This time, there was no tap, but the legal pad slowly slid in front of her. Sarah looked down.
Let me take the first swing.
Surprised, she read it again before turning to Commander Dunn. He was all attention, focused completely on the speaker. She didn’t know what he meant or how to take his comment.
“In his next deployment, he served as executive officer on a five-month deployment around South America on USS Omaha, during which time he conducted top-secret weaponry testing. Following that tour, he was assigned his first command, USS Hartford.”
Seth McDermott finished reading and looked up. To Sarah’s relief, for a couple of moments, absolute silence ruled the room. Now she understood that it was actually advantageous for McCann to have his impressive record read by these people.
“All the makings of a fine early career,” Rear Admiral Smith said curtly, flipping through his pages. “Now let’s get back to basics. Commander McCann. What was his first name?”
“Darius, sir.”
“Darius. What is Commander McCann’s ancestry?”
Sarah had to fist her hand in her lap and bite her tongue so she wouldn’t stand and object to the question. She couldn’t believe what Smith was implying. The innuendo was hardly subtle. McCann’s flawless record spoke for itself.
Lieutenant McDermott looked across the room at Admiral Meisner. Sarah saw her superior hunch over the table, his elbows planted on the dark mahogany. She knew that was a sure sign that Meisner wasn’t any too pleased with the question, either.
“What is it that you want to know, Admiral?” Meisner asked.
“I’m interested in his ancestry.”
“How many generations would you like to go back, Admiral?”
“One will do.”
Sarah knew her superior was well aware of this information, so she was pleased when Meisner took his time and thumbed through a manila folder on the conference table first before answering.
“Father, fourth generation Irish. Cork City, I believe. Commander McCann’s mother was born in Iran.”
Smith looked positively smug as he turned to Admiral Gerry, Commander of the Atlantic Fleet. “Has Commander McCann ever expressed anything that might demonstrate disagreement with our Middle East policy?”
“Of course not,” Gerry said.
“Does he have any family members that still reside in Iran?”
“Admiral Meisner?” Gerry said, fending off the question.
“He does, sir.”
Sarah saw the Head of the Joint Chiefs scribble a note that he handed off to an aide. The man left the room immediately.
“Is this his first patrol in the Persian Gulf region?” Smith asked the Atlantic Fleet commander
“Yes, sir,” Gerry answered, obviously showing deference to the president’s advisor.
“Did he have any objection to this assignment?”
“No, sir.”
“My apologies for interrupting, Admiral Smith,” Dunn said before Smith could fire the next question. “But we’re wasting valuable time discussing information of very little relevance.
“Very little relevance, Commander Dunn?” Smith asked critically.
“Yes, sir. My understanding was that this briefing was being held for the purpose of understanding the credentials of the ranking officer so that strategies can be developed to counter the potential actions of the unidentified hijackers. It serves no purpose to assume that Commander McCann has betrayed his trust.”
“Do you think it is irrelevant that McCann has family connections with a rogue nation that is a sworn enemy of the United States?”
“Yes, sir. It is entirely irrelevant to the purpose of this briefing,” Dunn responded sharply. “Unless, of course, we had all been told beforehand that you wanted to conduct a genealogy club meeting, then I could have brought pictures of my Russian great-grandmother who, as you know, was a diehard communist. Perhaps you have something to share about your own great-grandfather, who I believe stole horses for the South during the Civil—”
“That’s enough, Commander,” the Head of the Joint Chiefs snapped. “But I have to agree that we are digressing from our purpose, Admiral.”
Sarah didn’t miss the daggers that Dunn and Smith sent each other. He wasn’t kidding when he said they didn’t like each other.
Admiral Pottinger, commander of the Atlantic Fleet Sub Force, spoke for the first time. “We need to discuss a plan for taking back control of this vessel. We cannot afford to leave that submarine in the hands of hostile forces for even a minute longer than we have to.”
“Whatever is decided upon must be quick and decisive,” someone else replied from across the table. “We cannot allow any half-assed cowboy stunts like the one the Coast Guard pulled this morning.”
Others began to weigh in with their opinions, but Sarah knew she’d have no involvement in any of those decisions. Admiral Meisner was on the same wavelength, for she saw him stack up the files in front of him and turn around and hand them to her.
“McDermott will stay and bring you anything pertinent from this meeting,” Meisner said. “You’ve got a lot of work to do.”
Sarah nodded and grabbed her stuff. Commander Dunn was on his feet, and the two of them left the room.
Outside, she turned to him. “You’re lucky you’re not being escorted to the brig, talking like that to Admiral Smith.”
“He’s retired,” Bruce said coolly. “He just doesn’t know yet that he doesn’t run every show.”
Sarah looked at him as they walked down the corridor. “So what’s the real bone of contention between the two of you?”
“If you really have to know,” he replied, smiling as he pulled open a door for her, “I’m his former son-in-law.”
Chapter 13
Amy glanced over at the hole in the wall where McCann had disappeared before reaching up to make the first cut into the wires overhead. Without the schematics, she was no better than a bull in a china shop. But it really didn’t matter. Any kind of damage was a positive step.
She felt partially responsible for this whole mess. She’d ignored the immediate warning flag that had gone up in her head the moment she’d started testing the navigation system in the control room. The rejection report completely disagreed with the actual sequence. From the first readouts, it was clear there was nothing wrong with the system. The local network malfunction could have only been caused by someone intentionally disconnecting a wire or loosening a connection. She had a good idea that it must have been something right there in the control room, too.
From the moment she’d been given the job, she’d operated on the defensive, looking for screw-ups that would have occurred during production. She’d searched for catastrophic system failures and had totally disregarded the possibility of operator sabotage.
She knew now why it happened, too. Someone had wanted to bring Hartford back in for this, the hijacking, and Amy had missed the opportunity to send up a flare. She’d never even voiced her concern to the sub’s commander.
Idiot.
She snipped away with her cutters, determined to do some real damage to the navigation system that she guessed was probably working perfectly now.
Chapter 14
Mina Azizi was born and raised in Iran.