Code 13

by Don Brown

  But the date he couldn’t believe he’d just gotten himself into? The last thing he needed was gossip of a burgeoning office romance. Not good in an environment like this. He turned his chair around.

  “I’m fine, sir. I was . . . uh . . . reviewing the assignment on Project Blue Jay.”

  “You mean the AirFlite project?”

  “Yes, sir. Internally code named Blue Jay.”

  Prohaska chuckled. “Interesting code name. Most military operational code names take on a more menacing title, like Operation Desert Storm, Operation Urgent Fury, Operation Overlord. But Operation Blue Jay doesn’t fit any of that.”

  “That struck me too, sir. Do you think there’s a reason for it?”

  “Sure I do.” Prohaska took a sip of his coffee.

  “Do you mind if I ask what it is, sir?”

  The commander set the coffee cup down on P.J.’s desk. “Blue Jay is a benign-sounding name to distract attention from the project. Sounds more like a requisition order for a Navy Ornithology Department than a massive plan to flood the coastal regions of the United States with light-blue drones in the skies.”

  A massive plan to flood the coastal regions of the United States with light-blue drones in the skies.

  Prohaska’s last sentence made P.J. want to puke at the notion that his legal opinion could become a component of making that happen.

  “What do you think, sir? Are they expecting me to write this with a predetermined conclusion already in mind?”

  Prohaska sipped his coffee again before answering. “Did you read the memo thoroughly?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I think you’ll find your answer there.”

  P.J. hesitated. “I was afraid you might say that, sir.”

  Prohaska grinned, giving him a look that said, We both know billions are riding on this project and SECNAV needs rubber-stamp legal approval.

  But instead, Prohaska chose words more politically correct. “You’ll do an excellent job. Captain Guy, Admiral Brewer, SECNAV . . . they’ve all got confidence in you. It’s an honor to be selected for this assignment. Your opinion could lay the groundwork for a fundamental change in how we fight terrorism in this country.”

  Yeah, P.J. thought. A fundamental change in more government terror by giving the government more spying power over its citizens.

  Prohaska started walking away but then stopped and turned around. “I almost forgot to mention something.” A raised eyebrow. “Did you serve in San Diego with an officer named Lieutenant Commander Caroline McCormick?”

  P.J.’s heart shifted into overdrive at the mention of her name. What kind of psychological torture were these people playing?

  “Yes, sir. Commander McCormick and I served together in San Diego.”

  “Well, guess what?”

  “What, sir?” He opened another bottle of water from his desk drawer and took a sip.

  “We just got the word. Lieutenant Commander McCormick has received orders to Code 13.”

  P.J. almost choked. He set the Aquafina bottle on his desk. “Commander McCormick’s coming here?”

  “Yep. Admiral Brewer made the selection based on a handful of recommendations he asked for. He’s getting more involved in handpicking selectees for Code 13. Apparently she made quite the impression during a project she directed aboard USS Cape St. George. Word filtered up the chain, and somebody from SURFPAC called Vice Admiral Brewer to compliment her, and one thing led to another.”

  “Wow.” P.J. fought speechlessness. “What division?”

  “Don’t worry.” Prohaska chuckled, as if he already knew about P.J.’s yearlong relationship with Caroline. Of course he knew. The JAG Corps was a small community. Everybody knew. He was sure even Victoria knew, for that matter, although she had never said anything about it. At least not yet.

  Prohaska continued, “She’s going to be assigned to personnel, section 131, doing legal opinion letters for SECNAV on officer personnel matters.”

  “Okay. Uh . . .” He struggled for words. “When’s she reporting aboard?”

  “They’re fast-tracking it. She’s replacing Lieutenant Commander Rummel, who is being fast-tracked to Pearl Harbor to become XO of the trial command out there.”

  “This week, huh?”

  “Maybe even in a couple of days.” Prohaska grinned again. “Just thought you’d want to know.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “My pleasure.” Still grinning, Prohaska nodded, turned, and walked away.

