Darkside (43 page)

“There are two guest cabins on the boat,” he said. “C'mon back with me. You can take your pick. We'll get some wine, sit up on deck until the dew gets too heavy.”

She gave him a brief, weary smile. “Why not?” she said. “Can't dance.”

“Follow me,” he said, suddenly happy for her company. “I'll give you a lift to the main gate.”

An hour later, they sat watching the lights across the harbor from the cockpit of his boat. It turned out she kept an overnight kit in her Bronco, and she'd changed into a loose-fitting workout suit. He'd given her a sweater and a ball cap, and he'd changed into jeans and a sweater. Jupiter was in his cage, partially covered against the night breeze coming in from the bay. Jim had some single malt; Branner had opted for wine.

“Where are you from originally?” he asked.

“Omaha,” she said. “My parents were both cops. He was a detective before he retired, and she worked for Internal Affairs.”

“If she's was as good-looking as you are, she must have been downright lethal.”

“Thank you, sir. And she was. Lethal, I mean. She could drink any man under the table and they'd tell her anything. Not that we had a big police corruption problem in dear old Omaha.”

“You do college?”

“Creighton, right there in town. Jesuit school. Took a prelaw curriculum.”

“Wow. So what happened?”

“Met too many lawyers,” she said. “Even married one, just for grins. Big mistake. All fixed now, though.”

He decided not to ask what “all fixed” meant. He told her about growing up in Pensacola at his father's boatyard. He admitted to her that he didn't really enjoy going very far out into the Gulf.

“Truth be told, I'm prone to seasickness,” he said. “Which is why I don't take this beauty out on the bay, either.”

“I'm with you,” she said. “Being from Omaha, the ocean was just about the biggest damned thing I'd ever seen. And then a marine biologist told me one day at the beach that they called the first two hundred yards out into the water ‘the feeding zone.' So now I just look at it.”

“I'm sure there's plenty of sharks out there in the bay,” he said. “But the big threat around here are the damned jellyfish.”

“There you go,” she said, settling into the sweater, which she had thrown loosely over her shoulders. “Another reason to stay on nice dry land. I don't like the water, and I don't like confined spaces, either.”

“Like tunnels.”

“Exactly.”

He was a little surprised. After all that redhead bluster, Branner was actually scared of a couple things. Although, he had to admit, she'd gone right down there with him.

“You date much around here?” he asked.

“Nope. Mostly work. I was seeing this guy up in D.C. for a while, but he faded. A couple of Sunday nights getting home on Route Fifty during beach season took the fun right out of it. How about you?”

“Nobody special. The female mids are too young, and most of the tourists are too old. I party with the marina people once in awhile, but that's a pretty wet-drunk scene after about eleven at night. Occasionally, things work out.”

“Never married?”

“Nope. Not against it, mind you, but…”

“It's overrated,” she said, but did not elaborate. She looked smaller now, all tucked into his big cable-knit sweater, her legs curled under her in the soft deck chair. If he closed his eyes, he could still visualize those legs when she was decked out for business. Copper hair, green eyes, small, almost pug nose, pale white skin with a few freckles. In-your-face sexy.

“Where'd you go, cowboy?” she asked, and he opened his eyes and saw that she was smiling at him. It dramatically softened her face.

“I was thinking,” he said.

“Uh-oh,” she said. The challenge was back in her voice.

“Yeah. Of how pretty you are, sitting over there. And how tough and hard-boiled you are in your day job. I was going to say, how tough and hard you try to be, but the fact is, I think it's
not
an act. I was wondering why?”

“Simple,” she said with a small sigh. “I'm a redhead.”

“Uh, yeah?”

“What do think of when you see a redhead?”

He thought about being diplomatic. Nah. “Trouble?” he said.

“There you go. Men expect nothing but trouble from a redhead. So I oblige 'em. That way, they think they have me figured out, and when the occasion calls for it, I can surprise them.”

“Is all that necessary?” he asked. “In the NCIS business, I mean?”

