“The Joint Strike Fighter,” he said, then tilted his head down to her.
“The missile test!” she blurted, giving credence to her fears. She wheeled back onto the bridge and began shouting commands. “Lieutenant, call the crew to general quarters! Tell Raptor Two Four to remain on station and locate the hostile force, call Cutter Blacktip to mobilize a law enforcement response, then radio the Abe and warn them of a potential missile attack!”
The OOD looked stunned at her sudden and confusing change in demeanor. “Ma’am?”
“Now, Lieutenant!”
Lance Corporal Adam Garett yawned and placed his tray on the empty table. He sat on the stool, looking at the mound of mashed potatoes and Salisbury steak soaked in gravy, suddenly missing the Gonzalez chow hall aboard Miramar. He picked up the steaming plastic mug and winced when he held it in front of his nose, inhaling the aroma of what they tried passing off as coffee.
He took a sip of the dirty bean water and almost spit it back into the cup, but he needed the caffeine before his shift. He swallowed a gulp of the burnt liquid while trying to suppress a burgeoning guilt at giving Chen what she’d asked for. Even after justifying his treasonous actions for months, he struggled now with the notion that the information he’d given her would most likely result in a man’s death, an act that was tantamount to murder.
But you didn’t do it, he reasoned.
It didn’t matter that he didn’t pull the trigger. If Lieutenant Bancroft befell some mysterious fate, he would always blame himself and live the rest of his life in shame. And it would kill his parents if they ever learned what he’d done. Honor and duty meant something to them.
“Anybody sitting here?” a voice asked over his shoulder.
Adam shook his head and gestured for the sailor to take a seat as he cut into his rubbery Salisbury steak. “Help yourself.”
The sailor sat down across from Adam. “Pretty crazy about last night, huh?”
Adam popped a chunk of meat into his mouth after asking, “What about it?”
“You know, those strange lights over the Mobile Bay?”
He chewed several times and swallowed before answering. “Oh. That.”
“Yeah, I heard some TOPGUN pilot almost crashed his jet into the ship.” The sailor studied Adam closely, then added, “Say, wasn’t that your squadron?”
Adam nodded and stabbed at another piece of meat, then dragged it through the sea of gravy, not really caring to recount the effects of his treason. But he still had to act interested. “Yeah. Pretty crazy. Wonder why he did that.”
The sailor scooped a mound of mashed potatoes into his mouth and shrugged. “I dunno, man. Crazy.”
This was why Adam didn’t get along well with his fellow Marines or the ship’s company sailors. They lived for scuttlebutt, even about the most inconsequential things, like some strange lights over a ship at sea. He had more important things to worry about. Unlike every sailor or Marine on the Lincoln, Adam didn’t just have to do his job, but he also had to keep up regular communications with Chen and feed her enough information to stay in her good graces.
The sailor across from him swallowed the mouthful of potatoes and reached for the plastic cup full of soda. “Maybe those orbs will come back tonight and we—”
The sailor stopped mid-sentence when the bong, bong, bong of an alarm sounded over the 1MC followed by the rushed voice of a sailor with a Kentucky accent. “This is not a drill. This is not a drill. General quarters, general quarters. All hands, man your battle stations.” The announcement was followed by a repeat of the alarm.
Adam dropped his fork and felt his blood run cold. “What the hell?”
The sailor took a long swallow of soda and set the cup down. “Gotta go!”
“What’s going on?”
He shrugged. “Guess we’d better find out.”
Adam pushed his tray of food away and stood up. His meal forgotten, he stepped back from the table and spun for the exit, his mind racing over what he knew he had to do. If he had been assigned a different military occupational specialty, his battle station might have been on the roof, preparing his squadron’s jets to launch against an inbound enemy force. But instead, he was stuck reporting to Gunny in maintenance control, where he would sit out the action from behind an ODIN terminal.
The alarm sounded again, and the Kentuckian voice returned. “This is not a drill. This is not a drill. General quarters, general quarters. All hands, man your battle stations. The route of travel is forward and up to starboard, down and aft to port. Set material condition Zebra throughout the ship. Reason for general quarters is imminent missile attack. This is not a drill.”
He bumped into a sailor running the wrong direction on the mess deck while puzzling over the call to quarters. Imminent missile attack? This isn’t good, he thought.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going!”
He ignored the shouting behind him and pushed through a growing throng of sailors on his way to the closest ladder. He didn’t give a damn about the route of travel. He just needed to get to maintenance control as fast as he could and find out what was going on. His stomach turned, and he hoped with all his might his stupidity hadn’t put the entire ship in jeopardy.
Or his life.
“Dammit!” he growled. “Move!”
44
Tiffany shone her penlight on the notepad, comparing the coordinates the Navy helicopter had given her with the ones displayed on her handheld GPS. The handwritten latitude and longitude only went out three decimal places, giving her a margin of plus or minus forty feet. With that degree of accuracy, her handheld unit could read the exact same thing and she still might miss whatever the pilot had spotted.
She swept her light across the ground around her, looking for anything that might indicate a human had been there. Boot prints. Litter. Anything that hadn’t been made by the Almighty and worn down by the weather. But she only saw a bit of scat and a few paw prints hinting at the presence of an island fox. Slowly, she fanned her light outward, scanning in concentric rings around the center of the GPS coordinates.
“Tiffany, anything yet?” Chief Romero called over the radio.
“Negative, Chief. The first two locations were a bust. No evidence of human presence at either.”
“You’re at number three?”
She looked at the notepad again, confirming she had indeed trekked to the right spot. “Yeah, not much here either. I’m…”
She stopped when her flashlight illuminated a bush that looked… odd.
“You broke up,” the Blacktip chief said.
“Hold on,” Tiffany replied, carefully making her way up the steep slope to get a closer look at what had caught her attention. At a distance, she saw what looked like splintered light-colored sapwood, as if a thick branch had been ripped from a tree and tossed aside. She shone her light on the ground and placed her feet carefully, then lifted the beam back to the clump of irregular brush to make sure she was on the right track.
“Do you see something?” Chief Romero asked.
She stopped halfway to her destination and brought the radio to her mouth. “Give me a second.”
Click. Click.
The chief had finally gotten the hint and remained quiet while she took her time traversing the uneven terrain. As she drew closer, she felt an uneasy feeling wash over her and squeeze her stomach in a viselike grip. Under her flashlight’s weak beam, she saw a disheveled clump of blond hair tinged red, and she quickly turned her head and dry-heaved on the ground at her feet. She spat thick strings of sour saliva while trying to force the image from her mind and regain her composure. Slowly, she turned back to the gruesome scene and scanned the area around the bush.