  P.J. turned his chair around and stared at his computer, waiting for his mind to unfreeze.

  CHAPTER 4

  AIRFLITE CORP

  U.S. DOMESTIC HEADQUARTERS

  OVERLOOKING THE SAVANNAH RIVER

  SAVANNAH, GEORGIA

  MONDAY AFTERNOON

  Richardson Wellington DeKlerk, resting his slender six-foot-one-inch frame in the plush red-leather chair behind his huge mahogany desk, sipped brandy and looked over the slow-rolling, blue-green waters of the Savannah River.

  He got up, checked the mirror to make sure his salt-and-pepper hair was properly in place, and decided that his suntan would need a bit more work by next week. He sipped another spot of brandy and then stepped out of the air-conditioned confines of his office onto the balcony, enjoying the sound of a couple of seagulls’ high-pitched cries and the fresh, warm, southern breeze blowing off the river that caressed his face.

  He liked it out there, because down to his left the colonial-style buildings of Savannah’s historic waterfront came into view, hosting a buzz of modern activity and swarming with tourists, including lovers and honeymooners. He took another sip of his brandy, set his glass on a small outdoor table, picked up his binoculars, and commenced people-watching.

  Through his binoculars, sometimes he would discover delectable creatures of the opposite sex milling about down on the waterfront, their hair and blouses flapping in the inland Georgia sea breeze, which sometimes had the effect of halting his horizontal sweep of the area.

  On rare occasions, if his visual target appeared unaccompanied, loitering about with no gentleman companion, absorbing the ambience of the waterfront in a way that signified she didn’t appear to be in a hurry, Richardson had been known to take his lunch hour on the spot and head down to the waterfront, hoping for the appearance of a happenstance encounter to ignite conversation.

  Sometimes he had been successful in achieving the “happenstance” encounters. At least all the southern belles he happened to bump into thought they were happenstance.

  On one occasion, he wound up accompanying the attractive wandering damsel around Savannah all weekend. Her name was Leslie, a ravishing blonde from Charleston who looked splendid in the assortment of yellow, blue, and white sundresses she wore. Their weekend proved to be fabulous. Almost too fabulous, in fact.

  He smiled as he thought of her. For a lesser man with not so much on his plate, she would have been the ultimate catch. But for a man with tremendous demands upon his time, making decisions in business that could mean billions in profits and change the landscape of the country, maintaining any kind of committed relationship simply wasn’t feasible.

  Even if their weekend had been three days sprinkled with the unexpected magic of a fairy tale, Richardson could not thrive in a fairy tale, where all was bliss and giddiness and harmony—even if his fairytale mate, the smashing Charlestonian Leslie Grimes, could have given Christie Brinkley a run for her money even at her mouthwatering best.

  Leslie had tried contacting him on numerous occasions after their weekend, but he hadn’t responded. The temptation to respond had been enticing, but his business-oriented brain had sifted the pros and cons like a preprogrammed computer, determining that the type of discipline needed to accomplish his goals left little room for play.

  In the end, he had no time for feelings, no time for ambiguous nuances, and no time for relearning woman-speak, where one had to understand that what they say is not what they mean.

 
Despite strong temptations, he just didn’t have enough time for all that.

  He’d been through it all before, leading up to his nasty divorce after twenty-three years of marriage.

  Never again.

  Still, he enjoyed people-watching through his binoculars from his balcony off the CEO offices at AirFlite headquarters, preferably with a glass of brandy.

