Darkside (3 page)

The best part of formation time is when the plebes, all finished with their chow calls, come chopping down the center of the passageway, hands rigid at their sides, eyes in the boat, yes, sir, knowing within a few seconds what time it is, but having to give way to the upperclassmen, because that's how it works here at Canoe U. They had sixty, now fifty seconds to get down the stairwell—that's ladder to you, plebe-dweeb—and into ranks. We don't obstruct them on purpose, although it does happen. And, of course, you bump into me and you get an automatic come-around. On the other hand, if they aren't in formation by the time the formation bell rings, they're down on the demerit pad anyway. Can't win, if you're a plebe, can you? No, you can't. That's the beauty of the system. Make it hopeless, see what they do, see who gives up, who doesn't, and then help the strong ones figure it out. To recognize the system, and, better yet, how to beat the system.

That's how I've done it, only I was doing it long before I got to this place. Beating the system. Every place I've been, since I was a little kid, there's always been a system. Whether in Juvie Hall, the foster homes, the parochial school, there's always been a system. If you truly want to rule, all you have
to do is first recognize the system, then beat it by appearing to play by its rules while taking what you want. And you know what? The people who run the system are usually so damned dumb, they can't see you doing it. This place is no different in that regard. They've got all these chickenshit rules, so you focus on those rules. Shine your shoes, polish your brass, keep your room sharp, bounce that dime off the bedspread, man. Study what they tell you to study, excel at all things athletic, stand tall, speak loud, keep your hair short, your body pumped, your abs ripped, and, man, you will be a star. Just like me. Oh, you might not have many friends, but, hell, I didn't come here for friends. I came here to get those wings of gold and that great big Mameluke sword.

See, you don't need friends to select Marine aviation; you only need a certain percentage of your class to stand lower than you do. It's like if you and I were being chased by a big bad bear—I don't have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you. So my classmates don't like me. Big deal. But they sure as hell know who I am. And the Dark Side, especially the Marines? Hell, they love me. Set me up at attention in a set of tropical whites, take my picture while I'm bellowing out an order, I'm Poster Boy.

Well, it's going on class time. Just a couple more weeks and we get to flee this place. I finally get to join my mighty Corps, and, of course, learn all about a new system. They'll have one. And being Marines, it'll be a pretty simple system. Not simple as in dumb, but simple as in clear, pure, strong. But I'll play it and beat it, too. Piece of cake. Easy as slurping down the weekly shit-on-a-shingle breakfast in King Hall. Hope they hose off the plaza over there before noon meal. I saw a fire truck, but there's been no fire that I know about. Something messy on the plaza, I hear. Or was it someone? A plebe, maybe? Hope so—there're too many of them.

 

Just before noon, Ev Markham stood on the front steps outside Sampson Hall, wishing he could have a cigarette. He'd
quit smoking when he'd left carrier aviation, but the desire for just one had never been truly extinguished. It was a perfect spring day in Annapolis, with clear blue skies and a vigorous sea breeze coming in off the bay. The trees were in bloom, the lawns were coming green again after the wintry depredations of dark ages, and the Severn River was positively sparkling. The wedge of Chesapeake Bay he could see from Sampson was a vast sheet of silver punctuated by fishing boats and the seemingly motionless silhouette of a black-hulled tanker pushing its way up to Baltimore. It was no wonder the visiting West Point cadets, whose fortresslike academy up on the Hudson was still ice-bound in the early spring, called their rivals' school in Annapolis “the Country Club.”

The last midshipmen were exiting the granite-covered academic building, hustling back to Bancroft for noon meal formation, throwing a chorus of obligatory “Morning, sir” at him as they trotted by. He was a popular-enough professor, and it didn't hurt that he taught a subject that was considered non-life-threatening, as compared to, say, advanced organic chemistry. He was finishing his imaginary cigarette and admiring the big houses on the cliffs across the Severn River when Dolly Benson, the Political Science Department's secretary, stuck her head out one of the massive bronze doors and called him in for an urgent phone call from his daughter. Surprised, he followed her back to the departmental offices. A call from his daughter at this time of day, with noon meal formation bells about to ring, was unusual. The Naval Academy was a place of rigid routines. Any break in that routine usually meant trouble.

