"I'll take my chances, sir."
"Fine. We have an office for you in this building, just down the hall. The BOQ is just down the road. Anything you need, let me know."
It was clearly the end of the interview. Murdock stood. "Thank you, sir."
"Glad to have you with the Team."
0915 hours (Zulu -5)
Norfolk City Jail
Norfolk, Virginia
"Aw, c'mon, Ray," MacKenzie said. "I'm sure the boys were just blowing' off a bit of steam. You know how it is!"
"Blowing off steam, huh?" Captain Raymond Nagel of the Norfolk Police favored MacKenzie with as dark a glower as the SEAL had ever seen as he tapped a stack of reports on his desk with a bony forefinger. "Look, Mac. I've got thirty-seven complaints here from various parts of Norfolk's east side. Your boys were busy last night."
MacKenzie was already tallying up the possible damages in his head. Thank God that the cop on at the duty desk was an old friend. He'd known Ray Nagel back in Vietnam he'd been Gunnery Sergeant Nagel of the U.S. Marines then and since MacKenzie had been transferred to Little Creek, he'd more than once had official dealings with Nagel as representative of the Norfolk City Police Department.
"Are you sure it was my people, Ray? I heard some Marines went off half cocked and..."
"It's your people we've got back there in the tank, Mac." Nagel picked up another sheet of paper and studied it judiciously. "Chief Machinist's Mate Thomas Roselli. Radioman First Class Ronald Holt." He glanced up. "They are yours?"
MacKenzie sighed. "They're mine."
"Just wanted to keep the record straight. Okay, at nine-forty last night we got a call from a bar that a fight was in progress. We get there just behind the Shore Patrol and find twelve Marines that look like they'd had a run-in with a steamroller. No one'd say what happened, but these little tiffs between gyrenes and the SEALs are getting kinda routine, ain't they, Mac?"
MacKenzie spread his hands. "Ray, I can't even say for sure it was my guys who did it. Were they at that bar?"
"You don't know?"
"Hey, I'm asking you, right?"
"Yeah, okay. Fine. At ten-fifteen last night, we get another call from the Night's Rest Hotel up on Ocean View. Seems several guys were seen climbing up the outside of the hotel. Five stories, straight up. Some of the guests thought the place was being burglarized and called the police. There were also complaints about an unusually loud party on the fifth floor, and reports of several young ladies running down the corridor naked, rather loudly pursued by several naked or indecently exposed men.
"By the time the police arrived twenty minutes later, we'd already received another call, this one from hotel security. They said the hotel manager'd gone up to a room on five in response to complaints about the party. When the police reached the fifth floor, they about tripped over a man and a woman copulating in the hall in front of the elevator. Four more men were in a room registered to a 'Mr. Smith,' threatening to throw the manager out of the fifth-story window and into the hotel swimming pool below. Your man Holt had him by the ankles and was dangling him out of the window upside down. That's assault, Mac. It's damned serious."
MacKenzie groaned. After the dustup at Samelli's the night before, they'd hit a bar or two more before Garcia passed out, dead drunk on the sidewalk. MacKenzie had driven him back to the base. This new round of fun and games must have started after he'd left. Damn it, he'd told them...
"What's my boys' story, Ray?"
The police captain made a face. "That they were just having a quiet little get-together with some, ah, friends, that the manager used abusive and threatening language, and that they were just trying to reason with him."
"Uh-huh. That sounds about right."
"The room was a shambles. The bed frame had collapsed, and the thing was disassembled and stacked in one corner along with the mattresses, which I suppose explains why that couple was going at it out in the hall. The bathtub had been filled with something later identified as liquid lime Jello. And there were colored balloons hanging from the ceiling panels that turned out to be inflated condoms. 'Mr. Smith' was identified by the manager as your Chief Roselli. The arresting officers took Holt and Roselli into custody. Both men were under the influence and resisted arrest."
"Uh-oh. How badly did they resist?"
"One of my men may have a broken wrist, Mac. Four others have an assortment of bruises and contusions."
"That's a relief. Shit, Ray, you know as well as I do that if my boys had really been resisting arrest..."
"They also broke five nightsticks with karate blows and chucked two revolvers, a pair of handcuffs, and one of my men into the Jello."
MacKenzie sighed. "You sent five men to answer that call?"
"Eight. Hell, the dispatcher called in a 10-34, Mac. That's 'riot in progress." We finally managed to subdue Roselli and Holt, but the other three got away. The one in the hall slipped out a window and climbed down the outside of the building. The other two went through the open window in the hotel room. They dove dove, mind you five stories into the hotel pool. Damned lucky for them the deep end was beneath their window. But one older lady ended up in the hospital."
"My God. They landed on her?"
"No. Just shock. The guests at the poolside were rather, ah, startled, shall we say, by the sudden appearance of two naked men landing in the water."
"Is the woman okay?"
"Yeah. No thanks to your SEALS. The ones that got away were last seen barreling across the hotel's golf course in a '91 Chevy, taking out a palm tree and an ornamental fence on the way. The hotel's tallied up a bill of, let's see," Nagel consulted another paper on his desk. "Two thousand, three hundred ninety-five dollars. Damage to the bed, the grounds, the tree, the fence. Christ, Mac, this really is the final straw. We could hit your people with assault, unlawful restraint, resisting arrest, malicious destruction of property..."
"Ray, I'll give it to you straight. These boys just came back off a mission. A real mission. And they lost their CO. I mean it. It really hit 'em hard."
Nagel's eyes widened. "No shit?"
"Ray, you know I wouldn't shit you. We lost a good man."
"Where was it, Mac? Iraq?"
"You also know I can't tell you anything."
Nagel took a deep breath. "Look Mac, I understand, and I wanna do you a favor, you know I do. But this is a decent town, and I can't have your boys trashing the place just because they need to cut loose. I've covered for your SEALs before, but..."
"Have you filed charges yet, Ray?"
"No, but..."
"Is the hotel manager pressing charges?"
Nagel glowered, then shook his head, almost reluctantly. "If they get paid, they won't file. I think the manager was so relieved to get them out of his place he, well, sorta forgot."
MacKenzie pulled out his checkbook and began writing. The senior chiefs at Little Creek maintained a discretionary fund against just such emergencies. Roselli, Holt, Doc, Fernandez, and Nicholson would be encouraged to "contribute" to that fund, as they had a time or three in the past. He filled in the amount for three thousand, tore it off, and passed it to Nagel. "That's for the damages, Ray. If there's any change left over, maybe the Policemen's Fund?"
Nagel accepted the check and tucked it into a desk drawer. "Thanks, Mac. The boys appreciate it. But I can't keep sweeping up the mess your SEALs leave behind them.
The lecture that followed was rough, but not as rough as MacKenzie had feared. At least this time around there would be no civil charges against his men, and he thought he could handle the military end of it informally, through extra duty and that "contribution" to the chief's fund. Of course, if they wanted a captain's mast, he'd let them have one.
He wondered, though, what the new CO would make of all this. Maybe it was better that he never know.
They brought Roselli and Holt out to him, both men showing some nasty blotches around puffy eyes. "You two," he said ominously, "have a shitload of explaining to do." Damn, what was the new lieutenant going to think?