  He always thought he might see Leslie down by the waterfront again someday. If he did, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. And today he saw nothing else worthy of freezing the sweep of his binoculars. Only a sea of humanity milling about, stepping into waterfront shops, moving in and out of restaurants, holding hands along the dockside, all hoping to discover and become enraptured in that mystic, romantic aura of Savannah, made so famous in southern lore and history, and captured by great works of literature like Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

  Savannah, he concluded—in part because it reminded him of his native South Africa in that it had its own history of apartheid, which southerners called “segregation”—had become the perfect spot for both his personal repatriation and the repatriation of his great international business empire. AirFlite was once a South African hot-air balloon company, focusing on small commercial dirigibles designed for aerial photography marketed to residential and commercial real estate companies. But Richardson was among the first to understand the explosive potential of the drone industry. He knew that to make a fortune as a dronesman, one would need to juxtapose one’s surfboard on the first large wave crashing onto the beach. For beyond that, the beach would become overcrowded, with the waves receding into the sea.

  Although he loved the peaceful waves of the Indian and Atlantic Oceans lapping upon the gorgeous beaches of his native South Africa, he understood that the financial waves for the drone industry would be found rolling in toward the military-industrial complex in the United States.

  As a naturally astute businessman, he purposed to position himself to be in the right place at the right time. If that meant moving AirFlite to America, by golly he would do just that. In fact, he had done just that.

  He would let nothing and no one stand in the way of what he would accomplish.

  The intercom buzzer rang from the phone on his desk.

  He picked up his glass and stepped off the balcony, back into the office. “Yes, Ivana?”

  “Sir, Mr. Patterson is here for your meeting.” His secretary, Ivana Jirotova-Martin, had a heavy Eastern European accent.

  “Send him in.” The empty glass went onto the coffee table.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The office door swung open, with Ivana escorting the six-foot-six former Georgia offensive lineman into the plush offices of the CEO. The man, now in his late fifties, wore a gray, personally fitted Tom James suit, complete with a personally tailored white shirt and a Georgia-red bulldog tie.

  Jack Patterson’s hair over the years may have turned nearly as gray as his suit, but still a rock of a man, Jack was the type of chap one would want in one’s corner in a fisticuffs brawl in a dark alley.

  “Jack!” Richardson said. “How ’bout dem Dawgs?”

  Patterson laughed. “Sorry, Richardson. I appreciate the sentiment, but I’ll never get used to a man with a British accent trying to speak southern redneck.”

  “South African accent,” Richardson quipped.

  “South African. British. Australian. It’s all the same.”

  “Jack, you’re impossible.” Richardson extended his hand to Patterson. “That will be all, Ivana.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Have a seat, Jack.”

  Patterson took a seat on the leather sofa in front of the desk. “Care for a drink, Jack?” Richardson picked up his own glass.

  Patterson shook his head. “CEOs of Fortune 500 companies can drink on the job. Law firms that work for those CEOs can’t afford to.”

  “Now, Jack Patterson.” A sip of brandy. “Is that your way of angling for a raise of your rates from eight hundred bucks to a thousand an hour?”

  “Hold that thought. I’ll be back to see you when this drone contract is finalized.”

  “Ah. I never forget why we’ve retained you as general counsel. You always know how to zero right in on what the CEO wants to talk about.”

  “You mean my raise to a thousand bucks an hour? Or do you mean the new secretary? Or do you mean the drone contract?” Patterson grinned.

  “Jack. My man. You help us get this contract shepherded through, and we’ll make sure your firm gets the kind of bonus that makes you forget you even joked about a grand an hour.”

  “You know, Richardson,” Patterson said, still grinning, “you never let me forget why you’re my favorite client.”

  Richardson stood. He couldn’t sit for long. He walked toward the balcony and looked out. “To answer your question, we just hired Ivana’s American husband as one of our aeronautical engineers who will be working on the Blue Jay project. Nice guy. Name’s Harold Martin. Typical engineer. Kind of a boring guy, really. We’re hoping to keep him employed. That is, if you get this contract through the military’s red tape.” He turned around. “Ivana? She’s icing on the cake.”

  “Nice icing. Just keep your hands to yourself, Richardson. I don’t need you getting deposed in a domestic case between Ivana and Mr. Ivana, and our divorce lawyers are as expensive as I am.” Patterson checked his watch, something he would do occasionally whenever Richardson initiated a discussion of legal fees, as if to subtly remind Richardson that AirFlite was still on the clock. “Not that you can’t afford the legal bills.”

