“But won’t they find it suspicious? That I called for a lawyer? Since I truly wasn’t involved?”
“You didn’t call for a lawyer. I did. Which is why you’ll let me break that news to them, okay? You’re twenty-one, about to be commissioned, so the administration will deal directly with you. But I want you to call Liz. Now, in fact. You can stay for another few minutes. Let her tell you what to say if anything else comes down.”
“And she’s a criminal defense lawyer?”
“Well, you were talking to the Naval Criminal Investigative Service today, Julie.”
“Got yourself a point, there, Judge,” she said, going for some more milk. “Sure, I’ll talk to her. Hell, yes. Then I’ve got to get back. Have an econ test tomorrow. God! Two more weeks.”
Well, it’s 2:30 in the morning and I’m back. Undetected, of course. I think I told you that I was going to be running the tunnels tonight. Left at 12:10, out the eighth wing’s basement door, the one the mokes use to remove the daily trash. Dressed myself out in full sweats, the ones with the West Point Army logo, courtesy of a swim match bet against the Whoops a year ago. Had to wear the hood up so my shiny head didn’t show. Did the usual recon: a slow jog, down toward the seawall. Everyone thinks I shave my head for the swimming, but, hell, I’m the Shark! Don’t need any edge. No, I shaved it for the resident Marines. Let ’em know I’m gung ho. I jog like I swim, with power and precision. Always have some Marine trail cadence echoing in my mind as I pick ’em up and put ’em down. Marine cadence: Le-oh-ft-le-oh-ft-le-oh-ft, right, le-oh-ft. Army cadence: Left, left, left…When I need to really breathe, I let my mouth hang open, baring my teeth. The Shark. Hungry. Top predator on the prowl. Cruising. I sometimes hope I’ll run into someone out on those marble terraces at night, give ’em a mouthful of white teeth inside a darkened hood.
But not tonight. I’d called my little Johnnie vampire over on campus. You don’t know her, but you’d like her, I think. Well, maybe not. She’s just a little bit bent. Heavy into magic mushroom just now, and not the kind they serve in the mess hall. Made the cell call right after evening meal. Did it right in front of two plebes I had sweating bullets while plastered against the wall in their room. Made a little torment drill out of it, talking so they could hear, purring out some highly suggestive sweet nothings about her underwear. They couldn’t hear her, but they sure as hell could hear me. A little phone sex routine, just to bother them, kept it going even after she’d hung up. But not before she set things up for after midnight, her room, of course, candles, some of that dismal shrieking shit they call Goth music, and with maybe a few friends to watch… Goths love to watch. And so many of them are so stone-ugly that watching is all they’ll ever get.
Anyhow, the Yard’s a ghost town at that hour. Mother Bancroft at darkened-ship except, if you look closely, you can see the occasional flicker of flashlights where some poor bastards were sweating out a 2.0 average. I don’t have that problem, of course. I study. Well, actually, there’s a little bit more to it than that. It’s what I study that makes the difference. I always get the Gouge. I am a master of the Gouge. Three, four times a day, I’m out there on the Academy intranet, sifting for fast-moving intelligence about the next day’s quiz, or past patterns of questions. And: news flash! I actually study the material assigned by the profs. What a concept, huh? See, I’ve figured out which profs telegraph their test questions in their homework assignments. And which ones are too lazy to create a whole new quiz or exam, which means they go back to previous exams. All of which have to be approved. Via the faculty intranet. Where I have learned to lurk.
But you know, the system here is pretty straight-ahead. You work like hell to get the good grades going early on, and then ride the expectations train, with a little help from some selective hacking. After awhile, the profs expect me to do well, and then grade accordingly. That’s how I have a 3.69 cume after almost four years. I do get help from the profs, of course. It’s just that they don’t always know they’re helping me…
So, where was I? Oh yeah, jogging down the road along Santee Basin, listening to the Academy sailboats bouncing around on a light evening chop coming in from the bay, their halyards clinking in time on their masts. Isn’t that poetic? Easing on down to Dewey Field, which always smells like fresh-cut grass and dead fish. Then the obligatory recce run: jogging around the perimeter, scoping things out. They’ve got all those big light towers out there, but the rich people across the river bitched about the lights being left on all night, so now they shut ’em down, which is perfectly cool for us night runners.
But of course I wasn’t out there for any exercise. I was on the lookout for the Jimmylegs. Funny-ass name. Apparently in days gone by, really gone by, the Academy’s civilian police wore white lace-up leggings on the bottoms of their trou. Now, of course, they drive around in small pickup trucks, one, sometimes two to a truck, patrolling the entire Yard and the housing areas. Looking for A-rabs, probably. That’s why I start out a tunnel run with a little topside jog, because the cops wouldn’t care about a lone jogger, assuming they could even see me out here in the darkness along the river. Us mid coolies are supposed to be locked up for the night, of course, but sometimes guys come out to decompress from a bad day, and there have been lots of those over the past years, haven’t there? This whole place is mostly a succession of bad days. You know what they say: This place sucks so bad, there’s a permanent low pressure system over Annapolis.
Like today. Some plebe offed himself. Now that was news all right. No Gouge today on the LAN. Everybody with verbal E-diarrhea, sending shitloads of E-mail, bogging down the system. And the officers: oh, yeah. The officers were all stone-faced. Big trouble on the Dark Side. Made me smile, watching them today. Made me show my big teeth. And there are rumors. Man, are there some interesting rumors. Serious scuttlebutt moving down the wires. But you probably know all about that by now.
So here’s the drill! I jog around until I see the headlights, then step over to stand next to a light standard, right on the seawall. Gray on black. Invisible when the security truck comes around Rickover Hall and goes down Holloway Road. Drive right on by without a pause. Gotta improve that situational awareness, guys, A-rabs in the bushes, get you killed someday if you don’t. Every Marine knows that. Anyway, once the truck goes by, I hop the seawall. Last night, I had a nice high tide, which is cool-we sharks like deep water. I untied the rope from around my waist, hooked it up, and then climbed down onto that grating that covers the big storm drain. Which you’ve probably never seen, because it’s usually underwater. The seawall stones are slippery and smell of dead fish and crabs. Yuk-os. If all those Save the Bay tree-huggers are doing such a great job, how come the bay always smells of dead fish?
Do you know the drain I’m talking about? No, of course you don’t. It’s made of concrete, and it’s, like, five feet in diameter. I have to stoop over to make it. There’s always a little bit of water running down the center. Condensation from all those steam tunnels up ahead-you know, the ones that crisscross under the Yard. I do my usual knee-capping running drill. It’s fifteen hundred feet, almost exactly. I know the tunnels, you see. Really know them. You’d be amazed at what’s down there. The graffiti, for instance. Guys have been going down there for a long time. Playing games. Wonderful games, some of them.
Last night, my objective was what I call “Broadway,” that big tunnel that runs under Stribling. The storm drain’s dark, but Broadway has lights. You get a nice burn in your thighs, bent over like that, high-stepping up a slope that goes three football fields. But, hell, I’m, like, tough as nails; I could run that particular tunnel all night. It takes 210 steps before you hit the flap doors. You have to count-it’s pitch-black until you open the flap doors.