“Absolutely,” she said. “Most male agents meet a reasonably attractive female agent, or any government professional, they get hung up on the reasonably attractive parts.”

“Go on.”

“You meet another guy, you put a pleasant expression on your face and you shake hands, and that's that, right? Guys meet me, they check out my face, legs, my front and back, legs again, and then ask, after I've already told them, what I do. It takes everything I've got not to tell
them I'm a nine-hundred-dollar hooker, just to see what they'd do.”

“I think I might hit the ATM machine myself.”

She laughed out loud. “Studly guy like you?” she said. “Tell me you've never paid for it.”

“Only as a Marine in WestPac, and of course, over there, as we all know, it doesn't count.”

She laughed again and sipped some wine.

“So why the provocative clothes?” he asked. “More dazzle?”

“Yep,” she said. “It works, too. That's why I'm the boss of my own little resident agency, such as it is, at age thirty. What you see is what you get. That's my approach.”

“But they don't get it, do they?” he said with a grin.

“Nice one, Mr. Hall,” she said. “Does that shower work down there, or is there some special maritime incantation to make it produce hot water?”

“It's complicated, but you can do it. Turn the left-hand knob, the one marked with the
H
, to the left and you'll be good to go. In fact, you'd better turn the right-hand knob, too, or you're going to be red all over. So to speak.”

She cocked her head at him, finished her wine, and gathered herself to go below. “Thanks for the company,” she said. “And thanks for not making some clumsy pass. You're a very attractive man.” She stopped, as if wondering if she'd said too much. “I'm really bummed about Bagger, and I have this feeling that the Dell case is falling out of my hands.” She smiled up at him. “Takes the romance right out of it, you know?”

“I understand,” he said. “If you get bored later…”

“Yeah? What should I do if I get bored later, Mr. Hall?”

“Jupiter here plays a mean hand of gin rummy,” he said with a straight face.

She straightened and slowly smoothed the front of the exercise suit over the contours of her body, letting him watch as she did it. “I'll keep that in mind,” she said. Then she went below.

Jim relaxed in his chair and poured some more scotch. He
tried to think about the case of the tunnel runner, but his mind kept coming back to Branner. He wondered what it would take to get through all that armor. And then he realized that nothing would get through all that armor until and unless she decided to take it off.

“She's a tough one, bird,” he said. But Jupiter already had his head under his wing. Bird, he decided, had the right idea. He gathered up the sleeping parrot and went below himself. He put Jupiter into his big cage, doused all the lights, set the alarm system, and then went into his own cabin. He read for fifteen minutes before the rack monster sounded its siren song and he turned off the light. He couldn't quite figure Branner out. It was as if she were appraising him, as if she hadn't made up her mind whether or not she liked him. Actually,
like
was the wrong word. Respect. Branner was all about respect. He drifted off.

He woke up to the sounds of somebody moving around out in the lounge. He looked at his watch and saw that he'd been down for no more than half an hour. He lay still, wondering if Branner was looking for something. There was some light coming through the portholes on either side of his cabin, enough to let him see the door clearly. The boat was moving gently in tune with the harbor's tidal currents.

The alarm panel light was steady, so it wasn't an intruder. Had to be Branner. A moment later, he saw the door handle turn down, but the door did not move. Then the handle moved again, and the door slowly opened wide. It was Branner. She appeared to be wearing nothing but an oversized T-shirt, which didn't reach much below her hips. She stood there for a long moment, barely visible in the dim light, her hair down around her shoulders, the curves of her hips and thighs lovely. She had an expression he hadn't seen before. He didn't move, curious to see what she'd do.

“You awake, Hall?” she asked softly.

“I am now. You want a light on?”

“No,” she said, coming over to the bed. She sat down sideways on the bottom edge, tentatively, as if she didn't trust the bed to hold her. “I need to know something.”

“Shoot.”

“You said you got in trouble, over in Bosnia, when you were in the Marines. I'd like to know what really happened. If you want to tell me, that is.”