  “Well, that’s plenty of incentive to behave myself, the prospect of being double-billed by the high-priced, silky-stocking, old-line Savannah firm of Patterson & Landry.” He laughed, then stared down at his empty brandy glass. “Now then. Down to business. Where do we stand on Blue Jay?”

  “Here’s the deal.” Patterson eyed him, speaking in a southern drawl with a tinge of Savannah aristocracy, making one-syllable words like deal sound like two syllables, something like “dee-yul.”

  “The contract is sitting on the desk of the Secretary of Defense for the United States of America, waiting for the Secretary’s signature. The money’s already been approved by Congress for the Navy’s discretionary budget, so that’s not a problem, contingent on the Navy’s legal review process.”

  “What’s that mean? Contingent on the Navy’s legal review process.”

  “Good question, Richardson. You mind if I take you up on that drink offer after all?”

  “No problem.” Richardson picked up his phone. A sultry-sounding Ivana came over the intercom. “Yes, sir?”

  “Bring me another brandy, Ivana. Prepare one for Mr. Patterson too.”

  “With pleasure, sir.”

  He hung up. “So, Jack, we were talking about the Navy’s legal review process.”

  “Yes. Bureaucratic stuff. They have to conduct an internal legal review to be able to justify that what they’re doing under the contract complies with domestic law, since they could get into all kinds of legal trouble if they don’t comply with the law.”

  A knock on the door. “Come in.”

  “Your brandies, gentlemen.”

  “Thank you, Ivana. Put them down on the coffee table.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Richardson waited as his Anna Kournikova look-alike of a secretary set the drinks on the table, gave them each a flirtatious smile, then turned, walked out the door, and closed it.

  “Now, what’s this about, Jack?” He picked up his glass and handed Patterson his. “Some sort of legal stuff the Navy has to do? I thought the Navy operated under the rules of war or something. And how long is all this going to take? We’ve been gearing up for this production and have hired tons of people in anticipation of this contract. Like her husband, for example.” He nodded to the door through which Ivana had just exited. “We can’t afford any delays. We’ve got billions on the line here. So whatever this legal mumbo jumbo is
, I need you to cut through it.”

  “Patience, my dear Richardson. The Navy and, in fact, all the armed forces have different rules, regulations, and laws they must comply with when they operate inside the United States as opposed to operating at sea.”

  “What kind of rules? We’re talking about flying a bunch of drones through the sky. It’s not like they’re going to sail an aircraft carrier up the Savannah River. That should be simple enough.”

  Patterson leaned back on the sofa. “Well, they’ve got to get over something called posse comitatus first.”

  “Posse what?”

  “Posse comitatus.” He took a sip of his drink, then loosened his tie. “A federal law passed after the Civil War, signed by President Rutherford B. Hayes. It prohibits the military from being used for law enforcement inside the borders of the United States. It originally just applied to the Army.

  “But they later amended it to include the Navy. So they’re waiting on this legal opinion from some Navy lawyer at the Pentagon, saying that the proposed use of the drones complies with the law. That’s part of the contingency they need to make this happen to get the funding cut loose.”

  Richardson steepled his fingers together and thought. “Let me see if I can get this straight. We have an opportunity to begin a production project that will make AirFlite one of the top three defense contractors in the world, will pump millions into the Georgia economy when the production lines start rolling for these Blue Jay drones, and will pump billions in profits into the corporate treasury, and all that is being hung up by some penny-ante legal opinion from some low-level, no-name Navy lawyer in the Pentagon?”

  “I’m sure it’s just a formality, Richardson. I’m sure the Navy wants this project as bad as we do. I hear an internal war broke out at the Pentagon over whether the Navy or the Air Force would control Operation Blue Jay. The Secretary of Defense decided on the Navy because of the argument that the Navy should be in control of the coastal areas.”