Ryan bent, and hauled up a scuttle. Aisha had to wriggle through feet first, groping with the toes of her Merrells for whatever lay below. Faded paint, a confined passageway.
Finally, so deep Aisha felt entombed, Ryan tapped on a door painted with earphones, a crossed torpedo, a lightning bolt. Beneath it someone had painted in flowing script, Sonarmen do it aurally.
“Yeah?” Whoever was in there sounded surprised. “Whatcha want?”
The door unclunked inward on a cramped wedge of space walled with electronics and piping. A paunchy middle-aged man turned up a startled face, then pushed back from a keyboard. “Hey, girls! Wow, two hotties. You here for the banana-eating contest?”
This had to be the guy. “Carpenter?”
“That’s me.” He patted a chair. “Park it, let’s get acquainted. Nobody visits me down here anymore.”
Close up, she revised her estimate of his age upward. Gray hair, thinning at the back. Sagging jowls. A gut straining the waist of his coveralls. His stubble was gray too. Black-and-white glossy eight-by-tens of old submarines and many-times-xeroxed cartoons were taped to the few open areas of white-insulation-sheathed bulkhead. He waved at them. “Used to have my babes up there. XO made me take ’em down. But hey, a guy can dream.” He leered at Ryan. “I know you, right? You’re one of the pecker-checkers… I mean, corpsmen. What’s your name, sweetheart?”
Aisha plumped down into a chair, which creaked alarmingly and tilted as if to catapult her out backward. A strange smell lingered. Male sweat, ozone, acetone… and something else. “Petty Officer Reginald Carpenter?”
Carpenter winced. “It’s Rit, honey, not ‘Reginald.’” He reached for a thermos. “Want some bug juice? Where you from, brown sugar? That accent says… the Bronx?”
“Harlem.”
“Uh-huh. Cute outfit. What are you, part of the sultan’s harem?”
“I’m NCIS agent Aisha Ar-Rahim,” she said. “I’m investigating a crime.”
“NCIS. That’s what used to be the NIS, right? They took down a ring of faggots on a boat I was on once. Let me guess, you want the dude who put the blocks to the Terror. Hey. Don’t swing that way, kids.” Carpenter lifted his hands. “Pubic Bay, Bang Cock, I paid for it fair and square. I could tell you some stories. Angles and dangles at the Anchor and Spur? The time I bought a puppy in Olongapo?”
“Let’s stick to OS1 Bethany Terranova.”
“Well, from what I hear, she was asking for it. The radarman, I mean.”
By the door, Ryan huffed. “Really? That’s very interesting.” Aisha shot a glance at her, warning her to keep out of it. “Why do you say that?”
Carpenter nodded and leaned forward, lowering blunt fingertips to the keyboard with a strangely delicate touch. “Want to see some pictures?”
“Photos, you mean?”
“Way I heard it, she was laying it out on the Iron Beach for everybody to see. Topless. Kind of an open invite, don’t you think? Let’s be reasonable. Me, I’m just a dirty old man. But you got young guys here, away from home four, six months, ain’t had a decent liberty since Rota. Ever tried to get laid in Jebel Ali? Ain’t gonna happen, Ahmed. They lock ’em up tight. And you know what else they do to their women? Cut off their—”
“That’s not done anymore,” Aisha said.
“Ain’t what I hear. But don’t blow your shitter, girl. They like boys better anyway.” The sonarman swiveled the monitor toward them. “Grab a gander.”
The color still showed women on blankets and beach towels, in colorful swimsuits, lying on gray nonskid in bright sunlight. Over it, a gunsight reticle. The aiming dot in the center was centered on the crotch of a bikinied woman, chunky pale thighs spread, arm over her eyes. Her top was pulled down to show white skin. At the top of the photo, the sea was a creamy wake stretching out behind the ship.
Carpenter smacked his lips. “Whaddya think? Nice little rack of lamb, or what?”
“Where is this?”
“The Iron Beach, they call it. Top of the hangar. Girls only up there.” Carpenter winked. “Maybe a little blue-on-blue action? Back out of camera range.”
“This photo’s on the ship’s LAN?”
“Just cutie pies on a beach. Harmless fun.”
Aisha said, “I hear something else on the LAN is fun too.”
Carpenter tensed, then chuckled. “Oh—Molly? Shit. Nobody has a sense of fucking humor anymore. It’s a game.”
“That involves rape.”
“Yeah, you ever seen the other shit the guys play? The magazines they pass around? The fucking Navy’s getting as PC as Berkeley. I mean, this used to be a fun organization. You turned to at sea, but when the anchor went down, you cut loose. Now it’s just work, work, work, and when you do pull a little liberty, they expect you to paint an orphanage.”
“I’d like to see this game. Who are your high scorers?”
The sonarman hacked out a smoker’s laugh and rocked back. His duct-taped chair creaked and almost pitched him out, but he rode it down and back up like a mechanical bull. “Let’s make it easy. I’m the high scorer. ‘Thug Numba One.’”
“How about Petty Officer Benyamin?”
“He’s not in my league. And no, you can’t see the game, because the skipper himself shut us down and confiscated my boot copy.”
“Lenson did that?”
Carpenter shrugged, obviously conflicted. “Him and me got history. Some high-pucker-factor situations. Along with Donnie Wenck. Lenson’s solid. But also, like, this uptight Annapolis ring-knocker type. He listened too much in Sunday school, or something. No offense.”
“Wenck.” The name sounded familiar. She made a note, with a question mark. “Who’s he, again?”
“OS chief. The Terror works for him.”
“Oh. Right.” Aisha sighed. Thought of asking if Carpenter owned a knife, but didn’t. This guy wasn’t tall enough, and with his paunch and age, she couldn’t seriously make him for the assault. Just an overage, loudmouthed holdover from the Jurassic. “Are you married, Petty Officer Carpenter?”
“Haven’t met the right girl yet. She’s deaf and dumb, with no teeth, and a flat head to set your beer on.”
Ryan chuckled, and Carpenter shared a grin with her. Aisha said, “Let’s get back on track. You could be helpful, you know. Any ideas? Somebody who talks about rough trade, a woman hater. Knife fetish, talks about teaching the sluts a lesson? Trigger any thoughts?”
The sonarman shrugged again. “I’d like to. I really would. But, see, everybody gets weird, this long at sea. It’s the DSB.”
Beside her Ryan sniggered. “The what?” Aisha said. “This is the legionello—?”
“Deadly sperm buildup. Drives guys over the edge. To where they get their rocks off taking pictures through the Sea Whiz cameras.” Looking at the screen, he sobered. “Hey, I come across flip, I know. But maybe it wasn’t exactly like she said. You think there’s no guy-girl hanky-panky going on in this ship, you’re just closing your eyes. She gets it on with some swingin’ dick, he dumps her, she blows the whistle. Only makes it like, she didn’t know who it was, so you have to nail him for her. Whaddya think, corpsperson? Am I blowin’ smoke through my asshole, or what?”
Ryan didn’t answer, arms folded as she leaned against a rack of amplifiers. Her expression said it all. Amused disgust. Aisha cleared her throat, then got up. The chair creaked and flipped forward as her weight came off it, almost propelling her into Carpenter. “Please keep this talk between us. If a name, or a conversation, occurs to you later, let me know.”
“Feel free to come back and visit,” Carpenter told Ryan. “I’m down here alone most of the time. Or, we could arrange to be alone.” He winked at Aisha. “Goes for you too, honey. We can keep it all between us. You bet.”