She must have been too slow, for McCann reached inside the room, wrapped his hand around her wrist, and physically dragged her out.
“I’m coming,” she whispered, following him.
He signaled to her to be quiet as they hurried down the passageway.
Amy was relieved when he gave her wrist back, and she kept up with him. She didn’t know what his plans were or where he was headed, but she figured she wasn’t going to be left alone again.
McCann had different ideas. In a moment they turned into one of the ship’s crew’s quarters. She lingered by the door. He took a quick look around and did a search of the bunks.
“You stay here until I come for you.”
“No,” she said, blocking his exit.
“Amy.”
“I refuse, Commander. You can court-martial me when we get back, or get me fired or whatever, but I’m not going to be a sitting duck again. I refuse to hide in a closet and not have a chance to fight for my life. I’m coming with you.”
“That’s impossible. The only thing I want to think about right now is how to get this sub back. Having you with me is a distraction.”
“I can be a help,” she argued. “Honest. You won’t even notice I’m with you.” She turned to walk out ahead of him, but he grabbed her arm, pulling her back through the door.
She heard men’s voices coming up the ladder from the lower level. They turned in the passageway, headed in their direction.
McCann shoved her into the closest bunk, drew his weapon, and aimed it at the door.
Chapter 20
“We can’t just write this off as unrelated,” Sarah argued. “Of all the people who work in management for that shipyard, how many of them are going to have a submarine officer as an ex-husband?”
“I’m not big on coincidences, either,” Bruce Dunn replied, shaking his head. “But it’s too far-fetched. Ryan Murray was only a communications officer before he transferred to the surface fleet two years ago.” He thumbed through the file she’d been looking at before. “Amy Russell looks squeaky clean. Look at this — mother of twins, active in school PTA, volunteer at a local shelter. That’s in addition to having an excellent work record. She has no excessive debt, no criminal file, not even a speeding ticket.”
Looking at Amy’s file, Sarah was reminded of what was missing in her own relationship with Darius. Even when their romance had been in bloom, she knew that he was looking forward to leaving the navy someday, moving into some three bedroom suburb, having half a dozen kids, and just spending time with them. He was looking for the kind of life he had growing up. Family mattered to him. A lot. The relationship he had with his siblings and his parents was unlike anything she ever had with her own.
He’d never popped the question with her. She didn’t think he’d ever even come close to proposing.
Sarah hadn’t been ready for that back then, anyway. Her career was on the move. She enjoyed the challenge of the job, the lifestyle. She wasn’t sure she would be ready for marriage now, either.
Across the table, she looked at the picture of the young women.
“I’m not accusing her of masterminding this operation,” Sarah said reasonably. “What I do believe is that there had to be some serious coordination involved to have the right players at the right places for this hijacking. She could have served a function at the EB end of things, and that was why she happened to be on board at the precise time Hartford left the dock.”
“What do you mean, ‘the right players in the right places’?”
“The most obvious is the X.O., Lieutenant Commander Parker,” she told him. “I find it extremely coincidental that a parked U-Haul truck should roll down the street and smash into his front door at three in the morning, resulting in McCann being called, in order for Parker to leave the ship.”
She saw Dunn scribble Parker’s name at the bottom of a long list he was keeping on a legal pad.
“Whoever is behind this wanted McCann there for the reasons that Admiral Meisner already listed. They also wanted a navigation officer and someone in maneuvering, and—”
“You’re implicating the entire crew. Basically, what you’re saying is that the hijackers wanted specific members of Hartford’s crew there, and these men are cooperating.”
She sat back, feeling frustrated. “No, what I’m trying to say is that there had to be someone knowledgeable enough to run the reactor and the engine room and fire a torpedo with accuracy. That means the hijackers have successfully gotten the right people on board. Now, as far as whether they’re cooperating or not, your guess is as good as mine.”
Dunn tapped his pen on the pad a couple of times. “I agree with your hypothesis regarding McCann. He is their key to arming any nuclear warheads, not that they can’t do plenty of damage with the conventional weapons they’re carrying.” Dunn thought about that for a second. “And I agree with your idea about the accident in front of Parker’s house. It looks as phony as a televised town meeting.”
Sarah was pleased that he was listening.
“I’ll even go so far as to question why Paul Cavallaro was left on board that sub.” He reached for the navigation officer’s file and opened it up in front of Sarah. He pulled out a copy of the rejection report that was left at the NAVSEA office in the shipyard. “It was his call that brought Hartford back to EB.”
She looked at the document. Darius’s signature was also on that piece of paper, but she didn’t want to go there. In her mind, McCann was one hundred percent innocent. She was going to be smart enough to keep that opinion to herself.
“At this point, it’s too big a stretch for me to believe every other person on that boat was put there for a purpose. Amy Russell, specifically, was only given the assignment the night before. She had specific qualifications that made her right for the job, but could have been one of several ship supers. In addition, Russell was only scheduled to be going aboard at 0600 with a crew and not before. No, I think she surprised them. I think she was in the wrong place at a wrong time.”
“And Darius McCann would never have escorted her aboard Hartford if he thought something was about to happen,” Sarah asserted.
Dunn scratched his chin and nodded gravely. “Unfortunately, if our assumptions are correct, then she’s of no use to them.”
“Which means…” she paused.
“Which means,” he continued grimly, “there would be no reason for the hijackers to keep her alive.”
He closed Amy Russell’s file folder and slid it across the table. As the file came to a stop, a sheet of paper protruded from the file.
Sarah glanced at the heading as she pushed the paper back into the folder. She’d read the information on that sheet. It pertained to the woman’s personal life and referred to her children. An unexpected sharp pang ran through her.
“Do you know if anything has been done about seeing after her twins?” she asked.
“We had the locals and the Family Services people pick them up.” He looked at her intently. “We wanted to bring them in before the sharks got to them.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the media.”
She hadn’t considered that. The media was already all over this. Her thoughts shifted to Darius’s parents. They’d be in the Keys this time of the year.
“How about Commander McCann’s family? Has anyone been in touch with them?”
He nodded curtly and looked away. He was avoiding eye contact.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He paused before looking back at her. “I don’t know the details. But I received a text message about an ambulance being dispatched to the house.”