“Yeah, Julie. What's up?”

“Dad, I think I've got a problem. My company officer came to our room and told me to get into Class-A's and report to the commandant's office.”

“Whoa. Why?”

“I have no idea. I don't think Lieutenant Tarrens does, either. He just said to get up there ASAP. What should I do?”

“Get up there ASAP. And you have no idea of what this is about? Academic? Conduct?”

“No, Dad,” Julie said in a mildly exasperated voice. Rightfully so, too. Julie stood in the top 20 percent of her class academically and had never had a significant conduct demerits problem.

“Well, then, go find out. If you haven't done anything wrong, just go see the Man. He doesn't bite.”

“That something you know, Dad?” she asked, but her normal bantering tone wasn't there. He realized Julie was scared. He also knew that Captain Robbins, the commandant of midshipmen and a recent flag officer selectee, was not exactly a warm and fuzzy kind of guy.

“Listen, Jules: The commandant is all about business. Whatever it is, he'll be professional about it. However, if you think you're being accused of something, stop talking and call me right away. On my cell number. And before thirteen hundred, okay? I've got a department staff meeting then. Now hustle your bustle.”

“I guess. Shit. I'm going to miss lunch.”

He could hear the formation bells ringing out in the halls. “I believe you already have. Get going. And call me back.”

He hung up and stood there for a moment. He was grateful that the departmental office complex was empty. Everyone else, including Dolly now, had gone somewhere, either for lunch or to work out. There were individual offices for the department chair, who was a Navy captain, and for each full professor. There was also a conference room, and some smaller shared offices for newer faculty and visitors. There were no students hanging around, either. Unlike students at a civilian college, midshipmen had their time strictly regulated: They were in Bancroft Hall, out on the athletic fields, or in class in one of the academic buildings. Midshipmen rarely spent time lingering around the departmental offices.

He walked over to his own office to make sure his cell phone was on, wondering what the hell this was all about. The commandant of midshipmen's office was in Bancroft Hall itself. He and his deputy, Captain Rogers, directly oversaw every aspect of the midshipmen's daily life through a chain of command comprised of commissioned officers who
were designated battalion and company officers. The four thousand midshipmen were assigned to six battalions of five companies each. Having been a midshipman, Ev knew that a summons to the commandant's office was trouble, plain and simple. With her high academic standing and her athletic achievements as a competitive swimmer, Julie was one of the stars of her class, so this wasn't likely to be about a conduct offense. Another large-scale cheating episode, perhaps? God, he hoped not. The Academy didn't need another one of those, especially after all the ongoing controversy over the ethics and honor courses.

Forty-five minutes later, his suspicions were confirmed. Julie called in on his regular number. She asked in a wooden, stilted voice if he could come over to Bancroft Hall.

“Certainly,” he said, not liking her tone of voice. “But what's going on?”

“Can't talk,” she said, lowering her voice. “I'll meet you in the rotunda. We can talk there.”

“Five minutes,” he said, and hung up. He left a note for Dolly that he had been called away on an urgent personal matter and would be late for the departmental meeting. Then he grabbed his suit coat and hustled out the door.

Julie was waiting for him in the spacious main entrance to Bancroft Hall, the eight-wing, five-storied marble and granite Beaux Arts dormitory complex that was home to the nearly four thousand midshipmen composing the Brigade. She was standing to one side of the ornate marble-floored entrance, looking small beneath the massive naval murals lining the cavernous rotunda. He felt a small pang in his heart when he looked at his daughter: Julie looked so much like her mother—medium height, dark-haired, pretty, and bright-eyed, except that right now she wasn't so bright-eyed. Her face was rigid with what looked to him like massive embarrassment. Fifty feet above her head was a twenty-foot-wide color mural depicting battleships under air attack in World War II. It somehow seemed appropriate.

