drove into the port complex.
"The ship you'll see in a few minu�
�tes is an army-provisioning ship. It's smaller than the Pits but still carries a pretty good tonnage."
When their vehicle rounded the end of a mile-long warehouse a few moments later, Cleo discovered "smaller" was in the eye of the beholder. Craning her neck, she looked up. And up. And up.
"Holy shit!"
It was the biggest, blackest hull she'd ever seen: twelve or fifteen stories of steel plate, topped by five super size cranes swinging stacked containers from dock to deck as if they were Lego blocks.
9
When Cleo and Jack departed Sunny Point almost an hour later, her respect for logisticians had taken several quantum leaps and her neck had developed a severe crick.
As Jack's rental car ate up the miles back to Charleston, she also developed a decided reluctance to end that little excursion. Despite their rocky start that morning, it felt good to be working with him. Damned good.
Apparently he was experiencing some degree of reluctance, too. That became evident when he pulled up alongside the Escalade and hooked his wrists over the steering wheel.
"What's next on your agenda?"
"I've got to meet with the detective working my missing-persons case. Hopefully, by now he'll have subpoenaed the phone records of this mysterious man Trish Jackson called from her doctor's office. How about you?"
"I still have a few matters to check out here in Charleston."
She waited, wondering if he was going to spend another night alone in his hotel room, with her bunked down just a few miles away.
THE MIDDLE SIN Page 9