He lay back on the pillows and put his hands behind his head. “It was a blue on blue—friendlies firing on friendlies. I was the spotter—the guy who can see the bad guys when the friendly artillery can't. My job was to call artillery fire down on this fifty-seven-millimeter cannon some Serbs were using to pick off schoolchildren trying to get across a street. Serbs' idea of sport.”

“Who were the friendlies?”

“An Italian peacekeeper squad. They were emplaced on a hillside below the Serbian position. Serbs didn't know they were there, but the Italians couldn't do anything about the cannon.”

“Couldn't or wouldn't?”

“Couldn't. It was going to take artillery of some kind—mortars, bigger guns. The Italians had rifles. Anyway, I called the mission ‘danger close,' meaning there were friendlies close to the intended target. The Brit radio operator told his arty people that it was danger, but not danger close.”

“And that made a difference?”

The boat rocked gently as something went by in the darkened channel. The curtains swayed, changing the light in the cabin. “Yeah, that made a difference. ‘Close' means the artillery folks hedge their bets with the fall of their rounds. Remember, they can't see the target, so they shoot the first one near the target. My job was to watch to see where it fell and then adjust their fire-control solution. Danger close, that first round is always fired long, or beyond the target, just to make sure.”

“And?”

“They dropped a one-oh-five round on top of the Italian position. Got 'em all. I wasn't sure they'd been hit—I was three thousand meters away—but it looked bad. Not knowing, I went ahead and adjusted the fire onto the Serb position. They got on in three rounds, and then fired ten for
effect. Hamburgered 'em pretty good. But the Italian local commander couldn't raise his people, so they sent some folks to go look.”

“And they blamed you?”

“Well, there was an inquiry, of course. I had been up there solo. My radio operator was in the rear with the gear, down with Tito's revenge. The Brit radio operator said I called danger, not danger close. The Italians were furious, in their inimitable style. They went up the UN chain of command, looking for blood. My bosses were terribly embarrassed—Marines are supposed to be experts at this spotting business. It got public.”

“Could you prove your story?”

“Not initially. He said/they said, deal. But then, after I'd been relieved of all duties and sent out of theater, a British signals intelligence outfit came out of the weeds and said they'd had a multitrack tape recorder monitoring the local tactical circuits. They had me on tape. They took it to the Brit artillery people, who fessed up. Like I said, the Brits did the right thing, but by then, my bosses had publicly hung me out to dry, and they weren't willing to admit they'd screwed up twice. The Marine Corps had been getting ready to court-martial me. Instead, they gave me the choice between the court or taking the ceremonial detail posting to the Academy. Naturally, I took it.”

“How many people died?”

“All nine of them. Direct hit. The Marine Corps kindly made me go face the families. Not fun.”

“God. And afterward? After it came out that it wasn't you?”

“Came out? Nothing came out. And no one was going to convince the signoras. That damage was well and truly done. Bosnia, Kosovo, that whole peacekeeping scene was a major cluster fuck. I still feel guilty, even though I didn't cause it to happen. I was part of it.”

“So your career in the Marines went permanently south.”

“Yup. The Corps never forgets.”

“Did the people here at the Academy know the story?”

“The Marines did. I assume somebody briefed the supe. Oh, and did I tell you the Italians had some kids up there? Some local kids—they ran wild over there—had climbed down into the Italian position, begging for food, hanging out. Ground them up, too.”

“Oh shit.”

“Yeah, shit. So that's why I'm in this ‘nothing' job.”

She was quiet for a minute. “You associate a career with the chance to get into another mess like that?”

Jim thought about it. “I guess I do. Sometimes, when I get to brooding, I refocus on what's right in front of me. A pretty day in the harbor. The pleasure of polishing my boat. A nice wine. A pretty lady. Keeping it simple, here, boss.”

She nodded. “I appreciate your telling me this. It explains a lot. Now I just want to cry.”

“When I think about all that, so do I, Special Agent. You better get back to bed.”

She gave him a long look, then nodded and quietly left the cabin. Jim didn't know what to think, so he went back to sleep, hoping not to dream about that ravaged red hillside far away.