He went to her and saw that she was struggling to contain tears. A couple of passing midshipmen, youngsters, with a
single anchor insignia on their shirt collars and arms laden with books, glanced at him in his civilian suit and tie but kept going. Being sophomores, they wouldn't necessarily know he was faculty, so he looked like what he was: a visiting father, here to talk to his daughter. A freestanding wooden privacy partition masked the side hallways leading back into the Brigade hallways. He saw a lieutenant he did not recognize standing next to the executive corridor partition, watching them. Probably someone from the Executive Department. Given the weird acoustics of the rotunda, he was close enough to eavesdrop.

“Want to go somewhere?” he asked softly, eyeing the watching officer.

“Can't,” she said through clamped jaws. “They say I have to meet some people from NCIS in a few minutes.”

That stopped him. NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service. Emphasis on the word
Criminal.
“NCIS? What the hell, Julie?”

She looked right at him, keeping her back to the lieutenant and her voice low. “That plebe who jumped this morning? They're saying it had something to do with me. The commandant just put me through some kind of interrogation. It's almost like they think
I'm
responsible. You know, for what he did.”

“Good Lord. Did you even know him?”

“Only sort of,” she said. “I mean, he's a plebe. Was a plebe, I guess.” She turned and glared pointedly at the lieutenant. The young officer finally stepped back behind the partition to give them some privacy. That was his Julie: not one to take crap from anybody.

“Why do they think that?”

She shrugged. “They say there's something that ties him to me.”

“Like…”

“The dant wouldn't say. It was like ‘We'll ask the questions; you answer.'”

He started to say something but stopped. The word had gone through the entire Academy like quicksilver before
first-period classes. A plebe named William Brian Dell was dead, the victim of a fall from the roof of the eighth wing. And now there was something that tied the victim to Julie?

“I don't know what's been going on since the incident,” she said. “But they sent for me just before I called you. The dant just sat there. Captain Rogers did the talking. Asked if I knew him. I did remember him from plebe summer detail. His name was Dell. Like the computer company? He was in our batt. Had him come around a few times, but then, I don't know, I quit running him. He seemed to be flailing. I didn't think he'd last.”

Julie had been a member of the prestigious plebe summer detail, a small cadre of rising seniors who ran the seven-week summer indoctrination program for the incoming class of plebes. The objective of plebe summer was to turn civilians into midshipmen. It was an exhausting regimen, during which the plebes got a taste of what was coming when the full Brigade returned from its summer cruise. But only a taste—the reality was worse. Up at West Point, they called their version of it “Beast Barracks.”

“So what—you were helping him?”

She turned away for a moment. “When I called you this morning, I didn't know it was Dell. Who jumped, I mean. Anyway, they started in asking if I knew Midshipman Fourth Class Dell. I told them, yes, I did. Then they told me he was the one who fell. They keep saying ‘fell.'”

“They probably don't know yet, Julie. They're going to have to do an investigation.”

“They seemed pretty insistent that he fell, like they'd heard the scuttlebutt going around and were laying down the party line. You know, play down any suicide angle. But then—”

She stopped. The lieutenant was back.

“So they're bringing in NCIS?” he asked. “Are they accusing you of something?”

“I don't know. That's what's pissing me off. And the dant wasn't exactly being friendly. You know, what's happened has to be someone's fault, because of course it's going to
embarrass the Academy. But NCIS? Should I have a lawyer or something?”

Ev hesitated. Whenever a Navy service member was seriously injured or killed while on active duty, it was standard procedure for his command to initiate a so-called line-of-duty investigation. NCIS normally would not be brought in unless the authority convening the investigation thought that the incident was the result of criminal or suspicious acts.

“And they won't tell you what this so-called tie is between you and Dell?”

“No. I asked. They said that was privileged information for the moment.”

Ev didn't like the sound of that. The lieutenant was signaling something to Julie. As Ev turned to see what was going on, the commandant himself appeared and headed toward them. Ev felt Julie stiffen to attention by his side.