“Hmm. Yes. Not exactly a young man’s job, is it?” They turned up Stribling Walk toward Bancroft Hall.
“It’s a job, sir. I give it good measure. But, no, I don’t look at it as a career. On the other hand, I may not be the career type.”
He thought he saw Robbins smile, which was unusual. “We tend to forget that, those of us immersed in the career Navy,” he said absently. “I seem to remember something about a problem in Bosnia?”
So much for that little secret, Jim thought. “I was involved in a friendly fire situation,” he said. “Some Brit artillery went blue on blue. I was the spotter.”
“Ah,” Robbins said. “Were you actually responsible for the error, or were you the designated goat?”
Jim was surprised. Robbins looked sideways at him. “Oh, I know something about how the Corps operates, Mr. Hall. Whenever there’s a screwup that embarrasses the Marine Corps, somebody has to take a fall. ‘Disciplinary cut,’ I think they call it. They pick somebody who was involved, not too senior, hopefully, and hammer him to the satisfaction of whichever general’s been embarrassed. Guilty or not.”
“It was the Brits who screwed up,” Jim said. “To their credit, they admitted it. The UN commander called it another way, so then the Corps was on the hook. Plus, I had expressed some reservations about what we were doing.”
“How convenient. You were a natural target. I understand. Well, here’s what I need: I want you to find out as much as you possibly can about the NCIS investigation, using whatever resources you can muster. Ditto for anything being worked in the county or state law-enforcement channels, such as the Anne Arundel medical examiner’s office, from whence I suspect the leak cometh.”
“I can tap the chief’s web for some of this,” Jim said. “Bustamente knows everybody.”
They had arrived at the Tecumseh monument. “Don’t care and don’t really want to know,” Robbins said, “if you catch my drift. Just feed me as much intel as you can. Directly to me. As you know, I can’t lean on NCIS-that Branner woman would squawk command interference. But we need to be in the loop, one way or another, Mr. Hall. This thing is going to get bloody. I’m sure of it.”
“It already has,” Jim said. “For Midshipman Dell.”
Robbins gave him a pained look but then nodded. “I don’t for one moment believe that this young man was killed,” he said. “A homicide here is just inconceivable. I think this was some kind of end-of-plebe-year stunt that went terribly wrong. But, be that as it may, please be discreet. No James Bond stuff. I don’t want anybody on the staff to know you’re doing this.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Jim said. He resisted the impulse to salute as the commandant turned away abruptly and headed into Tecumseh Court. Jim turned left and went down along the sidewalk flanking the first wing.
The commandant had been right on about what had happened to Jim’s career over there. His commander at the time, a major with very serious career aspirations, had sat him down and told him the bad news after the incident and the ensuing investigation. He was to be relieved of his duties and sent out of the theater. No further disciplinary measures. An assignment to a ceremonial post somewhere. When Jim had objected that he hadn’t done anything wrong, the major had just looked at him. You were involved. That means the Corps was involved. Henderson Hall needs somebody to take the fall. You’re young, with lots of time to go. I’m at the twelve-year point, with half a career invested. You’re the goat. Suck it up, and the Corps will take note of your sacrifice. That’s how it works. He’d ended up at the Academy one month later.
Twenty minutes later, he was banging through laps in a side lane of the training pool, called the Natatorium. The Nat was in MacDonough Hall. There was a second, Olympicsized pool in Lejeune Hall, with seating for one thousand spectators, but the old Natatorium was used mostly for swimming instructions and tests. A familiar drama was unfolding above the middle of the pool. A lone, miserable-looking midshipman sat on the steel grates of the infamous jump tower, a steel platform suspended twenty-five feet above the water, from which every midshipman who wanted to graduate had to jump. The purpose of the drill was to teach the mids what it might be like to abandon a sinking ship.
The exercise was simple, if sometimes daunting. The mids, fully clothed, had to climb a free-hanging steel ladder, ascending from the surface of the pool up to the platform, more than two stories above. They then had to walk to the end of the platform, assume the approved safety posture for the jump, and, on signal from the class supervisor, step off and drop into the pool, come back to the surface, demonstrate the strokes needed to sweep fuel oil out of the way, and then swim to the side of the pool.
Most mids did it without incident. Some were so afraid of doing it, they didn’t graduate. In every case, the reluctant dragons were ordered to climb to the platform-which in itself was scary, because the ladder slanted in at an overhang angle as soon as the mid climbed aboard-and stay there until they made the jump. A jump supervisor would remain on the side of the pool to encourage the mid to get it over with. There were mids who had spent the night on the tower. This one had apparently balked during a ten o’clock PE class, and so he had been on the tower for only a few hours, although he didn’t look like he was going anywhere anytime soon. As Jim remembered, the next step would be to send for his roommate, who would climb the tower and try to talk him into making the jump. And if that didn’t work, they’d detach the ladder.
After fifty laps, Jim still didn’t know exactly how he would approach the dant’s mission, but his leg muscles were telling him that it was time, innkeeper. He heaved himself out of the pool and grabbed his towel, just as a lone female swimmer did the same on the other side of the pool. Her distinctive swimsuit identified her as a member of the varsity swim team. He also took a moment to admire her very fine figure. That young lady was definitely built for speed, and she smiled through a hank of wet hair when she saw him looking. Then he recognized her: She was the midshipman the NCIS people had been interviewing in the Dell case. Owner of record of the infamous panties.
He grabbed his towel and walked over to where she was drying off. Behind them, the tower jump supervisor, a Marine captain with a shaved head, had begun yelling at the mid on the tower, exhorting him to stop wasting everybody’s m-f-ing time and do the goddamn thing. That he, the instructor, had already missed chow and wasn’t about to miss liberty, too.
“I’m Jim Hall, security officer here at the Academy,” Jim said.
“Midshipman First Class Markham, sir,” she replied promptly, continuing to towel off. Respectful, but cool. And really good-looking.
“Hey, I’m a civilian,” he said. “You don’t have to call me sir.”
She straightened up, draping the towel across the front of her suit as if realizing just how revealing the competition gear was. “I heard the word officer, ” she said. “Besides, you’re not a midshipman, you’re bigger than I am, and older. That’ll get you a sir every time.” Hint of a smile.
Older? Ouch. He was maybe six, seven years older than she was. “Think he’ll do it?” he asked, pointing with his chin at the gray-faced mid up on the tower. She turned to look. Strong profile. Her mother must be something, Jim thought.
“That’s Captain Mardle over there,” she said. “The instructor doing the yelling? We call him Captain Marble. If he starts to take his gym clothes off, that guy’d better jump. He doesn’t want to be there if Marble is forced to swim out there and climb the tower.”
Captain Marble, Jim thought, staring at the supervisor’s glistening scalp. It did look like a marble. An angry marble, now that he thought about it. Getting angrier, too.